Chinese Government Hardens Its Heart Against The King of Kings

China Attacks Christian Church

Orders It  to Discontinue Online Worship

Thomas Williams
Breitbart News

The Chinese communist party has ordered the Early Rain Covenant Church (ERCC) to cease all online worship services, in its latest crackdown on Christianity in the country.

In late 2018, Chinese authorities carried out a series of tightly coordinated raids on the 5,000-member Early Rain Covenant Church in the city of Chengdu, arresting more than 100 members, including Pastor Wang Yi and his wife.

The government cut the phone line to the church and Chinese police reportedly tracked down church members using the location signals from their mobile phones. Pastor Wang later received a sentence of nine years in prison for “inciting subversion” and running an illegal “business.”  China’s state-run Global Times newspaper argued at the time that Wang was not a true Christian but an agitator “brainwashed by Western values.”

Since the shuttering of their church, Early Rain members have had to resort to online streamed worship services, but now the government wants to stop those as well, the Christian Post reported Monday.

Killing The Underground Church

Vatican Got It ‘Badly Wrong’ About China

Thomas Williams
Breitbart London


ROME — Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, said the Vatican “got it badly wrong about China” in its secret 2018 accord with the Communist Party on the naming of bishops.

“It is very sad, but under Xi Jinping things have gone backwards in China,” Patten told the Tablet, a UK-based Catholic journal, adding that it was “bizarre” for the Vatican to warm to the Communist Party at this time.

“How can you have a rapprochement on religious issues with China when there are a million or more Uighur Muslims locked up in Xinjiang?” queried Patten, who has been chancellor of Oxford University since 2003.

Lord Patten, who was the governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997, said he understands why the Vatican has an interest in China but questions the opportuneness of its timing and method.  “Of course I am in favour of them trying to do what they can to make it easier for Catholics and Christians to worship in China,” said Patten, who is himself a Catholic.

“I just think this was an extraordinary time to be doing this with an administration in China which has gone back on human rights – which is making things tougher on human rights. That is what Xi Jinping has been doing,” he said.

Fools and Horses Run The Chinese Government

Xi Jinping’s Quotes Replace the Ten Commandments in Churches

Implementing its ultimate goal of becoming the sole deity revered in China, the CCP continues to smother the Christian doctrine, replaces it with the party line.

by Tang Feng
Winter:  A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights in China

A MAGAZINE ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA


The Ten Commandments are the basis of Christian moral code, an essential part of believers’ life throughout the world. But in atheist China, they have become an eyesore for the country’s dictator, and are eliminated from places of worship.

Even though a state-run Three-Self church in a county of Luoyang city in the central province of Henan has replaced the Ten Commandments with President Xi Jinping’s quotes after repeated demands, it didn’t escape reprimands from the government. “The Party must be obeyed in every respect. You have to do whatever the Party tells you to do. If you contradict, your church will be shut down immediately,” United Front Work Department officials lectured the congregation at the end of June.

Ten Commandments were torn down from a church wall.

According to a believer who asked to remain anonymous, against the will of believers, the Ten Commandments have been removed from nearly every Three-Self church and meeting venue in the county and replaced with quotations from Xi Jinping.

Dynamic Chinese Christian Church

‘God’s Double Agent’ Talks About The Explosion Of Christianity During Increased Chinese Persecution

"In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned—the soul of man.”

By Helen Raleigh

JULY 18, 2019

Although China is under the rule of the atheist Chinese Community Party, it has seen a rapid growth of its Christian population, at an impressive rate of 10 percent annually for the past four decades. It is predicted that China will have more Christians than the United States by 2030.

However, under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the persecution of Christians and other religious believers has also intensified. That’s the sobering message Pastor Bob Fu, founder of China Aid, delivered at last weekend’s Western Conservative Summit, the largest conservative gathering in the west region. I had the opportunity to interview Fu at the summit.  

Before he became a pastor, Fu told me, his life was already full of God’s miracles. During China’s Great Famine (1959-1962), a disaster caused by Chairman Mao Zedong’s ruinous agricultural and industrial policies, there was very little food in the village where Fu’s family lived. When Fu wasn’t born yet, his young mom took his two older siblings, carrying one on her back and holding the hands of the other one, and walked to a nearby city to beg for food.

