Safely Home Read online

  This work of art titled Safely Home by Ron DiCianni served as an inspiration for this story.

  Endorsements

  “Randy Alcorn, one of the great storytellers among Christian writers today, has produced a powerful work. It’s not only a first-class story; it is a bracing wake-up call about Christian persecution in China. You’ll be challenged.”

  —CHARLES COLSON, bestselling author and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries

  “Safely Home will change the way you pray for the persecuted church. This brilliant story mixes the warmth of a good novel with the harsh reality of the persecuted church. Randy Alcorn has mastered the art of educating while entertaining.”

  —DR. TIM LAHAYE, bestselling coauthor of the Left Behind series

  “Safely Home is a compelling and gripping story that not only forces the reader to look with eyes wide-open at the present-day persecution our fellow believers are suffering, but also shakes Western Christians from the slumber of spiritual apathy, theological error, and materialism. It should be required reading.”

  —STEVE GREEN, recording artist

  “Randy Alcorn shows us what it could be like to live and die for a faith that will last for eternity. Read this book and you may never be the same again.”

  —CLIVE CALVER, former president of World Relief

  “Inspiring—in the truest sense. Randy Alcorn does what the great story- tellers do. Combines truth and hope in the drama of human situations.”

  —SIGMUND BROUWER, author of Fuse of Armageddon

  Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  Safely Home

  Copyright © 2001, 2011 by Eternal Perspective Ministries. All rights reserved.

  Interior illustration copyright © 1998 by Ron DiCianni. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of bicycle copyright © Claudio Arnese/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of textured paper copyright © rusm/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of landscape copyright © HAIBO BI/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Calligraphy written by John Cheng

  Cover designed by Erik Peterson

  Interior designed by Jenny Swanson

  Edited by Curtis H. C. Lundgren

  Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

  www.zondervan.com.

  Some Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  Some Scripture quotations are taken from The Bible in Basic English © 1949, 1965, by Cambridge University Press. Used by permission.

  Some extracts that appear to be Scripture quotations are an amalgam or paraphrase written by the author.

  Safely Home is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition as follows:

  Alcorn, Randy C.

  Safely home / by Randy C. Alcorn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8423-3791-5

  ISBN 978-0-8423-5991-7 (pbk.)

  1. Americans—China—Fiction. 2. Businessmen—Fiction. 3. China—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.L292 S24 2001

  813'.54—dc21 2001002235

  Repackage first published in 2011 under ISBN 978-1-4143-4855-1.

  Build: 2015-09-28 10:08:51

  Dedication

  TO GRAHAM STAINES, who left his home in Australia to serve lepers in India for thirty-four years.

  TO PHILIP STAINES (age ten) and TIMOTHY STAINES (age six), who at half past midnight on January 23, 1999, as their father held his arms around them, were burned to death by a mob in India, murdered because of whom they knew and served.

  TO GLADYS STAINES, who continues to minister to lepers and who said to all India, “I am not bitter or angry. I have one great desire: that each citizen of this country should establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who gave his life for their sins.”

  TO ESTHER STAINES, Graham and Gladys’s daughter (then age thirteen), who said, “I praise the Lord that he found my father worthy to die for him.”

  TO THE HUNDREDS OF MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN KILLED FOR CHRIST EACH DAY, ignored by the world but watched by the eyes of heaven—those of whom the world is not worthy.

  Contents

  About Persecution in China

  Acknowledgments

  Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  An Interview with the Author

  Discussion Questions

  Reader Letters

  Note to Readers

  Note from the Artist

  About the Author

  About Persecution in China

  MANY READERS ask me whether Christians in China continue to suffer persecution. Often they’ve been told it’s a thing of the past.

  Compared to earlier decades, religious persecution in China is less extreme. In some places there is little or no persecution. Local officials may look the other way, even if they suspect Christians are meeting illegally (as most Christians in China do).

  In other cases, where Christians were once jailed for assembling without permission, they may now be ostracized and prohibited from holding significant positions of influence in government, education, or business. So the severity of their persecution is decreased but still very real.

  However, in other places, Chinese Christians continue to experience extreme persecution. In fact, it is likely that more Christians in China are currently in prison for their faith than in any other country. Reports from unregistered churches continue to confirm that thousands of Chinese Christians are still imprisoned for following Jesus, and many are still beaten and abused in prison. I have seen recent photographs of tortured believers and have wept at their stories.

