My Trip to China – I Saw God Move and People Set Free
On my mission trip to China I saw a vibrant Christian community growing and alive in a country where the Government controls, restricts, and even persecutes Christians. I saw God moving among His people and I found myself comparing my Church experience in America with the issues brothers and sisters in the underground Church in China deal with daily, including deliverance and healing. Here is my report of that trip and how I see the Church in America in light of what I found in China.
Part 1 of 3 — Christians in China
Tuesday evening I returned from a 2-week trip to China. I travelled with my friend Sidney (Not his real name. I am using a pseudonym for his protection) and one of his children. Our purpose was to visit two ‘churches’, one each in a major Chinese city, to teach workshops on spiritual deliverance, emotional healing, and physical healing. Each workshop consisted of lectures, live demonstrations, and practice sessions. Our aim was to teach these techniques, thus giving the participants the ability to perform healing for themselves and others.
It was a great trip! Your prayers made such a difference. There were times of great peace and power and I knew in those moments that someone was praying for us. I also felt your prayer protection. Thank you!
The teaching was well received. During the practice sessions we saw tremendous spiritual deliverance, which sometimes included physical manifestations. A lot of people were set free. Judging from the practice sessions and sessions that Sid and I conducted, there was even more emotional healing. We saw or heard of people being set free from anger, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, and other destructive emotions. There was less physical healing, but we did see some of that as well.
We taught and interacted with about 150 people in the two workshops. Most were Chinese, but there were some American mission workers. Everyone was gracious, welcoming, and excited that we had traveled from America to be with them. The first workshop we taught had about 100 participants. Many of them were from the city in which the workshop was held. But some participants came from other parts of China. The second workshop, in another city, had about 35 participants. It was here that we met some amazing American missionaries serving in that city or preparing to go to other cities in China, and India.
We had powerful times of worship, great fellowship over lunches and dinners, and a chance to see, first hand, God at work among believers in a country that restricts the practice of the Christian faith.
China has a two-tier system of religion. On the one hand, the Chinese government recognizes a state-controlled ‘Christian’ Church. This government-sanctioned Church is allowed to hold worship services, but controls what the Church preaches and how it interacts with the country. The highest authority in this Church is the State. On the other hand, in order to worship Jesus freely, underground churches have formed. I gathered from limited conversation with Chinese Christians that these churches are mostly house churches, although some meet once a week to worship as a larger congregation. In this sense, you might call them cell churches. At least some of these individual cell churches are linked together into networks that share resources and encouragement.
I didn’t sense that the members of underground churches were in danger of being arrested or physically harmed as long as they stayed ‘underground’ – but I have since heard testimony that some leaders of the underground church have been imprisoned. They were definitely careful about what they talked about openly (for example, on the street or in lines at stores, restaurants, or in train stations). They were also wary of infiltrators working their way into the fellowship to report on their activities. Many of the participants in the first workshop were staying in a hotel about a 30-minute walk from the venue where the workshop was being held. My host asked me to wear my cap and sunglasses during this walk each day. Blue-eyed people are unusual in that city, and he didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to our group during this walk. At first I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.
I didn’t attend any state-sanctioned worship services in China, but I was told that the ‘official’ church lacks the power of the Holy Spirit – not surprising when Jesus is not the center. My sense was that preaching is mostly focused on how to live a good, obedient life without mention of the Kingdom of God or the power of the Holy Spirit. In contrast, the underground Church in China, based on what I experienced in the two groups we visited, is on fire for Jesus. Their worship has real purity – there was no sense of the performance mentality that has slipped into western worship. I saw a passion for living the Christian life that is not a Sunday-morning thing, but part of who they are each day. They were warm, friendly, loved each other, and willing to live their faith in spite of the lack of religious freedom and possible consequences. For many, the home church was their family, the place where they could experience real love and acceptance, especially the women. At least that is how many of them struck me in my conversations with them over lunches and dinners.
In the restricted, underground Church in China, true believers are serious about their faith. The stakes are too high for it to be a nice-to-have relationship with Christ. For them, Jesus is essential. There is often a personal cost to following Jesus and there might be a more public, professional cost as well.
They also had a heart for taking the gospel out. Many of them were either missionaries somewhere else in China, preparing to go into the mission field, or doing full-time ministry in local universities. Some were preparing to go to India or the Middle East (!) for missionary work. Most of them looked for opportunities to share Christ (carefully) in their circle of influence.
