China And The True Jesus

"The history of the True Jesus Church, a Pentecostal church founded in Beijing in 1917, reveals dynamic interaction between charismatic experience and organizational processes. Believers' lived experiences provide grassroots perspective on developments in China's modern history, including transnational exchange, gender roles, models for legitimate governance, clandestine culture, and church-state relations"--

In 1917, the Beijing silk merchant Wei Enbo's vision of Jesus sparked a religious revival, characterized by healings, exorcisms, tongues-speaking, and, most provocatively, a call for a return to authentic Christianity that challenged the Western missionary establishment in China. This revival gave rise to the True Jesus Church, China's first major native denomination. The church was one of the earliest Chinese expressions of the twentieth century charismatic and Pentecostal tradition which is now the dominant mode of twenty-first century Chinese Christianity. To understand the faith of millions of Chinese Christians today, we must understand how this particular form of Chinese community took root and flourished even throughout the wrenching changes and dislocations of the past century. The church's history links together key themes in modern Chinese social history, such as longstanding cultural exchange between China and the West, imperialism and globalization, game-changing advances in transport and communications technology, and the relationship between religious movements and the state in the late Qing (circa 1850-1911), Republican (1912-1949), and Communist (1950-present-day) eras. Vivid storytelling highlights shifts and tensions within Chinese society on a human scale. How did mounting foreign incursions and domestic crises pave the way for Wei Enbo, a rural farmhand, to become a wealthy merchant in the early 1900s? Why did women in the 1920s and 30s, such as an orphaned girl named Yang Zhendao, devote themselves so wholeheartedly to a patriarchal religious system? What kinds of pressures induced church leaders in a meeting in the 1950s to agree that "Comrade Stalin" had saved many more people than Jesus? This book tells the striking but also familiar tale of the promise and peril attending the collective pursuit of the extraordinary-how individuals within the True Jesus Church in China over the past century have sought to muster divine and human resources to transform their world.

"The Heavenly Man" tells the true story of Liu Zhenying, also known as Brother Yun, who, for the past 30 years, has committed himself to bringing the gospel of Christ to all of China. Imprisoned, tortured, and separated from his family for his beliefs, Brother Yun shares his story.

This updated edition by one of the world's leading apologists presents a systematic, positive case for Christianity that reflects the latest work in the contemporary hard sciences and humanities. Brilliant and accessible.

Tens of millions of Christians live in China today, many of them leading double lives or in hiding from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. Bob Fu, whom the Wall Street Journal called "The pastor of China's underground railroad," is fighting to protect his fellow believers from persecution, imprisonment, and even death. God's Double Agent is his fascinating and riveting story. Bob Fu is indeed God's double agent. By day Fu worked as a full-time lecturer in a communist school; by night he pastored a house church and led an underground Bible school. This can't-put-it-down book chronicles Fu's conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his brethren. God's Double Agent will inspire readers even as it challenges them to boldly proclaim and live out their faith in a world that is at times indifferent, and at other times murderously hostile, to those who spread the gospel.

This text addresses the history and future of homegrown, mass Chinese Christianity. Drawing on a collection of sources, the author traces the transformation of Protestant Christianity in the 20th-century China from a small 'missionary' church buffeted by antiforeignism to an indigenous opular religion energized by nationalism.

The Light Shines in the Darkness There is more to China's story than its rise as a global economic power. The Holy Spirit has birthed a vibrant, rapidly growing house church movement in China's cities. For years, Christians in the West have heard rumors of house churches in the rural countryside with believers numbering in the tens of millions. Now the underground movement has emerged among China's upwardly mobile, globally connected urbanites--and there will be no turning back! In Christian China and the Light of the World, you'll meet believers serving God's people in the People's Republic of China. Learn about the political, social and economic pressures faced by the urban Chinese church, and find out how you can pray for and support your sisters and brothers in Christ who are following Him no matter the cost. Their true stories of the Holy Spirit's miraculous move across the most populous nation on earth will thrill and inspire you . . . and lead you to worship the Light that darkness cannot overcome.