1 March 2020
Dear Phyllis,
Last
week I told you about the history of Karuizawa, this week I want to
share with you another interesting story. Karuizawa has got to be one of
the finest resort towns on this planet. It
is the jewel of the Orient. One time I was standing on the hill behind
our house looking at the view. A western man came up to speak with me.
He was an European who had lived in China before the war. He told me in
1932 he used to come to Karuizawa for summer
vacation. I asked, “Why would you come all the way from China? There
are many fine vacation areas in China.” He said, “Yes, but there is
nothing on earth like Karuizawa.” The Japan emperor, many of the top
business executives, and movie stars have summer homes
in Karuizawa. In 1978 we had visitor who was a famous musician from
England, John Lennon. In the early 1960s I didn't know the Beatles were a
rock band. I thought they were insects. To this day I don't know one
Beatles song. When I learned that John Lennon
had come to Karuizawa I said, :The sum of the world is here. But I was
wrong.
Kjell
(pronounced Shell) Harjo was a Norwegian who had immigrated to Seattle
and had a US passport. His wife, Rhedun, was Norwegian, and they had
come to Japan as missionaries with a Norwegian
mission board. Kjell was a very outgoing, congenial, guy who was in the
language school at the time. One day when John Lennon was walking past
the language school Kjell hollered at him and said, “Hey John, come over
here and let me show you this church.” The
language school was on the lot of the historic summer Tabernacle. As
Kjell was showing John the church, John said, “This is great”. I was the
pastor of the Japanese church, but it was summer time and Rosemary and
the boys were attending the English services
at the Union Church. When I finished my service I went over to the
Union Church to pick my family up and was shocked to hear that John and
Yoko Lennon had attended the service that morning. The whole missionary
community was abuzz.
John
Lennon was one of the most famous men in the world but he was a lonely
man with very few friends. John and Kjell became very close that summer
and Kjell was probably his closest friend.
One afternoon the Lennons and Harjos were having a picnic on a hill up
behind Team Center. Rhedun had brought along her guitar and after
eating, Rhedun handed her guitar to John and asked him to play while
they sang some Gospel choruses I didn't know he could
play but Rhedun said he was a very good guitarist. After singing a few
Christian songs, John put the guitar down and said,
“This is what I have been searching for for all my life. My friend
George (Harrison) will be surprised when I go back and tell him I am a
Christian now.”
Kjell
and I were very close and he would frequently come up to my house to
give me an update as to what was going on. I had heard a lot of garbage
about John Lennon and heard that he had married
Yoko Ono in a cemetery on an island in the Mediterranean in a witch
craft ceremony. I knew that John Lennon had said he was more famous that
Jesus Christ. I asked about these things. He admitted that he had been
involved in a lot of junk and had experimented
with drugs, but he always had a death fear of black magic and the
really bad stuff. It was true that he had said he was more famous that
Jesus, but he didn't mean it the way it came out in the media. The real
John Lennon and the media image were totally different
men. John was a very genuine humble man with a seeking heart. He asked
Kjell for a reading list. Kjell and I sat down to compile a list of the
best books we could think of for him, We wrote down Chuck Coleson, CS
Lewis, Josh McDowell, etc. The Christian book
store was in my office in the summer time. The next day John came in
with the paper Kjell and I had given him the day before and bought every
book listed that was in stock, and a good Bible. John later told Kjell
he was doing very little else that summer than
reading the Bible and Christian books. Dick Dennis lived next door to
the Harjos and always had his house stacked with high school and college
kids. One day a little Japanese high school girl saw John Lennon go in
the house next door and lost it. She started
screaming. The window was open. John walked over to speak to her and
said, “You shouldn't do this for any man. Jesus Christ is the only one
worth to be worshiped.”
We
thought John had a very clear testimony and was going to be a huge
international witness for Christ. But Yoko was a problem. Kjell came up
to my house one day to ask me what I thought the
chances were of casting demons out of Yoko. I told him that him the
chance of that was not very good. No one could say definitely that she
was demon possessed but she certainly was a bad person. John was really a
very fine fellow but a surprisingly weak man
who had married a very powerful, domineering, woman who controlled his
life The next summer when the Lennons came back to Karuizawa, Kjell went
over to their house to speak to his old buddy. Yoko met him at the door
and said, “We don't need your help any more.
Please don't come back.” That was the end. We never were able to
contact John Lennon again.
Several
years later I was talking to a missionary who boasted to me he had
witnessed to John Lennon. I didn't tell him that I knew all about that
incident. What I didn't tell him was how counterproductive
that was when he went to their house to speak to John, and the house
maid had foolishly told him that they had gone to the Mampei hotel for
supper. It didn't help the cause of Christ when he went to the
restaurant and intruded into what John had hoped for
a quiet evening with his family. John had told Kjell that his two most
favorite places on earth were Greenwich Village in NY, and karuizawa
where he could live a normal life without being mobbed.
We
only had one summer with John and in 1980 he was killed by a crazy man
who wanted to make his name famous as the assassin of John Lennon. A
couple years ago I saw a You Tube interview with
John Lennon's biographer. He knew that the Lennons loved Karuizawa and
had spent the last three summers of his life there. And he had heard
that John had an interest in Christianity but never knew about the close
relationship he had with Kjell Harjo and what
appeared to be a clear testimony for Christ. The biographer also knew
that, due to his interest in Christianity, John was also in contact with
Pat Robinson and had written to him several times.
There is a verse in Isaiah 57:1 that says,
“The righteous is taken away from the evil to come” I was
disappointed that the last thing John Lennon ever did was to pose nude
with Yoko on the cover of an album. That was not the John Lennon I knew.
That sounds very much like Yoko Ono. I like to believe
that John Lennon was a born-again a man that we will see in heaven, but
the Lord knew the influence that his wife had on him and took him out
of this world to preserve his saved soul.
John's
testimony has never been published and I thought the world should hear
it. Several years ago I wrote up a short pamphlet of his testimony as I
remembered it. Kjell had retired, and
was living in Seattle. I sent my pamphlet to Kjell asking for his
correction and input. Surprisingly, I got a very hot reply from Kjell
saying He would have nothing to do with that. Kjell said the reason he
and John were close was because he knew that Kjell
would never share anything personal about him, and Kjell's main concern
was for the salvation of his son Cheyne and Yoko. I answered Kjell, “If
we could reach John in heaven by email, what do you think his wish
would be?” I never got a reply. It's a dead issue
now. A year later Kjell Harjo was killed in an auto accident, and apart
from Rhedun and a few other close friends the world will never hear
about the testimony of John Lennon. That is another one that we will
have to wait until Jesus pulls back the curtain
in eternity.
bill
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