Beating the State: Third Century Christianity in the Third World Today

Most Christians in places hostile to the gospel aren't confined to buildings, and they don't rely on First World support. The churches in those areas are growing because they are mobile and hard to find, much to the chagrin of government officials.

Gary North discusses these "guerrilla" tactics:

This has received little attention in the West, because this strategy relies on invisibility. The West's intellectuals suffer from a myth of modernism: "If bureaucrats cannot count something, it cannot be important. It it cannot be computerized, it cannot be socially relevant." Call it the NSA's blind spot. Call it the IRS's nightmare.

The strategy is simple to describe: no permanent real estate. There are no permanent church buildings.

If you can't find it, you cannot tax it. If you cannot find it, you cannot regulate it. If you cannot find it, you cannot subsidize it. If you cannot tax it or regulate it or subsidize it, the state cannot suppress it. It's simple. And it is working, just as it worked from Nero to Diocletian. ...

... Consider the challenge of India. There are about 1.2 billion people in India. There is no way to generate capital sufficient to build enough churches to evangelize India in a generation. The same holds true for China. It has to be done with a house church system. There is no other way.

The tremendous advantage that the Communists gave to Protestants in China is that there was either persecution of the church under Mao or the Three-Self movement, which is a government-approved church, whose members meet in buildings that can be monitored by the Communist hierarchy.

This led to the creation of house churches. All over China, Protestants create house churches. Sometimes the government arrests the pastor, but he is replaced immediately from inside the congregation. We don't know how many Protestants there are in China today, but a common estimate is 120 million. In 1973, there were probably fewer than 3 million. We know now what happened. All of this came as a result of the fact that the Communists either tried to stamp out Protestantism, or else they tried to control it by confining it in buildings, where the government could monitor what was going on. This has led to the largest, fastest evangelism explosion in the history of the church.

In terms of percentages, 120 million is 10% of the Chinese population. But Protestant evangelists were in China from the 1860s, and there was not much growth until the serious persecutions began in the aftermath of the cultural revolution of the mid-1960s.

Mao drove all the Western missionaries and pastors out of China in the early 1950s. That was the making of the Protestant church in China. That exodus freed the Chinese church from the legacy of seminary-trained pastors, church buildings, and large congregations.

We're seeing the greatest evangelism movement in the history of the world, yet we're not seeing it. We're not seeing it, because it has no buildings, no seminary-trained pastors, and no hierarchical organizations...yet. There are only local organizations, and they multiply under persecution. They don't have any money, but they don't need any money, so they multiply.

A very interesting read. Check out the full article here.

'Tolerance' in Action

Activists like these do not seek tolerance. They want nothing less than complete acceptance of their lifestyle as well as the elimination of any and all dissenting opinions.

The Evangelist Is No Stranger to Hostility

New DVD Series Takes You to the Front Lines of Spiritual Warfare

Here is a preview of Dispatches from the Front, a new DVD series which offers an up-close look at what missionaries and pastors are doing in regions that have been traditionally hostile to the gospel of Christ.


Extended preview:


Dispatches from the Front is available from Westminster Books.

Chuck Colson Remembered

Atheist Penn Jillette Does Not Want Christians to Shut Up

The following quote from atheist Penn Jillette was featured as an audio clip on Wretched Radio last Monday:

The only people I don't understand are people that say they don't care about the whole issue. I love evangelicals. One of the things I learned doing Penn and Teller: Bull----! on Showtime for all those years is that Christians are really good. They're really good people. You notice there wasn't an anti-Muslim show that we ever did. We did a bunch of anti-Christian shows. That is the biggest compliment I can give. The fact that Christians will really believe...American Christians...will really, really believe in the marketplace of ideas. And I love the fact that there are people that talk to me after the show and pray for me and give me Bibles. I never understand the atheists that say it's OK as long as they shut up. They believe that there is eternal life. They believe you can be saved. What could be more hateful than shutting up?

Onward Christian Soldiers?

While I'm on vacation, please enjoy some old posts from the Contemporary Calvinist.

Onward Christian Soldiers?
(originally posted 05/06/2009)

Consider this report from Reuters:

Bibles in Afghan languages sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan were confiscated and destroyed to ensure that troops did not breach regulations which forbid proselytising, a military spokeswoman said.

The U.S. military has denied its soldiers tried to convert Afghans to Christianity, after Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a bible class on a base with a stack of bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages.

U.S. Central Command's General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty -- including all those based in Iraq and Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.

