00:00:00.000 - 00:00:20.000

[Cassette tape being turned over] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the solo "The Lord is My Light" sung by Frank Mahoney, and the reading of Scripture and a message by Reverend Mr. Bruce W. Thielman entitled "The Church Confronts

00:00:20.000 - 00:00:40.920

China." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn the cassette over immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. [Music]

00:04:03.920 - 00:04:31.920

Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the first chapter, beginning with the verse which is numbered six. So when they had come together, the disciples asked him, "Lord, will you at this time

00:04:31.920 - 00:05:05.920

restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." And when he had said this, as

00:05:05.920 - 00:05:50.920

they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Holy Word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

00:05:51.920 - 00:06:31.920

Of what do you think when I say the word "China"? A large, irregular, yellow blotch on the Asia page in your old high school geography book? A fierce-looking, five-clawed Ming dragon staring at you from the side of a beautiful porcelain vase? When I say "China," do you think of an ancient nation, an ancient so old that in the 1700s

00:06:31.920 - 00:06:57.920

it was still abiding by the same civil code it used in the 200s? Or when I say "China," do you think of the tales of China you were told by missionaries twenty or thirty or forty years ago? Missionaries who sought to fire your zeal and your Christian compassion with regard to China by telling you terribly colored paintings of what goes on there.

00:06:57.920 - 00:07:23.920

I've recently read some of the sermons of Bishop Henry Fowler, who preached much about the situation in China. He said the Chinese were like Judas, the only difference being they didn't have sufficient conscience to commit suicide. He said they were a nation of moral mummies. Is that where your knowledge of China has come from?

00:07:23.920 - 00:07:52.920

From spokesmen of the Church who weren't always fair to truth, or fair to the Chinese, when they told you about the need in that distant land? What do you think of when I say "China"? In these minutes, I'm going to ask you to think of 800 million people,

00:07:52.920 - 00:08:25.920

over half of which are 19 years of age or younger. And I'm going to ask you to think of them in terms of yesterday and today and tomorrow. I heard someone say a few months ago that they considered the expulsion of the Christian Church from China after the success of the Communist Revolution to be one of the greatest catastrophes

00:08:25.920 - 00:08:57.920

in the history of the Church. Well, there is no doubt that it was a great catastrophe. But this individual, by making this statement, failed to understand, or indeed perhaps did not even know the fact that the Christian Church has been expelled from China no less than five different times. On five different occasions, the representatives of Jesus Christ have been driven out of China

00:08:57.920 - 00:09:12.920

and the bamboo curtain has descended. You see, Christians first arrived in China in the very early centuries, possibly as early as the second century. They were Nestorian Christians who came from Syria.

00:09:12.920 - 00:09:39.920

In their time of ministry there, they did not make any significant effort to reach the Chinese, but they did make a significant effort to become very successful in business. We have a monolith which comes from one of the Nestorian churches in the 7th century. On that monolith are the names of the 72 members of the Church, and only one of them was Chinese.

00:09:39.920 - 00:09:59.920

So after a while, the Chinese wouldn't tolerate it any longer. They weren't interested in people who considered them to be inferior and only a market for them to make money, and so they drove the Nestorians out of China. And the bamboo curtain came down.

00:09:59.920 - 00:10:23.920

We went back again in the 12th century. This time, the Franciscans came. They weren't sent principally as missionaries of the cross, but rather as diplomatic emissaries to the Mongol Empire. The Mongols were ravaging Asia, and the Pope was anxious to open some kind of diplomatic relations with them,

00:10:23.920 - 00:10:47.920

so he sent these Franciscans. And when the Mongols swarmed down into China, butchering on every hand, the Franciscans went with them. And later, when the Muslims rose in great strength and defeated the Mongols, those Christians who weren't killed by the Muslims were promptly killed and driven out by the Chinese.

00:10:47.920 - 00:11:13.920

The Chinese didn't forget, you see, that we came into that country riding side by side with Mongol murderers. And the bamboo curtain came down again. We returned in the 16th century. This time, Jesuits. They were led by a rather remarkable man named Matteo Ricci.

00:11:13.920 - 00:11:33.920

And Ricci's theory was that he would try to reach the aristocracy of China through appealing to their intellect, by demonstrating the intellectual accomplishments of the Western world. And so he asked that students and teachers would come to China. And they came, mostly from Portugal.

