Irony Indeed

God Moves in a Mysterious Way, His Wonders to Perform

Forty years ago some Westerners were involved in trying to smuggle Bibles into China. Christians going there on business or other reasons would sometimes take a few extra Bibles in their luggage and try to make contact with Chinese Christians, leaving the Bibles with them.

Such activity now seems bizarre. Really? You mean people actually did that? Well, yes they did. But times change. How they change.

In May, 2008 a new publishing facility was opened in Nanjing. It is run by Amity Printing Company and it prints Bibles. Only Bibles. It is the largest printing and publishing company of Bibles in the world. It has made Nanjing the Bible printing capital of the world.

Amity has the capacity to produce 12 million Bibles a year, or 23 every minute. The vast majority of these Bibles go to Christians and Christian churches in mainland China.

According to an article in Time in December 2007, published shortly before the new Amity facility opened, the Bible is now China's new bestseller.

About 80% of the Bibles Amity produces are for domestic use, with the remainder going to Christians in Africa, Central Europe and other Asian nations. A poll early this year by East China Normal University in Shanghai of 4,500 Chinese found that 31.4% considered themselves religious, a proportion that suggests 300 million Chinese believers; of the religious respondents, Christians represented 12%, or 40 million nationwide. Demand has grown to the point that the foundation plans to open a new, 515,000-square-foot (48,000 sq. m.) printing plant next year, which will allow Amity to turn out more than a million books a month. It's thought to be one of the largest Bible production facilities in the world.

To all intents and purposes, the Bible is now freely available in China; most copies and editions are being published by an officially sanctioned organization: Amity.

Under Chinese law, the Bibles Amity prints can be distributed only through officially sanctioned churches. But in recent years it has become easier for house churches to procure Bibles, often buying them through registered churches. Some Bibles are even appearing in bookstores, despite lacking the registration numbers required of any printed work. Jean-Paul Wiest, an expert on Chinese Catholicism who teaches at the Beijing Center, says his students have no problems getting religious materials. "Bibles are very widely available," he says.

As the ancient prophet said, they shall come to Zion from the ends of the earth.