i・MODE→　　

Testimony


Takeshi Tomii


　　　I became a Christian when I was 9 years old (1966), and baptized by an American Baptist missionary a year or two later than my father and mother in Sapporo, a northern city of Japan. But I did not realize the true meaning of the Gospel then. When a new pastor came to our church and forced us to use so old style Bible that a child and uneducated people could not understand because the grammar of old Japanese is quite different from the present one, though the passages in such a style sound solemn when read aloud. Our family decided to leave the church, so we wound up to be a churchless Christian family. Thus I did not attend churches during my high school days. But through many hard experiences including my father's illness I came to think of the meaning of the life and religion. When I went to Tokyo to take the entrance exams, I happened to read a Bible written in a plain style. The words in it shocked me because they were the very ones that I had sought for long time. Especially, the words of Jesus impressed me very much, so I found them to be the ones that only God can utter. I was filled with joy and a sense of happiness.

　　　When I became a university student, I would not attend a church though I thought myself to be a Christian. But I happened to attend a meeting of Christian Bible study club without any intention to be the member of it, because all I had wanted to do is to make a rock group, of which I would be the lead guitarist. The Christians belonging to the club were totally different kind of people than I had ever met. They were energetic, kind and sincere in everything. I gradually came to be fascinated by them. A few months later, I was invited to attend an evangelical church and became a member of it. During the first and second years I was not a serious member, because my wish was still to become a rock star. But when I was a junior, I was compelled to become the chief of the club because the other male members would graduate from the school. Through this experience I was forced to think about how to lead the congregation of God's people. I studied the Bible intensely with these members every Wednesday (OT) and Saturday (NT). Our senior members graduated from the university and became seminary students and they are now the young teachers of a leading seminary and a university. I experienced in the club the tremendous works of the Holy Spirit. Many non-Christian members converted to serious and active members in their churches. When I graduated, all that I was interested in was to know how to evangelize the Japanese and to make them disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

　　　The subject of my graduation thesis was about the epistemology of C. Van Til. My teacher of the seminar on the philosophy in the university said, "Now we don't have any answer to the problems of the human thoughts after the unsuccessful experiments of modern philosophies, including the failures of the Soviet Union, China, and the Islamic fundamentalism. Where is the exit from this stalemate? We are facing the death of modern philosophy." At that time I happened to be introduced a book about the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til by a friend and realized that the cause of such stalemate lies in the autonomy of the human reason. To get over this crisis of the civilization, we must go back to and reevaluate the wrong basis on which the modern world stands. So I began to look into the Biblical laws, because the alternatives of the humanistic government over every area of life cannot be found within the inventions of the humanistic minds. But there were no good books written on this theme. The commentaries of the Biblical law presented me nothing but the word-for-word explication. What I wanted to know was the general principles that penetrate these various laws, that is, the world view that the Biblical Law presents. In the meantime, I had to graduate from the university and to enter a trading company to earn money, which caused me to stop this research. But I was sent to the Soviet Union in 1982 to study Russian, where I had a chance to see the various things that the humanistic regime had done to establish the godless society.

　　　After several years I quit the company to study theology at a seminary. I had a chance to go to the United States to attend a Christian college students' summer camp in Panama City Beach, Florida in 1986. When I went to a Presbyterian church near the camp site, I came across two fat books at the book store. They were "The Institutes of the Biblical Law" and "The Law and Society" by R.J. Rushdoony. I did not know that these are the major books of Christian Reconstruction. I did not read them until I began to write my seminary thesis. When I set out to write about the covenant of God, I happened to read them and found that they were the ones that I had sought for. Surprisingly enough, when I entered the seminary, I had been presented another book by my coworker in the church, which was "Theonomy in Christian Ethics" by Greg Bahnsen. The coworker had not known that it was another major book of Christian Reconstruction. I happened to read it and noticed that this book says similar things to those two books. And I finished my thesis on theonomy using these three books.

　　　After I became a pastor of a branch of the church, I read intensely these three books and understood the Reconstructionist world view. Meanwhile, when I met another pastor (Mr. Ryoichi Tokota) at the pastor meeting, who was a graduate of the same seminary as mine, I said to him, "I am now interested in the theonomy and reading the works of Rushdoony." He said, "I am reading them, too." We were surprised to know that we had the same opinion on the theonomy and the Christian world view. After that, when we met again, he said, " I became acquainted with an American pastor, who is a Reconstructionist. He started a ministry to teach the Christian world view to the Japanese, founding a research center in Mitaka-city of Tokyo. He wants to meet you." So I met him in 1988, who is Rev. Ralph Smith. Three of us started to meet once a month to read the Institutes.

　　　Two years later, when Mr. Tokota was going to resign voluntarily as a pastor because of his Reconstructionist belief, I was also about to resign the pastorate due to the same reason. When we met the senior pastor, he said, "We are not bound by the laws of God. It is a stupid dream that the Japanese as a nation are to be the disciples of Jesus." I realized that if I would stay in this church as a pastor, the church would be in a great confusion because he would not allow me to hold the Reconstructionist belief. So I decided to ask him to let me resign as a pastor. Because to keep a stand in revolt against the authority that God has set over me seemed to be a rebellion against God Himself and his order.

　　　Now I have some men who became Reconstructionists and want to start to publish many books on this cause. I am working on the PC network nationwide and on the Internet, publishing the translated theses by Rushdoony and other Reconstructionist writers. We feel that God has started this work and wants to do a great thing in this country and the world. I hope Reconstructionist movement will become far greater than even that of the Reformation.



Send your mail to millnm@path.ne.jp

Imperial Family and Christianity



Home