BTJ is working with an underground network of orphaned children in Afghanistan. Since the takeover of the Taliban, there have been many children abandoned and left homeless. The Taliban executed many Afghanis who they considered a threat once they took over, leaving thousands of children without parents.
In response to the tragic situation in Afghanistan, Christian missionaries have started an UNDERGROUND ORPHAN NETWORK. Through a wide network of underground Christian believers in Afghanistan, BTJ is able to provide homes, shelter, and love for children located throughout the country. Every month, BTJ sends funds to help these families buy food and clothing and pay for the schooling of orphaned children who have nowhere else to go.
Through the network, the children are also taught about the salvation of Jesus Christ, which is in direct contrast to the teachings of Islam taught by the Taliban.
Children are the most vulnerable victims of the Taliban regime. According to the Oxford Academic International Health Report, half of all Afghan children under the age of 5 years are living with acute malnutrition, and at least 1 million children are expected to die of starvation.
Four years ago, there were 68 public orphanages in Afghanistan, but today, only half a dozen are left and they are barely surviving, as many foreign aid organizations have fled and taken their funding with them.
“Afghan donors, foreign donors, embassies – when I call them or email them, no one is answering,” reports Ahmad Khali Mayan, program director at an orphanage in Kabul. Mayan, 40, told Reuters news agency at the sprawling Shamsa Children’s Village in the north of the capital that no one answering his call for help.
Through a network of underground house church believers, BTJ is able to help many of these children to survive.
Nadya and she lived in a home with a household where she is constantly being beaten by her father and stepmother. She dreams that one day she can help children who have similar situation as her to be set free.
Through the work in Afghanistan, 3 new families were saved in the month of April and added to the fellowship. The reports that we have received are several pages long full of pictures and stories that are too detailed for us to share.
To help with the orphan project click below:
backtojerusalem.com/support/middle-east-project/
In one of the largest secret moves in the world today, China is about to take over as the king of media in Africa.
China’s Communist Party propaganda arm, Xinhua, now 37 bureaus in Africa, is providing free training to African journalists, is providing free infrastructure and communication equipment, and is even installing satellites for homes in Africa. This effort dwarves every other news agency in Africa —African or non-African.
China is aggressively installing satellite dishes in 10,000 rural homes across 20 African countries, linking them to Chinese digital TV with zero subscription fees. The most basic subscription comes with 30 channels but with a catch. Its only international news channels are two 24-hour media outlets owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
This is media warfare on a different level. A combative media infiltration on this scale has never been allowed before. Imagine if any media outlet attempted to do anything of this nature in China. It would have immediately been labeled a threat to national security.
Today, more than ever, media is a battlefield and that is why China spends billions of dollars a year on global media campaigns in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and America, but nowhere has China made as much headway as they have just pulled off in Africa.
China’s state-owned StarTimes is now the second-largest digital television provider in Africa, boasting more than 13 million digital TV subscribers and 20 million streaming subscribers. The CCP has more media offices in Africa than any other with at total of 37 bureaus.
As a result, African viewers are already starting to notice certain Indigenous news stories disappear and be covered up with Chinese-backed stories. Just the Kenyan outlet alone is cranking out about 1,800 news stories per month and not a single one of the stories are delivered by a Chinese person or shared by a Chinese face. They are all put out by African journalists who are trained and paid by Chinese government outlets.
Joseph Odindo, a Kenyan journalist who was flown to China where he was provided training, is a former editorial director of East and Central Africa’s largest media conglomerate, Nation Media Group. He said that the Chinese are training so many African journalists that it was difficult to keep track. “[We] had to draw up a chart which would enable us to see who was out on a Chinese training at any given time, who was due to come back, and who was next — otherwise you could find half of your newsroom is in Beijing undergoing training.”
For Daily, Mission Focused News check out our website:
backtojerusalem.com/
We exist to help the Chinese Church fulfill the vision they have received from God to take the Good News to the nations in the 1040 window. Most of these peoples and nations are located between China and Jerusalem. The Chinese call this missionary movement Back to Jerusalem.
