China's Christian Future Foreseen by Chinese Christian Emigrant "Yu Jie"
Dec 30, 2018 16:33:32 #
This viewpoint by a Chinese Christian, raised under Communism, illustrates how Christian Bible believers in Jesus Christ develop subtle differences in their world and cultural outlooks even as they are united around Jesus Christ, and God's Word.
This gentleman's religious philosophy combines what we in western culture would consider Calvinism with Wesley's Methodism in a Christian Republic.
Zemirah
China's Christian Future Predicted by Chinese Christian Emigrant "Yu Jie"
by Yu Jie
August 2016
At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the Communist party defeated the Nationalists and founded the People’s Republic of China, Christians in China numbered half a million. Yet almost seventy years later, under the Chinese government’s harsh suppression, that population has reached more than sixty million, according to Fenggang Yang, a sociologist at Purdue University. The number grows by several million each year, a phenomenon some have described as a gushing well or geyser. At this rate, by 2030, Christians in China will exceed 200 million, surpassing the United States and making China the country with the largest Christian population in the world.
The beginnings of this immense growth can be traced back to two moments in contemporary Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and the Tiananmen Square massacre instigated by Deng Xiaoping in 1989. Countless innocent lives were lost as a result of these two cataclysms, and the people’s belief in Marxism-Leninism and Maoism was destroyed. These events opened up a great spiritual void, and the Chinese began searching for a new faith.
When the Cultural Revolution ended, it was as if my parents’ generation had just woken up from a dream: It turned out the man they had worshipped as the Red Sun itself was nothing but a cruel and petty dictator who led a wanton and dissolute life. My father was an engineer and Communist party member. He told me when the plane carrying Vice Premier Lin Biao, once heir apparent but then branded a traitor to Mao, mysteriously crashed into the Mongolian plains in 1971, his belief in Communism shattered along with it.
My own awakening came on June 4, 1989, in the midst of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sixteen at the time, I listened with my family to reports of happenings that night secretly on BBC and VOA radio. When sounds of screams, cries, and gunshots poured through the speakers, all the political propaganda drilled into me at school, like “Without the Communist party, there would be no new China,” turned to dust. The night of June 4 opened a chasm between the Chinese regime and me. I swore I would never serve a government that opens fire on an unarmed and defenseless people.
Years later in Beijing, I met the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of Chinese democracy activists made up of the parents, relatives, and friends of victims of the massacre. Professor Ding Zilin, the mother of one of the victims, gave me a copy of a book she had compiled, Interviews with June 4 Victims. On the title page was handwritten: “If my son were alive, he would be like a brother to you.” Her son, Jiang Jielian, was only a year older than I was. Had I not been in the faraway province of Sichuan but in the heart of the democracy movement in Beijing, could he have been me?
After Tiananmen, Deng Xiaoping thought the key to keeping the regime in power was to make a select few wealthy. He made their economic dream of getting rich come true while sacrificing the political dream of many to live in a free society. Like a drug, however, money’s hold on people could only last so long. Man cannot live on bread alone. Beyond his material needs lie spiritual ones as well. Government leaders sensed a crisis, too. They started rummaging through the Confucianism and Buddhism they had tossed out, hoping to reclaim the former moral authority of these traditions for the party.
The tradition of teaching that began with Confucius has guided the Chinese over two millennia. Confucianism emphasizes the importance of cultivating one’s character as well as intellect, of curbing desire and keeping things in moderation, and of having goodwill toward all. “Respect any elder as you would your own elders; care for any child as you would your own children.” Such advice would be well regarded anywhere in the civilized world, echoing Jesus’s commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” On the other hand, as a political tool, Confucianism has been used by monarchs to control and manipulate the people; they ensure absolute rule by appealing to “heaven’s mandate” and “Confucian orthodoxy.” Beginning with the Han dynasty in 141 bc, it was promulgated as the official state religion. Over time, it became more and more fixated on hierarchy and social rank as the source of all meaning and value. Only since the last century have the Chinese started to reflect critically on Confucian thought, beginning with the May Fourth Movement of 1919 when many leading intellectuals introduced Western ideas of modern science and democracy into the country, knocking Confucianism off its altar.
The Communists had strictly ideological reasons for discarding China’s Confucian heritage, but for Mao, the hatred was personal. In his youth he worked for a brief time at Beijing University Library. There he felt looked down upon by professors and students who took Confucius as their model. From this sprang his abiding hatred of intellectuals. He especially targeted them during the revolution, calling them “stinking nines,” the lowest rung of class enemies after landlords, wealthy peasants, reactionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, spies, and “capitalist roaders.” Many scholars and writers were subjected to physical and psychological torture by Mao; a number were driven to suicide. The supreme leader even had his Red Guards tear down Confucius’s temples and dig up his grave.
