Chinese are curious about Jews

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/17848631[/vimeo]

 

Check out more episodes of A New York Jew in China here and here.

June 12, 2011 | 4 Comments »

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  1. An excellent portrayal of what many Chinese people know and think of the Jews. Prof Xiao Xian (also spelled Xu Xin) is a good friend whom we first met 11 years ago during our first visit to China. He is an expert on the history of the Jews of Kaifeng and has studied and taught in the US and Israel on many occasions.

  4. Ted,

    It’s interesting that you should post this video at this time. I produce a weekly Bible study on the local TV station, and was preparing my next lesson. The subject? “Persecution and the growth of Christianity in China”.

    My “sermon” is part of a series I’ve been giving on Bible prophecy about the end of the world. I decided to produce it, after the almost comical prediction that the “rapture” was supposed to have come this past May. The date’s been updated to October — which is more sad than comical, considering that there are many Christians and others who are still clinging to the words of that false prophet. So, I decided to do a teaching on what the scriptures really say, to keep vulnerable people from being disillusioned.

    The nugget of my teaching, is that there WILL BE no rapture; but that all believers in the world will suffer persecution for their faith in the Bible. Christians will suffer this, and so will Jews; and curiously, it is BIBLE-BELIEVING Christians and Jews who are suffering on this very day in the press, in the universities and in the political forums of the world. More direct persecution is coming in the form of rocket attacks on Israel, and the massacre of Christians in places like Egypt and Iraq; but a quieter persecution is happening today in China. I just looked up a website touching the matter:

    “No one would have expected that the annual persecution report of 2006 would start with
    astounding news issued by the persecutor. According to a reliable source, recently Mr.
    Yie Xiaowen, the director of the Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs
    (SARA), revealed in two internal meetings held at Beijing Universities and the Chinese
    Academy of Social Science that the number of Christians in China reached 130 million
    by the end of 2006, including about 20 million Catholics…”

    Concerning the interest in Judaism by the Chinese, I think this is a natural outgrowth of the spread of Bible-believing Christianity: The Chinese are given and taught the Bible by native Chinese evangelists in the “house church” movement; those receiving Bibles and reading them then learn about Israel and the Jews.

    Despite the deep rift between institutional Judaism and institutional Christianity in the West, and the animosity and violence this has spurned, the Chinese do not see an obvious separation between the two religions. My Chinese son-in-law asked me several years ago, just before he married my daughter, “What is the difference between Christianity and Judaism?” He was sincere, and I answered him that we were two schisms of the same religion, with each schism believing that they had the one and only green light from God. He understood this answer perfectly. Here in the West, of course, we are much more sophisticated.