God's Double Agent (24 page)

“America,” he began, “is a capitalist empire, which has oppressed the people of China for a hundred years.”

We listened in disbelief as he delivered a scathing sermon against American imperialism without even mentioning the odd circumstance of the day. For that matter, he didn’t even mention Jesus. At the end of the diatribe against the United States, he
explained that he was going to be the new pastor of the church. It was like an afterthought, similar to an announcement for a potluck. He even explained that Pastor Yudong had been asked to resign because he was too elderly to lead a church of our size.

“But Pastor Yudong is ten years younger than this guy,” I whispered to Heidi.

The entire congregation began murmuring, and the elder pastor held up his hand to quiet us. “Pastor Yudong is not fit to serve here,” he went on. “He is—”

Just then, a door opened on the stage and Pastor Yudong jumped out from a secret hallway. “I’m still here!”

Apparently, he’d snuck out of his home under the cover of darkness, broken into the church, and hidden in a secret corridor that connected the hallway to the stage. All night, he’d crouched there waiting for his opportunity to tell the church what really happened. And this was his moment.

At the sight of the brave pastor, the congregation collectively gasped. A few people screamed in surprise, some stood to their feet, some applauded, others began yelling, and still others prayed aloud right there in their seats. The seventy-year-old walked to the microphone right in front of the Communist officials and began explaining what happened.

“I wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye to you, my beloved congregation of so many years,” he said.

As the pastor was pouring his heart out, one official jumped up, grabbed his microphone, and pushed him aside. The front five rows of the church that were filled with people I’d never seen before were actually undercover police officers, sent to keep order in case of a riot. They stood and began protecting the stage from congregants who were rushing to the defense of the aged pastor.

His wife, sitting in the congregation, stepped up to defend her husband but was pushed down. She grabbed at her heart as she fell. Right in the middle of the church service, she began
having a heart attack. Several congregants tried to make their way to her, but the officers blocked any rescue attempts. Finally, a few people got through and tried to take her to the hospital. They didn’t get very far. The officials yelled out to the police, “Arrest anyone who tries to save her!”

The officers immediately apprehended the people rushing to get to her, threw them into police cars, and arrested them. The congregation was ordered to remain in the building, while the pastor’s wife was dying in front of our eyes. A man in the congregation had gotten out a video camera, and the police tackled him and began beating him.

My friend sitting next to me looked at me and said, “Let’s find a phone.” I led him to the back of the church and watched for officials as he picked up the phone and called the emergency line. When the operator answered, he said, “Please send an ambulance. A woman is having a heart attack!”

“What is your location?”

“We’re at Gangwashi Church on Xidan Street.”

My friend pressed down the receiver over and over. “It went dead!” he told me.

He slammed the phone down, then quickly dialed again.

“Why did you hang up?” he yelled. “A woman’s dying!”

“Sorry, we were told not to service that area today.”

The phone went dead again. Not only had the government forcibly retired our pastor, they had also prepared for a bloody riot and wanted to be able to deny us all assistance.

My friend’s face grew red in fury and he banged the phone against the wall. He ran out into the street and flagged down a taxi. When the cab stopped, he leaned into the open window and said, “I need you to take a woman to the nearest hospital!” However, just as he got the words out of his mouth, the police ran up to the car and commanded it away.

“Wait!” he yelled, but it was no use. The police had set up a perimeter around the church and cabs weren’t allowed to enter.
He knew the pastor’s wife didn’t have much time, so he ran out beyond the perimeter, saw a taxi, and literally jumped on its hood. “I need you to take this woman to the hospital,” he yelled from the hood.

“We aren’t supposed to stop here today,” the driver protested.

“Well, you just did!”

After forcing the cab to the gate of the church, the congregants who hadn’t been arrested managed to carry the pastor’s wife to the car and gave the driver a handful of cash. “Take her,” they yelled, and he sped off just as the police reached the scene. My friend, after successfully getting her into the cab, was thrown to the ground and arrested.

In 1989 I’d gone to Tiananmen Square because my hope was still in government reform. Only when the tanks started crawling over people did I lose hope in the government’s ability to transform. That Sunday was my “spiritual Tiananmen Square.” As we stood there with our mouths hanging open in shock, we saw atheists barking commands to the police, silencing a man of God, and leaving an elderly woman to die.

Our petition to God was answered. No matter how beautiful the services, the ultimate lord of the Three Self Patriotic Church was communism and God had no place in it.

17

Before that terrible Sunday, I believed I might be able to work within the government-approved framework and spread the gospel. But after the crackdown at Gangwashi Church, I knew it wasn’t possible. I also learned that Pastor Fong, who conducted the youth Bible study at Hadian Church, had been dismissed because he preached from all of the Scriptures instead of just the sanctioned ones. After the Communist Party ousted him, he continued to teach Christians in secret. One day, when he was walking home from ministering to a house church in a suburb of Beijing, he was stabbed in the chest. A police car drove by as he was bleeding on the sidewalk, and he waved his arms, trying to get assistance. The policeman looked at Pastor Fong and kept on driving. Thankfully, another person offered assistance and he survived.

The Communist Party wouldn’t tolerate my beliefs. The incident at Gangwashi Church clarified that for me. Pastor Yudong’s wife did make it to the hospital and survived her heart attack. The man who dared to try to videotape the riot was tailed for months and beaten for his efforts. Many congregants were like me and simply decided that government-sanctioned churches were not really headed by Christ. After that service, prison felt inevitable, like a shadow constantly following and threatening to overtake me.

