Tag: China

China Detains Beijing house church leaders in latest crackdown on unregistered churches

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Monday, September 28, 2026

Authorities in China have detained several pastors and church workers from Beijing Jiaquan Church, an independent house church operating in the capital.

The U.S.-based group ChinaAid said it has received firsthand accounts of the arrests, though the number of people held and the charges against them remain unknown.

The group said it was checking whether Jiaquan congregations outside Beijing were hit.

A coordinated operation in several places, if confirmed, would mark another major move against churches outside the state-run religious system, the group said.

ChinaAid’s founder and President Bob Fu said his organization is “urgently concerned for the safety, health and legal rights of every Jiaquan pastor and church co-worker who has been taken away.” He asked authorities to name the detainees, disclose where they’re being held, provide the legal grounds for their apprehension and detention, and allow them to see independent lawyers.

Jiaquan has operated in the capital for over two decades, has 1,000 members, and has built churches and meeting locations in several parts of China, people familiar with the church said. It draws younger Christians in cities with discipleship, contemporary worship music and interactive fellowship.

Its leaders have run Noah Music School in Beijing for over 10 years, training worship leaders and musicians for house churches around China.

The arrests occurred days before Xi’s summit with President Donald Trump, and follow a Sept. 16 Washington forum on religious freedom, where advocates highlighted cases of Christian persecution ahead of Xi’s visit.

Fu called the arrests part of a growing campaign aimed at several of China’s most influential city churches. He said these churches differ in history and ministry and share a resolve to run church life free of government political control.

House churches stay outside the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the government-approved Protestant body, and other Protestant structures under state control. Rules on unregistered religious groups have tightened in recent years, and there have been verified cases of raids, surveillance and prosecutions.

In October 2025, authorities began coordinated raids on Beijing Zion Church, among the biggest house-church networks in China. Members were detained in several provinces, and 18 were formally arrested.

The group reported on Sept. 10 that eight Zion pastors and co-workers were still in custody in Beihai, a city in the southern autonomous region of Guangxi, on charges of “fraud” and “illegal business operations.”

Police have also repeatedly acted against Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital in southwestern China. On June 14, police broke up a church meeting at a hotel in the city of Jiangyou, northeast of Chengdu, and detained more than 30 members.

On Sept. 10, police detained 11 Christians, most of them older than 60, at a small reading group in a teahouse. Authorities banned Early Rain after mass arrests in December 2018, and its founding pastor, Wang Yi, was later sentenced to nine years in prison.

A lawyer for Zion Church pastors has fled China with her spouse and their two children as authorities pressed her law firm to dissolve. Ruth Wang is a partner at the firm, VDoor, and since October 2025 has been on the legal team for Zion founder Pastor Ezra Jin and other detained members.

Taiwan has given the family temporary humanitarian housing, according to the news account Visegrad 24. The Malaysia Sun reported that Wang arrived on the island earlier this month.

Taiwanese officials reportedly told Wang the island cannot grant asylum to mainland Chinese under its rules, citing tensions between Beijing and the island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Wang is considering a move to the U.S. or Canada and has said the family’s future is uncertain.

In a separate case, authorities released Lian Xuliang, pastor of the unregistered Xi’an Church of Abundance in Shaanxi province, over four years after they opened a national security case against him and two others. He went home earlier this month, according to the rights group Weiquanwang.

The rights group Church in Chains said the three spent six months held apart in small rooms of a former hotel while their families heard nothing. It said they were starved, beaten, drugged and denied bathroom use for long stretches.

Why Communist and Leftist Governments Hate Christianity.

Why Communist and Leftist Governments hate Christianity.

Author: Robin Schumacher

Source: Christian Post

If you’re someone who thinks Christians aren’t persecuted much in today’s world, I have a challenge for you. Subscribe to Voice of the Martyrs magazine, read three issues, and then let me know if you’ve changed your opinion.

The current VOM magazine (March 2020) provides an excellent reality check for those who believe Communism is on the way out and gives a drill down into recent activities in Communist China. After the cultural revolution (1966-76) that resulted in China being placed firmly in the hands of Communist control, the campaign to stomp out Christianity has now risen to a point where churches are routinely bulldozed, Christians are consistently harassed, interrogated, and imprisoned, and pastors get ‘disappeared’.

