20

PRIEST - KING

Issachar Roberts finally reaches Nanjing on October 13, 1860, while Hong Xiuquan dreams of vanquishing the demon dogs and tigers. With Roberts’ arrival, many hopes and thoughts converge. It is now thirteen years since Hong Rengan and Hong Xiuquan together visited Roberts’ chapel in Canton.¹ It is over eleven years since Hong Xiuquan, as if puzzled by Roberts’ refusal to give him the rites of baptism, asked Jesus through the mouth of Xiao Chaogui, whether “the foreigner Roberts has a truly sincere heart or not” and received the answer from Jesus that “his heart is indeed sincere, you are connected together.”² It is over seven years since Hong Xiuquan, on first entering into his Heavenly Capital, sent a trusted emissary to Canton in person, to invite Roberts to visit Nanjing and preach there to the Taiping faithful.³ It is close to two years since Hong Xiuquan, seeking to woo Lord Elgin to his cause, asked if Roberts was with Elgin on the mission, and met with no reply.⁴ And it is a little over a year since Hong Rengan, in his elaborate memorandum, mentioned to his Heavenly King that just as newly developed weapons of war can be purchased to strengthen the Heavenly Kingdom, so is it in the best interests of the Taiping to let certain foreigners into their domains. Instructors from countries that are “advanced in technical skills” and have “elaborate institutions” should be encouraged to enter Taiping areas, along with foreign missionaries, as long as they offer their advice to the kingdom as a whole and do not “slander” the Taiping ways.5

Roberts’ arrival in Nanjing, in turn, is made possible only by a concatenation of events. One is the result of Lord Elgin’s violence in Peking, which has forced the emperor to yield new treaty rights that will let foreigners travel freely in the interior of China, whether to trade or to preach the gospel. Another is the eastern campaign, which, even if failing to seize Shanghai, by making the city of Suzhou a Taiping bastion has made travel from Shanghai comparatively easy.⁶ And Roberts himself, though not exactly for the happiest of reasons, is for a time free of the family and financial problems that have dogged his life for years: his wife, weakened by illness and alienated from Roberts, has insisted on living in the United States with their two children; his first Chinese assistant has died and the second, after grave mistreatment, has abandoned him; and years of tenacious legal wrangling have finally led exhausted Qing officials to grant the perennially bankrupt Roberts $5,200 in restitution for his Canton home and chapel, which have twice been looted by Chinese mobs.⁷

Hong Xiuquan initially receives Roberts almost as rapturously as he received Hong Rengan eighteen months before. Shortly after his arrival, Hong grandly promises freedom of worship to all Christians in his domain. He endorses Roberts’ appeals for more Protestant missionaries to come to Nanjing, so that there can be eighteen new chapels in the city, and as many as two to three thousand more outside the walls. Seeing himself as “the pioneer” in this venture, Roberts writes to his friends of the great opportunity now offered to the Baptists to reach out to the thirty million souls who live in the six provinces more or less controlled by the Taiping forces. Success in this “will doubtless prove the surprise and admiration of Christendom.”⁸

Hong announces that Roberts will be his minister of foreign policy and of justice in all cases involving foreigners. He gives him free lodgings—two rooms, upstairs, not far from his own palace—and food and a stipend. He offers Roberts three new wives—Roberts declines the offer—but when Hong offers him Taiping clothes, Roberts accepts. A missionary who sees him in Nanjing writes that Roberts looks resplendent, “robed in Taiping costume, a blue satin fur gown, and yellow embroidered jacket over it, with red hood, and satin boots.”⁹

Yet the only personal meeting Roberts has with his former baptismal candidate is disconcerting: the pomp of the moment in Hong’s palace is undeniable; the honor to a foreign visitor, unique in Taiping history, is patent; and Hong seems imposing to Roberts—“a much finer-looking man than I thought he was. Large, well-made, well-featured, with fine black moustaches which set off considerably, and a fine voice.”¹⁰ But the retinue makes it clear to Roberts that he should kneel in Hong’s presence, and when he refuses he is tricked into doing so by the sudden shouted command that all present should now kneel in the honor of the Lord—which Roberts follows automatically, till he realizes it is Hong who is being knelt to. Their hour-long conversation is interrupted several times by the assembled Taiping leaders’ further kneeling and chanting in Hong’s honor. Roberts now stands throughout these genuflections—indeed he is never invited to be seated, the only one besides the Heavenly King so honored being his son Tiangui. And when Hong invites Roberts to dine, he means with the other kings but not with him.¹¹

