"God did not create us in this world merely to beget children and carry on our kind, to amass wealth, to leave a famous name, or to feast and make merry. God created humankind in the world to reverence and love Him, and after this life to reward them in heaven with the everlasting bliss of God Himself. Our time in the world is short, no more than a temporary stay; heaven is our true home. We are now in the world as on a journey, so we should regard the things of this world as things we pass by the roadside, and not let our hearts cling to them."
— Ferdinand Verbiest
Source: Jiaoyao xulun (An Introduction to the Essentials of the Doctrine, 1670)
Doing good, eternity, wealth, and the human world.
Views: 363
"China, happier in its foundation than any other nation under the sun, drew in the chief of the holy maxims of their ancient religion from the fountain head. ... Hoamti the third Emperor built a temple to the Sovereign Lord of Heaven; and although Judea had the honour of consecrating to him one more rich and magnificent, hallowed even by the presence of our Creator and the prayers of our Redeemer, it is no small glory to China to have sacrificed to their Creator in the most ancient temple of the world."
— Louis Le Comte
Source: Nouveaux mémoires sur l'état présent de la Chine (1696); Eng. tr. Memoirs and Observations ... Made in a Late Journey through the Empire of China (London, 1697), letter to Cardinal de Bouillon
God, Heaven, God, Reason, Divine, Creation
Views: 331
"Marie Monsen (1878–1962), a Norwegian Lutheran missionary who arrived in China in 1901 and served there some thirty years, was a catalyst of the Shandong revival of the early 1930s. According to Paul Hattaway, her question "Have you ever really been born again?" burned throughout many parts of China; held up to the searching light of God's Word, many professing Christians realized that Christianity had merely been pasted over their lives as a veneer, and that they had never been thoroughly converted to Christ nor forsaken their sins. A Lutheran missionary recalled that her plan was first to destroy the false security of church members, exposing the "patches" the unsaved hid behind to persuade themselves they were saved, and then to speak of sin, one sin at a time."
— Paul Hattaway
Source: Paul Hattaway, HENAN: Inside the Greatest Christian Revival in History, excerpt "Marie Monsen: The Mother of the House Churches" (asiaharvest.org); biographical details from BDCC, "Monsen, Marie"
Religion, Christianity, salvation, hidden sin, Holy Spirit, revival, sin, holiness
Views: 289
"We need to understand a great deal more about the major religious emphases in China and India. In China, for example, to select three of the major words in its religious vocabulary: hsiao, ho, jen; the first lays emphasis on the filial relationship; the second, on spiritual harmony; the third, on what we may call for lack of a better term, humanity. The Chinese character jen, humanity, is that of a man beside two horizontal strokes, the upper representing heaven and the lower our earthly existence. Humanity is the thing that links the eternal with the temporal."
— Edward H. Hume
Source: Facing the Future of the Missionary Movement, preliminary paper for the Second General Session of the Institute of Pacific Relations (Honolulu, 1927)
Universe, Unity, Yin and Yang, Holy Spirit, Soul
Views: 282
"The French Jesuit Claude de Visdelou (1656–1737) was one of the missionaries sent to China by Louis XIV in 1687, and he acquired a wide knowledge of the Chinese language and literature. When the papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon came to China in 1705 to settle the question of the Chinese Rites, Visdelou was the only Jesuit favourable to their prohibition. Secretly consecrated bishop in Macau in 1709, he went on to Pondicherry, where he lived in great retirement in the house of the French Capuchins until his death nearly thirty years later, working almost solely on the more than 500 Chinese volumes he had taken with him."
— Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia, "Claude de Visdelou" (after the Catholic Encyclopedia)
Nature, reason, cross, philosophy, morality, revelation, faith, wisdom
Views: 277
"In 1897 the Christian and Missionary Alliance sent the Canadian Robert A. Jaffray to Wuzhou, Guangxi, where he served for 35 years, leading the Alliance work in South China, helping to found the Wuzhou Bible School, and editing the Chinese Bible Magazine, which was read in Chinese communities all over the world. To reach the overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia he founded the Chinese Foreign Missionary Union, which sent missionaries to Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, yet he refused to be its president, believing Chinese leaders should take up that role. After Japan invaded the Indonesian island where he was stationed in 1942, he was interned and died in captivity in 1945 of illness and malnutrition."
— Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia, "Robert A. Jaffray"
Chinese, vessel, grace, gospel, mission, soul, missionary
Views: 371