Why is it that Communist and Leftist governments persecute and hate Christianity so much? To answer that question, we need to peel back the theological, philosophical, and historical covers to get a better understanding of what motivates these anti-God worldviews, where their humanistic pursuits take them, and their tragic end results.

The theological foundation

Jesus provides a succinct explanation for why these worldviews and forms of governments hate Christianity when He says, “The world … hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil” (John 7:7). He speaks to the same thing earlier in the book of John: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God” (John 3:19-21).

When you tell an adherent of one of these belief systems and their oppressive government that their actions or ideas are wrong, it produces an egocentric rage that quickly manifests in authoritarian actions that first move to silence such ‘hate speech’ and then go further to squash the persons themselves. The Bible says we shouldn’t be surprised at this kind of aggression because “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Rom. 8:7).

The natural outworking of this, from a governance standpoint, is the rejection and outlawing of liberties and freedoms (especially religious) of the general public. In rejecting God, tyrannical governments and their underlying worldviews suppress the fact that God is a free being, and since we are made in His likeness, we are also free beings who have innate freedoms that naturally flow to us from our Creator.

And for authoritarian governments, that just can’t be allowed.

The philosophical permission slips

Churchill once said that, “the empires of the future will be empires of the mind”.[1] By this he meant worldviews, ideologies, and belief systems power human actions and have consequences. Humanity always looks to some foundation of knowledge or learning to justify what it does, and when we look at the philosophies behind both Communism and Leftism, we find teachings that do everything in their power to reject Christian thinking.

As most know, the philosophy of Karl Marx gave birth to and supports the Communist philosophy. Marx thought religion was a mechanism of control used by society’s elite to manipulate the masses. But he went further to say, “Religion is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the man who has either not yet found himself, or else (having found himself) has lost himself once more. This state, this society, produce religion, a perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted world. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people” (Marx’s original emphasis).[2]

While most understand Marxism, what’s not so well known is the philosophy of Leftist thinking. It was given birth to in 18th century France, with the origination of its mindset being cloaked beneath the cover of the Enlightenment and sheltered under seemingly reputable names like Rene Descartes, Sir Issac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon, and John Locke. Much like Marxism and Communism, it purported to use its philosophy to combat poverty and unfairness.

In truth, the actual set of principles powering Leftist thinking came from Voltaire, a French writer, historian, and philosopher who introduced the common argument against religion of ‘reason over superstition’. He and his lover (Émilie du Châtelet) concluded their formal examination of the Bible by saying it was nonsense. Voltaire and Émilie called Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount “trite, ridiculous, absurd” and His resurrection “comedy”.

Voltaire’s snide and caustic attitude are captured by British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay whose words not only portray the man but also define what is representative of the entire Leftist movement: “He could not build – he could only pull down; he was the very Vitruvius of ruin.”[3]

Other philosophers that aided Voltaire included Denis Diderot who provided a sneak peek into the Left’s use of violence with a quote that is commonly attributed to him: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”[4] Beyond hostility, another attribute characterizing the origins of the Left was muddled thinking, which is represented well by Jean Jacques Rousseau who complained that people’s woes are the result of society, evidently overlooking the fact that societies are comprised of people.

The gods, priests, and prophets of Communism and the Left

It’s a historically verifiable fact that when you hold God’s funeral, someone will take His place. And that replacement is always one of us.

The deification of man that you see today in Communist governments like China and North Korea are nothing new. Look back to ancient Egypt, and you will find the pharaoh being thought divine and elevated above his subjects, who were expected to deliver nothing short of absolute obedience.

Then came other in-place-of-God rulers such as Alexander the Great, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (who assumed the name Theos Epiphanes or “God Manifest”) and various Roman Caesars like Domitian who demanded to be addressed as “Dominus et Deus” (Lord and God).

The interesting thing about emperor worship is noted by historian William Barclay who observed, “The extraordinary fact is that emperor worship was not imposed on the Roman Empire from above; it grew from below.” Romans populations, pleased with their fragile peace and economy, took things too far in the worship of their emperors not realizing the monster they were creating. The exact same thing happened in Nazi Germany.