Today, by contrast, party officials clutch at Confucius like a drowning man clutches at straws. Without ever having apologized for what they did to destroy Confucianism, they now set up so-called Confucius Institutes around the world, no expense spared, to foster their agenda. The institutes offer financial assistance to scholars of China in the West, inviting them on luxury tours of the country in exchange for favorable reviews of the Chinese government. By the same token, they blacklist those critical of the administration and send their names to Chinese embassies around the world, which in turn deny them visas. The Confucius Institutes are political tools for maintaining power, not genuine sources for cultural renewal. Had the Communists not dug up his grave, Confucius would be spinning in it.
Continue Reading: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/08/chinas-christian-future
This gentleman's religious philosophy combines what we in western culture would consider Calvinism with Wesley's Methodism in a Christian Republic.
Zemirah
China's Christian Future Predicted by Chinese Christian Emigrant "Yu Jie"
by Yu Jie
August 2016
At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the Communist party defeated the Nationalists and founded the People’s Republic of China, Christians in China numbered half a million. Yet almost seventy years later, under the Chinese government’s harsh suppression, that population has reached more than sixty million, according to Fenggang Yang, a sociologist at Purdue University. The number grows by several million each year, a phenomenon some have described as a gushing well or geyser. At this rate, by 2030, Christians in China will exceed 200 million, surpassing the United States and making China the country with the largest Christian population in the world.
The beginnings of this immense growth can be traced back to two moments in contemporary Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and the Tiananmen Square massacre instigated by Deng Xiaoping in 1989. Countless innocent lives were lost as a result of these two cataclysms, and the people’s belief in Marxism-Leninism and Maoism was destroyed. These events opened up a great spiritual void, and the Chinese began searching for a new faith.
When the Cultural Revolution ended, it was as if my parents’ generation had just woken up from a dream: It turned out the man they had worshipped as the Red Sun itself was nothing but a cruel and petty dictator who led a wanton and dissolute life. My father was an engineer and Communist party member. He told me when the plane carrying Vice Premier Lin Biao, once heir apparent but then branded a traitor to Mao, mysteriously crashed into the Mongolian plains in 1971, his belief in Communism shattered along with it.
My own awakening came on June 4, 1989, in the midst of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sixteen at the time, I listened with my family to reports of happenings that night secretly on BBC and VOA radio. When sounds of screams, cries, and gunshots poured through the speakers, all the political propaganda drilled into me at school, like “Without the Communist party, there would be no new China,” turned to dust. The night of June 4 opened a chasm between the Chinese regime and me. I swore I would never serve a government that opens fire on an unarmed and defenseless people.
Years later in Beijing, I met the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of Chinese democracy activists made up of the parents, relatives, and friends of victims of the massacre. Professor Ding Zilin, the mother of one of the victims, gave me a copy of a book she had compiled, Interviews with June 4 Victims. On the title page was handwritten: “If my son were alive, he would be like a brother to you.” Her son, Jiang Jielian, was only a year older than I was. Had I not been in the faraway province of Sichuan but in the heart of the democracy movement in Beijing, could he have been me?
After Tiananmen, Deng Xiaoping thought the key to keeping the regime in power was to make a select few wealthy. He made their economic dream of getting rich come true while sacrificing the political dream of many to live in a free society. Like a drug, however, money’s hold on people could only last so long. Man cannot live on bread alone. Beyond his material needs lie spiritual ones as well. Government leaders sensed a crisis, too. They started rummaging through the Confucianism and Buddhism they had tossed out, hoping to reclaim the former moral authority of these traditions for the party.
The tradition of teaching that began with Confucius has guided the Chinese over two millennia. Confucianism emphasizes the importance of cultivating one’s character as well as intellect, of curbing desire and keeping things in moderation, and of having goodwill toward all. “Respect any elder as you would your own elders; care for any child as you would your own children.” Such advice would be well regarded anywhere in the civilized world, echoing Jesus’s commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” On the other hand, as a political tool, Confucianism has been used by monarchs to control and manipulate the people; they ensure absolute rule by appealing to “heaven’s mandate” and “Confucian orthodoxy.” Beginning with the Han dynasty in 141 bc, it was promulgated as the official state religion. Over time, it became more and more fixated on hierarchy and social rank as the source of all meaning and value. Only since the last century have the Chinese started to reflect critically on Confucian thought, beginning with the May Fourth Movement of 1919 when many leading intellectuals introduced Western ideas of modern science and democracy into the country, knocking Confucianism off its altar.
