The Untold Truth About China Revealed.

When I was in China I could not view my website because the government blocked it. It had too many references to God. Today I walked into Lifeway Christian Bookstore and saw one my friends who works there. She asked how my trip went and I told her it was amazing but that a place like Lifeway would be illegal in China and that we would all be thrown in jail. I was walking around the store and I got tears in my eyes just thinking about the Chinese Christians; about how they were arrested for meeting together to learn about the Bible, not only arrested but beaten, tortured, sent to hard labor camps and killed. We have this wealth of information just sitting at our doorstep and on the other side of the globe Christians risk their lives for knowledge about the Bible. I have not been able to stop thinking about them and about what I take for granted.
The unsaved Chinese friends I met in my travels are also on my mind. Most of them don't even know what the term Christianity means and have never heard of the Bible. This larger awareness of the persecuted Church and all those untouched souls created upon my heart a meloncholy that I have not been able to quell and I pray that it doesn’t alleviate. God has lifted the veil from the confines of my comfortable life and I feel led to share my limited experience with everyone else. More than any other trip, going to China has really made a profound impact on me. God has really laid a burden on my heart for that country and its people; both the saved and unsaved.
This trip has given me a much different perspective on life and on my Christian walk. The number 1.3 billion constantly hovers in the conciousness of my mind. That’s nearly the number of people who know nothing about God, or the Gospel. The tragedy of that number initially grieves me but then it inspires me to further the Kingdom of God in that land. I took every chance to share the Gospel with those I met and each time I did I was sharing something completely new and foreign to them. This changed the last night when I met a girl who had the color bead bracelet that represented the Gospel story. A westerner had sown the first seeds before me and had shared the Gospel with her and given her the bracelet. This made me incredibly excited and opened the door for me to share more with her about God and the Gospel. In the end I gave her my small Bible and she told me she would cherish it.
Seeing this one photon of light in a dark country was both exhilarating and sobering. Most of China lives in the dark; and this is due to their government. Everything they've been told about the world today and the history of the past 60 years is skewed and often outright false. For example, they are told that China liberated Tibet. Liberated from what? Themselves? China invaded Tibet and killed over a million people. The people literally have a veil put over their eyes not only about history and current events but of not really being aware of the outlawing of Christianity and the persecution their own people.
While I was there I felt the desire to lift this veil and shed the light of the Gospel. The Chinese Christians are doing a good job at this but need help. Imagine the early church after Christ and how they held councils to determine doctrine, this is the similar situation in China. These new churches are reading their Bibles without the aid that we have and they desperately want to know more about Theology. This is where my good friend Daniel comes in. He and another Westminister Seminary student named Eric, went to China earlier this summer to teach reformed theology to the underground church. It was the first missionaries and teachers this denomination had seen ever seen. They were incredibly appreciative of them and treated them like royalty. Daniel and Eric took turns teaching 7-hour shifts and the pupils were eager for every bit of it.
On August 2, things went bad when my friends went to a high-risk part of China. The taxi driver turned in my friends and the Chinese Christians. Dan and Eric were taken to a holding room in an unmarked government building, interrogated but were released 7 hours later. The Chinese Christians with my friends were not so lucky. They were put in prison, beaten, and tortured for an "illegal meeting."
This might be graphic for some but it deserves to be told. The Chinese Christians were beaten with metal chairs to the head, tortured with cigarette burns to the face and arms, needles stuck into their wrists and their thumbs pulled out with mini-handcuffs to the point where they couldn’t use their hands. One girl was stripped naked and beaten on the legs and rear so hard by bamboo rods that she bled and couldn’t walk for weeks. Most have been released. Two are still in prison; one an older frail lady who owned the house and the female leader who tried to stop the police from arresting my friends. Both are beaten daily and there is no current release date set.
These are people that my two American friends knew. Not just names in a paper but friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. In 2000 the pastor of the church was arrested along with some women of the Church. The women were tortured to sign a document that said the pastor had raped them. After extensive beatings four signed the letter but after release recanted. (They are now in hard labor camps for reeducation) The fifth girl who didn’t sign the document was beaten to death because she didn’t sign. The pastor was given the death penalty but his wife and the church sold everything they owned to buy off the government, so now he has life in prison.
These stories I have heard from Chinese Christians themselves, and from my friend Daniel. These events weigh on me and I don’t believe I can ever truly be the same. The Christians hunger and thirst for the Gospel like I've never seen before and they willingly pay the price for it. The American Church pales in comparison. There has to be something more we can do for them.
I feel like the Holy Spirit has truly touched my heart for both the saved and unsaved in China and I am looking for ways to be used by God to help the people in China.
If your interested you may look up an article in World Magazine dated August 27th about my friends and their arrest in China.
http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=10971
This link gives further information on recent Christian persecution in China.
http://www.earnedmedia.org/caa0818.htm

Please keep the Chinese Christians in your prayers.