Hong Xiuquan makes it clear that the Christianity he expects Roberts to preach is Taiping Christianity, with its own special revelations; to Roberts, who has come to Nanjing in hopes of purifying Hong’s religion of its misconceptions, this is a bitter blow. Roberts’ secret hope has been to replace the Gutzlaff version of the King James Bible, used by the Taiping, with the American Baptist Bible of Goddard, which a group of Baptist co-workers have already translated into Chinese. Roberts himself has prepared an annotated version of Luke’s Gospel for Hong, while two of his Baptist colleagues have annotated Acts and Romans.¹² Less serious, but also dispiriting, is the curious but intrusive rule that Roberts may have no visiting foreigners to stay with him in his small Nanjing residence. And yet just as Roberts begins to grow most guarded, convinced that Nanjing is run by martial law, with only a glimmering of truth in its so-called Christian teachings, and no clear sense of its future fate, he is struck favorably and afresh by the Taiping’s stated need for a church, their desire for true preachers, their determination on the battlefield, their openness, and Hong’s willingness to debate his stands.¹³

It is hard for Nanjing visitors not to be moved by the outdoor services on one of the open plots of land in the center of Nanjing, when a great crowd assembles on the Sabbath day, while “a sea of flags and streamers, red, yellow, white and green, floated in the wind over them,” to listen to the two Taiping preachers appointed for that day. The Taiping preachers, standing in their glittering yellow coronets on a rostrum that itself is raised upon a great square platform, address the throng in turn, one on the topic of a soldier’s duties, love of family and attention to prayer, one on the reason for excluding traders from the city and on the need for charity toward the elderly and destitute. Then, as each preacher himself kneels on the rostrum, the congregation also kneels, and prays together as a group, in perfect silence. Once the Taiping service is over, Roberts is free to preach his own sermons, on what he considers “the central truths of Christianity,” either in the Cantonese dialect that he already knows or in the Nanjing dialect he is studying daily to acquire. Clearly much work still lies ahead, for when a soldier, chosen at random, is asked, “Who is the Holy Spirit?” he replies, “The Eastern King.”14

Roberts begins to doubt that he can convert Hong to the truest meanings of his faith, but Hong never despairs of converting Roberts, writing in a letter to the American Baptist:

Add to your faith. Do not suppose that I am deceived. I am the one saviour of the chosen people. Why do you feel uncertain of the fact of divine communications to me? When Joshua formerly destroyed the enemies of God, the sun and moon stood still. When Abraham sat under the oak, three men stood by him. Carefully think of all this. Do you become conscious of it? Do you believe? I am grieved at heart, having written very many edicts on these matters, and all men being with me as one family. When the Shield King came to the capital, he also had a revelation. To recognise these divine communications is better than being baptized ten thousand times. Blessed are they that watch. Your Father, your Lord, comes to you as a thief, and at a time when you know not. He that believeth shall be saved. You will see greater things than these. Respect this.¹⁵

The British missionary Joseph Edkins, a scholar of fluid dynamics and Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as of biblical theology, and friend to the Shield King ever since they met in Shanghai in 1854, also visits the Heavenly Capital, in the spring of 1861.¹⁶ While there he presents to Hong Xiuquan a copy of an essay he has published in Chinese, “That God Is without a Body Is True,” and several other shorter theological pieces.

