by Dan Jones
Is your church worthy of being blown up and bulldozed?
Mission Network News is one of the blessings that is broadcast over Kinship Christian Radio and I am grateful for news that I would never hear over the secular news media. Last week, they reported that Chinese government officials destroyed The Church of the Golden Lampstand in Linfen, Shanxi Province, China.
On January 9, the People’s Armed Police went into the church and announced it was an illegal building. They then cleared out the congregants, placed dynamite in the basement sanctuary, and blew it up. They bulldozed the rubble.
This was not a small church. It had been in existence for about a decade and had 50,000 congregants. Various news sources described it as a “megachurch.” Linfen is a city of over four million people.
This was not the first time this church had been persecuted by China’s ruling Communist Party. Back in 2009, officials confiscated Bibles and interrogated and imprisoned some of the congregation’s leaders.
Communist Party officials say the church was demolished as part of a campaign to “remove illegal buildings” and that it was initially “disguised as a warehouse.” The building was five stories tall with three steeples and an enormous red cross on the center steeple.
It is true that the church did not have a permit registered with the government. Anthony Rhodes, with Voice of the Martyrs, Canada, says, “Churches don’t register because [if they do,] they will have to comply with government interference and they’re told what they can teach from the Bible [and] what they cannot teach. It’s really strong government control in churches that are registered. So unregistered churches, they recognize that Christ is the head of the Church and they want to stay true to what the Bible teaches and have the freedom and the ability to teach that to their congregants.”
In other words, the Chinese government destroyed this church because they feared it. Communism enforces atheism because a central tenet of communism is that government, not God and not Jesus Christ, has authority over people. Under Communist rule, the government is god. The church was demolished because it was a threat to the authority of the Chinese government.
Now we may well see this as a terrible event and feel for our Christian brothers and sisters who are persecuted in this way. We can thank God that none of them were killed or injured by this event, but Rhodes raises an interesting point: “I want to put a different spin on it. I want to say that maybe we should also take time to rejoice that the Chinese Church has been found worthy to suffer for Christ. You know, we see that in the Bible that when the apostles were arrested, when they were thrown in prison, when they were beaten — and we see in Church history when church leaders faced the same things — that they rejoiced that they were found worthy to suffer for Christ.”
Indeed!
What the Chinese government does not realize is that they may have destroyed a building, but they did not destroy a church. The Church of the Golden Lampstand, and the Church of Jesus Christ cannot be destroyed by dynamite and bulldozers. The very gates of hell will not prevail against the true Church of Jesus Christ.
If we have seen anything from the history of the persecuted church, what Chinese officials have just done is probably equivalent to a small child who blows on a dandelion’s puff-ball, scattering seeds everywhere.
Which leaves us to ask ourselves if the church we attended last Sunday would be worthy of dynamite and bulldozers.
Today’s Praise
“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.” Revelation 2: 1-3 (NIV)