My brother Stephen spoke messages from John—the Gospel of John—on abiding. I do not know how you remember that, but those were some of the most powerful messages. His illustration was that, having come out of China, he had seen that the church there knew her Lord in reality and in life. They knew, even in the midst of persecution, what it meant in a living way to abide in Christ.
I will never forget those messages. So I encourage you to go back and hear them. Since that time, I think we have really had a burden for God’s work in China. Tonight, we have the privilege of hearing from a brother who has labored there and goes in and sees firsthand what the Lord is doing.
What we hope to do after Jonathan shares is to take this as an opportunity to learn to pray more intelligently for what the Lord is doing. Jonathan Kong now resides in Seattle, Washington—on the opposite side of the United States from us—and has come all the way here to be with us. We thank the Lord and trust that He will speak to us tonight.
Greetings to all the brothers and sisters. It is really my pleasure to be here in this wonderful season. Although you have to pay a little price with hay fever, the surroundings are so beautiful. Best of all, I have met the most beautiful people in God’s house and enjoyed fellowship together.
Tonight, I have the privilege of sharing what the Lord has laid on my heart for the past fourteen or so years concerning what is going on in China.
I was not born in mainland China. Some people ask me, “Where is China?” There is a world map. I used to ask my father, “Where is the United States?” He would say, “Look at the earth. Look down at your feet. Just start drilling. When you drill through the earth, the other side is the United States.” That is what my father told me.
Maybe some fathers here will tell their children the same thing: if you drill through the ice, you will see China. That is the relative position.
I live in Seattle, another Washington. It is different from your neighboring Washington, where the real action is. From Seattle, if you take an airplane to Shanghai—the largest port and commercial center in China—it takes about twelve to thirteen hours. From here to Richmond is about four to five hours, depending on the connection. That gives you a relative scale of distance.
Last century, one of the most famous and greatest missionaries—many of us know about him—was Hudson Taylor. He wrote a letter to his sister in which he said:
If I had a thousand pounds, I would give every pound to China;
If I had a thousand lives, I would give every life to China.
No, not China, but Christ.
Hudson Taylor was from England, and somehow he had a tremendous burden for China. He started the China Inland Mission in the second half of the nineteenth century, and that mission work continues even today.
China has always been a place in the heart of Western missionaries who wanted to share the gospel. The gospel has been preached in China for about two hundred years. It is a tough place in which to preach the gospel.
For about one hundred and fifty years, the message did not really reach the general population. It remained on the coast and in the major ports. Inland areas had never heard the gospel until Hudson Taylor, through the China Inland Mission, brought the message inland. Even then, it was very spotty.
By 1949, China’s political system changed, and the Communists took over. The statistics printed on the first page show what the situation looked like at that time.
The Christian population was about 700,000. The figure 1.4 represents Protestants and Catholics together—about 1.4 million. That was the official Communist government statistic.
Outside estimates from Hong Kong suggested that there were about two million Protestants and two million Catholics at that time. The total population of China was approximately 450 to 460 million people—about twice the population of the United States.
The number of Protestant meeting places was about 20,000, with approximately 34,000 Christian meeting places in total. Buddhist temples numbered more than 30,000 or 40,000.
Chinese society did not have much pure Buddhism. It was a mixed religion: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism merged together into a kind of hybrid. This had been popular in China for about a thousand years.
When I was young, I studied Chinese history, but I could not comprehend the degree of influence that Buddhism and Taoism had upon China until 1979. That was the first time I entered China. It was my first historical trip.
I started from Hong Kong in southern China and traveled northward to Canton, Shanghai, Beijing, and Manchuria. Then I came down to Xi’an, which is actually near the center of China and was an old capital. I made a large circle through about ten cities.
For the first time, I saw what China looked like. I had always learned about it from textbooks but had never seen it. I saw the great Buddha idol. My goodness—the size of that Buddha! I could never imagine that people would build such a humongous idol.
The size of one toenail on that Buddha could hold a full-sized Chinese banquet table and serve twelve people. You can imagine how tall that idol was.
That opened my eyes, and it suddenly dawned on me why China had gone through such a terrible time in recent history.
When I studied Chinese history, I always had the question: Why have we suffered so much? Why did Brother Kong’s generation have such a difficult youth, always in war? There was the Second World War, the warlords fighting one another, the Sino-Japanese War, and afterward the conflict between the Communists and others.
China was constantly under battle. Many people lost relatives and possessions. It was a tough, miserable life. The nineteenth century was no better, with the Opium Wars and many other conflicts.
Foreign powers such as Russia and Japan fought battles on Chinese territory, particularly in Manchuria. Then they settled their disputes by dividing Chinese land between themselves. It was Chinese territory, yet they gave it to one another.
Our history books explained these situations, but we could not understand why China was so weak and so tortured by foreign powers. A thousand reasons were offered—science, technology, democracy, and many other things—to explain China’s problems.
But this opened my understanding. I think the basic problem is spiritual.
For Chinese people, we are under a severe culture of idolatry. Chinese people say, “We are the descendants of dragons.” The dragon is selected as a national emblem.
If you go to Beijing or other former capitals, you will see the king’s palace and throne surrounded by symbols of dragons. Chinese people consider the dragon to represent power, majesty, and fortune. Good things are always associated with it.
But after we had the Bible, we saw what the dragon represents. As you travel around the country, you see so many idols—tens of thousands of idols. It is unbelievable.
Israel experienced the loss of her country and dispersion throughout the world. Chinese people have also experienced suffering, dispersion, and a miserable life.
Let us turn to a couple of Scriptures. I would like to read from the Old Testament, Isaiah 40:1.
This verse was given by the Lord to the prophet after all the travail and suffering the Jewish people had endured. The Lord said to His people:
Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her,
that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
That was the comforting word God gave to the Jewish nation after they had gone through so many troubled years and so much suffering. For the Chinese people, I have a feeling that perhaps the time of suffering should come to a close, at least to a great degree.
I would not say that I know whether the whole nation will turn to God. But if you look at the statistics, you can see historic numbers of people turning to the Lord. That is truly the work of God.
Let us also turn to Isaiah 45:20-23.
Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations:
they have no knowledge that carry the wood of their graven image,
and pray unto a god that cannot save.Declare ye, and bring it forth; yea, let them take counsel together:
who hath showed this from ancient time? who hath declared it of old?
have not I, the Lord? and there is no God else besides Me,
a just God and a Saviour; there is none besides Me.Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth;
for I am God, and there is none else.By Myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth from My mouth in righteousness,
and shall not return, that unto Me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.
From God’s declaration, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess. This includes all peoples. If the Lord’s coming is close, then given such a huge population in China, God must proclaim the good tidings to them. They deserve another chance.
Tonight, I feel this is a good opportunity to share what the Lord has shown me over the past fourteen years. Since 1979, I have visited China about twenty-three times.
I have covered much of the country—from the northern end to the southern tip, from the eastern islands to many inland areas. I have not visited the far western side, perhaps in the future.
China contains many different peoples and minorities, mixed together. You see many different cultures. It is truly a vast country.
Let us return to the statistics. From a spiritual point of view, China has had two major turning points in recent history.
Missionaries spent one hundred and fifty years trying to enter this huge country and spread the gospel. But in 1949 they were all thrown out. Foreign missionary organizations, structured churches, and organized ministries were expelled, torn down, or destroyed.
Yet that did not kill Christianity in China.
Then, from 1966 to 1976, China experienced the Cultural Revolution. We know that this movement was real. As outsiders, those of us in Taiwan saw reports in the newspapers and did not always believe such things could happen. We thought it was Communist propaganda. But it was literally true.
People persecuted one another and made false accusations. They used guns, cannons, and tanks against each other. Many people were killed. For ten years, China was basically tormented.
From a cultural point of view, many old traditions were thrown out. Idols were destroyed. Temples were shut down, and the idols inside them were chopped up and ruined.
Chairman Mao basically wiped out everything that belonged to the old tradition. He tried to get rid of everything connected with old society, and religion was one of the core elements of that old society.
From a Marxist point of view, religion is the opium of the people. That was their basic belief. Anything belonging to religion was considered harmful.
However, in 1987 the Chinese government released new statistics. They said that Chinese Christians had grown to four million, and with Catholics included, the total could be calculated at 7.4 million. That was a huge increase.
The Hong Kong estimates for 1987 were much higher: thirty million Protestants and twenty million Catholics.
At the same time, the Chinese government reopened old churches and cathedrals in Shanghai, Beijing, and other major cities. They wanted to give the outside world the appearance that China had freedom of religion.
At that time, there were about 6,000 Protestant church buildings, around 3,000 Catholic buildings, and approximately 9,000 Buddhist temples.
Then came the famous Tiananmen incident. In one sense, it had a significant effect on Chinese students abroad.
During the 1980s, when we shared the gospel with Chinese students who came to the United States, they would listen carefully but would not express much. They would neither affirm nor deny. They would simply listen.
But after the Tiananmen incident, things changed almost overnight. They responded to the gospel much more directly and openly. They would tell you right away where they stood.
In earlier days, students were concerned about returning to China and what the government might think about their faith. After Tiananmen, many of them did not care in the same way. They were baptized publicly, went to church, and did things they had formerly been reluctant to do.
That was another turning point. The same thing happened in China itself. There was another major increase in the Christian population.
China has now reached a historic high: approximately five percent of the population is Christian. It has never been like that before. We must say that this is strictly God’s work. Nobody could have expected it.
Early this February, when I went to China, I heard that the Communist Party had become very nervous because of events in Russia and Eastern Europe during the early 1990s. We all witnessed those great changes.
The Chinese Communist Party analyzed why those changes happened so quickly. They concluded that Christianity played a major role in Russia and Eastern Europe, and they became afraid that a similar situation might happen in China.
They began an internal study to discover the real size of the Christian population in China. Last October, they released an internal report stating that there were sixty million Christians. This was a party document.
They also reported that the highest concentration of Christians was in Henan Province. The second largest concentration was in Zhejiang and Fujian, along the coast. Other concentrations were in areas such as Guangdong, Shandong, and Jiangsu.
Many Christians who had been in hiding came out and worked hard in the rural areas and countryside. China has its highest Christian population in the countryside.
I believe that during the Cultural Revolution, many Christians were persecuted and sent away to rural areas. Some went to Heilongjiang, some to Qinghai, and the gospel spread outward.
According to many reports, people did not convert to Christianity because some charismatic preacher came and preached. Rather, they saw that Christians had a wonderful life of love. They saw Christians pray, experienced healing and divine power, and witnessed miracles. These things caused them to believe.
You see many testimonies coming out of China explaining why people believe in Jesus. In some places, entire villages have become Christian villages—one hundred percent Christian.
Here is a small example from internal publications concerning northern Jiangsu Province, around Shanghai. During the 1960s and 1970s, Communist Party officials counted these counties as good examples because they supposedly had no religion. All religion had been wiped out.
By the 1990s, Christians were 2.53 times more numerous than party members, representing 12.1 percent of the workforce in that part of northern Jiangsu Province.
The Lord has done tremendous work in the rural areas. Even now, rural believers enjoy relatively greater freedom to share the Word and meet together.
A meeting like this would be unthinkable in China unless it were held in a government-approved church building with approved personnel. Not just anyone can stand and preach; one must be approved by the government.
What we take for granted is a luxury to them. Sitting together and singing hymns is almost unthinkable.
When I visit house churches, there may be ten, twenty, or at most twenty-five people. That is the largest meeting I can attend in a house church, because their houses are very small. Twenty-five people literally means being squeezed together.
The way we sing songs is quiet. Three people sing verse one, three others sing verse two, and so on. We take turns singing quietly because the environment is not friendly.
The Communist Party’s basic doctrine has never changed: religion is the opium of the people. They believe people embrace religion because they are innocent and lack education. They think that if people receive scientific education, they will abandon superstition.
The Communist Party also considers Christianity to be a channel through which Western imperialism invaded China from the eighteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century. That is how they interpret Western cultural influence through Christianity.
If a Western religious group wants to visit China, officials may reluctantly agree. But if that group says, “We want to establish an organization and preach the gospel,” they will say no. They are very sensitive to Western organizational churches entering China and carrying out the kind of missionary work that existed before the Communists took over.
That is why they developed the idea of the Three-Self principles: self-governance, self-propagation, and self-support.
In principle, every local church should be this way. It is quite biblical. But for the government, it carries another connotation. They use it as a tool to expel all foreign influence and to establish a quasi-government organization to control religious activity.
Within the Communist Party there is a department called the United Front Work Department. Its strategy is essentially this: “If I cannot use force to conquer you, I will make friends with you and then absorb you.”