Under the strict food rationing, people in the city were starving too. Yet there were always kind people willing to share a bowl of soup or a warm steam bun with this hunger-stricken young family. An estimated 20-30 million Chinese people perished due to starvation as a result of the famine, but Fu’s mom and his two older siblings miraculously survived.

Fu was born in Shandong province on the eastern coast of China. In 1989, he led a group of college students from Liaocheng University in Shandong to participate in the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. Three days before the Chinese government sent troops and tanks to the Square, Fu had to take his sick girlfriend Heidi (who later became his wife) back to Shandong. Had they stayed in Beijing, they might not have survived the June 4 massacre.

Back at school, Fu and his friends were investigated by local public security officials. Fortunately, none of them were thrown into jail. But they had to write confessions and self-criticism every day, not being able to resume their classes. Some of his friends broke down under this enormous pressure and started lying about their activities. Fu felt a great sense of betrayal. He was angry, depressed, resentful, and even suicidal.

When Fu Discovered Christianity

It was at this time that an American English teacher gave him a biography of Xi Shengmo, a 19th-century Chinese Christian. The book was a God-sent gift. This verse in the book, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (Corinthians 5:17) struck Fu especially.

He had hoped to help build a democratic China through the pro-democracy movement. But now he realized that he shouldn’t put his trust in mankind. He was also aware that he couldn’t build anything new when he was so angry and resentful. Before he sought any rebirth for China, he must seek his own rebirth in Christ and put his faith in God.

Fu became a Christian. He was no longer angry and resentful. Instead, he was full of peace and joy, even when he had to write another false, forced confession. But his new cheerfulness caused suspicion. Not long after, the Communist Party secretary of the school invited Fu for a “conversation.” Instead of his normal harsh criticism, the party secretary, not aware of Fu’s spiritual rebirth, was gentle this time and kept asking Fu whether he was alright.

Later, Fu found out that the party secretary thought Fu might have gone crazy after the constant interrogation and confession. Not wanting to have to deal with an insane college student, the party secretary decided to go easy on Fu.

God’s blessing kept opening new doors for Fu. He was able to attend one of China’s top universities for a master’s degree, thus avoiding the post-Tiananmen persecution. Upon graduation, he got a job teaching English at Central Party School in Beijing. With such a safe government job as a cover, Fu actively participated in the house-church movement.

By day, he taught ABCs to a group of atheists who had no idea of Fu’s pro-democracy activism and his religious beliefs. At night, he led sermons and preached the gospel in various house churches in Beijing, the heart of Communist China. This double agent type of life later gave him the title to his biography, “God’s Double Agent.”

The Chinese Government Caught On

Eventually, the Chinese government discovered what Fu was up to. He and his wife were thrown into jail for a few months for “illegal evangelizing.” Both lost their jobs. Not long after, Fu’s wife Heidi became pregnant. The couple were concerned that Fu’s political activity and multiple arrests meant Fu couldn’t get the Chinese government’s permission to have this child nor citizenship for the child once born. With the assistance of friends and lots of personal audacity, Fu and his wife escaped to Hong Kong and later came to the United States as political refugees.

Fu founded China Aid in 2002, “an international non-profit Christian human rights organization committed to promoting religious freedom and the rule of law in China.” He believes that “by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused, and spiritually and legally equipping the leaders to defend their faith and freedom, China Aid strives to promote religious freedom for all.”

I asked Pastor Fu how bad the persecution of Christians is in China. He told me that their situations has gotten much worse under China’s president for life, Xi Jinping. Fu showed pictures of churches in China being demolished. He talked about the Chinese government’s “Sinicization” of churches: in government-sanctioned churches in China, photos of Xi and Chairman Mao are hanging next to a cross. Before a church service, these congregations usually sing China’s national anthem and songs praising Xi. Churchgoers are told to be patriots and trust the Communist Party first. People who are younger than 18 are forbidden to attend church services.

