DAVID ADAMS speaks to Pastor John Jones, director of Open Doors Australia, about the persecution of Christians around the world and how the organisation is helping to support them…
Pastor John Jones, 56, is the Sydney-based director of Open Doors Australia. In part one of a two part interview, he spoke about persecution Christians face around the world and how Open Doors supports those who are its victims…
Open Doors was created to provide awareness of and support for persecuted Christians. Why is this important?
“Well, it’s important as Christians that we remember our brothers and sisters as we’re directed in the Scriptures, especially in Hebrews; to remember those that are in prison as if we’re in prison with them. I think it’s easy for Christians in the Western world to be distracted by all the blessings we have; to forget that part of the body – with the same faith that we have in Jesus Christ – is paying a price. Matter of fact, we have Christians who are being persecuted in over 50 countries. The persecution varies (and includes) being absolutely forbidden to have a Bible and being absolutely forbidden to worship in any form with the result of jail, imprisonment and even torture…It’s estimated that over 200 million Christians are suffering persecution for the same faith we share in Jesus Christ.”
GETTING INTO THE WORD: Pastor Jones says there is a great demand for Children’s Bibles in China given the restrictions on materials for children.
“I think it’s easy for Christians in the Western world to be distracted by all the blessings we have; to forget that part of the body – with the same faith that we have in Jesus Christ – is paying a price.”
What are the nations which Open Doors is most concerned about with regard to the persecution of Christians at the moment?
“We put out a worldwide watch for persecuted Christians and the top 10 countries (include) North Korea…Just having a Bible is seen to be contrary to the philosophy of the country and is very severely punished: it can put you into a labour camp or re-education camp where the survival rate for the first year is 50 per cent.
“So you can see the price is very severe. Yet we’re finding Christians not only maintaining their faith but also desperately in need for the Bible, risking their lives – taking enormous risks – to procure Bibles and to share their faith with their families. And that’s because they have realised and understand the eternal nature of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We live for eternity and that’s why their philosophy is: if they live, they live for Jesus and if they die, they’re with Jesus. So either way they win.
“The second country (on the list) is Saudi Arabia and that’s followed by Iran. Now we delivered into Iraq and Iran and neighbouring countries over 300,000 Bibles and Biblical resources just last year. The need is growing enormously there. We’re finding more Muslims are coming to Jesus in the last 20 years than in the last 200.
“The fourth country is Somalia followed by The Maldives – most people think The Maldives as more a resort area but it’s very restricted for Christians. That’s followed by Yemen and Bhutan. Robyn (Jones’ wife) and I were in Bhutan earlier this year. It’s a Buddhist country and there’s not one Christian church. But there are Christians in Bhutan and it was a real privilege for Robyn and myself to have met and prayed with some of them. After Bhutan comes Vietnam, then Laos and Afghanistan.”
You mentioned North Korea – that has been number one on Open Doors’ watch list for some time.
“It has been for quite a while. I was there this year and I’m pleased to say that I’m starting to see some light appear. We’ve been praying for North Korea for many years – we’re in the middle of a 10 year prayer campaign for North Korea. I think it’s an answer to prayer and I think it would be a marvellous thing if the United States and other countries were to flood that country with the love of Jesus – with food, with medications and medical supplies to help that country get ahead. And I’m starting to see that take place. I’m seeing more visitors from South Korea, from Western countries, starting to come into the country, small Chinese businessman who were with us on the train as we went in. I believe that God wants to bless North Korea.”
As you’ve mentioned, persecution can include such things as internment in camps but also such things as discrimination in employment?
“In Bhutan, for example, your children may miss out on education. You’ll miss out on promotions and jobs, you’ll suffer financially, if not lose your job. These are the more subtle, or less severe, persecutions. Persecution varies, obviously. In our country we may say we come up against opposition – because the Bible indeed tells us in 2 Timothy 3:12 that all who seek to be God-like in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We may get some opposition and some people may ridicule us as Christians, so we may suffer that type of discrimination, but it’s very mild, to say the least, compared to those who have been thrown in jail.”
How does Open Doors gather knowledge of persecution?
“We have field teams and people in the countries themselves. We always look to find the church where-ever it is in persecuted countries and get the information firsthand. In particular, we look to see where there are groups which network together…There are quite a number of them who communicate to us when there is persecution so that we can pray for them. In many cases they prefer not to advocate because that can make the situations worse – if their names were revealed that could bring more recriminations against their family – but they do seek prayer. That’s the first thing they ask for.
“(It’s) what impressed back on my first trip back in 1984 to China. I was a businessman at the time and I would have been happy to give them my wallet but they didn’t ask for money. My contact there just simply first asked for prayer and the second question was ‘Did you bring Bibles?’ That hasn’t changed all that much, particularly in China. There’s still a need for Bibles in China – we’re seeing the largest revival the world has ever known. We estimate five million each year are becoming new believers in Jesus Christ.”
Open Doors had released an eight page booklet called The Truth About China. Why have you done this?
“China is a very complex and big country and most things you hear about China are probably true somewhere. People may have the impression because Bibles are printed in China – and we praise God that Bibles are printed in China – that there’s no shortage of Bibles. But the official figures that are given out are very different from the figures that we obtain through out contacts which are very extensive with the house church movement.
“What a lot of people don’t understand about China is that 800 million of the 1.3 billion live in rural areas. And that’s where, by and large, the underground church, the unregistered church that we mostly serve, exists. The official church which is registered with the government is more in the urban areas and they tend to understate or severely reduce numbers in the underground church for whatever reason. They’ll make claims that there are 55,000 distribution points for Bibles or something of this order. But those distribution points may be a church bookstore which is (only) open for 20 minutes on Sunday and you may be limited in how many Bibles you can obtain.
“In some provinces there are plenty of Bibles freely available. But in rural or less populated areas, it can be a lot more difficult. We’ve also sometimes seen the prices inflated…For rural workers, even $2 for a Bible may be out of their reach and in these cases we look to deliver the Bibles. Bibles we deliver we don’t charge for obviously.”
How many Bibles does Open Doors take into China each year?
“Well, the demand is not just for Bibles, it’s for teaching materials. This year we’ll be looking at taking in more than four million Bibles and Biblical resources. Out of that, there may be 600,000 to 700,000 study Bibles. They’re in high demand for the pastors. The study Bible – it has teaching notes and a commentary – will help them to prepare sermons far better than just a straight Bible. Also in that four million would be a large number of Children’s Bibles. In China…it’s still illegal to, in their terms, ‘brainwash’ anyone under 18 with religious teaching. So therefore Sunday schools, in practice, are illegal in China. So children’s study materials are restricted. They’re not printed, of course. But there is a big demand for Children’s Bibles and indeed we find it’s not just the children who benefit. Not all the older Chinese are that literate and with the Children’s Bible illustrations, it’s easier for them to understand the Gospel message. So we see a lot of the older people coming to Jesus through the Children’s Bible as well as the children.”
Pope Benedict recently called for reconciliation between the underground and state-sponsored churches in China. What’s your response to this?
“We’re seeing that come together; we’re actually seeing the (state-sponsored) Three-Self Church preaching the Gospel and…it is bearing fruit. I know of Australian teachers who are providing teaching to both the Three-Self Church and the underground church. Catholics, we estimate, (number) 15 million in China and there’s only four million officially, so that would mean the majority of them – 11 million – are underground or in house meetings…(Pope Benedict) would want to see that there’s no recriminations against those coming together…and I think that’s a good call. We believe Christians have been model citizens for China and we think the correct questions are: why isn’t the Bible freely available and why aren’t all churches allowed to be open freely? Part of what (the Chinese Government) claim is freedom of religion and we’d like to see that demonstrated. Why are there restrictions? What are there limitations on what Bibles are printed, etcetera?”
One of Open Doors’ roles is in advocacy. Can you tell us any specific ways you are advocating for the persecution of Christians to cease?
“Particularly through letter writing. Each two months we will have a specific persecuted Christian people can write letters to. Advocacy is still relatively new for Open Doors but we’re finding that, from the requests of the suffering church, this can be more and more effective. To give you an example – there were three Sunday school teachers in an Indonesian jail – they were imprisoned for three years. Well, we had tens of thousands of letters that came to the jail. As you can imagine, if you’re the jail warden and particular prisoners get all this international mail arriving, you’d want to be a bit more careful how you treaty those prisoners. Just from the point of view that they’re not forgotten, it does make a big difference. We’re looking to ramp up more and more in regard to letter writing, not only writing to the prisoners themselves but perhaps writing to embassies; to members of parliament to plead the case for human rights. A lot of the countries where Christians are persecuted claim adherence to the United Nations’ human rights (convention) and therefore what they’re doing is in complete violation (of this).”
Last time we spoke. we talked about your visits to China and places like Vietnam, North Korea and Mexico. Where have you been recently?
“Recently I was over in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, to give it in a nutshell, is 70 per cent Buddhist, seven-and-a-half per cent Christian and seven-and-a-half per cent Muslim…When the tsunami took place…we were able to provide support immediately to the churches. What blessed us is that the churches came together, often for the first time, and there was a strong unity between the churches. And not only that but they shared the aid they received with non-Christians, with their Buddhist neighbours, and that helped bring down a lot of barriers and bring about a lot of goodwill.
