Articles and correspondence

Gwynne Dyer, ‘Sins of the believers, South China Morning Post, 23 March 2007

They published an opinion poll in Britain recently in which 82 per cent of the people surveyed said that they thought religion did more harm than good. My first reaction, I must admit, was to think: that’s what they would say, isn’t it? In “post-Christian Britain”, only 33 per cent of the population identify themselves as religious. If you stripped out recent immigrants – Polish Catholics, Pakistani Muslims, Indian Hindus – then the number would be even lower. 

In the US, where over 85 per cent of people describe themselves as religious believers, the answer would surely be very different, as it would be in Iran or Mexico. But then, I remembered an article that was published a couple of years ago in the Journal of Religion and Society, in which the social scientist Gregory Paul set out to test the assertion that religion makes people behave better. 

If that is true, then the US would be heaven on Earth, whereas Britain would be overrun with crime, sexual misbehaviour and the like. Mr. Paul examined the data from 18 developed countries, and found just the opposite: “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, [venereal disease], teen pregnancy, and abortion”, while “none of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction”. 

How interesting. Now to be fair, only one of the 18 countries examined (Japan) was not Christian or “post-Christian”, so maybe this just shows that high levels of Christian belief correlate with a variety of social ills.

There’s really no way of testing that. There’s not even any way of knowing if other religions will eventually experience the same decline in belief as the people who believed in them get richer, more urban and better-educated. Even in what used to be Christendom, the US didn’t follow that path, after all. But the question is not whether religion will continue to flourish. It is whether that makes people behave better, and the data says “no”. 

I never thought that religion really made people behave any better, but apart from the occasional pogrom or religious war, it hadn’t occurred to me that it would actually make them behave worse. But there may be a clue in the fact that the more religious a country is, the less it spends on social programmes, perhaps on the assumption that God will provide. There is a strong link between how secular a country is and how much it spends on social welfare and income redistribution. 

Its not that religious people choose to do bad things more often: indeed, they are probably more likely to get involved in charitable activities. Maybe it’s just that when they talk about transforming people’s lives, they don’t think in terms of big, state-run systems – so lots of people fall through the cracks. Whereas the godless, all alone under the empty sky, decide that they must band together and help one another through large amounts of social spending, because nobody else is going to do it for them. Or maybe there is some other reason entirely, but the numbers don’t lie: the more religious a country is, the worse people behave in their private lives. Thank God they didn’t survey the correlation between strong religious belief and war. 

‘Religion Bashing’, South China Morning Post, 26 March 2007 

How spurious are the arguments of Gwynne Dyer in “Sins of the believers” (23 March). 

In making his claim that religion does not make people behave better, he cited evidence from a study that compared religion and morality in 18 developed countries. The study found that ‘higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator” correlated with “higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early morality, [venereal disease], teen pregnancy and abortion”. 

But to compare different countries like this is to compare different histories and cultures as if each were the same. The only way to satisfactorily make such a claim is to compare the condition of an individual country before and after the secularization process it undergoes. 

And if we do that what might we find? No study in the world would conclude that Britain, for example, with its holocaust of over 6 million legalized abortions since the late 1960s, loose sex and smutty tabloid culture is more moral today than, say, in 1907 during the Edwardian age when secularization was in its early stages. 

Then there is the personal element to religion that Dyer misses completely. As a churchgoer I hear testimonies time and time again from different people speaking of the moral transformation they experienced as a result of their conversion.  

I, too, can testify to a radical improvement in my behaviour as a result of my own conversion from agnosticism to a belief in Jesus Christ. Where do these experiences fit into Mr. Dyer’s conclusions? 

I fear this article is nothing but another manifestation of the fashionable and clearly orchestrated trend of religion bashing so evident these days.

David Eason, Tai Po 

‘Unbalanced opinion’, South China Morning Post, 29 March 2007 

Congratulations to David Eason in his letter “Religion bashing” (March 26) in response to Gwynne Dyer’s article “Sins of the believers” (March 23) for his self-proclaimed “radical improvement” in behaviour due to his conversion to a belief in Jesus Christ.  However, in view of his slightly venomous response, he clearly has some way to go in terms of balanced opinion, freedom of expression and belief, and genuine compassion for others. I recommend he reads the excellent book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. 

John Bond, Ap Lei Chau 

‘Where’s the evidence?’, South China Morning Post, 31 March 2007 

I totally agree with Andrew Nesbitt’s letter “Where’s the evidence?” (31 March). Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, is great. He writes compellingly and convincingly. On the same subject, the book by the 1950 Nobel prize winner for literature, Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, is excellent reading. Most people are just simply scared to even begin to question the existence of God. Why take the chance? Meanwhile, in the name of God, people are killing each other. Religion cannot explain our existence. The Italian philosopher Umberto Eco wrote: “But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” 

The concept of religion is based on fundamental untruths. As a result, more people have died and continue to die due to religion than any other cause. This is perpetuated by religious leaders, and also by parents. In the simplest words: We are born, we live, we die … No more, no less – no kidding. 

Mohan Mirpuri, Central 

‘Don’t blame religion’, South China Morning Post, 5 April 2007 

Recently, some writers have claimed religions cause the world’s many problems rather than being part of the solution to them. It is easy to attribute racial conflicts and sectarian bloodshed to religious feuds. While religion may not be ruled out, that causes of many conflicts are more complicated. 

People do not hate and kill because of different gods, but because of disputes over food, water, land and other issues. As natural resources become increasingly scarce, we will only see more people fighting for survival. 

Religion is blamed because it is so conspicuous. 

There may be little chance for the world to get any better if people conclude that religion is the culprit, and brand anyone devoted to religion as fanatics. 

Karen Lee, Tai Po 

‘Denial of God is offensive’, South China Morning Post, 5 April 2007 

The recent torrent of abuse against religion, including “We are born, we live, we die” (April 3), is sadly a common phenomenon in Europe, where many have abandoned traditional principles for do-it-yourself moral systems. 

Despite the fact that people generally fight for resources and power, rather than philosophical differences, religion is an easy scapegoat. 

In Hong Kong we have a long-standing tradition of respect for each other’s faiths and a desire to avoid insulting each other, perhaps due to o9ur easy-going Buddhist and Taoist roots, the Chinese principles of maintaining harmony, and partly due to the prudence of the British in allowing local people to find quietly their own path to spiritual satisfaction. 

In the Christian and Muslim religions, public denial of the existence of God is not seen as distasteful but grossly offensive. 

Given that more than I million Hongkongers are Christian or Muslim, perhaps your correspondents could keep their “progressive” foreign opinions to themselves and allow us to get along in peace? 

Simon Appleby, Mid-Levels 

‘Losing sight of spiritual reality’, South China Morning Post, 6 April 2007 

It is simply not true that most people, as Mohan Mirpuri claims in ‘We are Born, we live, we die …’ (April 3), “are simply too scared to even begin to question the existence of God”.  

A vast majority of those living in most western societies are already in the position of having discarded a belief in the God of the Bible upon which their civilization was founded and sustained.  

An irrational faith in science alone has given birth to the lie that what you can measure is the sum of all there is, and people are losing sight of the spiritual realities that underpin our physical existence.  

This is sheer folly, just as the simplistic and predictable mantra of atheism that religion is responsible for most wars is an inadequate assessment of history. 

In some sense this view is beguiling and can appear correct. A study of the two most destructive wars of history, for example, reveals that it was pagan religious beliefs as well as atheism that lay behind the militarism of Germany that caused the first world war, and Nazism and Japanese expansionism that were responsible for the second world war.  

The fate of Japan and Germany, however, should give us dire warning of the divine justice with which such hubris inevitably meets its end. 

David John Eason, Tai Po 

‘Get history and dogma right’, South China Morning Post, 7 April 2007 

Your correspondent Simon Appleby “Denial of God is offensive” and Karen Lee “Don’t blame religion” (April 5) might want to get their history and dogma correct. History is rife with dogmatic adherence to killing the infidel, most often promulgated by religions. The god of the Bible (or the Koran) not only kills, but also promotes war with alarming frequency and zeal. 

Mr Appleby’s claim of I million Christians and Muslims in Hong Kong is not borne out by any statistics that I am aware of. But even if it is true, his is not a rational argument. After all, were not the Nazi movement and the Cultural Revolution broadly popular and clearly wrong? 

And as for Buddhism and Taoism, one should keep in mind that these are both distinctly atheistic religions; they do not appeal to a supernatural being nor do they exclude anyone from their peaceful mission of self-enlightenment. In that respect, they are much more rational than any Abrahamic faith. 

Christopher Gallaga, Ma Wan 

‘Live and let live’, South China Morning Post, 9 April 2007 

Talk about tolerance! Your correspondent Simon Appleby “Denial of God is offensive” (April 5) applauds the accepting nature of our community here in Hong Kong. But then he asks those who doubt God’s existence to keep their opinions to themselves. Saying what you think is called free speech and is generally considered a good thing. 

Let me ask Mr. Appleby – you believe in a god (presumably), I do not; do you find that offensive? If you don’t, why would you find my statement of the fact offensive? Live and let live, I say. 

Brian Hart, Sai Kung 

‘In denial’, South China Morning Post, 9 April 2007 

I don’t know which planet letter writers Karen Lee (“Don’t blame religion”, April 5) and Simon Appleby (“Denial of God is offensive”, April 5) live on when they deny religion’s responsibility for “sectarian bloodshed” and admonish your writes for observing the same. Apparently, they are oblivious to the global conflicts between Christians an Islam, Christians and Christians (Protestant and Catholic) and Islam and Islam (Shiite and Sunni). 

And while promoting religious tolerance, Mr Appleby admonishes your correspondents to “keep their progressive foreign opinions to themselves”. 

I hope that someday humans will grow up as a species and embrace not only freedom of religion but freedom from religion, tolerating belief and non-belief. 

Gary Verstick, Kennedy Town 

‘Not so divine’, South China Morning Post, 9 April 2007 

In response to David Eason’s letter (“Losing sight of spiritual reality”, April 6), which described the fates of Germany and Japan after the second world war as a “warning of the divine justice with which such hubris inevitably meets its end”: I have little choice but to attribute his comments to reductionism and ignorance. Only severe historical reductionism would facilitate drawing implicit parallels between the fates of Germany and Japan and that of the Tower of Babel. Only ignorance would allow him to justify atrocities such as the fire-bombing of Dresden and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “inevitable, divine justice”. 

Rachel Tsang, Pok Fu Lam 

‘A better world’, South China Morning Post, 9 April 2007 

In some letters published recently, people have said we would be better off without religion. They seem to miss the point that they think this because they are already living in a world which is the product of religion. Not a perfect one but better than, say, 100 years ago and with hope of further improvements. 

Let me cite one example: the abolition of slavery. It is undeniably one of the many achievements of Christianity. 

Angelo Paratico, Mid-Levels. 

‘Science is our reality’, South China Morning Post, 12 April 2007 

David Eason, (“Losing sight of spiritual reality”, April 6) oddly refers to “An irrational faith in science.” Science is, almost by definition, not irrational: comprehending and acknowledging scientific fact requires no faith. Webster’s dictionary defines science as “the state of knowing: knowledge as distinguished from ignorance and misunderstanding”. Faith is not necessary to believe that which is already known, but ignorance is essential to have faith in something that flies in the face of all the evidence. 

Science is constantly pushing back the horizons of human knowledge and, in doing so, keeps an open mind about its discoveries. Scientists readily admit that there are gaps in their knowledge, and strive to fill them. Indeed, it is the pursuit of the unknown that pushes science – and humanity – forward. 

The scriptures were written by people who had no knowledge of the world in which they lived. They believed that God existed just above the clouds and that the earth was flat. Nobody can condemn these biblical “scholars” for their shortcomings but, in modern times, when science has provided so much enlightenment, it can only be described as completely potty to base one’s understanding of the world upon such ignorance. 

Mr Eason commented upon religions’ responsibility for wars and the apparent atheism of militaristic Germany. Hitler was a Roman Catholic who orchestrated the extermination of 6 million Jews, although I accept that he did not necessarily kill in the name of Catholicism. 

Returning to reality, spiritual or otherwise, I challenge Mr Eason to scan the international news in this newspaper on any day and find any article in which violent death is reported and the words “Muslim”, “Jew” and/or Christian do not appear. There won’t be many.  

Andrew Nesbitt, Sai Kung 

‘Science a study of creation’, South China Morning Post, 16 April 2007 

It was not an ‘irrational faith in science’ that I spoke of in my letter – which Andrew Nesbit takes issue with (“Science is our Reality”, April 12) – but an “irrational faith in science alone”.  

Science, of course, is the study of God’s creation – but it’s unable to see beyond it. What sort of science is it to then claim, as many atheists do, that “therefore there is no God”.  

The same perverse logic can be discerned in the claims that wars are caused by religion. Of course religion may be the cause of war, just as materialism and secular ideologies may also be the cause of war. 

But again, what sort of science is it to then claim that “therefore God does not exist”. 

Surely the prevalence of spiritual factors behind war, and the fact that millions are prepared to fight in the name of religion, testifies to something spiritual going on behind the veil of history. 

Surely it reflects a struggle for spiritual truth, a struggle that has its roots in a cosmic war between God and evil powers. 

But it must not be supposed from this that all religions are truth or that, because of spiritual conflict, all religions should be dismissed.  

But if the atheists wish to make the assertion that there is no God, they should be true to their own claims and call on the fruits of science and reason to prove it. In so doing they will discover that atheism is no less a belief of faith than any religion. 

On the other hand, for Christians, the truth of God and the nature of things are plainly revealed in the Bible, and upon this do they base their position.  

David John Eason, Tai Po 

‘A burden of disproof’, South China Morning Post, 17 April 2007 

I assume David Eason has never heard “he who asserts must prove” when he calls on atheists to use the scientific method to prove the non-existence of God, “Science a study of creation” (April 16). I would commend to him a study of Bertrand Russell’s “celestial teapot” parable, or of the tenets of its rapidly spreading modern incarnation – the parody religion, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 

The burden of proof is on the adherents of received dogmas, there is no burden of disproof on the skeptics. 

Ray Pierce, Admiralty 

‘Science is rational study’, South China Morning Post, 18 April 2007 

Can David Eason (“Science a study of creation” April 16) prove that God exists? Until someone can, science will have to remain the study of the universe through rational means. I do not believe there is no God, nether do I believe there is. I have seen no conclusive, scientific proof either way. The Bible does not reveal “the truth of God” to me.  

The “prevalence of spiritual factors behind war” should probably be studied through the sciences of psychology and animal behaviour. The fact that extremists on both sides try to characterize some of the most worrying conflicts as a battle between “God and evil”, even when those faiths share founders, texts and tenets, should be of concern to the faithful. Especially when the underlying causes appear to be oil, power and greed. 

Allan Dyer, Wong Chuk Hang 

‘Reason rules our world’, South China Morning Post, 18 April 2007 

In “Science a study of creation” (April 16), David Eason uses the phrase “Irrational faith in …” Faith can be neither irrational nor rational because these terms refer to reason, while faith is simply an act of believing in something, whether this something be science or religion. It has nothing to do with reason. 

I do not have faith in either science or religion. When I “think”, I use reason … it is how we human beings “think”. Both Mr Eason and I, when arguing for our respective points of view, are using reason. 

Science is an extension of how we think as functioning human beings. Science is essentially reason-based. It is a method based on inductive logic. Of course, it can never tell me whether God exists or not, but over the years it has come up with some pretty amazing facts. Within its limits it seems to work – we gain knowledge. 

In most of our endeavours in life we are quite pleased with our ability to use our reason, but when it comes to religion, things change. 

To adopt a religious world view is an act of faith – that simple act of choosing to believe in something. Once having made that jump to faith, reason makes its reappearance to argue for the particularities of that world view. 

Mr Eason argues that religious wars are evidence of a spiritual realm. Simple deductive reasoning would quickly show that such an argument is simply unreasonable; it is logically flawed. Reason reigns – for better or worse. 

Michael Tobin, Central 

‘Keeping an open mind’, South China Morning Post, 18 April 2007 

David Eason is correct to assert that science must not claim unequivocally that God does not exist (“Science a study of creation”, April 16). Real science proceeds with a healthy skepticism, treating the existence of God as a hypothesis to be tested by observation. 

The evidence offered by Mr Eason is the Bible. This book asserts that the world was created in six days and describes a God that is jealous, misogynistic, infanticidal, genocidal, capricious, intolerant and cruel. It represents evidence that it is an invention, revealing the narrow observations and moral attitudes of its human authors. Science awaits better evidence with an open mind. 

Julian Grudzien, Jordan 

‘Question left unanswered’, South China Morning Post, 19 April 2007 

Ray Pierce’s comment on “Science a study of creation” (April 17) still begs the question. The only logical alternative to a belief in life appearing by chance from the after-chaos of the “Big Bang” is for many present-day skeptics unacceptable simple because it is faith in special creation or intelligent design.  

Old-style Darwinism with its belief in gradual change in life forms through the struggle to survive has been now replaced by theories of “punctuated equilibrium” and “hopeful monsters”. 

Life of even the simplest forms in all its irreducible complexity is a fact and demands from us all the question “How did this wonder come about?” and if we believe the response is because of an intelligent designer, the next question is “Why am I here?” To say it is by chance is equally (in the face of the evidence, more so) an act of faith as to say God designed it. 

Phil Smith, Tsuen Wan 

‘Bible is spiritual truth’, South China Morning Post, 20 April 2007 

For humanity to discern spiritual things it is necessary to appeal to spiritual sources. 

Far from being a human invention, as Julian Grudzien claims “Keeping an open mind” (April 18), the Christian claim is that the Bible is divinely inspired. It is true this revelation has come to us through human authors and reflects the moral attitudes and world view of the times, but this adds rather than detracts from its authenticity. How else would God communicate except through contemporary language, culture and understanding? Many problems with the text disappear when it is understood in its historical context. 

The bible was not written as science and should not be tested as though it was. It is spiritual truth that needs to be spiritually examined. And what is the central crux that many find so unpalatable? That the “jealous, misogynistic, infanticidal, genocidal, capricious, intolerant and cruel” God, whom Julian Grudzien also describes, loves him and the world so much that he “gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ – John 3:16.  

David Eason, Tai Po 

‘Question for the agnostics’, South China Morning Post, 21 April 2007 

I enjoyed the three letters (April 18) well representing the agnostic community of Hong Kong. The three were responses to a letter by David Eason “Science a study of creation” (April 16) 

I am sorry I missed that letter. With such strong responses it must have been thought provoking. I had a brother who was once an agnostic. In fact, I have had many friends who, at one time or another, were agnostics. 

The type of thought expressed about “God” was pretty much to pattern and therefore nothing all that revolutionary to me. 

I must unashamedly admit to my three agnostic friends, that I do take it by faith that God speaks through the Bible to His creation. 

That faith came about by reasoning and it would be negligence on my part as a reasoning man not to respond, to aid our agnostic readers to go one step further in reasoning. “If there is a God, whom might He be?” 

To aid them in keeping an open mind perhaps we should ask: “If there is a God, what would He be like, and does He speak?” 

On the other side of the hypothesis, we could ask: “If there is no God, what does that mean?” These are the scientific approaches we can take in questioning and reasoning. It is not scientific and reasoning to write off God (or a concept of God) with labels. 

Here are a couple of passages from the Bible to ponder: “Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” 

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 

Tim Obendorf, Tin Shui Wai 

‘Darwinism is a fact, not just another theory’, Sunday Morning Post, 22 April 2007 

The question posed by Phil Smith “Question left unanswered” (April 19) namely “How did this wonder [of life] come about?” has, in fact, been answered quite satisfactorily by science for a number of years now. The acceptance of this fact requires no act of faith. 

The conditions suitable for the creation of life on Earth did not come about overnight but took around 700 million years to develop following the creation of the planet 4.5 billion years ago. A cyanoacetaldehyde, a compound that would have been created by lightning on the primitive Earth, reacted with a concentrated urea solution (primordial ooze), such as might be found in an evaporating lagoon. When this mix was heated, cytosine was formed and in reaction with water, uracil came about. These are the two base chemicals that make up the genetic material RNA, the predecessor of our genetic driver, DNA. From that point it was just a simple matter of applying 3.8 billion years of evolution and – hey, presto – here we are. There was no chance involved, the right conditions existed and the life-forming chemical processes could not help but happen. The wonderful fact is that we are here as the result of trillions of mind-boggling natural occurrences that have taken place over billions of years. 

To clarify one further point in Mr Smith’s letter, Darwinism (evolution and natural selection) is a fact, not a theory, which has not been replaced by any theories of any kind.  It is a fact. The proof is overwhelming. It happened. 

