Chinese Christians Compelled to Evangelize Muslims, Journalist Says
by Chad Groening
December 5, 2003
(AgapePress) - The former Beijing bureau chief for a major U.S. magazine says he is truly amazed at how China's growing Christian community is committed to the people of Israel.Dr. David Aikman is the author of Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power. The former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine says that in talking to numerous Chinese believers, he discovered that they are completely committed to the Nation of Israel -- and that could eventually affect China's foreign policy.
"If the process of Christianization continues -- as I project it probably will -- by the time China is significantly Christianized, this view is very likely to be expressed at the national level in China's foreign policy," the author and journalist says.
And Aikman says Chinese Christians believe they can evangelize in places Americans cannot. "China's Christians believe that they have an opportunity to take the gospel to parts of the world where Americans -- because they're not necessary very popular -- are far more limited in their access to local communities," he says.
Aikman says Chinese believers particularly believe they are called to evangelize the Muslim world. "I found this absolutely, universally accepted in every Chinese Christian group I met, that they are called to evangelize the Muslim world," he says, "and a corollary of that is [that] they are pro-Israel."
He says in some ways, China's Christians could be described as "Christian Zionists," explaining that they believe the Jewish people are being replanted in the original Holy Land by God's sovereign acts "and that they as Christians, in China, should support that process."
