China

Children’s Story – Heavenly Food

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In the early days of mission work in China, there was an elderly man named Li who accepted the gospel. Having learned the truth, he immediately began to share his faith with others. One day, soon after his conversion, he read, “covetousness which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5. Determined not to fall into any kind of idolatry, he gave away all of his property and lived day to day from the hospitality of the people with whom he was laboring to share the gospel. Not far from Li’s home was a large temple in which lived a cousin who was a priest. From time to time the young priest would visit his old relative, bringing him a small present of bread or millet from his very adequate supply. Each time the old man received the gift, he would say, “My heavenly Father’s grace!” After awhile, this began to annoy the younger man; and he at last said, “Where does your heavenly Father’s grace come in, I should like to know? The millet is mine. I bring it to you. And if I did not, you would very soon starve for all that He would care. He has nothing at all to do with it.”

“But,” replied the old man, “it is my heavenly Father who puts it into your heart to care for me.”

“Oh, that is very well!” interrupted the priest. “We shall see what will happen if I bring the millet no more.”

For a week or two he kept away, although his better nature kept prompting him to care for the old man whom he could not help but respect for the many works of mercy in which he was engaged in helping others.

In the passage of time, old Li’s food supply finally ran out. The day came when he no longer had enough food for one more meal. Kneeling alone in his room, he poured out his heart in prayer to God. He knew very well that his Father in heaven would not, could not, forget him; and after pleading for a blessing on his work and upon the people all around him, he reminded the Lord of what the priest had said, asking that, for the honor of His own great name, He would send that very day his daily bread.

Suddenly the answer came. While Li was still kneeling in prayer, he heard an unusual clamor and cawing and flapping of wings in the courtyard outside, and a noise as of something falling to the ground. He rose up and went to the door to see what was happening. A number of ravens, which are common in that part of China, were flying all about in great commotion above him. As he looked up, a large piece of meat fell at his very feet. One of the birds, chased by the others, had dropped it just at that moment.

Thankfully the old man picked up the unexpected food, saying, “My heavenly Father’s kindness!” Then glancing about him to see what had fallen before he came out, he discovered a large piece of Indian meal bread, cooked and ready for eating. Another bird had dropped that also. There was his dinner, bountifully provided. Evidently the ravens had been on a foraging expedition at the market place; and, overtaken by stronger birds, had let go their prize right over the poor brother’s courtyard. But whose had had guided them to give up their prize right over his small courtyard?

With a thankful heart that was overflowing with joy, the old man started a fire to prepare the welcome meal. While the pot was still boiling, the door opened; and to his delight, who should walk in but his cousin, the priest.

“Look and see,” said the old man, smiling, as he pointed to the pot on the fire.

For some tie the priest would not look, feeling certain that there was nothing inside but boiling water. At length, however, there was the unmistakable smell of cooking meat. Overcome by curiosity, he lifted the lid and looked inside. Great was his astonishment when he saw the excellent dinner being prepared.

“Why,” he cried, “where ever did you get this?”

My heavenly Father sent it,” responded old Li, gladly. “He put it into your heart, you know, to bring me a little millet from time to time; but when you would no longer do so, it was quite easy for Him to find another messenger.” And then Li told his cousin the whole story about the coming of the ravens.

The priest was very much impressed by what he saw and heard, and it eventually led him to also accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. He gave up his comfortable living in the temple and became a teacher. He eventually became a deacon in the church. During the Boxer War that took place in China in 1900, he finally lay down his life for Jesus.

Current Events – Christians Targeted

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“Never, never was there a time when the truth will suffer more from being misrepresented, belittled, demerited through the perverse disputings of men than in these last days.” Letter 136a, 1898.

According to South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, which cites sources in China, singer Hyon Song-wol was among other singers, musicians, and dancers arrested and publicly put to death by firing squad [August 20, 2013]. Mum Kyon-jin, head of the Unhasu Orchestra, was also executed, along with members of both that orchestra and the Wangjaesan Light Music Band. Family members and bandmates watched as authorities killed the dozen performers with machine guns, one source said. A source told South Korea’s largest daily newspaper that some of the victims also faced accusations of possessing Bibles. All were regarded as political dissidents, and their families have been shipped off to prison camps, according to the source. www.spin.com, August 29, 2013.

Kafr Hakim, Egypt (CNN) – For 67 years, the Virgin Mary Church has been a peaceful refuge for Shenouda El Sayeh, much like the Giza province village of Kafr Hakim where it rests and where he has lived all those years. But, as he swept its floors on Thursday, it was painfully obvious things had changed. The night before, a mob—chanting against Coptic Christians had torched and looted the Virgin Mary Church.

Christians all around Egypt are cleaning up in the aftermath of a spate of attacks, which came on the country’s deadliest day since the 2011 revolution. Bishop Angaelos, the Cairo-born head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said he was told by colleagues in Egypt that 52 churches were attacked in a 24-hour span, as well as numerous Christians’ homes and businesses. www.cnn.com, August 16, 2013.