What worries Fu the most is the persecution of Christians. He mentioned that Pastor John Cao, a permanent U.S. resident who has built a number of schools for ethnic minorities in some of China’s most impoverished regions, was arrested in China in 2017 and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Religious Persecution Tightens Its Grip

Right before Christmas last year, Chinese authorities arrested Pastor Wang Yi and more than 100 members of the Early Rain Covenant Church in Southwest China. Wang was charged with “subverting state power,” a charge that can carry up to a 15-year sentence in prison. In a letter sent from the jail, Wang wrote that the “persecution against the Lord’s church and against all Chinese people who believe in Jesus Christ is the most wicked and the most horrendous evil of Chinese society. This is not only a sin against Christians. It is also a sin against all non-Christians.”

China Aid has been at the forefront of exposing these persecutions and rescuing persecuted Christians and human rights activists in China. China Aid’s most high-profile case involved helping the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng to escape from China to the United States. Fu translated Chen’s appeal to travel to the United States in a special congressional hearing. Fu told me that China Aid is actively helping a few Christians and their families to escape further persecution in China.

I asked him what Americans can or should do to help. He said, first, the U.S. government needs to talk more openly and forcefully about the Chinese government’s persecution of religious believers, including Christians and Muslims. Second, the U.S. government should incorporate support for religious freedom into its foreign policy. Third, he would like to see the U.S. government use the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction Chinese government officials who persecute religious believers.

My final question to him was why the number of Christians continues to grow despite the government’s relentless persecution. Fu credited it as one of God’s miracles. He also pointed out there is a faith vacuum in China: after the disastrous three decades under Chairman Mao, even the Communist Party doesn’t really believe in Communism anymore.

The wealthier Chinese people get, the more they seek to understand life and faith. The government’s persecution has unintended consequences. When family, friends, and neighbors witness how peaceful, joyful, and loving Christians are in spite of their persecution, these nonbelievers are inspired to become Christians too.

Early Rain Covenant Church is a good example. After a government raid and the arrest of Pastor Wang and some of its members, the church has not disappeared. Remaining members continue to meet in small groups in restaurants and parks.

Before his arrest, Wang said in a sermon, “In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned—the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.” Fu agrees. He told me Christians in China are winning because God is on their side.

Helen Raleigh is a senior contributor to The Federalist. An immigrant from China, she is the owner of Red Meadow Advisors, LLC, and an immigration policy fellow at the Centennial Institute in Colorado. She is the author of several books, including "Confucius Never Said" and "The Broken Welcome Mat." Follow Helen on Twitter @HRaleighspeaks, or check out her website: helenraleighspeaks.com.

An Emerging Rogue State?

Members of Chinese Church Tortured

China (International Christian Concern) 

Members of the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China who have been held since December were tortured while in custody. Police are using the information they gained from this torture as evidence that their pastor “colluded with foreigners to incite subversion of state power.” A seminary student of Early Rain Covenant and Wang Yi, who is the pastor of the church, are among those who are currently detained.

Nearly 100 members of the church were arrested on December 9th when the church was shut by authorities. Wang Yi and his wife were accused of “inciting subversion of state power”. On June 11th Wang Yi’s wife was released on bail. Wang Yi has previously stated that even if he is tortured he will never plead guilty.

The Chinese Communist Party is hostile toward Christians in their country, frequently shutting down and arresting members of house churches. The government sees religion as a threat to their power, and have been increasingly cracking down on religious freedom. USCIRF has deemed China to be a country of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act.

[One thing is clear in such a circumstance: the Chinese government is riven with doubt and fear.  That's why it strives to monitors relentlessly its own citizens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's why it persecutes and attacks its own citizens.  Ed.] 

Chinese Persecution of Early Rain Covenant Church Continues

Officials Continue Abuse of Early Rain Covenant Church Members

China Aid

(Chengdu, Sichuan—Jan. 4, 2018) Since officials rounded up around 160 members of Early Rain Covenant Church in December, the church’s congregants have undergone abuse at the hands of the authorities.

When police conducted a mass arrest of the Chengdu-based church, Wang Jun, one of the Christians who attends services at Early Rain Covenant Church, tried negotiating peacefully with the police. In response, the officers attacked him, injuring his head, knees, and toes. Wang was also recently detained after he organized a Sunday worship event at the side of the Funan River. Police shut the service down.

