|
Brother Yun
BACK TO JERUSALEM
God's Call to the Chinese Church to Complete the Great
Commission
For the last number of years, we have heard increasing news
of the Chinese house church movement which has swept millions of Chinese into
the kingdom of God. The members of these house churches are very
missionary-minded people. This is not a new movement. Some like to trace it
back to the very first Christian century. There is a tradition among the
Chinese that at least one of the magi who visited the infant Jesus came from
China. He was the chief astrologer at the court of the Han rulers. His name was
Liu Shang, and he had seen what the Chinese call "The King Star." He made a
pilgrimage that could very well have taken two years, following the Silk Road
to Jerusalem and on to Bethlehem to worship the infant King Jesus. It has also been
confirmed that Christianity came to China via the Nestorians in A.D. 635.
There is a Christian tradition that Thomas brought the Gospel
to India and saw a church established. He then traveled up the East Coast of
the Indian subcontinent over the Himalayas into China and preached Christ for a
number of years, subsequently returning to India, where he was martyred outside
the city of Madras. His grave is still there.
Coming forward to the 20th century (1920s), one of
the first groups to catch a vision of taking the Gospel outside the boundaries
of China was the "Jesus Family." Their five-word slogan encapsulates their
commitment to make Christ known and to practice frugal living: "sacrifice,
abandonment, poverty, suffering, death."
In 1943, another group of house churches banded together with
the name, "Preach Everywhere Gospel Band." These have joined hands together and
are now known as the "Back to Jerusalem Evangelistic Band." It is the policy of
the leaders of this organization not to solicit finances in any way but
to pray and trust God to provide all their needs. In 1947, two men and five
women set out on a long westward trek to the most westerly province of China. Chinese
missionaries were making their way into the Islamic world with the fire of the
Gospel burning in their hearts. Some reports indicate that some of these
missionaries did go beyond the Chinese border, but most were stopped by
Communist officials and forced to return to China proper. They continued to pray,
and plan, and prepare for the day when they could go forward.
In the past few years, the immigration laws in China have
been relaxed. Passports are being issued and exit visas granted, and the first
39 missionaries headed West in March 2000. Their goal was to evangelize a
neighboring Buddhist country. Other Chinese missionaries were making their way
into the Islamic world with the fire of the Gospel burning in their heart. One
of the leaders of this movement said, "Do not pray for the persecution to
stop. We should not pray for a lighter load to carry, but a stronger back to
endure."
Their commitment is to plant groups of local believers who
meet in homes. "We do not desire to build a single church building anywhere." This
allows the Gospel to spread more rapidly and is harder for the authorities to
detect. The area that they are targeting is inhabited by more than 90% of the
remaining unreached people groups in the world. Two billion of earth's
inhabitants live and die in this area, completely ignorant of the Good News
that Jesus died for their sins and is the only way to Heaven.
When the Back to Jerusalem movement was born, the Chinese
church had less than a million members. Today, 50 years or more later, the
Chinese church numbers over a hundred million members, and countless thousands
of believers are responding to the Back to Jerusalem call. They are very much
aware that they will face persecution. Persecution may take different forms
from one country to another, but there will be persecution.
When your church makes missionary outreach to nations that
have never heard about Jesus its priority, you will not fail to be blessed and
revived. The Back to Jerusalem leaders state, "One thing is certain. The two billion
Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus we are targeting in the Back to Jerusalem vision
will never be reached by passionless Christians." They believe it has
rightly been stated that "If you haven't discovered something you are
willing to die for, then you haven't yet found anything worth living for." The
goal of the Back to Jerusalem movement is to have a hundred thousand
missionaries from China going West with the Gospel.
This is not a headless organization. There are leaders who
play a significant role in challenging and preparing these many missionaries
for the task. We are told that there are a number of centers in China where
missionaries are being trained particularly in the languages and culture that
they will encounter. (In particular they are being taught Arabic as well as
English.) Although many of these countries are "closed to the Gospel," they are
being trained to go in the "backdoor" so that the multitudes along the Silk Road
will be reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (The leadership has met on
several occasions and charted out the course of the missionaries in the Back to
Jerusalem movement.)
I want to review just briefly the life of one of the (outstanding)
leaders in the Back to Jerusalem movement. His name is Brother Yun. A book, autobiographical
in nature, concerning this man is entitled The
Heavenly Man. Brother Yun came to faith in Christ during his late teens. He
is still a relatively young man-in his mid 40s. He has suffered greatly for the
cause of Christ in China. He has spent more time in prison in his adult life
than he has enjoyed freedom. Three times he has been incarcerated, and each
time he was severely persecuted and tortured, sometimes in ways which are too
gross to mention here.
Some of the book is difficult for us here in the West to
really conceive. The Chinese church oftentimes relies (very heavily) on dreams,
visions, and other means of heavenly communication. This man started to fast on
his second imprisonment and claims not to have eaten or drunk anything for 74
days. He was reduced to a mere skeleton. Since he was extremely weak, he had to
be carried anywhere he went by other inmates in the prison. But he refused to
break before the interrogation.
At the time of Brother Yun's last arrest, he was meeting with
other leaders of house churches to discuss the Back to Jerusalem movement. Police
broke into the group that was meeting, and most were arrested by the
authorities. In an attempt to escape, Yun jumped out of a second-story window
and, in so doing, sustained fractures of both legs. He was taken and put in a
maximum-security prison. He was beaten with rods, shocked with electricity, and
severely tortured in almost any way feasible in an attempt to get from him the
names of other leaders in the house church movement and the Back to Jerusalem movement.
He refused to give any of those names.
One day as he was being carried to the toilet (his legs still
unable to bear his weight because of the severe beatings and fractures that had
been sustained), he gained strength and wellbeing in a miraculous way. He walked
out of the maximum-security prison-past a number of guards who seemed to be
blinded and through the main gate, which was standing open. He passed guards
who were milling about in the courtyard and walked through the open gates. As
he reached the street outside the prison, a taxi pulled up. Brother Yun got in
and ordered the taxi to speed to the home of a friend. It seemed to him as a
vision, a dream, but the further he traveled from the prison, like Peter, he
realized that this was reality.
There was a great furor in the prison when they discovered
that Yun was no longer there. Roadblocks were set up, and police dogs were put
on his trail. At that moment there was a deluge of rain that apparently washed
away his scent, and he could not be tracked. During that very time, the house
church had been fasting and praying for his release. It was determined that he
should leave China as soon as possible.
He had no passport or other documents. A man who was much older
than Yun and looked nothing at all like him gave Yun his passport and said,
"Here, take this." With that passport Yun traveled to Beijing and, without
prior reservations, walked through all the security points and boarded a plane
bound for Germany. It was there that he at last found refuge. His family (who
had remained in China) made their escape, likewise without proper documentation,
into Thailand.
Sometime later, in an attempt to bring his wife and two
children to Germany, he returned to Myanmar, where they were at that time. This
time he did have proper ID, but he was suspected of being a spy because of some
of the documents. He was put in prison in Myanmar for several months before he
was finally released at the request of the German Embassy and finally reunited
with his family in Germany.
From that time on, which was 2001, he has been speaking
widely in Europe, Canada, and the U.S., representing the Back to Jerusalem movement.
This is a picture of first century Christianity in the 21st
century.
JAD
5/24/06
|
