July 18, 2000

Dear Ministry Friend,

I just returned from smuggling Bibles into Communist China. I found a small missions organization that had contacts with the underground church there, and teamed up with 12 other people with similar vision to take in Bibles. We had a total of 26 suitcases full of study Bibles for pastors, regular Bibles, tracts, and worship tapes (all in Chinese), plus many of my teaching tapes. In addition, I took in a high-speed tape duplicator which I was told will be run almost 24 hours a day, meeting the needs of believers in at least 25 churches.

We prayed and fasted before landing in Beijing. God miraculously got all 26 suitcases through airport customs without being x-rayed or opened!

I visited 3 underground churches and met many leaders of the persecuted unregistered Christian movement in China. Revival is truly occurring. There were less than 1 million Christians in China when the Communists gained control in 1949. There are now 70 million believers. One village I visited had no Christians 2 years ago, now 60% of the village is saved.

The Communists allow an occasional "registered" church to exist to give the West an impression of religious freedom — and to be able to control what is preached and practiced. In a large city I went to with a population of perhaps 700,000, there was only one registered church allowed. Open Doors Missions estimates that only half of the "pastors" of the registered churches are even saved, so you can assume many in the congregations are not. When I visited a registered church, I seized the opportunity and gave my testimony, shared the plan of salvation, and led the entire group assembled in a verbal salvation prayer. Normally, evangelism is forbidden, and it's against the law to minister to anyone under the age of 18 (however, many children and youth were present for that special afternoon service). I was told that secret police were present for all the services, but spiritual hunger of the people caused them to not fear arrest.

One underground pastor came to our hotel at night. He had been arrested four different times, and had just been released after a 2 year sentence for his faith. He had been beaten many times, was missing a tooth, and looked many years older to those that knew him previously. He was eager to receive Bibles, and had personally distributed tens of thousands.

The government allows the printing of a very limited number of Bibles each year to give the appearance of religious freedom. They are divided up into small allotments for each registered church and delivered once every three months. Even though the believers usually risk having their name and address known to the government in order to publically buy one, their spiritual hunger results in all the Bibles being gone in a few days. I had meals on two occasions with major leaders of the underground church. Pastor X. had been in prison over 23 years, was beaten regularly, and was once tortured 74 days in a row for at least 7 hours a day because he would not renounce his faith. When he felt he could not take any more, he unscrewed the lightbulb in his cell and tried to electrocute himself. However, when he found the current was too weak to kill him, he cried out to God and the torture ended. His plight became known to Voice of the Martyrs who started a letter writing campaign to the United Nations. Because of pressure from the U.N., China released Pastor X. He has been arrested twice since, but still ministers and now works to get other Pastors released from prison.

I also had lunch with a 93 year old retired Chinese medical doctor named Mabel. She is called the "Corrie ten Boom" of China because she hid Christians in her home (including Watchman Nee and his wife for over a year) during the Communist crackdown in the 1950's.

I also had supper with Pastor Y. who was in prison over 21 years for his faith. His wife raised his six children during this time by herself while the government would not let her work a paying job. Pastor Y. prayed, and was never sick even one day during his 21 years of forced labor. God has given him great favor and he now pastors his house church in Beijing with only occasional problems from the government because he is so well known by visitors from the West.

Beijing has a population of over 14 million, and the government only allows 7 registered churches — one for every 2 million people! So unregistered pastors squeeze 50 to 100 people in their houses for secret church services all over the city. I met 3 Americans at one such service who had been arrested the night before for passing out tracts. They had their Visas canceled and had been given 5 days to leave the country. Such is life under Communist rule.

I went to Tiananmen Square, the sight of the 1989 massacre of the students for freedom. I first did a "Jericho" prayer walk around it. Right when I fully completed the prayer walk, I was able to strike up a conversation with a Chinese artist who could speak English. Of the 1.2 billion Chinese, over 500 million have never even heard the name of Jesus. I asked the Chinese man if he knew what Christians were. He said, "Is that some kind of taxi?" I explained the Gospel to him and when I was through, he prayed a salvation prayer!

I also prayed over other Chinese spiritual strongholds such as the Forbidden City (site of palaces of previous Chinese leaders), the Temple of Heaven (site of occult ceremonies each year), the largest Buddhist temple in China, and other such locations. I prayed and laid hands on the Great Wall of China, which is over 3,600 miles long. It is a spiritual symbol of the rich and powerful oppressing the poor. (Peasants were forced labor to build it to protect the leaders of China). Hundreds of thousands of peasants died during its construction — they were buried in the wall itself resulting in something like 100 bodies per mile. It is really a 3,600 mile long tomb!

One special thing God did was related to our airline connection in Seoul, Korea. We had an overnight layover, and got special permission to go to the 4 kilometer wide DMZ (border of North & South Korea). We launched special, flat plastic helium-filled balloons with the Korean Gospel of Mark printed on them for the North Koreans. But we also obtained permission to go down into a long cave dug southward under the border by the North Koreans in preparation for an invasion of South Korean. We were able to go north in this tunnel to within 170 meters of the actual border — we were literally under the DMZ! We laid hands on the soil and had a mighty prayer meeting for God to hold back a Communist invasion from the North. (A little known fact to Western media is that just before Chairman Kim of North Korea recently met with the South Korean President to try to attract Western aid for his starving country, the North Korean Chairman launched a campaign to kill leading Christians in North Korea. Over 1,000 had been killed in the 3 weeks leading up to my trip. Koreans were referring to it as a "river of blood.")

I previously had a scale of 1 to 10 to measure commitment to the Lord. But some of the pastors I met must have registered something like 28, so I have revised my scale! I hope their testimonies inspire your faith like they do mine.

This trip to take "Words of Life" to a desperate and dangerous area of the world was a great success. My primary focus is the spiritual need of America (which Communism threatens), but every believer should support world missions in one way or another as God leads.

Thank you to everyone that prayed or gave in any way for this outreach. Many lives will be changed for eternity. Together, we are making a difference with the Word of God.

Reaching Farther,

Dale Leander