“What I was pleased about during my recent trip during July and August was that it has continued. We’re supporting socio-economic development , micro-enterprise type programs: I saw cows, goats, a TV repair shop, a small mobile phone shop, lace making and a small fish stall – small businesses that we’d helped to get running. A number of these small projects were given to non-Christians and I think that even-handedness has helped create a good community feel. And this is what, as Christians, we should be doing. As a church we should be existing for non-Christians, being model citizens and helping the community where-ever we can.
“Providing socio-economic support for communities is relatively new for Open Doors. It has become necessary in many of the restricted countries where, as I mentioned, persecution can involve loss of jobs, loss of livelihoods. With the father – the breadwinner – put in jail, there’s no social programs, no social security, to help the mother and the children survive. So it became necessary for is and we’ve found it very successful in helping the church grow in the community.
“We give a lot of training too in standing strong – lessons that we’ve learned from the suffering church in how to stand strong in the face of opposition. We call it Standing Strong Through the Storm and we’ve even made it available here in the West because we all will come, as I mentioned, against opposition and there are good lessons to learn about how to stay victorious in Jesus regardless of whether you have health issues or financial issues. It works well in both the suffering as well as the free church. In that we teach the essence of what a church is – it’s not buildings, it’s the people.”
Given you are faced with stories of persecution every day, is there ever a time when personally it gets a bit overwhelming?
“Actually it does get overwhelming…It’s a difficult situation. The last two years…we’ve been looking at member care and working with a Christian psychologist because we do need to debrief, we do need to look after ourselves. I’ve woken up at night with nightmares, thinking of some of the stories. I’ve seen photographs of beheaded young Christian girls – these do have a traumatic effect on anyone and I’m conscious of it and want to look after our staff as well as we can. It’s something we do seek prayer (for)…But we’re getting smarter and when we do trips, we now want to spend a bit of time with those have been confronted with traumatic stories and situations so we can share with them and pray with them. At the end of the day only Jesus can shoulder these loads and we’ve got to be careful we put our concerns and the things that make us anxious over to Him.”
And that’s one way people can be involved with Open Doors – they can go on a trip?
“Yes, we are happy to help people to go see for themselves. They can travel to China, take Bibles, meet some of the believers. We look for people who have a heart for travel and understand that…things can change very quickly. You can arrive at a destinations and the whole meeting could have been cancelled because of an arrest or an activity that happened 12 hours before you got there. So we want to brief all travellers that they need to be in prayer right from the beginning to be sure that they’re in God’s will and be sure that God will cover every aspect of the journey and the meeting with the believers. But it is a life-changing event. It changed my life back in 1984 – I’ve never felt so close to the Lord as the time He took my Bibles through a checkpoint in China…
“It is risky. On one trip to a Middle Eastern country, we had a group of local pastors from Australia led by one of our pastors and they were all caught. But Jesus said that ‘All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me, therefore go’. So all they could do was pray and two of the customs officials read the Bible for an hour during the interrogation. Then, inexplicably, they said ‘You can go’. Now it’s totally illegal to take Bibles into this country but they allowed them to take them in – except the two customs officials who wanted to keep the Bibles they were reading. That’s the Jesus we serve – He’s able to open doors. There’s always a way with Jesus.”
While you’re hearing stories of persecution, you’re also hearing stories of the miraculous ways in which God is moving around the world which must be encouraging?
“That is encouraging and there are many things that I don’t understand. I’m an engineer and all I can say is that God’s ways are so much higher than my ways. What I‘ve found in speaking with pastors, even those who been tortured, is that they’ll say ‘Yes, it was painful, yes, it was terrible, but Jesus was with me; the presence of God’. Somehow God gives that supernatural strength, that anointing, that enables them to survive and brings them through. We cannot estimate the power of prayer. I heard a Russian, Alexander, who wanted me to thank all our supporters for praying for him. Now he spent 10 years in a Siberian jail and, as you can imagine, it’s very cold in Siberia. He said ‘I knew when Christians were praying for me, I could feel the warmth of their prayers. Your prayers kept me warm in that cold jail’. He said: ‘Thankyou for your prayers that I survived and thankyou for your prayers, that I am free. And thank you for prayers’ – because we had a seven year prayer campaign for communist Russia at the time that finished in 1989 when the wall came down – ‘thankyou that because of your prayers, there’s no more communism – the Iron Curtain has come down’. And that’s the power of prayer.”
And, you’ve mentioned it already, but that’s one thing that people can do – pray.
“Absolutely. And don’t discount it. We don’t hear enough encouragement. Sometimes we’ve got to have that faith to believe our prayers are heard. We don’t always see the result of the prayers that we pray, particularly for the suffering church, but I think Alexander’s testimony shows just how powerful those prayers are…”
