China: The Land of God

By Yuan Zhim­ing

IV

The syn­op­sis of Sun Yat-Sen’s Three Prin­ci­ples of the Peo­ple (San Min Zhu Yi): nation­al­ism, democ­ra­cy, and the peo­ple’s liveli­hood are nei­ther to be equat­ed with “Mate­ri­al­ism,” nor “World­li­ness.” They were actu­al­ly found­ed on the sacred and pro­found basis of Chris­tian­i­ty. Sun Yat-Sen remarked: What is the pur­pose of human progress? It is none oth­er than what Con­fu­cius advo­cat­ed: “As the Way has its way, then the whole world forms one sin­gle com­mu­ni­ty.” It is as sum­ma­rized in Jesus’ words, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heav­en” (Matt. 6:10). This ide­ol­o­gy does not cen­ter on the devel­op­ment of man, but on the attrib­ut­es of God, beyond mere good­ness of human­i­ty. Only then free­dom, lib­er­ty, and broth­er­hood becomes the stan­dard for man (Li Shuang­bi).

The crux of under­stand­ing the Three Peo­ple’s Prin­ci­ples is the con­cept of “Doing (the truth) is easy, know­ing (it) is dif­fi­cult.” Sun Yat-Sen con­sid­ered the tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese con­cept “Know­ing is easy, doing is dif­fi­cul­ty” self-deceiv­ing, alto­geth­er decep­tive and mis­lead­ing to the whole nation. Many Chi­nese think that they know the gen­uine truth when they actu­al­ly do not. As a result they “revere what needs not be revered and do not fear what ought to be feared.” He advo­cat­ed that fore­go­ing the old and bring­ing about reforms takes lead­ing the nation to a true knowl­edge and rev­er­ence of the One who deserves rev­er­ence (God).

Sun Yat-Sen believed in “rul­ing by the prin­ci­ples of God” and “think­ing with the heart of Jesus.” Some of the mem­bers of the Nation­al­ist Par­ty (KMT) such as Wang Jing­wei and Chai Yuan­pei vehe­ment­ly opposed Chris­tian­i­ty. Sun Yat-Sen remind­ed the church “not to be used as a tool by impe­ri­al­ism” on the one hand, and empha­sized on the oth­er, that debate would only help “reveal more truth in Chris­tian­i­ty.” He solemn­ly declared, “Not only am I a Chris­t­ian, but so is also every sin­gle per­son in my whole fam­i­ly regard­less of age; we con­duct fam­i­ly wor­ship.”

“There is a dire need in thor­ough­ly cleans­ing Chi­na’s intrin­sic cul­ture and age-old eth­i­cal edu­ca­tion. These have been deep-root­ed, and had been taint­ed from thou­sands of years of con­fus­ing and impure Chi­nese cus­toms. This is a hor­ren­dous task, in which I do not dare to attempt as I have already ded­i­cat­ed my entire life to polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. But I wish that oth­er com­rades would par­take in this effort” (Bao Shi­jie).

Sun Yat-Sen was very clear-mind­ed: “The sep­a­ra­tion of reli­gion and state is a com­mon prac­tice in recent civ­i­lized nations. It enables free­dom of belief and evan­ge­lism; it caus­es lit­tle dis­tur­bance to pol­i­tics; and it enables church­es to ful­fill their pur­pose of expound­ing truth and grace” (Sun Yat-Sen, Replies).

Sun Yat-Sen passed away in Bei­jing on Feb­ru­ary 22, 1925; there was a prayer meet­ing in Union Hos­pi­tal fol­lowed by the state bur­ial in Chung-Shan Park, Nan­jing. In his dying instruc­tions, Sun Yat-Sen said, “I have been a Chris­t­ian who has bat­tled with Satan for forty years. You must also bat­tle in the same man­ner; trust also in God.” He also said, “Would that the whole world know that I am a Chris­t­ian even though I die” (Zhang Yijing).

