China: Expands Crackdown Against Christians
While Communist China moves aggressively to spread its influence throughout the Pacific region and around the world, the government is expanding a crackdown against people of faith at home.
In its effort to assure that all its citizens comply with the edicts and beliefs of the state, the Chinese Communist Party is targeting Christians for persecution and ethnic Muslims for genocide.
On February 1, 2021, China's Public Security Bureau (PSB) police stormed onto the property of a government-sanctioned church in China's Wenzhou City. Their mission? Toppling a cross from the roof of a church building for a second time. They had removed the cross seven years earlier, but church members replaced it.
Bob Fu is the Founder and Director of China Aid, a Midland, Texas-based group that helps China's persecuted Christians. "In that city alone we have documented over 1,600 churches where their crosses were being burnt, destroyed, and destructed. And many pastors you know were even detained, imprisoned," he said. China's Christians say it is the worst persecution against them since Chairman Mao Zedong. "To use ambassador Sam Brownback's word, 'it's a war against the faith,'" Fu explained. "I think it's a war against the independent faith."
And it's no longer limited to certain regions of China. VOM Radio Host Todd Nettleton says this massive wave of Christian persecution is widespread and it's coming from the national government.
"What we say in 2021 is that everywhere in China there is intense persecution of Christians. There are intense efforts to control the church, to bring the church under Communist Party control," he explained.
The crackdown is affecting every Christian in China said Nettleton - Protestants, Catholics, government registered churches, and unregistered house churches. And Fu said the CCP has a new excuse for targeting Christians. "Now under this pretext of Covid-19 coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its persecution by banning all the church activities – even those worship services, prayer meetings in believer's own homes with their own family members."
Meanwhile, despite the suffering, Bob Fu is expressing optimism about the country's spiritual future. He says when the CCP seized government control in 1947, only about one million people in China claimed to be Christian. But today – after 70-years of unrelenting persecution – their numbers have grown to as many as 130-million.
Fu sees a glimmer of hope in the suffering. "So, I think at the end of the day maybe we should call President Xi Jin Ping as God's you know, faithful servant to revive His church."
Coverage by Gary Lane / CBN
MORE: https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2021/february/unrelenting-china-expands-crackdown-against-christians-muslims
Pray for our dear brothers and sisters in the persecuted Church in China, for divine strength and resolve as they continue to minister and pastor their congregations.
Pray for those in authority in China (1 Tim 2:2) that they will find the true and living God.
Pray for those who are suffering for their faith, that you will pour out your grace into their lives and their hearts.
Pray for the continued success of the many networks who are working to equip and encourage believers in China.
More prayers:
