Wednesday, August 15, 2007

China's Long War against Christianity

I have long thought China is still the biggest threat in the world. I do not mean to down play Islamic-Terrorism, but in the end, the Islamic states are all backward and the rank and file armies would rather not fight. I worry that the world has forgotten that Communism is just as godless and just as dangerous as Islamic-Terrorism. China’s expulsion of Christian missionaries has gone mostly under the radar.

What worries me more is that this is pattern of behavior with China that goes back centuries. This pattern is not just to close its doors to missionaries, but to wipe Christians out through vicious persecutions. The article mentions the 1954 expulsion and resulting persecution by Communist China, but this goes back further than even the adoption of godless Communism. One can go all the way back to 635 and a monk named A-lo-Pen who carried Christianity (admittedly it was a perverted Nestorianism) to China and even won approval to do so by the Emperor, T’ai Tsung. Bishops were established and monasteries were founded. Then, at an unknown time all the Christians including the foreign born Christians were wiped out. The monks who visited in the 900’s found no traces of Christianity left anywhere. Of course these monks probably did mission work, but all traces of whatever they accomplished vanished under the Ming (beginning in 14th century). In 1807 Protestant missionaries are in Canton, and it is again a starting from scratch because of the extermination of all things Christian that has taken place. The Boxer Rebellion (1900) leads to the death of 189 missionaries. Then we can get to the massive persecutions that led to the arrest of Watchman Nee and local Chinese Christian leaders under the Communists in the 1950’s. Of these we have documented cases of torture and death for being a Christian.

These are simply the persecutions that I know about, and can be documented. Many traditions have Thomas of the Twelve disciples spreading the gospel in China, which would mean that any converts Thomas made were wiped out prior to A-lo-Pen in 635. China’s history is a bloody one that entails a great deal of Christian persecution. We should not forget to uphold the growing movement of Christianity in China as the signs begin to indicate another round of Christian extermination from godless China.

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