Ancient Hawaiian temple ruins

Ancient Hawaiian temple ruins, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

When the surf is up, the waves in Wiamea Bay are over 20 feet tall. Today, the surf was calm and the view from the mountain overlooking it spectacular. The dirt is "red dirt" -- it's really sticky, muddy stuff. Apparently they have 'red dirt" shirts -- a gallon of this dirt can die 500 t-shirts. By the time we walked around the ruins, we had about 2 inches of it stuck to the bottom of our shoes.

In the 9th century, a "spiritual leader" from Polynesia came to Hawaii and told the people that they needed to sacrifice to the god of war and the god of peace, etc. etc. He built temples to sacrifice to these gods and established priests (who were his descendants).

At this spot, the Hawaiian chiefs sacrificed humans up until a few hundred years ago. In 1819, they decided they didn't want this religion any longer and stopped it. These temples were places of "fear and oppression" to the Hawaiian people so they were happy to do away with this religion. It wasn't so easy for the chief but he went ahead with it on his own. The books are very clear that this was before any Christian missionaries arrived. It's interesting that the following year, God brought the first missionaries to the islands. The people were open and ready for the gospel.

The bondage and oppression of worshipping idols is really apparent when you see these ruins and realize the experience of the people. When the missionaries brought the good news about a loving God who wanted to have a relationship with people, people embraced the message of grace.

Today we can see lots of Christian churches on O'ahu. That's awesome. I haven't read about anything good coming from the other religion.