FEBRUARY 24, 2004 – Highlights of my trip to the underground churches in China

I would like to give you a brief update of my trip to China.  First of all, I want to thank you for your continued prayers.  God was very faithful to us.  Some of the stuff I share will be somewhat from the perspective of the persecuted church, so it may cross-grain and be a paradigm shift to our way of thinking but I don’t want to sound critical or biased.  A few weeks back, I had read a statistic from a couple of well-known sources (Brother Andrew’s ministry Open-Doors and Voice of the Martyrs), one says that the church in China is growing approx. 24,000 salvations per day and the other says that its growing somewhere between 10,000 to 25,000 per day.  My immediate impression was that maybe the numbers were exaggerated, but I really wanted to find out if it was true, and in no way could I have done that in a 2 week trip, but I would like to share some of my observations.  

We flew into Hong Kong and stayed there overall for about 4 days.  It is growing tremendously and prospering, we saw big skyscrapers all over the place.  A friend and me went to pass out gospel tracts by the subway station and I was somewhat surprised that after about a half an hour we had only given out maybe a total of 10 tracts.  The people didn’t seem too responsive, they were caught up with everyday life and life seemed to be pretty fast paced.  My friend who knows several Christians there commented that they didn’t seem to have much of a heart for their persecuted brothers and sisters just right across the border or even to evangelize the vast ripe fields of China.

The following day we went over to China.  There’s two types of churches in China, the government church which is about 20% and is really a heresy because they don’t allow anyone under 18 years old and you can’t preach outside the church and you can’t preach on the second coming of Christ, basically you preach a Cross-less message.  The other 80% is comprised of the underground church.  China is about 70% rural and 30% urban, it used to be 90:10, but lately the market has been greatly growing.  From what I understand, in the rural areas is where most of the spiritual activity is taking place.  The workers we met with had great love for the Word of God.  One day they had us speak from morning till evening with a lunch break in the middle.  I felt pretty inadequate, because I had a lot of head knowledge, but they seemed to have the experiential knowledge Eph 3:19.  They were so hungry for the Word.  I was tremendously blessed as they shared testimonies about their imprisonments.  They look at prison as their faith-building boot camp, because their faith is stretched and God moves miraculously on their behalf 1 Pt 4:1,14.  Many were imprisoned for about 3 years and had to shovel coal for about 12-15 hours a day, 6 days a week until their quotas were met.  And they ate 3x a day, only rice, plus a little bit of pork fat once a week.  They had powerful testimonies, and they didn’t want to say much about it but you had to pull it out of them, they were not bitter or angry for what they went through, but were full of joy.  What impressed me even more was that there were a few young ladies who sat through the entire day’s of preaching, and were not distracted or uneasy, but actively listened and really showed a heart for souls.  About 2 out of 3 Christian workers are women, many who give up everything for the Gospel’s sake.  The people’s main thrust is to go to places where the name of Jesus has never been heard.  From what I hear, they will go to a village and stay at a home, and than some miracle will take place and pretty soon they can’t be hid.  The more they are persecuted, the more they multiply Exodus 1:12.  They feel that persecution comes as a result of obedience to Christ, that just as the student is not above his teacher, so they will also suffer persecution like the teacher.  Like Paul says that all those who live godly in Christ will suffer persecution.  

One advantage for them is that I think that the first 3 heart conditions that Jesus talks about in Mark 4 cannot stand in the midst of the persecution, so for the most part all your left with are those who bear fruit 30-60-100 fold in souls.  Some Scriptures that became real to me were those that said, that God uses the foolish, weak, base, despised, poor (1 Cor 1:27, Jm 2:5), to confound the wise and noble.  And how in revelation the only church that didn’t get rebuked was the persecuted church that God considered rich even though in the natural they suffered much poverty (Rev 2:9), but the lukewarm church that boasted that they were rich, is the one God considered to be wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked (Rev 3:17).  

I don’t mean to magnify poverty or associate it with humility, but I noticed how in Jm 2:5 it says “did not God choose the poor in this world to be rich in faith”, probably I assume because they have no props to lean on, nothing to place their security, God is their only hope, they don’t really have too many other options.  But they do have the same sinful nature to deal with just like everyone else, so I don’t mean to make them morally superior.  It’s just that persecution causes them to be consumed with the things of God and they are broken in their hearts for the lost.  One thing I really gained from this trip was to be able to identify with them, like it says in Hebrews 13:3 to “remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves are in the body”.  

In China alone, I would estimate there to be about 1 billion people in spiritual darkness, let alone about another billion in India.  And many of them are so very hungry for the Gospel, that it causes me to pray to God that my heart would not be cool and indifferent, but like Nehemiah 1:4 that I would weep, mourn, fast and pray, and repent for my lukewarmness.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s not harder to live as a Christian in America versus China.  I have heard it said that in America the devil comes as an angel of light (bringing self-deception and delusion) but in China he comes as a roaring lion (persecution causing them to be sober and alert 1 Pt 5:8).  Their greatest prayer was for more laborers and that those who are persecuted would stand firm in their faith, but I don’t think they wanted to get out of persecution.  I remember Dr. Sumrall in one of his tape messages entitled, “of whom the world was not worthy”, talking about those that “experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment, they were stoned, …” Heb 11:36, and he said that when he observed the church in China he was in tears and he felt like he had done nothing for the Lord, which really got my attention!  I pray that you would keep this letter with confidentiality and if you have feedback, let me know.  Thanks and God bless.

KalebShukla@gmail.com | 989-482-1521