There are an estimated 100 million Christians in China, most of whom gather in small groups in house churches. PICTURE: Courtesy of Asian Outreach

3rd May, 2004

BARNEY ZWARTZ

Brother Yun nearly gave up in 1997. The Chinese church leader, with broken bones in both legs from trying to escape arrest, was taken to Zhengzhou Number One Maximum Security Prison. There his legs from the knees down were shattered by a brutal beating intended to cripple him.

In agony, he had to be carried to interrogation or the toilet by fellow Christian prisoners. He could not even crawl. Yet six weeks later, in obedience to a vision during the night, he walked from the jail, through three sets of locked doors and past dozens of guards. His legs, he says, were suddenly intact.

Plenty of fellow prisoners saw him crippled - and have written about it since - while the thousands who turned up in Melbourne to see him recently can testify that he is now whole.

The heavenly man - the nickname he earned when, under torture to identify himself and betray other Christians, he shouted ``I am a heavenly man, my home is in heaven'' - brought the Melbourne suburb of Richmond to a halt. Nearly 2000 crammed into the Richmond Assembly of God and another 1000 who not get in queued around the church, while traffic came to a standstill.

Uncle Liang, another church leader who is no stranger to prison and beatings, also preached at Richmond and at Waverley Christian Fellowship.

A former mentor to Brother Yun, Uncle Liang leads a church network with more than 10 million members. His best church-planting years, he says, were in prison, where he had a captive audience. Even the warden became an assistant pastor. The number of Christians is growing so fast, he says, that the church can't cope. ``There are floods and earthquakes - this is a churchquake.''

A Chinese communist general in 1949, asked about his astonishing record of success, replied: ``It's simple. I just give the order: `advance victoriously on all fronts'.'' Fifty-five years on the Chinese Christians could adopt the same slogan.

When the Western missionaries were expelled in 1949, there were about 800,000 Christians in the world's most populous country. After half a century of sometimes vicious persecution and ruthless repression, the number today is approaching 100 million, plus 12 million Chinese Catholics.

Now the Chinese Christians are emerging with an extraordinary vision they have cherished for 60 years: to carry the Christian message into the Muslim world and complete the gospel's progress around the globe.

As Christianity falters across Europe and Australia, it's numbers are exploding in South America, Africa and, especially, Asia. Missionaries are emerging from these continents now, but none are as ambitious as the Chinese project.

It is called Back to Jerusalem, based on Jesus' words in Act 1 that his disciples would be his witnesses in all of Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Brother Yun spoke of the vision in Melbourne a fortnight ago. He said: "If you stand on the Mount of Olives and look to Jerusalem you are looking west. Eleven of the 12 disciples went west. If you start at Jerusalem and go to the end of the world, you return to Jerusalem.

"The 10/40 window (from 10 to 40 degrees north of the equator) has 60 countries and 2.7 billion people, 90 per cent of whom have never heard of Jesus. Westerners are not very popular in this part of the world. The Back to Jerusalem vision is to send out 100,000 missionaries.''

The vision first came to Chinese pastor Mark Ma in 1942, in a dream in the night, which others also had. His first missionaries set out in 1947 for remote Xingiang, but were turned back in 1949 when the Communists won power.

All the Back to Jerusalem leaders died in jail but one, who survived a 40-year sentence to help inspire the re-energised vision.

The Back to Jerusalem leaders, drawn from throughout China's underground churches, believe that this is the destiny to which God has called the Chinese church. China has an official, government-sponsored church, called the Three-Self Patriotic Church, with comparatively few adherents. Most Christians gather in small groups in house churches. They believe that half a century of persecution has refined and equipped them for the task, though thousands may die.

Brother Yun has written: "There is little that any of the Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu countries can do to us that we haven't already experienced in China. The worst they can do is kill us, but all that means is we will be promoted into the glorious presence of our Lord for all eternity.''