"I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed," spokeswoman Major Jennifer Willis said at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

My initial reaction was one of shock. The chaplains were the ones responsible for confiscating these Bibles? How could they do something like that in good conscience?

Despite the official denial of the military, it's obvious the Bibles were intended to be distributed among the local population. Regardless, some may argue that the chaplains should have ignored the order. As the Apostle Peter said, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

But as I reflected further on this incident I found it increasingly difficult to sympathize with those involved. While we are called to evangelize other nations, I'm not sure it's the place of an active duty member of the U.S. military to assume that responsibility, even if all that is entailed is simply handing out Bibles.

I have two concerns. First of all, evangelizing isn't in any soldier's job description. Just as we don't expect to see anyone else in secular employment evangelizing on "company time," we shouldn't expect it from our soldiers.

Secondly, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan on a military mission. Killing people and destroying property was the very nature of that mission, and I don't think the spreading of the gospel should ever be associated with the use of military force.

The war we are called to fight is a spiritual one (Ephesians 6:12-13), and the weapon we have been given is the "sword of the spirit" (Ephesians 6:17). Going out into the world to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19) should be done with the willingness to give our own lives for the sake of the gospel (Matthew 16:25, John 12:24-25), not in the process of taking the lives of others. The military, after all, is a tool of the state, not a ministry arm of the church.

More on this story:

Preacher Has Pancake Mix

Tired of being harassed by street preachers? Just start yelling a nonsensical phrase like "You ain't got no pancake mix!" and shut them up. This is a three-year-old meme that will no doubt give way to something else just as idiotic now that one preacher has actually managed to produce said pancake mix.



Note the sad, angry kids with nothing better to do than stand around with makeshift protest signs. Pray for them. Who knows? Hearing this preacher proclaiming the gospel may have planted a seed that is already starting to grow.

The Witness Stick

Gotta get me one of these bad boys!

(via St. Eutychus)

Onward Christian Soldiers?

Consider this report from Reuters:

Bibles in Afghan languages sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan were confiscated and destroyed to ensure that troops did not breach regulations which forbid proselytising, a military spokeswoman said.

The U.S. military has denied its soldiers tried to convert Afghans to Christianity, after Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a bible class on a base with a stack of bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages.

U.S. Central Command's General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty -- including all those based in Iraq and Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.

"I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed," spokeswoman Major Jennifer Willis said at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

My initial reaction was one of shock. The chaplains were the ones responsible for confiscating these Bibles? How could they do something like that in good conscience?

Despite the official denial of the military, it's obvious the Bibles were intended to be distributed among the local population. Regardless, some may argue that the chaplains should have ignored the order. As the Apostle Peter said, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

But as I reflected further on this incident I found it increasingly difficult to sympathize with those involved. While we are called to evangelize other nations, I'm not sure it's the place of an active duty member of the U.S. military to assume that responsibility, even if all that is entailed is simply handing out Bibles.

I have two concerns. First of all, evangelizing isn't in any soldier's job description. Just as we don't expect to see anyone else in secular employment evangelizing on "company time," we shouldn't expect it from our soldiers.

Secondly, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan on a military mission. Killing people and destroying property was the very nature of that mission, and I don't think the spreading of the gospel should ever be associated with the use of military force.

The war we are called to fight is a spiritual one (Ephesians 6:12-13), and the weapon we have been given is the "sword of the spirit" (Ephesians 6:17). Going out into the world to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19) should be done with the willingness to give our own lives for the sake of the gospel (Matthew 16:25, John 12:24-25), not in the process of taking the lives of others. The military, after all, is a tool of the state, not a ministry arm of the church.

More on this story:

Witnessing and Closing the Deal

So much of evangelism seems to focus on "closing the deal" by giving someone the opportunity to pray the "sinner's prayer" and really, really, really mean it. If we don't do that, the perception is that we have failed, and that person may continue in a life of sin because we didn't do our part.

If you have ever tuned in to Way of the Master Radio, you have undoubtedly heard Todd Friel and Ray Comfort witnessing to someone over the phone. This past Thursday they witnessed to Marcus, who seemed very open and receptive to what they had to say. At the end of the call, Todd implored Marcus to repent and put his trust in Christ. He closed by saying, "Take care. We'll be praying for you."

Wait...that's it? No leading this young man in a prayer to ask Jesus into his heart? Listen to what Todd and Ray had to say:



Isn't the gospel itself the invitation? Where does the Holy Spirit come in?

What are your thoughts?