28

Preparing for Persecution

Most of my encounters with believers and most of the interviews I had done in China were one on one. Knowing the communist government’s policy and practice of relentless and brutal persecution of the faithful, and recognizing the security challenges that I would face on this trip, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have an opportunity like this.

More than one hundred and seventy house-church leaders were together in one place. And all of them are willing to sit down and talk with me. I was thrilled!

Oddly, the opportunities provided by this gathering were perhaps even more exciting for the other attendees than for me. In planning for this trip, David Chen had explained that believers in house churches around the country had several strict rules when it came to security. Through decades of oppression, they had learned that they could usually avoid attention if they never met in groups of more than thirty or so—and if they never met for more than three days at a time. That explained why local congregations met regularly but at different times throughout the week. And that also explained why a local body would subdivide into groups of fifteen when the total group grew to include thirty people or so. The “thirty people and three day” limits were observed as strictly as possible. Larger groups or longer gatherings presented a much greater risk of discovery.

Of course, I had assured David that I would gladly abide by the security parameters that he and his national contacts felt necessary. That’s when he told me that he was already scheduled to help lead a conference for house-church leaders. He suggested that this might be my best and safest chance to be with a larger group of believers together in one place at one time. The opportunity sounded so promising that I had told him that I was willing to contribute much of my task force funding toward the cost of food and transportation for the conference.

What I didn’t learn until later was that the unexpected prospect of those additional resources had prompted the conference organizers to plan a bigger week-long event. They would naturally follow the most stringent security precautions (such as meeting at a secluded farm location). But they also decided that this would be an unprecedented opportunity for training, teaching, and encouragement. They concluded that it was worth the risk. According to David, never before had that many leaders gathered for training, worship and fellowship in the history of that house-church movement. I felt privileged just to be a part of it. I could hardly wait to get started with the interviews on my first full day at the conference.

When the large-group training session started in the farmyard later that morning, I retreated to “my bedroom” with eight of the movement’s leaders. They knew that I would be interviewing one person at a time, but the others wanted to sit in and listen. That was fine with me.

The first three life and faith stories that I heard in the room that morning energized me. The researcher in me came to life. And I was as inspired personally and spiritually as I had been in any interviews thus far. Each of these three men had been sentenced to prison at least once. They had each faced and overcome serious challenges while suffering great hardship for their faith. Yet all three were much more interested in recounting for me the ways in which they had seen God’s power at work in their own house-church movement. God had granted spectacular growth in their movement, and that is what they wanted to talk about most. The number of believers had gone from hundreds to millions.

As I listened that morning, I sensed the spiritual significance of what was happening in China. The story was hardly known to Christians around the world, but it represented something unprecedented. These leaders had been born into an environment of oppression. They had lived their lives under that oppression. Even so, these leaders and their colleagues outside in the farmyard had witnessed the greatest spiritual awakening that the world has ever known. And they had played a part in it. God was using these faithful and courageous followers of Jesus, and countless more just like them, to spread the good news of the gospel further, faster, and to more people than had ever happened before in human history. The growth of the church during fifty years of communist rule in China was even greater than the growth experienced in the church over the first few centuries after Christ.

For some of us, this amazing movement of the Spirit in China had happened during our lifetime—and, likely, we were not even aware of it.

Each interview was exciting, revealing, and instructive. Each interview lasted about three hours apiece—and that was not nearly long enough. I hated to draw the interviews to a close. At the same time, I could hardly wait to see what the next person would tell me. The stories were amazing and almost beyond belief.

As had happened in the former USSR, it was as if the pages of the Bible had opened and the saints of old were once again walking the earth. And I had suddenly found myself among them.

As engrossed as I was in their stories, I couldn’t help asking myself: “What will I do after hearing such amazing witness to the power of God?” My heart broke for Somalia. “This is what Somalia needs,” I silently prayed. “How Somaliland needs an on-fire faith like this! Oh, Somalia, Somalia—how God wants to gather you as a mother hen gathers her chicks!”

I was shocked near the end of that first day. There had been nine long hours of interviews—three incredible interviews. The leaders who had listened to those first interviews consulted with each other. One of them informed me in broken English: “We are very sorry, Dr. Ripken. But we have talked and we have decided that we will do no more interviews like this.”

