Participants: Shelley Quinn (Host), Ethel Nelson
Series Code: IAA
Program Code: IAA000276
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00:30 Hello, I'm Shelley Quinn and welcome again to
00:32 Issues and Answers. I'm so excited that you've 00:34 joined us today because we have an exciting program. Let me 00:38 begin with a scripture. It's from Acts 14, I'm going to start 00:43 in the B part of verse 15 and go through 17. And the Bible says: 00:48 The living God which made heaven and earth and the sea and all 00:53 the things that are therein, who in times past suffered all 00:57 nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless he did not 01:02 leave himself without witness. We are going to be talking today 01:07 about the ancient writings of the Chinese nation and we're 01:11 going to see that in these ancient writings God left 01:15 himself a witness. Here to join us as our special guest is 01:20 Ethel Nelson. Ethel I just am so excited that you are back at 01:26 3ABN. You know I first met you at ASI and when you sat down 01:30 I knew who you were. I'm not sure you knew who I was, but 01:36 I remembered seeing you a couple of years ago in the interview 01:40 that Danny Shelton had done and you were talking about the 01:44 hieroglyphics of the ancient Chinese language and in these 01:49 you were showing that they depicted the story of Jesus. 01:53 It was so fascinating to me and I loved it. But let's let our 01:57 audience get to know you a little bit. You're a pathologist 02:00 by trade. Retired for some time now, yes 02:04 I am. But you were educated as a 02:07 pathologist. Yes. You married the love of your life Roger. 02:12 A surgeon. A surgeon and have three children. But now there's 02:17 something about you that you love research. 02:19 Well as a pathologist I kept running into very interesting 02:25 things and I've written a number of research papers even though 02:30 I was a missionary in Thailand at the time. Because it seems 02:35 like in Thailand we had so much more pathology and more 02:38 interesting pathology than in America. Roger and I were 02:42 missionaries there. How long were you there? 02:44 Twenty years. Twenty years in Thailand. 02:47 So here you are as a 7th-day Adventist missionary in Thailand 02:51 for 20 years, you loved to research, God's put that inside 02:58 of you and how on earth then did God translate that to the 03:04 hobby of researching the ancient writings of the Chinese people? 03:08 Well I really think it was all in God's providence, but one 03:13 day I was looking for something to read and we have lots of 03:17 books and a lot of them I haven't read and I happened to 03:21 look in our book case and I saw this one book with no title on 03:27 the spine. So I pulled it out and it said Genesis and the 03:31 Chinese and I immediately said oh there's no connection there. 03:37 but I'm a very curious person so I opened it up and I started 03:42 reading and it wasn't long before I was intensely 03:46 interested and you might say hooked to find out more about it 03:51 So you had spent now 30 years studying the ancient language of 03:58 the Chinese. Well actually more like 40 years 04:00 which really dates me. 04:02 Well but we're the beneficiary of this. I know you have written 04:06 a number of books, I think seven. 04:08 Well, that's with others. I have coauthors, yes. 04:12 Okay and now your latest book is Quest for the Holy Mountain 04:16 and that's what we're going to be talking about today is how 04:19 the Chinese language, the hieroglyphics, the ancient 04:24 writings of the Chinese, how each one of these symbols was 04:29 a picture and pictorially it tells the story of the Bible. 04:34 Now what's fascinating to me and we won't be doing this in 04:39 this program about the story of Jesus, but there is evidence in 04:45 the ancient writings of the great flood. 04:47 Oh yes. There is a Chinese legend and this is all written 04:56 up by the Chinese themselves. There was a person by the name 05:02 Nu-wa who was really a hero of the great worldwide flood. 05:09 Now, of course, Nu-wa sounds like Noah doesn't it but 05:15 according to some of the Chinese they said well that was a woman. 05:20 But I'm sure that Nu-wa was a man. There's further description 05:25 of this flood. It said waters inundated without being stopped. 05:30 Now it doesn't say where the source of the waters was so I 05:35 think it was both from below and rain. And then another 05:39 interesting statement was that fires flamed without being 05:44 extinguished, which would certainly suggest intense 05:47 volcanic activity. So we have in their legends about the flood. 05:57 Okay. So Nu-wa was their great hero of this flood and the 06:01 actual symbols show the picture of the flood. Why don't we look 06:05 at one of those. In fact, I'd like to start with 06:11 a verse. I have this on a graphic and this is from 06:16 Genesis 7:19. 