00:11:33.920 - 00:12:00.920

But before they came, they were carefully wrapped in the Portuguese flag. And shortly after their coming, Dominicans and Franciscans and Augustinians came from Spain. But before they came, they were very carefully wrapped in the Spanish flag. This was the time of the Inquisition, and it wasn't long until the emissaries of Christ from Portugal

00:12:00.920 - 00:12:24.920

and the emissaries of Christ from Spain were fighting it out on the very streets of the Chinese capital, before the very eyes of the people they came to win to the gospel of peace. They did manage, however, to become very successful in the silk industry, and also to build a very successful money-lending business.

00:12:24.920 - 00:12:43.920

The Ming dynasty came to an end. The Manchu dynasty came to the throne. And when it came, the Portuguese and the Spanish were driven away, and the bamboo curtain descended once more. But we hadn't given up.

00:12:43.920 - 00:13:01.920

We returned in the 19th century, representatives from many Western nations, not too successfully until the time of the opium wars. Opium, you know, did not naturally grow in China. It grew in India, and India was part of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

00:13:01.920 - 00:13:19.920

And so the British took the opium from India and began to sell it in China. Now, naturally, the Chinese government resented this. Opium is an addictive drug which wastes you away and then takes your life. The Chinese authorities did not want that product in their country,

00:13:19.920 - 00:13:36.920

but Britain continued to sell it there. And finally, in an act of resistance, the Chinese tried to fight the British off. And the British came in with a superior and a far more sophisticated military force, and they defeated the Chinese.

00:13:36.920 - 00:13:51.920

And in the treaty, which was written afterwards, they got the right to sell opium everywhere they wished, for their citizens to travel wherever they wished in China, and to be judged exclusively by British law, even when they were on Chinese soil.

00:13:51.920 - 00:14:05.920

And they also got this concession, that their missionaries could travel throughout the land. The opium trade grew. The effect upon China was tragic.

00:14:05.920 - 00:14:22.920

And so, in 1860, the Chinese tried again to free themselves of this British sovereignty that was ruling over them. And once more there was war, and once more Britain won. And this time the treaty was even more severe.

00:14:22.920 - 00:14:37.920

Not only Britain could go wherever it wished in China, but any nation could go wherever it wished in China, and their missionaries would have to be received. And any Chinese citizen who became a Christian was then under the laws of the nation who sent the missionary,

00:14:37.920 - 00:14:50.920

and not under Chinese law. And how many Chinese became Christians for just that reason, you see. No longer under their own laws. You know what it was like.

00:14:50.920 - 00:15:03.920

It was just like someone were to come to the United States and begin selling some kind of poison to our citizens. And we, in an effort to hold them off, would go to war. And they would beat us in the war. And then as part of the peace treaty,

00:15:03.920 - 00:15:20.920

they would come in and establish ports all up and down the Mississippi River from which they would spread this poison across the land. And then they would also demand of us the right to send the proponents of their religion across our country. How would we have liked it?

00:15:20.920 - 00:15:34.920

One Chinese man of the day wrote, "They came as uninvited guests, and when they had eaten everything from the table, they took the table also.

00:15:34.920 - 00:15:48.920

The British took Hong Kong, the Russians took Amur, the Japanese took the Pescadores, and Korea, and Formosa.

00:15:48.920 - 00:16:06.920

And China was raped." And then, some 60 years later, came the rise of the Chinese Communists. And as you can very well understand,

00:16:06.920 - 00:16:26.920

one of the principal doctrines which they announced was this. "We must rid ourselves of these Christians. They have come to us wrapped always in banners that are not the banner of their faith. The Nestorians came and treated us as inferiors and took from us our wealth.

00:16:26.920 - 00:16:44.920

The Franciscans came riding with murderers. The Jesuits came and fought with their Christian allies, at all times filling their pockets with Chinese gold. And the missionaries of the 19th century came on the backs of opium traders.

00:16:44.920 - 00:17:08.920

They are cultural imperialists. They must be driven from the land." And we were once more driven from that ancient land. I talked to one of our missionaries who served in China just last week.

00:17:08.920 - 00:17:27.920

He was there for some years. He told me of how on one occasion, just after the Communists took over, a young red official, 18 years old, came to visit the area where they were working. And the young red stood there and said, "What's growing in those fields over there?"

00:17:27.920 - 00:17:44.920

And you only had to look to know that it was opium. And the missionary said, "It's opium." He said, "Don't you know the laws of our country, that the growing of opium has been forbidden in China for decades?"

00:17:44.920 - 00:18:03.920

The missionary said, "Oh yes, we know those laws, but those are not Christian fields. None of our converts, none of our Christian converts grow opium." The young Communist official said, "I'm sure that's true. But the fact of the matter is, there are people over there who are growing opium,

00:18:03.920 - 00:18:19.920

and you see it, and they are violating the law, and you have never turned them in to the officials. You have never sought to bring them under the law of our land." And the missionary had to admit that this was true.