Having learned from friends that Hong Xiuquan is having great trouble with his eyesight, and refuses to read materials that are written out in too-small characters—unlike Loyal King Li Xiucheng, Hong has not adjusted to wearing spectacles—Edkins sends essays that have been printed in big clear characters and writes out his own remarks “in a large hand.”¹⁷ The arguments advanced by Edkins speak to the immateriality of God’s nature, leaning heavily on chapter 1, verse 18, of John’s Gospel: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Edkins also argues strongly for the divinity of Jesus Christ, and sends Hong translations of both the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, to warn him that he must not fall into the heresy of Arius, who was condemned for denying the divinity of Jesus.18

Edkins’ strategy of writing in large characters is successful. Hong responds with a stream of his own commentary, so that Edkins, even if not convinced, is still gratified to find his own letter “covered with vermilion corrections and notes,” all of which have clearly been “dashed off roughly” with a “very thick-pointed” writing brush. In the passage from John 1:18, Hong has erased the word “only” from the phrase “only begotten Son,” so that his own Sonship is not denied: “Christ is in God’s form,” Hong adds, since “the Son is as the Father.” In his letter to Hong, Edkins has also quoted a passage from the “Revelation of John the Divine,” explaining to Hong Xiuquan that the description of God contained within it must be read as strictly “figurative.”

After this I looked and, behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice which I heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the Spirit; and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. (Revelation 4:1–3)

In his reply, Hong erases the word “figurative” with his blunt-nosed brush, and writes in the word “real.”¹⁹

Showing himself to be fully aware of the purport of Edkins’ remarks on Arius, and of how the views of Arius had been fully revoked by Athanasius and a council of the church, Hong comments briefly that in that case the council was wrong, Arius right.²⁰ Hong not only deigns to read all of Edkins’ arguments; he sends his own handwritten poem in rebuttal:

God is vexed most by idols and images,

So human beings are not allowed to see the Father’s likeness.

But Christ and myself were begotten by the Father,

And because we were in the Father’s bosom, therefore we saw God.

The Father created Adam and Pangu in his own image—

If you acknowledge the truth of this, you can still be pardoned.

The Elder Brother and I have personally seen the Father’s heavenly face;

Father and Sons, Elder and Younger Brother, nothing is indistinct.

The Father and the Elder Brother have brought me to sit in the Heavenly Court;

Those who believe this truth will enjoy eternal bliss.²¹

Branching out from this private correspondence with the Western missionary to his own followers at large, Hong explains in a proclamation of May 1861 that the problem is partly one of numbers of participants as well as of belief, of history as well as present reality. If over twenty people suddenly said God was their Father, the world would justly doubt the claim, and believe it violated human relationships. If two hundred all claimed kin with the Elder Brother, one would justly believe God was being slighted. Because “since ancient times, no man has seen God,” there has been a justifiable fear—too often realized—that men in their ignorance would “make false images and consequently go to hell.” But such strictures do not apply to Hong himself, cannot apply: “Only the divine Son can recognize the divine Father. It is well known that the Elder Brother and I know the Father.” Thus it is that in high Heaven the Father, the Elder Brother, and Hong the “Shining Sun” pour their light “brightly upon the earthly world. The Father, the Elder Brother in Heaven, and I, the true Sun, together shall establish peace for myriads of years. This day is the heavenly day of great peace, prophesied long ago in the Gospel, and now proven.”22

Hong feels that certain aspects of these divine relationships are still not clearly understood. The fact that he and his brother naturally see their Father does not mean they in any way claim parity with Him: “I now proclaim clearly,” says Hong, “that in Heaven, upon earth, and among mankind, the Heavenly Father, God, is alone the most revered. Since the Creation, this has been the greatest principle.” To emphasize this point, Hong orders that the “Taiping Heavenly Kingdom” be renamed “God’s Heavenly Kingdom.” All state seals must be recut to reflect this new reality. All honorific titles held by his officials, and all future grants bestowed, shall reflect the same change, from Taiping to God.²³

Edkins and Roberts should not be surprised that they do not see Hong in person, and that he reaches them by commentary, poems, and proclamations. Virtually nobody gets to see the Heavenly King any more, save for a tiny circle of his family and his closest confidants. With the exception granted on one occasion only to Issachar Roberts, foreign missionaries, even if promised a personal audience and brought to the palace in a glittering retinue under yellow banners, sit in vain for hours before his empty throne, listening to the chanted hymns, and watching the smoke curl lazily from the sacrificial fire, above which are laid out offerings of rice and meat.²⁴ And Western consular officials, demanding their new treaty rights, can even angrily force their way through the seven miles of wide streets of the capital and sit in Hong Xiuquan’s own antechamber, hour after hour, among baskets of charcoal, pails of steaming water, and stacks of firewood, peered at by crowds of boys, or the bolder palace women, listening to the booming of the gongs, and watching the royal proclamations carried by on rolls of yellow silk, but Hong himself never appears.25

