Spiritual Encounters with Chinese Jews

Spiritual Encounters with Chinese Jews

By Sean Song

 

Since the beginning of my prophetic dreams in 2015, I frequently have been taken in the Spirit to China to meet various people. In these encounters, I observed services and meetings of Chinese believers. I also traveled to different cities to meet all kinds of people. Many of these encounters were accompanied by a mysterious person. I believe it was either the Holy Spirit or angels that took me on these trips. During several of these trips, I encountered descendants of Chinese Jews, and this stunned me. I was even told in several dreams that I personally am a descendant of a Chinese Jew. After praying about these encounters, I believe God is prophetically calling the remnants of the Jews in the East to be part of the great revival that is to come in China, and the future revival to the Middle East and Israel.

 

Encounters with Chinese Jews

I have never personally met any Chinese Jews nor am I aware of any possible connections with my own Jewish heritage, so these encounters shocked me at first. However, I will let these dreams speak for themselves. They are recorded below in chronical order.

 

On May 19^th, 2016, I dreamt of visiting a few different places, one of which was my hometown village. In this dream, the mysterious person who accompanied me told me that the two daughters from my uncle’s family are Jewish descendants. Their father is my father’s cousin. Their grandfather is the older brother of my grandfather. I grew up with these two ladies in the same village. Naturally, I was surprised after being told about their Jewish heritage. I wondered if I was also a Jewish descendant. Just then my grandmother (my father’s mother) appeared and told me that one of our ancestors is a Jewish woman. My grandmother also mentioned that one of our male ancestors was a sinful man who committed sinful acts with this Jewish woman. My grandmother did not mention the identity of this man, but I made note that she specifically said we were born of a Jewish woman and are therefore Jewish descendants according to Jewish tradition.

 

Right then, the two small Jewish girls appeared in my dream, but I conversed with them as if I did not know where they came from. I left them my US phone number and asked them to visit me if they ever came to America. Then my third aunt (my father’s younger sister) appeared in the dream, and we started to discuss the heritage of these two Jewish girls. I said to my aunt, “These two Jewish girls do not look Jewish at all, do they?” I meant that they looked more Chinese in appearance. I continued speaking to my aunt, “You look more like a Jewish person or foreigner than them!” Upon saying this, her face suddenly impressed me. I noticed that her face did have foreign or non-Chinese features to it. When I woke up from the dream, I was reminded that in real life, my aunt’s appearance is indeed different than the normal Chinese people I grew up with.

 

On October 22, 2016, I was taken in a dream to another place in China to participate in a service with a lot of people. When the service was about to close, I noticed two Jewish rabbis. One was young and the other old. The younger rabbi started in a closing prayer. Although I don’t understand Hebrew, I knew in the Spirit that he was praying in Hebrew. His prayer seemed so cumbersome though. When he was halfway finished, he asked to restart his prayer and the older rabbi agreed to let him pray again. I did not know what he was praying about, but I felt he was learning to pray or minister under the older rabbi. It was clear, however, that he was not very good at it.

 

On April 26^th, 2017, I was taken to Beijing. Most of my encounters with people there were with Chinese Christians. One man interestingly told me he was a descendant of the Jewish people. I boldly commented back to him in the dream, “Me too. I have always thought that I was one of the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. I am also a Chinese Jew.”

 

On September 4, 2017, I dreamt I was taken to my childhood village. There I encountered another villager who claimed to be a Chinese Jew. I have never met this person in real life. To my surprise, he told me in English that he was Jewish. Of course, his identity stood out to me because of the several dreams I had prior about my Jewish lineage. Before I knew it, I was interviewing him in Chinese. He said he became a Red Revolutionist in his lifetime, and he loved China. Nonetheless, he was happy to tell me about his Jewish identity and eventually his life story. He wanted his story to be passed on to next generation. This was why I was asked to interview him.

 

The Amazing Stories of the Kaifeng Jews

At first, these dreams puzzled me because I was not aware that any Jews lived in China before the twentieth century, nor did I think I had any personal connection with them. I knew that many Jewish people fled from Europe to China during World War II to escape Nazi rule, but I was not aware of any Jewish communities in China before that. Therefore, I started to search the internet for Chinese Jewish communities. I found stories about a group of descendants named the Kaifeng Jews who were immigrants who lived in China. A small group of them eventually moved back to Israel in 2016. However, due to Israel’s immigrant policy and the fact the Kaifeng Jews were almost assimilated into Chinese culture, they had to formally convert to become Jewish.

 

I went on to read more stories of the Kaifeng Jews, and what I found was astonishing to me. When the Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci went to China in 1582, he found favor with a Chinese emperor. At the time, one of the Kaifeng Jews, Ai Tian, had gone to Beijing to take the imperial examination. While there, he heard that someone from the West believed in the same monist God that he did, so he went to visit Matteo Ricci. Upon seeing a picture of Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist, he misinterpreted it as Rebecca and her two sons. He thought Matteo Ricci was a Jew, and Matteo Ricci thought Ai Tian was a follower of Nestorianism, which came to China in the sixth century.