My heart nearly stopped. I was distraught. “But,” I started to protest, “you can’t do this . . . I am learning so much from you.”

Words failed me. I tried to think what I might have done or said to offend them, what cultural gaffe I might have committed. “I’m sorry,” I said, thinking it wise to apologize in preface to arguing. “But the stories that we have just heard are so encouraging and so important. Surely there are others here at this conference I can talk with.” I wasn’t going to accept their decision easily. I simply could not let this opportunity pass.

The Chinese spokesman smiled and turned to address David Chen, who had been translating for me during the interviews. David smiled back at him and then at me as he translated: “He says, ‘You don’t understand.’”

“He says, ‘They think that these interviews are a very good thing.’”

“He says that you are pulling so much out of them, so many details and experiences from these stories that they have never heard before. They think that there is so much they can benefit from that they want you to do the rest of your interviews out in the compound in front of the whole group. If we do them that way, everyone can listen.”

They ushered me outside and had me sit on a little platform. One of the leaders explained to the group a little more about the purpose of my trip, and he told them how the interviews that we had been doing all day had been so inspiring and informative. He told them that they had decided that everyone at the conference should hear the rest of my interviews. (David whispered the translation to me.)

For my first public interview, the leader called up two brothers who had recently been appointed to leadership positions upon their release from the standard three-year prison sentence for “religious crimes.”

Back in that quiet room, I had just finished three amazing interviews that had each reminded me of something right out of the Book of Acts. Now in front of one hundred and seventy witnesses, I found myself talking to two men who were difficult to figure out. So far, I had been impressed with the wisdom and maturity of the people that I had talked to. But my first impression of these two men was less than positive. They didn’t seem to be spiritually mature. They seemed to be about the most shallow believers that I had met in China.

I am embarrassed to admit it now, but I reached the conclusion quickly that they were spiritual misfits. They seemed to barely know who Jesus was. After talking with these men for about ten minutes, I was looking for a way to end the interview. The fact that this was being done in public was even worse. It was turning out to be a humiliating experience. Finally, after a few more pointless questions, I ushered the men off the stage. They wandered back through the crowd to sit down together under a tree in the far corner of the compound.

I was then given a brother and sister (he was a pastor and she was an evangelist) to interview next. Thankfully, that went much better, but their interview still didn’t quite measure up to any of the ones that I had conducted back in the little private room. I was not happy about the way things were working out.

It had been an exhausting fifteen-hour day. When I finished with this brother and sister, I was ready to quit for the day. I simply needed to rest. I gave a conclusive “thank-you” and started to step down from the platform. As I moved toward my room, one of the leaders jumped up and asked, “Where are you going, Dr. Ripken?” I looked at the translator uncertainly, and I said, “Well, uh, I guess I’m not going anywhere yet.”

The man who had stopped me went on to say, “You’ve gotten so much information out of us already. Now, it’s your turn. We want you to teach us!”

“What is it that I am to teach you?” I asked.

The man said, “Well, you have been to seminary, right?”

I nodded.

He continued: “And you are travelling all around the world to talk to people about persecution.”

Again, I nodded.

“Well, maybe you could teach us this,” the man continued. “We have one hundred and seventy leaders here. They are mostly evangelists and church planters. There are also a few local church pastors. Only about forty percent of us have already been arrested and put in jail for our faith. That means sixty percent of us have yet to go to jail. Would you please share with us how to prepare for prison? What do we need to do to get ready to go to jail for our faith?”

I have always considered myself a well-educated person. I have studied for years and I am fairly well-read. But I have never had a course on how to prepare for prison. In fact, I have never heard of such a course. I silently offered a rather desperate prayer: Lord, just a few minutes ago, I was irritated about how the interviews were going. Please forgive me for that. Now, I really need for you to show up. Lord, I have nothing to teach these people about this subject—unless you can give me some words to speak.

I moved back to the platform and simply began to tell the assembly of house-church leaders the stories that the Lord brought to mind in that moment—a sampling of testimonies from believers who I had met in Russia, in the Ukraine, throughout Eastern Europe, and in other parts of China. I told them the story of another secret gathering—that historic youth conference in Moscow back in the 1950’s—and I told them what I had learned about believers who had hidden the Word of God in their hearts. I told them about Dmitri and his seventeen years in prison; I told them how he would write out all the Scripture he had memorized as an offering to Jesus, and how he had sung heart-songs to the Lord in praise and worship every morning.