Check out this 2-minute video to know more:
https://youtu.be/tezudRm6-cY
Like most people, you’ve probably never heard of Brother Ren. Keep in mind that in secret organizations, such as the CIA, the Chinese PSB (Public Security Bureau), or the KGB in the former Soviet Union, recognition and fame are synonymous with failure. This reality is also true for Brother Ren. Any fame or advertisement of his achievements would be a major failure, as they would most likely lead to the shutting down of projects and missionary work in many closed countries around the world.
Brother Ren has been responsible for printing and delivering more than eleven million Bibles in China; organizing the training of over two hundred thousand Chinese Sunday School teachers; arranging for the training of thousands of pastors, evangelists, and missionaries; funneling tens of millions of dollars directly to the mission field; and participating in what may quite possibly be the largest missionary movement in the history of mankind.
You can read the story here (it is too long to fit the community post):
backtojerusalem.com/breaking-news-chinas-plan-to-t…
In a small hotel on the outskirts of the city of Ningbo, Chinese Pastor Amos (not his real name) came into the room wearing a baseball hat pulled down low, dark sunglasses, and a face mask to avoid facial recognition by the countless security cameras between the hotel and his home.
Pastor Amos was taking a huge risk meeting with me: a foreigner.
Pastor Amos is a known Christian. He a part of the local leadership for the government’s Three-Self church and what he is about to reveal about the Chinese government’s plan to change Christianity is not safe for either of us.
Last week, Pastor Amos revealed for the first time some of the details of China’s five-year plan to “Chinanize Christianity.” The plan is not a secret, but what is in the plan and how it will be carried out has not been revealed until now.
In his speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, President Xi Jinping announced his commitment “to the Sinicisation of religion, guiding the adaptation of religion and socialist society to the Chinese context.”
But what did he mean by “Sinicisation” specifically?
That has been a mystery, but Pastor Amos was ready to give specifics.
Pastor Amos is the pastor of an urban underground house church network with about 150,000 members. It is one of the largest urban networks in all of China. Unlike most pastors in the underground house church, however, he is also a pastor in the government-sanctioned Three-Self church. “It is my cover,” he admits, as he shares about his dual role.
“China is making changes that are not being reported in the news,” Pastor Amos said, while sitting across from me in the small hotel room, detailing exactly how the Chinese Communist Party plans to infiltrate and change Christianity from within. Before dismissing the plan as irrelevant to the world Christian body, Christians would do well to know that China plans to use the same multi-pronged approach that has been used to divide the western church with ideological teachings on homosexuality, global warming, abortion, Marxism-inspired social justice, reverse racism, gender affirmation, and even one world religion.
Only a decade ago, these ideologies were largely rejected in most evangelical churches and would be considered absurd to even debate, but in only a short time, not only are they accepted by many mainstream churches, but refuting them can result in expulsion from denominational circles. In some cases, even teaching against these subjects in a Sunday morning service can result in jail!
China has closely monitored the success that these concentrated efforts have had in the Western Church and is now deploying a concentrated strategy to do the same.
In this FOUR PART SERIES, we will lay out China’s plan to change Christianity line-by-line.
Step one has already begun. A panel of religious leaders who represent the government church in China was commissioned to find a way to make Christianity more palatable for Communism. It took 16 months and five rounds of discussions with government officials, with many drafts and redrafts, to systematically order the sinicization of the Catholic church in Beijing.
Archbishop Li Shan has been placed in charge of the Catholic church in China. Unlike the rest of the world, where the Pope appoints leaders, in China the Communist Party appoints the Catholic leaders and the Vatican accepts.
The Archbishop headed the launch of a China-sanctioned exhibition called, “Honouring Heaven and loving the Homeland. The history of the sinicisation of Catholicism in Beijing.” The exhibition consists of 41 panels with more than 600 images that demonize the efforts of missionaries, glorify the history of Communism, and put national patriotism before Christ.
One of the key points is a focus on Archbishop Fu Tieshan (1931-2007), a priest installed as the leader of the Catholic Church in China, promoting the idea of an “autonomous” body free from the “colonization” of Rome.
This effort was not limited to Catholics. Protestant missionaries were also thrown out after 1949, pastors were rounded up and forced to accept the Communist interpretation of Christianity which, among other things, included the rejection of the resurrection, virgin birth, and return of Jesus. Those who refused to accept the elimination of these key pillars of the Christian faith were sent to “re-education” camps. Many did not survive.
