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Member of persecuted Chinese church receives prison sentence
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - An elder from the church of persecuted Chinese pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to four years in prison this week for possessing the church library, as the Chinese government continues to bear down on members of Early Rain Covenant Church.
Qin Defu was charged with "illegal business operations" for being the keeper of 20,000 books he said were strictly for church use, and was baited into accepting a government-appointed lawyer with the promise that the charges would be dropped if he did so.
His pastor, Wang Yi, was taken into custody on December 9 and charged with "subversion of state power" for a slew of writings that called Chinese Christians to civil disobedience against a communist regime trying to cow them into statist idolatry.
Early Rain Covenant Church has been harassed unceasingly since then, with many of its members either arrested or under surveillance.