I felt it in my bones. I was going to go to jail.

On a particularly anxious day, I went to visit my friend and mentor Jonathan Chao, who was visiting Beijing, and told him how I was feeling.

Though Jonathan was born in northeastern China, his parents were Presbyterian missionaries who escaped before the Communist Party took power. He was raised in Japan until his teens, when his father, Dr. Charles Chao, moved them to California in 1958. There, his dad was a pioneer in translating reformed Christian literature into Chinese, which he then smuggled back into his home country. Jonathan, in the meantime, was educated in America, receiving a degree from Geneva College, a Master of Divinity degree from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He knew he wanted to be a missionary to China for most of his life, and after the Cultural Revolution he quietly began to train Christian leaders in China despite the fear of government reprisals. He founded an organization called China Ministries International (CMI), which is how our paths crossed.

Under Jonathan’s direction, CMI sent a few missionaries to explore ministries on university campuses and among Chinese intellectuals. Since I was in Beijing ministering to students, I met with his group and later met with Jonathan himself.

Although he was very accomplished academically and spiritually, he was incredibly modest, a true missionary, a servant, and a scholar. The outside world didn’t know his name, but the Chinese government considered him public enemy number one. Not only did they dislike him because he was helping spread Christian teachings and doctrines, they hated how he drew attention to social and political issues as a scholar. He had a ready smile for everyone he encountered, but his innocent appearance concealed his very subversive trade of evangelizing China.

“If you’re ever arrested,” he said, “just blame it on me.”

“I don’t want to throw you to the wolves,” I protested. “If I blamed you, they’d come after you.”

“I have more protection than you. Plus, if you give them information about me, perhaps they will treat you less harshly.” He took off his glasses, which normally perched steadily on his round, full face, and rubbed his eyes. His eyes were red, but—then again—he always looked like he could use more sleep. When he put his glasses back securely on his nose, he said, in perfectly accented Mandarin Chinese, “I’ll be all right. I’m an American citizen.”

I knew what he said was true. He was the most influential overseas Chinese Christian in the development of the Chinese house church. The term “house church” was actually first introduced to the West by Jonathan, who started his research and mission to China even before they formally opened its door after the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

Later that evening, I talked to my new bride. “The Lord promised He won’t give us suffering our faith can’t endure,” I said. “But I don’t want to go to jail.”

“I don’t either,” Heidi said.

I told her about my conversation with Jonathan, who so far had also evaded prison.

“Let’s pray,” she suggested. “Let’s ask God to give us a certain amount of time before we’re arrested.”

“How long?”

“Long enough to mature us,” she said. “We’ve only just begun to understand the gospel. I don’t know if I could survive prison!”

And so, we got down on our knees and prayed, “Dear Lord, please grant us three years to do Your work and to begin to understand the richness of the gospel.”

“Well, if the Lord gives us enough time before we go to jail,” we said, “we can do many things for the kingdom.” In a way, we
bartered with God. As long as we had freedom, we were going to advance the gospel.

And so, we set to work.

During the day, I taught at the Communist Party School. My classroom was located in the same building as our apartment, and I soon felt pretty comfortable in my new position. My class had about five rows of desks facing the blackboard, and my desk was off to the side at the front of the classroom. If my students knew I was not a Party member, they didn’t seem to care. These future Communist leaders were nice and generally polite, but I could tell some of them weren’t incredibly interested in the subject.

Two young men in particular, Dingbang and Feng, sat in the back and were always goofing off or laying their heads on their desks. At first, I tried creative ways to engage them. When that didn’t work, I tried to be stern. Finally, after they didn’t do their homework on several occasions, I figured they were the sons of some heavy hitters in the government and would be okay whether or not they could speak English. Most students, however, realized English was another tool to help them rise through the ranks of the Communist Party and were diligent in the classroom. It didn’t take much preparation for me to teach them English, so I quickly settled into a routine that didn’t require much outside work. This, of course, was my plan all along. With such an undemanding day job, I had more energy to spread the gospel.

In the evenings, Jonathan, Heidi, and I were involved in all sorts of illegal religious activity. As the church spread, Jonathan wanted to make sure that everyone was both a missionary and a scholar. He was from a Presbyterian family and consequently was very serious about not only spreading the gospel but also teaching people the correct theology. One summer, he organized clandestine training in modern Chinese church history in my reconstructed restroom-apartment. Right there at the Communist Party School, he taught new Christians about the history of the People’s Republic of China, how political changes affected
religious policy, and how house churches could be a powerful response to those policies.

Jonathan and I also organized secret training for our campus ministry co-workers in a small restaurant near a university campus in Beijing. Jonathan and his father smuggled in many books and videos from well-known Chinese evangelist Dr. Stephen Tong, which they used to teach about a Christian reformed worldview.

“We need more copies of these videos,” the ministers said after receiving their training. I didn’t have the technology to copy videos at the time, so I went to the Communist Party School’s video publication center, the China Youth Video Publishing House. It was Beijing’s main publisher for Communist Youth League’s propaganda video materials, so we had to be discreet.

We befriended two young men who worked there and convinced them to copy hundreds of evangelistic videos during the night. They agreed to work for free, not because they were Christian sympathizers but because they were thrilled to see illegal videos. However, while they made copies of the films, night after night, the message took hold of their hearts. There, in the Communist propaganda department, they were secretly converted.