00:18:19.920 - 00:18:35.920

You see, the missionary didn't want to turn in these growers of opium, because he hoped someday to be able to get the gospel to these people. And he was afraid if he turned them in, these people would turn against him and not receive the gospel.

00:18:35.920 - 00:19:03.920

And the young Communist looked at him and said, "You see, you don't really care about China. You don't care about our ridding ourselves of this curse." And at that time, over 95% of Chinese men above 25 years of age were addicted to opium. Over 95%, over 25 years of age, addicted to opium.

00:19:03.920 - 00:19:27.920

"You don't care about China ridding itself of this curse. You care only for yourselves and for what you want to do. We are the heathen Chinese to you, inferior. We don't need you anymore."

00:19:27.920 - 00:19:56.920

And this missionary confessed to me with the look of great sadness on his face, "He was right, and I had no response." So the bamboo curtain is down once more. When it was announced that President Nixon was going to go to China,

00:19:56.920 - 00:20:14.920

immediately a lot of Christians started talking about the fact that now China would be open again, and we could send our missionaries once more. I began to get mail. "Send us money. We are training a thousand missionaries to go to China. Send us money. We are preparing a gigantic literature campaign with which to flood China.

00:20:14.920 - 00:20:33.920

Paperback books have been published and magazine articles that talk about a strong and a vital Chinese church that is existing secretly in China. And everything is ready for the opening of the gospel, and it's going to happen now that President Nixon has his foot in the door. This is what we can expect."

00:20:33.920 - 00:21:06.920

If you believe that, you put faith in fantasy. That is absurd. When the Chinese communists took over, they announced that their doctrine was that of religious freedom. Now religion to them was that which benefited the people, and since they did not see Christian missionaries significantly benefiting the people,

00:21:06.920 - 00:21:24.920

they immediately decreed that no Christian could hold any official office, and they closed every church in China. Now that policy of the subjugation of the Christian faith, begun when they took over, has not abated one wit.

00:21:24.920 - 00:21:54.920

Just a few months ago, these words were broadcast over the Chinese radio system to Formosa for the nationalist Chinese to hear. I'll quote directly from their broadcast. "We warn the people of Taiwan against the American missionaries who are a band of wolves in sheep's clothing. What they call itinerant medical service is only a stratagem for bringing harm to the Chinese people.

00:21:54.920 - 00:22:21.920

What they call making gifts is only a way of refusing to satisfy the noble aspirations of the Chinese people. The churches, as they call themselves, are only foreign boutiques that poison and deceive the Chinese people." That's the position of the Chinese government. And they have forged across all of China something which has never been in China before,

00:22:21.920 - 00:22:39.920

a tremendous mental unity. From the east to the west, from the north to the south, there is but one Chinese attitude, and that attitude is formulated by the government, for only the government has access to the media of communication.

00:22:39.920 - 00:23:04.920

The Chinese have today over 300 million young people in school. That's 100 million more people than there are in all America. They have 300 million young people in school. And those children are taught one thing, the ascendancy of Marxism and the imperialism of the West,

00:23:04.920 - 00:23:31.920

and of missionaries whom they consider to be the servants of that imperialism. And there's very little in our history over there to prove that is not so. Little first graders learn songs in their schools that go like this. Here's one of them. "Mao Tse-tung is the sun. Everyone turns to Chairman Mao as the sunflower turns to the sun."

00:23:31.920 - 00:23:56.920

And Chairman Mao says, "China stood up and drove the cultural imperialists, the missionaries, home." James Reston, who was a reporter on the Los Angeles Times, recently returned from China. He visited many of their schools while he was there. As he was leaving one school, a youngster came up to him and said,

00:23:56.920 - 00:24:20.920

"Your visit to our school has been very encouraging to us. In the future, I will redouble my efforts. When you return, bring greetings to the American children. The American people are good, but their government is not good. I hope in the future that the people of America will win the final victory."

00:24:20.920 - 00:24:45.920

Those words were uttered by a ten-year-old little girl. The Chinese Communists have implanted across the face of that land a new belief in the superiority of China. The Chinese have always been a proud people. The very symbols which write the word "China" in that language mean "middle kingdom" or "central kingdom"

00:24:45.920 - 00:25:04.920

or that about which everything else revolves. And the Chinese have good reason to be proud of their culture. No nation has ever surpassed the arts of China. Some nations have equaled those artistic accomplishments, but no one has surpassed their accomplishments.

