"These are undoubtedly significant times, but we should not try to predict when Christ will come again. He said that. 'No one knows the day or the hour when He will come again.'
This is part five in a series of five blog posts in which James Wardroper, Senior Citizen, living in Ontario, a retired teacher, comments on the growth of the Christian church in the last 70 years. He is the author of "The Light-Bearer's Saga", a set of eight books, recounting history from a Christian perspective from 427 AD to the present, with volumes beginning to appear in September 2020.
There is evidence that in ancient times China was a monotheist society and that the name for God was Shang-Ti. There is also evidence of the knowledge the God of the Bible that is to be found in the ancient Chinese script.
China did not embrace Buddhism or other religions until about the sixth
century BC.
What has happened in China to bring back the knowledge of God is another fascinating story of His intervention in human affairs.
In the early days after Christ, the gospel was conveyed to China by Nestorian missionaries and was known as the Church of the East (not the Eastern Orthodox church). They grew to be the largest church on earth by the year 1000, but then various attacks and massacres, such as by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, decimated it, so that there are only a few such churches these days.
The modern missionary movement to re-evangelize China started in the 19th century. It was marred by its close association with the interests of the colonial powers which led to the Boxer revolution. The first missionaries settled and founded churches in the port cities, which seemed to be the sensible thing to do.
It took the insights of Hudson Taylor to realize that China, which consisted of 12 provinces would never be evangelized that way, so as an act of faith and without visible means of support, he founded the China Inland Mission. He and his followers adopted Chinese dress and had to learn the many local languages. Operating by faith, the C.I.M. became the largest mission in China. and Hudson Taylor's name is revered by the Chinese church to this day.
In 1949 all missionaries were expelled from China, and the communists under Chairman Mao Tsedong waged a ruthless war on the national church until in 1967 Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, declared that, apart from the puppet “Three-Self ”church, the church had been wiped out. A year or two later, reports began to circulate that there were two million Christians in China. Then the reports indicated that now there were four million, then eight million, and then thirty-two million. More recently I asked a friend who had recently returned from teaching English in China, “Is it true that there are a hundred million Christians in China.” “Oh no,” he replied, “there at least 130 million and some say to 150 million.” All we can say is that no one really knows, because, the different house churches in the same areas do not even know each other. Local churches seem to have been formed under the leadership of individuals who have had their own personal divine encounters.
China's president for life, Xi Jinping, is now waging total war on all religions, (not just Christians). All Chinese must now defer to the state, and no one can buy or sell or even get on a bus if their political views are not correct. To do this he is using face recognition technology. The latest is, that in view of the Coronavirus, people have been wearing face masks. Regardless of that, the church is now under intense persecution.
Despite the persecution, one of the world's greatest missionary movements is the Chinese “Back to Jerusalem Band”. Something like 100,000 individuals (no firm number) have gone out without visible means of support, to take the gospel back along the Silk Road to Jerusalem where the original Nestorian missionaries came from.
There are
other great spiritual movements around the world, particularly in Africa, South
East Asia and South America and they have their own stories.
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