Lightness of being #28 Steer, not stir the dragon (19 Nov 2013)

Lightness of being #28 Steer the stirred dragon ( 19 Nov 2013)

Dear.....


“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
 I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
 The wild beasts will honor me,  the jackals and the ostriches,
 for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself
 that they might declare my praise.
                 Isaiah 43:18-21

As I penned these rudimentary thoughts, possibly in a few weeks time, I will begin my first step into the final leg of the tripartite that God had placed in my heart in the lows of the subprime crisis back in April 2009.
Thailand is a decade long well where our good Lord has sent me to plow since 1998.  A land where His Spirit fell upon me and transformed my life from sedentary believer to a determined follower of our Lord Jesus Christ. Artisan wells there are plenty in Bangkok, and a reason for its continued sinking. It is an "old well" that our Lord has led me to give a respite to, as He now brings me to the new wells "Japan," and "China."

And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say,
                  Luke 12:11

Is this coming trip truly the will of God? Man plans God directs. It is good for me to wait upon our Lord, and move forth only when His Spirit leads.
Like Gideon or other men of God's leading, this trip that I plan to embark on is not without its challenges. Language proficiency will be testing for me, for one will not just be in a total Putonghua environment, but one spiced with the heavy accents of the locale which can be a strain on the uninitiated.  Would a "yellow banana" like me, schooled in the Anglophile environment of the mission schools, be incommunicado in this Chinese bazaar?

Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
               1 Timothy 6:12

Much as with man it might be impossible, with God all things will be possible.
God will on reflection, prepare us even as He leads us in wherever He wills for us.
These past 3 months of determined immersion in the Mandarin vernacular has given me some semblance of the beginnings of a more structured foundation in my grasp of the unifying language of the Chinese race. Though on the side, if what I had read is true, Hokkien was the language of the Great Tang Dynasty, much as Mandarin was distilled from the barbarian tribes north of Beijing.

I had intentionally concentrated my reacquaintance with Mandarin through primarily Mandarin Christian hymns written in the traditional Mandarin script used in Taiwan, rather than the simplified version in use in China. And I listened to the mandarin audio Chinese Bible on a daily basis, while on the road and very little of anything else.

Our Father in Heaven has a great sense of humor.  Not only my rudimentary grasp of the written Mandarin characters is more apt for Taiwan, than China.
I do wonder what the primarily Muslim Chinese entrepreneurs whom I will be spending time this trip with will think given my fairly nascent Putonghua is significantly Biblical oriented?

Like Japan, where my spiritual journey started with the very symbolic purchase of a property away from the main city, but in a strategic cross road of the two spiritual strongholds that have enslaved the country. A place where through the prayers of the faithful, God will begin to break the spiritual bondage.
I know my going to Hunan will be prescient if it is truly from our Lord.
And indeed, it is interesting that this ministry is not starting with the mainstream Han Chinese, but instead with the minority Muslim tribes and the Han Chinese who engage in business with them or reside in their land.

God always affirms. In Japan, in Kyushu where I made my maiden trip last month, it was also the place where the Western Christian missionaries were first allowed into a closed door Japan. And it was where the Japanese Christians who at one point accounted for 10% of the population were decimated through persecutions and cruxifications. Yet, the embers of Christianity never died off.

Changsha city, in Hunan Province was where Chairman Mao Tse Tung, had his epiphany moment with the "godless" religion, and became a communist. He was the man who brought China out of the inequitable capitalist abuses of Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang, into the utopian but in reality bondage of communism.
Changsa city is also the hometown of the great reformer, the ex Prime Minister Zhu Rong Zhi, whose radical reforms catapulted China up the curve in the 1990s. It is prescient that the present leadership in meeting in the key 3rd Plenary, where the next leap forward, is dotted with many advisers from PM's Zhu era.

Spiritually this is where our Lord has placed me to, to begin through prayers and engagement, the unravelling of the roots of China's present darkness.

Revelation 12:17
Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

And this morning, our Lord impressed upon my heart, to retitle this sharing from the planned "Mao Tai," a pun on Chairman Mao, and an intoxicated China, that is now inebriated with not the potent Chinese wine, but with the concept of Babylonian capitalism.
"Steer, not stir the dragon," this is the word our Lord gave me.

The ramifications of China, the Land of the dragon king( where every Emperor ascribe their ancestry to) awakening from self imposed slumber( since the Ming Dynasty, save for Admiral Cheng Ho's great sea expedition) reverberates through all our lives globally.
But clearly, from mere stirring, the Middle Kingdom is ready to reclaim her perceived birthright as the pivot of the world. She is ready to steer the world in her way.
Would it be in a godless manner, as is the foundation of the Communist Party?
Or in an even more rudderless manner, for with the dominant religion "communism," losing its bearings to corruption, many Chinese are increasingly searching for that spiritual compass, that peace and joy, that the much pursued material wealth the past three decades have not been able to provide.

God is calling Christians to pray for this nation. To engage the Chinese and be the conduit upon which His light will shine forth and transform hearts, that will point China's people, if not her leadership toward's Christ, before Christ returns.

For the times are near.

And on engagement, this past one week has been an intense Mandarin festival. Starting with meeting friends from Taiwan, followed by half a platoon of visitors from all across China, and rounded off by two calls from con men in China who caught me a little off guard in my Mandarin intoxicated state. And closing the week by signing on to WeChat to connect with my new friends from China.

God blesses

Eng Hieang
19 Nov 2013

An afterthought - Long Sand

Revelation 12:17
Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

"Long sand," this is the literal translation of Changsa. And it did struck me as to the coincidence or more aptly God's prescience in bringing me to Revelation 12:17 as above, where indeed, the Chinese government has been clamping down on the independent House Churches.
But it is the last line of Revelations 12:17 "he stood on the sand of the sea." that is intriguing.
Who is this he?

Bible theologians are divided as to who it is?

Revelation 13:1
The First Beast
 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.

If one read into Revelations 13:1  it will be Satan, as he stood on the beach to summon the beasts.
It could also be the Apostle John as he stood on the beach to witness the rising of the beasts.

What matters for us is, we are now standing on the same line on the beach of life.
We are witnessing the rise of the beast in our midst, for the world as we know it is increasingly deviant and the rules of the jungle is increasingly the norm in mainstream life.

Will you stand with the devil, as many are, as they either exhibit the same deviancy or choose to not speak and live boldly against it. Or will you answer God's call when He lifted the blindness in your hearts, to stand firm on the sand, and be the beacon of love as His light shines forth?

And is my fertile imagination on overdrive, or the Spirit of God is bringing to life the montages that must sharpen our spiritual awareness. As I was driving to the hair saloon this morning, I was reminded of a possible connecting trip to Shanghai from Changsa.
"Above the sea," that is the literal translation for this mega polis. And with the Chinese Government now focussed on using Shanghai as their experiment to go thoroughly capitalist,
indeed the new beast of Babylon has risen.
Is Changsa ( the sand ) where our Lord will allow me to witness the rise of the beast upon the water, Shanghai? And Shanghai, the old dame of Asia is where I will be in this 2 leg trip