In custody, Wang has been beaten violently, and he was sentenced 14 days in prison after undergoing an investigation that lasted for more than 30 hours.  Wang’s wife, Tang Shuangfei, was also arrested, along with his one-year-old child.

Other arrested Christians reported the police hit and trampled them. One of the Christian men had his arms bound and was imprisoned at midnight. From the abuse, his legs bled, and he sustained many injuries. Another said the police refused him food and water during his 24-hour detention. Instead, they bound him to a chair, and he was only able to sleep for a few hours that night.

On Dec. 20, the police inspected the home of one of the church’s elders, Su Bingsen. Su and others detainees associated with the church have been denied their right to meet with lawyers, and there is no way for the church to know whether or not the people have been treated humanely.

Nearly 700 congregants have been monitored, tailed, and threatened by local authorities, and two people have been beaten or hurt. In addition, equipment belonging to the church has been confiscated.

Despite these hardships, the remaining church members often gather in each other’s homes to host services, but they have been severely harassed. The local government dispatched numerous personnel to monitor their apartment buildings and follow them if they go out. They also stop friends from visiting them, and the officials repeatedly tell the Christians that they risk criminal detention on a “provoking troubles” charge if they continue to meet.

China's War on Christians

It's The Season To Remember

Alex Titus
Political Analyst
Daily Caller

Families across the United States and Europe celebrated Christmas this week exchanging gifts, drinking hot chocolate, and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Families in Langfang, China, had a much different experience. In a stunning display, officials from the city invoked a ban on Christmas and the sale of Christmas goods in order to “maintain stability.”

That’s right — a literal ban on Christmas.

This is just one of China’s many fronts in its war against not just Christmas but its Christian population. Arrests, Bible bans, and turning a blind eye to North Korea’s atrocities make up this anti-Christian agenda. The situation remains bleak. It’s time for Western Christians to demand accountability from China for its treatment of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Since the communist revolution in 1949, the Chinese government has viewed religion as a threat to its legitimacy and absolute rule. Enforcing atheism, even through violent means, became a political necessity. Thousands of Christians were slaughtered during the Cultural Revolution orchestrated by Chairman Mao Zedong.

However, years later, religious freedom seemed to be on the move in China.

China Persecution Update

100 Christians Snatched in Overnight Raids on Underground Chinese Church

Worshippers were taken from their homes and off the streets in coordinated crackdown across Chengdu in Sichuan province

Mimi Lau
South China Morning Post


About 100 worshippers at an unofficial church in southwestern China were snatched from their homes or from the streets in coordinated raids which began on Sunday evening.   Chinese authorities targeted members of the Early Rain Covenant Church across various districts of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, in what appeared to be an effort to close down one of the country’s most prominent Protestant house churches.

Members’ personal accounts and cell group discussions on social media channels were blocked at around 9pm on Sunday while the church’s telephone line was also cut. The homes of the church’s leaders, including pastor Wang Yi, were among those raided.

Zhang Guoqing, assistant deacon of the Early Rain Covenant Church, was among two church members who were released on Monday morning after his arrest by Chengdu police in the Sunday night raids.  He is now being watched around the clock by “security personnel” in his home.

Zhang said he headed to Wang’s home at around 7pm on Sunday after hearing about the raids but the pastor and his wife Jiang Rong were nowhere to be found.  “His home was ransacked. It was a mess,” Zhang said.  “The police said our church is an illegal organisation and we cannot attend any more gatherings from now on.”

The Early Rain Covenant Church is one of China’s few unofficial house churches – Christian assemblies that operate without state sanction – and this is not the first time Wang and other members of the church have been detained.

Testing Times

'We are scared, but we have Jesus'

China and its war on Christianity

Benjamin Haas
The Guardian

Crackdown on unofficial churches comes as Vatican and Beijing sign controversial deal on appointment of bishops

Add Pastor Jin Mingri has felt firsthand the pain of one of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s harshest crackdowns on religion in years.

Jin’s Zion Church in Beijing, one of the biggest unofficial congregations in the country, was abruptly demolished by authorities this month, who then sent him a bill for 1.2m yuan (£133,000) for the related costs. Jin had preached there every Sunday for decades.

“Before, as long as you didn’t meddle in politics the government left you alone,” he said. “But now if you don’t push the Communist party line, if you don’t display your love for the party, you are a target.  Of course we’re scared, we’re in China, but we have Jesus.”