Seen from outside by other foreign visitors, the gates through the huge walls of Hong’s palace open at intervals to allow the palace women and attendants to pass through with special gifts of food, while in a kind of shed outside the gates, beached now, lies the great gilded dragon boat in which the Heavenly King first glided down the river to his capital.²⁶ In the outer courtyard—under gleaming lanterns hanging from silken cords, one all of glass, brought from the Qing governor’s mansion in Suzhou—sits an old servant who has known the Heavenly King since his young days in Canton. He lets no one pass. Above the gilded columns is the inscription “Of the True God, the Sacred Heavenly Door,” reflecting Hong’s changing of his kingdom’s name from peaceful to divine. Spiritual matters are now the focus of Hong Xiuquan’s own life, he tells his followers. Henceforth it is his son Tiangui Fu who will handle “common things.”²⁷

The challenges posed by Issachar Roberts and Joseph Edkins have intermeshed perfectly with the current “spiritual matters” that occupy the time of the Heavenly King. For months, perhaps for years, he has been writing his own commentaries in the ample margins of the Bible—both Old and New Testaments—that he has already corrected. These commentaries link him to the text by verse or chapter, but apart from that limitation his thoughts are free to wander. For whereas in revising the Bible’s text, Hong felt constrained to fit his thoughts to the exact space available in the altered sections, in his own commentary he writes what he feels, at any length he chooses.²⁸ This freedom to browse and reflect, coming so soon after his careful revisions of the aspects of the Bible that disturbed him, means that though he has never been trained as a preacher Hong can often respond to Edkins and Roberts with chapter and verse.

Most of the seventy surviving comments by Hong written in the margins of his revised New Testament—and perhaps in scores of others, as in the case of John’s Gospel, that now are lost—show his concern with the dual themes of family relationships and the uniqueness of God as Father. Again and again, Hong emphasizes that Jesus cannot be God, is not God, just as he Hong is not God, can never be, and will never claim to be. The role of Yang Xiuqing, the East King, the Comforter, and carrier of Divine Breath or Holy Spirit, is often invoked as well, to prove that there is no parity in what others call the Trinity, for God is the Holy Spirit, but Yang as breath of God cannot himself be God. Hong reminds his followers that “God the Father knew that the New Testament contains mistakes; therefore he sent down the East King to testify the truth that the Holy Spirit is the same as God, but that His breath is the East King.” By the same token, writes Hong, “since God knew that some people on earth erroneously believed that Christ is God,” therefore “Christ himself sent down the West King to make it clear that he was [merely] the Heir Apparent. For the Father is the Father, a son is a son, the Elder Brother is the Elder Brother, and a younger brother is a younger brother.” If there is such a concept as a “three in one,” then it refers to God’s three children, Jesus, Hong, and Yang, three brothers born together: for “the East King is [also] God’s beloved son, born of the same mother as his Eldest Brother and myself; before Heaven and earth existed, we three were all sons of the same Father.”29

Hong constantly reemphasizes the nature of the family bonds. The passage of Mark’s Gospel, chapter 12, verses 35 to 37, where Jesus talks with the scribes in the temple at Jerusalem, before the Passover, debating the proposition that the Messiah would be the “Son of David,” prompts Hong to a counterargument. As Hong puts it, “If Christ were God, and ascended to Heaven where he and God became as one, . . . then how could it be that when I myself ascended to Heaven I saw that in Heaven there was God the Father, there was the Heavenly Mother, and there was also the Elder Brother Christ and the Heavenly Elder Sister-in-law? And that now I am come down to earth there are still the Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother, Heavenly Elder Brother, and Heavenly Elder Sister-in-law?”³⁰ And Hong gladly accepts the words of Stephen, just before his martyrdom, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, to be a support of Hong’s own interpretation. When Stephen calls out to the crowd, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God,” Hong points out, this “clearly proves one is Father and one is Son.”³¹ Surely, as Hong writes in another comment, “whether ascending to Heaven or descending to earth, it is always the same: hearing with one’s ears is not as good as seeing with one’s own eyes.”³²

