Singapore, or Lion City, already featured on the world’s first modern atlas by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius in 1570. Except then, it was spelt Cincapura. But its existence pre-dates that. We know because of the Singapore Stone that used to sit at the mouth of the Singapore River, a fragment of which is displayed at the National Museum of Singapore. That stone, which has an inscription in an unknown language, is possibly more than 1,000 years old. And travellers like the Chinese merchant Wang Dayuan, who passed this way, wrote in his diaries from 1300s that Singapore was famed for its hornbill casques, mid-quality laka wood and cotton. This rich history of our tiny red dot, which I call home, is what I seek to explore on this page primarily through a God lens. Because I believe that God has a unique destiny for our nation, as He does for all the nations of the earth.
The story of Singapore is littered with many wonderful and (in my mind) unlikely gems that one could attribute to coincidence. Myself, I’d contend that they are really fingerprints of God. Why would men like William Wilberforce (the famous slave abolitionist), Paul Revere (the American patriot featured in Longfellow’s poem “Midnight Ride”) and Robert Morrison (the Chinese missionary who translated the Bible into Mandarin) be connected to Singapore? Why would the first Prime Minister of newly-independent Singapore Lee Kuan Yew be miraculously saved from the Sook Ching massacre. Why would a church in Singapore have the privilege of redeeming the Bible College of Wales, with its deep wells of revival? I don’t know the answer, except to say “But God.”