Zion belonged to a vast network of unofficial “house” churches that function outside of the government mandated system, and for decades were tolerated by authorities.

They have long been vulnerable, but have become more vulnerable as China’s leaders call for the “Sinicisation” of religious practice.

Chinese Government Ramps Up Persecution of Christians

China Trying to 'Rewrite the Bible' 

Churches Forced to Sing Communist Anthems


Samuel Smith
The Christian Post


WASHINGTON — The Chinese government is supervising a five-year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism in which there will be a "rewrite" of the Bible, a prominent religious freedom activist has told Congress.

The Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader who immigrated to the United States in 1997 and founded the persecution watchdog organization China Aid, provided great detail during a House hearing Thursday about a plan enacted by leading state-sanctioned denominations in China to "Sincize" Christianity.

Rev. Bob Fu, founder of China Aid, speaks at a House Foreign Affairs' subcommittee hearing on the increasing persecution in China in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 27, 2018

As China's crackdown on religion has seen many house churches demolished and thousands of crosses removed from churches nationwide, Fu warned upfront that what is happening right now in China represents the highest degree of persecution for independent faith groups the country has seen in decades.  "Religious freedom in China has really reached to the worst level that has not been seen since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by Chairman Mao [Zedong] in the 1960s," Fu told members of the House Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.

Chinese Government Shows Its Weakness and Insecurity

Persecution of Christians In China

Chinese Gov’t Burning Bibles, Shutting Churches, Ordering Christians to Renounce Faith

Atheistic Chinese Communist Government Scared

Dave Urbanski
The Blaze

China’s government is burning Bibles, destroying crosses, shutting churches, and ordering Christians to sign papers renouncing their faith, the Associated Press reported, citing pastors and a group that monitors religion in China.  The crackdown is related to an effort to “Sinicize” — or refashion as Chinese — religion by enforcing loyalty to the atheist Communist Party and getting rid of challenges to its authority over people’s lives, the outlet said.

Bob Fu of the U.S.-based group China Aid, said the recent shuttering of churches in central Henan province and a well-known house church in Beijing equates to a “significant escalation” of the crackdown, the AP reported.  “The international community should be alarmed and outraged for this blatant violation of freedom of religion and belief,” Fu wrote in an email to the outlet.

More from the AP:

Unintended Consequences

Church Growth in China Expected

President Xi Jinping Views Christian Churches as ‘Severe National Security Threat’

Thomas Williams
BreitbartNews

Chinese President Xi Jinping harbors a “particular animosity” toward Christians and sees underground churches as a “severe national security threat,” according to the founder of China Aid, a U.S.-based watchdog group.  China Aid founder and president Bob Fu told a conference on religious persecution last week that the number of persecuted Christians has “dramatically increased” under the reign of President Xi Jinping who has “animosity against Christianity in particular.”

“The number of people we documented who are persecuted among just Christians alone last year reached 223,000 compared to these 48,000 in 2016,” Mr. Fu said.  Whereas underground churches that operate outside state control are seen as a particular threat, growing attendance even at official churches has provoked hostility from the Xi government.

Mr. Fu said the communist-controlled state is forcing churches to install facial recognition systems to identify those attending services. Every church building was “forced to put a sign banning children, students, civil servants, military personnel, and communist party members from entering,” he said.

The China Aid founder said, however, that “persecution will only help accelerate the growth” of the Christian faithful, as it has in the past.

Doomed to Failure

More Chinese Government Reactionary Prejudice

China Pulls Bibles from Online Bookstores in Crackdown on Christianity

Thomas Williams
Breitbart News

In the wake of the release of a new white paper on “religious freedom,” Beijing has ordered Bibles and other Christian books removed from online bookstores across China, sparking a wave of complaints.

In the absence of any official government statement explaining why the Bible has been removed from online bookshops, the most common theory has been that a new, state-approved translation is in the works that will square with Chinese socialist ideology.

Last week, China announced that one of its biggest tasks in the coming years is to enhance “Chinese-style Christianity” by reinterpreting and retranslating the Bible. The announcement came in a document, titled “Principles for Promoting the Chinese Christianity in China for the Next Five Years (2018-2022),” which was launched in Nanjing on March 28, two days before Bibles started disappearing from websites.