As the gods of the ancient world had their own priests and prophets, the same is true today. Deified political despots have their enabling politburo members, senators, etc., that the people look to in hope that interventions will be made on their behalf to the current ruler. And the propaganda machines and mouthpieces of the media take the place of prophets with their aim being to serve and glorify their chosen monarch, bury any negative impressions, and proclaim new revelations and insight from on high.[5]

How does it start?

The inauguration of the Communist and Leftist gods, priests and prophets that make up oppressive governments is usually done in a manner that resembles the events that took place during the French revolution of 1789. The American Revolution of 1776, we should remember, was motivated by a faith-based view of humanity and desired freedom from governmental oppression. Its aim was to recognize freedom based on innate human worth, absolute truth, and a morality underpinned by Judeo-Christian values that contained checks and balances to prevent any abuse of power.

By contrast, the French Revolution of 1789 chased a different type of freedom – one that was characterized by the pursuit of absolute power and secularism that included a mob-driven and forceful de-Christianization campaign. Discarding God, it was typified by an untrustworthy moral fluidity that expunged the idea of religious moral boundaries and grounded its ethics in pragmatism and ever-changing right and wrong.

The horrifying end results

The outworking of the French Revolution (and others like them) reflect the worst of modern-day slasher films and bear witness to an important truth for those who participate in them: Communist and Leftist movements are cannibalistic in nature; i.e. they eat their own. Their actions personify what novelist Walter Jon Williams once said: “I’m not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels. I’m afraid of what real human beings do to other real human beings.”[6]

The two primary weapons employed by these movements are the lie and violence. History has shown that the tongue of Communist and Leftist governments, and their enablers, is forked and patterned after their spiritual father: “Whenever he [the devil] speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Witness the current COVID-19 lies and coverup from Communist China as just one of countless examples.

In addition to falsehood, violence is another hallmark of Communism and the Left. Again, they mirror their spiritual father who is “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

While these oppressive worldviews have criminal records that wrap around the earth hundreds of times, a tired tactic they employ to take the spotlight off their bloody past is to accuse religion as being the real culprit behind the moral brutality that’s occurred down through history. The only problem with that claim is that it is 100% false.

It’s true that atrocities have been committed in the name of religion (e.g. ISIS, the Crusades, the Thirty Years’ War, etc.), but they barely register on history’s violence Geiger counter compared to the carnage and body count produced by secular governments. Historians Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars shows that, of the 1,763 wars waged over the course of human history, only 123 of them have been religious in nature. [7] That amounts to an amazingly low 6.98% of all wars being the result of religion.

Further, when wars carried out in the name of Islam are subtracted, the percentage falls to 3.23%, meaning that all religions combined – minus Islam – have been responsible for less than 4% of all humanity’s wars and violent conflicts.[8]

The sobering fact that secular despotic governments account for over 93% of all violence and war in human history is summed up by political science professor R. J. Rummel this way in his book, Death by Government:  “Almost 170 million men, women and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed or killed in any other of a myriad of ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. The dead could conceivably be nearly 360 million people. It is though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power, not germs.”[9]

Afraid but not afraid

So why do Communist and Leftist governments and their adherents hate Christianity? “The world . . . hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil” (John 7:7). “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18-20).

Ironically, though, for all its hatred of Christian teaching, Marxist and Leftist philosophy end up abducting God’s first commandment of “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex. 20:3) and modifying it to be, “You shall not have God before me.”

This anti-God mandate along with today’s prevailing post-truth and anti-Christian thinking of Marxists and Leftists is something that has proven itself to be deadly. Their human condition is summarized well by political researchers Mark L Melcher and Stephen Soukup who speak to the birth of the Left in France: “Their atheism has left them with stunted moral values. Their utopianism has rendered them incapable of assessing the secondary and tertiary consequences of their actions. Their lifestyles provide us with the first glimpse into the sickness inherent in the nihilism that would come to be the progeny of their efforts. Finally, the petulance and outsized egos presage the terrible violence that awaits France.”[10]

However, even in the face of such promised violence and persecution, Christians such as those in China’s Early Rain Covenant Church continue their faithfulness to Jesus. They are afraid but yet not afraid, knowing that God remains sovereign over everything. Theirs is a realism that acknowledges the spiritual evil behind their Communist government’s actions but yet looks upward to pursue a purpose spoken to by their pastor, Wang Yi, before he was arrested:

“The goal of disobedience is not to change the world, but to testify of another world.”[11]

[1] https://www.quora.com/Winston-Churchill-once-said-that-the-empires-of-the-future-will-be-empires-of-the-mind-What-does-this-mean

[2] “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction,” in On Religion, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, tr. Reinhold Niebuhr (Chico, CA: Scholar’s Press, 1964), pp. 41-2.

