Customer Reviews

Chasing the Dragon

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Chasing the Dragon is well-written and fast-paced, and offers a little of everything: cops, robbers, farce, trajedy, an argument or two, and most of all, lives changed by the Gospel. Jackie has led a remarkable life, but wears her experience lightly, with a sense of humor. Having lived in Hong Kong, visited her church and known people who worked with her or become Christians through her ministry, the book was especially interesting to me.

I once traveled around Asia to do research on forced prostitution and AIDs. I hope others will follow her example, in the leading of the Holy Spirit, because there is a great need. In my opinion, this kind of ministry may be one of the key cross-cultural evangelistic outreaches of our time, and this book would be valuable to anyone trying to understand either the past or the future of missions. Many of the most successful Asian evangelists I have met were once drug addicts or criminals. This book might also be a good book to give to a non-Christian friend or to a Christian police officer who has become cynical and forgotten how God can change lives.

One caution: I think readers should beware of a "one-size-fits-all" attempts to emulate the exact ways in which God's spirit works in other peoples' ministries. Jesus should be the pattern for all of us. But like he said, "The fields are ripe to the harvest. Pray the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers."

Author, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture (d.marshall@sun.ac.jp)

This is an amazing book. Jackie describes how she lives purely by faith, not supported by any missionary society or church, and works fulltime amongst the poorest of the poor and the most wicked of the wicked in the ancient Walled City of Hong Kong. Jackie's ministry is to the drug addicts who "chase the dragon" and the Holy Spirit comes with power and healing to rescue them. Jesus is the Dragon Slayer!

I am a Christian Psychologist and I have recently applied to work as a Prison Chaplain. I think God directed me to read this book so that I would know that the Holy Spirit is wanting to help the drug addicts in Australian prisons too.

I read "Chasing the Dragon" about 16 years ago and then I went . I saw first hand the spirit of the contents of this book and what was written between the lines. It is about having "hard feet and a soft heart" that is what Jackie always says. It is a wonderful story of a place of concentrated darkness and in that 6 acre place more people's lives were touched with God's love and grace, more lives changed and brought to Him than any other 6 acres in all of Hong Kong. It is where darkness and light clashed and the miracles happenned. It's God's grace and love at work in the midst of broken despised people.

Every once in a while there is a person that is willing to step out in complete faith. Jackie Pullinger is one of these people. Leaving her homeland of England, Ms. Pullinger embarks on a journey of faith that lands her in Hong Kong with just 'three days' worth of money. But it is not in her money that Jackie has put her faith, rather her book reveals the processes that taught her to place it firmly in Jesus Christ and nowhere else.

The hindsight record in her book tells of what appears to begin as a stumbling to find her place and ministry, really was Jesus directing her steps. Ms. Pullinger learns to pray, trust and live out her faith in one of the worlds toughest environments. Surrounded by prostitutes, drug addicts and forgotten people she testifies of a Savior who can set the captives free. Her story is the testimony of life after life that is set free. The results she witnesses astounds all involved including police, the courts, the addicts and prostitutes themselves, fellow Christian workers and the reader.

Ms. Pullinger's account is compelling and remarkable. The reader will find many points to be challenged and encouraged in their own spiritual journey. The reader may also be challenged by her methods and practices, some of which would be considered unorthodox and dangerous to one's spiritual walk. Jackie Pullinger is a pioneer. Her willingness to put her money/life where her faith is and walk the talk has paid in ewards that leave much to rejoice over.

This book is very convicting. The book allowed me to follow her into humanity's sewer system - by herself without money or support but with loads of belief in the life-changing power of Jesus Christ.

Jackie inspires me by her example. "And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'(Matthew 25:40)

My thanks go to Jackie for walking the walk.

Can it be done? The signs we read about holiness can they really work?
Is it possible to heal the sick by the laying of hands, cure them, speak with the language of the indwelling spirit? Put off drug lords from violence acts by simple eye-contact and finding the Kingdom of God the Bible speaks about by listening to a hearty dream from childhood? Is it possible? In this day and age of T.V. imagery and individuality it would be wise to caution against believing that there are proofs or works of the Holy Spirit, but when I read Jackie Pullingers Chasing The Dragon even the logical side of me begs to differ in favour for the works of the divine.

Pullingers Chasing The Dragon about twenty or more years old, is a personal testimony about her experience as a young but aspiring English missionary during the late sixties ministering to the wretched residents in the drug-infested Walled City of Kowloon Hong Kong. In the forward she is described as haven given this testimony somewhat reluctantly in the tradition of humble saints. Having said that because she is persuaded that writing this her book may lift and win over hearts and minds for her cause she gives it a go and charges the reader to dare believe her anti-social, spectacular yet highly believable encounters.

