The Chronicle of God’s Revelation 
for Both East & West

In the past five thousand years of human history, God gave His Word to His children on Earth through different religions. Not all the religions are equal. Some religions that have more Word of God in their teachings not only survived the test of time but also prospered into major world religions; some religions that have less Word of God or even have some wrong teachings from low-level spirits may become limited or diminished religions. Therefore, it’s important to use world history as confirmation and testimony for the Word of God.

1. Initial Period of First Revelation (About 5,000 B.C. - 500 B.C.)

About four to five thousand years ago while most people were still struggling with nature and fighting with enemies, there were two nations that received revelations from God and formed religions with formalized rituals and doctrines. They were Israel in the West and India in the East. They were the first two nations that had sacred books for their religions, Judaism and Brahmanism, which later evolved to Hinduism.

However, due to the limitation of human knowledge at that time, people couldn’t comprehend the full scale of the Word of God. So, God started with the First Phase of Word of God. The First Phase of Word of God was mostly focused on worshiping and sacrifice. The teachings of the First Phase of Word of God was also emphasized fairness and justice, which included the teachings of the killing of enemies and discrimination over non-believers. In much the same way as Jews have discrimination against gentiles, Brahmans also had social discrimination against lower caste members in the Social Caste System in India. These were the limitations in the First Phase of Word of God.

After over a thousand years of development, both Judaism and Brahmanism became the major religions in their regions. But people gradually drifted away from the Word of God. They began to worship idols and pursue their earthly desires for pleasures; even priests became corrupt and obsessed with earthly fame and wealth. In India, many people were disappointed about the social caste discrimination and spiritual decay. They went into the mountains and practiced meditation, looking for spiritual enlightenment. In Israel, Jews lost the blessings from God due to their idol-worshiping and sexual immorality. They were invaded and controlled by gentiles for several hundred years. They were also looking eagerly for the Messiah to save them, and God heard all their prayers and granted them their wish in the Second Period of Advanced Revelation, or the Original Dharma Time in Buddhism prophecy.

2. Second Period of Advanced Revelation - Original Dharma Time (About 500 B.C. - 500 A.D.)

The Second Period of Advanced Revelation was the time when God brought about the Second Phase of Word of God to Earth. In about 500 B.C., Buddha started preaching Buddhism in India and in about 30 A.D., Jesus started preaching the Christian Gospel in Israel. Unlike the First Phase of Word of God, which emphasized justice and judgment, the Second Phase of Word of God emphasized love, compassion, forgiveness and mercifulness. Instead of focusing on rituals and sacrifice, both Buddhism and Christianity focused on the personal spiritual connection with God or the Holy Spirit/Buddha Spirit.

Before and around the time of Buddha, there were also some major revelations from God to the people of other nations. In the West, there were some major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel that came to bring the Word of God and prophecies of Israel to Israeli people. In the East, Lao Zi and Kong Zi (Confucius) established the foundation of Taoism and Confucianism in China.

After Jesus’ sacrifice, the religion of God in the West entered a new phase of Christianity. At the same time, Buddhism also entered a new phase of Mahayana Buddhism. In the next several hundred years, Christianity started from Israel and grew into the major religion in Europe and Mahayana Buddhism started from India and entered China, growing into the major religion in Asia. The main message from God was the same for both East and West: “to have love and mercifulness for the general public.”

In the Second Phase of Word of God, there was no more racial or social caste discrimination against people. Everyone is equal in front of God/Buddha. The doctrines of punishment and revenge were replaced by the teachings of love and forgiveness. The earthly goals for sacrifice, like winning the war or having a great harvest, were replaced by spiritual reward for eternal life. These are the major differences between the First Phase and the Second Phase of Word of God.

Because the Second Phase of Word of God was hard for people to learn through prophets, the Word became flesh and came into manifestation as Buddha in the East and as Christ in the West to teach people the Second Phase of Word of God directly. So, this period was called Original Dharma Period, or Original Dharma Time, in Buddha’s prophecy.

3. Buddha’s Prophecy on the Future

Before Buddha left this world and went into Nirvana, His disciples asked Him how the future would be after He left. Buddha said there would be one thousand years of Original Dharma Time after He left, then one thousand years of Image Dharma Time, and then ten thousand years of Ending Dharma Time. In Mahayana Buddhism, there was also another prophecy that divided the first twenty-five hundred years into five five-hundred-year periods after Buddha went into Nirvana.

