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Some people
have challenged the fact we are sending missionaries outside China. They say
we should stay in China and win our own country before we consider sending
missionaries out. To this illogical argument we respond with a simple
question, “Then why does your country send missionaries? Is everyone in your
country saved?”
If we stay home and refuse
to advance until we have completely finished the job there, we will never be
able to impact the world with the Gospel. Surely God’s way is for us to be
winning our home at the same time that we are sending new workers to the ends
of the earth! Our vision to reach the world does not mean we will stop or slow
down our efforts to reach all of China with the Gospel!
The two will take place
hand-in-hand.
We believe the best way for
the Chinese church to remain strong is to keep it motivated to reach out to
the nations of the world. When believers focus on serving the Lord and
reaching the lost, God blesses them and the church remains sharp. When we
become self-centered and critical of each other, Satan has deceived us and the
church will become a blunt, useless instrument.
We’ve been working and
praying hard that the vision to complete the Great Commission will become the
vision of all believers in China. We have no problem getting our believers
involved with evangelism. After they get saved they automatically have a
burning desire to witness and reach the lost, and then when they read the
words of Jesus they have a desire to take the Gospel to every nation.
The problem has been in how
to implement strategies that will enable Chinese believers to move outside our
nation as missionaries.
The believers in our
churches understand the importance and the responsibility of Back to
Jerusalem, but they don’t know what to do about it. That is the next step.
Almost no one in our churches has ever been outside China so it is a large
step for them to take in their understanding.
In 2000 many house church
leaders left China and attended a Back to Jerusalem meeting in a Southeast
Asian country. For almost all of us it was the first time we had left China.
This country where our meetings were held is a Buddhist stronghold, where the
overwhelming majority of people don’t know Christ.
This trip deeply impacted us
as we saw hundreds of temples, multitudes of lost souls worshipping idols,
young boys proudly walking down the roads as trainee monks, and a complete
absence of Gospel light everywhere we traveled. In China, of course, there is
still tremendous spiritual darkness in many places, and areas where Buddhism
is strong, but nothing so concentrated as what we saw all over that nation.
We all returned to China
changed people. Now that we had seen the need with our eyes and felt it with
our hearts, missions ceased being a theory and became a stark reality in our
lives and ministries. We all returned to our churches with a new urgency and
burden for Back to Jerusalem.
For several years we have
seen how God is directly calling our church members to be missionaries. One
sister received a dream from the Lord in which the word “Tamang” was shown to
her, and she saw herself preaching the Gospel to a group of tribal people.
She has no idea what this
word meant, and prayed earnestly for the Lord to reveal more. About two years
later she was given a small prayer booklet that contained information about
the unreached people groups of Nepal. She wept as she read a profile on the
Tamang people, a Buddhist tribe in that country! The picture of Tamang people
in the booklet showed exactly the same physical features and dress that she
had seen in her dream. She has now gone to Nepal as a missionary to the Tamang
people.
There are many similar
testimonies of how God is calling people to certain countries or ethnic groups
by divine revelation.
We are praying with tears in
our eyes for ways to get our churches involved more directly in the Back to
Jerusalem vision. We are training our leaders inside China in meetings where
we share the vision. They then take the vision back to their house churches.
Materials are being produced to help people gain a better understanding, and
we are seeing more and more Christians with a burden for worldwide mission.
Christians need to
understand that this number is not some fixed numerical goal that we have. It
is merely an indication of the minimum number of missionaries we plan
to send out. This number was first arrived at when many leaders of different
house church networks met together to pray and discuss Back to Jerusalem. At
the time we estimated that together we have approximately one million people
‘full time’ Christian workers in our churches. We believe the very least we
should do is give a tithe of these leaders to foreign missions. That is how we
first arrived at the figure of 100,000.
We have noticed that many
Westerners tend to be very excited and motivated by numbers, but we are not.
Our goal is not to send 100,000 missionaries out of China. Our goal is nothing
less than the completion of the Great Commission so that the Lord Jesus Christ
will return for His bride, to bring all of human history to the moment in
Scripture where “loud voices” are heard in
heaven, proclaiming, “The kingdom of the world has
become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever
and ever.” Revelation 11:15
That is our goal and
purpose! We are willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill this vision and be
obedient to the calling.