[3] Thomas Babington Macaulay, Life of Frederick the Great (American Book Exchange, 1879), 143-4. Vitruvius was a Roman author, architect, civil engineer, and military engineer during the 1st century BC.

[4] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/53247-men-will-never-be-free-until-the-last-king-is

[5] One thing different in the current American media is the shift from news reporting to full biased, opinion-driven communication where, in a very real way, the media are actually trying to govern through their bullying tactics.

[6] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walter_jon_williams_250112

[7] http://goo.gl/i84f0

[8] For a PowerPoint presentation on this material, see: http://www.slideshare.net/schumacr/does-religion-cause-war.

[9] http://goo.gl/pDbMU

[10] Mark L Melcher and Stephen Soukup, Know Thine Enemy (Murrells Inlet, SC: 2018), Kindle Edition.

[11] Voice of the Martyrs magazine, March 2020, 7.

Robin Schumacher is a software executive and Christian apologist who has written many apologetic articles, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at various apologetic events. He holds a Master’s in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament.

 

Xi Jinping’s CCP is rewriting the Bible

by Samuel Ben-Ur, Op-ed contributor – May 13, 2026

Christian Post

The Chinese Communist Party is rewriting the Bible. 

As part of Xi Jinping’s “Sinicization of Christianity” campaign, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plans to ensure Christianity in China is instilled with “core socialist values.” Pursuant to that effort, the CCP is currently working on its own translation of what it calls the “Chinese Christian Bible.” While it has yet to complete the project, the CCP has already given Christians a glimpse of what the world’s first communist Bible might look like. 

In China, the Ten Commandments became nine, then six, then zero. 

In 2018, mere months after Xi announced his “Five-Year Plan to Sinicize Christianity,” authorities forced a state-approved church in Henan Province to delete the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” The removal of arguably the single most important line of text not just for Christianity, but for all three Abrahamic faiths, is a strike against the very heart of religion. 

Later that year, the government changed the curriculum of a Sunday school in Hong Kong, removing not just the first four Commandments, but all references to “the Lord.” The entire book of Genesis was also removed. In 2019, the CCP completed this progression and replaced the Ten Commandments wholesale with Xi Jinping quotes. Within the span of a year, “You shall have no god before me” became “Use Chinese Culture to permeate faith” and “follow the party.”

The CCP has also targeted John 8:3-11, among the most famous passages in the New Testament. In the original story, when the Pharisees bring Jesus a woman accused of adultery, he replies, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” He then forgives the woman.

A textbook published by China’s University of Electronic Science and Technology Press, a government-run school, changes the ending. After the Pharisees leave, Christ tells the woman “I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.” Jesus then personally stones her to death.

These stories reveal the true face of “Sinicization.” Xi seeks to transform the Gospel into banal communist diktats, where mercy is subsumed by oppressive lawfare and the Party is the only higher power.

The CCP is, of course, avowedly atheist, and essentially deifies former Chairman Mao Zedong, who banned all religion during his reign, from the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 to his death in 1976. 

The CCP views Christians particularly with suspicion, due to perceived Western ties and the role of Christianity in the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s, in which more than 20 million died.

Xi might similarly desire to ban Christianity, but Xi is not Mao and Xi’s China is not Mao’s China. 

When Mao came to power, there were approximately four million Christians living in China. Since Mao’s death and China’s relative relaxation of religious restrictions, the Christian population has exploded. Xi presides over as many as 160 million Christians, though the exact number is opaque, as most worship in underground churches to avoid CCP oversight. If Christianity continues to grow at a steady rate, China may be the world’s largest Christian country by 2030.