V

The twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Chi­na took a tum­ble from Sun Yat-Sen’s ide­al of democ­ra­cy to the real­i­ty of autoc­ra­cy with both Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong.

Per­haps it is inevitable that the great turn­ing back of the “Land of God” would be a long and wind­ing pil­grim­age. After all, she has wan­dered away from God for so long now.

Oh Chi­na! Your brand new nation­al name and epoch, your brand new prin­ci­ples and con­sti­tu­tion are all at a loss cam­ou­flag­ing your old and rot­ten soul!

Con­sid­er­ing the dynas­ties of cor­rupt emper­ors, is Mao Zedong any bet­ter? Regard­ing dynas­ties of wise kings, can Deng Xiaop­ing be even on a par? Do not the lead­ers of “New Chi­na” con­tin­ue to steal the glo­ry of God and try to become the “gods” for the peo­ple? Do not the peo­ple still fall into the swampy trap of human­ism and wor­ship sin­ful and inad­e­quate men as gods?

Nev­er­the­less, the end of man is the begin­ning of God. Oh Chi­na! Have you not tried all the ways of man? You have repeat­ed­ly expe­ri­enced extreme exhaus­tion, near­ing the end of your breath, after the dynas­ties of Tang and Sung. You have been through the val­leys of death and shame beyond words since the last days of the Ming Dynasty. Yet you place the fault upon oth­ers. You attribute all fail­ures to oth­er nations and turn to them with hatred. But are you your­self pure and inno­cent? You have strayed far from God’s right­eous­ness and love. You lift up your­self in your pride­ful heart. You are masochis­ti­cal­ly destroy­ing your­self as you remain in sin. Right­eous­ness and ethics are on your lips, yet they are but filthy rags, inca­pable of cov­er­ing your shame­ful naked­ness, even less able to cleanse your inner ugli­ness.

Oh Chi­na! How much more blood and how many more tears must you shed before you turn to God in gen­uine repen­tance?

Fifty years of Com­mu­nist reign is mere­ly a flash­ing moment in the five thou­sand years of his­to­ry. Yet, this spe­cial peri­od which had incu­bat­ed between the late Ming Dynasty and the ear­ly Qing Dynasty turned a new page for Chi­na’s five thou­sand year his­to­ry. Chi­na even­tu­al­ly moved to face the world; the Yel­low Riv­er met the great ocean.

Oh Chi­na, you final­ly set your feet on a new jour­ney of dis­cov­ery! Step by step, you saw the earth beyond the arch­ing hori­zon, as it car­ried with it the whole human world, turn­ing into an oval cir­cle cast upon by the far away sun. You are lift­ing up your head slight­ly, and per­ceiv­ing the deep blue sky at the end of the deep blue sea.

Now you see, the water of the Yel­low Riv­er came from heav­en above, flow­ing straight into sea, nev­er to return, all the way being dyed the col­or of murky yel­low.

VI

Oh Chi­na, in the face of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, you are still so naive as to believe that by import­ing the West­ern eco­nom­ic sys­tem and sci­en­tif­ic tech­nolo­gies you can arouse the Sino nation. You think that wealth will bring nation­al well-being, peace and hap­pi­ness for the peo­ple. You believe that tumul­tuous riots will end and blood­shed and tears will cease.

You are mis­tak­en! Can you not see the moan­ing and groan­ing result­ing from exces­sive greed and a mul­ti­tude of sins all about the nation? Can you not hear the bil­lions of souls despair­ing­ly weep­ing in the vast sea of the desert?

Oh Chi­na! You should well remem­ber how the “dev­il of hatred” was released dur­ing the hot-blood­ed Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion and how the soci­ety came to the edge of com­plete ruin. Now you have fur­ther released the “dev­il of greed,” which may lead to the ruin of your own soul! Go on pros­per­ing and ignore your soul! This is pre­cise­ly the tan­ta­liz­ing lie of the Dev­il!

