Made in ChinaPete Greig - 11 Jun 2012

I smuggled Bibles into China twenty one years ago, packed in a sports bag, covered with dirty underwear. Good deterrent. 

My precious contraband was deposited in a locker at a pre-agreed location in Canton, and the key was mailed to a man who travelled across the nation at the cost of almost a year’s wages, and at the risk of his own life, to collect them.  That’s how hard – and dangerous – it was to get hold of Bibles back then.

Last week my friend visited a hi-tech Chinese printing press that is unashamedly producing 20 million bibles a year. Churning them out legally for anyone who wants one. Measurable evidence that the world’s largest nation is changing profoundly in our time.

What makes this transformation even more remarkable is that in 1954 Chairman Mao expelled all foreign missionaries, and the rest of the world expected the struggling Chinese church to decline and even to die.  Instead, within a generation it has grown to a membership of 100-300 million and China will soon be the largest Christian nation on earth (and may already be so).

Sometimes, when we read the newspapers, we may despair and wonder ‘can a nation really be changed?’  We may look at the economic crisis in Europe, or the oppression in North Korea, or the civil war in Somalia and feel like our prayers are ineffectual against such vast problems. But the miracle of China leaves us in no doubt that nations really can change relatively quickly when God’s people seek persistently in persevering prayer.

‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.’ (2 Chronicles 7:14)