20 Christians Rounded Up in Shanghai As Chinese Government Seeks to Extinguish Belief
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - Twenty Christians, including one Taiwanese-American dual-citizen, were taken into custody in Shanghai yesterday as China continues its crusade against belief.
Michael Yu, a Taiwanese -American Pastor who ministers to Christian business people in China, was among those apprehended and was later released before Chinese authorities prevented him from boarding his plane. He was scheduled to attend a dinner party with former U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
U.S. Ambassador-At-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback noted last month that “it seems that the Chinese government is at war with faith” amid calls from Western diplomats for China to stay its hand in the illegal roundup of over a million Uighur Muslims.
Yu, who said he had never encountered trouble in the past flying back and forth from China to Taiwan, surmised that the harassment is reflective of shifting political winds in the communist country, and feared harsher treatment from authorities due to his Taiwanese background.
Four major Chinese unregistered churches have been banned since September, a development with which Brownback said: “the Trump administration is deeply concerned.”
Some of us are old enough to remember.
We remember when there were no churches, at all, in China. Or in Russia ( which was then called the USSR) unless they were the vast Russian Orthodox Cathedrals deemed important architectural art. No one had religious meetings in them.
We remember when, just as now, there were more hidden Christians in China then people in the USA. The same may have been true about Russia. But both nations Believer's did it without "church."
With a slow growing sense of horror some of us watched as the wolves inside of Christianity from the USA and the UK and many other places around our world, moved in on a former USSR, an in China too, once the great persecutions had ended.
It was like how the Catholic Church had been birthed by Rome when it too ended it's great persecution of the saints and early apostles. Right out in the open, great vast buildings dedicated to Jesus Christ (and other gods) were built. Crosses were erected, some even blocking great sunsets. And people became lukewarm or cold. The ones who were on fire, persecuted by those very churches.
Until...until the time was ripe, once again, to capture real leaders in Christ, to take names and stamp out true faith in the God and Father of Y'shua, the Messiah (Jesus, the Christ).
Some of us are old enough to remember The Iron Curtain. We watched it go down, just as we are now watching it go back up. There are important lessons for Christians and Messianics and (Messianic) Nazarenes in the West here.