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PAGE 12
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 8, 1985
When Mr. Armstrong met Deng Xiaoping a year ago, he also mentioned how
impressed he was at Deng's willingness to admit the errors of the past.
Deng also seems to possess considerable wisdom in his manner of rule.
He realizes that reform can't be crammed down reluctant people's
throats. "Seeing is believing" and "nothing succeeds like success" is
more the style of this pragmatic leader.
He also said in the TIME
interview :
When we first started introducing the reforms in the
countryside, there were quite a few people who were not in
favor of reform.
In the first two years, a third of the
regions of China were still not so enthusiastic and were left
behind in starting reforms. So they waited a year, and when
they found that other regions were doing quite well and
starting reforms, they started to catch up. And they began
to have results in one or two years' time. So our approach
is not to force [the opponents of reform] to do anything.
Our approach is that practice shows them their approach is
not right and is not proper. That's why I say the reforms in
the countryside are a successful experience.
Won't much of the spread of God's way of life in the world tomorrow
also come as a result of the powerful example of success--first with
resettled Israel in the promised land, and spreading out from there?
Note Isaiah 62:2- -"The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, and all
kings your glory:" And in Zechariah 8:23 we read that "in those days
ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a
Jewish man, saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is
With
YOU.
In
The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Nakasone, aiso revealed an uncommon
quality of facing the facts of history in his recent address to the
United Nations on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.
His speech
was, according to the October 24 LOS ANGELES TIMES, a "radical depar
ture from the 40th anniversary rhetoric" in which nearly all the other
world leaders "used the occasion to attack their country's foes and to
defend their own policies."
Instead Mr. Nakasone profoundly apologized for Japan's having waged "a
desperate and lonely war against over 40 allied countries." Japan, he
said, "has profoundly regretted the ultranationalism and militarism it
unleashed, and the untold suffering the war inflicted upon peoples
around the world and, indeed, upon its own people."
Mr. Nakasone, nevertheless, was not without caution for problems con
fronting the world today.
In particular, he warned against
protectionism as a "narcotic" that, he said, would put world trade into
a coma.
He pledged to do what he could to further open up import
markets in Japan.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau