After returning from my recent trip to China, one oft-asked question is "What risks are there for you when you take Bibles into China?"
While those who bring Bibles into the country face some risk, the real risk is faced by those inside the country who work as couriers taking Bibles to the house churches and to the villages. While those from outside are not treated so poorly, those inside the country who do this work often face prison sentences to work hard labor. The charges are so vague as to be impossible to defend oneself against.
We heard many stories of people who are right now working in re-education camps in the People's Republic of China. Following is just one.
Three people were transporting scriptures from one village to another when they were stopped by the authorities. Of course, they were detained and arrested and the scriptures were confiscated.
They were put in prison and for the first several days they were severely beaten. They were given only water to drink, nothing to eat. After about four days of that, the three prisoners, all men, were taken out into the village square. The police chief said, "We're going to have a great celebration and you people are going to be the center of it all." From his sarcasm, the three men knew this was not going to be anything good.
They got out to the village square and there was a huge crowd of people that the authorities had gathered to observe the event. In the middle of all the people was a table. Remember that these men hadn't eaten in four days. They'd had a bit to drink, but nothing to eat.
On the table were three sizable piles of food: some rice, some rice cakes, and some sweet foods. Each man was asked to stand behind a pile of food at the table.
Then the officer said to them, "All you have to do to get your freedom is to simply indicate that you will stop witnessing, that you'll stop transporting these Bibles, by stepping forward and eating the food. You don't have to say anything. Just step forward and eat the food. That will be the indication that you're going to quit."
And he said, "And there's nothing you can do to save these books!" as he pointed to the end of the table where all the Bibles that had been confiscated were piled on the ground.
"Ah," he said, "but there is something you can do to save these books."
And from under the table, he took three rice bowls filled with sewer water. We saw these open sewers along the side of the road, what they call a benjo ditch. This sewer water is thick black sludge, human waste. That is what was in the bowls.
The officer said, "If you drink these bowls of sewer water, you can have these books."
After he had said that, the three men, without a moment of hesitation, stepped forward and each of them drank the bowls of sewer water.
Of course, the authorities didn't know what to do because they had promised that they could keep the books. The crowd understood that the authorities would lose face if they'd kept the books. There were many Christians in the crowd looking, so some in the crowd came forward and took the books for their use.
The three men were put back in prison. They suffered for another seven days. They were beaten some more, but finally they were released.
The amazing thing is that none of the men got sick. Normally, if you were to drink that sewer water, you'd probably die. In some miraculous way, God protected these three people.
Everything the authorities try to do in a sense backfires. The rice bowls incident was a tremendous witness to the people of that village. Seven months after the event, there were 800 baptisms in the village where this had taken place.
Now the need for Bibles was greater than ever.