They do not fight with bullets. They seek to make friends. If you are against them, they hope friendship will make you neutral. If you are neutral, they hope friendship will win you over.
Within that department is a religious department. It controls religious affairs in China—Buddhism, Islam, and all other religions. Each religion has a department that oversees it and draws in people from religious organizations who show sympathy with the Party.
Then they formed the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. It appears to be a people’s organization rather than a government organization, but it remains under the control of the Party.
As far as the Communist Party is concerned, they do not really care what Christians, Muslims, or Buddhists believe, as long as they obey government policy. You may read the Bible or the Qur’an; that is irrelevant to them. Their concern is control.
Throughout history, some have gone along with the Three-Self system, and some have not. The strongest forces resisting the policy have been Catholics and Protestants.
For Catholics, the issue is that the head of the church is the Pope. Even today, the Communist Party is very sensitive about Chinese Catholics having anything to do with the Pope. The government appoints its own bishops and refuses papal authority.
Many bishops and other Catholic religious workers were thrown into prison because they would not agree with government policy. The same is true among Protestants. If people refuse to join the national organization, they are considered illegal.
Christians use different Bible passages to justify their responses. Some say, “For us, the Head of the church is Christ, not the Communist Party or the government,” and they refuse to join. Others appeal to Romans 13 and say that they must submit to the government, so they join.
Thus, Christianity in China has been divided into two large groups: those who go along with the Three-Self churches and those who do not. Those who do not participate form what are called house churches.
Each house church may contain ten to thirty people, spread out everywhere throughout China.
I will give you another small example, translated from an official document. I jokingly call it the Ten Commandments for Three-Self churches. It is on page two: examples of local Three-Self church covenants.
No matter where you go, the first covenant says something like this:
Determine to support the policy of the Communist Party and the people’s government;
persistently follow the socialist ideology;
love the motherland;
positively contribute to the modernization of the country.
How would you like to have that posted at the entrance of your church?
After 1978, Deng Xiaoping came to power and said China needed modernization in science, technology, agriculture, and other major areas. Others argued that China needed a fifth modernization: political modernization. But the Party’s policy was modernization in the major practical areas.
Other church covenants include the following:
These kinds of regulations are posted in government-approved Three-Self churches. They call them covenants. That is the background of the church and Christian arena in China.
Let us now consider future trends. What will happen from now on? I will make two assumptions.
First, I assume that the current government will continue. I do not foresee it collapsing in the immediate future as happened in Russia. At least for the foreseeable future, this government will remain.
Second, I assume that economic growth will continue at an average rate of approximately eight percent per year. China’s economy is growing dynamically, especially along the coast.
There are many rich people in China now compared with ten years ago. The Party talks about four cardinal principles that cannot be violated, but when you look at the present government policy, the main principle that remains is Communist Party control of government.
Everything else is moving toward capitalism. The government retains a Communist title and political structure, but in economic policy it is moving in a very capitalist direction.
China’s approach differs from Russia’s. Russia began with political change, replacing the Communist Party and then trying to improve the economy. China has taken the opposite approach.
Deng Xiaoping said, in effect, “We will not touch the political structure. We will work on the economic situation and improve people’s livelihood.”
When I first entered China compared with what I see today, they are two totally different Chinas in terms of living standards, goods in the market, and people’s thinking. Shanghai and Beijing are very prosperous—almost like Taipei or Hong Kong.
As long as you have money, you can buy many things you want. That was not so in Russia, where people could have money but still could not buy things because of shortages.
Based on these assumptions, I see Christian groups developing in three categories.
The first category is the house church. This will remain the major force: underground, small in size, with twenty or thirty people in each group, scattered throughout China.
The second category is government-approved churches. They will continue to receive new believers who know little about the historical background of the Three-Self system. They see a building, a church name, and a pastor, so naturally they conclude, “This is the Christian church. I will join it.”
The third category consists of cults. These will grow in large numbers because of the lack of sound Bible teaching. This is a serious problem in China.
Every kind of religious group you can imagine wants to go into China because it is a golden opportunity. You can tell people almost anything, and many will believe you.
On the first page, I listed some cultural dynamics. China was a land of idols, with thousands and tens of thousands of idols. Then Chairman Mao came and destroyed everything, making himself the idol.
Mao’s body is still in the mausoleum at the center of Tiananmen Square. He was treated as an idol.
