Hidden Codes in Chinese Characters by Steven Liu (10 September 2016)

[Music] Pastor St could you tell us a little bit about your history as well where you know where were you born where were you from Yes um I share a little bit um in my first talk I was grw up and I was born in China grew up in China uh in the city of Shanghai I came to Australia over 20 years ago as a student uh then I of course start to live here in Melbourne and uh so I wasn't actually I was an atheist all my life until probably just little less than 10

years ago when I first came to Gateway and came to the K Group small group Ministry and became to be aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit and God in the Bible and everything so through Bible study I became a Seventh Day Adventist that's fantastic so uh for all those as sparring pastors out there he's one we prepared earlier just 10 years in the making it is definitely possible thank you thank you thank you so much P for being with us we look forward to your presentation thank you thank you Matthew for the introduction

I like to welcome those of you who just joined us uh for the second session uh I have had to apologize again uh on the topic on the screen previously you probably see the slides the first talk supposed to be the character in the Chinese um Chinese characters in The Bible second session is the link between the CH history and the Bible uh I did a switch around for the purpose of just give us a better understanding and lay down lay down some foundational knowledge for us to proceed with the characters um also what I

want to do is U I was told initially I only have half an hour for the talk but then I was told I can an hour if if more I can uh uh continue to do so so as long as I like yes so I just said to the gentleman uh well I will stop talking when I see more people in the audience are agreeing with me like this so don't worry know where to I know when to stop and I know where to stop as well what I want to do is go through the

material more material I just want to share with you there are actually a lot more material than what we can cover today in two sessions back in uh my own church we've been running this program for probably over six to seven years now um some uh situations we we can run a twoe programs just on these particular topics that only covers a very very small percentage or portion of the material that's that will be available to you if you can if you want to look further that teaches us U these particular links between the Chinese

culture and Christianity the Bible and God I want to start with a word on the screen you can probably see that on the screen we have a character on the left hand side this character is one of the most common word in Chinese is that refer to God it does not refer to a particular God not like the word Shandi as I mentioned in my first talk which is a specific term the Chinese use to refer to the god of the Creator they worship in the time of confusious who is an invisible all powerful moral

lawgiver and the Creator God Shandi this word is more General it simply refer to aide deity aide but the thing with the Chinese character unlike English or the most of the western language today are alphabetical languages the Chinese language the characters are what we known as pictogram in other words each single word is made of made up by different components in the most ancient form of this this language each one of these component is like a picture that make sense each one of those components is like a picture it's a joy actually means something so

let's use this word to Star Wars the word of the word Shen okay which is the English word is God is made of if you can see three components here the one on the left there's one component here there is one big stroke down the middle and then there's also another component here can you see that on the screen that's how the word was made up each one of these component actually has its own meaning so for example this is a very common component or in you if you want to be more technical we call

it radicals radical means a specific component of a character that actually give us the character certain meanings so this radical or this component which means to reveal or declare specifically from the spiritual sense to reveal or declare from God and then this is also a component in the character and it means a man a person somebody a person and then this character or this component means a field or a garden a place now why why did you may ask the question why would the word or the character God is made up from Revelation a man

and a garden let's do one exercise first how many of you put your hand up if you're a Christian you're a Bible believing Christian put your hand up okay that is wow most of you okay now put your hand up if you are currently not a Bible believing Christian that's also okay put your hand up if you're not a Bible believing Christian question no if you know if you are not a Christian put your hand up no okay uh I want you to do an exercise okay because most of you I'm speaking to the converted

okay because most of you are Christians what I want to do now is to when you're going through for the next maybe 40 or 45 minutes I know it's not going to be easy but just go with me here let's try not to ATT let's try to think from somebody who does not have any biblical knowledge okay let's try that let's let's try to think from a perspective that somebody who do not know God do not know about the Bible or Jesus Christ what the matter somebody who have no knowledge about the gospel stories especially

the Genesis stories right and try to think from that perspective those people let's just say cu the point I'm trying to make here is this for those of you just this is just a refresh from the previous session and for those of you who are not here for the first session as a Chinese myself who grew up and was educated in China we were taught right Christianity and the Bible is for the Western People nothing to do no relevance to the Chinese that's what we were taught in manland China okay I want to debunk that

in the sense is that let's assume that is the case my question now will become if that is the case then I want to understand some of the Chinese character not just some you know sporadic characters but specific characters that's to do with spirituality in our Chinese own culture and our language I want to understand why does these words were made up in such a way that try to tell us some sort of a story or some sort of narrative which we cannot find anywhere else but in the bible let me repeat what the point

I'm trying to make here my point is I want to understand why would the Chinese language especially the characters that's so Central to the spiritual component of the language are made up in such a way that they try to communicate some sort of message or story that cannot be found in any other narratives in our own Chinese cure and the history right the only place you can find those narratives and the story that can fit all these words is in the Bible I want to utilize these characters now I'll go through each one of the

characters after I can have we can we can do this for the next five six seven hours okay because I don't want to see each one of you you know agree with me more than you should I'll just pick some of the most commonly known some of the most famous fam soal famous cases right today and if you want more characters you want more reference more information about this these ideas and topics come and see me afterwards the start with the very first one the word god a revelation a few in the garden I don't

have to go through all this because most of you are Christians you know exactly from The Book of Genesis how the story tells us when when the Bible start to introduce God and his creation work where talks about the creation of man that after he created Adam he put him in the garden now in the in the Chinese culture it's very interesting that the Chinese our own ancient writings also collaborate with this particular teaching I want to make a very quick point there are several ways the Chinese trying to explain where human being came from

okay the three major schools of thought so to speak right now the first school of thought is basically saying that we came from monkeys human beings and monkey came from some lower teer animals so on and so forth this is the common theory of evolution most Chinese actually believe that and there's also people who believe for those who are Buddhists in China they believe that the the the Buddhist teaching of the origin of the human being which is come from this idea of reincarnation but that is itself is very interesting actually really explain to us

exactly where does the first human being of the first being come from as well from the idea then there is also a very small percentage of small portion of the Chinese who actually read our own Chinese writings from ancient times seem to suggest we are created by a Heavenly God one of the things we can see that is from this character here the very word of creation or to create to not just to build or make something from existing material or some something but to create something from nothing so to speak that is the word

create is made up from two major radicals or two major parts the first part is to walk to walk to move forward and the other one is to talk or to communicate and then you can further break down this word to talk to communicate into three parts living dust and man which identify by an open mouth that that has true meanings Can it can sometimes mean a mouth right the mouth or it can also mean a person a man then again a creation we know the story God create everything by speaking but when comes to

man he created a being not a baby right I had a one-year old recently um well the Oney old right now is in a stage where it's still crawling but it's very close to start walking but God did not create a toddler or baby right God created man a fully grown man was able to have conscience was able to have moral um you know uh understanding and to make some judgment and decisions and through that the process living being that was created by God and God communicate that as well we know the story from the

Genesis Adam was very happy in the garden the word Garden again here this is the official word for Garden right is made up from dust breath or mouth there's a bigger one the bigger encl the biggest Square actually means an the enclosure right in the enclosure a person then there's another person so you can say there are two people in this big enclosure they there's a lot of dust in them again where do you see that story again flesh two people there's a border there there's one person plus a border a border then you have

another person how does that make sense how does it make flesh think about it how was Eve created according to the Bible right this is also very interesting word here the word means perfect or benevolence right perfect benevolence you see you have this radical here represents person or people and this is simply a character or word for two how come two people makes it perfect where can you see that isn't one is perfect no not enough what what did God say Adam and Eve who were created perfect at the very beginning they were created perfect

okay the word for forbidden interesting these two radicals you can see that you can put the break them down which means trees or true trees and this one again to command or to review remember I mentioned that before the word character for God Revelation to review or to declare to command so the word for forbidden have the component of two trees or Forest how how does that how does that relate to the story of Genesis what did God say to Adam after he created this perfect environment for he to live he says you can pretty

much do whatever you want eat any fruits in this Garden except for this one tree right this one tree you cannot eat the fruits of that tree that's the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil that's just one tree what about the other one think about it what's the name of the other tree that also mentioned in the account of Genesis Tree of Life That's the tree of life so that command that forbidden command has the two components freedom of choice you can choose to continue to Live Forever by partaking the fruits from the

