Interview with Pastor Isaiah Duong (PI),
the Adventist World Radio Speaker for Vietnam,
by Dr. Bruce Bauer (BB)
of the Journal of Adventist Mission
July 10, 2010
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BB: Pastor Isaiah, when did you and your family leave Vietnam?
PI: We left Vietnam in 1975 after the war ended. My father was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor in Vietnam, and then also in America.
BB: Prior to 1975 where was the Adventist work in Vietnam located?
PI: Most Adventist work was concentrated in Saigon where there was a hospital, the academy, and the printing house. Because of these institutions there were two large churches each with several hundred members in Saigon, plus another church for the Chinese in Cho Lon. Outside of Saigon, there were two smaller churches in the south—Can Tho and Vom Nhon. In the central part of Vietnam there was a church in Da Nang with an elementary school and several other small companies in Tam Ky, Quang Ngai, Quang Hue, Phu My and other Branch Sabbath Schools. But among the ethnic people in the central highlands there were several thousand members. This was also where the work was growing the fastest.
BB: What happened to the Adventist Work after the country was unified under the communist government?
PI: In 1975, just before the war ended, almost all the church leaders, hospital workers, and teachers from the academy were taken out of Vietnam. In all about 500 Adventists leaders, employees, members, and their relatives were taken out of Vietnam to the US. The communists closed all the churches in the central part of Vietnam and the church properties were confiscated. The communists took over the hospital and the academy in Saigon, but allowed the central church (Phu Nhuan) to remain open as well as the Chinese church which continued to function with a small membership. In the southern part of Vietnam, Can Tho and Vom Nhom continued to be open. All the other churches were closed. For several years the work of the church seemed to be paralyzed.
BB: How did you get involved in the radio ministry for Vietnam?
PI: In 1992, the Orange County Vietnamese Adventist Congregation started a weekly TV program to reach out the Vietnamese communities in North America. In 1995 Elder Robins Riches, who was the president of the Southeast Asia Union, heard about the TV program and requested to use the sound track of the TV programs for a daily radio program broadcast by Adventist World Radio (AWR) to Vietnam. The broadcasts to Vietnam began in July 1995.
BB: What kind of expectations did you have for the AWR broadcasts to Vietnam?
PI: At first, we thought that it would take at least five years before we could see any result from the broadcast because we had no way to advertise them within Vietnam and the Vietnam government controlled all communication channels with the outside world at that time. The Lord blessed the efforts, and within five weeks we had received five letters that had been brought out of Vietnam by tourists and sent to the Hong Kong address (a neutral point for communicating with Vietnam). Among those five letters was a letter from a Catholic priest, who indicated that he was working with a 22,000 member parish, and that he was using the materials of the broadcast to teach his members. He later indicated that he would like to be baptized and join our church. Since that first batch of letters, many more letters were sent to Hong Kong to request literatures and the offered Bible Lessons.
BB: What did you do to follow up the radio interests?
PI: I started by contacting the Seventh-day Adventist Mission in Vietnam to see if they could quietly do the follow up. I wrote and called the president several times to urge him to do this. The radio program invited people to attend the Phu Nhuan headquarter church. But then I started receiving letters from listeners who had visited the Phu Nhuan Church, but they were turned away or given a cold welcome. Many of them also indicated that when they entered the church, some officers bluntly told them that the Phu Nhuan church had nothing to do with the radio program (this is understandable because of the persecution from the police).
Then one day I visited Nguon Song, the Center for Evangelism and Materials of the Vietnamese Sunday Churches Worldwide to buy some Bibles. After asking my name, I was greeted warmly and respectfully by the director and all the workers of the Center. This kind of greeting was very surprising especially since all the Sunday churches in Vietnam consider the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be a cult and usually avoid all communication with Adventists. Then the director told me that, “Pastor Duong, God is using you all over Vietnam. Many people had come to Christ and joined the Sunday churches because of the radio broadcast.” I humbly gave praise to the Lord for the good news, but wondered if I had done enough?
Then one Sabbath after the worship service, two visitors indicated that they wanted to talked to me. They introduced themselves as viewers of our TV program in California. They said they have just returned from spending two months in Vietnam, and while there had visited several Sunday churches throughout Vietnam and heard that there were many listeners tuning in to the Peace & Happiness radio broadcast on AWR who were joining the Sunday churches as a result.
During that same period of time we also received many more letters from listeners indicated that they could not find any Seventh-day Adventist church in their areas, so they asked whether they could join a Catholic church or a Sunday church which were under the control of the government?
