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Morris Ruddick
GLORY FROM THE EAST MANIFESTING
In the face of what seems unlikely and impossible, God's ways are always higher. Having spent over 21 months in Vietnam in the last 7 years, we have continually been amazed. God's ways simply defy natural efforts and the best of human capabilities. At the crux has been a remnant committed to prayer.
Behind the Scenes
We've long been acquainted with how over two decades ago the Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong served as Bible training centers. Huge numbers of Vietnamese were coming to the Lord and then being prepared for what God knew, but those held there hardly expected: being returned to Vietnam when China took over Hong Kong. That difficult event for those in the camps changed the balance of power for the house church movement from one end of the country to the other. More than seventy percent of those interred had come from the North.
During that same general time frame, beginning in the early 1990s, many from Vietnam's elite in the North were being sent to Russia for graduate work, business training and assignments, along with positions of influence. In Moscow alone, there was a community of over 100,000 Vietnamese. Most of Moscow's Vietnamese lived in one central high-rise area. THEN, during the time that the Vietnamese refugee camps across Asia started being disbanded, there came a radical spiritual climate change in Moscow. Almost overnight, in the expatriate Vietnamese community, everyone was talking about Jesus and reaching out to know Him.
Parenthetically, the late 1980s to mid-90s in Vietnam were the most brutal for the persecuted house church movement. Raids were made, leaders were jailed. So it was that the prayers of the saints steadily and desperately became more intense. Anointed, high-level Western ministry leaders slipped in to pray in agreement with secret gatherings of Vietnamese leaders. Those fervent prayers of the righteous, oppressed and anointed were heard -- and from Hong Kong to Moscow, grand-strategy alignments from on High were set in motion.
We tend to describe such big-picture alignments as God doing a new thing. While they are, they entail more. A very key factor involves the amassing of prayers from those most impacted, especially those being crushed for their faith. They entail the anticipatory response of a God whose ways are beyond the realm of our short-term perspectives of things. These highlights from more than the last two decades set the stage for what unfolded in our most recent sojourn in Vietnam as we have been privileged to serve as a part of these NEW dimensions being released in God.
Current Parallels
Upon arrival almost six weeks ago, we came out of the chute hard and fast. After a number of meetings in the Saigon area, we headed north. Domestic Vietnamese flights were a zoo this time of year, as we were traveling just prior to the Tet (Chinese New Year) holidays on our own, when there is a massive shift of the population returning to hometowns for family holiday visits.
It was freezing when we arrived in the capital city. Not literally, but with it sunny and 
Our first workshop had a mix of leaders: business people, fledgling entrepreneurs, pastors, pastor's wives and even a graduate-school professor whose academic expertise (economic forecasting) closely paralleled my own professional experience. There were several minority group, village leader/ pastors who had traveled distances to attend. Forty to fifty were expected -- the number wound up being 75. The man who arranged it was amazed. The professor who came had such a positive response, that he has offered to have my books translated and published in Vietnam. This very significant offer is an important answer to prayer and our future potential in helping these brethren.
I already knew core infrastructures were being deeply penetrated by the Lord, but this time in Hanoi demonstrated even more. We had dinner one night with a Vietnamese pastor our age, a former field-grade military type, also retired from a high-level position in a Russian firm, who is a product of the sweep of the Holy Spirit in Moscow during the 1990s. He now leads a fellowship attracting field-grade and above vets from the capital city. ONLY GOD, with the prayers of a remnant, could have done this.
Our next workshops included all successful business people -- whose desire is to follow God's ways of business. When I learned of the makeup of those attending, I re-shuffled the presentation and raised the bar. The new format has been well received with invitations for more. Our final group teased us with their desire for "more" by telling us that they would allow us to go ONLY if we agreed to come back in May with additional teaching. We agreed!
New Potentials and Challenges
We visited two of the orphanages our chief host supports. One has 22 kids who were rescued from human trafficking. We usually come with a small supply of Hershey's chocolates. It brought tears to our eyes to see those kids take their first bite of chocolate and see their eyes get real big at the taste of it.
