Could the Japanese disaster cause this secular country to turn to God?

[James Nored]

A Japanese woman hangs her pray on a slatted-wall surrounding a "divine" tree outside a Shinto shrine in Tokyo. The woman's prayer asks for protection in the ongoing nuclear crisis.  BP Photo by Susie Rain.

A recent Baptist Press article, Disaster pushes Japanese beyond secular thinking, details the very secular thinking of most Japanese and how the current disaster in Japan could cause them to turn to God. In this article, one Japanese family who once did not believe in God detail how they turned to God during a previous disaster.

 

I do not presume to know why this disaster happened. I have prayed for the Japanese people, and I hope that many lives will be saved and people will be helped through these terrible times.

 

But there is no doubt that difficult times can cause a person to turn to God. The Japanese do not have a biblical understanding of God. They have a saying, "The god that you depend on in times of crisis." When times are tough, and they have tried everything else, they may try God. Or god (little g), because they do not know the one true God. Perhaps it is this lack of knowledge of the true God that causes them to turn to God only temporarily. 

 

My prayer is that in this crisis, Christian relief groups and workers will be able to introduce the Japanese to the one true God of Israel.

 

And my prayer for all of us is that we will turn to God during difficult times as well. It may that God can only get our attention during these times.

 

Do you think that the disaster in Japan will result in the Japanese turning more towards God? Why is it that it often takes difficult times for us to turn to God?

 

[Ryan Lloyd]

James, I recieved this email from Wolfgang Simson and found it very insightful to the above discussion and copied and pasted it below.  Would love to discuss this more.  Windows of opportunity to reach "the ends of the earth" are open.  I'm listening.   

Dear friends,

 

As you will see, this is a different kind of mail about Japan. It is time to go beyond the superficial oh-my-goodness-condolences, stunned speechlessness and the feeling of powerlessness. It is not enough to sit in front of the TV and passively watch, while the media is in a feeding frenzy, driving the reality show with ever new twists and gruesome pictures – without any Kingdom answers, but with record viewers for their TV ads.

 

Kingdom people do not see things the way the worlds sees it. And therefore they do not respond the way the world responds. They respond in alignment with the King. They don´t just ask, what is happening, but why is it happening. God, beyond your works, what are your ways? What is the Kingdom significance of all this?

 

As anyone can see, something of an apocalyptic nature is happening on the planet, to the planet and sometimes through the planet; something that at this intensity and speed has not happened before. The tip of the iceberg: In the year 2008, Reinsurance giant “Swiss Re” lists 311 (173 of them “man- made”) catastrophes for that year, killing about 250.000 people and costing 7.4 billion US $. Add to this the credit crisis. Year 2009: Swiss-Re lists 850 catastrophes (damage of 50 $ b); Year 2010: Swiss-Re lists 950 catastrophes with about 295.000 dead (and a damage of 130 billion $); 250.000 alone die after the earthquake in Haiti; worst floods in Pakistan’s history displaces millions; mud buries folks in China, and fires devastate the area around Mt. Carmel in Israel. Year 2011, so far:Australia experiences unimaginable draught, fire and floods. Much of the inner city of Christchurch (New Zealand) is leveled, its Cathedral badly damaged. Speak of a symbolic place… The Arab world is like a sea in uproar…

 

But now back to Japan. Why would God allow this nation to be thrown into an almost apocalyptic distress? Japan, as a nation, is drunk by world-class workaholism and driven by an unparalleled technology craze and the desire to compete with other global players for an ever increasing market share. Many Japanese workers are not much more than actual bond-slaves of their companies. The nation is drowning in a gigantic national debt of 218,6% of its GDP (the highest debt of any top-industry nations, double that of bankrupt Greece). Now the biblical prophecy of Jesus, that “the sea and the waves are roaring” (Luke 21:25), touches Japan and creates, what Jesus calls a “nation in distress”: it is shaken by a quadruple-punch of seaquake/earthquake, the resulting tsunami, atomic power plants gone wild, andeven a volcano re-erupting in the south. A situation that even EU-energy commissioner Günther Oettinger calls what it truly is: apocalyptic. And finally, if we take God’s jealousy about Israel his love serious, Japan is in trouble: Japan does not recognize any unilateral measures that prejudge the final resolution on pre-1967 borders, nor does Japan recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel, and is constantly bickering about various decisions of the Israeli government, a situation that God does not take lightly.

 

A world without a God-perspective simply does not know how to handle this beyond cleaning up and trying to rebuild things how they were before. From a Kingdom perspective this means they have learnt nothing and everyone can now go back to keep on sinning, violating God’s principles of life as an individual and as a nation. In the absence of a connection to God they believe, like animists, that they are in the hands of “the elements” or “Mother Nature”, whoever that is.