This was the beginning of one of the largest genocides in history, with as many as 70 million people dying.
As a part of the sinicization of Christianity, Yanjing Theological Seminary in Beijing, the Bible school that trains the official religious leaders in China, has been identified as ground zero. Only those who are approved by the government can attend this seminary. All of the future pastors and Christian leaders come from government-sanctioned seminaries like Yanjing and are used as the foundation for tomorrow’s leaders to push the new effort.
Yanjing Theological Seminary launched an exhibition hall divided into four parts representing the ‘Awakening’, ‘Practice,’ ‘Development,’ and a process known as the ‘Deepening of Understanding.’
The ceremony was attended by many high-ranking government officials and church leaders who are expected to carry the message to the rest of the official Christians in China… and abroad. This is important to understand – not only does China have a plan to change Christianity in China, but to alter it for the rest of the world.
On April 23, 2024, Representatives from the Chinese Baptist Press (International) met with the China Christian Counsel and the Three-Self Church, the official Communist representatives for Christianity in China. The Chinese government officials used the delegation meeting to discuss printing Christian books.
The availability of Christian books is a big challenge for the government. In order to control the narrative, they have to control what people read. Rev. Geng Weizhong emphasized the publishing goals for the government was to ensure “higher quality books for the future of the Church in China to go deep into the soil of excellent Chinese traditional culture.”
The next day at a separate event, Rev. Hanns Hoerschelmann, Executive Director of Mission One World, and his three colleagues visited China and the China Christian Council and Three-Self Church. The Germans were well received as they were taught the “ongoing Chinanisation of Christianity.”
The desire to “Sinonize Christianity,” really means to Communize or Socialize Christianity.
Read more at our website:
backtojerusalem.com/
There is something happening in China that is shaking the nation at it core. After the last four years of intense persecution, there is a new wave of revival happening in China’s largest cities!
Eugene Bach has been traveling in China for the last couple of weeks and saw a new move of the Holy Spirit and it is hitting a different part of society. Churches are swelling with young urban believers who are hungry for the Gospel message. Disillusioned with the idea of chasing wealth, China’s urban youth are looking for something more meaningful in life and they are finding it in Christ. Eugene saw house churches filled to capacity in office buildings, factories, hotel conference rooms, farm garages, and even a massage parlor!
Eugene is flying straight from China to Stockholm, arriving in Arlanda on the 21st of May, and driving straight to Södertornkyran to share about the newest developments in the house churches in China.
Tuesday May 21
Södertornkyran
Patron Pehrs väg 3
Huddinge
Start Time: 6:30 PM
#revival #sweden #huddinge #stockholm
Something interesting is happening with the underground church in China. After attending several not-so-secret meetings this week, it seems clear that the church is growing both in size and in its defiance of government regulations.
For the last four years, the church has had to go deeper underground to escape government monitoring. In 2019, China launched a concentrated attack on unregistered church meetings and these attacks have forced illegal fellowships to meet in smaller numbers. The majority of unregistered house church meetings were also held on irregular weekdays instead of Sundays because Sunday meetings were easier for the government to anticipate and monitor.
However, last Sunday, I was able to attend several churches in China and it was clear that many of them have started to break the self-imposed rules on attendance restrictions. “A few years ago, we never allowed any group to get bigger than ten people,” Pastor Andrew said (not his real name). “As soon as we had more than ten people, we would break into two groups. Then three. Then four.”
“What happened?” I asked after seeing at least 300 people in attendance at the Sunday morning service.
“We couldn’t stop the people from coming,” he said laughing. “Many of them would rather be arrested than stop meeting in slightly larger fellowships.”
The venue for the meeting was also a risk – the church was meeting in a hotel conference room. “We have paid for the entire floor,” Pastor Andrew said, indicating that the only people in the room were Christian hotel staff and believers.
Since the economic fall of China, there are many international hotels that sit empty. This has created a unique situation for the church in China.