About a year and a half ago, when I was in China, I saw an interesting phenomenon that I had never seen before. In almost every taxi or car, something was hanging from the rear-view mirror.
Do you know whose image they hung there? Chairman Mao’s. I was very surprised. I asked a driver, “Why do you hang this here? Did he not make enough trouble for China?”
The driver said, “It brings us good luck. We will not have car accidents.” They believed that Mao’s spirit would protect the driver.
Even today, people think he is some kind of magical person who can protect them. In perhaps seven out of ten taxis, you see such an image hanging there. One side may show Mao, and the other side may show Premier Zhou Enlai.
In Taiwan, you do not see that. But in Taiwan, many taxis still hang Buddhist or Taoist objects, believing that these spirits will protect them from danger. Each side has some form of superstitious spirit.
The next point is a window of opportunity for the gospel of God. The gospel door is open, but not in the traditional sense of holding public gospel meetings or sending missionaries to conduct public ministry.
Many organizations still pray, “Lord, please open the door in China. There are so many lost souls. We want to send missionaries and hold public meetings.” If you pray only in that way, you may wait a long time.
But if you see the great gospel movement in China—an explosion of gospel activity—then the door is open. It is simply not open in the way you expected. We must see from God’s point of view.
Through different approaches, the gospel is spreading rapidly. There are huge numbers of converts.
I call them Christian babies in China. They are like famine babies: spiritually hungry, with no Word of God. Every kind of cult goes in and tells them, “The Bible says this,” or “The Bible says that,” and they do not have the grounding to discern it.
That is why there are so many problems with cults. I have heard shocking examples of how the gospel has been twisted in China. People may speak of a human leader as though he were Christ. When I heard it, I was shocked. I could hardly believe it, but it is true.
There is a tremendous opportunity because no new idol has yet been firmly established. Everyone is trying to establish a new idol.
I use Taiwan as an example. Taiwan responded very positively to the gospel in the 1960s and early 1970s. But gradually, as Taiwan became more affluent, people became, in a sense, too rich.
If you preach the gospel to people from Taiwan, they often take it carelessly. It is very strange. The same gospel that may receive a response from people coming out of mainland China receives a much smaller response from people in Taiwan.
I call this gospel receptivity. This is my personal feeling: if coastal China continues to develop over another ten to fifteen years and reaches the living standard of Taiwan, people’s hearts may no longer respond to the gospel in the same way.
When we are rich, we feel blessed. We have better things to do. The gospel can seem too abstract, too vain, and unreal.
If that is true, then the window of opportunity to share the Word of God may be only ten to fifteen years. This is the golden opportunity right now.
At the same time, I think God has done something else. In the past, the gospel could not reach the core of Chinese society. It could not affect the intellectuals.
For one hundred and fifty years, Chinese intellectuals tended to look down on Christianity. They said, “This is a foreign religion. This belongs to people with round eyes. It is not Chinese.”
From a Chinese cultural point of view, this foreign religion was not accepted by the intellectual class. That was a major problem for many years.
Now many Chinese traditions have been wiped out, including Mao as the great idol. For the first time, Chinese intellectuals are seeing the problems in Chinese culture and asking themselves, “What is wrong?”
For the first time in history, we are asking: “What is wrong with Chinese tradition and Chinese culture?”
A historic number of Chinese students have gone overseas: 80,000 to North America, 40,000 to Europe, 30,000 to Australia, and 30,000 to Japan. Never before in Chinese history have so many young elites gone abroad.
From the government’s point of view, they go overseas to learn science and technology and return to help modernize China. But from a Christian point of view, this is a tremendous opportunity.
We cannot freely go into China, but God has sent these elites into Western society. They are exposed to Christianity. Many Christians see this opportunity and approach them with the gospel.
Hopefully, they can also be trained. One day, when they return to China, they become the real missionaries.
They came out of China, received education here, and came to know the Lord here. Again and again, when we share with them, we hear the testimony: “During my years in the United States, the most precious thing I learned was to know about God.”
This touches your heart. A historic number of Chinese young people are being sent out, and I think this is the best opportunity for us to approach them and share the Word.
When they return, they will be in key positions. They will be at the core of Chinese culture, and they will have a long-term influence.
Lastly, I would like to speak about needs in prayer and action. These are only my personal thoughts, and I am open to suggestions.
