Preparing For the Underground Church
The increase in church fires and bombings should not be dismissed; it is a precursor to the increasing global annihilation of Christians. The Communist New World Order globalists know exactly what they are doing and that’s why few of them has said a word to condemn these attacks on Christians. Instead, two of them tweeted that those murdered were “Easter worshipers” not Christians.
A Communist has written, ‘The only people who can help the world in its present condition are the Christians, but they do not realize it.
The great ideological motivator of persecution against Christians is Communism. The communists are busy forming cells. What are Christians doing? We are busy building projects and fighting against each other. The struggle is between cessationists and continuationists.
Almost a quarter century ago, something remarkable happened. Religious leaders were oblivious to the Russian revolution that was about to take place. It was reported that on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, conferences were being held in two hotels on the same Moscow Street.
At the consultation sponsored by the Orthodox Church, clergy vestments were the principle agenda item. In another meeting, Vladimir Lenin and friends were finalizing plans to overthrow the existing regime.
Jan Pit in his book Persecution: It Will Never Happen Here writes:
During the appalling Vietnam War, church leaders from a certain Christian group held their annual conference. The southern Vietnamese city resembled a fortress. There were soldiers everywhere, barricades, and a terrifying collection of weaponry. Daily attacks were being made on the city by the communist Viet Cong, yet the pastors continued to discuss the various activities which they would embark upon in the ensuing years.
They even adopted a ten-year plan. Despite all the evidence, no one there thought it possible for South Vietnam to be overthrown. All were convinced the country would remain open to mission work. The church remained unprepared.
The churches in the Western nations are in a similar situation. They are going about with their business, as usual, ignoring the impending distress and persecution that could come to Christians.
What is most extraordinary is that despite the systematic persecution that generally prevails against Christians in Communist nations, Christianity is nonetheless flourishing in some Marxist/communist Western countries.
There are four ways churches are likely to respond as the pressure comes from government or other sources:
- The church closes;
- They attempt to co-exist with government regulations;
- They resist and become a protest church; or
- They go underground.
Sprit-led Leadership
Spirit-led leadership is most important when the church is facing a hostile situation. The type of church leadership which is widely accepted in Western society today, with one man at the centre of all activity, cannot continue in a repressive society. It is easy for the authorities to remove the key man and stop that church’s impact.
Open Doors with Brother Andrew described what happens when a country suddenly falls to Communism just as it happened in Cambodia and Mozambique:
By the time communists take over a country, they have already identified the key Christian leaders on the local as well as national level. Anyone who was a full-time Christian worker before the takeover must assume he is a “marked” man.
In Vietnam, even Christian businessmen who were not full-time Christian workers, but who had exercised lay leadership, were marked. These people do not have the option of going underground. They must stand openly or face the consequences.
In the period of confusion that immediately follows a takeover, some small groups of Christians may be able to move to a different locality and become underground churches, but they must leave their “institutional” forms behind. Then through the Holy Spirit leaders will be raised up.
House Churches
The early church worshipped in the temple, synagogues, lecture halls, open forums, riverbanks, and ships, as well as homes for worship. The New Testament specifically refers to them as “house meetings.”
Tell Priscilla and Aquila hello. They have been my fellow workers in the affairs of Christ Jesus. In fact, they risked their lives for me, and I am not the only one who is thankful to them; so are all the Gentile churches. Please give my greetings to all those who meet to worship in their home. Greet my good friend Epaenetus. He was the very first person to become a Christian in Asia (Romans 16:3-5).
The churches here in Asia send you their loving greetings. Aquila and Priscilla send you their love, and so do all the others who meet in their home for their church service (1 Corinthians 16:19).
Please give my greeting to the Christian friends at Laodicea, and to Nymphas, and to those who meet in his home (Colossians 4:15).
To the beloved Apphia, Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house (Philemon 1:2).
So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart (Acts 2:46).
And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5:42).
How I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house (Acts 20:20).
Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea, and Nymphas and the church that is in his house (Colossians 4:15).
