I have had merely a taste from the vast smorgasbord of emotions, impressions, and experiences that are China. So this brief assessment will give you only a fleeting glimpse of the land and its people. My intention is not to give you a detailed travelog but some facts that may help you in your prayer ministry for the Chinese people and for this mysterious land. The challenges of China are as massive and complex as its population. Please pray as you read.
The Numerical Challenge
One out of every six people in the world is Chinese. And it is estimated that by the year 2025, the population could reach 2 billion. To add to the challenge, the majority of China’s people live in rural villages, scattered through the countryside, making them much less accessible than those in the major cities. Even using liberal statistics, there are still more than one billion lost souls in China, souls that are “loved Above.”
However, assuming 75 million believers in China, if every true Christian there was able to share the gospel with about 18 distinct Chinese people, the whole country would be evangelised!
The Linguistic Challenge
For those used to the relative simplicity of the alphabets used in most of the world, the complexity of the Chinese character system can be daunting. In classical Chinese, each character is based on one or more of 214 radicals (also called primitives or roots). These radicals are arranged in order of complexity from one to seventeen strokes.
The language includes about 600 pictographs (this group includes most of the radicals) which are simplified drawings of an object, and 700 ideographs made by combining two or more pictographs to form a new character. Add to that 20,000 more phonetic characters that are formed from combining radicals brought together for their sound rather than their meaning.
Although Chairman Mao simplified the language somewhat, it still is a bewildering language to foreigners and requires extensive study to become proficient enough to share the gospel.
Add to this The Literacy Challenge. With one-quarter of the population unable to read their own language, this adds appreciably to the difficulty of establishing a solid evangelical work, especially in the rural areas.
The Political Challenge
China’s modern history has been one long struggle for the common people. Following the routing of Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist Revolutionary Army and its flight to Taiwan, Mao Zedong proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. The 1950s and 1960s saw the first Five Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guard was launched, closing universities, killing intellectuals, and attempting to eradicate China’s past. After the death of Mao, a power struggle between the “moderates” and radicals ensued, with “moderate” Deng Xiaoping finally establishing a six-member Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1977.
As one Communist regime after another fell in eastern Europe, calls increased for democracy and personal freedoms in China. This social unrest climaxed in the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, an attempt to suppress the desire to break out of the Communist mould.
However, as China continues to open its doors to Western business interests, it also finds rising expectations in its citizens for those Western freedoms as well.
It seems that China today has welcomed almost everything the West has to offer—except Christianity. While Communism is officially atheistic, the regime has agreed to a peaceful coexistence with other religions—Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, etc. It does officially recognize the “Three Self Patriotic Movement,” a network of state-authorized churches, but continues to persecute those who refuse to submit to the Communist government as head of the Church (a ludicrous position at best).
The Cultural Challenge
The Chinese claim a cultural history reaching back 4500 years. But during the Zhou period (c. 1100-221 bc), at the time of the emergence of Confucianism, there arose the concept of the “mandate of heaven.” China is known to its people as “The Middle Kingdom” because it is seen to sit between heaven and earth, with the right to rule over the other nations. Anyone seeking to bring the gospel to the Chinese may well be confronted with the attitude, “we are the people.”
The Chinese were the inventors of paper about ad 100. They invented block printing in the 9th Century, the moveable press in the 11th Century; and by 1750 had printed more books than the rest of the world combined. Their building prowess, workmanship in metals, agricultural skills, and sciences and philosophies leave us with the conclusion, as one veteran missionary said, that we have only the gospel to give them.
The Doctrinal Challenge
One positive effect of the Communist regime seeking to suppress, or at least limit, religious expression in the country is that they have banned the Jehovah’s Witness and Mormon cults (although they are active in Hong Kong). However, the Chinese Church suffers from its share of false teachings, including home-grown heresies like “Lightning in the East,” “Ling-ling,” “Established King” and “Cold Water.”
The doctrinal stability of the Church there is all the more uncertain because of the dramatic number of new converts (some say as many as approximately 3000 daily—Pentecost every day!). As well, there is a paucity of good Bible teaching material and a very limited number of teachers and shepherds for the new converts. There is a heroic effort being made to bring in Bibles and Christian literature from the West and to produce both printed literature and CDs containing Bible teaching aids within China itself. There are also, for those willing to take the risk, Bibles available at the “Three Self” bookstores in China. But the need is far greater than can be obtained at the present time.
Even when materials are printed, add to this The Logistical Challenge. Once the material is ready, how do you distribute it across the country and get it safely into the hands of those who need it, without endangering them through contact with Westerners? Here we see the need of a sovereign, superintending God who can protect His flock from the wolves and get the green grass to His little lambs.
The Manpower Challenge
China needs the gospel and then biblical teaching for those who receive heaven’s good news. Where will she find those who can help her in this monumental challenge?
How thankful we are for those who regularly take risks travelling in and out of China with help for the believers there. Please pray for their safety and for the good success of their journeys, not only into China but into other needy countries in southeast Asia.
There is also a cadre of Christian business people and educators (especially those teaching English as a second language) who have continuous opportunities in personal testimony because their skills, services or products are in demand there. God give them opportunities, boldness, and wisdom to function well “as sheep in the midst of wolves” that they might be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Mt. 10:16).
Will You Take the Challenge?
There is one category of servants for China in which we all qualify: as prayer warriors. This kind of help requires no plane flights, visas, border crossings, language study or surruptitious meetings.
In my travels among assemblies I hear most prayer for needs in North America, much prayer for Africa, less prayer for India, South America, and Russia with its former sattelites, little prayer for the Muslim world and southeast Asia (and almost no prayer for Western Europe, the Caribbean, Australia and the islands of the sea). Perhaps we need more balance in our intercession to the God “who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).
Here are some prayer pointers for China:
• PRAISE for the surviving, reviving, and thriving of the Church in China. Undoubtedly one of the great stories of the 20th century.
• PRAY for continued opportunities in the gospel, more freedom and protection for the believers.
• PRAISE for changes in opening China to the rest of the world. While this has unfortunately brought growing materialistic attitudes, it has also allowed Christians to enter through educational and business opportunities and bring the gospel with them.
• PRAY for the raising up of godly shepherds and teachers to care for the many new believers, and protection from the false cults abounding.
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr