01 Aug 2012

August 2012 - Christians & Nation-Building (7): Prayer & Revival

By Bishop Hwa Yung

In the Pelita issue of August 2011, I began looking at the role of Christians in the task of nation-building in our country. The first article sought to remind us that Christians must learn to make a principled stand against evil and injustice in the world. Further it explains that nation-building is a complex multi-layered process. Winning the battle at the ballot box may provide for immediate changes but not long-term answers. The next five articles went on to detail what Christians are called to do to help in the task of building a nation that is just and free, and righteous and strong: responsible participation in electoral politics including voting; moral reformation in society as the only effective way to deal with corruption; building compassionate communities and reaching out especially to the poor and the weak; understanding the Christian roots of modern democracy, and defending freedom and human rights; and lastly, the call to be peacemakers in a deeply divided nation and bring reconciliation in the midst of mounting ethnic and religious tensions.

I write in the context of a general awakening amongst many Christians in the country to the Bible’s mandate to be ‘salt’ and ‘light’ in the a sinful and broken world. At least within Protestant circles, it is probably true to say that never before has there been so much consciousness of our social and political responsibilities! Yet when we look at the nation, we often see evil, corruption, self-interest, inefficiency and mediocrity deeply entrenched, and challenges so seemingly insurmountable. Just think of the World Bank report on brain drain from Malaysia over the last few decades, with about one million people having left the country, a third of whom are skilled and highly-skilled! (See http://siteresources. worldbank.org/INTMALAYSIA/Resources/3243921303882224029/malaysia_ec_monitor_apr2011_full.pdf.) Despite all the hype about ‘Malaysia boleh,’ Malaysians of all ethnic and religious backgrounds appear to be losing faith and hope in the country on a massive scale!

This situation reminds me of John Sung, China’s greatest evangelist and revivalist of the first half of the 20th century. When he arrived home in 1927 from America after his studies there, the Protestant Church numbered only about 300,000 in a sea of some 400 million Chinese. This was despite more than a century of missionary efforts with thousands of missionaries poured into China, and huge sums of money brought in to build some of the best orphanages, hospitals, schools, universities, and the like. He could have cried, ‘Apa boleh buat?’

Christians forget too easily the importance of
repentance, holy living and prayer
Moreover, it was not just that the church was growing at snail pace in China. The whole country was a socio-political and economic mess. Drastically weakened by colonialism and external aggression in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it continued to be ravaged by an ongoing civil war that had begun with the Chinese revolution of 1911 and would only end with the Communist victory in 1949. And the government of the day under the Kuomintang was corrupt to the core. President Truman of the USA once said this of Chiang Kai Shek’s family: ‘They’re all thieves, every damn one of them … They stole seven hundred and fifty million dollars out of the $3.8 billion that we sent to Chiang.’ (Cited in Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty, 1985; p. 437.) The equivalent today would be anything between fifteen to forty or fifty billion US dollars!

How did John Sung respond to the situation at hand? From the time he came home until he was terminally hospitalised in Dec 1940, he single-minded laboured for revival in Chinese churches in China and S. E. Asia. It is estimated that 100,000 were converted under his ministry and thousands (if not tens of thousands) of Christian lives were transformed. In the final years before his death in 1944 he foretold that a great revival was coming to China—one which would be primarily a work of God and not man. But the way to prepare for it was through earnest prayer. Thus he wrote: ‘In my prayers, God has shown me clearly that the great revival of the Chinese church will come. This great revival is not through man but through the Holy Spirit Himself moving in the hearts of a class of workers to unite … for a long period of prayer, to do prayer work in the Spirit.’ (The Diary of John Sung, 2012; p. 383.)

It took more than thirty years before John Sung's vision found fulfilment in the late 1970s, when the first rumblings were heard of one of the greatest revivals of modern history. It was all happening during the Cultural Revolution when many, including the whole church, were terribly persecuted! Since then, not only has the Chinese church grown exponentially in the last few decades, but China itself is a totally transformed nation, with a GDP that is second only to the US today and fast catching up!  

Like many of you, I too have had my share of despair! Apa boleh buat? But as I wrestle through the years with the issues before us, it has increasingly dawn on me that Malaysian Christians are too worried about the state of the nation but not concerned enough about the state of the church! Could it be that God is more concerned about the latter than the former? I believe so. The church is called to be ‘salt’ and ‘light.’ But our Lord reminds us that if the salt has lost its taste, ‘It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and tramples under people’s feet’ (Mat 5:13). That is in the Sermon on the Mount. Similarly in the letter to the seven churches in Revelations, Jesus adds a further message. The church in Ephesus was told ‘You have forsaken your first love’ (Rev 2:4). He then adds the warning that, if there is no repentance, as the Lord of the church, ‘I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place’ (2:5). In other words, when the light fails to shine, the lampstand will be taken away. 

