The Transcendental and Political Nature of Bilocation of the Holy Land in
Solomon Islanders’ Journeys to Israel
Jaap Timmer, Macquarie University, Sydney
Abstract
This paper will discuss the phenomenon that for followers of the All Pacific Prayer
Assembly (APPA) in Solomon Islands who journey to Israel, the Holy Land is in two
places simultaneously, both in Israel and in their homeland. APPA is a new religious
movement that is particularly popular among To’abaita speakers on the island of
Malaita and which infers to transcend the large South Sea Evangelical Church (from
where most of the followers come) and all other religious institutions in Solomon
Islands and the wider region. Over the last five years, the leader of APPA, Michael
Maeliau, together with regional and international followers, journey to Israel every
year as part of their role in serving the Kingdom of Christ through prayer, intercession
and prophetic ministry. At the same time, these journeys to the Holy Land highlight
bilocation in relation to a Malaitan nation-building agenda. To shed light on this sense
of bilocation I will discuss APPA’s journeys to the Holy Land in terms of the creation
of transnational social spaces and attempts of attaching To’abaita as a nation to a
plane that transcends the present as well as To’abaita and biblical pasts.
Introduction
In this paper I will explore journeys to the Holy Land by evangelical Christians from
Solomon Islands. These journeys originate from the All Pacific Prayer Assembly
(APPA), an evangelical movement in North Malaita that has developed a theology
that revolves around the key vision of Michael Maeliau and a more universal body of
evangelical doctrine. This theology has shaped a particular discourse on transforming
the world in accordance with God’s will. In essence, the theology of APPA declares
that To’abaita speakers in North Malaita are a special elect and this idea brings them
to the centre stage of the Second Coming as a people who will need to return the
‘relay baton’ back to Jerusalem by preparing the world through prayer and
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intercession. Maeliau’s vision locates the people of Malaita at the uttermost part of
the earth, measured from Jerusalem, where the Gospel was ‘launched’ and maps a
path back to Jerusalem with specific stopovers where the path needs to be
straightened through prayer assemblies, intercessions and further prophecy (Maeliau
2006: 186).
APPA draws, like other evangelical movements, heavily on biblical texts to find
guidance for its models of devotion and for the activities of the elect (Crapanzano
2000 among others). Active and ongoing exegesis of biblical texts and numerous
revelations to Maeliau have underpinned the establishment of the so-called Jerusalem
Council. Since 2010 the Jerusalem Council arranges journeys to Israel during the
Feast of Tabernacles. In 2012, I joined council members to witness how APPA
“serves the Kingdom of Christ” and worships the Lord Jesus, and, as the special event
of this journey, how it connects, for the first time, with Messianic Jews in Israel.
Although a number of events and visits during the journey were planned ahead (such
as the two meetings with Messianic Jews and the guest houses at every location), it is
God who guides the leaders of the group to specific places to proclaim places for
prayer and intercession.
I will focus on events in Israel during the 2012 journey as a window into looking at
the meaning of the Holy Land for members of APPA. I will consider how sites and
events in Israel are understood and used as an affirmation of faith, a typological
template that oscillates between APPA reading of the biblical text and recent history,
and finally how experiences in Israel are narrated in ways that attach To’abaita to a
historical plane that transcends the present as well as To’abaita’s past, and the biblical
past. The latter fits the phenomenon of bilocation that has been identified by Hastings
(2003: 39) in relation to Ethiopian and Europeans convictions of being Sion while still
being concerned about retaining a physical and spiritual presence in Israel. I will use
Harding’s concept to show that APPA journeys to Jerusalem in relation to bilocation
do not only have religious and emotional significance, but also holds particular
importance to the idea of transferring Israel’s status and the holiness to Malaita as a
politically sovereign nation.
Redemptive Purpose
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The journeys to Israel as well as APPA gatherings organized at the above-mentioned
stop-overs and in the region build on the biblical idea that every Christian is called to
pray for his city (Jeremiah 29:7) and nation, Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6), and all nations
(Isaiah 56:7). A key source of inspiration for APPA to define a central role for
Malaita to rise and pray in faith for the fulfilment of its redemptive purpose is derived
from the House of Prayer for All Nations (The World Wide Watch) on the Mount of
Olives, established by Pastor Tom Hess in 1987. Maeliau joined the House of Prayer
for All Nations activities at different times, both in the house on the Mount of Olives
and in his own nation in North Malaita. In North Malaita, at a prayer and convocation
centre called Aroma, Michael Maeliau established a 24-hour Watch unto the Lord
(Maeliau in Hess 2008: 235-237), following and supporting the effort of the House of
Prayer for All Nations towards the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom coming to Jerusalem
(Hess and Hess 2012: 7). According to the House of Prayer for All Nations, the
specific redemptive purpose of Solomon Islands is “to take up the dish and the towel,
to be a servant of all. Her redemptive purpose is to be a Servant of Servants (John
13)” (Hess and Hess 2012: 279).
