I was shocked to discover that the Chinese worshiped the God of the Bible as far back as 2500 BC.
They called him "SHANG DI" which means "The emperor above" or "The Most High God"
I have always heard that simplified Chinese characters destroy the original meaning or the word &, after watching this sermon, now I wonder if it was a deliberate attack on the Chinese people to keep them ignorant of the God who was with them since the beginning.
You can also watch the first 15 minutes of the sermon below for additional interesting details.
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I can't watch YouTube on my office computer, but I've read that too. I took beginner's Chinese for a year, and my teacher basically confirmed it. She didn't believe it had anything to do with the Bible, but the meaning of the characters was pretty clear.
As for Shang Di and the ancient Chinese religion, I would guess (but cannot prove) that it is probably due to Jews migrating to China at some point. After the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BC, the ten tribes of Israel were scattered abroad. There are very good linguistic reasons to believe that the tribe of Dan migrated into Germany and assimilated. Perhaps another tribe migrated into China and brought a debased form of Judaism with them. Given the religious state of Israel at the time of the Assyrian conquest, I doubt that the religion they took was very pure, but it would make sense that they brought at least some elements of it with them into China.
Israel is in a unique location such that Jews leaving it can get to Africa, Asia, and Europe very easily on land. And if you study a history of the Jews after Rome ransacked Jerusalem around AD 70, you can see that they migrated mostly into Europe and Africa. But with the earlier Assyrian conquest, they likely moved into Europe and Asia more than Africa (since Judah to the south was around for another ~150 years).
I don't know what all Chinese characters are shown there, but I found one on my own during class that I haven't seen online. Take a look at this character:
想
It is xiǎng, and it means "to want, to think, to wish", and is part of a compound for "to covet". But if you look at each individual radical, you find something very fascinating.
目 – mù, "eye", looks like an eye
木 – mù, "wood", looks like a tree
心 – xīn, "heart"
If you consider these three radicals and how they all come together to mean "to want", you find yourself observing the Woman in the Garden of Eden before she ate the forbidden fruit.
The fruit of the 木 is pleasing to her 目, so in her 心 she 想 to eat it.
I'm still learning Mandarin at YOYOCHINESE & am thinking about using WyzAnt to make sure that my tones are correct.
I'm still using pinyin, but I dream of the day when I can study the traditional chars in depth.
Do you recommend any books?
Not really, I only studied for a year. I don't even remember what textbook I used. Sorry. :-/
I am sorry I forgot, wanted to post this after watching - thanks for posting this, very interesting and inspiring video(s)