Conversely, in the same letter to the seven churches of Revelations, the Risen Lord tells those who were faithful in the church in Thyatira, ‘who keep my word till the end,’ that to them He will ‘give authority over the nations’ (2:26). Now this is a pretty awesome promise! What our Lord is saying is that the church has authority over the nations, or as in our case, our nation. In other words, in some manner, not spelt out here, the well-being of our nation is tied up with the faithfulness of the church. Could this mean that if the church in our country truly walks in holiness and seeks God in humble prayer, then not only will revival follow, but the nation will be blessed as well? It would appear that if the story of John Sung is anything to go by, this is what the Lord is saying to us today.

Christians forget too easily the importance of repentance, holy living and prayer. When we live in repentance and holiness, we are telling God that the Holy Spirit is welcomed amongst us. He will therefore come and work powerfully in our midst. When we truly pray and ask God to act, we are really humbling ourselves before God. When human pride and self-sufficiency get out of the way, the Spirit is then free to do His work!

We see this truth repeatedly in the Bible and in church history. In the 9th century BC,Judah was attack by a powerful military coalition from Moab, Ammon and Mount Seir. King Jehoshaphat, realising that the enemy was simply too powerful for him, ‘set his face to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout Judah’ (2 Chron 20:3). As the nation prayed, God’s word of assurance came: ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismay at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s’ (20:15). The result was that the enemy forces self-destructed through in-fighting, and ‘the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for His God gave him rest all around’ (20:30).

More than 100 years later, an even greater deliverance took place around the year 700 BC. Judah was attacked by one of the world powers of the day, the Assyrian Empire. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was sweeping through the whole region in an orgy of conquest, tearing down fortresses and destroying cities one after and another. Jerusalem was puny in comparison and nothing in his eyes. Hezekiah, king of Judah, had only God to turn to and no other. And as he and his people prayed, the prophet Isaiah came with a clear message from God concerning the enemy: ‘He shall not come into this city, declares the LORD. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David’ (2 Kings 19:33f). The Bible tells us that ‘that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of Assyrians’ (19:35). This miraculous deliverance is actually recorded in secular history by the Greek historian, Herodotus, who attributed the destruction of the Assyrian army to bubonic plague.

When God’s people in this country begin to takes these things seriously, Christ, the Lord of our church will come as He promised

Such things have been repeated throughout the history of the church. This is certainly true of Methodism in its first hundred years. As I have already pointed in an earlier article in this series, that the Methodist revival and its emphasis on holy living, together with the work of Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect on moral reform, contributed immensely to the decline of corruption in 18th and 19th century England. Again, Roy Hattersley, a former Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party, could speak of Wesley being one of the great architects of modern Britain through building an honest and hardworking working class which became ‘the indispensable backbone of industrial and imperial England.’ And in the last article we also noted how the South African church, through united prayer, brought about a miraculous breakthrough in the reconciliation and peace process in that country. This enabled the country to avert a bloody civil war which would have resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, being killed! Instead, South Africa marched joyfully days later into her first free election ever and a new democratic era!

How do we as Malaysian Christians respond to these things? Paul, writing to the Galatian church, urged: ‘Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up’ (Gal 6:9). Every one of us are gifted and called differently. In the preceding articles, I have suggested that there are different things we can do to make a significant contribution to nation-building in our country. May God strengthen each of us so that we will all do what we are called to and what our hands find to do, and not ‘grow weary of doing good’! But over and above these things, I would like to bring us back to the point I made earlier, which is that God’s primary concern is with His church, rather than with the nation. Yes, this seems to be what is repeatedly asserted in the Bible, that God is primarily concerned with His people, His church. This is not to say that God does love our country and all the peoples in it. Rather, this is to say that it is God’s purpose to call forth the church, so that the church as the people of God will become His instrument of salvation and transformation for the society in which they live. This is what Peter meant when he wrote: ‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may declare the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’ (2 Pet 2:9).

If this is correct, then there is something here that every Christian can and must do—to strive to be what God expects us to be. Space does not allow me to go into elaborate arguments. But at the heart of being God’s people are three things: holiness, unity and prayer. The challenge before us to recognise what it is that we must do to live holy lives day by day, to strive for the unity that we have in Christ through our love for one another, and above all to seek God in genuine repentance and humble prayer. (On the issue of prayer, please refer two other related items in this issue of the Pelita: the announcement on ‘Prayer United’ and ‘A Call to Prayer for the Church and our Nation Malaysia.’) 

When God’s people in this country begin to takes these things seriously, Christ, the Lord of our church will come as He promised. And through His Spirit, He will pour His very presence, power and glory upon His people to revive the church, transform the nation, and bless all the peoples of this land!