This redemptive purpose alludes to the motto ‘To Lead Is To Serve’ that is stated on
the coat of arms of Solomon Islands but this link with the nation-state does not
emerge during the APPA journeys to Israel. Instead APPA, as a global movement, is,
as Maeliau explained to me, an assembly of the unrepresented nations like the tribal
group of To’abaita speakers of which he himself is a member. “Like the United
Nations has real nations and unrepresented nations, we believe that God means
original nations and not colonial constructions like Solomon Islands” (interview with
Maeliau, Tiberias, December 2012). Within the prophetic intercession framework of
the redemptive purpose of the To’abaita nation, the modern state of Israel acts “as the
vital connection point between the past and future” (Shapiro 2008: 465). Because this
expected future is important to To’abaita it is interesting to consider how it acts as an
organizing principle against which other events, both locally and globally, are
measured can be measured.
During the 2012 journey, gatherings, sermons and discussions mostly built around the
assumption that the Bible is a constituting text – a set of commandments that need to
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be followed, and that all that happens during the journey is part of God’s will. The
spiritual rewards of this journey are thus limited to what according to their conviction
God has in place for them. This does not differ much from what has been announced
during APPA’s launch of the so-called Celestial Warfare in Malu’u, in 2000,
the angelic sons of God are now returning to take their rightful place over their
nations’ to prepare them for the return to Israel. During this launching, the
Lord thrust a sword through the Solomon Islands to bleed the nation of all the
bad things,’ signifying ‛the beginning of the restoration of Solomon Islands’
(Maeliau 2006: 134).
The restoration will essentially entail a return to some basic principles of original
(‘tribal’) nations and the establishment of theocracy for Solomon Islands. To
accomplish this APPA seeks to redeem their past and their ways of doing things
(kastam) through prayer assemblies so as to revoke the curse of the Tower of Babel:
In spite of this original curse, we discovered that we could reap some gems out
of it through the grace of God. Firstly, the curse enabled mankind to fulfil
God’s original mandate to increase, spread out and populate the entire earth.
Secondly, the multiplicity of languages became the foundation of the diversity
of the various cultures that littered the planet. All these, once redeemed, will
become a glorious conglomeration displaying and expressing worship, and the
collective wealth, glory and honour of the nations will be brought to the King
of kings and the Lord of lords from every tribe, language and nation (Maeliau
2006: 101).
This illustrates the ways in which APPA members work to accomplishing their
ultimate aim of turning their land into the true central holy land in the Pacific from
where people in this part of world will return to Jerusalem.
This is a serious matter for many APPA members, in particular the leaders, and it is
thus understandable that during a number of instances following visits to churches
and sites in Israel where prayers sessions were held by APPA, Maeliau would get
frustrated about members of the group buying souvenirs. He thought that the buyers
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might think that these souvenirs have certain powers and he told me that they were
wasting their time. The buyers told me later that they were buying souvenirs for
relatives and friends back home, to show off that they visited the Holy Land. This is
evidenced by the large amount of caps and t-shirts with prints of “Jerusalem” and
“Israel” or the Israeli flag collected by those from the Pacific. People were also
interested in collecting necklaces, pens, key hangers and other smaller items, also all
with clear signatures of the Holy Land.
The Malaitan nation
Back home in North Malaita, for hundreds of To’abaita speakers the ‘Holy Land’ is a
utopian symbol of a just nation and of a Jerusalem firmly grounded in the ancestral
soil of their island. In particular for followers of APPA, the Holy Land is a powerful
symbol and in conjunction APPA stands in a long history of attempts at redefining
sovereignty vis-à-vis government and mission. Most of APPA’s ‘religious’
antecedents of current ideas held by members of APPA can be traced to the Remnant
Church described by Burt (1983) and Maetoloa (1985). While living at Radefasu near
Langalanga, North Malaita, Zebulon Sisiama, a Kwara’ae-speaking man, was visited
by Kwaisulia in 1955. Kwaisulia was touring for the revival movement of the South
Sea Evangelical Mission (the processor of the SSEC) and inspired Sisimia who then
began to hold meetings to ‘organize the struggle for ‘freedom and set up ‘God’s
government’ through the formation of the Remnant Church’ (Burt 1983: 340).
Adherents of the Remnant Church trace their ancestry to certain Old Testament
migrations of the tribes of Israel and are committed to observing Hebraic laws. In one
of his revelations, Sisiama was given the description of the flag that the first ancestor,
Beldigao, brought from Israel. The flag has twelve stars (representing the twelve
tribes of Israel), an eagle (the commonly accepted symbol for Malaita) and the
colours red (purity), white (righteousness), green (unity in love and prosperity), and
gold (perseverance and loyalty towards God) (Maetoloa 1985: 144).
