Welcome to this bonus episode of China Compass, the 5th in a weekly series called “The Prison Pulpit”. I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. You can follow me on X (@chinaadventures) where (among other things) I share a new prefecture and/or city to pray for daily. Visit PrayforChina.us to learn more. If you want to see the missionary books I’ve published and learn more about our work, you can find links to everything @ PrayGiveGo.us

Between now and the end of the year I am working through some of the writings of imprisoned Chinese pastor, Wang Yi, of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China, which were published just before and after his arrest in December of 2018. The idea is to give him a voice, even though he is physically locked away (for now) and remind the church to "remember his chains" and pray for all those who are currently being persecuted in like manner, a la Hebrews 13:3.

Besides Wang Yi's own writings (link in the show notes) a book that might be helpful is my little memoir, Unbeaten, which details my arrest, interrogation, and deportation from China in 2018. At the end of the book, I included an appendix entitled Remember My Chains, which is basically the manuscript of a message I have given dozens of times around the country dealing with this very topic: remembering and praying for the persecuted church, especially in China. You can get the book, Unbeaten, including the sermon, Remember My Chains, at Unbeaten.vip

Read more about Wang Yi:

https://chinapartnership.org/who-is-wang-yi/

https://www.amazon.com/Faithful-Disobedience-Writings-Chinese-Movement/dp/1514004135\

Wang Yi, from his Declaration of Faithful Disobedience:

(I am filled with anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by this Communist regime, at the wickedness of their depriving people of the freedoms of religion and of conscience.)

But 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.

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity: 

“Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization if civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.”