Tree of Life or you can choose to eat the fruits of that tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil but then you will lose the right or lose the access to the Tree of Life very interesting that's not the only one I'll skip to this one the word for desire or covetousness right is for is this one L again you see the true trees I always I I don't like to use the word teasing but I always ask this question in my class especially I'm teaching uh the people come to church or come to

our um k for the very first time I ask them if the Bible is purely a western book explain to me why in the Chinese word desire is made up from Two Trees plus a woman is that just human nature at play what's wrong with do you know what me is it because the Chinese culture is so patriarchal no because you know why for a very long time in those early days even there a lot more historical evidence to suggests that the Chinese Society was for a very long time especially the early stage was matriarchal

how do you explain the character here especially the word for desire as woman instead of men a lot of words bad words actually have the radical of men in them but not in this one interesting come back to this one this is also very interesting word it means to execute to put something to death or someone to death in ch Chinese the word is true it's made from a character called here is the the radical here means words the words plus the tree plus life plus dust what was the first I guess death sentence that

passed down from God that's right what did God say now you're going to you're going to die unfortunately because you have made that choice because you have eat from the tree right you shouldn't touch then you're going to lose your life by what returning to dust interesting this one of my favorite words I want to quickly explain to you something for those of you you when you I'm sure okay how many of you have friends who are Chinese put your hand up you have friends and neighbor someone you know you come in regular contact with

our Chinese okay I want to before I go any further I want to explain something to you real quick for those of you who don't familiar with this idea in 1949 in 1949 there was a big change in China not just a change of government but also a change of ideology one of the things that happened after 1949 was the government introduced the idea of changing the Chinese characters how do they do that they call it the simplification of Chinese characters I give you an example what you see on the screen the other example I've

used I purposely have chosen all the words in this original form these are what we call today the traditional Chinese anybody here that grew up in say Hong Kong or Taiwan or Malaysia anyone here you grew up in that non Chinese some of you yeah so what language do you learn to write for example is it traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese yes yeah traditional Chinese very good the trouble with traditional Chinese is very complicated it takes ages for you to write something I grew up learning the simplified version of the Chinese I had to say

it makes the life a lot more easier why because it's just simpler to write but you see there's also a problem that comes from the simplification of Chinese characters or language you know what that is the meaning the meaning is lost that's right because when you simplify the Chinese what you're actually doing is you change the picture what did I say you have changed the picture of the character or the language who are supposed to guess what communicate a message to the people who are writing them and reading them let me repeat it one more

time the primary purpose of the language if you sometime I will study Linguistics the one of the primary purpose of the language is to Pres deserve knowledge and to communicate a certain message or certain idea to the Future Generations but by simplifying the characters I can see I can say okay maybe they did it for the better purpose of trying to you know make it easier for more people to receive education this make it easier for people to learn to ride that's fine but the problem the byproduct of that process is a lot of people

grew up in China today they have lost the idea of L lost touch with what these words were supposed to mean originally primary example is this this is a character that means righteousness righteousness it's quite complicated to write you can see that this I I'm sorry I did not have the simplii simplified version on there but the simpli simplified version only has three Strokes one dot one um um sort of squiggle stroke and the other one three stroke that's it that's one word for righteousness but the original word look at this complicated why because it's

made of made up by two major components one simply means sheep the other one means me so let me ask you why sheep and meat makes it righteous you you you have to answer straight away because you know the Bible praise God for that now imagine for one second you are somebody who never read any story in Genesis have no knowledge about the sacrificial system of the Jewish time in the sanctuary service system you do not know the type and the antitype of the sacrificial sacrifice on the cross of Jesus Christ you don't know any

of that let's imagine for one second you don't know any of that and you come across a character like this you have a friend who's Chinese you put this word up and you ask him what this word is they will tell you and then you ask them the second question why is a sheep and me makes the righteous there is no coherent or reasonable explanation can be given in any Chinese historical or literal um writings that can tell you why the only place you can find is the Bible Jesus and you can further if you

really want to go deeper the word me you can even divide that into hand and a knife think about it the first thing that God want Adam to do after he committed sin is to what God has give him a a to cover himself in order to do so God has to kill an animal that's the beginning of the sacrificial system from that point killing the animal and later on it's very clear it's the Sheep right it is necessary step want to remove one sin this is a word that we use on the screen in

the brochure right some you may have seen it you a lot of you know about that the word means a big sheep a big vessel right it's made up by these three components a little or a smaller vessel called jool eight people I was just talking to um Randy was it just before his friend last night he show his friend the Chinese friend his character and ask him the question why eight people in the boat make it a bigger boat we want a bigger boat why because we got eight people inside most most ship can

