Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: CONSPIRACY (01/21/21)
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TITLE: Mao’s Madness Magnifies Messiah’s Mercy | Previous Challenge Entry
By Linda Lawrence
01/26/21 -
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When we met and married Carl had just joined the Far East Broadcasting Company. In 1967, during Mao's Cultural Revolution, we moved to Hong Kong and Carl became an avid China watcher, heading up a Chinese Research Centre.
After twenty years of interviewing Chinese believers and refugees, Carl was compelled to tell their story. His book, The Church in China, gave testimony to God taking what Mao Zedong meant for evil and using it for good. All Mao’s conspiring to replace God with himself, all his taking counsel together against the Lord, all his attempts to cast God out of the hearts of men and women, all his “reeducation camps”, all his commands to the Red Guard to destroy followers of The Son of God—was a vain thing—just as the Psalmist foretold.
Mao attempted to purge the nation of any god but himself, replacing the Bible with his own writings. Everyone was required to study and follow the principles of his “Little Red Book.” Coerced confessions of anti-revolutionary thoughts were the focus of mandatory study groups. Mao ordered a nation to confess and repent, bowing down to him. As their god he then sentenced the “guilty” to hard labor, prison or death. Millions died. Unwittingly, Mao’s wickedness prepared and encouraged his people to look for a just God. Yes, Jesus also called for repentance, but He then voluntarily took the required punishment on Himself. Jesus was willing to die for the guilty.
Mao feared death, but in spite of orchestrated shouts of “Long live Chairman Mao”—Mao is dead. But Jesus is alive.
God continues to use conspiracies against Him and His followers for ultimate good. A young woman told Carl her story. She was sentenced to prison for her anti-government thoughts—refusing to renounce Jesus as Lord. Although severely beaten and thrown into a filthy dungeon, she continued to sing in her heart. She asked the Lord for opportunities to preach the gospel. Singing of Me is your ministry. She begged a guard to let her scrub the excrement from the cells of each of the prisoners. Down on her knees she could look up into the swollen faces of hopeless prisoners and quietly sing the good news of eternal life available in Jesus. When the Communist officials found out that most of the prisoners were now believing in Jesus, they were furious. They lost control of the prisoners. Beatings and torture were useless punishment when the victims cried out, “We forgive you in Jesus’ name.”
The young evangelist was beaten again and ordered to write a confession of her anti-revolutionary actions. She wrote as commanded, confessing the words she spoke to the prisoners that told of God’s offer of forgiveness and eternal life. When the warden read it he was furious. In anger and frustration, he read her confession aloud to the gathered guards. The guards listened, then took her back to her cell, without saying a word.
The next day, as she was taken from her cell she expected to be killed. But instead, she was shoved out the prison gate and ordered, “Go! And never come back. You are a troublemaker!”
Carl’s persecuted brothers and sisters urged him to tell the world about the triumph of the gospel. Our joyful celebration of his book’s eventual publication does not compare with the celebration in heaven of God’s eventual triumph over Mao’s conspiracy against heaven and earth.
God will not stop turning what is meant for evil into good. We can quiet our troubled souls, because God’s ultimate purposes will be fulfilled.
Genesis 50:20; Psalm 2
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