Twenty years ago one of the bravest
protests was witnessed throughout
the world in the very heart of
communist
China,
and these vivid memories are being
rekindled via the worldwide
international news media. We have
been reminded this past week of the
thousands of students who protested
on the streets of China’s capital
Beijing and by gathering at
Tiananmen Square. Then on June 4,
1989 the Chinese government turning
its guns and tanks on its own
people, in an attempt to brutally
crush their pro-democracy movement.
This past week, we have heard from
many commentators discuss the
consequences of the brutal
crackdown. One of the comments I
discovered and found most intriguing
came from a Chinese pastor who was
the guest speaker at the National
Presbyterian Church in
Washington, D.C.
His words demonstrated once again
how God can bring good out of evil.
Through the June 4 tragedy,
Pastor Hong Yujian said,
"We see that . . . God prepared the
hearts of the people for the
widespread dissemination of the
Gospel ... in
China."
First,
he said, Tiananmen Square "destroyed
the last sense of hope the Chinese
people had in the idol of communism.
The massacre of ordinary people by
the government fully exposed the
barbarity of a totalitarian
government under the rule of man."
Second,
the massacre "Was a blow to the
blind spot of self-conceit of
intellectual elites in the Chinese
tradition."
Third,
he said, "the decline of the student
movements and the pro-democracy
movement forced us to reflect on a
deeper level: what is really the
root of all the miseries in the
Chinese nation?"
In the past, the Chinese believed
the answer was oppression, which
they attempted to resist. But under
the mighty power of the crackdown by
the totalitarian authorities,
Yujian
said people "demonstrated cowardice,
numbness, betrayal."
"Many people are beginning to
realize that they in themselves have
nothing praiseworthy," Pastor Yujian
said. "The end of human efforts is
the beginning of God... The only way
out is by coming to the throne of
God’s grace and surrendering to
Him."
How has God used the Tiananmen
tragedy to build his Church? Before
the massacre, the house churches
were mainly in the countryside,
Pastor
Yujian noted. But after
June 4, the churches "spread to
urban areas and into intellectual
circles." In these arenas, in the
aftermath of the massacre, students
were suffering from a sense of
passiveness, depravity, and loss-
but then they began to listen
seriously to what house church
pastors had to say.
In other countries, Chinese churches
and Bible classes had previously
been attended mainly by immigrants
from
Hong Kong
and Taiwan. But after Tiananmen
Square, people began to reach out
and show their care and love to
students from mainland China. "As a
result,"
Pastor Yujian said,
"there was an upsurge to understand
more about God among the students
from mainland China."
Out of the ashes of
Tiananmen Square, and the failure of the student movement, its leaders
began a search for truth-and
ultimately have "found hope and
reality in Jesus Christ."
What are your problems today? What's
in your background? Who's in your
way? What failures are dogging your
steps?
God has a perfect plan for every
person's life, but He doesn't make
us walk that path. We are free moral
agents with the ability to choose.
The Bible tells us
"The Lord is...not willing that any
should perish, but that all should
come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9).
This clearly states that it is not
the Lord's will for anyone to
perish, but people are perishing.
Jesus said,
"Enter by the narrow gate, for wide
is the gate and broad is the way
that leads to destruction and there
are many who go in by it." (Matt.
7:13).
Relatively few people are saved,
compared to the number that are
lost. God's will for people
concerning salvation is not being
accomplished.
That is because God, throughout the
Bible has told us what the right
choices are, but He doesn't make
those choices for us. God gave us
the power to control our destiny
together with the freedom to choose.
When I experience days when I feel
low, tired or sad in my spirit or
times when I’m spiritually buoyant
such as this last week, I find this
eight line poem I discovered
entitled “God’s Handwriting”
brings me back to the calm assurance
of the sovereign workings of God's
providence in my life…
He writes in characters too grand
For our short sight to understand;
We catch but broken strokes, and try
To fathom all the mystery
Of withered hopes, of death, of
life,
The endless war, the useless strife,
But there, with larger, clearer
sight,
We shall see this…..His way was
right!