As commenters have pointed out, the Bible itself is not officially approved by the Chinese Government for publication and therefore is technically an illegal publication that cannot be sold and can only be circulated in churches. Moreover, the government has announced that all “foreign religions” must be reconciled with Chinese socialism, or “Sinicized.”

New Wave of Chinese Persecution of Christians

Chinese Communist Government As Repressive As Ever

Chinese Pastors Ordered to Post Signs on Churches Forbidding Entry to Minors

Thomas Williams
BreitbartLondon

As part of its most recent clampdown on Christian churches, Chinese authorities have instructed priests and pastors to post signs on churches barring entry to minors.  The instruction is part of a new set of communist party-controlled regulations on religious activities that went into effect on February 1 and is aimed at preventing children and young people from getting religious instruction or taking an active part in Christian worship.

According to a report Thursday from ucanews, the leading independent Catholic news source in Asia, authorities have begun enforcing the government ban on minors in church in several regions, while forcing a number of Protestant house churches in Henan province to close.

The new regulations are an expansion of bans already tried out in certain regions. As Breitbart News reported last August, communist officials had already issued “notices” to over a hundred churches in Wenzhou, within the largely Christian Zhejiang province, informing Christians that children are no longer permitted to enter any church. The notices stated that minors attempting to enter a church would be turned away at the door, even if accompanied by their parents.

Chinese authorities stated that church attendance and religious instruction keep young persons from developing “a correct worldview and set of values.

China Threatens More Persecution of Christians

China’s Wants to ‘Annihilate’ Underground Christian Communities

Approaches the Status of a Rogue State

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News

A report on China’s new regulations regarding religion suggests that the norms are consciously intended to “annihilate underground communities” and “suffocate official communities,” rather than merely organize them.

China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) has published a series of regulations overhauling religious practice in the officially communist country. Despite China’s claims of “religious freedom,” the U.S. State Department as well as numerous watchdog groups consider China to be guilty of systemic religious oppression.

The new rules are slated to come into force on February 1, 2018.

An early draft of the regulations was released a year ago, creating concern among believers and human rights groups, but if anything the updated text is even worse, AsiaNews stated in its report. The few added articles go into greater detail in pondering the many “threats and deviations” that can come from religion.

Thy Kingdom Come . . .

Risky Road: China's Missionaries Follow Beijing West

BBC News

When so-called Islamic State announced on 8 June that it had killed a Chinese man and woman in their mid-twenties in Pakistan's most volatile province, many would have assumed they were two of the thousands of workers that Beijing has sent to the country in the last few years.

China is investing more than $55bn (£43bn) in Pakistan, a key beneficiary of its grand plan to connect Asia and Europe with a new Silk Road paid for by Beijing.  Such an ambitious project involves risk, and China is building major infrastructure projects in Balochistan, a Pakistani province home to a long-running separatist insurgency and an array of militant and jihadist groups.



But Meng Lisi and Li Xinheng were not there to work on Chinese-funded projects.  They were in the provincial capital, Quetta, on a clandestine mission: to spread the word of Christianity in the unlikeliest and most dangerous of places in conservative Muslim Pakistan.

Their story draws attention to an unintended and often overlooked by-product of China's aggressive drive to develop new trading routes and carve out influence across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Hundreds and possibly even thousands of the country's growing cadre of Christian missionaries are along for the ride too - even if Beijing doesn't want them there. . . .

"Thy Kingdom Come"

Reformation 500 for the Chinese Church

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
The Gospel Coalition

Wenhong didn’t think anything of it; everyone got baptized in the dark in China in the 1980s.

She had come to Christ two years before, after secret Bible studies with her English teacher from America. When Wenhong attempted to connect with the one other Chinese Christian she knew—a high school teacher—she was immediately shut down. (“She said, ‘How do you know? Let’s be quiet. Don’t say anything about it,’” Wenhong recalls. “She was so scared.”)

Wenhong’s father told her that if she talked about God, he’d kick her out of the house. So she quietly hid her Bible under her pillow and read once everyone else fell asleep.  After college, she moved to the city of Guangzhou to be near her American boyfriend (now her husband of 28 years), and he connected her with an international church. She told them she wanted to be baptized.