06:26 So, of course, we see that the flood the waters rose up so high 06:31 that nothing was visible of the earth at all. They just rose up 06:36 to heaven. And there's a very nice character that fits this 06:41 exactly. I'll show you another graphic and notice that the 06:47 contemporary character circled in red and we're going to look 06:54 at one on the right which shows the character meaning beginning 07:01 or of old and you see some wavy lines here. Now let's look over 07:07 to the left hand side and we'll 07:09 see what those wavy lines are. 07:11 They actually are waves I think. 07:14 and it means disaster. All right 07:16 then below it we see the 07:20 representation of the sun. Now 07:23 if we put the disaster rising up 07:27 to the sun that means beginning 07:30 or of old. Now certainly the flood occurred in olden times 07:35 and there had to be a new beginning, not only of the whole 07:39 earth but specifically of Noah's family and I think Noah's family 07:45 began right after the flood. 07:48 So you see those waves coming right up underneath the sun 07:51 there and showing that everything was all covered. 07:54 Yes. Maybe I should say something about these ancient 07:58 writings, which are pictograms. These are the most ancient form 08:01 of the characters. It's the oracle bone writing and I'll 08:06 later on and tell more about that. 08:11 So when now when we have these ancient writings, they've shown 08:17 now the great flood. How about the Tower of Babel. 08:20 You know in all the writings, and I've read a lot of the 08:24 ancient writings of the Chinese which miraculously have survived 08:28 for about 4000 years. There's no mention at all of the Tower 08:33 of Babel, but you can see the effects from the Tower of Babel. 08:38 Now let's look at a graphic about the Tower of Babel from 08:44 the Bible. We read: 08:58 And the Chinese underwent this scattering, but before we come 09:06 to that point I want to really date the time of the dispersion. 09:13 All right, let's look at that then. 09:15 So I have another graphic. This time this is from Genesis 11: 09:23 You'll notice that the date of flood is given as 2348 B.C. and 09:31 we find that two years after the flood Shem had a son 09:42 Arphaxad. When Arphaxad was 35 he had Salah. When Salah was 30 09:50 he had Eber and when Eber was 34 he has a baby named Peleg. 09:57 Now I want to stop at that point and talk about adding up 10:04 those figures and it come out to 101 years. So if we subtract 101 10:10 years from the time of the flood in 2348 it comes out to 10:15 2247 B.C. as the time of the Tower of Babel. 10:23 is this significant for the Chinese? 10:25 Oh yes. But let's talk about Peleg first. Why did they call 10:30 this baby Peleg? You know in Hebrew names have meanings and 10:36 the name of Peleg means division and what division had just 10:40 happened before that baby was born. I think it must have been 10:45 the great division of all the peoples of that time into 10:49 language groups because the Bible very clearly tells us that 10:54 they divided by tongue. So I think that this gives credence 10:59 to the date 2247 B.C. as the time of the dispersion. 11:04 So this Chinese chronology though fits with this? 11:09 Yes it does. Now the Chinese have so called ancient rulers. 11:19 There are five of them and the fourth and fifth we are going to 11:29 discuss first. We want to go back to another graphic that 11:39 talks about Yao and Shun. These are the fourth and fifth rulers. 11:44 and the one that is going to talk about it is Menchis. He was 11:49 a very wise sage, also a believer in the true God, but 11:56 he lived just shortly, well, around 200 B.C. and he made 12:01 this statement. From Yao and Shun down to Dong, the first 12:07 emperor of the second dynasty the Shong were 500 years and 12:11 more. Now you may say, that's not interesting at all, but 12:16 really it is very interesting. Now on this graphic we have a 12:21 time line and you'll notice first of all that there's 101 12:26 years between the flood and 12:29 Tower of Babel. Now also I've 12:33 put into this time line the 12:35 first Chinese Dynasty which was 12:38 in 2205 B.C. Now first of all let's point out 12:42 that 101 years is the same amount of time that we just 12:45 looked at on the last graphic. That's right. All right. 12:47 All right then the dating of the Shong Dynasty is from 1766 B.C. 12:55 and if we go back 500 years from that time we'll found that Yao 13:03 and Shun, their lifetimes fall into this 101-year period 13:09 between the flood and the Tower of Babel and, of course, Menchis 13:14 said 500 years and more. So it wasn't exactly 500 years so it 13:19 could be any time within this 101-year period. 13:24 And during the time of Yao and Shun, if I'm following you, what 13:29 you're saying, Ethel, is that there was no dispersion in their 13:34 language at that time. They had a common language. 13:36 For 101 years they had a common language, yes, and it wasn't 13:41 until the Tower of Babel incident that their language was 13:45 confused and that made them disperse all over the world. 