Cal’s Comments: China Report - April 30, 2011

By Cal Zastrow

“Mao is god,” exclaimed one construction engineer to the witnessing efforts of my 14-year-old son. Learning how to witness and not quick to quit, Jimmy asked respectful questions, listened, and declared the glories of King Jesus to this educated man who eventually accepted a Scripture booklet to study.

Our team of fifteen successfully got in over one ton of Chinese study Bibles and Scripture booklets. The Bibles were quickly transfered to persecuted Christians while we split into sub-teams to literally drop the booklets into targeted cities and towns in western China. Tens of thousands of Chinese people awoke to find God’s Word sitting outside of their doors. The Bibles and booklets are not illegal, but the Communist government there has a “policy” against directly evangelizing or distributing God’s Word without a “permit.” No, they don’t give permits. We witnessed one-on-one during the days and covered the towns with the booklets in the nights. Years ago, we stopped counting after fifty million homes were reached this way with Gospel tracts/booklets.

One of our sub-teams entered a town to see the police and army putting down a demonstration of Tibetans weary of Chinese oppression and tyranny. They left without being able to evangelize there. One thing the Chinese have shown progress in is closing off such cities to foreigners with cameras. Another sub-team had the police barge into their hotel room, without knocking, to ask lots of questions. Thankfully, they were not arrested. Some nights, policemen stood outside of hotel room doors in order to follow the foreigners wherever they would walk to. Although such events slowed us down, we got all of the booklets distributed except for one hundred pounds. These boxes were confiscated in Kashgar by eager policemen who caught Denny’s sub-team after they had only placed three tracts one night. Arrested, interrogated, and held at their hotel, the three young ladies laughed when the police asked if Denny was their “master.” They really laughed when the serious detective belched loudly during their interrogation at the police station. They witnessed for Christ before being turned loose the third day. We welcomed them to join up with our sub-team (my daughter, son, and I) in another city.

There are always new surprises when delivering Bibles and tracts inside of Communist countries. I’ll mention two. When on a train, it is par for a policeman to walk through and demand to see identity cards from everybody. This time, the policeman put their cards up against his small computer. The computer would read the cards and pop up all recorded information about these people. The second surprise was a van I was asked to drive, which facilitated getting twice as many booklets safely delivered, but got me lost several times in the middle of the night. While turning around in one driveway at 1:00 am., the van wouldn’t go into gear. Adding to the stress was seeing the parked police car up the driveway. The Lord answered our heartfelt prayer to help us get out of there quickly.

My daughter, age 17, and my son, really enjoyed dropping Scripture booklets through the open van windows on to more porches than they could count. We especially targeted the mosques and Muslim neighborhoods with God’s Word and intercessory prayer. Seeing drunk Muslim or Chinese men staggering around the streets late at night was not pleasant. It was all the more motivation to evangelize people trapped by religious, political, and cultural lies.

No, we weren’t in Beijing when the police were arresting people for attempting to go to the unregistered Shouwang Church. If you risked being arrested, fined, fired from your job, kicked out of college, threatened, or beaten, would you still go to worship Jesus with other committed Christians? When these Chinese Christians are so highly motivated to worship, fellowship, and evangelize, we are highly motivated to stand with them and bring in the study Bibles and tracts that they are requesting.

No, we weren’t there when three Christians were arrested for reading the Bible in public last week, but you can watch it here. (Be sure to note the location).

Liberty in Christ from sin is a great blessing, but so is liberty from man’s tyranny and oppression. Forced baby-murder, theft of property, torture, imprisonment, and persecution have been the usual fare for many Chinese Christians. Let’s stop clucking our tongues and shaking our heads at how bad the Communists are. Let’s pray for them, and go evangelize them! Don’t wait around while tyrants take more of your liberties away in the U.S.A. Live liberty!

Yes, it drove us nuts when Jimmy kept blowing on the yak horn he bought, but it blessed me that he was reading the book, “Do Hard Things” while he was doing them. I can’t think of a better vacation with my children than evangelizing China.

We were invited to guest speak at a school in some English classes. The students greatly enjoyed the pennies we gave them. We greatly enjoyed having them read our national motto, “IN GOD WE TRUST,” and explaining to them what that means. May it become our national practice again. May it become China’s.

Lastly, I thank those of you who prayed for our team. Please keep praying for the Chinese people and for more Christians to hear the call to finish the job of global evangelization. Is God calling you to foreign missions?