Andrew Nesbitt, Sai Kung 

‘Keep science and creationism apart’, Sunday Morning Post, 22 April 2007 

I have recently read several letters on science and religion. Such discussions are always interesting and thought-provoking, particularly when some religious fundamentalists argue with evangelical fervour. But I am concerned, as a science educator and researcher, that science education in Hong Kong may be eroded by fundamentalist religious beliefs similar to those of David Eason, one of the writers. 

More than 30 years ago, when I was teaching in a Hong Kong secondary school and running a magazine with a group of like-minded teachers to promote educational reforms in Hong Kong, our magazine was once involved in a heated debate against some fundamentalist Christian views that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in biology. Of course, this has never been allowed in Hong Kong science classrooms. There is no place for religious beliefs in science education, and “intelligent design” – the idea that life forms are highly complicated and cannot occur by chance; therefore, evolution alone cannot explain biological phenomena – is not science. 

Let’s teach students about religion in biblical knowledge classes and preach it in church sermons. 

Chi-Yan Tsui, Tuen Mun 

‘Commands of compassion’, South China Morning Post, 23 April 2007 

Julian Grudzien “Keeping an open mind” (April 18), in characterizing the God revealed in the Bible as “jealous, misogynistic … intolerant and cruel”, hardly attempts to put the commands given by Moses in the cultural milieu in which they were given. Though the Mosaic law is often compared to Hammurabi’s code, the legislator to Israel went far beyond that document and actually elevated the position of both women and slaves far beyond their rights in any other culture. 

Only in Israel did everyone, including all slaves (bondservant is a more appropriate term), get one day of rest every week, putting all, husbands and wives, masters and bondservants alike, on the same level. 

If Mr Grudzien had not grown up in a civilization with Judeo-Christian roots this correspondence column in which we all express our views so freely would be non-existent. 

Though numerous “tares” who have claimed the name of Christ have (as He prophesied they would) perpetrated horrors in that same name, no historian would deny that there was a man who walked the Earth and said: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”. 

So how do you explain Him? And those who followed Him in the joyful enduring of persecutions, suffering and martyrdom if they had not personally witnessed the resurrection of which they testify? If the God revealed in the Bible is as Mr Grudzien says, from where came the abolition of such perversities as gladiatorial combat and legitimised paedophilia in the latter Roman Empire? To these very perversities it seems our present civilisation is now returning. 

Phil Smith, Tsuen Wan 

‘Clerics the cause of war’, South China Morning Post, 23 April 2007 

I normally do not comment on religious issues, but David Eason’s latest letter “Science a study of creation” (April 16), part of series of exchanges as silly as Hong Kong politics, compelled me to jump in. 

Mr Eason makes an excellent argument that, lacking scientific proof of the non-existence of God, atheism itself is like a religion. He also pointed out that religion is but one of the many causes of war and suffering. The whole argument was then deflated by using the Bible as a proof of the existence of God. 

The failure of Christianity is in the attempts throughout history by the church to use natural phenomena and logical arguments to justify something that is purely faith based. 

The really interesting question is whether the Christians like Mr Eason are simply defending their institution or are they defending God. Religions do not cause wars; clerics do.

 Zack Culvert, Wan Chai 

‘Unfaithful civilizations doomed to fall’, Sunday Morning Post, 23 April 2007 

The issue for non-believers should not be whether God is real or not, but what it means if he is. 

Apart from what may be discerned through physical creation, the only specific knowledge we have concerning God comes through the revelation of scripture. 

But armed with this revelation, it soon becomes apparent to the believer that the world operates as though this revelation were true. History moves forward as if directed by a divine mind and in conformity to the biblical emphasis on the conflict facing man of making a god of himself, or worshipping the creator. 

Take the case of Hong Kong’s wishing tree. It is dying and it’s just a matter of time before it finally topples. When it does what will people conclude? To the materialist, this will be explainable by the harm caused by people throwing offerings into its branches and subsequent infestation by termites. But the believer will see the finger of God. 

When in 2003 I saw how worshippers prayed to this tree for protection from Sars, I was so angry they would do this instead of turning to God that I, in turn, prayed against this idolatry. Two years later the main branch fell off, and now I notice several more branches have gone, and the tree is supported by crutches.  

This to me is answered prayer, for the tree’s death was by no means certain. After the first branch fell off, the government went to great lengths to try to save it – all in vain. But when the tree finally does fall will the folly of such idolatry be acknowledged in deference to the living God?  

Similarly, if tragedy should come to Ngong Ping 360 or one of Hong Kong’s towers should slide into the sea, will the idolatry of Buddhism or mammon also be acknowledged? 

Given the stubbornness of the human heart, even then, possibly not. But the fact remains that a study of history reveals that it favours the righteous and pronounces against such idolatry. It is no accident, for example, that the most successful civilizations since the time of Christ are which have had a faith in God.  

By rejecting its historic faith, the west stands on the precipice of its own destruction. To those with eyes to see, the Bible, history and the fate of the wishing tree are warnings to this effect. 

David Eason, Tai Po 

‘Real issues of religion’, South China Morning Post, 30 April 2007 

This mini forum on religious issues is a bit unusual, but in my mind highly courageous and valuable. Thank you, South China Morning Post, for keeping the topic alive. 

People globally are increasingly aware of the flaws in religion. This is not to say God does not exist. Instead, there is an awareness of the harm caused by religious people doing bad things in the name of religion. 

Far too much of today’ religion is rooted in ignorance and has nothing to do with the real issues; what is God; how we conduct ourselves; and why were we given the gift of thought and awareness, for example. This is all about the “bigger picture”: we have gifts, responsibilities and purpose.  

Yet, religion has become a vehicle for bullies. Every once in a while, it seems, people are given insight. Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed, for example. Then other people write about them, and their words are hijacked by the bullies, and ultimately the essence of the messages, peace and goodwill, is lost. 

The Prophet Mohammed said that the primary job God gave him was to spread the notion of peace; and the primary reason God gave him was that too many people were killing each other. I strongly suspect that today the Prophet would be very upset with his most vitriolic supporters. It is not just Islam. But Muslims do regularly give us the most dramatic examples of all that is possibly bad in religion. However, 300 years ago, you could have said the same about Catholics. 

Ongoing dialogue is important. Please keep publishing letters; writers, keep sending your letters. They show that, notwithstanding our differences of opinion, we are mostly good. It also shows us others’ mindsets. Understanding is essential for peace. 

Gregory Pek, Happy Valley 

‘Vindictive thinking’, South China Morning Post, 2 May 2007 

Does David Eason, “Unfaithful civilizations doomed to fall” (April 29), really think it Christian to pray for the death of an innocent wishing tree and then rejoice that God has done his bit by answering his prayer? 

I am also puzzled that he thinks God might bring down the Ngong ping 360 cable car as a blow against Buddhist idolatry. His vindictive thinking is quite enough to put fair-minded folk off Christianity. 

Paul Serfaty, Mid-Levels 

‘A petty God’, South China Morning Post, 2 May 2007 

David Eason says God answered his prayer to teach idolaters a lesson by causing the Lam Tsuen wishing tree to lose branches two years after the fact. 

It seems to me a rather lazy form of answering a prayer – “causing” something to happen which would have been likely to happen anyway, with or without supernatural interference. 

Perhaps God should go on a motivational seminar. Maybe it is Mr Eason’s opinion that God moves not so much in mysterious ways, but particularly petty ones. 

Alethea Dean, Discovery Bay 

‘Uneventful trip’, South China Morning Post, 3 May 2007 

Your reader David Eason has made some claims that are both interesting and disturbing regarding believers and non-believers of the Christian faith. (“Unfaithful civilizations doomed to fall”, April 29). 

I am so glad that his prayers went unanswered while I was enjoying my trip up the Ngong Ping 360 cable car on Saturday. 

Wu Shun-ping, Sha Tin 

‘Ignorance and blind faith poor partners for life’s journey’, Sunday Morning Post, 6 May 2007 

I was addled by reader David Eason’s letter (April 29). Winnowing his mass of statements and analogies entails considerable effort and I hope I do not misinterpret his viewpoint. Overall, he seems to disapprove of idolatry on one hand but extols the virtues of worshipping a Christian God on the other. 

There lies the root of my befuddlement because I see no distinct difference between the two. The former is based on ignorance whereas the latter is based on blind faith. But blind faith is considered a form of unenlightenment, too. Rationality and reasoning are ostensibly absent in both rituals. 

His litany of reasons for the failing health if the wishing tree, saying it is emblematic of the omnipotence of God, is so logically and scientifically flawed that it will be truly amazing if there are others who subscribe to this preposterous notion. Tossing aside the indubitably materialist rationale that the tree was dying because damage was caused by things being thrown at it, I doubt even the most faithful devotees will readily embrace the hypothesis that somehow God is having a role in this episode. The association seems too implausible and the possibility is too flaky to imagine. It is indeed sad to see the affinity with God descend into the realms of absurdity. 

I respect Mr Eason’s religion and his strong adherence to his belief. Nevertheless, projecting an aura of righteousness merely upheld by an ancient document is misguided if not downright baleful. Using an ancient scripture as a guide to personal conduct is palatable insofar as the doctrine is confined only to oneself. Any pugnacious attempt  by zealous acolytes to cross the threshold beyond the individual perimeter and force their decree upon others is a recipe for disaster. 

Lots of past and present calamitous conflicts in human history bear witness to this kind of hubris and intolerance, notwithstanding his outlandish claim that “the most successful civilizations since the time of Christ are which have had a faith in God”. Finally, Mr. Eason’s opening statement “the issue for non-believers should not be whether God is real or not, but what it means if he is” resembles Pascal’s wager and advice on taking a view. 

You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in God. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, he will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him. 

Jack Teh, Clear Water Bay  

‘Different names for an ultimate reality’, Sunday Morning Post, 6 May 2007 

Gregory Pek writes wisely, “Real issues of religion” (April 30). In particular he states that between religions “ongoing dialogue is important” and “understanding is essential for peace”. 

I attended an interfaith dialogue meeting at the Kowloon Mosque, hosted by Imam Muhammed Arshad and organized by the Hong Kong Network on Religion and Peace. Our group included men and women from the Muslim, Hare Krishna, Baha’i, Brahma Kumari, Buddhist and Christian communities. 

Our topic was “Where I find God in my life”. So, unlike some of your recent letter writers, whether God exists is not a contentious issue for us, though we use different names for the ultimate reality. 

Rev Matthew Vernon, St John’s Cathedral, Central 

‘Adherents ignore interfaith example’, Sunday Morning Post, 13 May 2007 

I congratulate the Reverend Matthew Vernon “Different names for an ultimate reality” (Sunday Morning, Post May 6) on the successful interfaith dialogue meeting organized by the Hong Kong Network on Religion and Peace, and wholeheartedly applaud any and all such initiatives. 

However, the success of this meeting does not, in itself, demonstrate religious tolerance. Rather, what such inter-faith dialogue represents is the wisdom and humanity of the individual participants, who cherry-pick the good from their scriptures while discarding the bad. Unfortunately, such virtues are not sufficiently widespread among the faithful of the world, many of whom prefer to read the incitements to hatred and intolerance, inherent in scripture, as the word of God. 

Andrew Nesbitt, Sai Kung 

Note: the following article and letters, while not strictly contiguous with the above stream of correspondence, nevertheless, coming as they did immediately afterwards on a related issue, are included both for the reader’s interest and the publishing of a further letter from ‘Mast’.

Will Clem & Agnes Lam, ‘Is the Bible indecent? HK officials have 208 complaints saying it is’, South China Morning Post, 16 May 2007

The Bible became a target of indecency complaints yesterday after an anonymous website launched a campaign asking people to put pressure on the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority to reclassify the holy text as an indecent publication. 

The Chinese-language website www.truthbible.net said the Bible was full of stories and references to incest, rape, cannibalism and violence in both the Old and New Testaments. 

Tela confirmed yesterday it had received 208 complaints, more than double the number of complaints it received over the past week about the Chinese University Student Press, which resulted in two issues being classified by the Obscene Articles Tribunal as indecent on Monday. 

It was not clear how many of the complaints were prompted by the website, which is highly critical of the Christian scriptures. 

The website runs under a bilingual banner in red, stating: “Legal disclaimer warning: this website contains biblical material, which may offend and may not be distributed, circulated, sold, hired, given, lent, shown, played or projected to a person under the age of 18 years.” 

The suggested complaint letter contained on the site makes specific reference to the student journal’s controversial sex survey. 

The survey asked readers if they had fantasized about having sex with family members or saw them perform sexual acts. The letter likens it to more explicit sections of the Bible. 

“Passages in the Bible not only advocate incest, but they also aim to rationalise incest and present it as normal,” the letter states. 

Under the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, a publication or a display is exempt from the law if it is deemed to be in the interest of science, literature, art and academic study. 

If the complaints were upheld, by law it would mean full texts of the Bible would be deemed suitable to be read only by over-18’s, and copies would need to carry a warning and be sold in sealed packaging. 

‘Bible passages serve as negative commentary, not titillation’, South China Morning Post, 21 May 2007 

It is a gross distortion to claim, as does the website reported in your article “Is the Bible indecent?” (May 16), that passages in the Bible “advocate incest”, “rationalise incest and present it as normal”. 

Such acts as they occur are either included because they were abhorrent to the religious mind and therefore serve as a negative commentary upon the perpetrators, or else they reflect prevailing marriage customs within societies at the time. Either way, the trajectory of the scriptures overall is clearly away from such practices towards morally correct, monogamous and lifelong marriage. 

None of which can be said for the Chinese University Student Press sex survey to which the website in question refers in order to claim biblical indecency. Under the banner of academic freedom and so called “openness”, this survey is nothing but titillation and bravado that is an encouragement in the opposite direction towards moral degeneration. 

As such it is right for the Obscene Articles Tribunal to draw a line through it. 

David Eason, Tai Po 

I am responding to the article in your newspaper which reported [2,307] complaints against the Bible. When did we become slaves to twisted morality? On the surface, the whole incident is like a hoax, but there are deeper, hidden implications, too. 

I am not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I would like to point out three things:

• Who is backing the website this appeared on? It looks like too much work for an individual. The forces behind this should not be underestimated.
• How could a website encourage so many complaints to the authority? The fact that [2,307] individuals actually went to the effort of logging a complaint is a wonder. Hongkongers are well known for not caring much about anything not related to their personal interest.
• I foresee some sort of moral dialogue arising from this, just like the long-winded one we had about a university newspaper. However, let’s not lose focus on more important issues ahead of us, such as universal suffrage. 

I hope we don’t get sidetracked. 

Inde Au, Wan Chai 

Observations and commentary 

Whilst these letters are self-explanatory, readers may find the following observations and comments helpful.

All in all, this sequence of correspondence represents a significant exposure of the issues raised in what is one of the prominent quality daily newspapers of the world. The South China Morning Post has a circulation of around 100,000 and tends to be read by the more so-called elitist sections of society, not just in Hong Kong but in China and many other Asian countries as well.

As an English church historian, I have not come across many streams of correspondence on religious issues on this scale in the secular press (33 letters in the main sequence, 35 including the final two on a separate though related issue). In fact I know of just one in Britain that was more extensive (comprising 44 letters) and that took place in 1899 over the issue of a day of humiliation and prayer on account of the Boer War. No doubt I will soon be informed of many others in due course.

What this shows, however, is something of the interest and openness that exists in Hong Kong to spiritual matters. Compared to the UK, where resistance to the Christian gospel is hard, cynicism and unbelief are rife, and in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism secularism (and anything else but Christianity so it seems) is actively encouraged, Hong Kong is a refreshingly overt spiritual society. There is a negative side to this, of course, in that idolatry and demon worship abounds openly and is ‘in your face’, but there is nonetheless an acceptance of spiritual realities here that makes it easier for evangelists and missioners to communicate spiritual truths.

Having said that, the participants in this debate appear to have come primarily from among the ex-pat community within whom unbelief and atheism are likely to be as common as in any other western society. And the current atheism cum Dawson God Delusion debate is primarily a western phenomenon affecting what are now termed post Christian societies.

This alone should alert anyone to the fact that there is much more to this debate than meets the eye. Now ‘Mast’ does not subscribe uncritically to the many political or economic conspiracy theories that abound. Such is the chaos of world that I do not believe it is possible for any single human being or group to dictate the course of history to the degree necessary for these theories to be wholly true (although it is very likely that various groups might strive for such control or believe themselves to have it). But it is a different matter altogether with regard to a spiritual conspiracy directed by agencies from beyond our physical realm. Quite clearly, Satan is working to an agenda, and to the extent that God mysteriously yields to his devises for his own purposes, evidence of this agenda is visible in the world around us, and not least in this particular debate.

Several things are worth pointing out in this regard. Firstly, it can be no coincidence that The God Delusion is just one of several books that have appeared promoting atheism in recent times and that articles like Dyer’s are now appearing in profusion. This might, of course, only be a reaction to contemporary fundamentalisms just as it is also true that books and interests do come and go in waves, but atheism’s resurgence, or more specifically the rubbishing of monotheism (you will notice that so called self-enlightenment in any form remains untouched) at the same time as globalization is on the rise can only make one suspicious. If the devil is truly behind the current agenda, as I believe he is, then it is in his interest for people to (1) remain in ignorance about his existence, because (2) they might discern his schemes if they weren’t and (3) such ignorance and the void of ‘no God’ that atheism promotes leaves him free to convert the world to the worship of himself, either though materialist or pagan idolatries or descending one day as the great deliverer from those troubles that inevitably spring forth when God is denied. The west is especially targeted in this regard because it is western culture and values that are sweeping the world and that inform the globalization process.

Secondly, it is possible to see something most definitely spiritual manifesting in the three responses to the first letter. When I wrote ‘Religion bashing’ (26 March) in response to Dyer’s article, although that article does not mention it and neither does my letter refer to it, undermining Dawson’s book and others like it was very much on my mind. And something spiritual recognized the attack, for each of the three responses went out of their way to recommend Dawson’s book specifically. What I had set out to undo came back at me three times as strong, and because of this I began to doubt the wisdom of my writing in the first place. What this commonality reveals, however, unless all three writers belong to a local atheist’s club and acted in collusion, is that each was animated by the same spirit and that this spirit and collective action betrays a very real demonic entity animating the current atheism.

Thirdly, the demonic nature of this sprit is also palpable in the hostility that pervades many of the overtly anti-Christian letters, against a more gentle (though sometimes and necessarily direct) spirit that can be discerned in those more Christian. From the beginning I made it my policy, for example, never to respond to personal attacks in my own letters, nor to engage in personal attacks against anyone else, seeking only to speak out against untruth as it arose and promoting in turn the truth of God as I understand it according to the scriptures.

Despite any initial misgivings, some satisfaction must be expressed at the overall progress of the debate. The argument that appears to have elicited the strongest reaction was that exposing atheism as a religion in ‘Science a study of creation’ (16 April). This was particularly significant because not only did this reveal the atheist position for what it is, but it was also a point in the debate that appears to have been won. For too long it’s been all too easy for atheism to flag up to the uninformed the cliché of religion being the cause of war in the world and the apparent undermining of the biblical creation account by the ‘evidence’ of science, and so discredit Christianity in their eyes. But what is never offered in return is a single scrap of evidence to back up atheism’s own assertion that there is no God, and of course none will ever be found. It doesn’t exist and atheism couldn’t appropriate it even it if it did, and so in reality the position of the atheist is as dependent upon faith ultimately as any religion, if not more so. For while the Christian position is also one of faith, over and against atheism Christianity has the distinct advantage of having recourse to additional and viable evidence in the form of the divine revelation of scripture and a physical universe that appears to operate in conformity with it as if it were true.

There are, for example, very reasonable grounds indeed for discerning the operation of God in the workings of the world that he has made. Not least in this regard may be cited God’s evident judgment of idolatry in Hong Kong as manifested, for instance, in the ongoing deterioration of the famous Wishing Tree and the saga of the Ngong Ping 360 cable car. It was of further significance, therefore, that a letter highlighting both these scenarios (‘Unfaithful civilizations doomed to fall’) was published on 29 April, especially given that at the time this was a prophetic letter written in faith, that God in turn then appears to have honoured with a demonstration of his power. If the letter was initially ridiculed, as can be seen from some of the responses, it subsequently gained in credibility when on 11 June a cabin fell off the cable car that resulted in its humiliating closure until 31 December 2007. I am reliably informed that after the accident this particular letter was discussed on RTHK, one of the premier radio stations of Hong Kong. (A fuller report of the cable car incident and the divine inception of this letter, together with the latest news, may be found in the third issues of The Mast and Mast Ministries Newsletter).