  It is still illegal to teach children under eighteen about God and Jesus. It is still illegal for three or more believers
to gather for religious purposes without government approval. Eighty percent of Chinese Christians are part of unregistered illegal churches—remaining underground because they recognize only Christ as Lord, and they refuse to allow the atheistic government to control their churches. Some Western Christians have naively criticized unregistered churches, without understanding that these Chinese believers cannot in good conscience bow to a government whose hands have long been stained by the blood of Christians. The counsel of some American Christians to their Chinese brothers is “Just register your churches and you won’t be persecuted.” This simplistic approach betrays a great cultural insensitivity to the history, depth of conviction, and personal sufferings of countless Chinese believers.

  From the time Safely Home was first published in 2001, I received letters assuring me that Christians were no longer being persecuted in China. Interestingly, they were almost always from people who had visited China for short periods, or who had heard reports from those who’d done so. In contrast, I receive a number of letters from people who have lived in China or who still live there, and invariably they write to confirm the reality of Christians still being persecuted there.

  So let me give a brief survey of some of what has happened in China since 2001. That year Ling was producing Christian materials in China. He was interrogated in his home by police officers. When he refused to lead officials to his Christian coworkers, they placed his hands on a table, held them down, and pulled out his fingernails, one by one. He was then forced to spend three years in a “reeducation through labor” camp. Though burned with cigarettes and beaten, he refused to deny his faith.

  A major crackdown in 2004 against unregistered church groups resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Christians. A twenty-eight-year-old Christian teacher and a thirty-four-year-old female evangelist were among those beaten to death while in police custody.

  In 2005, one hundred security officers from five Chinese government agencies raided a conference of 140 house-church leaders and ten guest pastors in northeastern China. The police, accompanied by the Religious Affairs Bureau, seized Bibles and Christian study materials and arrested many attendees, including two American pastors, who were detained, questioned, and deported.

  Even as the government attempted to create a better public image for China in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they continued to persecute believers. Asia News reported that in December 2007, officials arrested 270 Christian pastors in a quick and brutal raid, accusing them of holding an illegal Bible meeting and fining 120 of them with an “interrogation tax.” According to the China Aid Association, earlier that year, a Beijing house-church leader, Hua Huiqi, served six months in prison. Hua and his seventy-six-year-old mother were arrested after being attacked by seven police officers. While walking on a public street, they were kicked to the ground and taken to the Olympic police station for questioning. Hua’s mother, Shuang Shuying, had turned her residence into a boardinghouse for believers. When authorities began planning the Olympic games, they dismantled the home and her family was detained, supervised twenty-four hours a day, and frequently beaten. Imprisoned for two years, Shuang was tortured, lost her vision, and dwindled to a mere seventy-three pounds.

  In 2008, the Chinese government destroyed three church buildings in one city and ordered that the remaining church buildings also be demolished, according to Voice of the Martyrs. More than ten believers were hurt as they tried to prevent the demolition. Earlier that year, a mob allegedly sent by government officials had attacked this same group of Christians when they refused to stop meeting on the church property.

  In February 2009, China Aid reported that Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng, who has worked to defend house-church Christians and others persecuted in China, was abducted by officials and went missing for more than a year. Reports from inside the country indicated he was undergoing torture. He was released more than a year later, in March 2010, only to go missing once again a few weeks later, BBC News reported.

  Bob Fu, a Chinese national, now labors in the US to call attention to millions of persecuted countrymen. I encourage readers to examine the stories on Fu’s website, www.chinaaid.org. Fu claims that, to this day, “Christians in churches unrecognized by the socialist regime in Beijing continue to be harassed, oppressed, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered for their faith in Jesus Christ. Most of these abuses are cloaked in secrecy for fear of offending Western trading partners and jeopardizing China’s fragile economy.”

  Readers of Safely Home in China concur. A missionary there recently wrote: “Safely Home was very, very accurate.” She knows a Chinese woman who couldn’t read the book because it reminded her of close friends suffering persecution.

  Those who deny that persecution exists in China often say they visited the country and saw Bibles at a registered church or for sale in a store. (That’s true; registered churches are permitted to have Bibles.) An American Christian leader assured me that he and his ministry preached the gospel in China and had cordial meetings with Communist government leaders. I rejoice in this. But he also spoke of the “misconception” that Christians are still persecuted in China. Unfortunately, the documented incidents demonstrate it’s not a misconception, but a reality.