It was humbling to worship with them, get to know their hearts, and compare what they had to do each day to follow Jesus with how I live (more casually) as a follower of Jesus in America. I found myself thinking that America, with its political correctness and liberal-progressive mind-set, is becoming more like ‘official’ China as American society grows more intolerant of the orthodox (that is, Bible-based) Christian faith.
Part 2 of 3 — Spiritual Deliverance and Healing in China Versus America
We saw many people delivered from demonic oppression and emotional hurt and pain. Virtually everyone needed some degree of deliverance and healing – and typically the two were related. Even the leaders – in some cases, especially the leaders – were operating at less than full strength because of their woundedness. Many American churches, based on my experience and on what I have read about demonic deliverance, do not understand, participate in, or even believe in the need for setting people free from demonic oppression, possession, or inhabitation – or whatever word you want to use.
I find this is a strange attitude for the Church to have. Jesus, the Disciples, and the early church cast demons out of people all over the place. In Luke 4 Jesus told us that He came to release the prisoner from darkness and to set the captive free. To be sure that we understood what captivity and darkness He was talking about, the next thing He did was cast a demon out of a man. Then in Matthew 10 and Luke 9 Jesus gave power and authority to the disciples, sent them out two by two to drive out demons and heal the sick. Later He sent out 72 to do the same thing. They came back excited saying “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name”.
Basically, Jesus commanded His disciples to “go, deliver people from demonic possession”. In the Great Commission Jesus said to the disciples, “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you”. Paul got the message and so did the early Church. Jesus would not have made such a big deal about casting out demons unless it was important. It is just as important today as it was then – maybe more important because we have a lot more gods we can turn to for comfort and value. How do we release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, which is satan’s kingdom, according to John in his first letter? We do it the way Paul tells us to, by “rescuing them from the dominion of darkness and bringing them into the Kingdom of the Son”, which he also calls the Kingdom of Light. How do we do this? One important way is through spiritual deliverance and emotional healing, one person at a time. The Chinese were so receptive to our message, not because spiritual deliverance was something they hadn’t heard of before or experienced. Demons are part of their Christian walk. They were excited because we brought a new tool to them to do more effectively (in some cases) what they had already been doing.
Deliverance is a part of everyday life for Christians in Africa, South America, and Asia. It is in those places where the culture is materialistic and scientific (and often atheistic) that the demonic is denied. That equals, more of less, many churches in Europe and America. Ironically, this includes churches that hold up Scripture as the inerrant, infallible word of God. Infallible, I guess, until the Bible describes something that is outside of our realm of experience and understanding like casting out demons, and then we make excuses about how that teaching is not relevant to us today or ignore it completely.
In the underground churches in China, demonic deliverance is an acceptable, even necessary practice. The Chinese leaders have great discernment and wisdom about how and when to cast out demons. They are bold and courageous. They believe the message Paul gave Timothy, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power” (2 Timothy 1: 7 NKJV). At a group dinner during our week in one of the cities, a woman sitting at a table in a restaurant with other believers began to exhibit demonic manifestations. The leaders did a deliverance right there (in a private room). I was not at that dinner but I heard all about it the next day. Later in the week, I led her through the anger release prayer and she got more freedom.
Ironically, the day I got back to the USA one of the guys I mentor each week talked to me about a friend. His friend was a missionary in Africa, is now home, and has been diagnosed with a psychological disorder. This former missionary believes that his problem is not psychological, but due to demons. He has some good reasons for thinking this way. He went to the senior pastor of his church for help. The pastor told him the church doesn’t believe in demons and to take his pills and to check himself into the psych ward as needed. Maybe his condition is medical, but from what I have seen it is possible that he needs spiritual deliverance. Sid has seen many people set free from conditions like depression and bi-polar disorder that were ultimately untreatable through medicine or counseling. I am not suggesting that spiritual deliverance is always the answer to every psychological problem, but Jesus used deliverance to heal demon-possessed people who, if they manifested those behaviors today, would spend the rest of their lives medicated in prison or psych hospitals, or perhaps living on the streets.