In the evening we drove to a more remote area, outside the city, full of migrant workers. The church, a small tin-framed building sitting outside a construction site, was full of young people but had the throwback feeling of house church meetings from more than 20 years ago. There were paper charts and scriptures written on the wall, small mats on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder attendees cramped into a small space, and everyone wearing simple rural clothing, soiled from working in the dust all day. As I approached the meeting place, hiding in the dark of night, I could hear the singing long before I walked through the door. It was obvious they were not trying to hide the fact that they were having a meeting. All of the windows in the meeting hall were open and the lights from the meeting lit the dark courtyard outside.
Anyone walking by would have been able to hear singing, preaching, and loud cries of repentance.
Even though the last five years have been some of the most intense persecution against Christians in China, it is clear that the church is not just surviving – it is thriving.
More news from the Underground Church:
backtojerusalem.com/
The Bible shares many stories with us specifically from the region of ancient Iran. Among them is the well-known story of Esther, which was set in ancient Iran. Deeper studies of the Bible will also lead us to appreciate that some of the major funding for rebuilding the Temple in Israel, in fact, came from Iran. By studying the Bible more closely, we understand the heart of Iran better, and likewise, by studying the history of Iran, we can understand the Bible better.
Iran is often the target of economic sanctions and military conflict. It is a region full of religious conflict and political turmoil. The best way of bringing change to this region of the world is to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to its very core.
Through reading “Jesus in Iran” you will become intimately familiar with the aspects that China and Iran share, but also learn how the Chinese are playing an instrumental role
in reaching the Muslim world. This book is not written with a Western perspective but with a Chinese perspective. As such, you will be encouraged and challenged to support our Chinese missionaries, as they are tasked to go where few others can go.
Iranian missionaries were, in fact, active players in founding the first churches in China such a long time ago. Since then, time has passed, revolutions have taken place, and the landscape is entirely different as history has played out its cards. Now we find ourselves contemplating a completely new scenario.
Now, it is time for the gospel to go in the reverse direction – from China back to Iran.
If you are a Gate Keeper You can download this audiobook for free here:
backtojerusalem.com/jesus-in-iran-audiobook/
You can also purchase it here:
backtojerusalem.com/product/jesus-in-iran-audio-bo…
It is a privilege to be able to read through the raw field reports we regularly receive from closed countries. The stories are unpolished, often in distinctly non-native versions of English. They have many details about people’s situations, their suffering, and their victories – and they often have photos.
These photos say more than a thousand words. A child who has just lost his whole family in an earthquake. A small gathering of believers, kneeling in a remote field where they can worship without being detected. A mother who has to beg to keep her family alive, her face so thin and tired. A Christian sister forcibly married to an addict, her relatively young face looking sad and 20 years older than she is. A small gathering of new believers high in the mountains of their strictly Buddhist nation.
A child who had to flee, because his parents were about to be arrested by an extremist regime for their faith. Now at a new school, studying in a strange language, his expression is full of loss and pain. Other children who are likewise refugees for their faith look hopeful, even joyful, as they are further ahead on the road to building a new life. And a group of women around a table, praying together in a country where they could be sent to prison for meeting in this way.
Yes, it is a privilege to see these faces and hear their stories, but it is also a hard job, because the next thing I have to do is turn these reports into something we can share with supporters. I delete all particulars, dates, places, sometimes even countries. I remove personal parts of their stories that could identify them. I polish the language. I change or remove their names. I crop the photos., remove place identifiers, reflections in mirrors, and sometimes backgrounds. But the worst part comes last. I place black rectangles over their eyes and a part of their faces, as if they are criminals.
That is what persecution does. It criminalizes the innocent. Refugee children, new believers meeting in a field, orphans worshipping Jesus, women holding hands around a table. I take away their personhood. Now they are just ‘the persecuted’. You can no longer look them in the eye. I have to make them invisible. Not because I want to, but because they have to be protected against those who would criminalize them or their parents. As I cover their faces, I catch myself whispering “sorry,” and “I see you.”
Even though we cannot show their faces, we can make their voices heard. One way we do that is by writing down their stories and publishing them in books. We also have a conference coming up where we will hear directly from the persecuted church. Brothers and sisters will come to share with us what it is like to be made a criminal for their faith. Most have been in prison, often multiple times and suffered unimaginable hardship. They know what it is to share in the sufferings of Christ. Through them, we can look our other persecuted brothers and sisters in the eye again and begin to understand what it means to be one body. One persecuted Body of believers.