If it takes more workers
than 100,000 then there will be more workers, if it takes less than 100,000
there will be less. More than likely, the figure of 100,000 is a conservative
one. We are concentrated on getting the job done in the power of the Lord. The
details of how this happens we leave up to the Lord.
In March 2000 the first
group of 36 Back to Jerusalem missionaries left China. These were all men and
women who had been in fulltime ministry for the Lord for many years, with much
fruit. These were not new believers, or young people looking for something to
do! No, these were all battle hardened warriors of the Gospel who have proven
God faithful and experienced much hardship. Almost all of them had been
arrested for the Gospel, imprisoned, beaten, slandered, and tortured.
It was actually difficult to
keep the numbers of that first group down to just thirty-six. House church
leaders shared the vision for Back to Jerusalem in just a few leadership
meetings, and immediately people jumped up with their arms raised,
proclaiming, “I will go! I am willing to go and die for Jesus!”
In some meetings over half
of the people in attendance insisted on being among the first Back to
Jerusalem workers, and in the end we had to settle the number at thirty-six
and tell the others to wait for the next opportunity.
Of course! These structures
are being put into place right now. We realize that our workers will need
spiritual and physical assistance as far as possible. They will need pastoral
care to help them remain spiritually encouraged and walking closely with the
Lord.
Our plans are to track the
workers that are sent from our house church networks. We understand there will
also be other Chinese missionaries going out to the nations (and they have
already started to go) who are not linked to our fellowships. We pray a great
blessing from the Lord on all of them! Because the Back to Jerusalem vision is
a call for the whole Church, there will obviously be many different workers
from different backgrounds going out for the Lord, but as far as the ones
coming from our church networks, yes, we certainly do plan to track them and
do everything possible to help them as they complete the Great Commission.
We also believe some
missionaries will need to go back to China from time to time, to report to the
Church what God is doing through them. We have found this to be extremely
important in our house churches. It encourages the sending believers, and
helps mobilize new workers for the vision.
We have plans for certain
locations to serve as key centers for the training and administration of Back
to Jerusalem workers. Plans are already underway for a secure headquarters for
the movement, and prayer centers where 24-hour intercession will go forth
asking the Lord to bless the work and remove all demonic hindrances.
We are told that many
Western missionary organizations pull their workers out of a place as soon as
there is any sight of trouble. Advance will be very slow with such a
mentality! If self preservation is so important then there is no point going
in the first place. God is always looking for children who are willing to die
for Him if necessary. The countries in the Back to Jerusalem vision do not
welcome the Gospel and there will be certain trouble when anyone attempts to
take it to them. All the way through the Bible there was trouble when God’s
people proclaimed the truth. Elijah was called the
“troubler of Israel” 1 Kings 18:17.
When Paul and Silas appeared
before the authorities in Philippi their accusers said they
“are throwing our city into an uproar.” Acts 16:20.
Indeed as
you read through the Book of Acts it seems every time Paul preached the Gospel
there was one of two reactions: revival or riot!
We understand that there is
a time for caution and a time to escape, such as when the Apostle Paul was
placed inside a basket and lowered over the Damascus city wall to escape those
who wished to kill him (see Acts 9:22-25).
But there is also a time
when Christians should march forward regardless of danger. Consider the
courageous words of the Apostle Paul when he said, “And
now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will
happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me
that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth
nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord
Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
Acts 20:22-24
Making trouble is inevitable
for any believer who truly wants to obey God. Anyone who wants to avoid
conflict and maintain the status quo will not achieve much for the Lord. The
structures that keep countless millions of people enslaved to sin and Satan
must be confronted before they will crumble, and when you confront evil there
will always be trouble.
This is the main reason
house church Christians in China have been persecuted for decades. They are
not persecuted just because of their faith in God. If they chose, they could
all settle down in a Three-Self Church, worship God each Sunday, and live
relatively stress free lives as long as they keep their beliefs to themselves
and don’t try to share them with others.