In other comments, Hong shows that he has in no way forgotten the earlier debates, held between Yang Xiuqing and Mellersh and the “synod” aboard the Rattler on the materiality or immateriality of God. Whenever the New Testament reports that Jesus physically touches someone, Hong makes sure to emphasize by his comments that God, while not being Jesus, is separately and yet physically at the scene, and that Jesus gains his powers from God’s literal presence. In Matthew’s Gospel, for example, when Jesus heals the mother of Peter’s wife by touching her hand with His, Hong writes, “God being present in the Elder Brother, when He spoke and reached forth His hand, thus was she healed.”33 Or also as described by Matthew, when Jesus “touched the eyes” of two blind men to cure them, Hong comments, “God being present in the Elder Brother, therefore when He touched their eyes they were able to see.”³⁴ God is present “above” Jesus when he cures the man sick of palsy, and when Jesus cures a leper by touching him, it is because God is at the scene, even more literally, “upon the head” of Jesus.³⁵ Even when Hong does not place God in person at the site of an apparent miracle, as when Jesus raises the only son of a widow from the dead by “touching the bier,” Hong is careful to explain in his commentary that Jesus acts here only as a “prophet” sent by God, not in any sense as God Himself.³⁶

The New Testament offers, Hong tells his followers, signs or answers to many of the enigmas that attended the founding of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Thus the “Earthly Paradise,” the “Xiao tiantang” of which he spoke on Thistle Mountain and again in the dark days in Yongan, can be explained in the light of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, which states that “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” In this sense, the “Little Heaven” or Earthly Paradise, the current “Heavenly Court” of Nanjing, is God’s kingdom for men’s physical bodies on this earth, whereas His “Greater Heaven” is where their souls will ascend in glory.³⁷ In Acts 15:14—16, also, the prophecy of the rebuilding of the tabernacle fits well with current Taiping goals. In the words of the Bible:

Symeon hath declared how God first did visit the nations, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written: After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again its ruins, and I will set it up. . . .

As Hong comments, this passage prefigures the way in which “God and Christ have come down to earth to rebuild God’s tabernacle in the Heavenly Capital at the Heavenly Court.”³⁸

What Hong Xiuquan does not tell either Edkins or Roberts is that he has grown convinced he speaks with the voice of Melchizedek, at once God’s highest priest and king. Hong has found the two Bible passages that discuss Melchizedek most clearly. The first is in Genesis, chapter 14. It is only a fleeting reference to Melchizedek, but it is enough for Hong to build on. As Genesis 14:18 explains, when Abraham returned victorious from his battles, “Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the Most High God.” Hong has already made three revisions to this single verse, so that in the Taiping Bible it now reads, “Melchizedek, King of the Heavenly Realm, brought forth bread and cakes; and he was the highest priest of the Most High God.” In his commentary, Hong explains the newly rewritten text as follows: “This Melchizedek is I myself. In former times, when I was in Heaven, I came down to earth to make these traces plain, and to provide the proof that I would descend to earth at the present time to be your King. For with everything that is carried out by Heaven, there must [first] be a sign.”39

Hong continues this train of thought in his commentary on Genesis, chapter 15, where God offers his own promise of blessings and a rich posterity to Abraham. Hong writes:

When God came down to earth to rescue Israel from out of Egypt, it was the sign that in our present age God would come to earth to direct the founding of the Heavenly Kingdom. When the Elder Brother [Jesus] descended to be born in the country of Judea and redeem the sins of the world, it was the sign that in our present age the Elder Brother would come to earth to help us with our heavy burdens. When I myself came down to earth to give solace and blessing to Abraham, it was the aptest sign that in our present age I myself would come down to earth to direct the salvation of mankind. Thus does each of God’s sacred decrees have plentiful modes of expression, evidence and proof. Respect these words.⁴⁰

The second passage, or rather cluster of passages, on Melchizedek occurs in Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. There Paul writes of the “hope we have as an author of the Soul, both sure and steadfast, . . . even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”⁴¹ Paul sees Melchizedek as “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually” (Hebrews 7:3). And even Levi, from whom the later high priests claim their authority, “was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him” (Hebrews 7:10). In the margin above these verses, Hong has written:

