Over hundreds of years their devotion to Shang Di deteriorated and much knowledge about how that God had brought the Chinese to their land and prospered them was lost. Confucius tried to recover some of the teachings. Eventually Buddhism invaded along with other religions. The worship of Shang Di degenerated into the ceremonial Border Sacrifice annually performed by the Emperor until 1911 A.D. The common people no longer knew much about Shang Di.
About five hundred years ago the Temple of Heaven complex was built in Beijing
for the performance of the Border Sacrifice. There is a large Altar there for
most of the ceremony.
To the north is the largest building, a temple dedicated to a Good Harvest.
In between is the smaller Imperial Vault of Heaven.
Inside is mounted a simple plaque of dedication.
It says (Huang Tian Shang Di / Supreme Lord of the Great Heaven). There are no idols or other gods represented in this complex. This is the true God of China.
Dr. Chan's book gives many chapters of detail showing the former Chinese devotion to Shang Di and relates that to the Hebrew's El Shaddai, both the one Creator God. He describes the Border Sacrifice ceremony in great detail.
The purpose of the books by Drs. Chan and Nelson and this web site is to show that the faith presented by the Christians has the same spiritual roots as the Chinese faith in Shang Di. The two cultures had a common origin before the dispersal of the nations from Babel (Genesis chapter 11). They worshipped the same God, but with different languages after that separation. The God presented in the Bible chose to work out his eternal plans through a particularly troublesome people group, the Israelites and Jewish descendents. They were usually disobedient and ungrateful and frequently degenerated into idol worship. Eventually God came to live among them in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived a perfect sinless life as he taught God's way of living and performed many miracles. Eventually Jesus Christ offered himself as a pure living sacrifice to pay for the sin of the entire human race. His resurrection from the dead was proof of God's successful accomplishment of paying our sin debt in full. Since then the Christians have been under the command to spread the news of that accomplishment to all people groups.
Christianity is therefore not a foreign religion for the Chinese. It is a restoration of the worship of Shang Di, plus an update about what God had accomplished during the centuries of separation of the two cultures. The future greatness of the Chinese will be related to the degree to which they can recover the Mandate of Heaven (Tian Ming) of the original Chinese dynasties through the genuine worship of the true Creator God.
Beginning, Oracle Bones, God, Water, Earth, Mankind, Adam, Eve, Good Tree, Bad Tree, Penalty, Clothes, Lamb, Gate, Murder, Flood, Lifespans, Scattering, Border Sacrifice, Genesis 1 to 11