Sun Yat Sen 孫中山 and John Sung 宋尚節

Today is the birthday of Sun Yat Sen (孫中山).

Sun Yat-sen (12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary and political leader. He became a Christian wanted to revolutionise China. Instead of using the Gospel to transform the Chinese, he came up with his idea of revolution on based on the Three Principles (三民主義): Nationalism (民族主義), Democracy (民權主義), and People's Livelihood (民生主義). He came up with a constitution with five separate branches: the executive, legislative, judicial, the censorate, and the civil service system. The first three branches were like that of the American Constituion. The latter two were traditional branches of the Chinese government and functioned as a check on the first three. His political party, which eventually became Kuomintang (KMT 国民党), ruled China after the successful Northern Expedition (北伐) in 1928. After that, Kuomintang declined and eventually retreated to Taiwan. In 2004, it lost the presidential election to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). China was not transformed, but became Communist in 1949.

John Sung (29 September 1901 – 18 August 1944) one of the most fruitful servants of God in the 20th century. John Sung did not come out with any revolutionary ideas to transform China. He just preached the Gospel. He started his ministry when he was 28 and it went on until his death just a month before his 43rd birthday. In his 15 years of ministry, there were 100,000 recorded conversions and millions of others revived through his ministry. He used to preach three times a day and one sermon could go on for 2 hours. John Sung’s messages were focused on the need for repentance and he preached against sin. He took the issue of sin very seriously and often invited his audience to repent to a list of specific sins that he read out. He spoke out against sin and hypocrisy, even at the ministers and pastoral staffs who were with him at the meetings.

When the Communists took over in 1949, there were roughly 800,000 Protestant Christians in China. In 1954, the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM 中国基督教三自爱国运动委员会) was formed as the official church in China. Christians abandon the TSPM and establish house churches (家庭教會、地下教會、地下天國). During the decade from 1966 to 1976, Christians in China were persecuted by the Red Guards. By 1977 an open door policy pursued by Deng Xiao-ping. Since then, Protestant churches, with or without buildings, have been opening or re-opening. The number of Christians have risen to a total estimated at anywhere between 50 to 100 million.

Today, many of the house church Christians could some how trace their spiritual lineage back to John Sung. China is transformed by the simple Gospel, which change the lives of individual Chinese. The grand ideas of Communism and Sun's Three Principles which focused on society and politics could not change the hearts of the individual. It only serves to glorify those who espouse the ideologies.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The world cannot be changed by social revolutions and men's ideologies. It can only be changed one by one, individually, by the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus Christ, to the Glory of God.