TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
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THE SEWDAWS IS THE LASHOF THE RlSlSfi SES
Rev. Timothy Pietsch Scandinavian Alliance Missionary to Japan
Lord-of Glory who saves from sin, in order to be saved. To even suggest that accepting Christ as Saviour is less than accepting Him as Lord is expressing disrespect for His wonder ful work upon the Cross, by which He paid the price of our redemption. Be cause He is the Saviour, God has made him Lord. “If thou shalt con fess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9 R. V.). I did not find a single passage of Scrip ture that gave any assurance of sal vation if one believed in Jesus as Sav iour, but rejected Him as Lord. In John 1:12 we read: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” What does it mean to “receive Him” ? In the first Chapter of John, He is presented as the Creator of the universe who came to take that which rightly belonged to Him in order to rule over it. But some of the saddest words of the Bible are found in verses 10 and 11: “He was in the world, and, the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him1 not.” Long before His birth in Beth lehem, our Lord was rejected of men, and to this very day this world and its systems have no place fbr Him. In Japan, there was no difficulty in preaching Jesus as Saviour, if we eliminated from the message His, Lordship. Just as the crowd before Pilate shouted: “Away with him, away with him, crucify him” (John 19:15), so the world today cries out against Him. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed” (Psa. 2:1, 2). It is imperative that Christian pas tors, evangelists and teachers present Him as the Lord who saves from sin. He is not one who may be received as Saviour now and later on as Lord. It behooves us, as we approach the day of our Lord’s return, to make sure that we know Him as Lord. This is what distinguishes us from the devil’s crowd. The dying thief said unto Him, “Lord, remember me when thorn comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42). “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13),
legiance to Christ without being con sidered subversive. For the Japanese people as a whole, it seems to me that they will always consider Hirohito more than a man at least so long as they continued to call him Tenno Heika, which literally means “Heaven’s descended majesty.” Especially is this true of the country people who from their childhood have had drilled into them the doctrine of the divinity of the emperor. In 1940, the Kempeitai (military po lice) officials sent out a questionnaire to pastors and Christians of the Osaka area. Each one of the questions was so worded that it struck fear to the hearts of those who had to reply. There were such questions as, “Who is your Christian’s God?” “Which is more important — the imperial re script of the son of heaven, or your Christian Bible?” “Who is greater, our Japanese son of heaven, or your Jesus Christ?” Many made this evasive an swer to the last qustion: “Jesus is our Saviour; the son of heaven is our Lord.” Many prominent Christian leaders of Japan went to the Shinto shrines to worship. They claimed that when they did obeisance before these shrines, they were not praying to the deity there enshrined, but to the true God. But the Japanese words they used to describe these visits was suru, which means “to go and wor ship.” Thank God, these acts before the Shinto shrines are no longer com pulsory, and the first rays of religious liberty are lighting the land., The conditions that prevailed during the black night of Shinto domination in Japan were like those which will take place in all the earth during the reign of antichrist. Men will be com pelled to render complete allegiance to a false ruler. Any man who puts the Lord Jesus Christ above him will be branded a traitor. No one will be allowed to buy or sell unless he bears the mark of the lawless one, who will not only demand “the things that be Caesar’s,” but' also “the things that belong unto God.” What Is Our Message? WhiN T was doing missionary work in Japan, and wondering how it was possible for so-called Christians to compromise with a system of idolatry, I began to search my Bible. It was deeply impressed upon my heart that one must accept Christ as Lord, the
Helen and Timothy Pietsch Sally Sue, Kelsey and Tiny Tim S INCE THE sun of militarism and spiritual awakening and of opportuni ty for making Christ known. Like a miner who has lived underground so long that he is blinded when he comes forth into the light of day, the Japa nese people today are unable to com prehend the true meaning of what is taking place in their country. The emperor’s statement of New Year’s Day, 1946, that, after all, he was not a god, and that state Shintoism was no longer compulsory in Japan, will make it possible for the first time in the history of this country for the peo ple to openly discuss the divinity of their ruler, and to accept the Lord Jesus Christ without being called traitors to their land. Up to the present time, the consti tution of Japan, granted to his sub jects by “the son of heaven,” provid ed that the Japanese might have any religion “not prejudicial to law and order.” A Japanese official . once stated it clearly to me: “You are al lowed to have any religion you desire, Shintoism, Buddhism or Christianity, just so long as you worship the em peror and give him first allegiance.” However, even to be such a Chris tian took a great deal of courage, for the nation as a whole considered Christianity a foreign religion, op posed to the domination of the world by Japan, and her policy of Hakko Ichu (eight comers of the universe un der one roof). Now, under the new decree, Christians may give first al
world conquest has gone down in the land of Japan, we see at last the faint rays of a new dawn of
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