00:25:04.920 - 00:25:35.920

Did you know that when Western missionaries flooded into China in the 1700s, did you know that at that time they discovered, much to their astonishment, that the Chinese people had printed more different books in the Chinese language than the total output of all the books in all of the languages of all of the other nations of the world?

00:25:35.920 - 00:26:05.920

Did you know that last June in this country, 1600 Chinese students received the PhD degree? We're not talking about any stupid, backward, yellow race. We're talking about the people who invented the compass, who invented paper, who invented the saddle and the harness and the stirrup,

00:26:05.920 - 00:26:23.920

who invented the camp stool and gunpowder, and the ability to drill down into the earth for water or for salt or for oil, and countless other things. These are the people with whom we are dealing.

00:26:23.920 - 00:27:05.920

And the government of the Chinese nation has sought to reassert the Chinese confidence in the Chinese and in no one else. It is an act of absurdity to believe that President Nixon's brief visit to China will open the door to the gospel once more. It will be a long, long time before the emissaries of the cross can go again. One expert says that it will be at least 200 years.

00:27:05.920 - 00:27:37.920

And when we do go, it won't be as white men. It will have to be as yellow men. So in the meantime, we must support our radio broadcasting stations, which cover every square inch of China. There is no square inch of that huge land that cannot get gospel preached to them over the radio.

00:27:37.920 - 00:27:53.920

We must pray for the Chinese Christians. There are still some Christians in China. No one knows how many. No one knows, save God, what they're called upon to suffer. We must uphold them.

00:27:53.920 - 00:28:24.920

And then also, we must resolve that the mission servants of the Church will never again go forward, as they have sometimes gone and always gone to China in the past. This is the thought with which I would want to leave you. The mission servants of the Church must never go forth again wrapped in any flag but the flag of Jesus.

00:28:24.920 - 00:28:41.920

Apostle Paul sets the goal. He says in the second letter to the Corinthians, the fifth chapter, "You are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through you." An ambassador, that word had a very special meaning in that time.

00:28:41.920 - 00:29:02.920

The ambassador was a direct representative of the emperor, of no one else but the emperor. And the function of the ambassador was to gain the allegiance of others to the emperor. Paul is saying that we are to be ambassadors, that the mission servants of the Church are to go forward with one allegiance,

00:29:02.920 - 00:29:36.920

and that allegiance is to Jesus, and one mission, and that mission is to bring men to Jesus. Wrapped in his flag, and taking that flag from about their bodies, and with it clothing the naked, and giving warmth to the cold. We must go not only with the gospel about Jesus, but with the Spirit which was Jesus.

00:29:36.920 - 00:29:58.920

Some years ago Howard Lowry, the president of one of our Presbyterian schools, was talking to Dr. Rahat Krishnan, the Hindu president of India. And he said to the president of India, "You know, sometimes I think we Christians are frightfully arrogant. Here we are, only 10 million of us, in your Indian country where there are 400 million people

00:29:58.920 - 00:30:19.920

who hold to other religions, and we stand there, this small number of us, and we say that there is no other way that a man might be saved than that of Christ Jesus. That sounds to me very arrogant." And Dr. Rahat Krishnan looked at him, paused for a moment, and then said,

00:30:19.920 - 00:30:55.920

"Yes, that is true. But as Christians, you have no choice. Your scriptures teach that there is no other name under heaven by which a man might be saved. And you must bear testimony to your scriptures. But you will be saved from arrogance if you say this and live this in the Spirit of Jesus."

00:30:55.920 - 00:31:12.920

There's the whole thing in a single sentence. That we go no more on gunboats. That we go no more for economic advantage. That we become not the tools of this country or of any other country on the face of the earth.

00:31:12.920 - 00:31:31.920

But that we represent always that citizenship which is primary, citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. And that we go forward not to people who are inferior to us, but to people who are children of God, living in the darkness,

00:31:31.920 - 00:31:47.920

whom we would seek to bring to the light. I stand here today not as an apologist for the Red Chinese, not as an apologist for the people of any land anywhere. I stand here as an apologist for Jesus Christ.

00:31:47.920 - 00:32:07.920

And Jesus Christ is saying to us, "Go forth with my gospel, but go forth as I went forth with a basin and a towel." That's happening. Christians in the new country of Indonesia went to the leaders of that country and said,

00:32:07.920 - 00:32:20.920

"You have a new country and for a new country you need new men. And the only man who can make new men is Jesus. Let us preach Jesus and those new men will help to build your new country." And the government said, "You may do so."