The number one need in China, I feel, is to train teachers. There are so many spiritual babies and not enough teachers to nourish them and bring them up in the Lord.
They need milk. They need solid food. There is an absolute spiritual hunger. You would not believe it until you go there and share the Word.
People will come from far away. I have heard testimonies in China of people walking ten hours to attend a meeting. In cities, they take buses and change three times just to come to a meeting.
Once the meeting begins, if you preach for only one or two hours, that would almost be a terrible sin against them. They ask you, “Please speak from morning to night.”
The elderly brothers who can teach in China today are often those who knew the Lord in the 1950s and 1960s, went through persecution, and are now coming out to feed the flock. But they are old and feeble.
Can you imagine asking them to speak for ten hours? It puts tremendous demands on the older generation. Where are the younger generations?
I think there is a tremendous need for short-term training classes in strategic cities. Bring in rural church leaders, give them training, and strengthen them in the Word.
Overseas, focus on young students from the People’s Republic of China who have a heart for the Lord. Conduct camp meetings and discipleship training sessions. Train them, and when they return, that is a real work.
Another need is to build a network to support genuine rural servants of God. I have spoken with many rural servants who have had to give up their occupations in order to devote more time to moving from village to village and ministering the Word.
The government documents say there should be no cross-regional preaching. But the need is so great that these workers must move from region to region.
When I go to Shanghai, I visit two sisters. Every time I visit them, rural Christians come into town, knock on the door, and ask, “Sisters, when can you come? When can you come?”
They are always asking these sisters to go to rural areas and speak because they have no teachers and are so hungry. When you see that, it really breaks your heart.
When we travel to China as tourists, we can bring spiritual books, tapes, reference books, and children’s ministry materials. They desperately need children’s ministry materials—Bible stories and pictures that can be put on the wall to teach children.
They often tell me, “Give us some of those pictures.” They need them to tell Bible stories to the children.
Bibles are printed in China, but Bibles are categorized with spiritual books, tapes, and pornography. They are placed in the same category, and importation is restricted. Those are the rules and regulations in China.
We should also prepare high-quality mass media. These days, much junk goes out over radio and television waves. If Christians have vision and burden, we should produce good-quality radio programs so that true messages can go out.
I hope some brothers will have a burden in this area. Mass media is one of the only ways to reach such a humongous land and such a humongous population.
Every time I look at China’s population, I say, “Lord, who am I? What can I do?” Every time I stand in downtown Shanghai, I am overwhelmed by the mountain of people.
Chinese visitors to the United States often ask me, “Where are the people? We do not see any people in the United States.” American businesspeople traveling through China ask, “Why are there so many people on bicycles?”
There are thousands of bicycles on the street in the early morning, moving quietly in a huge mass. The number of people is mind-boggling.
Getting on a bus can seem impossible. From my perspective, if the bus is full, you let it go. But people struggle and push their way in. Some people even jump through windows, literally.
If they miss the bus, they may be late to work, receive a black mark on their record, lose part of their wages, or lose a bonus. For them, getting on the bus is critical. The number of people is just mind-boggling.
The last point is to encourage Christian businesspeople to form joint ventures in China as a bridge for bringing in workers and capital for long-term church development.
In my view, this is strategically important because the Chinese government strongly encourages foreign visitors and investors. They provide major benefits and incentives.
If any brothers or sisters have this burden, I would like to speak with you. Perhaps there is something you can do. But you must be very careful. How do you balance making money without being trapped by it? That is delicate and difficult for a Christian.
Question: Mongolia appears separate from China. Was it formerly part of China?
Mongolia is now an independent country. It used to be connected with China, but it became separate and is no longer part of China.
Question: What is the situation regarding law and order, especially around Canton and the southern provinces?
There is stealing, robbery, rape, and many other social problems, especially in the south around Canton. Deng Xiaoping said that when you open windows and doors to let fresh air in, mosquitoes and flies will also come in.
It is true that these social problems exist, and many of them returned after the Cultural Revolution. In certain places, social order is rough.
But generally, when I travel through the cities, I do not feel personally threatened. Some basic order is still maintained.
Question: How closely are house churches watched, and what happens if people meet secretly?