Despite CCP propaganda glorifying Mao, the Party is not eager to repeat the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, which spanned from 1966 to 1976. That period brought societal turmoil and more than a million deaths. Coupled with the challenge of forcing disbelief on more than 100 million Christians, today’s CCP is likely unable and unwilling to enforce a zero-tolerance religious policy. Instead of suppressing Christianity, it has sought to adapt it to Chinese Communist ideology — developing Christianity into another propaganda mill for the CCP. Grasping Xi’s endgame is crucial to understanding the unique persecution Chinese Christians face. 

Where other forms of Christian persecution are marked by bloodshed, such as in Nigeria, where Islamist terror groups routinely massacre Christians, China instead seeks to replace God with the Party. This is why, of all Christian teachings, the CCP first sought to remove the first of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” 

Incidents such as these are merely the surface of what Xi’s “Sinicization” program entails. 

China has instituted a bevy of religious restrictions since 2020, including loyalty tests for clergy, requiring the inclusion of Xi Jinping’s thought in seminary curricula, and a total ban on minors participating in religious activity. 

Surveillance technology now permeates churches across China, monitoring sermons and building a database of Chinese Christians. Resistance to the implementation of surveillance devices can lead to beatings or disappearances for Christians who wish to maintain a degree of independence from the CCP. Authorities have ripped down thousands of crosses and replaced them with portraits of Xi. Churches that refuse to join China’s state-sponsored religious bodies have been targeted with increasing frequency in large-scale raids in which police lock up hundreds of worshipers. 

As the Trump administration increasingly seeks to combat the oppression of Christians worldwide, Washington should mandate that the State Department’s International Religious Freedom process explicitly catalog altered biblical texts, approving committees, state-run publishers, and responsible officials. Those findings should be used to drive rolling Global Magnitsky sanctions and visa bans against those involved in clergy loyalty tests, church raids, and scripture rewriting. 

The U.S. is the only country in the world that can bring to bear sufficient pressure on China to slow or even stop its corruption of the Christian faith. Standing up to Beijing is essential to any policy of defending persecuted Christians.

Originally published at Providence. 

Samuel Ben-Ur is a research analyst focusing on Christian persecution at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Blessed Old Man – A True Tale of God’s Provision

In one village in southeastern Fujian near the Guangdong border, Chinese believers told a remarkable story of God’s provision and power. An elderly brother had believed in the Lord for many years when the Communists took control of the area in 1949. The Blessed Old Man, as other believers affectionately dubbed him, came from an impoverished family and had never learned to read or write properly. Despite these simple impediments, after he received the Lord Jesus he proved to be a powerful evangelist, leading hundreds of people to faith in Christ throughout the district.

Hatching a plan to give Christianity a black eye and to show the supremacy of Marxism, the government decided to make an example of the old preacher by giving him the best house in the village and a generous supply of food. They also appointed him chairman of the village’s Communist committee, thinking that when he abandoned his religion they would display him as a shining example of the goodness of Communism and the futility of Christianity.

The Blessed Old Man, however, belonged to Jesus Christ. Instead of being seduced by the Communists,

…he used the large house he had been provided to hold house church meetings and distributed the food he was given to those believers in need. After some time, the government saw that their plan was badly backfiring, so they issued an ultimatum  to the “chairman”. He had to choose between his faith and the new lifestyle and status he had been afforded by the authorities. Although he knew that he would return to a life of extreme poverty and hardship, the old brother did not hesitate for a moment.  “ I choose Jesus!” he boldly declared.

The enraged officials threw him out of the house. He had nowhere to go, but another believer provided him with a small room on the side of a shack. China at the time was suffering terribly from Mao’s disastrous economic experiments, and millions of people were starving to death. Although the old man now had somewhere to stay, there was no food available to eat. All the meager crops were taken by the government, and the other Christians were too poor to help him.

For some days the old man wasted away in his tiny room, with no food passing his lips. He grew weak and ill and knew that his life would soon be snuffed out. Then one morning he awoke to find a hole in the bottom of the wall. He didn’t know what had caused it and repaired the damage. A few hours later he found another hole and started to wonder if these strange occurrences were from the Lord. While he was still pondering it, a large rat came through the hole with some food in its mouth. After entering the room, the rat dropped the food on the floor and then left. A short time later it returned and did the same again. A small collection of nuts and vegetables lay on the dirt floor!