It is a belief and principle of ‘Mast’ that it is the duty of all Christians to counter deception and falsehood in our society and fight for the proclamation of what is true whenever the opportunity arises.  How else will darkened eyes begin to see and closed up ears begin to hear ‘the hidden and secret things’ of God? When Christians engage in this kind of work, while it is sometimes difficult to gauge or even know of its ultimate worth and effectiveness, they can nevertheless be assured that in ways mysterious God will use and bless such efforts to his purposes. Certainly in the case of this particular sequence of correspondence it seems evident that God not only opened doors and made a way for it to occur in the first place, but that through it there seems every reason to believe he was able to jolt a few hearts and minds and give them pause for deeper contemplation on the issues raised and their implication.

The Editor

© David Eason 2008

1. From the Masthead:
1.1. The World Cup, England and Scotland
1.2. Ngong Ping 360
2. God’s Presence, the Mission of the Church and the End of History
3. Territory, Idolatry, Church and Place
3.1. The Role of Territory and Land
3.2. The Control of Territory and Land
3.3. The Example of Wong Tai Sin
3.4. The Rise of Buddhism
3.5. Church and Territory

From the Masthead

Welcome to this second issue of The Mast. Originally it was intended that this journal should be published bi-monthly, but given the length of time needed to research and produce the material, this has since proved to be a slightly over-ambitious target. As a consequence, henceforward The Mast will be published once every quarter.

The main theme of this particular issue centres on the question of the relationship between ‘territory’ or ‘place’ and the religious phenomena of the Church and idolatry, in particular the idolatry of Buddhism. The reader is directed to the accompanying newsletter for more personal details of how and why this theme has become an especially pressing one for the editor at this time, but in essence an understanding of this topic is absolutely vital for the Church if it is to be obedient to the Great Commission in these days. What I find is that there is some ignorance as to the role of ‘place’ and territory’ in the concept of mission that is inhibiting the advance of the Kingdom of God. An exploration of this theme is therefore both timely and practical.

On a wider level, this topic falls well within the central concern of ‘Mast’ to discern exactly what is spiritually going on in the world and to understand what God and the devil are each seeking to achieve.

Sometimes we can take the very basic things for granted without giving them too much thought. For example, how often do we consider the way the world is in terms of it having three dimensions, an environment of sea, land and air, and intelligent bipeds that just happen to live on the land? In a causal sense, the atheist would argue that blind chance and physical laws are responsible for the world becoming this way, to which the Christian might reply that no, this is the design and creation of God. Now, I take my stand with those who advocate God in this way, but in so doing the vital issue for me is not who created the world or by what process everything came into being, but the more theological one of why God chose to make the universe and world in the first place and make it in the form that he did? Why, for instance, is there gravity and a vertical dimension that insists up is up and down is down? Why am I not a fish or a bird? Or for that matter, why am I here (on the land) at all?

These questions are not just idle speculation, but are very much related to the topic in hand. To know the particular one must attempt to understand the whole, and vice versa, and in seeking to understand religious phenomena in relation to ‘place’, the discernment of the bigger picture is also in view. For it is the case that for very similar though antithetical reasons, both God and the devil are very much more interested than one might suppose in the physical world in which we live and, in particular, the land on which the nature of our creation compels us to dwell. And to begin to understand this interest is to begin to understand, as one friend recently put it, ‘the great why of everything’.

This is a large topic that can barely be touched upon in a journal of this size, but nevertheless will be approached both in the general content and in particular through the two main articles. The first continues the examination of the motif of God’s presence begun in the last issue of The Mast, taking this forward through the era of the Church to the end times. This establishes that the control of territory and place is a primary goal in God’s mission to the world. The second puts this goal in some creational and historical context and relates it to contemporary developments. Prior to that, this extended edition of ‘From the Masthead’ continues with its regular mix of observations and comment, much of which is pertinent to this theme.

The World Cup, England and Scotland

It has long been a contention of mine that England is now a nation under divine judgment, and this became very visible to me during the recent World Cup in two specific ways.

Firstly, was it just me, or did England’s exit from the tournament give anyone else a sense of déjà vu? For it is very strange, but England’s quarter-final defeat by Portugal in 2006 was remarkable in its resonance with her defeat by the same country in the quarter finals of Euro 2004.

The similarities are striking. In each case:

• Rooney was the hope of the nation
• A broken metatarsal was a feature
• Rooney was forced to exit early
• Defeat is attributable to this exit
• Rooney’s boot was the image of defeat
• The match went on to penalties
• England’s penalty taking was dire

England as a nation has forgotten the God of her fathers and new idols have taken his place, one manifestation of which is an overweening expectation and pride in the national football team. Now all nations have this to an extent, but in England’s case the unrighteous depth of this pride is underscored by the loss of heavenly glory for which such things have arisen in exchange. As such, football has become one of the symbols of the nation’s apostasy, and God in his mercy will often judge apostasy through the humiliation of such symbols. For nothing in the present, it would seem, can strike at England’s heart quite like a defeat for their national team in their national game in an international tournament.

I am quite sure that football is not subject to divine influence generally (but who knows) and that fair play must be a quality of heaven, but in this case there is a palpable sense of the finger of God at work.

The focus of the nation’s hopes in 2004 and 2006 was Wayne Rooney. In 2004, because of his performance earlier in the tournament that ensured England went through to the last eight, the nation became enraptured by the emergence of this new star. ‘King Rooney’ screamed one headline, ‘Wonder of Wayne’, blazed another. In 2006, when a broken metatarsal late in April threw his participation in the world Cup into some doubt, the country again was gripped by Rooney mania, first with anxiety over his possible absence, but then with relief on his being declared fit, the whole conspiring to raise even further the nation’s expectations.

In each case Rooney was idolized to an unrighteous degree as the ‘saviour’ of English football and the focus of national pride. Nothing manifested this more than a Nike advert issued in June this year showing a bare Rooney painted with the Cross of St. George across his torso and outstretched arms in an a pose reminiscent of the blood-drenched crucifixion of Christ. Nike claim this was only meant to be a patriotic portrayal of Rooney’s trademark goal-scoring celebration, but the religious associations could not have escaped the notice of those responsible, just as they did not with the British public from whom, I am pleased to say, there was some outcry.

England’s idolatry found due nemesis in the detail of both defeats. The key point in each game was Rooney’s premature exit, and the focus of each exit in different ways was Rooney’s foot and boot. In 2004, in the 23rd minute, Rooney lost his boot and injured his foot as he fought for the ball with Portugal’s Andrade. In strange anticipation of 2006 he was then mysteriously penalized by referee, Urs Meier. When it became clear that he could not continue, Rooney left the field to discover later that he had broken his fifth metatarsal on his right foot. To compound England’s woes, during the subsequent penalty shoot out David Beckham (no small idol himself) sent his shot way over the crossbar in uncharacteristic fashion, complaining later that an unusually sandy and raised penalty spot was to blame. The images in the press the next day of boot, spot, foot and ball, as well as of dejection, were poignant, and countered with poetic and ironic symbolism the nature of the idolatry of football itself.

In 2006, Rooney’s broken metatarsal (again his right foot) gave a chiastic symmetry to the wider drama, and undoubtedly affected Rooney’s play and led to a build up of frustration during the game. This came to a head in the 62nd minute when, during a tussle with Ricardo Carvalho, Rooney brought his left foot (Nike clad it must be said) down upon the defender’s testicles, the red card that followed sealing both Rooney’s and England’s humiliation.

That both defeats should come at the hands of Portugal is also full of irony. England’s faith of old was the Protestant faith founded upon the Word of God and the gospel of salvation through the shed blood of Jesus alone. Portugal on the other hand is a Catholic nation that honours neither, having twice solemnly consecrated itself, lock, stock and barrel, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the cult of Fatima following ‘her’ appearances there during the First World War. In 1931 this involved 300,000 people and the entire Portuguese hierarchy, while in 1938 over half a million people took part. The image of Ronaldo crossing himself, therefore, as he took the winning penalty in 2006 should be understood less as evidence of divine aid for him, and more the galling completion of a divine cameo that by design was meant to strike at the heart of England’s soul and her rejection of God.

A second sign of England’s judgment may be discerned in the attitude of Scottish football fans towards England’s participation in the tournament, Scotland having failed to qualify. In short, this boiled down to their supporting with vigour whatever other country was opposing them. Such was the oddness to the rest of the world of this spectacle of one part of the United Kingdom against another, that it was even reported in the South China Morning Post.

Now of course the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island (to quote its full title) is currently not one country but a union of three and a province, and to varying degrees there is a long history of different hostilities between them. But since the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707, it would be fair to state that, with the exception of the Irish question, the United Kingdom, or Great Britain, has operated very successfully as a unified entity. There are indications, however, that this is about to change. The rise of nationalism, the recent granting of devolution to Scotland and Wales, and the rise of a Europe within which an independent Scotland can find a viable place, all point on the political level towards the likely break-up of the United Kingdom within the next couple of decades. And one societal sign of this is that Scottish affections for the English, on a grass roots level at least, have notably soured in recent years.

On a spiritual level I believe England to be a nation ripe for such a judgment, and a judgment it most certainly would be. It is no accident, for example, that there is more than a passing resemblance between England’s history and what happened to Israel in this same respect in biblical times. Documented in the Book of Kings, Israel’s sad decline from the glories of David and Solomon, through the subsequent division of the nation under Rehoboam and the steady erosion of territory, to the final conquests, first of Israel and Samaria and then of Judah and Jerusalem, may be directly attributed to her apostasy and idolatry. Likewise, it is possible to discern a direct correlation between Britain’s progressive rejection of her faith and her steady decline from being the world’s greatest empire to becoming a rather confused and mediocre power that seems now about to be torn in two.

As a ‘Brit’ and an Englishman this cuts my heart, not least because I believe the Lord has shown me that in heaven the decision for this has already been taken.

On a rocky prominence on the outskirts of Stirling there is situated the National Wallace (of ‘Braveheart’ fame) Monument, an impressive gothic tower built in the nineteenth century to commemorate the Scottish victory over the English at Stirling Bridge on 11 September 1297 (when relations were also a little sour) and to foster a Scottish national identity. And housed in this tower in a secure glass case is what is purported to be William Wallace’s broadsword, large and menacing and suspended point downwards like the sword of Damocles.

Because of my studies in Stirling, I have visited this sword on several occasions, fascinated by what it may have done and been through (literally). On one particular occasion in 2001, it was strange, but I felt moved by the Spirit of God to compose the following prophecy:

With this sword the LORD shall wield and cleave this nation in two.
With this death shall also come life.

Feeling a tad nervous (not quite yet the Jeremiah type), I wrote these words on a small piece of card and gently placed this on the outside of the glass case, watching several people read it before I left.

If really from the Lord, the implications of these words are clear:

• That through Scottish nationalism as symbolized by this sword, the UK will be divided and cut in two – beheaded, if you like, of its Scottish top
• The thought is not if but when
• Possibly too this will be more than a divisive issue for Scotland
• Scottish independence will shake all of Britain and Northern Island to its core
• Through the soul searching the nation(s) will be moved to return to their God

It would not take much to set this process in motion – a weak Labour government, desperate to please, or a strong Conservative government, remote and insensitive, and the right emotive issue – anything could start it off, and when it does, England will be powerless to prevent it. Perhaps the forthcoming 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 will provide the necessary catalyst. It was there that Robert the Bruce also defeated the English, ushering in a rare period of Scottish independence, a victory that has assumed heroic and talismanic status among Scottish nationalists.

Whatever the scenario, and it pains me to say it, England is about to receive due penalty for her folly. For rejecting his gospel, God is taking the United out of the United Kingdom. I pray the shock of this will indeed lead to repentance and a revival of her historic Christian faith. If it does not, however, then the history of Israel is England’s assurance that God will not shy away from eventually removing the Kingdom as well.

Ngong Ping 360

It has been the consistent practice in recent years for the Hong Kong government and government ministers, be it overt or unwitting, to pursue a policy of supporting idolatry.

Sometime in the late 1980’s: the decision is made (involving the British Governor) to build the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau. The Buddha opened in 1993 and has since become one of the ‘must see’ attractions of Hong Kong.

Sunday 2 February 2003: Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho, supposedly a Christian, bows before an idol at the Che Kung temple to seek prosperity for Hong Kong, drawing instead a fortune stick signifying ‘everything will be bad’. It was. With SARS and recession, 2003 was Hong Kong’s worst year in recent times.

Saturday 12 February 2005: Due to the number of wishes thrown into it, on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year the main branch of the Tai Po Wishing Tree falls off, injuring two. Not recognizing the judgment of God, the Home Affairs Department (under Patrick Ho) subsequently take measures to preserve the tree and encourage the tradition.

Sunday 15 May 2005 (1): Financial Secretary Donald Tsang, a devout Catholic, bathes the Buddha’s birthday statue, no doubt in anticipation of his expected campaign to become the next Chief Secretary.

Sunday 15 May 2005 (2): Resurrected by Patrick Ho, the Cheung Chau Bun Scramble, as part of an annual festival honouring the god Pak Tai, takes place for the first time since 1978 when the event was banned after three of the bun towers collapsed injuring 100 people.

Sunday 8 January 2006: Patrick Ho again bows before an idol, offering prayers to Wong Tai Sin for the blessing of Hong Kong as part of the Grand Blessing Ceremony.

If all this wasn’t enough, the latest idolatry project about to come on stream is Ngong Ping 360, the new cable car system designed to take visitors and tourists from Tung Chung near Hong Kong’s airport to visit a specially constructed ‘enlightenment’ themed village and the Tian Tan Buddha nearby.

First announced in 1998 by Donald Tsang as a boost to the economy after the Asian financial crisis, Ngong Ping 360 will open on 18 September this year. At 5.7 km the cable car is the longest in Asia, and with 112 cabins able to hold 17 people each, will be able to carry 1,904 passengers at any one time and transport over 3,500 people in any hour.

It is this capacity and scale that makes this project so alarming; for in effect this is nothing other than the state sponsored mass promotion of Buddhism. By the admission of the superintendent of Po Lin Monastery, to which the Buddha is attached, visitors to the statue have dropped from up to 10,000 people a day in 1994 after it first opened to between a few hundred and 1,000 now. The cable car will reverse all that, for the venture is expected to attract more than 1.5 million tourists in its first year, many from the mainland, and, due to the ease and convenience of use, these numbers are likely to be sustained or will increase year on year, especially if tour groups combine Ngong Ping 360 with a visit to Disneyland. Previously Po Lin could only be reached from Hong Kong by ferry and then an arduous journey by bus; the cable car journey will last just twenty minutes from an easily accessible MTR station.

The themed village is also a concern. One of the attractions is ‘Walking With Buddha’, ‘an immersive, multimedia’ ‘experience’ that allows guests to follow the life of how Siddhartha reached supreme awareness and became Buddha. There, among other things, the visitor will be given a Bodhi Tree leaf inscribed with a Buddhist meditation and through a variety of scenes and activities ‘enlightened as to the essence of Buddha’s teachings’. In other words, Buddhist evangelism pure and simple planned and promoted by the government. Not to mention these same visitors being guided towards the Buddha and monastery where the burning of incense and deference before the idol will be actively encouraged. I am quite sure that in branding Hong Kong as ‘Asia’s World City’, the government would claim to favour no one religion over another, yet can you imagine their same enthusiasm for a HK$750 million infrastructure project to enable millions to ‘meet Jesus’ on top of a mountain in ‘The Holy Spirit Experience’, with altar calls?

Acknowledged in promotion literature as the ‘Journey of Enlightenment’, Ngong Ping 360 will encourage Buddhist idolatry among millions, and it is probably for this reason that the development of the project has been plagued by a catalogue of mishaps and glitches that have led to its openning being delayed and which give the overwhelming immpression of divine displeasure:

• During the construction period heavier than expected rains set back the opening date by a few months.
• Gale force winds exceeding 90 km/h near the site of the Big Buddha disrupted the first day of trials on 8 June 2006. Media invited to try out the cable car had to be bussed instead to the Ngong Ping village, none of which was open. All very bad for publicity.
• On Friday 17 June a failure delayed the start of a trial involving hundreds of elderly and disabled who were forced to wait for 45 minutes in sweltering heat.
• On Saturday 18 June a further trial run was disrupted when a series of faults left 500 MTR staff (the parent company) stranded in mid-air in the cable cars for two hours. A later report by Skyrail, the operators, said the problem was due to a combination of three factors – a fault with the computer system controlling the spacing of cable cars; a friction problem on the conveyor rail; and a failure of the gate leading into the cable-car parking area. Secretary for Economic Development and Labour Stephen Ip Shu-kwan commented ‘the three problems were not supposed to happen, but they did’. As a result the grand opening planned for 24 June was postponed for further reliability tests.
• The ride suffered minor damage when Typhoon Prapiroon passed to the south west of Hong Kong on 2 August, delaying the opening date once again. This typhoon was unusual in that because of the distance it passed Hong Kong, the Observatory was lulled into a false sense of security and failed to issue typhoon signal no. 8 (issued on the basis of sustained wind speed in Victoria harbour) commensurate with the actual conditions, only raising instead signal no. 3. This gave rise to anxieties as to what would happen when the cable car was up and running. Previous planning only allowed for the closure of the ride during a signal no. 8, but this incident led Skyrail to change policy and initiate closure procedures with signal no. 3. This, however, will increase the number of days the attraction will be closed due to bad weather. Interestingly, the highest wind speeds recorded in Hong Kong during Prapiroon were at Ngong Ping, reaching 209 km/h, a full 100 km/h faster than recorded anywhere else.

All this appears to indicate there is a real spiritual problem with this ‘attraction’. Feng shui experts might offer their advice and Buddhists may point to the commercialization of a ‘sacred’ site as the cause of the trouble (although they would have a hard time explaining what mind or power was behind that trouble), but the truth of it is that God is against Ngong Ping 360 for the simple reason that this is a device, and an official one at that, that will facilitate idolatry on a massive scale. As such, every prophetic instinct that I possess compels me to issue a warning that this cable car will experience a very serious act of judgment in the not too distant future. As I write, the opening is only a few days away, and whether this judgment will come then or at some later date I do not know, but what I feel absolutely convinced of is that one day this judgment will come.

There are other ominous signs. The area to the south of Lantau Island and Hong Kong has been identified as a local earthquake zone, and just a few days before the opening was due, on Thursday 14 September (as this article was being prepared interestingly enough) Hong Kong experienced a rare earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale emanating from that region. Although there were no reports of damage, the shaking was nevertheless severe enough to cause people in some areas to run out into the streets.

According to information from the Hong Kong Observatory, since 1979 there have been six other locally felt tremors, all below intensity 5, with epicentres located around Hong Kong, once at Mai Po in 1983 and five times near the east coast of Lantau Island, twice in 1982 and three times in 1995 – these last statistics not without some significance given their proximity in space and time to the opening of the Lantau Buddha.

More worrying, perhaps, was the discovery on a website of a prediction of a terrible disaster given through a dream to a man called Brian in America on 29 January, who apparently had no knowledge at the time of Ngong Ping 360. His dream so resonated with what I had already personally discerned and his site was so full of testimonies concerning dreams of his that had come true, that regardless of his spiritual complexion (he may not be a Christian for example) I was compelled to take notice.

I reproduce below a photograph of a drawing he made of his dream at the time, which can be found on his website:

http://www.briansprediction.com/pri/jan2006wk5.htm

The key points to observe are (1) the word ‘Ping’ (2) the position of the cable car in relation to the Buddha, which by all accounts is accurate, and (3) his warning that the disaster comes as a ‘giant tower fails’, with arrows indicating on a sketch of the tower where that failure might occur. A unique feature of Ngong Ping 360 is that because the project was to be built in a country park there was a restriction placed on the number of towers allowed to support it. Consequently the whole 5.7 km route is supported by only eight of what are enormous towers.

I pray to God that few people will be on board if this or any other type of disaster should occur. Have mercy on us Lord.

And finally …

My heartfelt thanks to Fred Murphy of Ealing, London for his considered response to the last issue of The Mast and his observation that the incident involving Phinehas killing Zimri and his Moabite girlfriend is in Numbers and not in Exodus. The reference is indeed Num 25:6-13 and not Ex 25:6-13 as written.

God’s Presence, the Mission of the Church and the End of History

There are among the many other images in scripture three that illustrate perfectly the anti-idolatry and territorial imperative of the role of the Church in God’s plan of salvation to deliver all of creation from evil.

The first of these may be found in Daniel 2:31-35, and is the dramatic account of King Nebuchadnezzar having his own dream revealed to him by the prophet Daniel:

“You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue – an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

According to Daniel’s subsequent interpretation, the large statue represented a series of successive kingdoms and empires that arise to dominate the earth. Apart from the head of gold, the others are not specifically identified, and there has been much debate and some controversy among commentators in deciding what these other empires might be. Such deliberations need not concern us here (all of history may in any case be in view). More important are Daniel’s explicit identification of the golden head with Nebuchadnezzar himself, and by extension with the Babylonian empire, and the depiction of these empires collectively as a giant statue, or idol.