The first two five-hundred-years was equivalent to the Original Dharma Time, and the third and fourth five-hundred-years belongs to the Image Dharma Time. The fifth five-hundred-years was the beginning of the Ending Dharma Time. And at the end of the fifth five-hundred-year period, there would be a big revelation or restoration of the Word of God. That time is now, as Buddha left about twenty-five hundred years ago around 500 B.C.

Buddha’s Prophecy:

• Original Dharma Time (Around 500 B.C. - 500 A.D.)
  Including 1st and 2nd 500 years, which started with Buddha and Christ respectively.

• Image Dharma Time (Around 500 A.D. - 1,500 A.D.)
  Including 3rd and 4th 500 years.

• Ending Dharma Time (Around 1,500 A.D. - 11,500 A.D.)
  including 5th 500 years, which ended about 2,000 A.D.

In the Original Dharma Time, the first five-hundred-years started with Buddha’s Enlightenment and the second five-hundred-years started with Christ’s Sacrifice. As Buddha and Christ were both Word in Flesh for the East and West respectively, this period of time was called Original Dharma Time. To fully understand the meaning of Image Dharma Time and Ending Dharma Time in Buddha’s prophecy, let’s take a look at what happened after that.

4. The Third Period of General Revelation - Image Dharma Time (Around 500 A.D. - 1,500 A.D.)

After the Second Period of Advanced Revelation, there were some problems regarding the Word of God in both East and West.

In the West, Christians preached the Christian Gospel mostly in Europe and Asia Minors. There were large populations of Arabs in the Middle East that never learned the Word of God, either in Judaism or Christianity, due to racial differences and the language barrier. Most of them still had some uncivilized customs, like burying girls alive, and idol-worshiping. But they were also the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael, so God decided to fulfill His promise to “make them into a great nation” (Genesis 17:20). He sent the angel Gabriel to teach Muhammad (570 A.D. - 632 A.D.) the Word of God in Quran and started the religion of Islam.

In the East, Buddhism was widely accepted and patronized by royal families in most Asian countries. However, because there was no single doctrine as an authoritative doctrine in Buddhism, people often got lost in the sea of hundreds or even thousands of doctrines or Sutras available in Buddhism. They didn’t know which doctrine or Sutra to start and how to study Buddhism systematically. Most Buddhist monks spend their lifetime in seclusion to study all these Sutras and didn’t have time to teach the general public about Buddhism. Then the Wisdom in Buddhism was gradually lost and more and more Buddhist followers gave up learning Buddhism, as they thought it too hard to learn. And soon, in India, most people gradually abandoned Buddhism and converted to Hinduism.

God/Buddha realized this problem and sent a Buddhist monk Hui-Neng (638 A.D. -713 A.D.) to reveal Zen Buddhism, the Buddhism without doctrine, to the general public in China. Zen Buddhism was actually started by Buddha when He passed this wordless method from heart to heart to His disciple Mahakashyapa. But after that, it was only passed to next generation one by one and never disclosed to the general public until the sixth Chinese Patriarch Hui-Neng. With this concise method of learning Buddhism without studying mountainous doctrines, Zen Buddhism soon became the mainstream of Mahayana Buddhism in China and spread to neighboring countries like Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.

The interesting thing is that both Muhammad and Hui-Neng were illiterate when they were enlightened or taught by the angel. They never received any formal education from human beings. They received the Word of God directly through revelation or enlightenment and became the major master or prophet of their time. Both Islam and Zen Buddhism influenced billions of people in the last twelve to fourteen hundred years. Unlike Buddha and Jesus who were Word in Flesh, they were like the mirror image of Word in this world. Therefore this period of time was called Image Dharma Time in Buddha’s prophecy.

At a similar time around 600 A.D., God also selected Gregory I (540 A.D. - 604 A.D.) as the first monk to be Pope. He was such a humble man that he even rejected the unanimous election of him as Pope and escaped into the forest to avoid such an honor. Nevertheless people found him and made him the Pope of Rome. After he became the Pope, he gave himself the title “The Servant of the Servants of God” and worked devotionally to preach the Gospel and to send missionaries to all the new areas, like England. Under the inspiration of Holy Spirit, Gregory I established the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually replaced Constantinople as the center of Christianity in the world. He set a great example of a good Pope with humility, which was unfortunately forgotten in the later generations.

Before Gregory I, the church was still under the control of the government and there were many centers of Christian authority in the world. But because of his humility and devotion to God, God exalted Gregory above all the emperors and exarches in the Christian world. By the time of his death, the Roman Catholic Church had established its authority over all Christian matters in the West and Rome became the center of the Christian world in the West. For his great achievement, he was honored as Gregory the Great and also as the “Father of Fathers” in Catholicism. He was acting as the image of the Word in the Christian world. Therefore, this time was also the Image Dharma Time for Christianity.