But one of the men training the first group of Back to Jerusalem missionaries warns against the triumphalist tone taken by Brother Yun and some Christians in the West. David Wang, president of international aid and evangelism group Asian Outreach, says the movement's leaders in China are sufficiently disturbed to write an open letter asking people outside China to tone it down.

"Where the Chinese Christians can make a dent around the world, whether west or east, is through their signs and wonders and miracles. They are probably the most power-based Christian church I have ever seen anywhere.'' - Dr David Wang, president of Asian Outreach. PICTURE: Courtesy of Asian Outreach.

"The leaders in China plead, don't mention 100,000 missionaries going to the Middle East. The countries there will see it like a repeat of the crusades, as terrorism in reverse,'' he says. ``And the Chinese government will think`here comes another Falun Gong'.''

Dr Wang, in Melbourne to translate for Brother Liang, says Back to Jerusalem will take generations. While Chinese Christians are rich in faith and motivation, they are not equipped in cross-cultural sensitivity, in understanding modernity or the Middle East, he says.

He is training 40 now in the Biblical, historical, cultural and strategic perspective of mission, plus languages and skills to earn a living in the country they are sent.

"In practical missiology, they are not equipped. Where the Chinese Christians can make a dent around the world, whether west or east, is through their signs and wonders and miracles. They are probably the most power-based Christian church I have ever seen anywhere.''

Dr Wang says the first Chinese missionaries to the Middle East could go in 2007, 200 years after the first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, landed in China. "We pray we can repay not the gospel debt, but only the interest. In the history of missions hundreds and thousands of Westerners have laid down their lives for China.How in the world can we repay that kind of debt? Whatever we do we are only repaying the interest.''

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen says what is happening in China is awe-inspiring. "It is one of the greatest works of God in history, and certainly the greatest work of God in the 20th century.''

But the West still has a vital role, the archbishop says. "As with African Christianity, Chinese Christianity has to be theologically deepened and rooted in the Bible, and that element is probably still going to be the
responsibility of the West because of where we are historically poised.

Second, the US is still a huge Christian resource and has a big part to play.''

Dr Wang agrees. ``The growth of Christianity in Asia is tremendously rapid, but it could become like a river one mile long and one inch deep.'' The grounding of Christians in their core values and theology is essential.

Nevertheless, he believes the centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted to Asia. In 1997 he was invited to a Christmas banquet in Beijing. The organiser, unable to use the term, said it was ``to celebrate the birth of the chairman'' (pointing heavenwards).

"I sat next to the minister of population welfare, that is population control. For 17 years she had been strictly enforcing the law of one child per family. But still the population of China is growing at the rate of one more million every three weeks, she said.

"I said to her, I know of another population explosion in China: every single day another 20,000 people are born again into the kingdom of life. The minister of internal affairs, sitting next to her, bent over and said, `Dr Wang, according to our figures it's closer to 30,000 a day'.''

Korea has the world's biggest Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal churches, and Indonesia is catching up. Why this explosion? ``In the West, you are moving into a post-Christian era. In the East we are moving from a pre-Christian era into a Christian era. Suddenly we discovered that Christianity is not just a faith, it's a lifestyle that ushers us into a different realm.

``Do not misunderstand it as an embracement of Western culture. It's a self-discovery that the gospel has a lifting value. When the gospel arrives in any village, give it 10 years, the living standard goes up, whether it is in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia or China.''

Inside China, Dr Wang says, communism was utterly discredited by the cultural revolution. ``Communism lost its attraction long ago. Now the Communist Party is a governing body rather than an ideology. Their biggest concern is that while they open up China there will be no unwanted forces that influence people to overthrow them. Therefore, even with the church, they want to see that you are loyal, not necessarily to the Party, but patriotic. Patriotic is becoming a vogue word in China.''

In the days of Western missionaries, Dr Wang says, the general belief was that one more Christian meant one fewer Chinese. "Now we say, `one more Christian means one better Chinese'. For years I have been preaching, the Chinese are coming. Now they have come.''

This article was reprinted from Australian Presbyterian magazine and is an expanded version of an article that first appeared in The Age newspaper, Melbourne.