Christians and Muslims used to peacefully coexist in Syria. Unfortunately, the last two years of civil war have erased this peaceful coexistence, leading Christianity to face an “existential threat” in Syria. According to reports, over 300 Christians have been killed during the civil war, even though they did not participate in hostilities. Christian leaders, including priest and monks have been targeted by extremists and hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled the country seeking safety as a refugee outside Syria’s borders. Please pray for these persecuted people. www.persecution.com, August 21, 2013.

Peru has been urged to investigate the mass killing of Christians and other civilians. Over the course of two decades of guerrilla warfare in the 1980s and ’90s between left wing rebel groups and the Peruvian government an estimated 100,000 dead, most of whom were civilians. Massacres also targeted Christians and church leaders opposed to the group. Ten years after a groundbreaking 2003 report was published on the atrocities committed, the Peruvian government has yet to prosecute many of those responsible for the deaths, including the abduction, torture and murder of a Protestant pastor in 1989. www.persecution.com, August 2013.

Current Events – Can Christianity Save China?

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The growth of Christianity in China has been astonishing. At this point, it’s no longer a question of if China will become a Christian nation, but when. The ramifications of this religious shift are massive, and will shake China’s culture and economy to their cores.

Since 1979, Protestant Christianity has been growing in China at a compound annual growth rate of more than 10 percent. There were 3 million Christians in China in 1980, compared to 58 million in 2010, according to Fenggyang Yang, director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. By 2025, that number could swell to 250 to 300 million.

Surprised? That makes sense. The Chinese Communist Party has done all it can to downplay this phenomenon and keep a tight media lid on it. Meanwhile, Western media outlets are so taken with the idea that religion is an irrelevant (and declining) facet of modern life that they don’t pay attention to its growth in most places outside calcified Western Europe.

But this shift is happening, and it is astonishing, especially considering that China is officially an atheist country. From Chairman Mao’s accession to power until his death, China officially banned all religion, the only country in history besides Albania to do so. Then, in 1979, in keeping with its liberalization program, China cautiously allowed a few places of worship to open. But the government’s policy is still that religious expression must obey the party. Religion that is not officially sanctioned is still oppressed.

While it might seem surprising that Christianity could grow in the face of such repression, it is repression that prompted the growth of Christianity in the first place. In the third century, the church father Tertullian famously boasted that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”

To better understand what’s going on in China, let’s look back at the Roman Empire. There, both government and society had values that were at odds with Christianity. The religion was so foreign that the reaction to it was an incoherent mix of savage oppression, benign neglect, and attempts at cooperation.

Still, Christians eventually became the dominant group in the Roman Empire by compounding with a respectable yearly growth rate. But there was more to it than that. Christians were often over-represented among the intelligentsia, which gave them a strong cultural cachet, even as their innovative welfare work made them attractive to the poor. (Bone fragments show Christians were healthier and lived longer than pagans, almost certainly thanks to the church’s welfare system.) And of course, the church’s heroic work was great PR. After a plague, while most people fled to the countryside, Christians rushed in to help the people, like they did in China in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has stepped up its oppression of Christianity. As the Chinese writer and dissident Yu Jie writes in the magazine First Things:

An internal government document obtained by The New York Times in May 2014 shows that the church demolitions are part of a larger campaign to curb Christianity’s influence on the public. According to the nine-page provincial policy statement, the Xi administration wants to put an end to “excessive” religious sites and “overly popular” religious activities, but it names one religion in particular, Christianity, and one symbol, the cross.

If history is any guide, this will only increase the popularity of Christianity. As Yu writes: “One of the phrases I have heard most often among [Chinese Christians] is: ‘The greater the persecution, the greater the revival.’ ” Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, when oppression was at its fiercest, Christianity actually grew in China.

Interestingly, Protestant Christianity is growing much faster in China than Catholic Christianity, almost certainly because the Roman Catholic Church has practiced a doctrine of appeasement to the Chinese government. Given that Protestantism is a do-it-yourself religion, where anyone is empowered to decide doctrine based on their interpretation of the Bible, we could see the emergence of new and seemingly strange versions of Christianity, acculturated to China, and perhaps mixed in with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism.

Today, China is pursuing a nationalistic foreign policy, combined with a domestic policy focused almost exclusively on economic growth and productivity. This comes at the expense of families, social welfare, and the environment. To say that these are not exactly Christian values is an understatement. It is not hard to understand why the Chinese leadership is not a fan of Christianity.

But Christianity could be China’s only chance to survive. Because of its one-child policy, and sex-selective abortion and infanticide, China is a fast-aging country with a massive gender imbalance. If you add to that the tensions wrought by breakneck crony capitalism and consumerism and inequality and pollution, the country is a powder keg. Most Westerners see China as a strong rival, but China’s actual leaders see the country as always teetering on the brink of collapse, which is why their grip on power is so white-knuckled. More deeply, decades of Communism have stripped China of so much of its cultural heritage and left its society and culture aimless.

Christianity’s enormous cultural and spiritual heritage, its emphasis on the rule of law, and its traditional focus on fertility are just what China may need to manage the next few decades without collapsing into civil war, revolution, or something equally terrible.

www.theweek.com/articles/635668/christianity-save-china