 

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN WITH US?

 

1) We need to recapture a Kingdom perspective, now.

To this end, Mercy and I are producing small, homemade, youtube-able Kingdom-rediscovery-videos; make sure you don´t miss them. And tell others about them. We will produce about 1 or 2 each week. You can find them by following this link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/WolfgangSimson?feature=mhum#p/u/3/gSCVA...

or

http://whileweslept.wordpress.com

 

2)  Kingdom citizens have no reason to fret. They remember the words of their King who said (Luke 21:28): „When these things start to happen, stand up and lift your heads, because your redemption is near.“

 

3) Kingdom-Alignment. It is not enough to agree about Kingdom issues in theory – and practically live like everybody else. We need to un-align ourselves from powerless religion and start aligning ourselves with Kingdom principles, especially in the crucial areas church, money, power, sex.

 

4) Don’t do what the world does, but do what only Kingdom people can do, and no-one else. Kingdom people do not need to join the choir of a world without God that only sees the superficial humanitarian, economic, scientific or psychological aspects of disasters. Yes, we humans do need space to grieve. But Kingdom people have so much more to offer and to do than just re-act: lighting candles, observe minutes of silence and send money for humanitarian aid. We can and should be pro-active and go beyond treating symptoms that can be delivered by many well-qualified people, government agencies or the thousands of secular NGO-organizations dedicated to that. Seek first the Kingdom also means that we do what non-Kingdom people cannot and will not do.

 

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN ABOUT JAPAN?

 

1. Pray that the nation hears Gods voice calling them back to him and relinquish their powerless idols. Pray particularly for the Japanese church –where the judgment of God starts – (1. Peter 4:17) to wake up from its amazing fossilization and spiritual coldness and repent by coming back out of the caves of imported religion and become legal citizens of the Kingdom of God.

 

2. Japan needs to hear the Gospel of the Kingdom. It has heard many imported Western versions of a watered-down, effeminate “Gospel” that has almost completely failed to be truly Good News and is, as the last decades have shown,  powerless to turn Japan upside down the way it is described by folks in Thessalonica (Acts 17:6).

 

3. Japan needs to know that a God of love sometimes has to shake his disobedient child to prevent further disaster. Shaking simply is part of what God does: “He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble” (Job 9:6); “The voice of the LORD shakes the desert; the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.” (Psalm 29:8); “He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction” (Isa 30:28); “Before them the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine“ (Joel 2:9-11).

 

4. A shaking is the right time for a new start. Japan needs a new church, a Kingdom based church. And this initiative needs new leaders. I believe God is calling together a new avant-garde and very few of them will come from the traditional church. Many are innovators, inventors, pioneers, entrepreneurs, and are found in business, politics, sports, culture.

 

Since 10 years we are in contact with some precious leaders in Japan. Last August, I was in Osaka to speak at a meeting about the Starfish Initiative. We are therefore already in contact with such friends in Japan right now and discuss to bring together such a core team – Japanese and non-Japanese - as soon as possible, maybe even this month. The goal of such a meeting is to help Japan respond to God shaking the nation, and to align themselves as much as possible with what their true Emperor – Jesus, the King of Kings - wants for them.

 

Pray and listen to what God wants you to do here. If you are able and in a position to help financially for covering the costs for such an initial meeting (about 10 people, flights, food, shelter for 3 days), please get back to me about that as soon as possible.

 

And lastly: 13 years ago, during a morning prayer time in Switzerland when the sun rose, God, out of a sudden, started to talk to me about Japan! And he dictated a message to me that I had to write down for a later time. We have attached a PDF with that original message – and an explanation or application of it. Feel free to pass it on.

You can also watch the very same message as a video on youtube, just click on the links below…

 

Part 1: HOW THIS MESSAGE CAME TO ME
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFDKSJKTRSQ

  Part 2: JAPAN, MY PEPOPLE. WHAT GOD IS SAYING TO JAPAN RIGHT NOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRr6xvvAypQ

  Part 3: WHAT DOES THIS MESSAGE MEAN?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSTXoNeuH3k

 

 

 

Blessings,

Wolfgang and Mercy Simson

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[Bill Bowman]

When times are good I feel independent and powerful.  Why should I seek a god when I don't need one.  But when bad times come and I am brought down to having to call out for help, I am more willing to consider this God who offers to me a way to cope in bad times.  When I see people who espouse this God come to me with aid, that further  opens my heart to reconsider what I have been missing all my life.