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting (Acts 2:2; see Romans 12:4-8 Titus 1:1-16 1 Corinthians 14:26 Matthew 18:20).
Today one-third of Christians in the world operates (worship?) in secrecy with the threat of extermination. Believers may have to worship alone, in their homes, secretly, or in various ways corporately. In his one of his Personal Updates, Chuck Missler wrote:
I think that real believers will increasingly meet in homes. That day may come that they don’t arrive all at the same time, but drift in singly, so as not to call attention to themselves. We are locked in a very serious spiritual struggle in the West.
Richard Wurmbrand was arrested by the secret police because he was leading Christian worship and witnessing–both of which were deemed to be illegal under the Communistic regime of Romania. In his book, Tortured for Christ, he wrote:
It is not possible to give a course on the church underground, in a short time. I would urge you to put this question before your synod, before your denomination, and to ask absolutely that courses on the underground church be introduced.” …..We have to make the preparations now, before we are imprisoned. In prison you lose everything…..Nobody resists who has not renounced the pleasures of life beforehand.
When Idi Amin banned Christian sects and denominations in Uganda, people had to decide whether to join official churches or form house fellowships. Within days of the ban, thousands of secret house fellowships had sprung up across the land. In the midst of severe persecution, Kefa Sempangi’s congregation, one of the largest churches in Uganda at that time closed suddenly. Sempangi says,
The Redeemed Church as we had known it had come to an end. After one of the last raids it was unlikely that we could continue to hold public services. We would have to take the church underground. We would have to develop a network of invisible leadership and begin meeting again in individual homes. The prospect of breaking up our 14,000 member church in this way seemed to us an overwhelming task and out of fatigue and perhaps even fear we all agreed that a discussion of a detailed plan should wait the following evening.
Unfortunately, that detailed plan was never discussed, as night came on when no man could work. Some of the leaders of this church would not see each other on earth again. Because of this persecution, church leaders had to flee, some went to the world preaching the gospel of love and forgiveness, and others started house churches.
According to Don McAlvan:
The Holy Spirit may lead different people and churches to respond differently. There are examples from Scripture of people who reacted in diverse ways. The House Church movement has been the means of great growth of the Body of Christ in China. When all churches were officially closed as a result of the Cultural Revolution in 1996, people began meeting in homes.
The number has varied through the years with only five or six people in some, hundreds in others, and thousands in a few. Denominational lines are gone so that the only question asked is “Do you belong to Jesus?” Sometimes believers came together at the same time with no prior announcement. They reported, “The Lord Himself told us to come.”
As More Than Conquerors describes:
If the believer, because of fear, cuts himself off from all contact with other Christians, Satan will have won. It is called divide and conquer. A Christian cannot survive victoriously for long if he is spiritually cut off from fellowship, worship, and teaching. When physical isolation comes, the believer must turn to a deeper spiritual fellowship with Christ.
This must be coupled with increased alertness to look for other Christians. Often a simple word, the humming of a few bars of a hymn, or the almost casual making of a Christian symbol, can be used to make contact with another secret believer…. It may be necessary for a believer to lead someone else to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to end his isolation!
Richard Wurmbrand says:
Some regimes come to power without having real power….The initial situation does not last long. During that time they infiltrate the churches, putting in their men in leadership. They find out the weaknesses of pastors….They explain that they would make those weaknesses known. Then, at a certain moment the great persecution begins. In Romania such a clamp-down happened in one day. All the Catholic bishops went to prison, along with innumerable priests, monks, and nuns. Then many Protestant pastors of all denominations were arrested. Many died in prison.
As an aside, this frightening thought from Francis Schaeffer is offered:
The danger in regard to the rise of authoritarian government in America is that Christians will be still as long as their own religious activities, evangelism and lifestyles are not disturbed…. But let us be realistic in another way, too. If we Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state.
No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute.
If what some Christians leaders are saying is true, sooner or later the church must face two alternatives—social-political compromise with anti-Christian forces or incur the wrath of a controlled political-religious hierarchy.