13:49 And so this, I believe, was also the time of the dispersion of 13:53 the Chinese. Isn't that amazing. You know it 13:56 reminds me of so many times when archeologists and scientists are 14:01 saying that King David can't be found. There's no evidence of 14:07 King David or there's no evidence of Cyrus and then here 14:12 comes an archeological find that supports, or is evidence to, all 14:18 the facts of the Bible. So the history of the Chinese people 14:23 that was captured in their writing is what got you 14:26 who were so interested in seeing these pictures, but now 14:30 you can go back and look at the history itself and see that even 14:34 though they don't have a character to talk about the 14:38 Tower of Babel, their history shows they had that common 14:41 language from the flood for 101 years till the incident of the 14:45 Tower of Babel and then they were dispersed. 14:47 All right now you may say well who is Yao for example. We've 14:53 just said that he was the fourth of these legendary rulers but 14:59 can we find out a little bit more about him. You know I 15:02 looked up in the concordance, in Young's Concordance, under Noah 15:07 because I wanted to know what his name meant in Hebrew. 15:12 It means rest but I also found out something very interesting 15:16 and they say that the Chinese believe that Yao was Noah. 15:20 Well I don't think so and let me tell you who I think Yao was. 15:25 Let's put up a graphic and on this graphic we have the 15:40 contemporary writing of the name of Yao but it's interesting 15:46 that the Chinese names also have meanings and Yao's name means 15:54 High or Eminent. So I though well, who was Yao. We know from 16:00 the history of the Chinese that Yao was a very God-fearing man. 16:07 He believe in the creator God. So who was his father. Could it 16:12 have been Shem? Because Shem was the most godly probably of 16:17 Noah's sons. So I thought wow I'm going to look up the 16:24 names of Shem's sons that are listed, all right, and I come 16:30 down to the name of Aram and you know what it means? It means 16:36 high or exalted. Now Yao's name means high or eminent, Aram, 16:42 high or exalted. Could they be one and the same person? 16:49 So the name of Yao and the name of Aram are identical, almost 16:53 identical, and you're thinking they're one and the same. 16:59 Now in the chronology of the Bible Aram is the last listed 17:04 son of Shem. Does that make him the oldest or the youngest? 17:09 Well I think that he is the oldest but as we look at it now 17:12 we would say well he must be the youngest because he is 17:16 listed last. But if you look at the lists of others like Noah's 17:21 sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. Japheth was the oldest and 17:26 he was listed last and last mentioned on the list but he was 17:30 the first born. But why do you think that Yao 17:36 and Aram are the same? 17:39 Let's look at the history of the storm and when Noah's family was 17:45 in the ark. For five months the storm was furious but then the 17:51 Bible says that in the fifth month the ark rested in the 17:55 mountains of Ararat. But when did they get off the ark? 17:59 It wasn't until they'd been there a whole year. Seven months 18:04 passed by. So in my mind I think well when the family got off the 18:11 ark I think all the ladies were about seven months pregnant. 18:17 Now that would make Aram or Yao born about three months after 18:23 getting off the ark and so we can know about when he was born. 18:28 Around 2348 or 2347 B.C. 18:33 All right if I'm understanding you correctly what you're saying 18:36 is that Aram of the Bible, Shem's oldest son was called 18:42 Yao in Chinese and their names mean the same and you're 18:47 believing that this ruler, Yao, who served after the great flood 18:54 that is depicted in the Chinese language, I think that's so 18:58 fascinating. Because here we've got scientists trying to say it 19:01 didn't really happen and in these most ancient 19:05 hieroglyphics, this holy language of the Chinese shows 19:09 that there was this great flood. But this Yao, this ruler, who 19:13 ruled for approximately 101 years or lived during that time 19:16 period I should say, before the Tower of Babel, you believe this 19:24 was Aram. Yes. Now as I've just said I think that Yao or Aram 19:33 was born maybe three months after the flood, after they got 19:42 off the ark. We have information from the Book of History 19:52 regarding Aram's or Yao's reign. He reigned for 70 years and we 19:59 also have a date which is very good. And that date is 2255 B.C. 20:07 Now I think we have a graphic on this one. 20:09 We have a graphic. And that is the time when he gave over his 20:17 rulership to Shun. But for 30 years preceding that Shun 20:24 had been a co-ruler. Now what we can do then is take this 2255 20:31 from the date of his birth and we can find out how old Yao was 20:36 when he began to be the ruler of the Chinese. He was about 23 20:41 years old. You see how nicely it fits. One other thing while we 20:45 are looking at this graphic I want to point out is you'll see 20:49 the line here, 2247, of the dispersion and so Yao's 20:59 rulership then ended about eight years before the dispersion so 21:04 at the time of the dispersion then Shun was, you might say, 21:09 the leader of the migration of the Chinese. All right, now 21:15 let's talk a little bit more about Shun. He was 30 years old 21:21 when he was selected to become the co-ruler and he becomes a 21:28 very important person after they migrate to China. Now was there 21:34 any mention at all of a migration in the writings, in 21:39 the ancient writings. No, not a word. How do we know that there 21:43 was a migration. Well there's something very interesting... 