Each morning the rat paid a visit to the elderly brother. In response to his commitment, God had saved the old man from starvation by instructing a rat to feed him! The miraculous provisions continued for several months. On some days the rat brought more food than usual. Those were the days when the old man was expecting a visitor!

Excerpt from Fujian – The Blessed Province – The China Chronicles, Paul Hattaway, Asia Harvest (Langham Global Library), p. 245-246

God says “I will not, I will not cease to uphold or sustain thee; I will not, I will not, I will not forsake someone in a state of defeat or helplessness in the midst of hostile circumstances.” (Expanded Greek Translation of Hebrew 13:5 by Dr. Kenneth Wuest.)

Be encouraged Saints… regardless of your circumstances. God sees you, is in you, and has not forsaken you.

Love,

Carl

Persecuted Christians are starving for Bibles

Source: Christian Post (See note at end of article)

What would you do if you had no access to Scripture? Most Americans have multiple Bibles at home, dozens of translations at our fingertips, and devotional apps on every device. Yet for believers living in hostile areas and restricted nations, a single torn page of the New Testament is a treasure worth suffering for.

For many Christians around the world, owning a Bible is illegal. It can cost a believer their freedom or even their life. Yet, in the darkest prison cells and most hostile corners of the world, the Word of God remains the most desired possession. 

During 25+ years serving at The Voice of the Martyrs, I’ve had the honor to meet with persecuted Christians living and serving in the most dangerous and difficult places to follow Christ. Often, they share their inspiring testimonies.

Recently I came across five powerful stories about what having access to Scripture meant to imprisoned Christians.

1. Brother Joe

Brother Joe, a former prisoner in North Africa, received a smuggled portion of the Bible — just Psalms and part of the Gospel of John. For him, those verses were life itself. 

“I would cry over the words,” he said. “Not because I was sad, but because it was like Jesus Himself was sitting in my cell with me.” 

Even as Brother Joe endured torture, he began copying verses by hand to share with other prisoners. The guards tried to stop him, but the Word kept spreading. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “The word of our God shall stand forever.”

2. Helen Berhane

Helen Berhane, an Eritrean gospel singer who was imprisoned in a metal shipping container for over two years, had no Bible at all — but she had memorized verses before her arrest. 

“The Word became my song, my food, my comfort,” she shared. “I had no book, but I had Him.”

Even today, years later, those memorized verses continue to sustain her.

3. Aaron

Aaron, a front-line worker, told me about a woman jailed for leading Bible studies in China, where the underground church is heavily persecuted. Fellow inmates, recalling verses they had memorized, pieced together entire chapters from memory. When a contraband Bible finally arrived, they tore it apart — not to destroy it, but to share it. 

“In that cell,” Aaron said, “the Bible wasn’t just a book — it was their breath.”

4.  Ali

Perhaps the most startling transformation came in the life of Ali, a former jihadist who encountered the Gospel of Luke in prison. The Bible turned his world upside down.

“I had studied violence all my life,” he said. “Then I met Jesus in a jail cell in the pages of that book. That Bible broke me.” 

Ali found, for the first time, a God who loves His enemies and sent His Son to die for them.

The Bible is more than print on paper — it’s living and active. The Word of God has the power to sustain people’s faith under the most intense persecution. For the millions of Christians in hostile nations, a Bible is not just a comfort. It is what carries them through their torture and suffering.

5. Iranian prisoner

Hormoz Shariat, the founder of Iran Alive Ministries known as “the Billy Graham of Iran,” shared how one Iranian prisoner risked his life to possess a single page of Scripture. That page became a spark. He memorized it and passed it to another inmate, who did the same. 

“They shared one torn page like it was gold,” Shariat said. “It was enough to bring light into total darkness.”

In Iran, where printing or importing Farsi Bibles is illegal, believers face prison or death for sharing God’s Word. And yet, they do it anyway. The hunger for the Bible is so deep that even a fragment — one Psalm, one parable — is worth everything.

Every April, VOM focuses on getting Bibles to persecuted Christians. This year, our ministry has identified 458,000 Christians, by name, who are waiting for a Bible in hostile areas and restricted nations.

