The vision of 1837.
After failing the imperial examinations a second time Hong collapsed and was ill for weeks, and saw an old man with a golden beard who gave him a sword, and a younger man who fought beside him. Six years later he re-read a Christian tract he had been handed in the street and understood what he had seen.
The 1837 vision is the origin of everything and it is worth noticing how long it lay dormant. Hong collapsed after failing the examinations, was ill for weeks, and reported being taken up, given a sword, and told to sweep away demons. He then returned to teaching for six years and made nothing of it. Only when he re-read Liang Fa's tract — Good Words to Admonish the Age, handed to him in the street in Guangzhou years earlier — did the vision acquire an interpretation. The interpretation was retroactive, and Hong's own accounts, printed later as The Taiping Heavenly Chronicle, are the source for it and were written when he had every reason to shape the story.
The same ground, other faiths
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