The eagerness we're experiencing among business practitioners dovetails with another dimension of the big-picture alignment that ONLY GOD could be orchestrating. One of our earliest trips to Hanoi (2008) unveiled a move of God among the sons and daughters of high-ranking government officials, young professionals in their late 20s and 30s being completely delivered from hard-drug addictions after government drug-rehab programs had repeatedly failed.
NOW! Now there is a shift underway by authorities in the acceptance of the role of local Christians working with addicts.
As we've become a part of what is unfolding with business leaders in both Hanoi and Saigon -- it has brought the Joseph-Daniel Calling dimension of my message into sharp focus. So, in addition to our workshops to birth new businesses, we've begun to collaborate on bringing these business leaders together from across the regions to strategize on their joint mobilization. Discussions on plans to establish funds to train the youth entrepreneurially, as well as to help mobilize poor communities economically are in motion -- as Vietnamese leaders embrace the responsibility of helping their own.
Advancing opportunity -- with God's proclamation of the Vietnamese brethren being the head and not the tail -- is being facilitated, cooperatively by both the North and the South. As we have witnessed these "beyond expectation" dynamics, I marvel at the rich, personal relationships we've come to enjoy with the brethren in the North.
In line with these thoughts were some recent and very key Kingdom connections. One brother in particular is a genuine modern-day Joseph, a business-owner and product of the Vietnamese-Russian revival, who has an amazing story of how God supernaturally birthed his company and how he has intertwined his business with Kingdom purposes. His vision and zeal make him a major force for change in this simultaneously challenging, yet opportunistic spiritual environment.
We found our burden to start a business-school of values for the secular marketplace shared by ones who we might collaborate with in the days ahead. Step by step, the Lord is bringing the pieces together.
We visited and received feedback from a businessman who six years ago slipped us into a major stronghold of this nation. During that time we helped start businesses that have not only grown, but have built up the local body, as our self-sustaining program has continued to spawn new businesses. The "value-added" to what he shared was in the faith-filled way he now saw these brethren THINKING.
Contrary to ones culturally tainted by Western doctrinal precepts and ambitions, these brethren culturally are very biblical in their thinking while retaining a faith that is Vietnamese in its identity. With a culture closer to the Jewish roots to the faith than most other Asian cultures, it explains their ready grasp of deep matters of faith.
The Bible is culturally Jewish and from an Eastern mind-set. So it is that these brethren have embraced community-based mind-sets that look to the Lord, that are inclined to reach out and help one another AND to expect miracles. It's one of the reasons revival is taking root so strongly. In the face of adversity, these brethren have not only been prospering, but growing as a community spiritually. In so doing, they have become truly a light on a hill to their neighbors.
Yet, alongside these positive developments is a reality and deep concern. It involves leaders whose hearts have strayed from the purity needed in the high stakes of this spiritual environment and have become ambitious. The impact ranges from those who inform on one another (to local authorities) for their own gain, to those whose out-dated and short-sighted grasp of the spiritual big-picture short-circuits the alignments emerging from the long-term amassing of prayer.
I'm sharing these matters with the hope that it will engender prayer that supports the move of God underway, rather than the move of man.
Overall however, what we've been witnessing is how uniquely and strategically the Spirit of the Lord orchestrates things when people are praying. Alliances are being mobilized and Kingdom strategies planned and set in motion. With such a unique intertwining of fervent prayer and developments over the last two to three decades, there is emerging today, against all odds, something vibrant that taps His glory with results beyond chance expectations.
With our next trip in May, as well as our September trip almost filled up -- we are 
I've been systematically tracking and mapping out these historical developments of the revival in Vietnam. Understanding the cultural overtones to the parallels between Vietnamese and biblical, Jewish culture is an important key to what lies ahead. God's ways are always higher. The prayers of a remnant have been triggering His glory. As they have, this fervent, effectual prayer combined with strategy impacts the spiritual atmosphere and brings change. It brings the change that only can be explained by God.
Thank you. We deeply appreciate your prayers and support in our efforts to build up these most remarkable brethren.
With every blessing,
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