take I don't know 80 800 even right super Cruiser these days can take what how many people can what Queen Elizabeth second that big Cruiser ship take I don't know few hundreds thousands right eight people in the ship why does it make a bigger boat why well the only place you can find that is in the Bible again who's in the ark you have Noah Noah's wife right that's true who else the three sons of Noah is that it and the wives of those three sons how many people you have in the ark how many

human beings you have eight human beings in the ark right don't believe the holy adaptation that's incorrect okay only eight people in the ark right that's it and what happens after the ark what story comes after The Ark well we know in Genesis 11 vers1 4 and A9 the descendants of shemam and jaffra came out of the AR and what did they do they decid to build a tower right the Tower of bab now interestingly the Chinese word for Tower is again let's break it up dust or Earth grass people one mouth you know what

it's saying it's describing the process of how people were trying to build the Tower of Babel the material they use historian archaeologist now claim they find the original s of the Tower of bab but those those days even with what they can see you have to use material that's available to you at the time Earth or Clay is one the most common material but also grass or vegetations or anything that we utilize to also makes the material stronger also emplo then you have people and why one mouth because when they were building the ark they

were not speaking Cantonese or Mandarin or you know um English or French or Spanish they will speak only one language we don't know what a language is right but the Bible says they were speaking one language and that was the story the Tower of Babel but then what happened God did what what did God do right he caused the confusion God caused the confusion right he caused the confusion of the people so the the word confus or confusion in Chinese notice T and mystery how do you explain that confusion comes from the the the tongue

or the words coming out of their mouth becomes like a mystery if I start if I start speaking shines right now to you most of you will not understand actually who who can speakes here sh okay maybe just one person apart from that that lady over there nobody can understand me it would be just voices right confusion and then what happens after God confused the language of the people what's the purpose of confus the people's language why so they cannot continue building this tower that does not give glory to God right and they want to

build this Tower to give them self Glory not only that God wanted to disperse no longer congregate in that one place right God wanted to be scattered the Bible say they are scattered right all over the place now scattering again Chinese the top part means together all together the second part is flesh right and the one on the right means go so so it's basically saying everyone was in one one place right but then they start to go everywhere scattering now it's very interesting this is this is one of the key words right can I

want you to pay very close attention to this character this will be one of the top three words I will use if I'm conversing to somebody who is familiar with Chinese culture right these are the top three words definitely I will use I use this one the word for migrate migrate means people transfer or they move from one place to another the word for migrate it's like this this is the tradition by the way again these are the traditional characters don't use the simplifi version it doesn't make sense use the traditional version okay this is

traditional that is the the how the Chinese was written thousands of years ago to migrate you break it down big to walk or to travel West stop why West people can say oh that means uh you can travel from the west or you can travel to the West correct you look at the map of China for those of you who know a little bit about the Chinese geography what's east of China the ocean right so what about after that this Japan so you're telling me migrating again if it's related to the Chinese culture migrating is

it likely that it means to travel from the East to the West because from the East there's ocean enough that there Japan most modern historians and Scholars all believe the Japanese indigenous population actually came from the West not the other way around it's not like Japanese moved to China and became the Chinese it's the other way around so the only reasonable explanation is the word migrating is talking about a migration from the West to the east why West again the world West can be break down into one a person in the enclosure so again this

is give you a clue about what West was referring to it's not just W West in America right it's not just Western Europe again the world West even in the Chinese language seem to link that with the Genesis story Adam and the Garden of Eden I want to take this uh opportunity to pause and just think about this right somebody made a very good observation but I want to make this point one more time how the I don't know what happened to this screen this what happened to my top okay sorry technical issue should be

fixing five four three two 1.87 okay how did the Chinese know all the stories thank you Randy you know your LIF how do Chinese know all the stories how do you know they don't have the Bible right they don't have this the Bible we have you have in front of you don't have the Torah the the the first book five books of the Moses you don't have Moses 1 2 3 4 5 how do they know right yeah Pastor what's name again Kevin yeah pastor Kevin mentioned that all tradition remember that oral tradition some things