Come and join us at our ‘Voices of the Persecuted Church’ conference. Click below for more details:
backtojerusalem.com/events/voices-of-the-persecute…
A-fo did not come from a wealthy family, and every indicator in his life put him on the same forgettable trajectory as his forgotten ancestors. The Chinese keep detailed family trees, but not A-fo’s family. They were slaves, vagabonds, and concubines.
His mother was a concubine, one of several. Some of them were known, and some of them were not. The word concubine is the more socially acceptable way of describing a prostitute who lives with her only customer. A better description is not used to save the concubine from shame, but rather to save the one that uses the concubine.
The concubine is too low in the social order to give a name. She is merely known by the number that corresponds to the order in which she was “received.” A-fo’s mother was known as number two. A-fo’s birth wasn’t noticed, other than the inconvenience it caused when his mother was unable to perform her ‘duties’ during the later part of her pregnancy.”
“His father’s first wife hated A-fo and his mother because she wasn’t able to have any children of her own. A-fo could not inherit anything from his father, because his mother was too low on the social scale. She was not allowed to have any official title in the home, nor her son.
A-fo’s father paid for him to study, but the study time was more to hide him from the wife of the manor than to actually educate him. When he wasn’t hiding by pretending to be studying, he was sitting in the parlor of the forbidden quarters, where the women servants would gather during the day. A-fo would watch as his mother and her friends would do their hair, mend their clothes, and share scuttlebutt about the daily family gossip.
The home where he grew up had a main house where his father lived with his wife. It towered over the north side of the courtyard. To the right was the house of his father’s parents, who had already passed, so it was occupied by his siblings.
To the left was another large home where the first wife’s family resided. At the foot of the courtyard, hidden behind the arched gate, was a line of small structures that made up the servants’ quarters. This is where A-fo lived with his mother.
Since A-fo was a child, he was never allowed to play in the open courtyard. He had to stay in the servants’ quarters or in the fields. He was never to be seen by his father or his wife. If his father or his wife ever saw A-fo, he and his mother would both be banished.
When A-fo turned sixteen, his father died and left very little for his family. He had gathered up considerable wealth as a trader but lost everything when catastrophe hit at sea. After his father’s death, the wife made them both leave the property, but life was not easy for her either. She was strapped with the responsibility of A-fo’s father’s debt. When she could not pay it, one of A-fo’s brothers was sent to jail as ransom until the family could pay the debtors.
A-fo was told to never return to his father’s home. A-fo traveled using the few resources he was given until they ran out. He was about to do odd jobs together with his brother, but in the end, he learned to survive by developing a quick understanding of life on the streets.
He learned that a strong back and a quick mind provided a full belly in Macau. There was so much wealth that circled around the foreign communities that it could easily aid a street beggar like himself to afford a rather comfortable existence.
A-fo got a job running goods in bulk from one business to another businesses. That only took up a few hours of his day in the early morning. In the afternoon he could run a rickshaw and pull foreigners around town from one meeting to another and from one house to another. In the evening he could clean tables at restaurants and scrub floors in factories. Whatever he could do to earn money he did.
Each job seemed to pay crumbs, but collectively, A-fo built up multiple income sources. The streets of Macau, however, were not the easiest place to develop good character, and over time A-fo grew hardened and easily provoked into fits of rage.
After four years of hard work on the streets and building up several income streams, he hit the jackpot when a foreigner wanted to hire him personally. Here is where Robert Morrison, the first Protestant Missionary to China, was introduced to A-fo by Sam Tak. Sam was Robert’s Chinese language teacher. 200 years ago it was illegal to teach the Chinese language to foreigners, but Sam did it anyway with much risk.
A-fo felt an instant connection with the strange foreigner.
Most street hustlers could not be trusted. Robert was constantly being taken advantage of by the locals. They overcharged him for everything, but there was something different about A-fo. From the first day they met, there was a level of honesty in A-fo that was unique. Not only did A-fo not overcharge Robert, but he was able to look out for him and keep him from getting cheated by others.
Of all the times that Robert was cheated, it was never by A-fo and never when they were together. Once Robert could speak Chinese better, he could understand much of what A-fo said to local vendors when they were out shopping together.