The reason house church
Christians are arrested and imprisoned in China is because they cannot keep
still. They cannot possibly keep their mouths shut because Jesus has revealed
Himself to them and they have been radically changed from the inside out. They
understand how the prophet Jeremiah felt when he said,
“If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is
in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it
in; indeed, I cannot.” Jeremiah 20:9
Western Christians often ask
us why we think there is persecution in China and other countries and not in
the West. There are several different things to say about this, but one
question we would like to ask is this: “Do you boldly preach the truth of
God’s Word to sinners inside and outside your churches?”
If you do, you will soon
find out there is persecution wherever you are. “Those
who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” 2
Timothy 3:12. This Scripture does not say “might” be persecuted, but
“will” be persecuted. If you are not being persecuted, the problem isn’t with
God’s Word. Perhaps the question should be asked, “Are you truly desiring to
live a godly life in Christ Jesus?” Persecution may take a different form in
one country from another, but there will be persecution.
As the Back to Jerusalem
vision unfolds, we know there will be many troubles, but
“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them
all; he protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken.” Psalm
34:19-20
The Muslim and Buddhist
nations can torture us, imprison us, starve us, but they can do no more than
what we have already experienced in China for many decades. Thousands of young
men and women will go as missionaries who are not afraid to die for Jesus.
They are not afraid to bleed, as they know their bodies are merely temporary
tents to be used in the Lord’s service and that one day they will be in
paradise where there is no pain and no tears. They are not only ready to die
for the Gospel, they are expecting it.
The Chinese house churches
have only really started to obey God’s call to win the minorities in China in
the last few years. There were evangelists trying to reach minorities before
then, but overall the large majority of house church work was targeted to Han
Chinese communities within our country.
It was actually when a
Western brother came and taught the house church leaders that there are more
than 400 unreached minority groups in our country that we began to pray and
target them more seriously. God gave us a great burden for their
evangelization, and hundreds of new teams have been formed that have already
gone, or are currently in preparation, for ministry to the minorities of
China. Actually we have already started to receive good reports of
breakthroughs among Muslims in Xinjiang – in some parts of southern Xinjiang
God has used house church workers to win many Muslims to Christ. This usually
happens in the Muslim communities after God confirms the preaching of the Word
with miracles.
Some people have said the
Muslims in China hate the Han Chinese so much that we can never lead them to
Christ, but God is proving that to be wrong. If we go to them in true
humility, and in the power of God, they see that we are different and many
Muslims come to Jesus.
The Tibetans and other
strong Buddhist groups are in one sense even more difficult to reach with the
Gospel than Muslims because Buddhists have absolutely no concept of a Creator
God, or of personal sin. Yet we have many evangelists working among Tibetans.
Just in Lhasa City alone, the capital of Tibet, we have almost 100 house
church evangelists reaching out. While it is true that not so many Tibetans
have believed, a few small Tibetan fellowships have been established, and God
is teaching our workers how to pray and work more effectively. They have
learned that successful strategies used in other parts of China will not
necessarily work in Tibet, so they are seeking God for revelation about how to
win the Tibetans. When God gives the key, the door will open!
We don’t consider reaching
the minorities of China as a separate vision, but as a part of the Back to
Jerusalem vision. Many lessons our workers learn in reaching Muslims and
Buddhists within China’s borders will prove valuable as we reach Muslims and
Buddhists outside China.
You need to understand that
miracles are not something we should seek after in themselves. Miracles are
not a toy for us to play with. They are an integral part of the Gospel. We are
not called to follow miracles, but the Bible says signs and wonders will
follow us when we preach the Gospel (see Mark 16:17-20). The miracles
therefore act as evidence that the message is true. When we tell people that
Jesus is alive, and they see him heal a cripple or deliver a demon-possessed
person, they will easily believe the message!
Among China’s house churches
we estimate as many as 80% of believers first come to Jesus because they
receive a miraculous healing or deliverance from the Lord. They give their
lives unreservedly to God in response.
