On October 15th, Taiwan’s churches gathered to hold the 11th annual National Prayer Breakfast in Northern Taiwan. Over 8,000 Christians from throughout the country flocked to Shinju County’s Gymnasium for this significant event.
For the fourth consecutive year, Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-Jou attended the NPB together with numerous other special guests, including the First Lady Chow Mei-Ching and Taiwan’s Control Yuan President Chien Shien Wang, who are both devout Christians.
The theme for this year’s National Prayer Breakfast is “Thy Kingdom Come.” With Rev. Shen-Chu Chou as the event’s chairman and Rev. Shao-En Ko as the master of the ceremony, the event featured keynote messages in Mandarin and Taiwanese and special performance by an award-winning choir from a church in Shinju on “Amazing Grace”, a song that combined the Taiwanese aboriginal language Atayal with Mandarin, which has won the prestigious Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan.
Event coordinator Dr. Simon Hung, ORTV executive director, said that the prayer meeting began from 13 weeks ago, where every church started to pray daily for Taiwan that God be the first and holds the ultimate authority in this nation; this is the best way for Christians to celebrate the country’s centennial anniversary.
Rev. Shen-Chu Chou, Dr. Simon Hung, Rev. Shao-En Ko, and four other pastors placed their hands on the President in prayer. They’ve prayed for the nation, next year’s election, requesting that the most suitable candidates be placed in the right positions, and that the Lord’s will be established on earth as it is in heaven. Together, the pastors and the President closed their eyes and prayed in unison.
According to The Christian Daily in Taiwan, the following in an excerpt of Taiwan’s President Ma Ying- Jou’s dedication speech:
Since I’ve came on this post, this is the fourth time that I’ve participated in the National Prayer Breakfast. Every time that I’ve participated I can deeply feel the passion and the conviction of faith of the Christians. That kind of energy really touches people. Especially seeing the “heavy-weight” brothers leading worship, dancing and giving one another high-fives, I can help to say that there is really “Shen Chu” (God’s help).
We hope that God’s kingdom can come on earth, bringing us strength, faith, and blessings. This caused me to think that about a hundred years ago, a 28 year old Christian from Guangdong went to Hawaii and established the Hsing Chung Hui or Revive China Society with around 20 members; but nobody could have imagined that 17 years later they would overthrow the Man-Ching dynasty and establish the first democratic country in Asia – Republic of China. He is Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.
Dr. Yat-Sen Sun has gone through ten failing attempts to overthrow the Man-Ching dynasty, where each time many of his friends, colleagues were killed, but he did not as a result lose hope or give up. Because of this kind of spirit, the 11th attempt of revolution finally succeeded. I believe that the faith that he holds then is “Thy Kingdom Come”. Many of his revolutionary colleagues were also Christians. Through their sacrifice and offering, using actual action steps, they allowed God’s kingdom to come on this land.
National Prayer Breakfast is held jointly by the Taiwanese churches in accordance with their mandate taken from 1 Timothy 2:1-4, “That requests, prayers, intercessions be made for the peace of people, government, president, nation, and the world, asking the Lord to make our country fulfill the God’s given justice, peace, compassion, in order to become a country of faith, hope, and love.”