This is all very revealing, for this image encapsulates like no other the consistent biblical presentation of the world as fundamentally idolatrous. Firstly, Babylon in scripture is an archetype for idolatry and rebellion. While ‘Babylon’ in the Old Testament can simply be a reference to the historical city, such was the depth and depravity of historical Babylon’s idolatry, particularly as the enemy and destroyer of Israel and its temple, that ‘Babylon’ developed into a generic term for idolatrous religion and world power generally in opposition to God. In Genesis, it was in Babylon where the world after the flood first coagulated in rebellion around the Tower of Babel, while in the Book of Revelation, ‘Babylon’ is both the earthly origin and symbol of all apostasy, synonymous with the evil empire and the world ‘city of power’. Across the forehead of the harlot is written: ‘Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth’. It seems fitting, therefore, the statue in Daniel has this head of gold.

Secondly, the fusion of the world’s empires into an idol reminds us that all civilization(s), all nations and empires (with the exception of the people of God insofar as they remain so) are rooted in and are expressions of idolatry. Civilization is in essence an exercise in human and spiritual autonomy in response to the fall. The first city in the bible, for example, was built by Cain in response to and immediately after his being cast from the Lord’s presence to be a restless wanderer. Specific and generic Babylon was/is founded on humanity’s desire to make a name for itself and forge its own spiritual destiny. The consequent division of the earth into nations after Babel did not change this dynamic so much as divide it, and apart from the irruption of the influence of God at certain points, remains the basis of civilization today.

Thirdly, this same fusion is poetic in its exposition of the fact that idolatry is territorial. Individuals, homes cities, nations and empires all have their different gods, and the influences of these gods are commensurate with boundaries of the ‘space’ within which they are worshipped. They are not always allies. One aspect of idolatry that is universal, however, and which transcends and connects all the different geographies and entities together is the idolatry of the human or humanity itself as god, hence the form of the idol is that of a single man.

What then does the rock represent made ‘not by human hands’? According to Daniel, this rock is another kingdom set up by God ‘in the days of those kings’ (Dan 2:44) that would never be destroyed and that would ultimately be the undoing of all the others. This of course can only be the eternal Kingdom of God, but more specifically appears to represent Christ and his Church. This becomes apparent with the second of our images in 1 Peter 2:4-9:

As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone, ” and, “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

The key motif in this text is that of the ‘living stone’, but what does this expression ‘living stone’ mean? Amongst other things, this also describes a stone that ‘has not been worked by hand’, the same as the rock in Daniel. And in the context of 1 Peter, the complete metaphor – stones fashioned by God, beginning with the cornerstone and capstone, and built by him into a spiritual house – can only mean Christ and his Church.

There is much resonance to suggest this is so. The incarnation of Christ came in the days of the Roman Empire, undoubtedly to be included as one of the empires in Daniel’s statue, and so the rock was indeed hewn ‘in the days of those kings’. And this rock subsequently smashes the statue to smithereens, which captures perfectly the ultimate victory of Jesus over all idolatry. The rock then became a mountain that fills the earth, just as the Church is given the Great Commission (from a mountain) to go and disciple all nations.

This equation of the expanding mountain with the missionary Church is an interesting one, and neatly encapsulates the nature of the Great Commission and the goal of salvation history. Firstly, in the smashing of the statue the emphasis of God’s overall intention is clearly delineated as one of combating idolatry. Indeed, the undoing of idolatrous rebellion is possibly the reason behind all of creation. It is Jesus alone who makes this possible by his death and resurrection, a cosmic victory over every evil power in which the ground for their influence in heaven and on earth has been utterly broken. But the methodology of the implementation of this victory is one of displacement. For secondly, the filling of the earth by the mountain unmistakably depicts the Church as taking territory, not strictly in the geopolitical sense of taking control of the nations, though this in effect is by no means absent, but, following the connectivity of the imagery, in the sense of pushing back the idolatrous powers as it geographically expands and exercises its spiritual authority.

The use of mountain imagery confirms this. At various points throughout scripture the image of the mountain is juxtaposed with the image of the sea as a means of conveying this overall struggle. Idolatry is in mysterious connection with chaos and chaos is represented by the sea. With idolatry comes chaos, just as out of the sea in Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 emerge the same idolatrous entities as conveyed by the statue in Daniel 2 as blasphemous beasts. The mountain, on the other hand, is a symbol of creation against this chaos, and stands for the purposes of God and his presence. And here we come back to the living stones. For these are being built into a living temple made of believers in Jesus to house the presence of the living God, and as the Church grows and expands, so does God’s presence in the world, causing the powers of idolatry to fall back in rage and disarray. History testifies, for example, to the universal retreat of paganism in the face of resolute Christianity.

The expansion of God’s presence in the world is a key motif of salvation history and can be traced from beginning to end in scripture. I refer the reader to the main article in the last issue of The Mast for a detailed treatment of the earlier elements of this theme, but this motif may be summarized thus:

• There was no temple in the Garden of Eden, for God was fully present within it.
• After the fall, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and God’s presence.
• After the fall and prior to the creation of Israel, God’s glory presence was absent from the world.
• With the creation of Israel, the establishing of the covenant, the laws of holiness and the construction of the tabernacle and temple, God was able to presence himself within the world and sinful humanity for the first time since the fall. Without these safeguards God’s wrath would break out against the community. For this reason his presence is restricted to just the Holy of Holies.
• The sanctification of the land of Israel through the presence of God in the temple makes possible the incarnation of Jesus in Israel.
• The victory of the Cross means that God’s presence was no longer restricted to just the sanctified space of the Holy of Holies, as evidenced by the tearing of the temple veil. This was as much a sign that God was bursting forth as one suggesting unfettered access for believers. With the atonement and substitution of Jesus, the Holy of Holies with its veil was now redundant. Henceforward, the sanctified place of God’s presence would be the new temple, the Church, through whose missionary endeavours God’s presence could now be established in all the territories of the earth.

This motif finds complete fulfillment in the third of our images, that of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-2, 9-10, 16:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband … One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God … The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long.

The key point here is the description of the city. It’s a cube. The Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple was also a cube, and the significance of this is profound. In antiquity the geometric symbol for the entire earth was the square, hence the expression the four corners of the earth. The cube incorporates the square in the third dimension, and as such the Holy of Holies was not only symbolic of all of creation, but was also representational and prophetic of God’s intention to deliver all of creation from evil. The New Jerusalem as a cube, therefore, is the ultimate fulfillment of those intentions, and is beautiful in the extreme. Firstly, God’s presence has expanded from just the Holy of Holies in the temple (a ten cubit by ten cubit box) through the ministry of the Church to fill the entirety of everywhere. This is why there is no temple in the city. ‘I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple’. (Rev 21:22). Or put another way, all of creation has now become the Holy of Holies. Secondly, the victory over idolatry and chaos is total and complete. There is no longer any territory left for the devil and his demonic powers to establish themselves, for despite the many appearances in history to the contrary, the geographic expansion and ministry of the Church in the world was God’s method for unseating them. Consequently, having been expunged from heaven and denied any place on earth, they are consigned to the one place that is left to them, the Abyss, to which their influence is forever removed. Not without significance, then, does Revelation also record that in the new heaven and new earth there ‘was no longer any sea.’

Territory, Idolatry, Church and Place

There is currently going on in the world a spiritual struggle of titanic proportions for the control of territory and land. The Bible testifies to this struggle from beginning to end, and yet this struggle is one that very few in the Church seem to be aware of in respect of its magnitude and importance. The depth of this theme in scripture (as also indicated in the previous article) makes such ignorance all the harder to understand. This is especially true with regard to the territorial imperative of the Great Commission, for which I make no apologies for reiterating here. To this author it seems highly significant that the Great Commission was only ever given in connection with a very specific regard to territory. The command was to make Jesus known to ‘all nations’ (Mt 28:19) and ‘all creation’ (Mk 16:15) in a missionary endeavour that would expand from ‘Jerusalem’ through ‘Samaria’ to ‘the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8), notions that by their very nature embrace concepts of territory and place. Moreover, taking other biblical images into consideration, there appears to be an emphasis here that views the establishment of the Church in territories and place as a missionary goal in itself beyond just the fact that people live there. In other words, as well as being a call to save souls worldwide, the Great Commission has a parallel agenda to establish the Church in all the territories of the earth against the demonic powers in control of those territories. This article explores this territorial imperative a little further and gives some illustrations as to how this struggle has manifested in history and is manifesting today.

The Role of Territory and Land

Land is one of those ‘normal’ phenomena that people tend to take for granted, but its very existence should give us pause for thought, especially given that land is God’s chosen arena for the conflict. If God really did create the universe then presumably he created things as they are for a reason, and it is not necessary for us to suppose he was unable to arrange them in any other way. In all likelihood, therefore, the physical context of this struggle reflects the spiritual realities of what is actually involved.

In the creation account in Genesis 1, land is accorded a place of high honour, as can be seen in the following table:

In what is a very stylized piece of writing (arguing, it may be noted, against a strictly literal interpretation of the text) it can be observed that the days of creation are constructed in two parallel sections each of which culminates in the land, underlining its importance in the drama to come. The nature of this drama is also indicated in another structure within the same text:

Here we see in both parallel and linear form a transition in the emphasis of the narrative from the heavens to the earth. The focus of the spiritual drama of heaven is about to be enacted on physical earth. But what is that drama?

The clue comes in the very second verse of the bible (Gen 1:2):

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

This is a depiction of chaos, and in the rest of the bible, just as it was also universally understood throughout the ancient world, chaos is not good. In fact chaos is evil, and here it is on earth (or somewhere!) prior to the days of creation. This points to the possibility that something was already very wrong in heaven before creation began. The same thought is suggested by the presence in the Garden of Eden of both the serpent and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil prior to the fall.

The likely scenario to account for this is that physical creation was and is in some way related to, and perhaps an extension of a cosmic battle that was already raging in the heavenlies between good and evil, a battle that began with Satan’s rebellion against God (Milton wrote Paradise Lost on this same basis). Creation, therefore, was possibly God’s method of sorting it out.1

Indeed, when you spend time to analyze Genesis 1, it increasingly becomes apparent that all of God’s creative acts, and in particular the creation of land, was tantamount to spiritual warfare against forces of chaos and evil already in existence. The six days of creation appear to be in direct confrontation to the primordial chaos represented by the primordial sea, just as the creation of the land pushes against the earthly sea and keeps it within bounds in physical creation. In this sense the sea and land on earth are to be understood as reflections of the spiritual conflict in the heavens translated to this physical realm, confirmed by the persistent association of the sea in scripture with idolatrous chaos and the triumphant lack of sea in the new heavens and new earth.

Land or territory, then, is a crucial if mysterious element within God’s wider plan of salvation history. It is there by design, and so it is small wonder that in both the bible and history it is possible to detect an enormous spiritual war going on for control of this land.

In the first place, the devil and his demons betray a fatal attraction towards it. Before the flood, for example, in Genesis 6, we can read how the demons were attracted to the daughters of men and came down to the earth to copulate with them, as if their spiritual baseness could not help but manifest in a desire for physical incarnation and control of the physical realms (similar in movement, interestingly, though antithetical in spiritual dynamic to the incarnation of Jesus through Mary). The consequent beings, the ‘mighty men of renown’, were rulers and kings who led humanity astray, the world as a result being destroyed in a return to chaos through the flood in which no land remained uncovered.

Certainly the devil seeks to control the land. In the third temptation of Christ in Matthew 4:8 one can read how ‘the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor’. Clearly Satan here already has extensive control of the nations of the earth, for he couldn’t offer them to Jesus unless he had. For he goes on to say “All this I will give you […] if you will bow down and worship me.” Or perhaps the giving and the worship here go together, in that Satan could not offer the nations unless Jesus did worship him. Regardless, this transaction points us most succinctly to the religion of Satan, also strictly earthbound, which is idolatry. For idolatry is nothing except the turning of men’s hearts antithetically away from God and heaven towards the worship of the things of the earth, in other words towards Satan’s new domain and ultimately towards Satan himself. And his control is established over territory wherever this occurs, be it human hearts, their towns or cities or their nations.

In summary, the scenario thus far is this:

• There was rebellion in heaven
• Creation, and in particular the creation of land, appears to be God’s method of defeating this rebellion
• Satan is attracted to the territories of the earth (physical creation in fact having all the appearance of being a divine trap for spiritual evil)
• Satan’s plan is then to control humanity and the territories of the earth through idolatry

But God’s plan is to defeat Satan completely, and a further hint of the importance of territory in this plan may be seen in the relationship between land and people. Right from the beginning it was always God’s intention that the land should be populated by humanity – humanity, it must be remembered, made in the image of God. It was God, for example, who gave to Adam and Eve the directive to ‘increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it’ (Gen 1:28). It was God who also commanded Noah after the flood to be ‘fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth’ (Gen 9:1). And it was God who scattered the peoples of the earth and formed the nations, each in its place and time, after the debacle of the Tower of Babel. Just as the creation of land was an act of spiritual warfare, so too was the creation of people to inhabit and populate it. And we know this because the devil at Babel tried to stop it. At Babel he tried to incite humanity to all settle in one place, in a city, and make a name for themselves.

But this wasn’t God’s idea at all. In the defeat of evil it would be his people who would play the key role. This is partly what God meant when he told the serpent after the fall that he would ‘put enmity between you and the woman, between the your offspring and hers’ (Gen 3:15). People made in God’s image would become God’s chosen instrument for Satan’s downfall. But for this to happen there would have to be people in all the territories of the earth, which is precisely what God took such great pains to arrange.

God’s end game is threefold: (1) to expunge satanic rebellion from Heaven, (2) to liberate all of humanity and the territories of the earth from Satan’s control, and (3) to consign Satan and his own to their final destination in the abyss – a roller coater descent of Satan from the highest to the lowest that would eliminate evil forever from everywhere, except hell, and this would be achieved through the ministry of Jesus and his Church.

This is plainly visible in the fact that as well as being fatally attracted to the land, as a result of this ministry the devil, in poetic judgment of this attraction, is also portrayed in scripture as being cast down from heaven and banished upon it. After sending out the seventy-two, for example, Jesus saw Satan ‘fall like lightning from heaven’ in consequence of the disciples’ preaching and exorcisms (Lk 10:18). Similarly, in Revelation 12:9 one can read how subsequent to the ascension of Jesus Satan ‘was hurled to the earth and his angels with him’ after war in heaven.

From this it is clear that through his death and resurrection, Jesus has won a stunning and unexpected victory over Satan that undermines completely both his position in the heavenlies and what was the unassailable legal basis of his usurpation and control of the earth. It is also clear that the Church is God’s chosen agency to put this victory into effect. It is the role of the Church to proclaim and establish the victory of Jesus in all the territories of the earth in order that Satan’s authority is not only eliminated from heaven, but also squeezed out from the earth as well.

But none of this happens without a fight, a bitter fight, as Revelation 12:12 also makes clear. Although the heavens may rejoice at Satan’s expulsion and defeat:

Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.

Satan knows full well his reduced estate and what will happen to him in the future when (though as far as he is concerned if) the Church is ever successful in its mission. Although being confined to the earth, the devil is nonetheless still able to command enormous power, and through his (increasingly manic) promotion of idolatry is still able to control the territories of the earth. Ever more desperate, he will resort to anything and everything to maintain and even increase his position wherever this idolatry is allowed to flourish. Hence the vital and urgent territorial imperative of the Great Commission, for Satan’s influence and idolatry in the world will only, indeed can only ever be overcome insofar as the Church is obedient to this imperative and establishes itself among people within every territory in order to defeat it.

The Control of Territory and Land

The key methodology that Satan employs to establish his control over a territory is as simple as it is revealing. In short, this involves nothing other than his directing people in that territory to erect a structure – be it the appropriation of a natural feature, the erection of a stone, a shrine, a statue, a temple, a pyramid or a tower – to provide the focus for idolatrous worship. That’s it, that’s all it takes for Satan to establish his control, which would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that all societies seem so readily disposed to do just that and fall in utterly with his plans.

Wherever this occurs, the same general dynamics may be observed:

• The structure is located at a fixed point, i.e. is rooted immovably to the land. This may be stating the obvious but it is easy to miss.
• This creates a geographical pivot and symbol around which idolatry can cohere
• The grander the structure, the more strategic the location, the greater the potential for attraction and influence
• Within this structure is housed the object of idolatrous worship (or this can even be the structure itself)
• From this idolatrous centre demonic control emanates over the territory in which it is situated.

Now, in one sense, leaving aside for a moment the actual idolatry, what we are looking at here is a ‘neutral’ dynamic that one finds being employed all around us be it for good or for bad. Any city centre with tall buildings or any landmark building, for example, relies upon the same dynamic to draw attention to itself and generate influence. So does a church or cathedral; a church building with its steeple or tower serves the same function as any of these other structures in providing a loci for its declared activity. All such structures empower attention and loyalties towards whatever it represents or stands for. It depends upon what that purpose is as to whether this dynamic becomes a tool of the devil or not (as in fact do all such structures except churches). The point here, however, is that this basic dynamic is one that works, and when employed towards overtly spiritual ends, the effect can be powerful indeed.

It was the devil’s cunning appropriation of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden as an idolatrous structure (through the focusing of Eve’s attention upon it and away from God) that led to the fall of man. It was through the simple device of the Tower of Babel that the devil was able once again to lead all of humanity into idolatrous worship at Babylon. And the devil continues to employ this same dynamic with devastating consequences today.

The Example of Wong Tai Sin

Two contemporary examples will suffice to illustrate the point. The first concerns Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon.

The worship of Wong Tai Sin is a comparatively new phenomenon in Hong Kong, the first image in the form of a painting only being brought from China by a father and son in 1915. Now, however, Wong Tai Sin is one of the pre-eminent deities of the city revered by hundreds of thousands of people.

The sudden rise of a god like this is rare and thus provides observers with a unique opportunity to study the development of such worship. In a notable study of this phenomenon, the author, Graeme Lang, attributes this rise to one factor above all others – the building and location of the god’s principal temple. 2

The choice of the site of this temple was guided by a fuji message from the god (spirit guided handwriting, by whom I wonder) and was propitious. Originally a barren field, the site was nevertheless far enough away from the centre of Kowloon to avoid commercial redevelopment, yet in the middle of a district convenient enough to become the subsequent and urbanized home to thousands of refugees from China, all needing the healing, reassurance and guidance the god seemed especially able to provide. There were many miracles and the cult flourished. The temple is now one of the largest in Hong Kong and shelters the city’s largest grouping of fortune-tellers and diviners.

Another insidious aspect is this. The Wong Tai Sin cult was brought from an area in China, far to the north of Guandong Province (again under oracular instruction), where it was never really widespread or popular, and during the Cultural Revolution was made completely extinct. Its success in Hong Kong, however, has led to its recent reintroduction back to Guandong where ten new temples have been built since 1985 to perpetuate the cult, more vigourously there than ever it seems, once more. Never underestimate the devil.

The Rise of Buddhism

Another example of the devil’s strategy is provided by the contemporary rise of Buddhism. I use the word ‘rise’ here advisedly, not just because there are some indications of an increase in the number of practitioners worldwide (although evidence for this is not yet conclusive), but because of the extraordinary spectacle, unprecedented in all history, of the sudden proliferation of big Buddha statues. And on this basis alone one may confidently prophesy that even if there isn’t at present, there soon will be a dramatic growth of Buddhism in the very near future.

The scale and concentration of this proliferation is almost beyond belief, as can be seen in the following chronology.

From this it is possible to discern some intriguing developments. In view of the sudden escalation of this phenomenon, it seems quite obvious that the powers behind this trend have a most definite agenda for these days. Now it would seem doubtful that there is anywhere a central Buddhist body that is responsible for directing all of this according to some worked out strategy. At least I have no knowledge of such a body. Neither can the phenomenon be wholly attributed to purely local commercial, tourist and political interests, although these are by no means absent. What we are more likely witnessing here, given the spread and nature of the phenomenon, is the manifestation of a single coherent and diabolical scheme orchestrated through a common demonic agency. But for what purpose?

The sheer size of the idols and their geographic location give us a clue. For these are no lightweight projects aimed at securing a village or a town, these statues are of a scale to influence whole nations, and in the case of the Indian ‘Maitreya Project’, possibly even the world. The nations involved thus far are Japan, India and in particular, China, and for both collective and specific reasons it is possible to speculate why each is being targeted in this way.