00:32:20.920 - 00:32:38.920

And we are watching in Indonesia today one of the greatest revivals in Christian history. The church in Indonesia is growing twice as fast as the population. Or take that part of the world called Sumatra. There the little Batak church, a church with only 200,000 members,

00:32:38.920 - 00:32:56.920

desperately concerned for its country, trying to stand up amongst nations, recognize the tremendous need of their country for educators, for teachers. So that little church said, "We will train our young people to be teachers who will not only lift our nation by their teaching,

00:32:56.920 - 00:33:16.920

but also will lift up Jesus Christ and be his servants in the classroom." And today that little church of 200,000 members has produced 70% of the teachers in Sumatra. Witnesses to the truth that men have discovered and witnesses to the truth that is revealed in Jesus Christ.

00:33:16.920 - 00:33:36.920

Don't you pray to God that 70% of the teachers in Glendale, California would be flaming evangelists for Christ? In West Eria, as part of New Guinea, missionary aviation fellowship. You remember the folks to whom we gave an airplane last year.

00:33:36.920 - 00:33:50.920

They have been serving the missionaries there and these people came and they said, "Look, we'd like you to set up an airline for us. We'd like you to teach us how to take care of airplanes, maintenance and all those kind of things, establishing schedules.

00:33:50.920 - 00:34:06.920

We want our country to become an independent and a strong nation. Won't you assist us in this?" And because the servants of missionary aviation fellowship love those to whom they go, "Go with a basin and a towel. Go serving."

00:34:06.920 - 00:34:23.920

They said, "We'll do it." And in doing it, they're loved. And as they are loved, they are believed. And they are always whispering about Jesus.

00:34:23.920 - 00:34:37.920

The world is hungry and we must feed it. The world is sick and we must heal it. The world is poor and we must lift it. But if that's all we're going to do,

00:34:37.920 - 00:34:52.920

then we're not doing anything more than the communists are trying to do. For those are their announced goals also. But are you aware of this? Are you aware of the fact that leading communist theoreticians

00:34:52.920 - 00:35:17.920

are now having regular conversations and dialogues with Christian theologians? Did you know that many of the high-ranking philosophical minds within communism have begun to discover the weaknesses within their faith? The church was supposed to die. It hasn't died.

00:35:17.920 - 00:35:29.920

The communist millennium was supposed to have come. It hasn't come. Their doctrine of the future is sterile and without power. Their understanding of man is weak. And what's happening in history is proving it.

00:35:29.920 - 00:35:44.920

And they have begun to talk to us. Are we going to be ready to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to strengthen the weak,

00:35:44.920 - 00:36:16.920

and to do it all with the spirit and the love of Jesus, and to do it all with the name of Jesus on our lips? I read over 5,000 pages of material to prepare for coming into this pulpit to bring you this message this day.

00:36:16.920 - 00:36:41.920

And after reading those 5,000 pages, I was possessed by one overwhelming conviction. China said no to the agents of other countries. China said no to those who would seek to make money from her.

00:36:41.920 - 00:37:17.920

China said no to those who would treat the Chinese as inferior. But China has never said no to Jesus. And our task, as the door to China in God's good time opens, and as the doors of so many nations stand wide open today,

00:37:17.920 - 00:37:32.920

our task is to see that the Church is ready. Ready with basin and towel. Ready to go on its knees. Ready to go in love.

00:37:32.920 - 00:37:49.920

Ready to put its arm around those who are beaten and broken and lift them up. Ready to heal like Jesus healed, and teach like Jesus taught. Ready to set lights in minds that are dark.

00:37:49.920 - 00:38:15.920

Ready, yearning ready, to go out for a Christ who died and who, living, still agonizes to be the Savior of all the world. Will the Church be ready?

00:38:15.920 - 00:38:52.920

Brother, sister, young lady, young gentleman, never forget, the Church begins with you. And the mission field starts right next door. Let us pray.

00:38:52.920 - 00:39:27.920

Oh Jesus, whether our field be ten thousand miles from here or across our backyard fence, may we go not only with the truth about you, but with the spirit which was of you. May we gird ourselves with the garments of humility, and with arms spread wide in love, lift men as you lifted them.

00:39:27.920 - 00:39:50.920

We would march only under your banner. We would be true to you, and to all those who so desperately need to know you. And the Lord bless you and keep you.

00:39:50.920 - 00:40:10.920

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and upon all those whom you love, and upon all those whom nobody loves. The Lord give you peace.

00:40:11.920 - 00:40:19.920

[Birds chirping]