A Dark Cloud Over China

Many people have written to us asking for an update on what is happening in China. If you are familiar with Asia Harvest, you know that for almost 40 years we have not only served the Church in China, but have written countless books and newsletters about how the kingdom of God has advanced there.

From the 1980s to now, we have been privileged to see and hear about how tens of millions of people have been saved by the Blood of Jesus throughout this great land.

For most of that time, waves of persecution were common. A season of intense crackdowns would come upon God’s people, and for a while Christian activity would slow until the government changed its focus to something else. This ebb and flow was regular, and the Church continued to strengthen and grow.

Something fundamentally different appeared in 2016 as President Xi removed his mask and began to show his true intentions and anti-Christian passion.

We wrote that it seemed like Xi was determined to complete what Mao had failed to do in the 1950s and ‘60s, by trying to completely obliterate Christianity from China once and for all. In our April 2017 newsletter we reported:

“In China, 2016 saw the government launch a massive crackdown against the house churches. Many pastors throughout the country were bundled into vans and not seen again after being taken to dreaded ‘black jails’ (secret facilities where they are mercilessly tortured). Reports have reached us of some church leaders who were arrested and injected with an unknown substance. They returned to their families in a vegetative state and are now permanently mentally incapacitated.”

We were the first ministry to report such things and were ridiculed by some missionaries and organizations for doing so. One foreign believer arrogantly wrote, “You need to stop writing such nonsense. I am looking out the window of my 28^th floor apartment overlooking the city, and I can assure you all is well. I don’t see any persecution at all!”

Ironically, this man was granted a closeup view of persecution, as within six months he was one of tens of thousands of covert foreign missionaries to be systematically expelled from China, which we reported in our September 2017 newsletter.

Many were serving as teachers, students, businessmen, etc. Despite their official visas, few were allowed to remain. Desperate scenes were witnessed in airports across Asia as bewildered missionary families sat in disbelief, wondering where they should go after their missionary careers in China were unceremoniously ended, bank accounts seized, children yanked out of school, and their homes and lives turned upside down.



Rhyming History

There is famous saying that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” In China this is certainly true. In the past, whenever the government wanted to severely persecute believers, they started by removing all foreign Christians to cut off their influence and to prevent news of what was to follow from reaching the outside world.

In March 2018 we wrote, “You are unlikely to hear much fresh information about the Church in China. Thousands of Western Christians have been expelled from the country, and news about the Church is becoming difficult to access. The government is trying to throw a blanket over the Church so that the rest of the world can’t see or hear what’s going on inside the country.”

The same dark things that occurred in China in the early 1950s were now happening again.

For decades there had been a big difference between the illegal house churches, which Asia Harvest serves and works closely with, and the registered, government-approved Three-Self Church, whose members often felt safe.

This all quickly changed as Xi Jinping also began to persecute Three-Self churches, throwing hundreds of registered pastors into prison and demanding that all Christians put the Communist Party above their allegiance to Christ.

The next way history in China rhymed was that the Chinese Church showed its flexibility by quickly reversing a trend toward bigger and more open meetings and, instead, breaking into small groups of several or more believers, who gathered for prayer and fellowship in homes across the country.

This again rhymed with what happened from the 1950s to 1970s, when the government pulled a bamboo curtain over the country and severely persecuted God’s people.

In 2018, Xi Jinping had the constitution amended to make himself “President for life,” and he began to change laws to facilitate his crackdown on religion.

Around this time, many church leaders we know decided it was prudent to cut all communication with believers outside China, as the state was collecting information using unparalleled levels of surveillance, including through 400 million facial-recognition cameras that were installed in every part of China.

Sadly, since that time, everything we predicted has happened. News from China has dried up, not only to us but to every Christian ministry. The news that does occasionally leak out usually tells of mass arrests and persecutions.

The truth is that the Church in China has now gone underground again. It is the sixth or seventh time in history when almost all foreign Christian influence and activity has been shut off from China.



God’s Kingdom Continues to Grow!

Dear friends, please don’t be dismayed or discouraged by the developments in China!

After Mao tried to obliterate the children of God during a quarter century of brutal persecution, the Living God declared, “Enough!” and the Bride of Christ rose from the ashes.

Not only had God protected His children during those long, dark years, the Lord Jesus had caused them to flourish. God had once again mocked the plans of evil men and laughed at them:

“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in His anger and terrifies them in His wrath, saying, ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain’”

(Psalm 2:1-6).

When the Almighty God allowed His bride in China to undergo severe, prolonged persecution a few generations ago, a purified remnant emerged of suffering saints who had discovered a richness in Christ that they would never have otherwise experienced. From the ashes came one of the greatest revivals in Christian history, with at least 100 million people coming to faith in Christ.

Yes, there are dark times in China again, and reports of revival and miracles may have dried up for now, but rest assured that God still has tens of millions of wholehearted believers across China who are continuing to follow Him faithfully. Their circumstances may be difficult, but the seed of God’s kingdom has already been planted deep and has transformed multitudes of people.

Over centuries, the Church in China has proved remarkably resilient, creative and flexible. By God’s power they will not only survive, but will continue to flourish until the purposes of the Lord Jesus in China have been fulfilled.

Some of the more encouraging reports we receive say that people in China’s cities are especially open to the Gospel right now. Their souls remain empty from generations of Communism and materialism, and the void is being filled by the Lord Jesus. Despite all the challenges of life today, the kingdom of God continues to advance in China, with many people continuing to come to faith and being discipled.

When conditions change in the future, expect to see a purified bride emerge from underground once again, “producing many seeds” as the words of Jesus at the top of this newsletter declare.



Never forget that the kind of battle going on now in China is no less than a spiritual battle for the soul of the country. Satan hates the wonderful move of God that has swept China for the past half century, and he desires to spoil the harvest. These words of a missionary in China reflecting on the time when all missionaries had been expelled from the country in the 1950s is apt for us to ponder today:

“Among those behind the curtain and under the iron heel of Communism is a pulsating, living Church. The cry of anguish of that Church has been muffled. A cruel and heartless system has done everything possible to alienate that church from us in the West. It is the avowed purpose of the powers of hell to destroy the mystic body of Christ by ruthlessly cutting off those members which are in China. The prince of this world has sought to destroy the life of that body by dismemberment, but the ransomed throng in that land are one with us in life. The life of Christ in His body cannot he broken by any human or hellish power.”