Because of all these factors, I contacted the Southeast Asia Union Mission (SAUM) president, Elder Robin Riches, requested help in doing something for all the interests. Christians cannot just sow and not reap. With much prayer and planning, I asked Robin Riches for permission to start an Adventist underground church system in Vietnam. He flew to the US, met with my church board members, and gave us the green light to start an underground church in Vietnam.
Even with the permission from the SAUM president, I was still reluctant to start the underground work. I did not have any experience with house churches. I had left Vietnam almost twenty-two years earlier. I wondered whether I should trust all the letters I received from Vietnam even though I knew that they had to risk their lives to write to us. I then decided that I had to see everything with my own eyes before I would proceed. I asked the SAUM president for a permission to enter Vietnam using my US passport and American name. In September 1998, I visited Vietnam as a tourist. I selected those radio listeners I thought could be trusted to meet with me. We tested their sincerity first and also set up a plan to avoid police raids. I spent one month in Vietnam, traveled from the south to the north to train several people in how to lead small groups of five to twenty-five at the most. Even though I tried my best to avoid the police, in many cases the police raided the places I was using for training, and I narrowly escaped. Some nights I changed hotels three times to avoid the police. I used different names with different groups. By the end of that month I had trained seventy people to be the leaders of the underground movement.
I went to Vietnam with an inquiring heart, questioning the sincerity of the people. I left Vietnam with full confidence in the faith of these people. I had no doubt about their commitment to Jesus Christ and their hunger and thirst for the Word of God, and their commitment to spread the message of the gospel to other people. I vowed that I would help them by any mean which the Lord would give me.
We set up an underground printing and distribution system for various publications. It is extremely difficult to print literatures in a communist country where the government controls all the printing presses and all the other means of mass communication. Distribution is equally challenging. If it’s possible to print and distribute material in a communist country for one year without being arrested, that is a miracle. But if God allows that to be done for fifteen years without the system being discovered by the police that is a supernatural phenomenon.
The movement gained momentum and spread from the south to other parts of Vietnam. And new groups were established in various places opposition also started to build. First, it came from the mission, (probably at the urging of government official), then it spread to the police. I also felt the heat and pressure from some Vietnamese Adventist leaders and Vietnamese members in America, but also from some of the leadership of the SAUM.
The Vietnamese Missions president voiced his objections to SAUM. He requested that the radio broadcasts not use the name Seventh-day Adventists on any printed materials because this would bring trouble to him and the mission people from the government. He was also against the setting up of an underground system for the radio Adventists in Vietnam. One Vietnamese Adventist leader from the U S stirred up opposition against the AWR Peace & Happiness broadcasts and also against me personally in America. Then even the SAUM officers changed their attitudes and I received pressure to shut down the underground work. The battle went on throughout 1999. False accusations, name calling, gossip, malice, stirred-up division within my congregations in the US, telephone threats, anonymous letters sent to my home to threaten or accuse me, using some of the people on my team against me, pressure from respected church leaders—all this was building during 1999. By December 1999, I decided to stop working for Vietnam on the ground that the Bible teaches that I should obey my superiors. I conceded to the requests of SAUM at the end of December 1999.
But a miracle happened. God intervened and wanted his work to continue. I received four visions consecutively in a four week period that came every Tuesday night in which God sent his angel to tell me that I should continue with the work in Vietnam. I didn’t know how since I had already decided to shut everything down in Vietnam. I had given the underground workers in Vietnam stipends for three months and had told them to stop all activities. I did not know how to carry out the command of the visions. Then on the fifth Tuesday night an officer from the SAUM flew to America, called me, and asked if he could come to visit me in my home. During the conversation, he asked me to start the underground work in Vietnam again, and giving me permission to work anywhere in Vietnam with no limitations. I told him, I am a man of my own word. When I said I stopped, I stopped. Don’t try to test my sincerity. He reiterated his request, so I told him I would pray about it.
During this time, I received news from Vietnam that there were many Sabbath-keeping groups developing all over Vietnam. They were independent from each other and called themselves by various names such as, The Church of Jesus Christ Seventh-day, Catholic Returning to Their Origin; Seventh-day Church of God; Seventh-day Baptists; Seventh-day Pentecostals; Seventh-day Bible Church; Seventh-day Evangelical Christ Church, etc.
After that I contacted the SAUM president and asked what was going on? He told me that the SAUM had discovered that the communist government was using the Vietnam Adventist Mission to try to take over the underground work and to kill the movement. The pressure from the mission was a trap. So now the SAUM wanted me to start the work up again.
I told the president, “people are not toys. We cannot turn them on, then turn them off. If we work this way nobody will trust our word anymore, and how can we preach to them?”
