God Will Have The Last Word

God never leaves or forsakes. Last week was a demonstration of this with the passing of Pentacost Sunday and the 25th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre turning our attention to China.

Evidence of Christianity in China can be seen as far back to as in the 8th century’s Tang dynasty. As Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong was determined to purge religion from China. During his Cultural Revolution from 1967 to 1976, places of worship were destroyed while scores of religious leaders were imprisoned, tortured and/or sent to labour camps.

His legacy lives on with the World Watch List ranking China as the 37th worst country in the world for Christian persecution. It is estimated however that by 2025, just 49 years after Mao’s death, China’s Christian community will swell to 160 million surpassing the United States in having the largest population of Christians in the world.

Mirroring this are statistics from Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. Currently, ‘God’  is mentioned more than 165 million times, more than 18 times compared to ‘Mao Zedong’. It has 18 million posts mentioning Jesus while Chinese President Xi Jinping only gets 4 million mentions. Christmas appears nearly 150 million times, while Chinese National Day only got 50 million mentions.

For evildoers shall be cut off;
But those who wait on the Lord,
They shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more;
Indeed, you will look carefully for his place,
But it shall be no more.

But the meek shall inherit the earth,
And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The wicked plots against the just,
And gnashes at him with his teeth.
The Lord laughs at him,
For He sees that his day is coming.

Psalm 37:9-13

 

Image: Paintings of Mao by Andy Warhol

Join the conversation