Maeliau and most of his followers are also convinced that the Ark of the Covenant,
for which King Solomon built the Temple, was constitutive of Israel’s status and of
the unique holiness of Israel. The transference of this holiness to their island would
make their homeland the true Israel, the true Holy Land. APPA’s sacred journeys to
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Israel thus have a political nature in relation to attempts at making Malaita into the
true central Holy Land in the Pacific from where people in this part of world will, so
people believe, eventually return to Jerusalem. Malaita is the Holy Land for which the
leader of APPA receives key revelations when journeying through Israel. These
divine ‘downloads’, as he calls them, direct him in the building of a just local state
(for the already existing nation). In his discussion of the political consequences of
such acts of transference of the Holy Land to one’s homeland performed by many all
over the world, Adrian Hastings (2003) suggests that the idea of visiting the Holy
Land comes with the intention of transference.
If transference of the Holy Land to Malaita is the main purpose of APPA journeys to
the Holy Land then these journeys are not about discovery of new dimensions about
their relationship with God, or the meaning of sacred sites, or new avenues for
biblical exegesis, and so on. APPA journeys instead highlight the general tendency of
the movement to seek, as said, confirmation of what is already postulated in their
theology. This inward trend makes the travellers disinterested in the multiple other
ways in which people of other faiths including the people living in Israel and
Palestine engage with the Holy Land. Similarly, back home in Malaita discoveries
through engagement with other ways of thinking are very limited. APPA people have
the truth and while there is some communication with others who often passionately
ponder the meanings of “Israel”, much of the evolving stories are looked down upon.
This creates a schism between APPA’s theology and the beliefs of those of other
faiths, even including the members of the SSEC.
While theories about connections between Malaita and Israel are widespread they are
mostly presented as possibilities and hypothesis. During conversations many love to
fantasise about the Holy Land, about the Temple in the interior of Malaita, the idea
that Malaitans followed Hebraic customs in the past, and that perhaps Israelites
journeyed to Solomon Islands in the past. Some even suggest that Jesus spend over a
decade wandering around on the island of Malaita. Followers of APPA on the other
hand, come to these theories from the perspective of an emergent church and view
themselves as part of a movement that is not just movement but the only right
response to God’s plan for Solomon Islanders and humankind in general.
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In light of their experience of being a people apart, or, as many in APPA sense, a truly
chosen people, many are keen to immerse themselves in a Christian world that they
understand to part of. This Christian world is the world pictured in the bible and thus
geographically placed in Israel, but also including the uttermost parts of the world
where God’s word was brought. This is the world mapped initially in Michael
Maeliau’s vision that includes the idea of return to Jerusalem. Tracing the journey
back to the Holy Land is increasingly becoming an obsession by Maeliau and others
in APPA and this quest was greatly stimulated by Tom Hess’s World Wide Watch
map which situates all nations in the world in relation to the twelve gates of Jerusalem
through which they pass through for the Restoration of the Tabernacle of David.
In that sense the APPA journeys to Israel are best seen as journeys to God’s text
(Eade and Sallnow 2000: 8-9 and Bowman 2000: 99-108) to what evangelical
Malaitans see as icons of clarity and, in effect, furthers political action. That is, that
certain political and social notions of being different than other Solomon Islanders
and whites become consolidated in God’s word which authorises these theological
notions as timeless, Bible truths, and therefore obscure their very social origins in the
region. It is thus important to pay close attention to the way these Malaitans represent
the past in relation to the present, and, in the case of nation-building in the region
people go about forms of social formations in the present as seen as timelessly evident
in the biblical text. The various narratives surrounding the idea of connections
between Malaita and Israel build on moments in the past that connect APPA to a long
line of “righteous Gentiles,” as the heirs to a specific divine calling. This example of
modern myth making shows that what is an essentially mundane social formation (a
movement that is keen to establish a sovereign nation) is cast as the fulfilment of a
divine design and is thus invested with significance that is described by its members
as wondrous.
Works cited
Bowman, G. 2000. Christian ideology and the image of a holy land: The place of
Jerusalem in the various Christianities. In J. Eade and M.J. Sallnow (2000),
Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, pp. 98 – 121.
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Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Burt, B. 1983. The Remnant Church: a Christian sect of the Solomon Islands.
Oceania 53(4): 334–46.
Crapanzano, V. 2000. Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the
Bench. New York: The New Press.
Eade, J., and M.J. Sallnow. 2000. Introduction. In J. Eade and M.J. Sallnow (2000),
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