It is true that sin also exist­ed in the West two hun­dred years ago, but there was God, and repen­tance, and prayers far and beyond, end­less sacred church bells and wor­ship, demo­c­ra­t­ic rule and the suprema­cy of law. Peo­ple did not ignore the exis­tence of the God of jus­tice. The strong main­tained fear and the weak retained hope.

When you are pur­su­ing and imi­tat­ing the West, instead of focus­ing on her true essence, you are mere­ly imi­tat­ing her super­fi­cial knowl­edge and declin­ing ways. In actu­al­i­ty, the West has begun to turn away from God.

Oh Chi­na, as you try to rise up, you are in sin yet with­out God. You have nei­ther a repen­tant heart nor a demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. What can you do to con­trol the wild beast of lust? What can you do to purge your tar­nished con­science? What do you rely upon to stop the greed and ambi­tion of those in pow­er, to pre­vent them to turn Chi­na upside down once again, falling into con­fu­sion, rest­less­ness, even caus­ing the shed­ding of rivers of blood?

“Evil per­vades the world, like the waves of the sea.” Who can turn around the malev­o­lent spir­it of these times? Who can hear the call of God? Who can see the sal­va­tion of the Lord?

VII

When West­ern politi­cians and mer­chants broke open the door of Chi­na, they sought what­ev­er com­mer­cial and polit­i­cal ben­e­fits they could squeeze out. Nev­er did they intend to help Chi­na thor­ough­ly reform or total­ly progress. They did not wish to see a strong Chi­na that could rise up rapid­ly. Instead, they pre­ferred Chi­na to remain in a long-term semi-devel­oped con­di­tion with eco­nom­ic free­dom but polit­i­cal autoc­ra­cy. They hoped that their prof­its in Chi­na would be sta­ble, pro­tect­ed by total­i­tar­i­an regimes.

Nev­er­the­less, God intends it all for good, to accom­plish His own will (Gen. 50:20). God wills to wake up the Chi­nese so that they can claim their dig­ni­ty and val­ue as God intend­ed.

While West­ern cap­i­tal­ists were greed­i­ly suck­ing the blood of Chi­na, mis­sion­ar­ies came to Chi­na car­ry­ing a dual iden­ti­ty as God’s mes­sen­gers and cul­tur­al ambas­sadors, sac­ri­fic­ing their own lives for the truth and for Chi­na.

Robert Mor­ri­son came and died. The cap­tain of the ship asked him, “Do you intend to change this mag­nif­i­cent coun­try?” “No, but God does,” answered Mor­ri­son.

Tim­o­thy Richard came and died. His per­son­al sec­re­tary Liang Qichao became the “pious god­son” of Chi­na.

Hud­son Tay­lor came and died. Five gen­er­a­tions of his chil­dren and grand­chil­dren ded­i­cat­ed their lives to serv­ing Chi­na. He declared, “If I had one thou­sand pounds, I would not keep one from Chi­na. If I had one thou­sand lives, I would give all to Chi­na.”

Thou­sands upon thou­sands of mes­sen­gers came and died, wave upon wave. They died amidst mis­un­der­stand­ings, antag­o­nisms, hard­ships and sac­ri­fices.

What were they after? For­tune? No, they were all poor. Pow­er? No, they crit­i­cized the pow­er­ful. Fame? No, they came qui­et­ly, from places of com­fort and free­dom, and they died qui­et­ly. Some died as an entire fam­i­ly under the swords of the Box­ers; some died in bar­ren and unwhole­some places, suf­fer­ing from hunger and cold. For what on earth did they come and die?

In such man­ner Jesus came and died! He came from the Father who loved His own. He died by the hands of those He loved. He came to save us from sin; He died for our sins.

Mat­teo Ric­ci, Robert Mor­ri­son, Tim­o­thy Richard, Hud­son Tay­lor-count­less evan­ge­lists from the West came, fol­low­ing the steps of Jesus, bear­ing their own cross­es. One by one they came, to live and die among the peo­ple of Chi­na.