Firstly and geopolitically, these nations are currently the three major economic and political powers of the whole of Asia. They have enormous populations and hold, or will hold, commanding positions over the world’s economy. Spiritually, therefore, they are rich prizes and Satan will do whatever he can on a number of fronts to retain and boost his control over them, Buddhism being one such front.

Secondly, even a cursory glance at a map of the religions of the world will show that historically these three countries virtually define what may be termed the Buddhist sphere of influence, which altogether covers the whole of South East and East Asia. If one’s goal is to keep or restore this traditional stronghold over the region then it would be sound policy to concentrate on these particular countries, which is precisely what Satan appears to be doing.

Thirdly, in each of these nations Buddhism has suffered a major historical setback from which it is still trying to recover. In the case of Japan, although Buddhism and Shintoism are by far the dominant religions, and held together by many, Buddhism lost significant ground during the Edo and Meiji periods to the national religion and lately has suffered against secularist materialism. In China, after a golden age under the Tang dynasty (618-907) during which Buddhism was the imperially ordained faith, it subsequently declined, first in the face of resurgent Confucianism during the following centuries, and more recently because of Communism and the Cultural Revolution. Buddhism nevertheless, remains the largest organized faith in the country. In India, where Buddhism first began, the problem is even more serious. After its successful establishment throughout the sub-continent during the 3rd century B.C., a revival of Hinduism and the various onslaughts of Islam led to Buddhism’s virtual disappearance, this despite India remaining the cultural and symbolic heart of the religion.

Perhaps this in part explains the awesome magnitude of the Maitreya Project. Let’s just pause and take a look at what this entails:

• A 500 ft seated idol on a throne
• Over 201,500 Buddhist images altogether
• A 3-mile north south axis leading to the statue through parks, ceremonial gateways and a statue sanctuary
• A 17-storey building within the throne housing 2 large prayer halls and 15 different shrine rooms (as below)
• Maitreya Temple with 12 m statue, side walls with 1,000 individual paintings of Buddha’s of this aeon, and 50 m back wall containing 200,000 images of Buddha
• Shakyamuni Temple with 10 m statue of historical Buddha and glass walls to see the images in the Maitreya Temple
• Merit Field Hall with 10 m 3-D depiction of over 390 Buddha’s and Buddhist masters, and 12 individual shrine rooms devoted to particular deities
• Numerous items of religious art
• Large collection of holy relics (bits of the dead Buddha and other saints) to be displayed in the ‘heart shrine’ within the statue itself. 3

The enshrinement of the remains of the dead Buddha as the heart of a giant idol of another is staggering in the depth of its depravity and could only have arisen from the blackest heart. What else is this except death magnified and the self-deification of humanity and humanity’s worship of itself as god – the original sin? This is occult at the highest level. Idolatry of this form and scale, and the site will undoubtedly attract millions of adherents from around the world, has the capacity to generate enormous spiritual influence, and surely the re-buddhafication of India must at least be in view here. Perhaps more. Such would seem to be suggested by the symbolism of Maitreya on his throne, an image of sovereign control if ever there was one.

Anyone who doubts the capacity for such a device to affect the religious complexion of a whole nation need only look as far as the building of the Lantau Buddha in Hong Kong in 1993, a mere baby by comparison. According to two surveys conducted in 1988 and 1995, people who declared themselves to be Buddhists increased almost 90 percent, from 6.6 percent in 1988 rocketing up to 11.6 percent in 1995. In the opinion of May M. Cheng and Wong Siulun, analysts of these two surveys, the erection of the Buddha was a key factor behind this considerable recruitment.4 Anecdotal evidence confirms this assessment. For example, a common complaint among Hong Kong pastors is that after the building of the Buddha the spiritual atmosphere in Hong Kong changed, with much greater resistance to the gospel being encountered thereafter. Interestingly enough, along with the dragon, the Buddha has since become one of the symbols of Hong Kong, displacing the old Chinese junk.

There is another element to the Maityea Project. The choice of Maitreya as opposed to the historical Buddha and the location of the statue near the village of Kushinagar with its ancient temple commemorating the place of the Buddha’s ‘passing from our world’ and the stupa commemorating the site of his cremation, are all highly suggestive and significant. For Maitreya is the Buddhist messiah, and while ‘officially’ he is not expected for an aeon or two, there has nevertheless been much speculation within certain circles in recent decades concerning his imminent arrival. The whiff of this eschatological tension may be seen, for instance, in the statement by the management that ‘the statue is designed to stand for at least 1,000 years, supporting the Project’s spiritual and social work for at least a millennium’.5 Whether or not the Buddhist messiah / antichrist figure will materialize through this project, it is difficult to say, but what is less problematic is the observation from history that idolatry and ideology invariably finds its man, and so it would not surprise me in the least if when this project was up and running a great Buddhist teacher should emerge onto the world stage.

This eschatological element points us back to China and possibly the main reason behind the current escalation of Big Buddha’s. It is no accident that the vast majority of the Buddha’s are being built in China, for China lies at the heart of Asia and the Buddhist sphere of influence, and this Buddhist sphere, together with the Islamic sphere, remain the last coherent nation blocs on earth not to have been penetrated wholesale by the gospel and the Church. If the Great Commission is to be completed, therefore, then these areas will need to be opened up in a way that hitherto has not been possible. This is an eschatological issue, for the second coming of Jesus Christ will not take place until this has occurred. As Jesus stated to his disciples concerning the end times:

… the gospel must first be preached to all nations.

Mark 13:10

… this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Matthew 24:14

So there is an almighty conflict going with God and his Church on the one side seeking to ensure this happens, while on the other the devil is using all his wiles to ensure that it does not (his own future being rather dependent upon it). And China is currently an epicenter of this struggle.

Of all the nations within the Buddhist sphere on influence, China is proving herself the most vulnerable to Christianity. Against all expectations and in the face of enormous persecutions, the Chinese Church is growing fast. Indeed, at present around five percent of the population are committed Christians, making it a more Christian country at the moment than England (shame!). Moreover, there are indications that the Chinese Church is poised to become a great missionary sending Church to the rest of Asia, as indicated by the ‘Back to Jerusalem’ movement that is gaining apace. And if this process continues, then possibility is raised that the Buddhist sphere of influence as a coherent stronghold will collapse. It is for this reason that we are witnessing so many big Buddha’s in China at this time; Satan is reinforcing his territory against the Church, and idolatry, as ever, is his particular method for doing so.

Church and Territory

Idolatry and the struggle for territory is a worldwide phenomenon and should be a concern for the entire Church. So what should the response of the Church be?

In the first place, it is absolutely vital that where this has been lost, the Church should restore the concept of territory and place within its theology of mission.

Historically, a concern for territory and place has been a prominent feature of missionary endeavour. For example, one only has to look at some of the methods by which England became a Christian nation:

• The early church had a policy of building a church and establishing a congregation over or near every pagan site in the country. In this way the power of paganism and idolatry was eventually and utterly defeated
• Once the church was established, a system of parishes was instituted over the whole country ensuring that every village and town had its church, and it is only recently that this system is beginning to break down.
• The 11th-13th centuries was the ‘Age of the Cathedrals’ during which many cathedrals were constructed throughout the British Isles and Europe. Along with the many churches, these rooted Christianity immovably within society and the nation.
• The evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were characterized by the building and planting of churches. If the Church eventually failed to influence sufficiently the urban masses of the industrial revolution, this is only because this process did not adapt quickly enough to keep pace with the new situation. The methodology, however, was sound.

Through these missionary strategies England became for centuries the most Christian country on earth. And let us just note in passing that it is surely of no small significance that the rise and fall of her territorial control of the earth appears to be in some connection with the rise and fall of her historic faith and her capacity to extend Christianity over those territories.

We are talking here about strategies of church planting and church building:

Church planting: an expanding programme of planting churches in specific territories amongst specific people groups (the two being, more often than not, inseparably linked)

Church building: the erection of structures, preferably imposing and beautiful, at specific locations as a visible means of establishing the Church and a congregation. The value of buildings is twofold: (1) a church building fixes a congregation to an area, and provides an excellent base of operations from which to extend and do the same into other areas. (2) A structure gravitates a community’s attention and can be a centre of enormous influence. Church buildings that are obviously so are a powerful witness in a way that civic halls, for example, never can be.

The beauty of these strategies as employed in the past was their insistence on expansion into new territories, their commitment to specific places and their acknowledgement of the spiritual conflict. And they worked.

Given this success, it is curious then that in much of the contemporary church this notion of ‘church and place’ has been lost, while in some quarters there even seems to be an aversion to it.

It can happen this way. First the traditional church is criticized for being too building-centric. People say things like: ‘The Church is not the building, it is the people’. This, of course, is valid, for traditional church can be too fixated with buildings. However, this genuine concern can easily drift into such sayings as: ‘It doesn’t matter where you worship, it is the people who are important’. And before you know where you are, legitimate concerns about an overemphasis on buildings have been transformed into a denial of the geographical mission of the church and its connection with place, a connection that is very much facilitated by buildings. Or people can say things like: ‘The Church needs to be a Church without walls’. This again is valid because the church does need to be open to the local community. But this too can drift into a call for the church to be ‘out in the community’ or to become ‘a community church’. Well, what was it before then? Of course the church needs to be in the community, but this kind of approach can also lead to a shying away from owning buildings. Typically, these may be deemed unfashionable or a waste of resources. So churches start renting spaces in civic and commercial properties. Nothing wrong with this either, except that without having a permanent place in which to establish themselves churches become vulnerable to locational moves as either rents go up or premises cease to be available. And this again weakens the connection with territory. All very subtle, but a very real danger.

Please note: buildings are only being advocated here insofar as they are an excellent means for planting and establishing churches permanently and influentially in a territory – any other method that achieves the same is also to be applauded. The crucial thing is that the Church needs to regain once more its sense of responsibility to place.

For as we have seen, the Great Commission, scripture, God’s wider plan, and even the strategies of Satan, all point to the fact that God’s will for his church is that it should be established as his presence in every territory on earth so as to push back the idolatrous strongholds in those territories, and anything that undermines that goal undermines the Great Commission itself.

In Hong Kong this whole issue of territorial commitment is a vital one. Most churches in the New Territories, for example, do not own their worship place and a change of location is common. Loyalty to place can be thin. Worse, there seems to be a lack of awareness of anything being wrong in this. As long as souls are saved, churches grow, and people taught ‘the Christian life’, then everything is ok. No, it is not ok. One of the problems at present is a general dumbing down of Christianity towards an overemphasis on personal development to the detriment of a more rounded theology and practice – Christian book shops, for instance, being full of self-help books, trinkets and chintz. This leads to an imbalance in which the wider concepts around salvation history and the purposes of the Church are missed or not sufficiently understood. Which probably explains why idolatry is rampant throughout the region, despite there being, in actual fact, numerous congregations.

As well as regaining the concept of territory and place, therefore, the Church also needs to learn how better to spiritually fight. Now many Christians do appreciate this point, but possibly do so more from the perspective of personal morality. But the Great Commission in its call to save is also a call to war against the evil powers over the earth, and while preaching the gospel, the moral life and resisting temptations are inseparable from this goal, so too is more direct action against these powers.

There is something very muscular in the image of earlier Christians building a church in every village or over the ruins of pagan temples that seems to be somewhat lacking today, just as it also rare to see modern Christians smashing up idols or even praying directly against other religions and pagan sites. This latter does happen through some sections of the Church, but not nearly enough overall. But it is the God-given responsibility of every church to take spiritual authority over its own territory and over the idolatry within it and to work with neighbouring churches to do the same collectively over larger areas.

On the one hand, this happens naturally through the church just being there (as long as it goes there and remains there), in that the Church as God’s presence in a given area is itself a challenge to the evil powers over that area. On the other hand, however, the Church has been given the authority to deal with these powers in the name of Jesus and therefore has the further obligation to conduct overt operations against them.

The following two examples from Hong Kong illustrate the degree of authority that believers and the Church have been given in this regard:

The first is a personal experience. Near where I live in Tai Po there is a road bridge that goes over the Lam Tsuen River. After I moved to the area, I was appalled to discover that under this bridge there was a strange and very large collection of bits of furniture and shelves full of idols. There were probably over a hundred of them. These had been gradually collected by some of the old folk from the local estate that congregate there, and over the years this had developed into an enormous shrine to countless deities.

When I saw this I was angry, for this was in my locality, and I began to pray against this idolatry. I believe too that a local church must have been doing the same, for I saw them once delivering tracts along this stretch of the river. On one occasion in 2005, I stood under the bridge when none of the old people were present, and prayed out aloud in Jesus name that God would remove these idols.

He did. About three weeks later, as I was walking past early one evening, I saw that the site had been completely cleared and that just behind it was a council rubbish truck. And next to this truck were two large piles of debris, one of the matchwood remains of the furniture that held the idols, the other of the shattered fragments of the idols themselves. In fact, as I stopped and stared in wonderment at this scene, I saw a workman hammering the last idol into smithereens. Selah.

But that was not all. Some months later, again as I was walking past, I saw three hard looking men walk into this area each carrying a large box on their shoulders. As bold as brass they then proceeded to construct a new shrine before my eyes near the same place as the old. Bad timing. I began praying that the area would once more be free of idolatry, and sure enough within a few weeks the site was cleared again (by whom this time I do not know) and has remained clear ever since. Praise God!

The second example concerns the events of the handover in 1997. This was a highly charged time and a number of religious meetings were held, including a 24-hour Christian prayer meeting from 6pm on June 30th until 6pm on July 1st, and a Buddhist meeting the same day ‘to bless Hong Kong’ involving 40,000 Buddhists, including 1,000 monks. In addition, Buddhist monks prayed for Hong Kong for 30 hours into the early hours of the morning of July 2nd.

The results were dramatic. At around 5am that morning and following heavy rainfall, a landslide slammed into the temple of 10,000 Buddha’s in Sha Tin, destroying the steps, a house and two of the shrines. A caretaker who lived on site was unfortunately buried and killed. This temple, despite its name, actually contains over 13,000 Buddhist statues, the largest number of any of Hong Kong’s temples, and many were broken into pieces. Others were knocked over, including that of Kwan Yin, the ‘Goddess of Mercy. Further landslides ruined the foundations and the whole area became unusable, the government being forced to close off the area. Only recently has the temple been restored. Ming Pao, a Chinese newspaper, printed photographs of the landslide under the headline ‘He can’t even help himself!’

Indeed, ‘he’ can’t. If this degree of authority is exercised in conjunction with a strategy for mission that gives due honour to territory and place, and then extended throughout the world, then the Church will be an unstoppable force against whom the devil is ultimately powerless and by whom will face ultimate ruin, no matter what kind of idolatrous device or strategy he employs. Even the big Buddha’s will be as nothing and will fall to the earth as dust.

What is clear is that the Church will need to engage more and more in this kind of mission and spiritual warfare. Only if it does so will idolatry be defeated and the Great Commission fulfilled. The battle for land upon which the future of everything depends is gaining apace. In all probability we are approaching the era when this battle will reach its climax. In Jesus his Church has the assurance that this battle will end in victory, but in his Church Jesus in turn expects his people to lay such claim to the territories of the world for which he died that his victory may be brought to completion.

Next issue: The Idolatry of Buddhism

There are sustained references in this issue to the idolatry of Buddhism, and this article will be a response to possible objections raised by the use of that term. It is, for example, a common assertion among Buddhists that the use of images and statues of Buddha in Buddhism does not constitute idolatry, a position that will be shown to be untenable.

© David John Eason 2006

1. Across the Bows
2. A Pressing Theme
2.1. Church Move
2.2. Vacant Church
2.3. The Rise of Buddhism
2.4. A Confirming Word
3. Reports:
3.1. Wong Tai Sin Protest
3.2. Trip to the UK
3.3. Mast Progress
4. Endnote

Across the Bows

The last words spoken by Jesus in person to his disciples, as recorded in the synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts, are of immense and cosmic significance:

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:16-20

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Mark 16:15-16

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

Acts 1:8-9

These texts constitute the giving of the Great Commission by Jesus to his disciples. By extension, this is a commission that applies to the entire Church for all time until the end of the age when Jesus returns. The command is to ‘go and make disciples’, ‘preach the good news’ and that ‘you will be my witnesses’, collectively a command to make known the salvation that has been made possible through the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross and to win souls for Christ and eternal glory. But there is a further element here, the exactitude and intensity of which can sometimes be overlooked, and that is the element of spiritual geography. It is an interesting fact that the Great Commission was only ever given in connection with a very specific regard to territory. The disciples were being sent to all nations’ and ‘all creation’ in a missionary endeavour that would expand from ‘Jerusalem’ to ‘the ends of the earth’, notions that by their very nature embrace the concept of territory and place, indeed the concept of every place on earth. This emphasis on territory and place has several aspects: Firstly and obviously, places are where the people are. On a simple level then, the disciples are to go to every nation and continent in order that the Church may reach out to all of humanity. Secondly, however, and taking this a stage further, the Great Commission understands that people and communities invariably have an association with a particular location and do not exist in a geographical vacumn. To establish Church in a community is also to establish Church in the particular place or territory in which that community is situated, and in terms of mission the two cannot be viewed apart. It’s God’s intention for the Church that it seeks to be established in every community and in every place where there is a community across the entire earth. Thirdly, however, there would appear to be an element to the Great Commission that views the establishment of the Church in territories and place as a missionary goal in itself beyond just the fact that people live there. God’s plan as revealed throughout scripture is among other things one of unmistakable territorial warfare that has as its goal the deliverance of all the earth from the domination of the devil and his demons. This is nothing less than the climax of all history. The victory of Jesus on the Cross was and is a cosmic victory over every evil power in heaven and on earth in which the ground for their influence over the earth has been utterly broken. The role given to the Church, therefore, is to go and proclaim this victory and be God’s instrument towards the eventual reclamation of all of creation for the Kingdom of God. Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. In a very real sense this is a geographical battle as much as it is one for the souls of men in which territory plays a crucial if mysterious role. Only with the prosecution of the Great Commission in each of its major aspects, i.e. embracing both people and place, will God’s plan be fulfilled.

A Pressing Theme

The concept of ‘place’ forms one of the dominant themes in the second issue of our newsletter and journal, not only from the perspective of mission, but also from the perspective of the idolatry of Buddhism that in Asia is fast becoming endemic. Several events in recent months have conspired to press this whole issue of Church, idolatry and place heavily upon me, their confluence being such that through them I am compelled to see the hand of God and his revelation guiding ‘Mast’ to explore these matters.

Church Move

In the first place, my church in Hong Kong is currently undergoing a painful process of moving. Formed some nine years ago, the original vision was to found a church of our denomination in the North District of the New Territories. Except that we are now moving out of the North District into the West District to a secondary school the denomination has recently opened in Yuen Long. While retaining a fellowship group in Sheung Shui where we have been for those nine years, this move has nevertheless underscored the whole question as to what the relationship should be between church and location. The prevailing view in our church appears to be that it doesn’t matter where you worship; after all it’s the people and not the place that’s important. Is it?

This is not the first time our church has had to face this issue. Three years ago, because of growing numbers, we moved within Sheung Shui itself from an elderly centre on an estate – a notoriously difficult estate with many suicides – to the Landmark North commercial building in the town centre. At the time I felt uneasy with this move, not because I was in any way against the move to Landmark North, but I was unhappy with the church leaving the estate for two reasons: (1) Our congregation included a body of elderly and the move for them would be difficult, and (2) I saw our church as God’s presence on the estate and a living witness to Jesus – very visible on the central road opposite the main shopping area – and I did not think it right this should be abandoned.

And so I began a campaign to convince the church to convert the church move into a church planting exercise. Amid protests that the resources and manpower were not available for this, the leadership (to their credit), while rejecting the idea of a church plant, nevertheless were eventually prepared to compromise that our site on the estate could be retained on the basis of our becoming one church two worships.

In the event this new arrangement was not very successful and perhaps those who offered protest were right to have done so, to a degree. The will to develop the worship place on the estate was just not there, and because of the initial preponderance of elderly (the others having moved to Landmark North) the congregation was unable to translate out of what became just an elderly fellowship group. Perhaps if a genuine church planting vision had taken hold things might have been different, but part of the problem I feel was a theology of church that did not give due emphasis on the association between church and place, an association that church planting recognizes and indeed is founded upon. But we were not yet ready for this.

Nevertheless, there is a happy ending to this particular story. When during discussions on our current move it became clear that the one church two worships arrangement would not be continued, I pleaded that if we were unable to develop a viable congregation on the estate, then rather than close it down we should give it away to another church who was able. This was accepted. A suitable church was found and they have now put eight to nine of their people there, showing a clear commitment to both the remaining elderly and to growing a full church on the estate. Praise the Lord! I take some satisfaction from all of this and see here some vindication for my original concern. Moreover, not many people can fairly claim to have been responsible for the planting of a church without anybody in that church actually knowing anything about it!