The Scriptures point out
that when a new believer both hears the Gospel and sees a demonstration of its
power, their faith will be deep. That is why the Apostle Paul wrote,
“My message and my preaching were not with wise and
persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your
faith might not rest on man’s wisdom, but on God’s power.” 1 Corinthians 2:4
As Paul explained, when the
Word of God comes to people not only with persuasive human words, but with a
demonstration of the power and reality of God, their faith rests on God’s
power and not on man’s wisdom. This is much better! In China new believers are
often willing to endure tremendous hardship, torture and harassment, even when
they have believed in Christ just a few weeks or months. When someone comes to
Jesus because they experienced His power operating in their lives, they have
no trouble believing Jesus is alive, because they have already met Him! If
they were ever to deny Christ they would not only have to reject the
theological aspect of God’s Word, but they would also have to reject their own
experiences.
Therefore to answer the
question, yes miracles are an important factor, but they are not something we
seek in themselves, but something that happens automatically when the Good
News is preached to the lost. We should not follow miracles, but miracles
should follow us when we preach! This has been our experience all over China.
There is some concern among
those spiritual elders and intercessors in the house churches that the
spiritual life of the present generation of believers is not as strong as in
previous years. China is becoming economically affluent and there are
opportunities and temptations for young Christians today that didn’t exist 15
or 20 years ago. The lure of the world is stronger than in the past. Young men
and women who desire to live wholeheartedly for Jesus and the advance of the
Gospel face a struggle to maintain such a single focus.
When we brought our concerns
before the Lord in prayer, He clearly showed us that the house churches of
China will remain in revival as long as they remain obedient to the vision to
preach the Gospel back to Jerusalem. If we lose our first love and start to
focus inwardly on our own needs, our spiritual life will surely shrivel up and
die, but as long as we strive to obey God’s call to take the Gospel to the
Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu nations then He will bless our churches and revival
in China will continue. This principle is not only a spiritual one, but is
true in nature also. A flower or plant that looks upward and outward
flourishes and reflects the beauty of the Creator, but one that turns inward
soon dies and its true beauty is never revealed to the world.
We encourage Christians and
churches around the world not to focus inwardly on their own needs and
desires! If you do, you will surely shrivel up and die. God’s principle is
that when you look to bless the needs of others, then your own lives will be
blessed.
When you make missionary
activity to nations that have never heard about Jesus the priority of your
church, you will not fail to be blessed and revived. A Christian or church
that just seeks inward blessing all the time for their own pleasure and
enjoyment is in danger of idolatry. Jesus said, “He who
speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the
honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about
him.” John 7:18
So many Christians are doing
their own thing, and don’t know or even seem to care that God’s cloud and
pillar of fire have moved on! Let’s decide to wake up and find out what the
Lord is doing and see how we can get involved! The gap between just “doing
Christian activity” and being a front line soldier in the Lord’s harvest is as
wide as day and night.
When you are truly obeying
the Lord’s call you please God, and when you are in step with the work of the
Holy Spirit you begin to feel the heartbeat of our Loving Savior. Your work
stops being a chore and starts becoming a natural overflow of the love of God
that has been deposited into your heart.
If the Chinese Church
settles down and stops preaching the Gospel then the fire of God that has been
among us for so long with surely die down, but as long as we are true to our
call, it will be impossible for the fire to die down! If a man picks a hot
stick out of a fire and runs with it, the movement will fan the flame back
into life. If he sits down and watches it long enough, the fire will diminish
and finally be snuffed out altogether. The Christian life is one of action for
Jesus, not inaction.
As more of our missionaries
go to the nations with the fire of Jesus Christ in their hearts and a
two-edged sword, the Word of God, in their hands, the believers back home in
China will need to be praying for their missionaries every day. As reports
come back of salvations, persecutions, and martyrdoms the Church in China will
find their own zeal and commitment fanned into flame. We have seen this many
times in our house churches. We send evangelists to all four corners of China
and when they come back months later and share how the Lord used them, with
testimonies of miracles and breakthroughs, their home churches are encouraged
and challenged to win more souls and live more radically for Jesus.
It has already begun, and is
gathering momentum with each day! We do not have our own timeline, we just
want to obey God’s will and leave the timing up to Him.