Since these alternatives have already been posed in many parts of the world, there is no reason to believe that the area where we live will continue to escape their realities. Let us then, as Christians, prepare ourselves now and be sure that our children have a clear example before them if their turn comes.
Consider the following testimony of the saintly Dutch woman, Corrie Ten Boom:
There are some among us teaching that the Christians will be able to escape all this. Could this be the false teachers Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days? Most of them have little knowledge of the persecution that is already going on across the world. I have been in countries where the saints are already suffering terrible persecution.
In China the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes, you will be translated—raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly, “We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Turning to me, he said, “You still have time. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when persecution comes—to stand and not faint.
It is surely better to warn believers to be ready for the Great Tribulation and then discover that they will not go through it than to tell them they need not to be prepared for it and then find that they should have been.
What is very frightening is that persecution of Christians is most likely to come from lukewarm believers as the writer mentions in this book. There will be betrayals, love growing cold due to multiplied lawlessness, division, complacency, and lukewarmness. The cares pertaining to the business of this life will chock out the seed of the Word of God in the hearts of most Christians.
Surveillance Police State
This will be a time to become accustomed to divulging little information and keeping silent. This is an area that is very difficult especially for Americans. It is the American way to help, to talk freely, and believe the best of people. Unfortunately, Americans are also easily deceived and manipulated.
Americans don’t want to believe that their own state is capable of doing the most despicably evil acts known to mankind. However, as freedom is lessened, it will become more important to divulge little information about people and activities. I believe God is going to allow human wickedness to come to its full expression. If we are still alive, we will see real, innate evil manifested with ugliness and fearfulness hardly imaginable.
We already live in a surveillance police state where telephone conservations are monitored and certain words trigger “bugging.” Many technological tools like smart phones are suggested as possible tools for monitoring.
Every unnecessary word spoken can endanger someone. Useless talking is some countries means prison and death for one’s brother. “You cannot learn to be silent the very moment the country is taken over. You have to learn to be silent from the moment of your conservation,” writes Wurmbrand.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn relates that the one who had been his greatest persecutor, the one who denounced him, was his own former wife. It is written in the book of Ecclesiastes not to tell the secrets of your heart, even to your wife…The secretary to Solzhenitsyn was put under such pressure by the communists….that she finished by hanging herself. If Solzhenitsyn had kept silent, this would not have happened.
This is not suggesting lying. A person can withhold information and not divulge information without being untruthful. There is a difference between openness and being honest. As Wurmbrand wrote in God’s Underground:
A brother had been taken to the police and was asked, “Do you still gather at meetings?” He answered, “Comrade Captain, prayer meetings are forbidden now.” To this the captain replied, “Well, it is good that you conform with this. Just go.” The brother had not said that he conformed; he had not said that he did not go to meetings.
When Wurmbrand was asked about meetings of the underground believers, he knew he would be risking danger for them if he answered. “Where the results of resisting are beatings and tortures, you have to take them upon yourself, even if you die.”
During World War II, posters around America and England warned: “Loose lips sink ships.” The same applies to believers under persecution or functioning in the underground church. Be very circumspect with what you say, with the information you give out.
Use a “need to know” strategy, and not only impart that information which is essential and only to those who are highly trusted. Even children and spouses should not be burdened with the information they don’t have a “real need to know.
Concluding Thoughts
We have to prepare for persecution. This is the fundamental purpose of the book of Revelation being written to us. Its message comes across loud and clear to Christians who are suffering for their faith, encouraging them to ‘endure and overcome’, and thus keeping their names in the book of life and their inheritance in the new creation.
Jesus predicted universal hatred of His followers before the end of the age (Matthew 24:9). So we all need to be prepared. If this is not already happening in the West or in your country, it will certainly come. And so will Jesus, before whom cowards will be ‘shamefully exposed’ (Revelation 16:15) and condemned to hell (Revelation 22:8).