The Chinese describe the policy this way: externally, it is loose; internally, it is tight. They want to present an image of religious freedom. If you ask whether people have freedom to believe, they may say, “Of course. Come and take a look. The churches and temples are open.”
But internally, it is a different story. The Communist Party allows what it can see and control. It does not allow what it cannot see and cannot control.
House churches are unseen and outside government control, so they make the authorities nervous.
They use traditional neighborhood surveillance. Elderly women may sit at the entrance of a residential area and watch who comes in and who goes out. They report suspicious activity. It is a neighborhood watch system.
Therefore, when believers meet, they do not do so publicly. They may come in gradually and leave gradually.
Usually, officials first warn them not to meet again. Next, they fine them. If they still do not change, officials may shut down the meeting, confiscate books and tapes, and take away religious materials from the home.
A few key leaders may be thrown into prison, depending on the intensity and frequency of their activities. But many believers accept this possibility. They say, “So be it.” For some, going to jail is almost like going to a second home. Otherwise, they feel they cannot carry on the work.
For someone like me, the greatest penalty would probably be expulsion from China: “Do not come back.”
Question: What about illiteracy in rural areas?
Illiteracy is a major problem in China. In rural areas, the illiteracy rate can reach sixty percent on average. Literacy among men may be around forty percent, while illiteracy among women may reach sixty to seventy percent.
In the countryside, many people think studying is a waste of time, and women are often thought not to need education. That is a serious problem.
My major burden right now is the first point I mentioned: conducting training classes. That is what I have been doing.
Question: Can Western believers enter China and visit believers there?
Yes, you can enter as a tourist without much problem. You are welcome as a visitor. For an initial visit, visiting people in their homes is generally all right.
But if you go in repeatedly and continually, people begin to ask questions: “Why do you come all the time?” If you show up once as a tourist and then return several years later, they may not ask many questions.
Many Western religious groups do unwise things. Some bring huge bags of Bibles and try to go through customs. That creates a huge problem.
Others hand out tracts publicly on the street. The police come right away. This kind of public ministry is not wise in that setting.
One of the most common activities for Western believers is teaching English in universities. This is a welcome job, and there are literally hundreds of people teaching English in different universities in China. Through this channel, they hope to reach college students.
Some do very well and some do poorly. It depends greatly on the person’s spiritual condition, because the environment is very unfriendly toward religious activity.
Another avenue is for professionals—doctors, professors, and engineers—to enter China for special projects. They may stay for one semester, several months, or a shorter period.
A third avenue is business. Businesspeople go into China to conduct business and, in the meantime, serve the local saints. I know some large companies whose China general managers are Christians and provide many services to local believers.
Because of their position, they can bring in materials such as Bible tapes and other resources. They can go in and out of China repeatedly because they represent foreign companies doing business there.
Question: Why is there such a restriction against preaching to people under eighteen?
The government sees young people as its future. Young people are the people the Communist government wants to recruit, so they do not want to lose them to religious activity. That is the logic.
But many young people attend house meetings. Young people are turning to the Lord in great numbers, especially after the Tiananmen incident. Many eventually end up in Three-Self churches because they do not know the difference.
I believe you can find many people of quality in China—people who can be taught, molded, and trained. They have been through much, and their character has been built. Now it is a matter of teaching them God’s Word.
When we speak about sharing the message in different countries, we sometimes wonder whether people will go all the way with us. In China, I think you can find many people willing to go all the way if you teach them the right Word. They have character.
If you want to fish, China has lots of fish. As a salesperson, I used to work for Weyerhaeuser. We would say, “If every Chinese person buys one log, that would be a huge market—one billion people.”
Turn that around: if you want to become a fisher of men, that would be deep-sea fishing.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we worship You for what You have done throughout history in different places. It is beyond our imagination. When Your Spirit moves, no one can stop You.
Lord, we can only bow our heads before You and say, “Lord, You are Lord of the whole universe. You are Lord of the earth.”
We ask that Your will be done everywhere on this earth. Tonight, we pray especially for China.
We believe You have Your work among the saints and among Your children. Lord, we ask the God of heaven to send out workers into the harvest.
Lord, You will answer our prayer because we believe it is Your will. You promised that every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord.
Lord, we believe there are a huge number of people who will be saved in that land. So we come before You and ask You to bind the evil forces and release those precious souls, so that they may come into the kingdom of the Son of God.
In Jesus’ name we pray.