Through front-line workers, the ministry is positioned to deliver these Bibles directly into the hands of those who need them most. Imagine being the reason a believer in prison experiences the presence of Christ in their darkest hour!

There are many lessons to learn from others who have suffered for their faith. The stories here are just a small example of the power of God’s Word to bring hope and strength to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Maybe our first lesson is not to take for granted what others are risking everything to hold.

Todd Nettleton is Vice President for Message at The Voice of the Martyrs and host of The Voice of the Martyrs Radio. He is the author of When Faith Is Forbidden: 40 Days on the Frontlines with Persecuted Christians.

READER NOTE: Voice of The Martyrs charges $10 per Bible per their donation page. Asia Harvest charges $3 to print and deliver a Bible per their donation page. Asia Harvest and the underground church in China estimate that for every Bible given to a believer in China, at least one other individual comes to Christ. Not a bad $3 investment in the Kingdom of God!

Asia Harvest’s ministry is limited to Asia. They print Bibles in 163 different Asian languages. Our family has supported this effort for about three years.

Voice of the Martyrs ministry is worldwide evidently.

May you do your part to spread His Word in this dark world.

Blessings to all,

Carl

New Law Requires Chinese Christians Fully Submit to Communist Party

The Chinese government has tightened its reign on its citizens by announcing that all religious personnel of any faith must submit to and evangelize about the Chinese Communist Party.
“In practice, your religion no longer matters, if you are Buddhist, or Taoist, or Muslim, or Christian: the only religion allowed is faith in the Chinese Communist Party,” said a Chinese Catholic priest, according to CBN.
Starting on Feb 1, all religious groups must adhere to the new rules, which consist of six chapters and 41 articles. They require government approval for any type of gathering and total submission to the Communist Party.
One law, Article 17, states: “Religious organizations must spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as national laws, regulations, rules to religious personnel and religious citizens, educating religious personnel and religious citizens to support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, supporting the socialist system, adhering to and following the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics…”
Manuscripts from each religion are also not immune to censorship. The Daily Mail reports that the Communist Party intends to complete a “comprehensive evaluation of the existing religious classics aiming at contents which do not conform to the progress of the times.” As Christian Headlines previously reported, this means that books such as the Bible or the Quran will be rewritten to “reflect socialist values” and any paragraphs that the government deems “wrong” will be changed.
“In many ways, the Chinese government’s control, including censorship of the Bible and the Quran, has twisted the doctrines of these religious texts and thus the religions,” said Patrick Poon, a China Researcher at Amnesty International. “There is simply no genuine religious freedom.”
The new laws come after finishing off 2019 with the “worst religious persecution in the country’s history,” according to the Federalist. A pastor of house church Early Rain Covenant Church, Wang Yi, caught international attention last year when he was arrested and later sentenced to nine years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” and “illegal business activities.” His family wasn’t even sure if he was alive until they heard about his sentencing.
(Mikaela Mathews, “New Law Requires Chinese Christians Fully Submit to Communist Party,” ChristianHeadlinesOnline Tuesday, January 7, 2020)

No Longer Anxious

“I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize that He is able to carry out His will for me. It does not matter where He places me, or how. That is for Him to consider, not me, for in the easiest positions He will give me grace, and in the most difficult ones His grace is sufficient.”

― Hudson Taylor (21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905) was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM, now OMF International).

