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by Fred C. Wilson III
December 3, 2010
“If anyone wishes to follow me let him take up his cross and come follow me.”
-JESUS CHRIST-
CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA
While we Americans sit in the quiet comfort of our churches observing Advent, Christians are being rounded up, imprisoned, and murdered. It was reminiscent of ancient Rome. Bishops, priests, and pastors are being detained, tortured, and murdered for the ‘crime’ of being Christians. Yet in spite of this, world governments and international corporations remain on friendly terms with China casually conducting trade and other business as though nothing out of the ordinary was taking place. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe highlighted by the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War officially drew to a climactic close. The Evil Empire is no more. The Red Dragon was vanquished but what the world forgot, or wanted to forget, was the looming red menace growing stronger by the hour in our midst, China with its anti-God anti-religious policies; how this citadel of atheism is trying to destroy the religion of Jesus Christ. This article will show you Reader, what you should do to stop this.
To comprehend why the current Chinese government has adopted such virulent anti-Christian policies, you have to understand the history of the Christian religion in China. The Way has existed in China as early at the 635 when all of Christianity was united in varying degrees under a single spiritual head the Bishop of Rome. According to Wikipedia, the first Christians to reach China were missionaries of the Assyrian Church of the East commonly called the ‘Nestorians’ taking their name and following the doctrines of Bishop Nestorius who was branded a heretic by the then reigning pontiff.
It was the heretical Nestorians who were allegedly responsible for giving the Prophet Mohammad his false views on the religion of Jesus Christ when the founder of Islam was formulating the Quran. Alongside the Nestorians came the now extinct Manicheans, a religion made famous by St. Augustine of Hippo (North Africa) the sect’s most famous former follower. During the Tang dynasty Christianity reached as far as Mongolia. After years of hit and miss the new religion didn’t take hold as the early missionaries had hoped.
When the Mongols came to power during the 13th Century both the Roman Catholic Church and the now separate Nestorian Church returned to China. During the Mongol era the Khan once petitioned the Pope to give him 1,000 priests to convert the entire Mongol Empire to Catholicism. The pope could only spare him 100. With the overthrow of the Mongols, Christianity again withered on the vine.
During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the third wave of Christian missionaries entered China. This time it was the Society of Jesus’ turn to try to make Christianity a vital part of Chinese life. After splendid efforts by such dynamos as Matteo Ricci who ingratiated himself with the Emperor of that country under the prayerful support of St. Francis Xavier, this third wave also came to naught once the then reigning pope banned the practice of Chinese rites and ancestor worship one of China’s most revered customs.
During the latter part of the Manchu dynasty things for the Christian Church started to look up as ever newer waves of missionaries Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant came to China. It was during this time when European missionaries under the military protection of Europe’s great powers that the religion of Christ started to take roots. Christian schools, modern hospitals, Western industrial ideas, philanthropic enterprises, opposing the opium trade, as well as churches sprang up throughout the then Chinese Empire. The Chinese were slowly turning to the Message of Jesus Christ. Even high level Chinese such as Sun Yat-sen, Chang Kai Shek, and other notables became converts. But as with every new idea, reaction set in. The Boxer Rebellion and Taiping Rebellions all took a huge toll on Chinese Christians making martyrs out of many but Christianity continued to grow in spite of persecution. Today according to recent studies there are around 130 million Chinese Christians and that number is rapidly growing!
Christianity is now a Sino-Centric religion which is why the Communists are scared witless. After so many centuries the Message of Jesus Christ has finally taken hold of the Chinese mindset, nation, and culture! (Source: Wikipedia-Christianity in China.)
THE PRICE OF DISCIPLESHIP
Sixty-six (66) year old Pastor Guo Jingtian of Arong Zhen Ge Er church of the town of Yadong also in Inner Mongolia, was summoned by the Security Bureau and charged with holding illegal religious meetings. Security officials have sealed off the church building so that religious services can no longer take place.
According to Christian Today three Catholic priests who refused to join the state-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association, a branch of world Catholicism that officially doesn’t recognize the religious authority of the Vatican, these priests (Revs. Liang Aijun (35), Wang Zhong (41), and Gao Jinbao (34) of Hebei province) along with a fourth unidentified priest, were secreted by force and detained by Chinese authorities at an undisclosed location. It is feared that all three religious fathers are undergoing various forms of torture and other inhuman treatment.
Pope Benedict XVI has recently written a letter pleading with the world as to the plight of the Roman Catholic Church in Communist China. The Holy Father urged the world to recognize the plight of persecuted Catholics and other religionists to urge the Chinese Communists to stop persecuting Christians and release them from captivity as a good will gesture to the pope. To this writer’s knowledge the pope’s plea fell on deaf ears.
Throughout China churches are raided, Bibles and other related sacred writings are seized and presumably destroyed, bishops, priests and ministers are arrested and brutalized and on numerous occasions killed outright after enduring long and inhuman torture sessions by paranoid Communist police agencies who fear the spread of the Christian religion as the force that will ultimately destroy world Communism. Reader, go to:
* www.christianitytoday.com
* www.au.christiantoday.com
* www.persecution.org
* www.christianpersecution.info
* www.persecution.com
and find out how you can help ease the sufferings of our Chinese-Christian brothers/sisters.
COULD THIS HAPPEN IN THE PHILIPPINES?
YES!! Satan is no fool. With all the current uproar in the Philippines over artificial birth control, abortion, alleged clerical corruption, growing poverty and a perceived indifference by the churches to the plight of the Philippine people the Christian Church could find itself on the outside looking in. Case in point: the Russian Orthodox Church’s fall from grace in 1917.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
That’s it for this week’s Mega Scene’s Philippine Adventures: next week A Christmas Carol. Till then may GOD bless you and your loved ones.
(vamaxwell@yahoo.com)