A Weekly Meditation of Pastor Chang (March 7, 2010)

<Futurology, Soothsaying, Fortunetelling, and Biblical Prophecy> (12)

In any ancient country soothsaying and fortunetelling were very popular. However, these types of business, so far, do not out of work because of the great progress and advance of science. Instead, they are even more prosperous than before. For example, the registered soothsayers and fortunetellers are more than priests in the USA and Germany. May the Lord have mercy upon us! I repeated again and again to Christians: do not go to seek guidance from them, because according to the Bible, God doesn’t like His people to get involved in such kind of work for they are connected with the evil. Anyone who is connected will be trapped and controlled by the evil.

Now let us continue to talk about the future of China:

Before predicting the future of China, I would like to review the past historical relationship between the dynastic regimes and the religions in China as the first step so that from the past we can trace to the presence and the future.

Since the ancient time, all regimes confirmed that religions were important. However, in order to survive, religions might become effective instruments of the government, otherwise, the religions could not survive. For example, each time when an emperor gave any instruction or order, the first sentence was always related to “the Heaven” – the highest God. And the emperors called themselves, “Son of heaven.” It seemed very religious. Interestingly enough, any rebellion against the regime was also very religious. The rebellions also gave reasons to attack the regime and they always claimed that “on behalf of Heaven” they wanted to wipe out the corrupted regime. Many cases and examples can be seen in the past 3000 years of Chinese history.

Actually, it was not only China, in Europe the same, the rulers always invented religious term to control their subjects, for example: “this king and queen are ordained by God, anyone who disobeys is against God’s will.”  In India, the same, when Aryans conquered India few thousand years ago, they took the Hinduism’s teaching and set up the caste system which totally controls the minds of people and prevents people from fighting against the rulers and the rich. But it becomes one of the most terrible spiritual shackles in the world that enslaves people from getting better life. It is almost the same as Moslem’s extreme teachings about the way for salvation which teaches people to kill in order to plea their god, Ala.

By God’s grace, China doesn’t have such kind of evil religious system which totally controls people’s minds. Although one still can find some religions and cults teach some evil thinking in China; but generally speaking, most of the rulers used religion as a kind of tool but most of them did not believe it deep enough to create damage for the nation.

And because of that, no matter it was in Taiwan or in China, the dictatorial regimes do not like to give the religious freedom for people to have gathering worship, because they are afraid of the possibility of riots. Therefore, these kinds of dictatorial regimes will invent “religious law” to control “religious activities.” Actually, any good and democratic government should be the defender and protector of good religion, because good religion will provide good and bright guidance for people to move on toward the right direction.      

A good and healthy government will never abuse the political authority to suppress religious freedom. Instead, she will encourage people to go to join right and good religious activities. For example, in the USA, the government is not permitted to create any martial law or religious law to confine or suppress religious freedom. Of course, in the past American history, one still can find several cases because of the cults’ activities that caused trouble and damage for the society. But the USA government will never create any religious law, because anyone who disturbs the society and causes trouble for the society, the government already has another kind of law which is sufficient to arrest and take care of the trouble makers.

Any government which is seeking for growing a healthy and strong country will provide religious freedom for her people; because any country which has religious freedom symbolizes that she is a prosperous and advanced country. (To be continued…)