that's been passed down from generation to generation or okay that is what we know today but I want to show you this word this is the word for to speak or to tell one of the most common words in Chinese yeah so you want to say to speak or to say something to say is this word here it's word again made up from three components this component means the language the written language or language in general language or words this component is eight and then you have very interesting this component here it normally means elder

brother but can also mean in some cultural context elders elders so for example give you an example in the Chinese culture the eldest son will resume or we take up the position as the patriarch of the family as soon as the father of the family passed away the brother will take up to that and also once somebody who become an a someone who's quite respect in a particular community in the Chinese culture that person will be addressed as elder brother although they may that person may not have any biological um connection with anyone else in

the particular Community but then once somebody become a respected person that person will be addressed as as older brother all this work here there therefore the idea of eldership or someone who is Elder of the community mean someone who's respected and someone who is um someone who has authority of the community this word can also mean that so this let me go back to this uh this point here let's break up this character one more time the word for speak is words or language plus eight plus elders think about that for one sec this is

something you have to think about again why at where do we see in the past or in the just moments ago which word has that component eight the word the word for ship a big ship right why eight because in the big ship there are eight people and this is talking about the story of Noah yes we are we tracking yeah we tracking yeah okay now tell me is it possible is it possible the word for speak orally communicate in other words to orally communicate means that take down words take the language coming down from

eight Elders who are the eight Elders in this case is it possible the eight people that came out of the Ark Chinese the ancient Chinese somehow consider them as the eight Elders of their own language and culture is it possible if the biblical account is correct we can say the eight people that came out of the Ark they are considered the eight Elders of the human race today right these are the surviving members of a human civilization that simply got completely destroyed by the flood correct so in the new beginning of the new historical narrative

these eight people their knowledge their says their ideas becomes what consider as the eight Elders or the the cultures origin one more character here the word for passing them or to hand them what water eight people the word for passing down to follow the certain path or you can even go so far to suggest tradition right water eight people so you can see the coding it's like there a every character is try to tell you something there are messages hidden in them you just have to break them break them apart and just stand back and

go H that's interesting I never thought about that the beauty of the Chinese characters especially the traditional Chinese characters is that these are pictograms every character is like a picture or a picture made up made up uh from several smaller pictures or trying to tell you something so this picture tells you there's water there this picture tells you that is people this picture tell you the number of these these people are eight right so a lot of water eight people what's trying to say Noah AR this is uh one of illustration I can find on

the internet after the dispersion right after the ark the three sons of Noah they went to different places in Chinese culture if the biblical account of the history and the chronology is correct we have the tower bab which happened around 2,400 BC and the first dynasty of China established about 2005 BC so there's a gap about 400 years right 400 years from here to here geologically the no Ark the Bible records a stop at the end today's Turkey right Mount right right it sto right there this is 2800 BC 2500 BC there is the tower

B south of that this today's Iraq again few hundred years later you have the the first recorded history the first recorded record of um the Chinese dynasty that's formed over there can you see they seem to be a migrating pattern here again to conclude at the previous session I also just uh uh recap as well in the first session there are three things I want to debunk okay these are the things are commonly taught uh in China even today that we were led to believe you if you educated over there when it comes to religion

especially Christianity these are what we are told or we are taught the Bible is the Western religious book number one number two since the only the Bible only mentions the Greeks the Hebrews uh people of maybe Northern Africans or what not but never mentions the China or the Chinese people therefore it's irrelevant to us it's just a cultural book that's worth reading it's that Shakespeare confuscious which is considered the cultural um patriarch or the forefather of Chinese culture and our own ancestors we have our own belief system we don't not need to know about we

don't we don't we are not necessarily um entitled or we should know about you know Western religions to with our own thing right in the previous session we have seen that number one confusious and our ancestors Chinese ancestors also believing the god of the Bible we also see that the Bible does mention China Chinese as well this there's other references in the Bible that kind of refer to in the end time the God's kingdom you know people of All Nation will be part of it as well and finally from what we have seen so far

right we can say that the Bible is not a western religious book because think about the history of the Bible the oldest book we can find in China it's only about written about 6 or 700 Years BC where is the book of Genesis especially the first five books of the Bible were written much older than that right some historian put it somewhere between 15 1300 to 1500 Years BC so which one's older the the Genesis accounts yeah so the Chinese writings and our own characters were formed after that so therefore it's not about why does