“On a cold November night, at 8 p.m., we were supposed to meet in the parking lot outside of a prearranged hotel, and then get on a van, and they would drive us all the way outside of the city and baptize us in the reservoir,” she said. “But we didn’t know anything different. I thought everyone was baptized like that.”

Wenhong remembers house-church meetings in living rooms, with the curtains pulled tight.

A New Constantine?

Is Chinese Premier Xi Jinping Going to Follow The Example of an Ancient Roman Emperor

There have been a series of articles published in Epoch Times over recent months to the effect that the current Chinese Premier, Xi Jinping is going to change the stance of the Chinese Government toward Falun Gong.  Epoch Times is an international media organisation owned and controlled by Falun Gong, an erstwhile religion which has been severely and implacably persecuted by the Chinese regime for over a decade.  

We read:

Through a number of unusual political gestures, Xi Jinping appears to have hinted at a departure from the policy of his predecessor toward the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline, a large group that was targeted for elimination in 1999 shortly after they mounted that appeal to the central government.

Xi Jinping’s recent actions—which include moderate remarks on how to treat petitioners, the purge of some particularly rough security officials, demands that the security forces conduct themselves with probity, and what borders on conciliatory remarks about religion in China—while subtle, indicate, in part due to their sequence and timing around such a sensitive anniversary, a potential shift in stance and emphasis to the Party’s status quo policies.

We are unable to comment on the reliability of this report.

Sanctifying the Church

Chinese Catholics Say No to Church ‘Controlled by Communist Party’

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News

As Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to tighten the Communist Party’s grip on religious practice, more and more Christians are opting out of the official, state-recognized church and heading underground.  Some six million Catholics have refused to join churches recognized by the Communist Party and have opted to worship in “house churches,” where they can remain loyal to the Vatican.

Father Dong Baolu, an underground Chinese priest, celebrates Mass in these so-called house churches in order to worship God in freedom and independence from state control.  For Dong, a church controlled by the Communist Party is no church at all. According to Dong, the Party “says we have religious freedom, but they only allow us to be free within a circle they drew.”

“They want to lead us. But those who don’t believe in God cannot lead us,” he said.

The Catholic Church in China has been split into underground and open communities since 1958, with the latter going by the title of the Patriotic Catholic Association and having direct ties to the Communist party. A Vatican document of 1988 barred Roman Catholics from participating in the sacraments of the Patriotic Church, since the association “had broken all relationships with the pope” and would be “under the direct control of the government.”

Father Dong fears that a thaw in relations between Beijing and the Vatican could compromise that freedom.

Rising Persecution in China

"God Is With Us"

The Chinese government is ratcheting up its persecution of Christians and churches.  Yet, the church continues to grow.  While estimates are only that--estimates--the generally accepted figure is that Christians number more than 100 million in China.

The sad thing is that Christians are not a threat to the government or civil rulers.  But it troubles an insecure government to realise that a substantial group of people have a higher loyalty to a Ruler that they regard as above and beyond the Communist regime.  Christians, of course, believe that Christ is the ultimate Lord and Ruler of not just China, but of all the heavens and the earth.

But it has always been the way: Unbelief must persecute and attack Christians, or it must itself become Christian. There can be be no middle ground.  Unbelief proclaims the absolute sovereignty of Man; Christians proclaim the absolute sovereignty of one Man, risen from the dead and living eternally--the Lord Jesus Christ.

The very Name of Christ, then, is a threat to the sovereignty of man over the world.  In the ancient Roman Empire this conflict was not settled until the Emperor's themselves became Christians, and the organs of state ceased to persecute the Church.  We expect that it will be the same in China.  Meanwhile the power and claims of the Lord Jesus Christ are extending over the Middle Kingdom and millions of people are responding to God's irresistible grace.  "Everyone whom the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never cast out anyone who comes to me," said the Lord. (John 6:37)

The ultimate sanction of Unbelief is to kill the body.  Man cannot kill the soul.  Christians fear God above man, because God can destroy both body and soul in Hell.  And thus the Gospel spreads in  China and people are converted, despite the earnest endeavours of the pagans.