They were the seeds sown by God on the vast land of Chi­na. “Unless a ker­nel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a sin­gle seed. But if it dies, it pro­duces many seeds” (John 12:24).

In the 1950s, when West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies were dri­ven out of Chi­na, there were only about a mil­lion Chris­tians in Chi­na. Fifty years have passed, in an envi­ron­ment of athe­is­tic cul­ture, under the per­se­cu­tion of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, amidst over­all polit­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and social oppres­sion the num­ber of Chi­nese Chris­tians, has grown to tens of mil­lions!

From vil­lages to cities, from the com­mon peo­ple to cadres, their souls have been awak­ened; their eyes are opened and they see God. They repent of their sins and fol­low Jesus. They go out to spread the Gospel of sal­va­tion.

Chris­tian­i­ty expands not because of their suc­cess­es but because of their fail­ures. They grow not out of their strength but out of their weak­ness­es. Their strength lay in their blood, tears, and suf­fer­ing, just like their Lord Jesus. This is God’s invin­ci­ble way!

The West­ern mes­sen­gers left, and the East­ern mes­sen­gers rose up in droves a hun­dred­fold, even a thou­sand­fold.

When John Sung threw his Ph.D. diplo­ma in chem­istry into the Pacif­ic Ocean on his way back from the Unit­ed States, when Watch­man Nee beat the drums of mid­night watch­es, when Wang Ming-dao walked back to prison and returned the doc­u­ment autho­riz­ing his release to the jail­er, it was obvi­ous­ly that God had majes­ti­cal­ly stepped into the land of Chi­na. His foot­steps were so mighty and pow­er­ful that noth­ing could resist!

Cast your eyes over­seas and see, thou­sands of Chi­nese intel­lec­tu­als have been rush­ing into church­es, fel­low­ship groups, Bible study groups and evan­ge­lis­tic meet­ings, as nev­er before. The long-time parched con­science of the Chi­nese nation has begun to thirst for truth. You cross the deep blue sea and pierce the bright blue sky, where you seem to find your real home, where you dis­cov­er your place of ori­gin.

Return toward God, oh Chi­nese! That evil drag­on that has mes­mer­ized the spir­it of the nation for thou­sands of years is but a dog in the hands of God. The bless­ings God has pre­pared for all mankind will def­i­nite­ly be bestowed upon the Chi­nese as well. He will pro­vide not autoc­ra­cy, nor mere democ­ra­cy and eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, but repen­tance, rebirth, dig­ni­ty, for­give­ness, and love.

Spe­cial Note: The orig­i­nal Chi­nese doc­u­ment used the name “Shen-Zhou. “Shen- Zhou” lit­er­al­ly means “the Land of God.” Chi­na was at one time in her his­to­ry called the “Land of God.”

Bib­li­og­ra­phy
Li Shuang­bi, From Gov­ern­ment To Ped­a­gogy, Chi­na Hori­zon Pub­lish­ers, 1992, p. 264.
Bao Shi­jie, “The Pri­vate Doc­u­ment on the Death of Sun Yat-sen,” in The Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Recent His­to­ry, Chi­na Social Sci­ences Pub­lish­ing Co., No. 711, p. 217.
Sun Yat-sen, “Replies to Gao Yishen and Wei Yajie of the Mei-Yi-Mei Soci­ety,” in The Com­plete Vol­ume of Sun Yat-sen, Vol. 2, p. 361.
Zhang Yijing, Mei-Hwa-Jin, edi­tors, The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy and Tes­ti­monies of Sun Yat-sen, Shang­hai, 1931, p. 7.

-Yuan Zhim­ing, is from Main­land Chi­na. He is the pro­duc­er in Chi­na Soul. From Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, June, 1998, Vol.2 No. 2, pp. 3–6.