I told Robin riches, “If you really want me to start the work again, I have two requests: (1) please do not tell me to shut the work down again until Vietnam has complete freedom that allows the people to make decisions for themselves, and (2) since the Vietnam Adventist Mission does not want me to use the name Seventh-day Adventist in connection with the underground church, and since the Mission also does not want me to print any literature with the Seventh-day Adventist names on it, and since there are so many Sabbath-keeping churches in Vietnam now, the union must give me a name for the underground work.
At the July 2000 General Conference Session in Toronto, a committee composed off a General Conference Associate Secretary (Larry Coburn), the Southern Asia-Pacific Division president, the AWR president, the Adventist Southeast Asia Project board chair and director, and the SAUM president voted for the radio ministry and underground work to use the name, “Everlasting Gospel Underground Church.”
BB: How difficult was it to set up the underground house church network in Vietnam?
PI: To set up and operate an underground network in a communist country is not easy. Every three houses has a government officer and every ten houses has a chief who oversees everything. Besides that everyone is a potential informant for the police. Any stranger entering the area can be spotted immediately and reported to the local police. The government controls everything. Any legally functioning organization has government agents. These agents are either planted there or bought by the government to supply information about the activities of the organization to the police. Furthermore, the government spreads distrust within the organization’s members to cause division and force cooperation with government agencies. If the government cannot control an organization’s leader, the government will create rumors or accusations or false evidences about crimes committed in order to remove that person. In other word, if a leader does not cooperate with and work for the government, he or she will not be a leader very long.
Furthermore the communist propaganda machine is very effective and powerful. It will create chaos within the ranks of an organization to destroy morale and weaken the will to carry on with the organization’s mission.
In the most severe situations, church workers were put into prison and tortured to break their will to serve Jesus. At other times people were heavily fined so that the financial penalty would discourage church work.
To run an underground system in this kind of environment is very difficult. I have to say that it is by God’s grace and power that the house churches have survived until today.
BB: Isn’t it true that recently there has been an easing of restriction on Christian activities in Vietnam so there is more freedom today?
PI: When Vietnam wanted to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and receive economic aid from the West, the government had to comply with the WTO’s requirements. It also changed its practices toward Christianity at that time. Now the government tactic is to pressure church groups to register and allows churches to function within the scope of direct government control and permission. Permission must be sought and received before any religious activities can be carried out. The church organization becomes an arm of the state, or state’s instrument to carry out the state’s agenda. The church is used to promote the government’s agenda and to improve Vietnam’s image abroad.
I certainly hope that the recent changes will bring the best result for the people and the church in Vietnam. But I am afraid that this change is only strategic and formal not ideological and will only be temporary. The government changes the way it treats the church for its (government) own sake. But communist ideology is still there. The party must be first and must have absolute power. Everything else exists for the sake of the party.
Church history gives us an example to illustrate my point in the Roman Empire’s attitude toward Christianity. At first the empire persecuted Christians ruthlessly. Then because the survival of the empire was at stake, the emperor recognized the church and used the church to strengthen the state. The emperor controlled the church’s leaders as his magistrates. When the Roman Empire persecuted the church, the church grew stronger and purer. When the Roman Empire recognized the church and stopped all persecution, the church was riddled with compromise and plunged into the Dark Age. The church lost its commitment to biblical orthodoxy. The church no longer served the Savior as its Lord; the empire was the church’s new provider and lord. The church lost its mission and its doctrinal purity.
The same thing seems to be happening in Vietnam now. Many people welcome the change from the government and believe that a new dawn is coming to the church in Vietnam. But news has recently surfaced that government agents have told church leaders in many parts of Vietnam that the church does not need to obey the Bible. Churches are to do what the government official command first, and second what the Bible commands. Morality and doctrine are no longer needed in the church.
BB: What do you think it will take to bring the government recognized Seventh-day Adventist Church in Vietnam and the underground work into unity?
PI: When freedom completely returns to Vietnam, especially religious freedom, then the world church can facilitate a process whereby (1) the leaders of both groups can meet together, (2) a reorganization plan of the church in Vietnam can be approved, (3) Vietnam can be divided into three or four missions or more if the underground church continues to grow at its current rate.
BB: What is your dream for the future of Vietnam?
PI: If I have a choice, I would like to devote the rest of my life to the evangelization of Vietnam. By God’s grace I would like to (1) train 100 committed youth evangelists to evangelize the whole of Vietnam, (2) continue to evangelize Vietnam through the use of radio, television and the printed page, and especially using DVDs, (3) write more materials about theological studies (a Bible Commentary, etc.) for future leaders and to use as outreach materials.
By the grace of God, I would like to see at least one million Vietnamese become Adventists during my lifetime.
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