people keep asking me that same question I just want to give you a point you have Chinese friends they will ask you the same question definitely how come the Bible never talks about China think about this let's turn turn the table why should the Bible talks about China Bible was written Bible was written First Chinese culture and the language comes after that so the right question is can we find in the Chinese books in the Chinese ancient writings in the Chinese language that talks about the Bible you get me some of you you're not listening

okay let me try that again this will be AA moment okay I don't get a high response for let me try that again people keep on asking why should I come to your cave or your church and to learn about the Bible since it never talks about my own culture and my own whatever right you said to them which one comes first the Bible or the Chinese writings and the Chinese language the Bible comes first yeah the Bible was written first yes okay if the Bible written was written first why should Bible talks about China

which it did anyway but why should it the right question should be what about the Chinese languages and the Chinese ancient writings do they talk about the Bible and I believe so I believe the origin of the Chinese culture and its history originates from the biblical accounts because after all we are all created by the same God Amen so once again whose narrative was right I give my interpretation my understanding this is my narrative a lot of Christians also believe that again but you will come across so many people that were taught a completely different

narrative who narrative is right you decide right we have to give people the opportunity to learn then they can have the right choice okay time to ask uh any questions no anyone have any questions I want to open the floor now for the audience first conference serve of course I see the hand go up straight away there lady there yes it's not really a question but it is um the Chinese actually that the number eight would that be coming from that as well very good question um okay the lady was asking a question that the

Chinese recognize at least a lot of Chinese today see the number eight number eight as a lucky number is there any historical context or reference that can link that with anything that we talked about today is that a question yeah okay um no that's a simple answer um it's a just for me it's just a coincidence you know why because the reason why they see that is a lucky number is not so because the word is the the language of the character itself BS any resemblance or have any intricate meaning itself right but simply because

the phonetic of the word in other words the pronunciation of the word AG sounds very very close to the word f which means to make a lot of money in China Chinese that is the reason um that is also the reason why it wasn't considered lucky number until recently in recent years when China become such a economic Powerhouse if that is a question yes uh yes okay I was wondering when you're breaking down those traditional characters into the uh is that set in concrete or is it open to interpretation the way they're actually Bren down

y very good question um it's it's interesting question can be answer by the way of atmology atmology which which which is a subject or the basically the theory of developing try to explain the origin of the word where does the word come from or came about so to answer your question in a simple way it is open for interpretation so people can try to break apart a particular character in a certain way that is fine but the the examples I use today the characters there are actually thousands of characters you can break apart and can

all you can also find links with the Bible but the ones I used today these are the most common um uh interpretation that's available for these characters but the problem is the without the biblical account or biblical story people are struggling to come up with a reasonable narrative or explanation why these characters are forming in such a way that is the point yeah okay yes gentle the back my question is about the name of sabath the word sabath all around the world except southeast Asia China Korea Vietnam Japan it's not ex expain Asia don't name

sure thank you okay that's a very good question actually people ask me that question as well you see for me I see that there is a difference between direct Revelation and indirect Revelation let me explain to you not every single cultur group as far as we know observes the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath correct not every single one so that tells me that there's a reason why God has chosen one particular people group to give them the specific moral code which contains the S commandment wasin there whereas for Chinese it's very interesting

the 7 Day cycle was formally introduced by the Jesuit priest to China in the during the main Dynasty in the 1600s sorry 1500s 16th century okay by the Jesuit priest to China earlier even in the 15th century there's people also earlier Jesuit Pioneers tring to do that was formerly introduced in the main Dynasty to China before that the Chinese will not we do not have a formalized sday cycle because we only have the lunar calendar which observes the monthly cycle of 30 days per month however in one of the oldest books one of the oldest

books that can be found people tend to believe the today historians and scholars believe today which is the book of change right in China right one of the oldest book in China is called the book of change in that book it does mention that seven days is a cycle let me repeat that in the oldest book that can be found today in China called The Book of change people believe was written uh probably a few hundred years before the time of conf confusious it's kind of debatable but let's say it's round about 700 to 800

