We have seen many similar cases which demonstrate how the rulership of Christ matches His heavenly priesthood. When we went from mainland China to Taiwan over thirty years ago, this story was repeated many times over. Many Chinese spurned the gospel when they were on the mainland. When the gospel was preached to them, they would have no part of it. But the Ruler of kings said, “You don’t want My gospel? Very well then. I will exercise My rulership to let someone else take over your country and chase you out.” When circumstances forced them to go to Taiwan, they went with nothing. They lost all their worldly goods. Thus they were ready to receive the Lord Jesus. At the same time, we believers were also forced to go to Taiwan. With nothing much to do there, we put on gospel robes, picked up drums, and paraded by the hundreds down the street. We got hundreds to follow us to the central part of the city, where there was a park with concert facilities that could seat three thousand people. Week after week on Lord’s Day afternoons we would get four or five hundred new names. Many hundreds were saved. Many of them would tell you that if circumstances had not forced them to Taiwan, they would never have been open to the gospel.
What is the purpose of Christ’s rulership? It is that we might be brought to God and especially to the church life. How marvelous it is that we are in the church life! It was the Lord Jesus Himself who arranged the events that brought us here.
Consider the second World War, which lasted from 1939 to 1945. How the Lord exercised His rulership to manage events then! He surely is the Ruler of kings. In 1940 Hitler’s forces invaded Belgium. How easily they could have crossed the narrow English Channel from there and invaded England! It would have been easy to take London. The British government and the royal family were all ready to move to Canada. Nonetheless, the German forces did not invade. Instead, the next year they launched an attack on the Soviet Union and destroyed much of its army. If Hitler’s troops had crossed that narrow stretch of water into England instead of turning to fight Russia, the world situation today might be entirely different. But Hitler was not king. The rulership is in the hands of the Lord Jesus!
Let me recount to you now how the Lord exercised His rulership over my plans to serve Him.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States joined the war against Japan. I began to realize that Japan’s defeat was inescapable and China’s victory assured. Once the war was over, China would no doubt be a vast, democratic country. I picked up the burden to develop the northwest, inner Mongolia. We would be supplied for this undertaking by the wealthy saints in the northeast, Manchuria. When I shared with others, we were all in agreement. In March 1943 we sent seventy from my home town of Chefoo to inner Mongolia. These were to do the work of preparation so that after the war the useful ones from north China could go to develop that backward section of China with the financial assistance of the brothers in the northeast. Our hearts were very much for this.
My testimony is that the Ruler of kings did not allow our plans to be realized. Within a few years north China was gone, taken over by the Communists. I was driven away. My intention had been to go to the northwest, but where I ended up was in the southeast. I was sent to southeast Asia, to the Philippines, and eventually to the United States. Who brought me here? The Ruler of kings. He wanted the recovery brought here and so ordered events that this did happen.
Even during the second World War, we had no thought of coming to the United States. Our work in China was prevailing. After the war there were about five hundred local churches throughout the thirty-three provinces of China. We were in Shanghai, the central spot. With just one language we could serve over seven hundred million people. With such a vast field, we had no intention of leaving. We did think that the Lord’s recovery would spread to the western world, but it would probably be by the translation of the books or by some saints from the West. We did not expect ourselves to be personally involved in it. But the rulership of the Lord Jesus arranged otherwise. By His rule we were brought to this country, in spite of all our plans to go another way.
Revelation, then, first presents Christ as the faithful Witness to God, as the Firstborn of the dead to the church, and as the Ruler of the kings of the earth to the nations.
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