The third five-hundred-years, around 500 A.D. to 1,000 A.D., was characterized by the great achievement of Zen Master Hui-Neng, Prophet Muhammad and Pope Gregory the Great as the image of the Word for both East and West. But a few hundred years after these great Masters died, people fell again.

The fourth five-hundred-years, around 1,000 A.D. to 1,500 A.D., was characterized by wars, conflicts and religious persecution throughout the world. The schism between Orthodox and Catholic, the wars and conflicts between Christians and Muslims, the destruction of Buddhism in India by Muslim armies, the invasion of Mongolian armies to the civilized world, and the religious persecution and big famines and plagues in Europe made the fourth five-hundred-years the Dark Age for the whole world, not just for Europe. The fourth five-hundred-years ended with the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation in the West and the Revival of PureLand Buddhism in the East.

5. The Beginning of Ending Dharma Time (Around 1,500 A.D. - 2,000 A.D.)

After the world fell into the Dark Age during the fourth five-hundred-years, God realized that human beings could not pull themselves out of their sins just by learning the Word of God or practicing meditation. They needed to have faith in God and to rely on the grace of God to resist the temptation of sins. That’s the time God decided to put more focus on the teachings of faith, instead of on wisdom. Faith in God is the guidance to the Wisdom from God. Without faith in God, people could be led astray from the Word of God and be distracted or deceived by false teachings.

At the beginning of the fifth five-hundred-years, which was around 1,500 A.D., the Protestant Reformation began in Europe to emphasize the doctrine of Faith Only in Jesus Christ. In China, several famous Buddhist monks also revived the teachings of PureLand Buddhism to emphasize the Faith Only in Amitabha, or Amita, Buddha, the Buddha of Eternal Light and Eternal Life, which is just another name for Christ in Buddhism. But compared to the teachings of Buddha and Jesus in the Original Dharma Time, the “Faith Only” teachings was a simplified version out of the mercy and grace of God for the people in the Ending Dharma Age.

In India, Sikhism and Krishna Consciousness also came into formation. Sikhism combined the teachings of Hinduism and Islam, and Krishna Consciousness incorporated the concept of salvation through faith with the chanting practice. Compared to the direct revelation from Buddha and Jesus, these two religions were the intermediate revelations through Gurus or masters. Their influences were mostly among the people of India.

Since the Renaissance & Reformation, there have been great discoveries in both scientific and geographic fields in the Western world. The new continent was found. The land of religious freedom and ethnic coexistence finally appeared. That’s God’s plan to prepare the land for the “Eternal Gospel to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (Revelation 14:6). God’s plan for the New Era of Peace and Wisdom on Earth would soon to be carried out after the fifth five-hundred-years.

After a couple hundred years of Faith education and scientific development, God sent “two witnesses” (Revelation 11) to prepare for the time of initial reward and judgment. In the nineteenth century, American prophet Joseph Smith got the revelation from God to re-emphasize the important of both faith and works for the reward from God. He started the Church of Jesus Christ for Latter-day Saints (LDS), or Mormons, and led them in the exodus from the East to the wildness in the West in North America. And another witness called Bab got the revelation from God in Persia to advocate the unity of the religions from God. But they both made some mistakes and eventually lost their lives in jails, as prophesied in Revelation 11 (see details in Chapter 2.3). One of the followers of Bab claimed as Baha’u’llah reformed the teachings of Bab and found the religion of Baha’ism to advocate unity of religions and unity of humanity. These were all the preparations for the final revelation of the Eternal Gospel of Peace and Wisdom.

6. The New Era of Peace and Wisdom (Year 2,000 and thereafter)

In September 2000, the New Revelation of the Eternal Gospel of Peace and Wisdom finally came. The “Man Child” in the Prophecy of the Bible, Revelation 12, was awakened. The complete picture of the Word of God for both East and West was revealed. After one year of confirmation and one year of public lecturing, the Eternal Gospel was finally put together as this book, The New Millennium Testament of the Holy Bible. A more detailed story about the “Man Child’ and this New Revelation and New Enlightenment will be revealed in later chapters. The “End Time” in Christian prophecies is the same “Ending Dharma Time” in Buddhism prophecy. But it is not the End of the World. It’s the End of Old Time and the beginning of the New Era of Peace and Wisdom. The prophecies in both Buddhism and Christianity were fulfilled.

The Chronicle of God’s Revelation for Both East and West. 

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