From: The Berean Call

China Churches Protest Government Crackdown

chinese-church-destroyed

The Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi Province was destroyed in January 2018, by Chinese paramilitary police officers. (Photo: China Aid)
“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,” says Bob Fu, a former house church pastor in China. Fu came to the U.S. to found China Aid to warn of the growing persecution in China.
The picture that is shaping up is a highly controlled society with a personality cult. The control follows the pattern of other Marxist/Socialist/Communist countries, present and past.
President Xi Jinping is the personality behind the cult. In the last 10 years, he has systemically restructured the government to put himself in permanent charge.
Control is escalating by using modern technology. Cameras are installed in churches to record who attends. It is now a crime not to watch state television.
As in Russia, the excuse for the crackdown is to “eliminate extremism.” Detention camps have recently been constructed holding up to a million Uyghur Muslims in the western province of Xinjiang. Since the Christians, especially members of the unregistered “house” churches, are also considered “extremists” by the communist government, they are included in the government “elimination” efforts.
Churches are now being forced to hang pictures of Xi beside crucifixes and sing communist anthems during service. In some places, children under 18 are forbidden to attend church and Bible camps are being closed. Bibles and other “illegal promotional materials” are being confiscated and burned.
Authorities in some provinces are taking a harder line than others but the government has passed regulations directing the nation-wide shift toward less freedom. The emphasis is on forcing everyone to submit to the Communist Party and “Chinese” culture. And all rivals must be eliminated, including Christians. “Party members who have religious belief should have [be given] strengthened thought education,” according to new government regulations released in February.
Some brave pastors have tried to resist. The persecution has become worse since new government regulations were published. At least 250 Chinese pastors have signed a public statement against the regulations. It closed with: “For the sake of the gospel, we are prepared to bear all losses, —even the loss of our freedom and our lives.”
This stand could be costly. Witness the invasion of one church in Henan province: 50 officials stormed the service, beat the worshippers and confiscated most of the church property. One grabbed the microphone from the pastor, read a document declaring the church “illegitimate” and demanded the pastor sign it. He refused and was taken away.
Some of the women attempted to video the attack and were beaten and kicked and their cell phones confiscated before they were taken into custody. Anyone who attempted to protect them was also beaten.
“For the first time, people throughout China are saying ‘NO!’ to what the Communist party wants—control. Control over what they can do, what they can believe, where they can go, what they can say. It’s yet another sign something is beginning to take shape here in China, the call for democracy! The call for freedom!” says Christopher Gregory of China Missions.
Decades ago the people of China chose Communism’s hollow dream instead of the Bible. Now, millions there have discovered the truth and are willing to die for it —and some may have to.
The same war is being fought in almost every other country in the world. Satan’s time is short and he is outraged. America is an oasis in this battlefield, but for how long? Handing out a gospel tract can get you killed in some parts of the world.
Many have shed their blood to buy and protect our freedom. Are we grateful enough to exercise that freedom and just hand someone a tract?

From — Chick Publishers

Red China Rewriting Bible, Churches Must Sing Communist Anthems

(Please pray for our brothers and sisters in communist China. Carl)

China Aid Founder Rev. Bob Fu – who led a house church in China before immigrating to the United States in 1997 to form his watchdog organization of China’s persecuted Church – warned U.S. Congress of the Chinese government’s aggressive move during a House hearing Thursday, divulging details about the plan administered by leading state-sanctioned Chinese denominations geared to “Sincize” Christianity nationwide.

“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 explained….

He said the state-sanctioned Protestant bodies are “retranslating” the Old Testament in their plan to Sinicize Christianity, while crafting new commentary for the New Testament to give socialist ideals and Chinese culture a more divine feel.

“The plan made it clear that ‘Sinicization of Christianity’ means to change ‘Christianity in China’ into ‘Chinese Christianity,'” Fu made clear. “[The plan] emphasized that ‘the heart and soul of Christianity’s Sinicization is to Sincize the Christian theology,’ – and even proposing to ‘re-translate the Bible or re-write biblical commentaries.'”

Giving an example of the latest outline of the plan, Fu explained that the summary consists of the Old Testament mixed with some Buddhist scripture and Confucian teachings – along with the newly devised New Testament commentary.

“Authorities in China have tightened their grip on the country’s churches by ordering that children are to be banned from joining religious groups,” the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail report. “The ban also prohibits children from attending religious sermons and other activities in several provinces across the country.”

An all-out ban on youth attending services at more than 100 churches was reported this month in just one province alone.

“Earlier this month, over one hundred churches in Wenzhou – China’s Zhejiang province – reportedly received a notice from government officials informing them that young people will be banned from entering churches, according to a report,” the Daily Mail’s Sophie Williams recounted. “Minors are also reportedly banned from participating in religious activities. Members of the church were told not to participate in religious activities, and churches were not allowed to organize a youth summer camp.”

(Haverluck, “China rewriting Bible, churches must sing communist anthems,” OneNewsNow Online, 9/29/18).

Berean Call