“This is not a person you should cheat,” he would say, chastising the local Chinese. “He has come to help our fellow countrymen.”
A-fo was only twenty years old when he came to work for Robert after being introduced by his brother. The education he received on the streets made him one of the most productive individuals in Robert’s employ, but he was not always the easiest to get along with. There were several instances where A-fo would lash out at the other staff members in a heated rage.
No matter how angry A-fo got, though, there was no question in his value. There was no one as resourceful. Whatever Robert needed for his projects, no matter how strange, foreign, or rare, if Robert tasked A-fo with finding it, A-fo would return in a couple of days with the item, simply saying, “I know a guy. . . .”
Not only was A-fo capable of locating the scarcest items, but he had a way of obtaining them for the lowest prices around. As a result, A-fo was put in charge of Robert’s shopping and provisions. Robert wrote of him, “There is one boy, a fatherless lad, the brother of Low-heen. He possesses tolerable parts. I wish to pay attention to him.”
Soon after Robert had printed his first Chinese Christian booklets for an exorbitant price, he worked with A-fo to acquire the entire printing press so that he could do his own printing in the future. Of all the Chinese that worked with Robert, A-fo was the one Chinese who was most adept at running it. Few people had the ability to learn a new skill as quickly or as efficiently as A-fo.
A-fo quickly learned how to carve out the wooden blocks needed for early printing. In this way, not only was A-fo the first recorded Protestant Chinese Christian converted in China, but he was also the first Chinese to use modern printing equipment and the first to print the Chinese Bible. Robert Morrison is remembered by historians as the first person to translate the Bible into the Chinese language, but it was A-fo who printed it.
Robert wrote about A-fo in his journal, saying:
"Three years after, when I could speak better and could write, A-fo understood better and being employed by his brother in superintending the New Testament for the press, he says that he began to see the merits of Jesus were able to save all men in all ages and nations, and hence he listened to and believed in Him.
A-fo’s natural temper is not good. He often disagrees with his brother and other domestics, and I thought it better that he should retire from my service. He, however, continued, whenever he was within a few miles, to come to worship on the Sabbath-day.
He prayed earnestly morning and evening and read the Decalogue as contained in the Catechism. He says that from the Decalogue and instruction of friends, he saw his great and manifold errors, that his nature was wrong, that he had been unjust, and that he had not fulfilled his duty to his friends or brothers or other men.
His knowledge, of course, is very limited and his views perhaps obscure, but I hope that his faith in Jesus is sincere. I took for my guide what Philip said to the Eunuch, If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest be baptized. O that at the great day, he may prove to have been a brand plucked out of the burning.
May God be glorified in his eternal salvation!
He writes in a tolerably good hand. His father was a man of some property, which he lost by the wreck of a junk in the China Seas returning from Batavia. Tsae A-ko, when at school, was often unwell, and did not make so much progress as his brother A-Heen, who is with me. A-Heen is mild and judicious, but is, I fear, in his heart opposed to the Gospel. His attendance to preaching on the Lord’s Day is also constant.
But insincerity and want of truth are vices which cling to the Chinese character."
On the night of A-fo’s secret baptism, Robert wrote:
"At a spring of water issuing from the foot of a lofty hill by the seaside, away from human observation, I baptized, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the person whose character and profession has been given above. O that the Lord may cleanse him from all sin in the blood of Jesus and purify his heart by the influences of the Holy Spirit. May he be the first fruits of a great harvest, one of the millions who shall believe and be saved from the wrath to come."
With the illegal printing of materials that A-fo was running, the “wrath to come” would come sooner than thought.
To learn more about the first converts in China, read BTJ’s latest book – Bury me in China – Robert Morrison: The Man Who Dared to Bring the Gospel to China
www.amazon.com/Bury-Me-China-Robert-Morrison/dp/B0…
Watch and learn what God is doing in China and through the Chinese House Church.
Back to Jerusalem is the goal of the Chinese church to evangelize the unreached peoples from the eastern provinces of China, westwards towards Jerusalem. The vision was birthed among the Chinese in the 1920s, and since that time, the churches of China have strived and even suffered persecution to fulfill what they believe is their integral role in fulfilling the Great Commission.