BC that was when that book was written in that book it talks about in other words seven days is a cycle but it was not observed by the people and and for me at this part of at this point of my research and my understanding is the observance of the Sabbath was not something that was directly revealed to people groups outside of um the the Hebrews the ancient is Israelites therefore it's not strictly observed by any other nations forly right whereas the permanent form of worship the Pagan worship when it comes in some worship is

more prevailing it happens in Chinese culture as well some some worship right but it happened much later in the earlier times some worship was not a common practice it was only introduced later on not sure if that answ c question yeah okay any other questions break and for example ship with in the main character Oh you mean like like this for example yeah like different yep okay let me yeah no no no your class is Right line yes so okay it's a very good question because okay it's simply because um this idea of abbreviation of

the the comp components let me give you a quick example let's [Music] say sorry I have to go through that that's for those of you who missed out you really missed out so anyway um where is it uh righteousness okay here we go all right you look at this part right at the top okay this bit here it doesn't have the line go all the way down right is that that's what you're talking about yeah Okay the reason for that is technically that's not a character but it's an abbreviation or a formalization of the character

what that means so this they call it the the radical for of sheep the radical that's what's the techn technical technical name for that part it's called the radical of sheep so in Chinese Y which means the the radical that represents sheep so for Chinese they understood okay that the original word is sheep that's why that's the character itself but that is the representation of sheep in a another character that makes sense yeah any other question some normal hands before maybe they all be yeah sorry um how advant China whates the problem is um I

can't give you exact number because there is none um they're just gtims China is very much closed uh when it comes to church development um so I can't give you exact number I know that's growing very fast um I work tell you is Christianity in general Christianity in general is the fastest growing religion in China right now there's no doubt about it um actually the the biggest Bible printing company in the world is in China it's in nin a city of nin prints about I think astronomical number of copy of Bibles a year like millions

of copies of Bible a year biggest largest Bible factories is in China for us not for themselves also for us as well because they pray for everybody this they don't belong to any denomination the company so we use the company as well I believe our um I can say that advantage of the Seventh Day Adventist let me give you an idea D Bachelor just over two years ago was in China to to have he he organized and he was pre he was preaching a two we Evangelistic meeting now that was the first time ever ever

a foreign missionary or foreign Pastor or foreign religious person that was able to do that in China since 1949 of any denomination the reason why he was able to do that one of the key reasons is because we have a Ministry in China that actually translated amazing facts DVDs into Chinese not just that they voiced up they they they employ people to voice up the DVD so when D bck was speaking he was speaking perfect Chinese we even with his mouth movement everything and that DVD becom so popular it was wiely not just given to

our church members it actually given to a lot of the Sunday church people that that what becomes the most sought after Bible D Days of the Chinese Christian churches in China and because he became so famous this pastor Pastor that became so famous in China the that City that he went to all the Sunday church leaders come together and plus our people want to get to come to preach in China so what's the advantage the advantage I see is that we have the truth amen the S part is a lot of our members don't see

it and that's what I our advantage just ask Chinese James um she was asking are we uh in China are they printing the Chinese King James version okay um the Chinese translation um the most uh common translation of the Chinese Bible it does not come from the King James it was translated from the Latin vate yeah so it's not a English translation they they don't they not use the King James as the the origin for translation the most common Chinese version is called the Chinese Union version of the Bible was translated from the Latin V

and subt I believe yeah um back to the Chinese characters I saw a few um can some of these other characters even though you've broken them down be broken down further so I saw was a word for Elder and it looked like it this one me my CH Rusty that was like mystery the word that showed up in one of the other characters sure yeah if you want we can put the break it down further yes you can okay you can further break down but the point is this okay I'm I'm I'm not saying I'm

trying to communicate this as clearly as I can you can always break it down to the point where you cannot break it down but you have to ask yourself the question does that tells you a story that's my point because the Chinese language the uniqueness about the Chinese language is because it's a pictograph it it is always designed to tell a story let me repeat that one more time the uniqueness of about the Chinese language one of the I think the still only remaining language in the world that is remain as a picogram right the

the language is designed to tell a story so it's not because I'm a Christian I'm trying to you know dissect the characters in such a way to fit my Paradigm to fit my understanding of story but I'm just trying to break it down as much as I can in the way does that tell a story does that try is that try to communicate something anything what I can see this is not one incident if it just one character tells the story that's fine but I just use how many characters already and you know what that's

only very only scratching the surface that's only a small portion of the characters that's out there like I said I have more material here I can go another five four five hours without stopping go through all these characters you can see that over and over and over these characters all seem to be telling the same story cannot be found anywhere else the point is this you cannot find the narrative in the Chinese own culture or historical interpretations unless you use the Bible U that goes first um the Japanese Ki is that based on the simplified