What would a large part of western society do with the demon-possessed man Jesus encountered in the region of the Gerasenes in Mark 5 and Luke 8? This man was so strong no one could bind him. He lived naked, in the tombs outside the village. “Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.” After Jesus cast out a legion of demons, the villagers found him sitting at the feet of Jesus, dressed, and in his right mind. Seeing this, the villagers were afraid! Today, a man living on the streets, dressed in rags, talking to himself or shouting, and cutting himself would be tranquilized, taken to the psych ward of the hospital or prison, and possibly medicated there for the rest of his life. I can easily believe no one would ask the question: is this man possessed by demons? Do we have such people in our midst today? I would say – yes.
Even if we believed that this man had a demon, how could we deal with it? The same way Jesus did – by commanding the demon. We would say, “In the power and authority given to me by Jesus and in His name, come out of this man”. Or, maybe even more simply, saying “Go, in Jesus’ name”. Often, but not always, that is all it takes! In other cases it requires more work, which is what the spiritual deliverance we taught in China was all about.
Jesus gives us power and authority to deliver men and women from demons – He calls us to this ministry. “He gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and He sent them out to preach (which in Greek means to ‘proclaim the gospel’) the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9: 1, 2 NIV). Only the body of Christ can do this because it is only the Church who has the power to overcome the enemy. In my opinion, to the extent the Church denies the supernatural power of the demonic to enslave us physically, spiritually, and emotionally and disregards the Church’s greater power to deliver and heal – it is not the Church that Jesus died on the cross to create. It is something, but it is not the Church of Jesus.
Our ultimate goal is the same as His – to partner with Jesus to release His Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, aka the kingdom of self or the kingdom of darkness, to take back the territory, push back the darkness, and defeat the power of satan (even though the victory has been won, satan is still fighting back). This mission, if we accept it, means we will inevitably tangle with the demonic. We are called to do this the same way Jesus did – in large part by casting out the demons and healing people physically, emotionally, and spiritually in His name and in the power of His Spirit. It works. I saw people set free in China. (We need fearlessly to deal with the demonic when we encounter it, but not fixate on it. That gives the enemy power).
The underground Church in China understands this mission and what it entails – they are thriving and growing at a crazy rate. I was told by one of the underground church elders that there are 1.4 billion people in China. About 8 to 9 % are Christian. That means there are about 125,000,000 Christians in China. I don’t think they are all in underground churches, but those churches are the ones rapidly growing. From talking to the missionaries who are working in the provinces and other countries, I learned people accept Jesus when the power of God heals and sets them free.
Perhaps there is a similarity between the official church in China and the mainline Protestant Church in America. In China, the government censors the official church. The power of God is not preached or experienced in spiritual deliverance or emotional healing. In many churches in America the power of God is not preached or experienced in deliverance or healing either. Not because the church in America is censored by the government, but because the church censors itself through adherence to powerless theology, unbelief, fear, or a lack of knowledge.
Isaiah spoke these verses over Israel in exile. I believe they are equally appropriate for a Church that has been beat down by culture in America over the last 100 years or so and today is in a kind of exile:
“Wake up, wake up! Pull on your boots, Zion! Dress up in your Sunday best, Jerusalem, Holy City! Those who want no part of God have been culled out. They won’t be coming along. Brush off the dust and get to your feet, captive Jerusalem! Throw off your chains captive daughter of Zion” (Isaiah 52: 1, 2 MSG).
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger bringing good news. Breaking the news that all’s well, proclaiming good times, announcing salvation, telling Zion, “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52: 7 MSG).
Part 3 of 3 — Let us Pray!
What can you and I do? We can pray. The prayers of true believers have power. Here are some of my prayer requests:
Pray for God to open the eyes of the Church and wake it up, for the Church in America to put away denominational differences and unify.
Pray for the Church to rise up in power to restore our families, defeat the demons of drug addiction, and strip away the cloak of deception that satan is using to mask his work in our universities, colleges, and culture.
Pray against the demonic powers that want to corrupt our children with pornography, video games, endless time on social media, and the messages from Hollywood.
Pray to bring an end to hatred and unforgiveness, and to restore the hearts that have been long devastated.
Pray for spectator Christians to be transformed into powerful men and women of God who go out, releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, wherever they are and through whatever they are called to do.
Pray for the Church to equip the Saints to do the difficult work of warfare required in this present age, with boldness and without fear.
Let us pray!
Grace and peace to you through our Lord, Jesus Christ,
John