They say the "truth is stranger than fiction." Well, perhaps an open-mind is needed to take in what is really being discussed about this rare experience. Opening a youth centre, and running it between the notorious streets of rival gangs, speaking no word of modern Chinese at first, yet still managing to get protection from dark drug lords whom she refers to in the chapter named "Big Brother Is Watching You."

Here is how Jackie briefly describes what she sees as her mission: "My mission was to help the Walled City (Hong-Kong, Kowloon) people understand who Christ was. If they could not understand the words about Jesus, then we Christians should show them what He was like by the way He lived. I remember He said: "If someone forces you to go a mile, go with him two miles." Those in need that I met seemed to need three." P45

Most of the boys that are drug-addicts are in gangs for status and safety, while the instituted religion of the Triads serves the gang that they have a personal duty and even national cause to their country and to themselves. Some gang lords quite nobly associate themselves only with opium, disapproving any class-A or harder drugs, while other disillusioned souls, need to get higher and higher in both drug quantity and type. Yet somehow these same children are the ones who give this book its colour.

The time-frame of this books narrative does jump about the place. From the beginning Chapter dating from the late sixties the Author is following her friends blood-trail in a dark alley to a few years forward more chapters down, and then a years back again some chapters after. Jackie acknowledges the unorthodoxy of her narration from the outset, but I think this gives the book a feel of spontaneity with characters often fading away leaving their charming impressions early in the book.

When reading this it seems that any individual who may not know how to make sense of the signs of the Holy Spirit described at the end of Mark's gospel may read clearly the humanity and humility that make the evidence of these signs clear almost believable unlike what may have been seen on T.V and miles away at that. It is interesting to note how she illustrates how it felt to receive them or be received by them. How she didn't know when IT happened until she mentally let go.

Some do dare, and get rewarded from their faith and courage in the form of hundreds of brothers and sisters and tens of mothers and father figures on this earth, and who knows what after. Jackie strikes me as product of this rebellious lot.

-- Leyman -

In August 1993, my wife and I moved to Hong Kong. We had briefly heard Jackie speak at a meeting in nearby Taiwan several years earlier and God stirred our hearts. So, we decided to attend the church she was pastoring at the time. As stout evangelical Christians, we had so many walls built up around us...about worshiping freely, speaking in tounges, women pastors, supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc. But I picked up her book at a local English bookstore and started reading. Her story was enough pique my interest beyond my personal spiritual hang-ups. I've never been the same again.

We watched Jackie and the brothers for months- worshipping and living in community, feeding the poor, healing the sick- just like we read about in the Bible. God broke down our walls on all of the above and allowed us to enter into a place of true freedom for the first time since becoming believers. We've seen addicts come off of drugs with prayer alone. We now have a deeper compassion for the poor, lost and broken that moves us to action rather than apathy and guilt.

I read about 1 book a year as the Lord leads, and this is one that changed the course of our lives.

Jackie is a significant word to the modern day church and world. If we will simply do the simple things God asks, regardless of how foolish it may appear, God will move on our behalf.

Jackie stands as a beacon of God's faithfulness and joy as He demonstrates His profound love and purpose for the poor, the devastated, the broken, the destitute, and the lonely!

You will find yourself weeping and caught in the passion of a heart that has been caught up by her love for Her Savior... would that we had the same passion in each of our hearts... this world just might actually be changed!

Hodder & Stoughton Books have released since 2001 an updated edition of the book. ISBN 0-340-78569-1. It includes 2 new chapters not found in the original book giving some updates. Very encouraging. Had some trouble finding the book "state side" but got it imported.

Chasing the Dragon is well-written and fast-paced, and offers a little of everything: cops, robbers, farce, trajedy, an argument or two, and most of all, lives changed by the Gospel. Jackie has led a remarkable life, and her sense of humor is evidence that her success hasn't gone to her head. I've met her twice. The second time, God used our meeting to speak to me in an unexpected and round-about way, of which she was not even aware.

There certainly is room for others to follow her example by reaching out to drug addicts and prostitutes. In my opinion, this may be one of the key cross-cultural evangelistic ministries of our time. Many of the most successful Asian evangelists I have met were once drug addicts and criminals. God has delighted in using the weak things of this world to confound the strong, as Paul put it. And the need is great, especially with the spread of AIDs. Christians going to the mission field might pray about ministry to drug addicts and prostitutes. Dragon might also be a good book to give to non-Christian friends.

One caution: I think readers should avoid a "one size fits all" attempt to emulate the precise ways in which God's spirit used her ministry. Jesus should be our primary pattern, not Jackie Pullinger or anyone else. Author, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture (d.marshall@sun.ac.jp)