As I retold those stories, I watched the faces of the house-church leaders. They were listening in rapt attention. I felt that the Holy Spirit was moving and working in that farmyard. I could sense that these leaders were pulling real biblical principles out of the stories.

Then, in the middle of the final story that I was going to tell, I heard a noise, a disturbance. I looked around and, in the back corner, I saw movement.

It was those two brothers that I had tried to interview a little earlier. They were standing up and waving their arms. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing. I tried to ignore them, hoping that no one would notice the commotion.

But they rushed forward. Weaving their way through the crowd, they made their way toward the platform. I tried in vain to figure out some way to keep them from coming up on the stage. As they drew closer, though, I could tell that they were crying. Instinctively, I moved back and gave way. By the time they stepped up on the platform, they were shaking and sobbing. They said to the assembled group: “Listen to this man! Listen to this man! The stories he tells are true! You can only grow in persecution what you go into persecution with.”

Then they opened their hearts to their Christian brothers and sisters seated before them. What they said sounded like a confession: “You have honored us and you have made us leaders just because the authorities arrested us and we went to jail for three years. But you never, ever asked us our story.”

“We know that when most of you went to prison, you shared your faith, you preached the word of God, and you brought hundreds if not thousands of people to Jesus. You started dozens of churches, and you began a movement that has grown out of the prisons. The Lord used you in a mighty way.”

“But when we were arrested, we barely knew who Jesus was! We did not know how to pray! We did not know the Bible! We did not know many songs of faith. We have to confess this to you today and beg your forgiveness. For three years in prison, we did not share our faith with one person. We hid our faith. And yet, when we came out of prison, you made us leaders just because we had been put in jail. The truth is, we failed Jesus in prison. Would you please forgive us?”

“You must listen to this man! Listen to this man! What he is teaching is true: You can only grow in jail what you take to jail with you. You can only grow in persecution what you take into it.”

There seemed to be nothing more that I could add to that. I silently asked for God’s forgiveness. I had been upset about my interview with these two brothers. Evidently, God had a purpose in bringing them to the front.

While feeling spiritually uplifted and radically changed by all that I was experiencing and learning, my human shell was exhausted from four grueling weeks crisscrossing China before I had arrived at that conference. I had been on planes, trains, buses, and clandestine automobile rides. I had been smuggled over provincial borders and hidden in safe-houses. Many days, I had risen before dawn and stayed up past midnight doing interviews.

By this point, I was exhausted. Still, I knew that this was a holy opportunity. Somehow, I made it through several good, solid interviews before suppertime on the next day. At that point, the conference leaders told me that, since they were now spending all day doing the interviews with me, they needed to do their originally planned training later at night. They asked David and me if we could both lead Bible studies on the remaining nights of the conference. David took Paul’s letter to the Romans; I chose the Gospel of Luke.

It was a sobering honor to teach Gospel stories and lessons from God’s Word to those courageous and faithful house-church leaders. Their lives and ministries were already inspiring and teaching me so much. But even more sobering and moving for me was a scene that I would witness later that week.

Early one morning I was surprised to come out of my room and see a small group of men walking among the entire assembly of house-church leaders filling the courtyard. From a distance I could see that they were tearing some books into shreds and handing loose pages to those sitting on the ground. As I walked closer, I was shocked to realize they were tearing a Bible into pieces.

Noting my reaction, David Chen hurried over to explain: “Only seven of the house church leaders at this conference own their own copy of the Bible. Some of us met last night and we decided that when the conference ended each leader would go home to his city, village, or farm with at least one book of the Bible. So that is what we are doing. We are asking each leader what books of the Bible they have not yet been able to teach, and we are giving them each at least one new book.”

I could only imagine what a joy it would have been for those whose portion of Scripture was the book of Genesis, the Psalms, or the Gospel of John. But I felt a little bad for the church leader who was handed a smaller portion like Philemon.

I had been not only inspired but also deeply convicted by the faith and the life examples of these Chinese church leaders. Even today, looking back fifteen years later, I view that whole trip, and especially that week, as one of the most significant turning points in my spiritual, personal, and professional life.

At the time I sensed that our conference that week would change my life and my work forever. Yet, neither the conference nor my China adventures were over yet.