Our current move is the result of a combination of crippling rent rises in Landmark North and the availability of the school virtually free to us in Yuen Long. This not only illustrates the danger of churches renting commercial premises, quite a common scenario in the New Territories, but also highlights the sense of drift that can affect a church without a theology of church and place. Hitherto, it seems we have been more guided by the availability of premises than by any definite sense of mission to a particular location, despite any previous assertions to the contrary. In this, however, there might be a further happy ending in that there are signs this attitude could be about to change. Yuen Long is not Sheung Shui. The school is situated in an area recently developed among some ancient villages, and as far as church goes is virgin turf – there has never been a church in this particular district. Moreover, the spiritual environment is strong and potentially very hostile. Whilst challenging, this new situation is forcing us to approach the question once again as to how we intend to see ourselves in relation to our surroundings, for it is clear to me that we will not survive unless we begin to take spiritual authority over the area, but we cannot do that unless we begin to view ourselves as the local church in the full sense of what that should mean. Thankfully, this awareness is already beginning to grow and members of the congregation are already speaking of our church as a Yuen Long church. Furthermore, and with some poetic irony given our history (but such is the way and mercy of God), because the school is likely now to be our home for the foreseeable future, this permanence in such a location is the very means by which God is teaching us a more rounded obedience to the Great Commission in respect to the commitment it commands not just to people, but also to place.

Vacant Church

While all this was going on, and when I was in England recently, I could not help but notice the appalling damage being done to the public image of God in the country by the growing number of redundant churches that now litter the landscape, particularly it would seem in Norwich and London where I spent most of my time. Given the decline of the established church, some redundancy is inevitable, but this appears to be compounded by a contemporary aversion within the rest of the church to invest in buildings. The tragedy is that if those churches that are in a state of growth could be allowed or organized more effectively to take over the redundant structures of those who are not, then this situation could be minimized or even averted. But I doubt if there is the unity or will for a major exchange of this sort precisely because within contemporary mission theology and the sort of churches that are growing, permanent and beautiful buildings are undervalued as a viable mission strategy. And so across the country old churches are being converted into homes, art galleries and warehouses, but every time I see this happen something in me cries out that this should not be so. This is a terrible witness that our generation will have to answer for. When a church that once housed the presence of the living God in the living stones of his people is turned over to such a purpose, then Jesus is dishonoured in that neighbourhood from that point forward. For regardless of any sound arguments for their closure or conversion, traditional church buildings are a powerful testimony and in the public eye forever associated with his name, and Christians if nothing else should be zealous for his name. Moreover, unless the vacant building is replaced by another Christian fellowship nearby, then the closure of that Church means the withdrawal of God’s presence and the spiritual authority that goes with it from that particular and immediate vicinity, and to yield ground like this is to deny the territorial imperative of the Great Commission.

The Rise of Buddhism

In a somewhat different direction, I have recently become very aware of the contemporary proliferation in Asia of enormous Buddhist statues, particularly in China, India and Japan. The building of big Buddha’s, of course, is nothing new. Only in March 2001, and neatly anticipating the destruction of the twin towers in New York by just a few months, the world was appalled by the destruction by the Taleban of two colossal ancient Buddha’s in Afghanistan. At 37 and 55 metres tall, and together with the 71 metre Leshan Buddha in China, these were for centuries the largest Buddha’s in existence. But not any longer. For example, in 1995 a 110 metre tall Amida Buddha was built at Ushiku in Japan, while construction of a 500 foot Maitreya Buddha is soon to begin in Northern India. Many others have been built or are planned. Of course Hong Kong already has its ‘giant Buddha’ completed in 1993 on Lantau Island. Hailed at the time as the world’s tallest bronze Buddha, such is the current trend that at a mere 34 metres this by comparison is now only a tiddler and has been demoted to the world’s tallest seated bronze Buddha. The life of record-breaking idol these days seems fleeting at best.

What first drew me to begin to investigate this phenomenon, however, was an illustrated report in the South China Morning Post of 19 June 2006 of the opening of the world’s largest gold-plated Buddha, standing 58 metres tall and weighing 600 tonnes, on top of Mount Emei in Sichuan province, China. Not the largest statue by any means, but to me, with the figure of the Buddha seated upon three elephants and itself topped first by a layer of three heads, then four and finally two, all facing opposing directions, quite obscene in its glistening opulence – particularly as the opening was attended by a large crowd of admirers. When I saw the photograph something in me was sickened, and I knew the leading of the Holy Spirit. Something too in its design alerted me to the possibility that the building of this statue and all the others was no accident in the present time, and that despite the likely impulse of prestige, status and tourism being significant factors behind their inception, there was something here that was also suggestive of a strategy of spiritual and territorial dominance.

Thankfully, the idols do not appear to be having it all their own way. Another report that God drew my attention to recently concerned the embarrassing glitches that have delayed the opening of the much-heralded Ngong Ping 360 cable car attraction being developed to take thousands of visitors daily from Tung Chung near Hong Kong’s airport to the Lantau Buddha. It turns out that this development process, like the building of the actual Buddha, has been plagued by a veritable catalogue of mishaps and delays that could not lead anyone to suppose that this project is in any sense ‘blessed’. Palpably it is not. Which should not surprise any Christian, for the building of the supporting infrastructure is as much a spiritual act as the building of the statue itself, whether those responsible are aware of this or not, the aim of which is to secure the territory of Hong Kong for Buddhism, just as the Church, whether they realize it or not, are God’s instrument for claiming the territory of Hong Kong for the Kingdom of God. And so it is small wonder that things are not going so smoothly, for this is a local manifestation and evidence of the wider spiritual war being conducted behind and through the physical of all things and to which most people seem blissfully unaware.

Confirming Word

This focus on ‘place’, Ngong Ping 360, as well as the overall agenda for ‘Mast’, was affirmed by a sequence of events that occurred while I was on holiday in Yunan province in July. It’s not always an easy matter to discern and follow God’s guidance and many are the times I yearn for his assurance that I am on the right path. In Yunan God graciously supplied it.

Now my wife booked this holiday purely on the basis that she had heard Yunan was a beautiful part of China, and chose it without conferring with me (though I was very pleased with her choice) and without taking too much notice of the exact itinerary. As with all holidays originating in Hong Kong, the itinerary was a packed one, involving stays at three different hotels over five days in Kunming, Dali and Lijiang, with visits to scenic features near each of these cities – a cave system near Kunming, the Cangshan Mountains behind Dali and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain near Lijiang. This sounded great, as indeed it turned out to be. The only difficulty for me was that each of the scenic visits involved a ride on a cable car.

My problem is that I suffer from a mild form of vertigo, not in any crippling sense, but I did once experience some deep anxiety when in an open topped cable car in Wales. However, I had forgotten about that, just as I only became aware that there were going to be cable car rides as I studied the itinerary for the first time on the coach going to the first one. This turned out to be less of a cable car and more like a glorified chair lift – a bench seat for two people with a single bar across for safety – but this didn’t bother me because when I looked at the route of the cableway above, it seemed to just hug the hillside all the way to the top. Easy peasy. And so I climbed aboard with my daughter without really thinking too much about it. But once over the hill, and hidden from view below, the route suddenly lurched across a series of wide and very deep valleys, the ground falling away with alarming rapidity, until in an instant we were suspended in complete stillness and quiet, hardly moving at all or so it seemed, some hundreds of feet above the trees. I was hit with a panic rush. For my daughter’s sake, who by her smiles and swinging legs (please stop that) was obviously enjoying herself, I forced myself to stay calm by pointing out the different coloured tree tops and the flocks of birds flying below us, willing the journey to end. She may have wondered why I held her so tightly, but it was all too easy to imagine her sliding out from under the bar. It all ended well, of course, for there was no real danger, but the relief to be back on terra firma was religious.

This, however, left the problem of the other two rides. On the one hand I was loathe to miss out on what were clearly the highlights of the holiday by giving in to my now excited fears, but on the other … And so I struggled before each of them as to whether I would go or not, a process not helped by the revelation that the other cable cars were each of the same flimsy type and our guide’s boast that the first of them lasted a full 45 minutes each way! I had visions of precipices and jagged ridges passing beneath my feet.

In the event I went on both, but not without some timely aid and encouragement. In each case I had made up my mind beforehand not to go, but in each case I received help that changed my mind. On the first occasion it was the support of my wife who insisted to sit with me that did the trick, while on the second I was invited in the last instant by a young man from England in our tour group to sit with him and have “a theological conversation”. No one has ever asked me for a theological conversation before, and so this was an invitation I could not refuse, for the man in question was not a believer but was a searcher after truth. I had already shared something about ‘Mast’ and my thinking with him previously over lunch, and so he made the offer both to encourage me in my fear, but also so that we could continue our talk. So there I was, going up Snow Mountain on a rickety chair lift suspended from a series of masts, sharing with a keenly interested unbeliever about my ‘Mountain and Sea’ ministry and the theological truths of God, the world, idolatry and salvation that it seeks to make known. It was glorious, and I was so engaged that I forgot all about the fear and felt no anxiety whatsoever.

But more was to come. After the holiday, my wife and I met up with a missionary friend of ours who was in Hong Kong. During a time of prayer an acquaintance of this friend, whom neither of us had personally met before, turned to me and said she had a word for me from the Lord, and began to prophesy:

The Lord gave me a vision concerning you David. I saw you walking towards a beautiful light, and I believe the Lord is saying to you that he wants you to continue to follow his leading and direction. You are not to turn to the right or to the left, but to continue in the way he has prepared for you. When you need courage he will give you courage and when you need boldness he will give you boldness.

I believe this word was first and foremost a confirmation of my overall direction with ‘Mast Ministries’ and the agenda that I outlined in the last newsletter. Moreover, as I meditate upon it, what strikes me is the way in which the saga with the cable cars appears to have been a real life restatement and prophetic illustration of the same message. Furthermore, I saw in this whole episode confirmation and direction as to the content of this particular issue of the newsletter and journal, not just with the cable car connection, which bodes ill for Hong Kong, but also in the fact that I discovered Dali and Lijiang, despite the years of communist atheism, to be geographical pivots of Buddhist and pantheist idolatry. In Dali this centred upon three ancient pagodas that from the cable car I could see dominated the landscape, while around Lijiang, religious influence emanated from certain sites around Jade Green Dragon Snow Mountain. In Yunan it came home to me more forcibly than ever that if ‘place’ was such a concern to the devil, it most certainly should be a concern for the Church. Praise God who alone can arrange for all things to come together in this way! I trust you may find the various thoughts and articles in these issues both helpful and illuminating.

Reports

Wong Tai Sin Temple Protest 8 January 2006

On Sunday 8 January this year, a Grand Blessing Ceremony was held at Wong Tai Sin Temple to mark the temple’s 85th anniversary during which the Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho, a supposed Christian, took part and prayed to the idol for strength and harmony for the people of Hong Kong. Nothing wrong in what he was asking, just who he was praying to. In so doing Mr. Ho, because of his position, was mocking God and elevating the occasion from being just a pagan religious celebration to one involving Hong Kong on an official and ‘national’ level. For this reason I took issue with the event and staged a placard protest outside the temple while it was taking place.

I only learned what exactly was going to take place on the morning of the ceremony itself, and so this protest was very much a spur of the moment decision made just before our Sunday worship was due to begin. Given the very short notice, I was greatly encouraged by a fellow brother from the church who immediately volunteered, very courageously I thought, to accompany me.

We traveled to the temple by train, after first collecting the placards that had already been prepared for other protests, and arrived at around midday just as the main part of ceremony was ending. After choosing a spot in the public square outside the temple and feeling very self-conscious, we took out our placards from their bin-liner coverings and started our protest.

Now my chosen method in conducting such protests is to just stand silently and let the placards deliver their message. If people want to talk with me then I will talk to them, but otherwise I will just stand there, hold my placards and pray. This method is designed deliberately to be as non-confrontational as possible except as God may bring conviction and challenge by his word. Which actually in such circumstances is about as confrontational as it is possible to be, as we were soon to find out.

We soon attracted the attentions of the police, the square was full of them, and before long were being questioned by an English inspector who seemed genuinely curious as to the point of our protest. After informing him what we were doing he seemed satisfied that we weren’t going to be any trouble and then left us to it. The only slightly worrying aspect to this was that he wanted to see our identity cards, which I guess is only routine, and that while he was talking to us I noticed that we were being photographed by several people and that a small crowd had gathered to watch the fun. Perhaps they thought we were going to be arrested. We weren’t doing anything illegal, however, and our protest was allowed to continue. I was particularly gratified to observe that the people around us were reading the placards very diligently, which were in both English and Chinese.

The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. – Psalm 16:4

Some scoffed, some laughed, but others seemed more thoughtful, while a few others still even came to congratulate us quietly on what were doing.

The police may have been satisfied with us, and the people around us amused or interested, but the property company that manages the temple and public square were not quite so accommodating. In fact, some of their operatives asked us to move soon after the police had finished talking to us, not so much apparently for what we were doing, but more because we didn’t have their permission to do it. And the property company evidently has the authority to decide what is or isn’t allowable in those areas under their jurisdiction, even in a public space (though perhaps owned by the temple?) outside of the main temple gates. I was in a mind to debate the various legal points this raised, but the number of company staff pressing the point gradually grew until we had little choice but to comply. They were nice about it, but insistent. They were also very helpful in explaining to us that if we were to stand on the pavement along the main road right next to the temple enclosure, then they couldn’t do anything about that because their line of authority ended where the pavement in question began.

Obediently we followed their hint and continued the protest. In our new position we were evidently hitting the right spot and I began to notice that reactions to the placards were much more extreme. Obscenities and mockery flowed freely and several people manifested demonic influences before our eyes. On a more positive note, many hundreds of people at this point must have passed by who read the messages. I could see many of them, for example, forming the words with their lips as they did so or attempting to read the English ones out loud. All very satisfying and worthwhile.

But it was not to last. When I saw a well-dressed temple cleric who was entering the temple turn back to look at us with a long hard stare, I knew that trouble could not be far away. I told my friend to prepare himself. Sure enough, a few minutes later the temple cleric reemerged from the temple with some six or seven of his friends, who then proceeded to surround us and harangue us in a loud and very threatening manner.

My friend started to look a little worried. For a westerner to engage in this kind of protest is one thing, but for a native Chinese it is another matter altogether. To the temple cleric and his friends, my friend was a traitor to his Chinese culture, and because of this he became a natural focus for their attention. In full understanding of the culture and language, he received loud and clear every nuance of their verbal aggression against us. He had every right to feel nervous. I on the other hand was somewhat shielded by the language barrier. Nevertheless, it was clear what was going on and I felt it absolutely right that we hold our ground against what I saw as demonic resistance to be overcome and against their unrighteous demand that we leave immediately. What could they do there in front of the police? Beat us up? I didn’t think so. Neither did they have any real ground on which to insist we discontinue what was, until their intervention, a peaceful and legal protest. Now the bible is very clear that if you resist the devil he will flee from you, and by this stage I was pumped up and ready for a spot of resisting, and no pagan cleric was going to push me around or put a stop to what I saw as God’s work.

So for a while this haranguing continued, we both surrounded by this group of angry shouting men, my friend looking increasingly alarmed, me and the cleric head to head, nose to nose, arguing our respective cases, with my friend translating at the same time as best he could under what were for him very trying circumstances.

The cleric’s central point hinged upon his disagreeing with me, a westerner, seeking to impose my religion and culture against his religion and culture in his country. Leaving aside the fact that idolatry is leading him and his friends and Hong Kong to utter and eternal ruin – in actual fact my chief concern and motivation – I tried to explain that Christianity was not a ‘western’ construct at all, that Hong Kong was also my country, and that Mr. Ho by his official presence as a representative of the government had made this ceremony everybody’s business, including mine. He remained unconvinced.

The cleric then followed this line of attack with another that I have to admit caught me off guard, and that was his counter that we wouldn’t like it if he and his people staged a protest outside of our churches against our religion in the same manner as we were protesting outside of his temple against his. And I have to confess this is true; we would not. And reduced to this personal level it could justifiably be argued that we were being unchristian and unreasonable in pursuing a course of action that we in return would not like to receive ourselves.

To this I had and still have no answer to offer, except that in this sense all mission that seeks to make God known and all attempts to highlight the dangers of worshipping idols could be deemed unreasonable in this manner, but at the end of the day a Christian must obey the higher calling of God’s Great Commission to go and do these very things. I felt genuinely sorry for having offended this cleric’s religious sensibilities, after all his religion is his choice, but the consequences of idolatry, and in particular national idolatry, are severe, and not to have made the attempt to warn him and others about it would have been the greater evil by far.

Having made our protest and seeing my friend begin to shake a little in the face of this uncomfortable though still only a verbal assault, I finally acceded to his increasingly urgent suggestion that we had done enough and that it was time to move on. This was no doubt wise, for although personally I felt no anxiety, I gather things could easily have become more ugly. We therefore disengaged and left the area of confrontation and proceeded to finish our witness by conducting a prayer walk around the entire temple site, carrying our placards aloft for one last time as we again walked along the main road, past the same area, and back to the station. As we did so we passed large numbers of people, many carrying offerings, assembling ready to enter the temple when it was reopened again after the whole event had finished – to attend after such an important occasion is deemed especially auspicious. Hundreds more people read the placards as a result and once again they gave their various responses. But however they may have felt about us or the messages at the time, my prayer is that each person who read them on this day would in due course be challenged and convicted by the truth of God’s word they conveyed. Upon such conviction does their own and Hong Kong’s future depend.

Trip to the UK April-June 2006

This was a very successful and fruitful trip during which I was able to gather much data for my PhD thesis. The two months were spent as follows:
• 5 weeks researching local newspapers at the Newspaper Library Colindale, London. Pretty dull, and recently made duller by the closure of the model shop opposite, but nevertheless one of the best ways to research local church history
• 2 weeks in Norwich looking at local church records at the Norfolk Records Office and the newly opened Heritage Centre
• 2 weeks in Stirling, Scotland, catching up with my supervisor and doing some much needed thinking and writing.
• Visiting secondhand bookshops at every opportunity
• Distributing the first issues of The Mast and Mast Ministries newsletter (see below).
• Touching base with Christ Church in Little Heath, my home church in the UK, and various other churches with whom I have links.
• Spending time with friends and family
I hope to be able to return to England later this year or early next year, depending on my commitments here in Hong Kong.

Mast Progress

• Altogether, around 150 copies of the first issue of the newsletter and journal were distributed in the UK and Hong Kong. This was a trial distribution to ‘test the water’, and as such copies tended only to be given to people that I or Celeste knew personally, those who I met on my various travels, and to churches with whom I have some links or are local to my situation. The readership thus far is a very select band, but nevertheless includes many clergy and ministers, several notable academics and a Bishop.
• Concerning the responses that I was seeking, these have so far been disappointing. On the negative side, only one person has indicated that they do not want to receive any further issues of ‘Mast’, but that was only because the person was moving away from Hong Kong (although in actual fact ‘Mast’ is relevant wherever you are). On the other hand, I did not receive as much feedback generally as I would have liked. One of the reasons behind Mast is to stimulate debate on some of the issues involved, but so far very little of that has been generated. But this is early days. On the plus side, several people have indicated to me their approval of the first issue and what I am trying to do, and for their encouragement I am very grateful.
• With regard to financial support, this too has been disappointing. I was able to secure some transcription and teaching work during the summer, but in terms of direct support so far this has amounted to, well naught. But I am not disheartened. I believe that the Lord is calling me to this ministry full-time and nothing in my past experience suggests anything other than he will supply all of my needs.
• A new development is that I can now see the requirement for a permanent office for ‘Mast’. Until now, I have either worked from home or used a college library. These situations are not ideal, for my work is best conducted with sufficient of my accumulated resources around me. Consequently I have a need for a workspace in Hong Kong of around 150 square feet or more. If anybody knows of anything they feel might be suitable, please could you let me know.

Endnote

The astute reader will have noticed that this issue covers three, and not two months. To produce the newsletter and journal involves a lot of time and research, and perhaps the initial goal of doing this bi-monthly was a little ambitious given my other research requirements. So I have decided to make these quarterly publications from this issue onwards.

© David John Eason 2006

1. From the Masthead
2. God’s Presence, Israel, and Salvation History
3. ‘All Men are Like Grass’

From the Masthead

Welcome to the first issue of The Mast, the journal of ‘Mast Ministries’.

