China: Inside the biggest revival in history

[Valin]

Premier

Oct. 2019

Bestselling author Paul Hattaway gives us a rare glimpse inside China’s underground Church

It has been described as the Chinese Marshall Plan, a 21^st Century Silk Road and a state-backed campaign for global dominance. The “One Belt, One Road” (yi dai yi lu) initiative is President Xi Jinping’s plan to connect Asia, Africa and Europe through a ‘belt’ of overland corridors and a maritime ‘road’ of shipping lanes. The goal is simple: China wants to become the new world superpower, with the most powerful economy and military on earth.

The Chinese are not in a rush, but are determined to gradually work their way towards this vision. The Communist leaders behind this project are hard-line atheists who desire absolute power over what people say, do and even think. Anyone who may pose a threat to their goals is being subdued or eradicated. Contrary to almost all predictions, the last few years have seen persecution against Christians in China skyrocket to levels not seen since the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). These are frightening times for religious adherents in China, and Christians aren’t the only group under threat. The BBC estimates that as many as 3 million Muslims have been detained in concentration camps in the Xinjiang region.

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Inside house churches

While we often hear stories of persecution inside China, there are also numerous reports of miracles and mass conversions. The Church has grown from about 1 million believers at the advent of Communism in 1949 to around 100 million today! Numerically, at least, this is the greatest revival in Christian history. There has been a great work of the Holy Spirit, and God’s children have learned that they grow stronger when they are placed under great pressure.

Approximately 60 million of China’s Christians are members of unregistered evangelical house churches, which have increasingly been targeted in recent decades. Their refusal to register with the Communist authorities, means the house churches are technically illegal, and therefore bear the brunt of the most intense persecution.

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A glorious mess

I’ve found the most difficult part of house meetings to be the intense prayer sessions, which often continue for hours. Every believer would kneel and cry out to God from the depths

of their souls. In order to fit in, I too would kneel on the cold, hard floors. I found the ground was often wet from believers’ tears as they engaged in fervent intercession.

To be honest, at times I too have had tears in my eyes during those long prayer meetings, though not from compassion, but because I felt close to passing out from the pain in my knees, especially during winter-time when my lower legs went completely numb from kneeling. When participating in areas that have been touched by powerful heaven-sent revival, I sometimes found my spirit was willing but my flesh was weak (Matthew 26:41). On occasions I think I may have caught a glimpse of what revival meetings were like in the time of Wesley, Whitefield, Finney or Roberts. In my experience, when the Holy Spirit brings true revival to a community it is exhilarating and terrifying, joyful and exhausting, all rolled into one.

Someone once asked me to describe the Chinese revival in a few words. I thought about it for a moment and replied: “A glorious mess!”

When the Holy Spirit brings revival it is exhilarating and terrifying.

Many Christians assume that church in the midst of heaven-sent revival must be clean, structured and highly unified – a near-perfect representation of Christ’s body on earth. The reality, however, is that the Chinese Church in revival has had to deal with plenty of problems, temptations, trials and weaknesses. These include theological debates between different leaders, and dealing with members who fall into sin, as well as those who cause division, just like in the churches of the New Testament.

The biggest weakness in the Chinese Church has been a lack of theological training. Some have criticised the revival for being a mile wide but only an inch deep. There is some truth to this assertion, but outsiders often fail to realise that the lack of theological depth in China today is largely caused by persecution. The government’s decades-long plan to cut the house churches off from Bibles and other resources, and to block their members from attending seminaries, has created a large void, leaving many Christians susceptible to error and being lured by the many cults operating in China today.

The reality is that the mighty revival in China during the last 40 years has not been the work of men and women. It has been a sovereign act of God, who has chosen to show his glory through weak vessels, “so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever” (1 Peter 4:11).

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A glorious mess! I Like That. Sometime The Spirit moves quietly.....and sometime The Spirit throws a

To shake things up.