Chinese Christians Advancing Toward The West - An Army Of Worms Great article on Chinese Christians - "An Army of Worms" - Completing the Circuit to Jerusalem (April 16, 2004)
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley .
Imagine that you and two friends have spent a total of more than forty years in prison for your faith. When you’re released, would you reason that you’ve endured enough setbacks for the Lord—that it’s time to ease up and avoid further confrontation? I would. That’s decidedly not the attitude of three leaders of the house church
movement in China. On the contrary, they believe their years of having to work “underground” have trained them for a major missionary thrust into other areas where witnessing has to be low-profile.
In his book Jesus in Beijing, David Aikman, former chief of Time magazine’s Beijing bureau and a Christian, reports on the “Jerusalem Evangelistic Band.” Back to Jerusalem gets its name from the fact that, since Pentecost, the Gospel has primarily spread westward from Jerusalem—first to Europe, then the Americas, then to the Far East . But there is “no firmly established church” among the two billion people in the area from China’s western border back to Christianity’s origination
point.
So thousands of Chinese Christians sense God nudging them westward to complete the circuit “back to Jerusalem.” Mainland Chinese and Chinese expatriates living elsewhere have already sent more than one thousand missionaries to witness in “the house of Buddha, the house of Hinduism, and the house of Mohammed.” And their announced aim is to send at least 100,000.
Paul Hattaway notes in his book, Back to Jerusalem, that participants call themselves “an army of worms.” They explain, “It will not be an army of elephants that marches into nations like Saudi Arabia , Afghanistan, and Iranwith the Gospel.” Border guards can detect elephants.
Chinese Christians call themselves “an army of little ants, worms, and termites who know how to work underground.” One “worm” adds, “Termites are very hard to detect. They do their destructive work inside the walls of homes and underneath the floorboards. Usually, the owner of the house has no clue that his magnificent structure is being eaten away until it is too late and it collapses in a heap! The termite can do what even an elephant is unable to do.”
Perhaps they realize that in the process of evangelizing the rest of the way back to Jerusalem, they know that some worms will probably wind up “underground” in an additional sense—buried in martyrs’ graves. When asked about safety, one leader answered, “If self-preservation is that important, then there is no point in going in the first place. God looks for children who are willing to die for Him if necessary.”
These Chinese Christians view their forty years of imprisonment, not as a setback but as a “set up,” schooling them and thousands of others to share Christ in the most resistant parts of the world—and the most strategic part as well.
Samuel Huntington, the great Harvard scholar, wrote what now appears to be a prophetic book. He predicted a great clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, and he predicted that Islam would win. He may be right, but then he didn’t take into account God exercising a flanking movement—100,000 Chinese Christians coming at Islam from the East. Isn’t it just like God?
Visit the Breakpoint website at
http://link.crosswalk.com/UM/T.asp?A1.25.21143.2.1160504
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