We have already seen how
many important things have started lining up in ways that make the Back to
Jerusalem vision possible. For example, until recently the Chinese government
largely stopped its citizens from traveling abroad, except in a few privileged
situations. This created a vacuum and deep desire in the hearts of Chinese
people to go and see what the rest of the world is like. There is a tremendous
hunger to learn about other countries, their people and cultures. The same
applies to the Church in China. In recent years the travel restrictions have
been gradually eased and now it is much easier for Chinese to get passports
and travel abroad. These easing of restrictions will surely only continue in
the future. We believe this as part of God’s sovereign plan to facilitate the
Back to Jerusalem vision.
We believe the Chinese
Church can succeed in bringing down the religious giants of Islam, Buddhism
and Hinduism because the Lord has taught us how to work in a nation where
there is great opposition and persecution to the advance of the Gospel. There
has been great effort put into evangelizing some of the countries in the
Middle East, for example, but without many results. These nations are paranoid
and on guard against Christianity coming from America. They have sealed their
front doors as tightly shut as they can against Christianity, and they closely
monitor every activity of Westerners who come to their country. While they
spend all their energy guarding their front doors, maybe the Chinese
Christians will quietly slip in the back door with the Gospel!
The Lord has been training
the Chinese house churches for the past 50 years through the sacrifice of
blood, imprisonment, torture, suffering and hardship. Thousands have been
treated brutally in prison, thousands more evangelists have been sent out
across the country with nobody to rely on except God himself. They have seen
numerous miracles and have learnt to trust Jesus in a deep way that could not
be obtained any other way except through hardship and suffering. We are not
saying we are any better than anyone else! This is not the issue. But we do
believe the Lord has put the Chinese church through these experiences to train
us to complete this specific task of taking the Gospel back to Jerusalem. We
do not fear what man can do to us.
There are two distinct ways
to answer this question. Firstly, the question is somewhat irrelevant due to
the fact that the whole nature of Back to Jerusalem is to share Christ in
places and among people groups where there is no Gospel witness. If there is
no Gospel then by definition there will be no other Christians working in that
place. Our aim is to have the attitude of the Apostle Paul, who said,
“It has always been my ambition to preach the Gospel
where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s
foundation.” Romans 15:20. If we enter a particular country, our
desire will be to find out where the neediest places are, where there are no
Christians, and to work there. We don’t want to get bogged down trying to
light a fire where others are already burning. We want to go to the darkest,
blackest regions where the light has never been seen before.
We are, however, aware that
small numbers of Christians do exist even in countries like Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan and Iran. Our intention is not to just “do our own thing” without
consulting the existent Body of Christ. As the Lord leads, we do want to
partner and work hand in hand with Thai, Indian, Arab Christians or whatever
the case may be, if the result will be to see God’s Kingdom advance more
quickly. We welcome true partnership. We need local believers to teach us
their language and culture and many other things that will help us be more
effective. For the local churches, perhaps we can share some of the fire and
vision that the Lord has given us in China.
Therefore, we will try to
work in cooperation with local believers as far as possible, but if our
ministry aims are so totally different from theirs it may be necessary for us
to respectfully agree to work separately.
We have several key
principles that we believe God has taught us and which we plan to take into
the mission field. For example, we refuse to be drawn into the spirit of
denominationalism in any way. We are going to preach the Gospel and see
sinners come to the feet of Jesus and experience a new life that He won for
them on the Cross. We don’t want to be any part of promoting any denomination.
We only want to promote Jesus and ask the Holy Spirit confirm whether Jesus is
alive or not in the hearts of people everywhere. Nowhere in God’s Word does it
say that if we lift up our church or methods or doctrine will the Holy Spirit
bless us and bring revival. But Jesus clearly told us who we should lift up:
“But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men to myself.” John 12:32.
Another example would be if
some local church strongly desires to build church buildings. This would be
incompatible with our vision because we don’t believe the world needs another
single church building. They need Jesus, and they need to worship and grow in
God’s grace with other believers within their own homes, according to the
pattern of the first church in the New Testament (see Acts 5:42, 20:20, Romans
16:5, etc.)
Although we do have some
strong convictions about how God’s work should be done, let us reiterate that
even if our methods are different from other Christians’ methods, we will
still strive and work to honor and fellowship all believers who have been
bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
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