In this issue we begin with what will become our regular column of comment, news and observations around some of the issues concerning ‘Mast Ministries’. This is followed by an in-depth theological article on the role of God’s presence in Salvation History and how in particular this reveals some remarkable continuity between Israel, the ministry of Jesus and the Church. This is the first of several articles that will appear over the coming year dealing with key events and some of the larger trajectories that may be discerned in scripture and history, and which collectively will contribute to a deeper understanding of God’s wider plan. A more meditative piece concludes the proceedings.

The origins and rationale behind ‘Mast Ministries’ (‘Mast’ for short) and this journal are adequately explained in the accompanying newsletter and do not need to be fully rehearsed here, except to reiterate the fundamental point that ‘Mast’ aims to be biblical, theological and prophetic in its perspective in order to (1) further and deepen understanding of God and his purposes as well as (2) draw attention to the gross deceptions in the world that are Satan’s ploy to topple them.

We are living in the midst of a cosmic conflict of enormous proportions against which the likes of the Lord of the Rings pales into the shadows. Moreover, things are about to get much worse. The enemy’s legions are on the march and are on the wing, and we need to beware and be warned and be careful. The Lord has shown me something of this horde, and it is immense, but nevertheless I trust in the certainty and the ability of the Lord Almighty and his army to deal with it. This conflict is made all the more difficult by the fact that everything around us looks pretty much normal. But normal it is not. In fact the world has never been normal in the way we sometimes wish it to be. It is a very spiritual place, and in order to understand it we need to adopt a spiritual approach that goes beyond, for example, just the currently accepted and dominant scientific worldview.

I am currently working on a thesis about National Days of Prayer in Great Britain during the First and Second World Wars. This is a historical topic and I am expected to follow the current disciplines in writing history when producing it, which is fair enough given the academic nature of the task. But nevertheless, these same disciplines forbid any serious historian from adopting a more spiritual approach to their craft. Under contemporary convention, for instance, it just cannot be done to write about the influence and role of God in history. One can write about people who believe in God and about the influence of this belief upon their actions, but not about the objective reality itself.

Now for a topic like mine this to me seems ludicrous. Most Christians understand and know from first hand experience that God answers prayer, the corollary of which is that God is intimately involved in the world and its history. Therefore the relationship between National Days of Prayer and the circumstances of Great Britain must be a tangible one and must involve God, but the contemporary discipline of history does not allow me with any credibility to actually say so or to present historical evidence supporting this understanding and view – it is argued that this is not proper history, it cannot be based on evidence, and in any case, with the virtual extinction of the biblical worldview the language and thought forms necessary to enable the reception of such an approach are no longer common currency with the reading public. Consequently, such history would be rejected and never read.

Thus the most profound influence upon history is denied and we are left with either mere physical causality or more secular worldviews (but in actual fact no less spiritual for that) to dictate our view of it. The irony is that if academia of old, and even the Church, had not so willingly and prematurely discarded the biblical worldview in the first place, then perhaps we would not be in such a mess in the present. But as it stands Christians have a job to do to restore this imbalance, and ‘Mast’, amongst the other things, aims to be at the forefront of this task, just as it aims to explore and expose the spiritual realities behind the physical of the historical process and what is happening today.

This however cannot be done in an afternoon. To construct a worldview and change a mindset requires a multi-faceted and long-term approach. Consequently, the idea with The Mast is that through the various articles of different types and over an extended time, the reader will gradually be equipped to see for himself a different way of understanding things, a prophetic way, a way that gives due acknowledgment to God.

For this task, however, I confess my sense of inadequacy as a writer and my feeling that I have only just begun my own journey of discovery. Nevertheless, I have good reasons to believe that the Lord has led me into some understanding and insight into these things and that he wants me to begin to share these insights with others and with the Church. And if through ‘Mast’ the sharing of my observations and thinking can help open up to a greater degree the spiritual dimensions of this world and its history to a few, or perhaps to many, and if this encourages deeper acceptance of and intimacy with the biblical truths concerning God and the salvation wrought through his Son, Jesus Christ, then I will consider this ministry to be worthwhile and to be doing its job.

If you like what you begin to see in this issue and would like to receive The Mast regularly, please do not forget to fill in the form in the accompanying newsletter so you can be sure of receiving future copies.

‘Mast’ is very much work in progress both in the evolution of its identity and in the ideas and views it wishes to promote. As in all disciplines I am learning as I write, and recognize that learning is best stimulated by dialogue and discussion. I also understand that what I write may elicit some debate. In view of this, my fervent desire is that you, the reader, would wish to enter into what I hope will become a forum for the exchange of views and ideas on some of these concepts and issues. If you feel you would like to comment on any of the topics raised by ‘Mast’, or have any questions, then please feel free to submit these to me, either in the form of a memo, article, e-mail or letter to one of the addresses that can be found on the back page of the newsletter. Suitable material will be considered for publication, and I hope that a ‘Letters to the Editor’ column will in future become a regular and important feature.

The Grand Blessing Ceremony

Those of you who know me understand that I have a bee in my bonnet about idolatry. Idolatry is the antithesis of the Kingdom of God and part of my mission is to raise awareness against it and where possible, put a stop to it.

Perhaps this is the reason why I am in Hong Kong right now, for I could make a good case for arguing that Hong Kong is one of the idolatry capitals of the world. Its campaign and proud boast to be known as ‘Asia’s World City’ should in my view read instead as ‘Asia’s worldly City’, and the irony of the dragon as the symbol of this campaign should not be lost on any Christian.

Now I am just a gweillo (westerner) so what do I know, but it seems to me that Hong Kong’s idolatry has been getting worse of late, as reflected, incidentally, by a question posed recently in the ‘Talkback’ column in the South China Morning Post: ‘Is Hong Kong becoming more superstitious [read idolatrous]?’

The answer must be a resounding yes! What else can explain the Grand Blessing Ceremony that took place at Wong Tai Sin Temple on 8 January 2006? Wong Tai Sin is one of the main Taoist temples in Hong Kong and the Grand Blessing Ceremony was held to mark its eighty-fifth anniversary. For the first time in its history the temple was closed to the public while about 4,000 devotees prayed for luck, harmony and stability for Hong Kong using rituals modeled on those conducted annually by the emperor in ancient China. This was also the first time this particular ceremony had ever been held in Hong Kong.

Worse was the fact that a Government minister, Patrick Ho, in his official capacity as Secretary for Home Affairs took part and offered his own prayer for the blessing of Hong Kong. Dr Ho says he is a Christian. If all this wasn’t bad enough, the day was a Sunday and the idol of Wong Tai Sin (so aptly named) deifies a mere human being, a one-time shepherd, so the legend goes, who miraculously found some sheep that he had originally lost.

From a Christian point of view everything about this is wrong, absolutely wrong.

Now scripture is unequivocal in its warnings concerning the worship of idols and created things over and against the worship of the creator, the Lord Almighty. The first two of the Ten Commandments, for example, on which, incidentally, all the others hang, make this perfectly clear in their prohibition against ‘other gods’ and the worship of images of any kind. Otherwise, as the prophet Isaiah preached to Israel, ‘you will be turned back in utter shame’ (Isaiah 42:17) and ‘thrust into utter darkness’ (Isaiah 8:22)

‘Utter shame and utter darkness’ – You would have thought these words would have put the fear of God into anyone, especially those that call themselves Christians. But Patrick Ho seems not to have considered them at all. Indeed, by doing what he did he mocked what is, in fact, the dominant thrust of the word of God. If God was prepared to punish Israel, his chosen people, for their idolatry, does he think God will stand by and ignore when those called by his name today do the same? No Mr. Ho he will not. And by your actions as the representative of Hong Kong’s government you have brought trouble to Hong Kong as well as to yourself!

But this is not the first time. On 2 February 2003, on another Sunday and before another image deifying a human being at the Che Kung temple, Patrick Ho in seeking prosperity for Hong Kong drew instead a fortune stick that signified ‘everything will be bad’. God made sure of it, and with SARS and the downturn in the economy it was one of the worse years in recent times. This was divine retribution that only began to abate when thousands of Christians prayed for God’s mercy on Easter Sunday in Victoria Park and on the following Sunday at Charter Garden.

But did Dr. Ho read the signs? No! And as a consequence of his latest folly Hong Kong faces further judgment. Unless Dr. Ho repents and Hong Kong with him, then this city can only be standing on the threshold of a time of trouble. Whatever the soothsayers have predicted for this year of the dog and whatever the appearance of circumstances, the testimony of scripture is certain – there is coming a time of darkness and deep gloom when the flood of God’s wrath will be unleashed and this nation will once again sink into the consequences of its idolatry.

God’s Presence, Israel, and Salvation History

Many who seek to understand God’s plan for the world are often puzzled by the role of Israel in relation to the ministry of Jesus and the Church. This is a large subject, but part of the solution is to see continuity between them in terms of the establishment of God’s presence on the earth. For certainly, the establishment of Israel was all about the reestablishment of God’s presence within a sinful and rebellious world and was thus the inauguration of his plan to save it. We may observe the following.

In initiating his great plan of redemption, God was beginning a historical process by which the whole of humanity and creation would eventually be reconciled to him. Such an undertaking, however, was not without its difficulties, for reconciliation requires a relationship and a relationship requires presence, and until a means was established to enable his presence to occur within humanity then his plan could never come to any fruition. The problem was how could an absolutely righteous and holy God presence himself amongst the degeneracy of how humanity had become without an immediate and catastrophic outbreak of his explosive wrath against it? God’s righteousness and humanity’s sinfulness are utterly incompatible.

God’s solution required, initially, an act of faith in Abraham’s obedience. From the midst of a rebellious world, and from within the nation that has come to symbolize this rebellion and which was its epicenter, God called out one man and, through his faith and obedience, separated him from it so as to begin the process by which a reconciliation and mutual dwelling with first a part and then the whole of humanity could occur. From this one separated man God would create his one holy and separated nation of Israel, and from this would come the redemption of the whole of creation.

This process was fraught with an immense danger given the essential incompatibility, and required at all points the institution of extraordinarily precise and elaborate arrangements so as to both protect the people and make a workable relationship possible. Israel may have been separated out from the world, and would become subject to the purifying effect of the law, but she still, nonetheless, was composed of sinful humanity and was not therefore immune from God’s wrath, unless these very careful arrangements were diligently followed.

The very real danger from this explosive incompatibility is strongly conveyed in some of the more seemingly irrational and excessive episodes of God’s anger, for example, with Moses on the road back to Egypt (Ex 4:24-26), and with Israel after incident with the golden calf when God threatened to destroy the whole nation (Ex 32:9-10), and in those incidents when God’s anger was only assuaged by extreme acts of violence, for example, again in the incident of the golden calf, when the Levites rampaged through the Israelite camp killing three thousand of their brothers and friends with the sword, and when Phinehas killed Zimri and his Moabite girlfriend by driving his spear through both of them (Ex 25:6-13). To the uninformed these incidents can appear as if God was subject to barely controlled mood swings or was merely blood thirsty, but examined in the light of the immensity of the gulf between the holy and the profane, and taking the human norm as profane, what is revealed are nothing but manifestations of the inevitable consequence when those safeguards, that were absolutely essential for the coming together of the impossibly repellant, were ignored or violated. This same incompatibility was why, after the incident with the golden calf and after God, through the intercession of Moses, had rescinded his threat to destroy them, he also warned Israel that though he would still give them the Promised Land, this time ‘I will send an angel before you … But I will not go with you, because you are a stiffed necked people … If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you.’ (Ex 33:2-5). Only the further intercession of Moses, the repentance of the people and the reinstitution of the covenant restored the possibility of God’s presence among the people once again.

This incompatibility is also the reason why theophany appearances were often characterized by the accompaniment of thick darkness or dark clouds shielding the divine and the profane from each other. This was for man’s protection as much for anything, for no man could see God and live. This, however, went far beyond just visual separation and was a graphic symbolization of the more profound separation caused by humanity’s depraved state. Here the visual effect perfectly captured the reality, and the unsubtle suggestion of latent wrath in the very substance of his presence in this form was both real and deliberate. In this sense the dark cloud does represent God’s anger barely contained but for the preparations made for his reception. It is interesting to relate that this ‘storm cloud’ phenomenon of the various theophanies in the bible is one that is predominantly associated only with the period leading up to and including Sinai. God’s presence during the flood, his appearance before Abraham and his presence at Sinai were all marked in this way. Subsequent theophanies, with the possible exception of God’s presence at the death of Jesus, were not characterized by storm clouds but were altogether ‘lighter’ in their visual tone; God’s visible glory on these occasions is invariably described in terms of brightness (see, for example, Eze 10:4; Lk 2:9; Rev 21:11,23). The possible reason for this is likely to be found in the fact that before the institution of the Sinai covenant and the setting in place of the tabernacle and sacrificial system, with all of their safeguards, the drawing near by God to sinful humanity dangerously exposed the explosive latency of his unassuaged and raw full holy wrath, and the potential for wrongful and disastrous contact was consequently the much greater.

The Sinai covenant was the means by which it was possible for God to dwell in relationship with and among his people, and was comprised of various components towards this particular end. What was needed first of all was faith and obedience in making the decision to enter into the covenantal agreement (just as God’s covenant with Abraham also needed obedience and faith). Such faith is diametrically opposed to the dynamic of the fall and was necessary in order to orientate Israel away from earth-bound rebellion and towards God. Crucially, only in the context of such an agreement could the following necessary requirements for God’s presence be undertaken. Second, the holiness laws subsequently protected against the holy and the profane coming into wrongful contact. Third, the very precise arrangements for the tabernacle, and later for the temple, further proscribed concentric degrees of holiness, and only within the holy of holies at the very heart of this meticulously prepared system could God dwell in the midst of his people. Fourth, the sacrificial system enabled due worship to be given and was a continual visual aid and reminder of sin and its cost. It was meant to keep Israel humble and contrite. Most importantly, however, the sacrifices enabled the purification of the entire system, the forgiveness of transgressions, and the turning away of God’s wrath. Fifth, the law codes pointed towards the purity and righteousness of God that was always his intention for his creation, and in the attempt to live in conformity to them the community of Israel would be influenced towards the goal of these ideals. The presence of a holy and righteous God demanded a holy and righteous community.

God’s presence within the community also demanded that the land of Israel be first cleansed of the corruption that had polluted it. It was this requirement, as well as the future protection of the Israelites against the leaven of Canaanite idolatry, that lay behind the command and urgent need to exterminate the indigenous peoples. Any alternative would have been a retrograde accommodation and compromise, a dynamic that by extension could only mean the end of God’s plan of world redemption given the inherent incompatibility present in such an option between the holy and the profane. The plain fact was that God would not be able to dwell in the land, or allow his ‘called out’ nation to possess it, unless it was first cleansed and made holy. Against this vital necessity it is not without significance that the bible describes the sin of these peoples as having reached full measure, meaning that their spiritual orientation had degenerated to become the antithesis of that required by God, and that there was now nothing left for them but God’s irrevocable judgment at the hands of the Israelites. The pollution of the land itself through sin, especially unrighteous bloodshed, and the need for its cleansing is emphasized in the commandment given to Israel in the book of Numbers concerning the temptation not to put those guilty of murder to death:

Moreover you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death; but he shall be put to death […] You shall not thus pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of him who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the LORD dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.

Numbers 35:31, 33-34 (RSV)

Israel was intended to be both an example and witness to the other nations of the world of God’s plan of salvation. The holy of holies was the nation’s sacred center and the actual presence of God’s glory within it was, in conjunction with the covenant relationship, the very essence and reason for Israel’s being. God’s organic presence within the life of the nation, as well as the refining action and leading of his law, was to have increasingly moulded Israel to conform to the Deity at its heart, and in so doing Israel would be a testimony to the world. But the intention went further than just this. God’s presence within Israel was also God’s presence within the world, and because of this, regardless of the eventual quality of Israel’s witness, the whole world would have been positively affected. Despite any appearance to the contrary, the power and influence of evil in the world would have been diminished to some degree. It is likely, for example, that the perceptible trend in the Ancient Near East away from base idolatry and paganism and more towards monotheism during the millennium before Christ can be attributable not only to the influence of Israel’s religion but also to the salt of God’s presence on Earth. It is possible too that the removal of God’s presence during the exile may have had something to do with the religious developments worldwide during the so-called Axial Age, when several non-Christian religions were founded. Certainly God’s presence on Earth and his influence through Israel was a preparation for the world to receive the messiah.

Could there not be in all of this a partial answer to another question often-asked as to why it was that Jesus entered into history at the time and place that he did? The answer to this must embrace many aspects, but the following should be considered among them.

Firstly, with regards to timing, it is surely significant that the ministry and death of Jesus came exactly forty years prior to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D. and what then amounted to a second exile with the expulsion of Israel back to the nations of the world out of which they had been originally chosen. Either God chose the timing of the incarnation to coincide with what he knew must surely occur, or else this judgment was itself timed to take place forty years after the messiah’s ministry as a message in its own right and marking the end of a time of grace. Either way, the timing of Jesus was in direct connection to the wider timing of the historical process.

Secondly, with regards to place, and aside from the very clear and obvious necessity of Jesus having to be Jewish so as to fulfill all that was expressed through Israel and the law, a crucial factor was still the original problem posed by the intractable incompatibility between the holy and the profane. Indeed it was to deal with this problem once for all that Jesus was sent, in order that it would be possible for God to intimately commune with those that would be his people. The obstacle of incarnating into sinful and fallen flesh was overcome through the righteous faith and obedience of Mary (as with Abraham) and the dynamic of the virgin birth that broke the hereditary lineage of the fallen nature in that Jesus had a divine father. But that still left the danger posed by the incarnation of God into a fallen and sinful world. Because of this Jesus could only be sent to Israel, for thus far Israel was the only purified and sanctified territory on Earth where the incarnation could occur without disaster and judgment befalling the world. It is significant that Jesus, by his own admission, was ‘sent only to the lost sheep of Israel’, (Matt 15:24), and rarely traveled outside of Israel’s historic boundaries.

Despite all of the distortions and faults in the Jewish practice of their religion during the time of Jesus, Israel was still the nation of the covenant, and the temple with its sacrificial system still lay at its heart. Furthermore, God’s glory was still present in the Holy of Holies. If this were not so then Jesus would not have engaged in temple services or had so much zeal for his Father’s house, a zeal that consumed him and that went far beyond just concern for what the temple symbolized. Certainly Jesus was not impressed with the building itself as can be seen in Matthew 24 when he prophesied its destruction. In other words, as imperfectly operated as they were, the institutions and practices of the old covenant were still valid right up until Jesus’ death on the cross, and through the ritual cleansing, the various sacrifices and prescriptions for the delineation of holy space, they still enabled God’s glory to dwell in the land. Moreover, in accordance with God’s original commandments, the sacrifices were still efficacious in atoning for the sins of individuals and the nation. As such the nation was still a purified one, even if its days were numbered and the system that defined it was about to be overturned and rendered obsolete.

It was only because of this purification that the incarnation was in any sense possible. This would appear to be confirmed in two phenomena that manifested during the crucifixion – the time of darkness when Jesus was dying and the tearing of the temple veil at the exact moment of Jesus’ death (Lk 23:45). Although the darkness is only thinly described in Luke, this nevertheless resonates with other images of theophany and judgment in scripture, such as during the flood and over Sinai, and suggests that God’s raw, full and holy wrath was once again being exposed. For Jesus on the Cross, there were no careful arrangements to ensure restraint, no elaborate measures to give protection, and there the utterly incompatible, the holy and the profane, were brought together with the inevitable consequence. God’s righteous wrath was unleashed upon his one and only Son because of the sins of the world he had chosen to take upon himself.

By this act, however, the original problem of incompatibility was finally solved. The sacrifice of Jesus was one that would be efficacious for all time in satisfying the righteous requirement of God’s holy wrath for sin, that of perfectly innocent and righteous blood, and thereafter, within the time space of the historical process, there would no longer be any more need for those who accepted this sacrifice and entered through faith into Christ’s death to be shielded from God’s holiness and presence. For with such God would no longer see their sin but only the purity of no sin at all. In these circumstances the old arrangements of Sinai are superfluous and have been superseded by those of a new covenant, sealed with the blood of Jesus, in which God can commune freely and openly with all believers in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Out of these living stones a new temple is being built in which the most holy place is formed collectively of human hearts. It is here within this human sanctuary made in God’s image that the Deity is now pleased to dwell and where free and open union between God and humanity has been made possible. There is no longer any need for barriers of exclusion between them and through Jesus the way to the Father’ presence is now clear. Moreover, through this same process God’s presence is now able to be established throughout the entirety of the old creation by means of the new creation of the Church arising in its midst in every nation, tribe and tongue. The tearing of the temple veil as Jesus died and his resurrection on the third day were God’s declaration to this effect.