The Communists had strictly ideological reasons for discarding China’s Confucian heritage, but for Mao, the hatred was personal. In his youth he worked for a brief time at Beijing University Library. There he felt looked down upon by professors and students who took Confucius as their model. From this sprang his abiding hatred of intellectuals. He especially targeted them during the revolution, calling them “stinking nines,” the lowest rung of class enemies after landlords, wealthy peasants, reactionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, spies, and “capitalist roaders.” Many scholars and writers were subjected to physical and psychological torture by Mao; a number were driven to suicide. The supreme leader even had his Red Guards tear down Confucius’s temples and dig up his grave.
Today, by contrast, party officials clutch at Confucius like a drowning man clutches at straws. Without ever having apologized for what they did to destroy Confucianism, they now set up so-called Confucius Institutes around the world, no expense spared, to foster their agenda. The institutes offer financial assistance to scholars of China in the West, inviting them on luxury tours of the country in exchange for favorable reviews of the Chinese government. By the same token, they blacklist those critical of the administration and send their names to Chinese embassies around the world, which in turn deny them visas. The Confucius Institutes are political tools for maintaining power, not genuine sources for cultural renewal. Had the Communists not dug up his grave, Confucius would be spinning in it.
Continue Reading: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/08/chinas-christian-future
Dec 30, 2018 18:12:39 #
Peewee
Loc: San Antonio, TX
Zemirah wrote:
This viewpoint by a Chinese Christian, raised unde... (show quote)
Anything but Jesus/Yeshuah. The more they try and bury Him the more He is lifted up. The Underground Church is alive and growing in China. They stand for hours in small unofficial house churches thirsting for the word. Bibles still get smuggled in, pastors still preach, and believers are still slain, yet the numbers continue to grow.
https://youtu.be/0Qi0rTHBobM
https://youtu.be/PUIa674GGCo
Dec 30, 2018 19:08:33 #
Exactly, Peewee, "anything but Jesus/Yeshua ha Maschiach... Jesus Christ the Messiah/God the Son.
In China, the clash of civilizations appears to be in full swing.
The Chinese are resurrecting what they imagine to be Confucian culture in an attempt to stop the religious freedom spreading across the Chinese underground; a result found only from knowing Jesus Christ.
Official Chinese Confucian "culture centers" are being built throughout the world in a futile attempt to choke off the Chinese people's spiritual knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ, as they present the veneer of Confucius to the world as the face of China.
If Confucianism can only be considered an ethical and political philosophy but not a religion in the strict sense, then China today officially recognizes only five major religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.
The government has created the State Administration for Religious Affairs under its United Front Work Department to keep a close eye and a short leash on practitioners, effectively installing itself as the high priest presiding over the internal affairs of religious organizations.
In China, the clash of civilizations appears to be in full swing.
The Chinese are resurrecting what they imagine to be Confucian culture in an attempt to stop the religious freedom spreading across the Chinese underground; a result found only from knowing Jesus Christ.
Official Chinese Confucian "culture centers" are being built throughout the world in a futile attempt to choke off the Chinese people's spiritual knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ, as they present the veneer of Confucius to the world as the face of China.
If Confucianism can only be considered an ethical and political philosophy but not a religion in the strict sense, then China today officially recognizes only five major religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.
The government has created the State Administration for Religious Affairs under its United Front Work Department to keep a close eye and a short leash on practitioners, effectively installing itself as the high priest presiding over the internal affairs of religious organizations.
Peewee wrote:
Anything but Jesus/Yeshuah. The more they try and ... (show quote)
Dec 30, 2018 21:01:20 #
Peewee
Loc: San Antonio, TX
Zemirah wrote:
Exactly, Peewee, "anything but Jesus/Yeshua h... (show quote)
Plus Google is planning on selling them the tech to spy on every citizen.
Dec 31, 2018 09:22:20 #
Zemirah wrote:
This viewpoint by a Chinese Christian, raised unde... (show quote)
Totally awesome article thanks for sharing Zemirah and Peewee as well we need that revival in America as well.
Dec 31, 2018 10:14:15 #
Some of us forget how good we have it here. We're not persecuted as they are in other countries.
Amazing what's happening in China. Here's some footage of some Chinese people getting bibles for the first time -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXDcdMNE-I
Amazing what's happening in China. Here's some footage of some Chinese people getting bibles for the first time -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXDcdMNE-I
Dec 31, 2018 10:18:52 #
Rose42 wrote:
Some of us forget how good we have it here. We're not persecuted as they are in other countries.
Amazing what's happening in China. Here's some footage of some Chinese people getting bibles for the first time -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXDcdMNE-I
Amazing what's happening in China. Here's some footage of some Chinese people getting bibles for the first time -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXDcdMNE-I
Awesome footage there Rose42 now if only in America we could see that same enthusiasm it would be wonderful. The progressives are doing everything in their power to destroy the Christians in America and they are succeeding I am afraid.
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