 

Later, Matteo Ricci found out Ai Tian was a Jew, and this is when the West discovered the Chinese Jewish community that had been in China for over 1000 years. The Kaifeng Jews started to live in the city of Kaifeng since at least the Song dynasty (AD 960-1279). Ricci and Ai Tian started having more interactions, and Matteo Ricci wanted to convert them to Christianity. Ricci even tried to find their Torah to prove that European Jews tampered with the manuscript regarding the coming of Jesus. To his dismay, the Kaifeng community did not convert to Christianity and the Torah they found among Kaifeng Jews was the same as the European manuscripts used at that time. Ricci’s people did take advantage of the opportunity to record a drawing of their temple along with many other stories. Several stones in Kaifeng describe how the Chinese Jews came to China. One of the stones suggests that some Jews received divine instruction to come to China even though many scholars suspected they came either by the Silk Road or Sea Route for doing business. Through historical records, we know the Kaifeng city was flooded and invaded many times during and after the Song dynasty, and many Jews fled North. Their community started to dwindle, and all their manuscripts were sold to western missionaries. One reason for this was also because the old rabbi there died, and his son was unlearned in Hebrew and other traditions.

 

An Unexpected Journey of Emotional Healing

The dream I had earlier about the two rabbis makes more sense in light of the history of the Kaifeng Jewish community. I was not aware of the historical reality of the older rabbi who died and his younger son who was inept to carry on Hebrew tradition. Although I still don’t know about any personal familial connection to the Kaifeng Jews, my hometown was only 196 kilometers north of Kaifeng. My village is one village away from the boarder of the Henan province where Kaifeng is. My grandmother was born in the village that bordered the Henan province. Though it’s now part of another province, our hometown was part of the Henan province (before the 1900s) that now governs Kaifeng.

 

Interestingly, one famous Chinese celebrity, Song Dandan, openly claims that she may be a descendant of the Kaifeng Jews. Her mom is from the Henan province where Kaifeng resides. She explained that she was bullied as a child because her skin was white, and her nose was pointy. She hated the fact that her skin was so white. She was even given the nicknames “Romania girl” and “golden monkey.” Her experience is not unique. As I grew up, I realized that my skin was whiter and more different than some of my villagers and classmates. One student always picked on me for this. He gave me the nickname “little white face” which in Chinese represents a man who sells himself to women to survive.

 

I really hated that name and I asked him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I had fights with other students who beat me up. This emotional trauma caused me to hate my skin color. I wanted to be black or darker. I tried to tan myself, but that did not work. I later read news that one can have lighter or white skin color due to premature birth. This worsened my perspective and caused me to believe I was born prematurely. I even asked my mother if this was true. Although she denied it, I still believed the lie that I was born weak. I likened “blackness” or “darker skin” to “strong” and “powerful,” while “white” meant “pale” and “weak.” I even recall discussing with a female high school classmate our desire to swap skin color because she was not happy with her dark skin, and I was not happy with my lighter skin. This was a large emotional burden I carried growing up. Years later I told this story to my African American fitness coach in Washington DC, and he laughed at me for being discriminated against for my "whiteness" in China. We soon became friends.

 

I don’t have evidence that I am also a descendent of any Chinese Jews besides what has been revealed to me in these dreams. I even did a DNA test once and it only shows I am Chinese. However, if my dreams are true, this could be emotionally healing to me. I felt so awful about myself and my skin color when I was a child. It would be comforting if I did have some Jewish lineage and to know I was not born prematurely.

 

A Prophetic Remnant

I don’t think these prophetic dreams are solely personal. They are also meant to sound a prophetic bell for the end age. Isaiah 43:5 says, “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.” (NRSV) God is calling His remnants from all over the world to come back to Israel. Even though only a small number of Chinese Jews embarked on a journey to become a Jew by conversion, I feel there are more descendants of Jews spread among the Chinese that may not be aware of it at all. Take me for example. As a Chinese person, I never thought of the remnants of Jews in China until I had these prophetic dreams. Whether man knows it or not and whether the world acknowledges it or not, the Lord knows His people and is calling His people back to Israel and Himself. I recall other encounters with Jesus like when I received my calling to be part of the coming Chinese revival, and I felt then as I do now that God is calling His remnant of people in China to be converted to Christians.

 

One of the Chinese men I encountered in these dreams was a brother who served in a church. He also told me he is a Chinese Jew. Many Jewish people from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union converted to Christianity because they did not have a strong religious mindset. Yet, they became a very important part of the churches in modern Israel when they immigrated to Israel. Likewise, I feel some of these Chinese Jews will become Christians too. Lest I forget that I was also shown in another prophetic dream that the great revival coming to China will eventually spread to the Middle East. I also believe many Chinese Christians will be sent out as missionaries to Muslim countries and Israel. Among them, it’s possible that Jewish descendants may come back to Israel in a different way. Maybe they will be part of the end of age revival in Israel and help usher in the return of Jesus Christ.

 

How exciting it is to imagine and see Israelite families saved. Though there are different ideas about how the whole household of Israel will be saved, I believe there will be a great revival in Israel in the end age. I hope the descendants of Chinese Jews play their parts in it. If it is true that God divinely instructed some Jews to go to China, there must be a great plan of God for them in the end of this age.