‘All Men are Like Grass’

‘All men are like grass’, cries the Prophet, for ‘like green plants they will soon die away’ (Isaiah 40:6; Psalm 37:2). How true these words are. It is a sober judgment on our earthly permanence, and one full of irony, but even the simplest object will outlast us by centuries. I have in my possession a brick, remarkably new and modern looking, from the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre in Lefkas in Greece. Nigh on 2,000 years old, I picked this up from the bushes near the site where thousands were just laying around in the dust. How much agony and history has that brick witnessed and how many lives have been lived around it in anxious rush and urgent ambition before the area returned to the ruin and wilderness it now is? And for what? All that remains are the debris and the dust of no value whatsoever, except for historical curiosity and the evidence of the judgment of folly for those with eyes to see.

A similar sense of hopelessness is conveyed by the poignant cast of the impression left in the ash of Pompei by the body of a man killed in the final pyroclastic surge that swept over the city during the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. The body decomposed soon afterwards, but the resultant cavity has preserved his death agony into posterity. What makes this all the more tragic is the bag of gold coins that he was found to be clutching. These have been almost perfectly preserved and still appear very usable, but what good were they to him in the end?

Small wonder then that Jesus placed due emphasis on life in the hereafter rather than on earthly life. This does not mean he was uncaring about this life and man’s physical needs. Indeed, Jesus himself showed great compassion and interest and makes it abundantly clear that God is very generous and mindful of these things. But on this side of heaven the values of heaven have been overturned. Man seeks security in material certainties not realizing that it was this very orientation that was responsible for his mortality in the first place. Trust in creation as opposed to the creator; trust in oneself and in mere things rather that in the God who made them all – this is the way of death and transience. Yet the world seems transfixed by the material. Jesus on the other hand was not. He owned no home, had no possessions, was almost contemptuous of money, and cared not for the shortness of his life save that of yielding it on behalf of those who believed differently. His message was simple:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven …

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body what you will wear … the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Matthew 6:19-20, 25, 32-33; John 12:25

It just cannot be right that we last but three score and ten while a brick can last millennia. But until our focus radically shifts towards God and his Son, that is our reality. But in this reorientation comes life, eternal life, and the security and permanence that we crave. For the truth is that everything else for which man strives is but an illusion. It will either turn to dust or be cast aside as worthless when the sky recedes like a scroll and every mountain and island is removed from its place at the end of this age. Then the only thing that will matter will be our treasure in heaven and our standing before the Throne of Judgment and Mercy.

© David John Eason 2006

1. Opening Word and Prayer
2. Welcome
3. Introducing Mast Ministries
4. Prayer Diary

Opening Word and Prayer

We read in the Book of Jeremiah:

I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone.
I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking; all the hills were swaying.
I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away.
I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

Jeremiah 4:23-26

Here the prophet in his pronouncement of God’s judgment upon Jerusalem describes this judgment metaphorically in terms of a return to the state of chaos that prevailed over the earth after it was first made, but prior to the first creative act of Genesis 1:3.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Genesis 1:1-2

Israel had sinned by worshipping other gods, and the consequence was the undoing of all that God intended for his creation. And what was this intention? That all of humanity whom God has created in His image might willingly choose to trust in and worship Him alone and that everything in heaven and earth that sets itself against Him would be overcome. In these orientations and in these images may be found the secret of the world and all that has happened in the past and all that is happening now. It is to explore and expound these mysteries through Holy Scripture and the witness of history from the beginning of time until the end that ‘Mast Ministries’ has been formed, in order that as many people as possible might have informed access to the truths and dynamics behind God’s word and His purposes and be forewarned, and equipped to forewarn, of the dire consequences of ignoring them. It is fitting, therefore, that this newsletter and ministry should first be committed to prayer:

Our Father in heaven, we pray that this newsletter and ministry would bring glory and honour to your name and your name alone and that through them your truth would be revealed in accordance with your will and desire. We pray that you would guide and lead both those responsible for this ministry and the readers of this newsletter into your great and wonderful purposes for their lives and that you would protect them from error and the attacks of the evil one. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Welcome

Welcome to the first edition of the newsletter of ‘Mast Ministries’. Through this newsletter we at ‘Mast’ hope to keep you abreast not only of how the ministry itself is progressing, but also on the issues and concerns that ‘Mast’ has been founded to research and make known to both the church and the world. We believe that in these days it is of vital importance that God’s people, His Church, as well as the interested reading public, become informed and do all they can so as not to be clouded in any ignorance as to what is really going on in the world today. For all is not as it seems. Great danger and momentous events lie on and over the horizon and in increasing measure deception is creeping into the very fabric of our world, even into the ordinary and mundane of our everyday lives.

It is this desire to help believers and interested parties remain on the right side of God’s truth that underpins ‘Mast’. We are a research and teaching ministry on the one hand and a prophetic and mission ministry on the other. To help in these tasks, each issue of this newsletter will be produced in company with The Mast, the journal of ‘Mast Ministries’, together with the occasional information sheet and more in depth papers. All elements are designed to be kept by the recipient and collated with subsequent issues into an expanding and ongoing prophetic and biblically based reference work, for which an index will be produced in due course. It seems superfluous to us just to produce a newsletter without using the opportunity to engage at the same time in the very dissemination of the fruits of the research for which ‘Mast’ exists. It is important, therefore, that if you feel the information and articles will be of interest – and we sincerely hope that they will be – that you send in the form enclosed in this issue right away to ensure you get onto our mailing list and so receive future copies as well as any news of other publications and events in the pipeline.

We hope that by reading this newsletter and the first copy of The Mast, you will become interested in our ministry and become one of our supporters, either as a reader – without whom we have no ministry – prayer partner, or financial supporter. A ministry of this kind needs all three kinds of supporters. With regard to prayer, it is a given with us that the Kingdom of God cannot advance a single milimetre except through prayer, and so we value your prayers highly, for without them this ministry will fail. With regard to money, no one pays wages for someone to conduct a ministry of this kind except through God’s provision of generous giving by those who discern its importance and God’s leading behind it all. And this ministry will require a degree of financial backing sufficient to enable myself as principal ‘worker’ to spend the necessary time in study, research, writing and teaching tasks. If those of you who are believers do discern God’s leading here, I ask that you prayerfully consider becoming a supporter and the kind of support that you might be able to offer. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you richly in his truth and through our work – the Editor.

Introducing ‘Mast Ministries’

An introduction to ‘Mast Ministries’ by necessity demands an introduction to myself, David John Eason. A few bare facts will suffice for the present, though doubtless you will get to know me better in due course.

• Born the youngest of identical twins and raised in Potters Bar, north of London, England
• Educated at Mount Grace Comprehensive School (not very effectively)
• Lifelong passions: making display and working models of ships, aircraft, vehicles, anything etc., books (and especially secondhand bookshops), the big ‘why’ of everything, and (later as a Christian) the relationship between God and history
• Early interests: astronomy, history, military
• Early ambition: not very ambitious except to own a model shop
• Early career: wages clerk (hated it), salesman (good at it), model shop manager (loved it)
• In business as proprietor of own model shops (market stall to chain of three) 1986-1992
• Became a Christian 1989, baptized April Fools Day 1990, feel called to full-time ministry April 1992, business folded September 1992
• Formative discipleship and ministry apprenticeship at ‘The Stable’, High Barnet – Charismatic Evangelical Free Church
• London Bible College 1994-1997 – B.A. Theology
• St. Mary’s College, Twickenham 1998-2000 part-time – M.A. Church History
• Mission worker Christ Church (Anglican), Little Heath, Potters Bar 1997-2000
• Married to Celeste from Hong Kong 1999
• Moved to Hong Kong where I now live for most of the year
• Daughter Salome born 2002
• Currently engaged in voluntary local church ministry (Xi Lin Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Sheung Shui), conducting research in preparation for ‘Mast’ and studying for a PhD at Stirling University, Scotland, topic: ‘National Days of Prayer in Great Britain Boer War to 1957’
• Current ambition: to fulfill faithfully my calling from the Lord. Period.

So why ‘Mast’ and what is it all about?

A Paradigmatic Encounter

I suppose it all began in 1998 while I was working at Christ Church in Potters Bar. I say ‘suppose’ because a starting point for any ministry is hard to determine in that, for the Christian, one’s whole life is a preparation for what God has planned for you to be and do. But in 1998 God began to ask me a very simple but strange question. He began to ask me: “What do you see son?”

The first time this happened I was walking down a typical suburban street in Potters Bar. The suddenness of the question and its source took me aback a little and I didn’t quite know how to respond. I had walked down this particular road hundreds of times before and nothing struck me as being out of the ordinary this time. However, having developed a passionate interest in the relationship between God and history in the years since becoming a Christian, I intuitively sensed that God was directing me to see deeper into the world around me.

This was confirmed later in the year while taking part in a ‘Walk of Reconciliation’ between Paris and Marseilles in France, during which young Christians from all over Europe marched to acknowledge the wrongs of the Albigensian and Children’s Crusades of 1208 and 1212. I had volunteered to be a driver and head chef for a team of youngsters from the Barnet area. Consequently, I had little time for walking, except on the last stretch into Marseilles. It was while I was walking over a high ridge on the plateau overlooking Marseilles that I heard God ask me a second time: “What do you see, son?”

Now, despite the obvious panorama that must have been before me it was very hazy at the time and one couldn’t see very much at all. But at that exact moment a local Frenchman on the team, whom I had never seen or spoken to before, started to walk alongside me and, without any prompting whatsoever, immediately began to talk about the landscape that one might see if there wasn’t any haze about! “You can’t see it of course,” he said pointing wildly, “but over there is the sea … and over that way are the mountains, beautiful mountains, but of course you can’t see them either. Never mind … au revoir.” And with that he was off!

The theme continued during the final farewell service that concluded this ‘mission’. During the time for prayer another stranger approached me and told me that the Lord had given him a picture word for me. He then described how the Lord had shown him that my journey was like a spiral staircase. At that present time I was climbing this staircase and couldn’t see very much. But in the future this staircase would emerge in sunlight onto a rooftop from which I would be able to see very clearly what it was the Lord was calling me to do. He further added that there were people who were waiting for my ministry.

The Prophetic Task

Well, it’s taken the best part of a decade to study, prepare and work through what the Lord was showing me, but I believe I am beginning to emerge into the sunlight spoken about, and ‘Mast’ is the first fruits of that long process.

In essence ‘Mast’ is, first and foremost, a prophetic think tank. What the Lord was confirming to me and leading me to in Potters Bar and France was to deepen my look at history, the world and its structures through more spiritual eyes, prophetic eyes, to look behind the visible in order to understand the processes behind them, that have shaped them and which continue to form them.

In a sense this is little different to what the prophets of old did. When Ezekiel prophesied against the King of Tyre, for example, in chapter 28 of his book, at one point the prophecy transitions seamlessly into a description of Satan:

“‘In the pride of your heart you say, “I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas.” But you are a man and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god […]

“ ‘Because you think you are wise, as wise as a god, I am going to bring foreigners against you, the most ruthless of nations […] They will bring you down to the pit, and you will die a violent death in the heart of the seas. Will you then say, “I am a god,” in the presence of those who kill you? You will be but a man, not a god, in the hands of those who slay you.

“ ‘You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you […] Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.

Ezekiel 28:2, 6-9, 12-17

Ezekiel observed and recognized in Tyre’s national pride and the king’s arrogant claim to be ‘a god’ the dynamics and influence of the serpent himself, and he wrote accordingly. This might not be literal documentary history, but it is a truer history. It is interesting to relate that Tyre was indeed subsequently besieged and destroyed by Alexander the Great in 322 B.C., never to rise to autonomous power again. Such hubris will always find due nemesis in the abyss, as one day Satan himself will be able to testify.

But Ezekiel’s insight was not an instant affair just as the books of prophecy in the Old Testament were not spontaneous writings, but each was the fruit of decades of learning to observe the world with God’s eyes. Absolutely inspired, yes of course, the prophets were writing scripture, but also absolutely informed. The gift of the prophet is the gift to see, but to see nevertheless requires learning in company with divine inspiration.

Today it is the Church who has been given this prophetic task. Christians alone have been given the Holy Spirit and they alone have the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ through which to observe and discern the world. But is the prophetic voice heard often enough? Is the prophetic voice that does get heard sufficient in force, insight and wisdom? Or put another way, is the prophetic ministry accorded the same honour in the Church as say the pastoral ministry? It is in Ephesians 4:11. But very few churches that I know employ prophets or workers solely for their prophetic insight! In fact I can think of none. Which is probably just as well, for I am not so sure the professionalization of prophecy would be a good thing, but then again, why is the prophet different from any of the other ministries listed by Paul? I trust you get my point.

More than ever the church today needs to raise its prophetic voice, for there never was such a time as now when prophetic insight was so urgently required to make sense of the times. Just one example will suffice. One would think it would be a simple matter for the church with one voice to condemn the trend of recent years towards the cultural acceptance of homosexuality. Scripture explicitly condemns such sexuality as an ‘abomination’, the inevitable consequence of which is the denigration of the God-given marriage relationship. But this is not the case. Large swathes of the Church worldwide are in apparent confusion over this issue. Why? In all likelihood the desire to love ‘the other’ or the ethics of ‘rights’ has got in the way, or it has not been sufficiently understood just from where such sexuality originates.

With regard to the latter, there is a curious reference in the Sumerian myth Inanna’s Journey to the Underworld to the god Enki (‘Lord of the Earth’) taking ‘dirt from his red lacquered finger-nail’ to form two other gods or demons. There is much to commend the theory that the god Enki, or Ea in Babylonian mythology, otherwise also known as ‘the crafty god’, was the pagan mythological representation of Satan. Given such an association, together with the reference to red lacquered finger-nails and the evident self-love in Ezekiel’s depiction of Satan’s fall quoted above, it is not hard to make the connections and begin to perceive homosexuality as the narcissistic ‘love’ it is arising out of a context of idolatry and self-centredness. I’m not so much referring here to the poor individuals caught up in the vortex of this problem today, but rather to the spiritual root of homosexuality in Satan’s character and man’s fallen nature. And why is it that toleration and rights for the homosexual are being pursued so vigorously today in particular? Could this not have something to do with the rise of a global and common idolatry throughout the earth under the umbrella of globalization for only the second time in history (the first culminating at Babel where Enki / Ea was worshipped)?

The ethics of ‘rights’ of course sound so moral. Who can argue against honouring ‘the other’ and ‘tolerance’ and ‘equity’ and ‘human dignity’ and any other phrase those pursuing the rights of minorities might care to use? But we need to be careful and recognize just where this loving consideration and talk of rights in this instance comes from. Not all that is morally good is necessarily morally good. We only have to look at the example of Jesus and Peter in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16. Just after Peter had correctly understood Jesus as ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (v.16), he then made a grave though understandable error. From that time on Jesus began to explain that he must go to Jerusalem, be killed and on the third day be raised to life (v. 21). At this Peter took Jesus to one side and rebuked him, saying: “Never Lord!” “This shall never happen to you!” (v. 22) No doubt Peter was motivated by his sincere love for his friend whom he wanted to protect from harm. From a human point of view this sounds commendable. But in actual fact this was utterly at loggerheads with the purposes of God and facing completely the wrong direction. Similarly, the ethics of rights with regard to homosexuality, though correct sounding, are also in antithetical opposition to the Kingdom of God. Rights which oppose God are wrongs, and are therefore deserving of the same condemnation as Peter, a condemnation that identifies their true source:

“Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Always it must be God first, and everything else will be put to rights following in this train.

A Programme for ‘Mast’

With all this in mind, the agenda for ‘Mast’ may at last be outlined in more detail. As a prophetic think tank I see three main roles for ‘Mast’:

1) To research history, the world and its structures from a scriptural, spiritual and prophetic perspective. There can be no short cuts here, ‘Mast’ will depend on the quality of this research and research takes time. It requires a full-time approach.

2) To disseminate the fruits of this research through publications, the Internet and teaching.
a) With regard to publications, this will involve:
i) A book that is still in the very early stages of planning.
ii) Publications such as this newsletter, other monographs on particular topics, and The Mast, which I would like to see develop into a more substantial publication.
b) With regard to the Internet, I already have a domain name godinhistory.com but as yet the website has not been set up. Thus far I have lacked the expertise and the funds, but I pray that under ‘Mast’ both of these will be forthcoming. Indeed, if anyone reading this can offer their expertise to help me set up this website I would be most grateful if they could let me know.
c) With regard to the teaching ministry, this will involve:
i) Developing an itinerant preaching / teaching ministry.
ii) Teaching the Church concerning the fruits of the research.
iii) Promoting within the Church a prophetic mindset. While certain people are called to the prophetic task in a special way just as people are called to the pastoral ministry, this does not preclude all of God’s people exercising the prophetic role in its different aspects. Like Paul, I would want all Christians to eagerly desire the gift of prophecy. In particular, I would like to raise the awareness and the capability of the Church in seeing and understanding the world through more spiritual and prophetic eyes.

3) To be a prophetic voice in the world, primarily forthtelling (revealing the biblical and spiritual dimension to things), but sometimes foretelling (giving warning / prediction), but only as scripture allows and only ever as and when God leads.

In relation to this last point, ‘Mast’ is also mission, so in parallel to the above, ‘Mast’ will also engage in the following:

4) Evangelism. Because mission and the prophetic word go together, like the two arms of a tuning fork, whenever God’s perspective is explained, so too must the gospel of Jesus Christ be proclaimed, which is the culmination of God’s purpose for the world. Therefore, the preaching of the gospel will always be a feature of this ministry.

5) Christian action (not social action). The image of the mountains and the sea was instrumental in drawing my attention to the vertical dimension of scripture and history and to the cosmic conflict being waged between true faith, with its orientation towards God and heaven, and idolatry, with its orientation towards self and the abyss. To expose and combat idolatry, therefore, is fundamental to ‘Mast’. Those who know me are already aware that recently I have been conducting an anti-idolatry campaign in Hong Kong. This will now come under ‘Mast’ and be further developed. Thus far this has involved:
a) A letter writing campaign to the South China Morning Post – 6 letters published so far on this topic.
b) A prayer ministry that has witnessed the removal of many idols. Praise God!
c) A placard protest at key sites of idolatry. This is a silent protest involving the holding of banners of scripture next to the offending area warning against idolatry. So far three protests have been conducted, two at the Wishing Tree and one at Wong Tai Sin temple on the occasion of the Grand Blessing Ceremony held in January 2006 during which a government minister prayed to the idol for Hong Kong’s prosperity (See the report in the next issue of the newsletter).

The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods.
– Psalm 16:4 (placard text)

In addition and parallel to all the above:

6) A Prophetic Model Display is being developed with the purpose of illustrating relevant themes through the use of models and display boards. This will be a flexible and portable display to accompany the teaching and prophetic elements of the ministry.

On a personal level, it is a given that in the next two years I will have to finish my PhD. Although progress has been lamentably slow over recent times, this nevertheless is a goal of mine that is not unrelated to ‘Mast’. For this study involves a topic that is not only opening up interesting areas in understanding the relationship between God and Great Britain in her history, but also, God willing, this study will be a contribution to the revival of faith in what was once the most Christian country on earth. My ambition for the project is that it will go some way in convincing the leadership of Great Britain to hold a National Day of Prayer in our own time on the same scale of those held during the First and Second World Wars. Excepting the feeble observance called the same during October 2001 after September 11th, the last time such a National Day of Prayer proper was held was in 1947.

Finally, you may be wondering why the name ‘Mast’ was chosen? There are several thoughts behind this:

• The image of the mast suggests on the one hand a transmission or receiving mast, and this reflects the research and dissemination aspects of the ministry.

• On the other hand, the image also suggests the mast of a vessel on the sea, and this reflects the prophetic role of the watchman and observer searching the horizon, as well as that of mission.

• Preeminently, however, the letters in ‘Mast’ reflect the phrase ‘Mountains and the Sea’, admittedly in slightly rearranged order, but nevertheless chosen to honour God’s initial revelation to me with the whole suggesting perfectly what the ministry has been called into being to do.

With these thoughts I commend ‘Mast Ministries’ to your prayers and support.

Prayer Diary

10 April- 10 June, David will be in England to further his PhD studies. He will be spending time at various county archives, the Newspaper Library in Colindale, London, Lambeth Palace Library, London, and with his supervisor in Stirling, Scotland. Please pray for safety and protection, a productive trip, divine leading in finding sources for his research both for the PhD and ‘Mast’, and for Celeste and Salome in Hong Kong.

The crucial prayer request at present is for finance. It is right that both ‘Mast’ and David’s research should now be independently funded. Without funding this ministry will not be able to develop in the way David feels it should. Please pray that sufficient finance would be forthcoming, or, if need be, the right openings or work is provided to enable the successful establishment of this ministry.

© David John Eason 2006.