My English teacher inspired me with the Bible experienced persecution in China

I would like to share a story about how I first encountered the Bible in China Once, when I was just a young student in primary school, we had a foreign English teacher who introduced something extraordinary to our class. amidst our English lessons, he would occasionally quote passages from the Bible.

This was the first time I learned about the Bible, it was my enlightenment to Christianity. For me, it was both fascinating and frightening. You see, in China, where the state champions atheism, my Christian faith is viewed with great suspicion.

The Chinese Communist Party has harshly labeled Christianity and Catholicism as cults, and the Bible? They called it a book of cults. If they found a Bible in your school bag, it wasn't just hidden away; it would confiscated and burned, erasing its words from our presence.

Yet, in those brief moments in class, the words of the Bible seemed to offer me a different narrative, one of hope and light. I remember one passage our teacher shared, from the Gospel of John one verse five: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." This verse struck a chord in me, amid the fear and the shadows cast by prohibitions and persecutions.

It whispered of a resilience, a persistent light that no darkness could quench. As I grew, so did my curiosity and my faith, nurtured by those stolen moments with biblical verses that promised something beyond the immediate, something eternally beautiful.

The story of our foreign English teacher took a dramatic turn when he decided to gift each of us a personal Bible. He had ordered a whole batch of Bible, eager to share the scripture that he held dear. However, those Bibles never made it into our hands; they were seized by customs right at the border.

Not long after, Chinese National Security Bureau began to dig into his background. It turned out, he wasn't just any foreign teacher— he was also a missionary. Once his identity was revealed, he was swiftly deported, leaving behind a classroom of bewildered students and a community that had just started to glimpse a different perspective.

The consequences didn't end with his departure. The few Bibles that had made it to some of my classmates were confiscated and destroyed— a bonfire of lost knowledge.

And our Chinese English teacher, who had dared to use the Bible in our lessons alongside him, faced a harsh fate. She was arrested and brutally imprisoned, a stark reminder of the risks associated with even the slightest deviation from the official line.

As I grew older, I came to understand the broader, more distressing pattern of persecution. The CCP wasn't just dealing with individual missionaries or confiscating Bibles; they were systematically reforming, arresting, and often torturing countless Christians across China. It was a chilling realization of the lengths to which the government would go to enforce conformity and suppress any form of spiritual dissent.

Reflecting on these events, the words of Psalm 23 came to mind, a stark contrast to the darkness we faced: "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." This scripture became a beacon of hope, reminding us that even in the face of severe trials, we were not alone.