Aloha Ke Akua
2006 Year End Report and 2007 Outlook
Japan Report
God at work in Japan, Brazil, Hawaii...
by Daniel Kikawa
It will no longer be, "Come to the
foreign God who dwelt elsewhere and did not care about communicating
with your ancestors," to "Come home to the true
God of Japan who lovingly placed your ancestors in Japan and was always
there for them, hoping they would seek Him. (Acts 17:26-28).
We left
Him for other gods, we now need to repent and COME HOME to our true God
of Japan. He waits for us like the loving father of the prodigal son,
hoping we will remember Him and come home to Him. He made a way for us
to do this through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus."
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Amazing things are happening in Japan. “God’s
Fingerprints in Japan” has caused a huge “buzz” in the Christian
community. Most are very excited about this new and effective way to
present the Gospel, and there are some, as should be expected with
anything new that is not in the “established way,” have been cautious
and a few against it. The debate and controversy are good because it
forces everyone to search the Scriptures and re-evaluate their theology.
Because of the great interest among pastors and
missionaries and because of Japanese Christians who were so excited
that they had run ahead of us and set up many meetings and interviews
for us, David Matsuura (former Hawaii State Senator), Junji Ono (Head
of Japanese churches in Hawaii and Japan for Hope Chapel, co-producer
of “God’s Fingerprints in Japan and our main interpreter) and I went to
Japan Dec. 4-11. We met with about 75 pastors, missionaries and
Christian leaders in
Tokyo,
Nagoya and Osaka, and had interviews with Christian newspapers. We also
met with prominent politicians and business people. The meetings went
very well and the pastors would like us to return to further teach on
the theology and missiology of Culture Specific Evangelism. We will be
having a seminar with the Tokyo pastors March 26-27. The Nagoya and
Osaka meetings are not yet set.
On this trip we also met a Brazilian pastor who contacted
us later to tell us that the Brazilian Japanese Fellowship would like
to translate “God’s Fingerprints in Japan” into Portuguese and Spanish.
A portion of his email follows:
“As you probably know, we have
around 400 Christian groups(including churches and smaller
congregations that speak Portuguese in Japan and 1% of our
population in Brazil are Japanese descendants(1.500.000 people) and in
2008 we will be celebrating the Centenary of Japanese Immigration to
Brazil(1908-2008) and the Confederation of Japanese Churches in Brazil
are putting together many projects to be launched at that opportunity
and we believe as a group that it is worth to consider this DVD part of
this project too.
Besides that we have some other Japanese descendants
who are Spanish Speakers too and we have some Spanish speaking people
in our congregation willing to translate/narrate the DVD God's
Fingerprints in Spanish too.
We believe that this material can be a great tool of
awakening among Brazilian Churches here in
Japan
as well as in Brazil. Most of the Portuguese Pastors of Kanto
Fellowship were really impressed by the content and technical quality
of the video and congratulate you for such an excellent work.”
Two of the most exciting
developments:
We met with the former Minister of Defense, Justice and
Diet member, Mr. Tanigawa, who is well known in Japan. The
New Prime Minister of Japan wants to put religious teaching back into
the public schools. This has not been done since WWII. This is because
Japanese children, like those in the US, have become rudderless, having
no absolute moral values without religious moral values. Mr. Tanigawa,
who is now a Christian, wants to have information about
Amenominakanushi included in the public school curriculum. This is very
important for Christianity in Japan. If Christianity is not considered
“Japanese,” it will not be included because it is foreign. Please pray
for this! We are just in the beginning stages of communication with Mr.
Tanigawa.
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We met with members of the Abe family. This family, I am
told, is from one of the three oldest and most important families in
Japan. Emperors and Shoguns could only come from these three hereditary
lines. This branch of the Abe family has been pastors for two
generations! These Christians were shocked to see Amenominakanushi
mentioned in God’s Fingerprints in Japan. When they came to Christ,
they were told that the Japanese only worshipped the eight million
Kami and never knew the One Creator God. They recognized the name
because this name and a short creation account are at the
beginning of their family genealogy scroll! This scroll lists their
ancestors for over 2000 years (over 40 generations, only a few
important families have these scrolls and the Abes only know of four
others like it) before it enters a mythical period which we do not know
the length of. The Abes suddenly realized that the Japanese did know
God and the proof of that is right in their precious genealogy! With
this realization, came the realization that the Japanese knew the
Creator God and then
left
the Creator God for the eight million Kami.
This is purely Romans 1:19-26! Now they are convicted that they
need to repent for leaving their true God for images of
man, beasts and nature! This is 2nd Chronicles 7:14! If they
lead the Japanese Christians in repenting until God hears their cry and
forgives their sin, God can heal Japan of their spiritual drought!
Shades of Hawaii on March 14, 1998, the repentance of human sacrifices
to other gods and the healing of the land!
Of course it will also help with evangelism. It flips
evangelism in Japan upside-down. It will no longer be, "Come to the
foreign God who dwelt elsewhere and did not care about communicating
with your ancestors," to "Come home to the true
God of Japan who lovingly placed your ancestors in Japan and was always
there for them, hoping they would seek Him. (Acts 17:26-28). We left
Him for other gods, we now need to repent and COME HOME to our true God
of Japan. He waits for us like the loving father of the prodigal son,
hoping we will remember Him and come home to Him. He made a way for us
to do this through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus."
The importance of this revelation to evangelism cannot be
stressed enough. The Bible says that we love Christ because He first
loved us. If we begin with the old premise of evangelism, we
have lost before we have even begun because He is not a God who loves
us! Through Culture Specific Evangelism, He can now be the
loving Father of the Japanese.
Isn’t this just like God? Out of the hundreds of millions
of Japanese in Japan and around the world, this family came into
possession of one of four known genealogies of this type. The father of
Mr. Abe was the fifth son in the family and so would not have inherited
the genealogy scroll so he took six months to copy it. The original
scroll was then destroyed at
Hiroshima!
God preserved this precious genealogy and placed it in a family of two
generations of Christian pastors (extremely rare in Japan) for such a
time as this!
We will be filming the Abe genealogy in late March. We
will be having two PhDs translating the creation account (It is in
ancient Japanese which is a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese that most
Japanese cannot read.), Professor Uemura from the Lutheran Seminary in
Japan and the head of the Japanese Studies dept. of the University of
Hawaii who is not a Christian. We hope to find a secular professor in
Japan also.
I have been meeting with Japanese of all ages and many
walks of life, trying to understand their worldview and how to best
present this new film. From early twenties to elderly, they think that
this film on the Abe genealogy scroll is very important to bringing
people of their age group to Christ. I have found something else
interesting, most Western people have told me that the young Japanese
don’t care about Japanese culture; they sure dress Western and seem to
like Western things more than Japanese. However, every Japanese young
person I have asked directly, “Do you love Japanese culture,” has
replied an emphatic, “YES!”
There is more about the new film under the 2007 overview.
