A Weekly Meditation of Pastor Chang (December 27, 2009)

<Futurology , Soothsaying, Fortunetelling, and Biblical Prophecy> (3)

It is another end of a year again! Nornally the Chinese have a good tradition or habit: cleaning up the gabage at home before the New Year to come. Actually, our spiritual life also needs to have a kind of spiritual cleasing too. Otherwise, it can stock a lot of juncks that will block our spiritual life to grow. May the Holy Spirit be our guide!

Let us keep discussing about our topic: the futurology. The main purpose of this subject is to learn about how to do discernment? Actually, the spiritual discernement is a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12: 10.) How can we use our rationality (which belongs to a part of knowledge), our sensitivity (part of the feelings) and spirituality (part of our spirit to connect with the Holy Spirit) to discern our future work? This is a very important lesson that we can learn through being obedient to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in Christ to lead us moving forward.

Last time I mentioned about my good friend, Dr. Mike Young about his opinion concerning the future of the USA. As a scientist, he analyzed well and gave several profound reasons to describe that the USA will be still the top leader in the world in the coming 50 years.

Of course, I have another perspective which is from a viewpoint as a church pastor. Actually, I am not so optimistic as my friend. I begin to worry that the USA is getting worse in terms of declining. Why? The Americans are trimming down and shaking their national foundation which is the Christian faith. Let me explain:

First of all, one may tell that since the Puritans arrived in the American Continent in 1620. Their purpose to settle on this New Promised Land was to build up a nation which could totally follow the biblical principles. When the representatives from the first 13 states, most of them were pastors, elders and church leaders. Each time in their meetings always began and ended with prayers. They hopeｄ that by their prayers that could sustain whatever their discussion and decisions.

Secondly, the American government system is a copy of the Presbyterian/Reformed system, which means that just like a church’s organization which has pastor, elders and deacons, likewise, the US government also has the President (as pastor), Senators (as elders from each state) and Congressmen (as deacons from the districts.) The spirit of this democratic system is against bishop system in the church and monarchy system in the political world. This political system is a typical example of democracy in which the political powers are shared and balanced. This kind of system is found from the biblical teachings. Of course, such kind of democratic system is not perfect either. Yet it is because of Christian faith as the foundation this kind of democratic system can work well. (To be continued…)