21:49 Oh I might say one other thing and that is that the ancient 21:55 history of the Chinese. There was a ruler many years later 22:02 who destroyed all of the writings of the ancient sages 22:10 But later on these were recovered from various places. 22:15 Whereas the Book of History originally had about 100 22:20 chapters, it ended up with 28 chapters. So may be some of that 22:24 lost material talked about a migration. But there's one other 22:30 way that we can figure that was a migration and that is that one 22:35 of the assignments of Yao. The old ruler who also evidently 22:40 made the trip to China was given the assignment of figuring out 22:46 climate; what was the climate like? What was the winter like? 22:52 What was the fall like? What was summer, spring and so on. Now in 22:55 meantime while he was calculating on that Shun himself 23:00 was making a big trip and this was probably, I would guess, 23:05 maybe a year after they had made their migration there. He made a 23:11 trip to outline what would become the Middle Kingdom, the 23:19 original China. Now we have a graphic for that also where we 23:25 show Shun making the trip. Now you notice on this graphic there 23:32 are five mountains. There's a middle one, Mt. Song, and 23:36 evidently it was in this neighborhood where the original 23:43 civilization of the Chinese grew But Shun went first east to 23:49 Mt. Tai and there he set up the so-called border sacrifice where 23:55 annually a bull was sacrificed by the emperors each year to 24:04 Shongdi, their god, the heavenly ruler. 24:07 So that would set up with like the day of atonement, the annual 24:13 Well there was a sacrifice. Then from Mt. Tai he went south 24:19 to the most southern mountain, Mt. Heng, west to Mt. Hwa, north 24:25 to another Mt. Heng and then back down. So you see he really 24:31 outlined what would become the middle kingdom. 24:35 Okay, so he made this tour of these four great mountains to 24:41 outline this middle kingdom, but what was really accomplished and 24:44 did God play a role in this in any way? 24:48 Well there are two statements in the Shu Jing which is the Book 24:52 of History which are very interesting. One of them says 24:55 of History which are very interesting. One of them says, 24:57 and I have a graphic... 25:05 So this middle kingdom that had just been formed here had 25:12 boundaries. Boundaries were these four holy mountains and in 25:18 the middle, the middle kingdom was divided into 12 states. 25:23 So was this about the time of the dispersion when the 25:28 languages became confused? 25:30 Well yes. This came shortly they had migrated there and they 25:40 were setting up their kingdom at that time but it's 25:43 interesting that God played a role. So on this other graphic 25:49 we have this... 26:01 Now the former kings are Yao and Shun. See how specific this 26:06 is and this is from the Chinese Book of History. 26:09 I think what you're saying, Ethel, and what I'm taking away 26:13 from this program is that the chronology of the Hebrew 26:18 children and the chronology of the Chinese perfectly line up 26:23 and in the writings, the Chinese ancient writings, perfectly 26:28 support the story of the Bible. That's true. That's what our 26:32 take away is today. Yes. You know, I know that for so many of 26:36 you this has been a little bit technical and I'm going to ask 26:40 you to come back because we want to just sit without all of 26:44 these graphics and sit and talk with you, Ethel, to get a little 26:47 bit more deeply into this teaching, but what we've been 26:51 talking about today is outlined in your book Quest for the Holy 26:56 Mountain, right. And what I hope our viewers and those who 27:01 are listening to this program are taking away is the fact that 27:05 the ancient, the precious, sacred writings of the ancient 27:10 Chinese perfectly support the Bible story. 27:14 That's exactly true. I am so excited that you've been 27:19 doing all of this research for 40 years and you know I'm sorry 27:23 that I didn't get the opportunity to read the book 27:24 before you came on, but I am really looking forward to 27:27 reading this book. Will you come back and just spend some more 27:30 time with us talking? I'd love to. 27:32 All right. I'd love that too. For those of you at home I hope 27:36 that this is just a faith booster to you as it is to me. 27:39 When I first heard Ethel on 3ABN and how she showed all of these 27:43 Chinese characters and how they told the story of Jesus, I knew 27:48 that we can trust every word of the Bible. Now I pray that 27:53 the Lord will multiply his mercy, love and grace to you. |
Revised 2014-12-17