Light in the Persecuted Church

“The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.”

Carl F.H. Henry

  How many Bibles do you own? If you add a version of the Bible that you have on your computer and smart phone, how many do you have? If you needed a Bible, how much trouble would it be for you to purchase one?

  Recently, Chinese social media users began noticing that they couldn’t find Bibles listed on some of their nation’s most popular e-commerce platforms. Shoppers who searched the word “Bible” on internet retailers began receiving a “no results” response. Why? The Chinese government had banned Bibles from online purchase but only Christianity is being targeted.

  Among China’s main religions, which include Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and folk beliefs, Christianity is unique for having its writings banned from commercial brick-and-mortar bookstores. Until the internet, Bibles could only be obtained in church bookstores but Christians rightly suspicious of being seen purchasing a Bible were wary of purchasing of them publicly. Sadly, millions of Chinese now have no means of attaining a Bible.

  This latest crackdown on China’s Christians comes two months after the government began implementing other regulations on faith. Now religious groups must have government approval for any sort of religious activity, including using one’s personal home for a religious practice, publishing religious materials, calling oneself a pastor, or studying theology. One provincial government engaged in a multi-year campaign to remove crosses from the tops of churches. Last fall, the Communist party reportedly visited Christian households in the Jiangxi province, forcibly removing dozens of Christian symbols from living rooms and replacing them with pictures of China’s President Xi Jinping.

  In Iran, Islamic Clerics are warning against the spread of Christianity.  House churches are hunted down. Conversion to Christianity is viewed as an action against national security. Still Christianity has been growing at a fast rate in the last couple of decades in Iran, which greatly concerns the Islamic government. Mohabat News, an Iranian Christian News Agency, reports that this high rate of conversion is occurring despite the rigorous Islamic indoctrination of the youth. Waves of arrests and harassment of Christian converts is taking place with many facing long prison sentences.  

  World Magazine (03-31-18) recently reported on the work God is doing in Vietnam. Since 1975, when the United States left Vietnam, the evangelical population in Vietnam has multiplied nearly tenfold from 160,000 to 1.57 million. With the Fall of Saigon, the Communist government kicked out foreign missionaries, commandeered Christian schools and hospitals, and closed churches. Some Vietnamese pastors fled the country on U.S. military planes, leaving their flocks without shepherds.

  Pastor Huy Le of Grace Baptist Church, who was 7 years old at the time, recalls the hunger and suffering his family faced those first few years. The North plundered the resource-rich South and implemented collectivist rice farming, which led to extreme food shortages. Local officials often called in Le’s father, then the pastor at Grace Baptist Church, for interrogations. Authorities closed all the Baptist churches except for Grace Baptist (which only experienced a temporary closure). Le believes it was spared because of its location in Ho Chi Minh City and because his father decided to stay.

  Pastor John Nguyen (not his real name) a house church pastor in Ho Chi Minh City, grew up hating the North Vietnamese. But God worked in his heart and he determined to plant a church in the heart of Vietnamese Communism. He moved to Hanoi and started a small seven-member house church. By 1998, it had grown to 20. Often God kept Nguyen from getting caught by the authorities. Police showed up at Bible training minutes after he stepped out of the room. Once while walking to a training class, he saw police rushing toward the meeting location, so he stayed back. For a time, he moved his Sunday service to 5 a.m. so it’d be over by the time the police started their workday. Pastor Nguyen said, “After being persecuted severely, more churches have been planted. Some places only had one church, but after persecution, it became five. Facing difficulties cannot deter the growth of the church.”   

  God is working! The gospel is reaching the unreached and seemingly unreachable. Some of His greatest work is taking place in what are considered America’s enemies. That’s always been the case for the gospel.

  In Acts 2, Peter preached the gospel to the very ones who crucified Jesus weeks before. The national enemy of those Jews were Romans, yet Paul longed to share the gospel in Rome. Eventually, he went, not as a missionary but as a prisoner and was probably martyred, according to some accounts by the Emperor Nero.

  Jesus said, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you…Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:10-12, 44). 

  Are you obeying? Do you love your enemies? Even our nation’s enemies? Loving your enemy means you pray for them. It means forgiving them. It means praying that God will send out more laborers to work in His harvest fields. Will you pray that God will send more laborers? Will you pray that God will send them out from our own church? 

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address.