No Sunday evening prayer this week.
In December, more than 100 members of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China, were arrested, including the church’s pastor, Wang Yi. Anticipating the arrests, Yi published My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience in September. Whether or not you agree with all of it, it is powerful and compelling on many levels and demonstrates the force and clarity that so often come only under persecution. Ease is a drug. Persecution is the slap in the face that wakes the Church from her slumber. A few excerpts:
This on why social and political solutions are ultimately superficial in addressing the human dilemma. “Changing social and political institutions is not the mission I have been called to, and it is not the goal for which God has given his people the gospel. For all hideous realities, unrighteous politics, and arbitrary laws manifest the cross of Jesus Christ, the only means by which every Chinese person must be saved. They also manifest the fact that true hope and a perfect society will never be found in the transformation of any earthly institution or culture but only in our sins being freely forgiven by Christ and in the hope of eternal life.” Ultimately the problem is moral, not institutional.
Or this on bad political leaders. “I accept and respect the fact that this Communist regime has been allowed by God to rule temporarily. As the Lord’s servant John Calvin said, wicked rulers are the judgment of God on a wicked people, the goal being to urge God’s people to repent and turn again toward Him. For this reason, I am joyfully willing to submit myself to their enforcement of the law as though submitting to the discipline and training of the Lord.”
This is becoming increasingly important in the U.S. “For the mission of the church is only to be the church and not to become a part of any secular institution. From a negative perspective, the church must separate itself from the world and keep itself from being institutionalized by the world. From a positive perspective, all acts of the church are attempts to prove to the world the real existence of another world. The Bible teaches us that, in all matters relating to the gospel and human conscience, we must obey God and not men. For this reason, spiritual disobedience and bodily suffering are both ways we testify to another eternal world and to another glorious King.”
And this on the personal cost of following Christ. “If I am imprisoned for a long or short period of time, if I can help reduce the authorities’ fear of my faith and of my Savior, I am very joyfully willing to help them in this way. But I know that only when I renounce all the wickedness of this persecution against the church and use peaceful means to disobey, will I truly be able to help the souls of the authorities and law enforcement. I hope God uses me, by means of first losing my personal freedom, to tell those who have deprived me of my personal freedom that there is an authority higher than their authority, and that there is a freedom that they cannot restrain, a freedom that fills the church of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.”