This Melchizedek is none other than myself. Formerly in Heaven our Old Mother bore the Elder Brother and also all those of my generation. At that time I knew the Father was going to have my Elder Brother born of Abraham’s descendants. Therefore I comforted the officers and troops, and congratulated and blessed Abraham, for Abraham was a good man. The Father’s sacred proclamation says, “Hong shall be ruler and save the virtuous man.” This was said to serve as a sign that at the present time I would come down to earth to be the ruler. Respect these words.42

“The time I spent in Heaven, during the days of Abraham,” Hong has written elsewhere in the margin of his Bible, “is still quite clear within my memory. I knew that God was going to send the Elder Brother to be born of Abraham’s descendants; therefore I went down to earth to save Abraham and to bless Abraham.”⁴³

Edkins has also challenged Hong Xiuquan to respond to the Protestant view that the depiction of God in the fourth chapter of the Book of Revelation is figurative, and been bluntly rejected by Hong with the words that the depiction is “real.” Hong’s commentary shows that he knows the context of Edkins’ example in considerable detail. For instance, next to the passage in the Book of Revelation, chapter 3, verse 12, that “the name of the city of my God . . . is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of Heaven from my God,” Hong has written in the margin:

Now the Elder Brother is come. In the Heavenly Court is the temple of the Heavenly Father, God, the True Deity; there also is the Elder Brother Christ’s temple, wherein are already inscribed the names of God and Christ. The New Jerusalem sent down from Heaven by God the Heavenly Father is our present Heavenly Capital [Tianjing]. It is fulfilled. Respect these words.⁴⁴

Hong too has read in Revelation how the seven seals are opened and how each one has its signs: the white horse, whose rider goes forth to conquer; the red horse, whose rider has the power to take peace from the earth; the black horse, whose rider carries the scales; and the pale horse, which bears Death upon his back. But he has given his greatest attention to the moment when the sixth seal is opened. The Bible says:

And I beheld, when he had opened the sixth seal and, lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every slave, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? (Revelation 6: 12–17)

All along the margins above this passage Hong has written his own judgment and elaborated on the ancient words so as to enlighten his embattled followers:

I am the sun; my wife is the moon. “[The sun] became black, [the moon] became like blood” is a hidden message that we would descend to earth to be human beings. The heavenly generals and heavenly soldiers are the stars of heaven. “Fell unto the earth” is a hidden message that they would descend to earth to kill the demons. “Heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places” is a hidden message that the old would be cast out and replaced by the new, and in the Taiping unification all regions would change to the new. “The chiefs of the earth hide in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains” is a hidden message that at this very time the snakes and beasts will be set upon and killed and the evil demons will be exterminated. Now it is fulfilled. Respect these words.45

In a final bold attempt to draw all these themes together, Hong takes the opening of the twelfth chapter of Revelation and shares it with his followers:

There appeared a great wonder in heaven—a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she, being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and, behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a male child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. (Revelation 12:1–5)

And as he has done with the earlier chapter, Hong fills the available open space above this passage with his own commentary, to show how this woman is his mother, and how Hong as her son is also Melchizedek, priest and king: I still remember that when I entered the womb of this woman, the Father made a sign, which was that she should be clothed with the sun, thereby to evidence that the fetus within her body was the sun. But who would have known that the serpent devil, the demon Yan Luo, also knew that this woman’s fetus was I? God had specially dispatched me to be born into the world to kill and eradicate this serpent. Thus it was that the serpent wanted to devour me, hoping thereby to usurp God’s great works. Little did he know that God is omnipotent; the son which was born could not be harmed by the serpent. I myself now earnestly give proof that the Melchizedek of former times was I. After the Elder Brother ascended into Heaven, his body was clothed with the sun. The son born to this woman also is I. Therefore the Father and the Elder Brother now have descended into the world, bringing me to be the sovereign, especially to eradicate this serpent. Now the serpents and the beasts have been set upon and killed, and the realm is in peace. It is fulfilled. Respect these words.46