or on the traditional traditional traditional so it would apply to the Japanese the problem the challenge with Japanese be careful though the Japanese KES because it's they bought I don't want to use they borrow from Chinese some of the countries actually change the meaning if you know what I mean so you have to be a bit careful so when you talk to someone was Japanese you have to be aware of that some of the country May mean the same thing this original version but some may differ because it was borrow language yeah yes I'm just

wondering if some of the characters when you break it down whether they actually tell a story from another religion yeah um from my research so far I can't see any um the traditional Chinese interpretation though they they they're trying to say something like that but these are just mythologies in the sense that okay let me try to explain this the Chinese mythology is very interesting the Chinese my mythology is it's not like the Greek or the Romans right they have a more formalized uh way of narrative where whereby the stories are told consistently so for

example um I don't not want to use the Pagan stories here um heres for example it's the son of Zeus right so that's a story kind of well known in within the Greek mythological um confine you can find that in the pass it down to the Roman um the Roman mythology is pretty much the same thing which the Chinese mythology is actually a bit of a mixbag uh I wouldn't say self-contradicting but it's it's bit a bit more confusing so that is the reason why when in the Chinese traditional writings that when they have uh

written books in the past which to explain where these words came about and why they form in such a way and the narrative was was not coherent in other words not they are not trying to tell the same story it was just one story there one story there but they don't sort of correspond because you can say that the interpretation is also self-contradicting as well because you can't say this bit here means this story but means totally different story alog together if it's used in the same word you know what I mean so I don't

see a consistent interpretation if it's used to try to explain from a different theological or different mythical point of view I don't see that at this point in time the only point I can see over and over and consistently um uh corresponding is the biblical account that's the only one I can see uh yes the lady DVD available uh I'm not sure um maybe you can go to www. amazing.com I'm not sure uh I think they have a Chinese version of amazing facts on website so um yeah I'm not sure if the whole DVD is

available there they should be so maybe you should contact amazing facts directly I'm not going to Endor that bachor any way so yeah see the gentleman raise a hand I'll go to the one you know like like in the English language we got we got 26 LS yeah you know a b c d e like you know but uh in Chinese you don't have letters right you got you got you got these characters do you have like a like a standard amount of characters so that that that you have to learn so that like when

I open a Chinese book with with that knowledge I can I can work out what's being said you know because there's like millions of words in this world sure um okay Chinese language 101 oh he was just asking how many language sorry how many Chinese characters I need to learn before I can uh understand something communicate I open a Chinese novel or something yeah to read okay yeah um 3 to 500 Words you need to learn before you can basically communicate with a Chinese person three to 500 Words uh up to 2,000 that's not the

alphabet is it that's that's just words I'm talking about characters there's no alphabets yeah so just different characters you need to learn in order to be able to communicate with somebody 3 to 500 characters okay uh goes to about you're talking about a novel you're looking at about 3,000 characters you need to learn before you can read a novel in order to write a novel you need 6,000 but that's why Chinese most of Chinese say wearing [Laughter] glasses I I I think I think it's very obvious uh how much people have enjoyed where is the

uh here it is never far away can I have one of those and I thought I'll give the man a break you have questions you're good you're good Steven that was just absolutely fantastic that was excellent that was so well received it was a blessing it's to see another angle of the Gospel I think it's a tremendous affirmation and it you encourage each and every person here that has attend here today and uh we want to commend you and thank you for uh for coming here and and uh maybe we'll have a just a prayer

as well we pray for the blessing and we pray for the blessing on the food as well because we have all all this Chinese talk makes me want to eat Chinese sorry about that but that that's yes okay let's bow our head so Heavenly Father we thank you that you have been so generous with us today we've learned so much so many interesting things and we thank you uh for for Pastor Steven L as he comes here from Melbourne and he has shared his knowledge and insight and and what a what a smokers board indeed

it was we thank you for everything that you've given us today for your very presence here and Lord we ask that you continue to bless us also as we will part from this room and as we will partake of the food and and and partake of the Fellowship Lord that it may be blessed bless each and every person here that we may continue to search never never giving up because you're a wonderful God who's never given up on us bless us now in Jesus Precious Precious name amen amen