Taiwaneers

I’ve wondered in recent years what people meant when they said that Christians were being persecuted in China. After all we in the Christian circle are just as susceptible as everyone else to sensationalizing when its advantageous and forgetting when its not.

Recently I talked to a guy, an American around my age, who witnessed and heard stories of persecution from the Chinese government towards followers of Christ. I cannot say with absolute certainty but his story led me to believe the persecution was caused solely because they were active followers and disciples of Jesus Christ the Son of God The Father.

The guy’s story went like this:

“I was in seminary in the United States and was asked if I’d be interested in teaching a few classes in mainland China to the Christians there on a short-term trip over my summer break. After getting the okay that I could bring a friend, a fellow seminarian, I agreed.

After submitting to the organizers the list of classes I was interested in teaching they changed there plans for me. They had originally wanted me to go to China’s cities. Knowing that I wanted to teach more academic, theological classes they informed me that they wanted me to go into rural China and teach the Chinese evangelists.

I was shortly to learn that 80% of these evangelists are women. They live simple lives traveling all across China. They arrive at a believers house, eat and sleep there and evangelize the people that the host family deems safe enough to bring over and hear the Gospel message. When its time to go they’ll be given enough money to get them to the next stop. One interesting part of these evangelist’s lives is that they use there shoes as a pillow. If the police come in the night they have to be ready to run.

Arriving in China my friend and I met up with the woman who would travel with us and act as our translator. We set out on a tour of China I couldn’t repeat on my own in a million years. Traveling by car, boat, train, pick-up truck, over mountains & streams, through cities and into villages where I wondered if I was the first foreigner to have seen the place.

When my friend and I would arrive at a believers house we’d rest. Over the course of the next twelve hours or so up to fifty Chinese evangelists would arrive as well. Once we were all there these evangelists would sit listening and taking notes for seven hours a day as my friend and I answered their questions and taught them from the Bible for a week. Before classes began in the morning they would pray for three hours and then after classes read their Bibles and pray for another hour before going to bed. I’m really not sure who learned more from whom. When the week was up the evangelists would set out and we would be off to do it again somewhere else. Mind you we were in the countryside. This wasn’t in Shanghai or Beijing and these evangelists would travel everywhere. In fact, one day while traveling to another house on a riverboat I recognized one of the evangelists we had taught a few weeks before.

My friend and I were teaching one day and into the house busted a group of around thirty policemen. My translator tried to help us escape but the three of us, my friend, our translator, and I, were taken to the police station. The Chinese evangelists were taken to jail.

For the next seven hours the police had us sit in the station, and periodically interrogated us. ‘Who organized this? What are your names? Why are you here? You’ve broken the law because you have to register when you come to town.’ We explained to them that we had only been in town for half-a-day (which was true) and had 48 hours to register (also true). We said we would not be giving them our names because they had nothing to charge us with. We said we wanted our passports to show them we were Americans (during the bust-in we showed our passports to the police chief but then they were taken along with our bags by the police who were holding them at the station) but they wouldn’t give them to us communicating quite clearly that they didn’t want to “know” we were Americans. We told them we wanted their names because we would be filing complaints in Beijing because of their misconduct and for unlawfully holding us. Finally their fear got the better of them and let the three of us go with our stuff. We had ended up giving them our names but I don’t think we ever got theirs.

While we were allowed to go the Chinese evangelists remained in jail for the next several weeks. They were beaten, and tortured by various means, including having their faces and arms burnt with cigarettes, as well as needles stuck in their wrists. One of them, an adorable friend of mine, was beaten with specially-designed bamboo rods. The woman who was the owner of the home in which we were arrested was repeatedly beaten, including having her head beat against the wall by a prison chair. Her home was also ransacked and her money and books confiscated.

Back in Beijing I went to the US embassy. I told them I wanted to report abuse and did so. Also, I learned that some of the Chinese evangelists who had been upstairs when the police busted in had escaped through the windows and had already gotten word back to the United States about the incident. Before I even left China WORLD magazine had written the story up. I wasn’t happy that they hadn’t waited for me to depart first. The Voice of the Martyrs magazine ran the story as well but thankfully it was after I was back in the United States.

My translator and many of the evangelists we had taught were part of a denomination particularly targeted by the Chinese government. I had learned this sometime before my trip to China at a Voice of the Martyrs conference in Texas. One of the speakers, a woman from this same denomination shared her own story with me over lunch. She told me how screws had been screwed into her thumbs by interrogators. While this woman was being tortured she audibly prayed for her torturer who had to stop and leave the room. Good really does overcome evil.

As I was preparing to leave China my translator confided in me. She asked me not to tell Christians in the United States of the persecution we had experienced together in China. I asked her why? ‘Because this is our burden, this is a Chinese burden and if you tell them they might not come.’ I told her that the people who wouldn’t come after hearing of this Chinese burden wouldn’t be the sort of people that should go in the first place.”

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This first-hand account told to me over coffee makes me think that the persecution of the family of God in the People’s Republic of China is real and furthermore current. I feel a desire to be an advocate for my Chinese brothers, to tell my government they shouldn’t turn a blind eye towards China’s evilness any longer. I feel a desire to support these Chinese evangelists in prayer, finances, and education.

Dear Lord help me turn these desires into actions.

If are interested in reading the prayer letter this guy wrote after returning from China to the supporters of his trip let me know. I’ve tried to write up the account as he told it to me but there is nothing better than the horse’s mouth.