Christ's Return and Today's Global Geopolitical Bombshells by Dr. David Liang

Author:Dr. David Liang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Biblical Studies/Prophecy/Religion, Politics & States
Publisher: Elm Hill
Published: 2019-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM BOMBSHELL

Spiritual Bondage in Another Ancient Civilization

In modern times, the most common name for China is Zhōngguó, literally translated as Middle Kingdom. China is also called Zhonghua (中華 or 中华), Shenzhou (神州), and Huaxia (華夏 or 华夏). Han (漢/汉) and Tang (唐) are common names for the dominant Chinese ethnic group.223 The ultimate source of the Western-language name China is the Chinese word Qin (秦), the name of the dynasty that gradually unified China by 221 BC.

China stands among a tiny handful of nations having both a very ancient civilization and great power in the modern day. This despite suffering a “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western powers and Japan between 1839 and 1949 and other major turmoil such as more than two decades of civil war (1927 to 1949), the decade-long political and social chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), and student-led protests in Tiananmen Square (1989).

China’s 5,000 years of civilization comes with a deep-rooted tradition of ancestral worship. Foot binding was another ancient tradition, considered a mark of status and beauty for women and practised for one thousand years until the early twentieth century.

Robert Morrison: I Can’t, But I Believe God Can

In September 1807, twenty-five-year-old Robert Morrison boarded a ship for the seven-month voyage from England through the US to the port of Guangzhou in China. He was the first Protestant missionary to China, following God’s call to reach the country’s 350 million souls with the gospel.

As Morrison stood on the deck of the ship, looking at the teeming crowds on the banks, a shipping agent asked him shortly before their arrival in China: “Do you really think you can influence China’s deep tradition of ancestral worship?” For a brief moment Morrison was at a loss for words, and then he replied: “No, sir, I can’t, but I believe God can.”

When the Bible proclaimed: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” God’s love must include the Chinese—the world’s most numerous people group.

When China went through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), churches were forcibly closed, many of the Christian leaders were imprisoned and/or killed for their faith, and many others spent years in hard-labour camps. In that era, it would have appeared that all the sacrifice, bloodshed, and labours of love by tens of thousands of missionaries from around the world had gone to waste.

Likewise, the social/ political turmoil of 1989 would have led to the question: ‘God, why is it that you do not seem to care?’

“Jesus in Beijing”

In late 2003, David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine, published a book called “Jesus in Beijing” How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power.224 According to a review in the May/June 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine:225

He [Aikman] estimates that “Christian believers in China, both Catholic and Protestant, may be closer to 80 million than the official combined Catholic-Protestant figure of 21 million” and that “it is

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.