  A Chinese Christian told me that “somewhere in China, the sun is always shining, and somewhere the snow is always falling.” In other words, there’s always freedom somewhere and persecution somewhere else. Visitors to China rarely go to the countryside, where much persecution takes place. They will not be given an audience with persecuted Christians. Believers will not step forward to share their stories with visitors who are escorted by or traveling under the favor of government officials.

  It is irresponsible to claim that Christians are no longer in prison or beaten or discriminated against simply because visitors don’t see this happening, or because Chinese officials and government tour guides say it doesn’t happen. Should we believe the government (who even denied persecution occurred under Mao Zedong), or the actual Chinese Christians, most of whom remain in unregistered churches, despite the great cost of their doing so?

  China Aid (www.chinaaid.org), Asia Harvest (www.asiaharvest.org), and the Voice of the Martyrs (www.persecution.com) provide current information about persecution in China. We encourage you to stay informed about—and to intercede for—our Chinese brothers and sisters. Though we should rejoice that persecution has lessened significantly in some places, let’s be careful not to perpetuate the lie that Christians are no longer persecuted in China.

  Randy Alcorn

  June 2011

  Acknowledgments

  I CANNOT name some of the people who have been most helpful in researching and writing this book. If I did, it could jeopardize their safety or opportunity to minister.

  Special thanks to Sau-Wing Lam, CH, CCH, JM, MJ, PE, JG, and SEP for their expert advice on Chinese culture, geography, and language. It was a long and tedious process attempting to standardize Chinese spellings in their proper Pinyin forms. This involved wading through various Mandarin, Cantonese, Hong Kongese, Taiwanese, and Americanized spellings of Chinese words. Certainly my own experience of seven days in China didn’t begin to qualify me.

  Even the experts sometimes disagreed on spellings. Finally, I had to make the call based on the best information I could acquire. My heartfelt thanks to Sau-Wing (who even sent me recordings so I could pronounce the words properly, at least in my head) and MJ for their prompt and exacting replies to my endless e-mail inquiries. They receive credit for the times I got it right, and I take full responsibility for the rest.

  Thanks to Doreen Button for her input on an early manuscript. For passing on relevant materials or giving me technical advice, thanks to Tom Dresner, Ted Walker, Barry Arnold, Bob Maddox, Diane Meyer, Jim and Erin Seymour, Doug Gabbert, and Diane Vavra. Thanks to Bonnie Hiestand and Penny Dorsey at Eternal Perspective Ministries. Thanks to Kathy Norquist for reading over every word of the final manuscript and
giving valuable input. And thanks to Janet Albers for her excellent proofreading.

  Thanks to my wife, Nanci, my best friend, who brings such great joy to my life and patiently put up with me when I was lost in this project. Also, my deepest appreciation for my daughters, Karina and Angie, who are of help in all that I do. I’m thankful for our sons-in-law, Dan Franklin and Dan Stump, two godly men whom God has matched with two godly women. May you honor the King as you love and lead our precious girls. Also, I want to acknowledge Melissa Allen, who asked if she could be named in one of my books.

  Thanks to my friend Ron DiCianni for his painting Safely Home and to Steve Green for his song “Safely Home,” both of which center on a martyr going home to heaven. In a sense, this book, Safely Home, is part three of an artistic trilogy. I deeply appreciate Ron DiCianni’s heart for the persecuted and his eagerness to join me in dedicating the book’s royalties to stand with them. While writing, I listened frequently not only to Steve Green’s “Safely Home” but to his song “The Faithful,” with its haunting and triumphant expression of the words of Tertullian spoken in the second century: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

  I’m indebted to C. H. Kang and Ethel Nelson’s The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language. I gleaned from Understanding China and various books by Chinese writers, including Thirty Years in a Red House: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China by Xiao Di Zhu.

  I drew from accounts of actual events recorded in By Their Blood, China: The Hidden Miracle, The Coming Influence of China, Their Blood Cries Out, and various biographies of Hudson Taylor, as well as Christian History magazine. I’ve also gleaned from the publications of Voice of the Martyrs, The Bible League, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and Intercessors for China, as well as news accounts in many newspapers and periodicals, including World magazine and Chuck Colson’s BreakPoint.

  While doing background research on China, I “happened” (in the providence of God) to read the galleys of my friend Davis Bunn’s excellent novel The Great Divide, which prompted me to do deeper research into the Laogai. This research contributed to my portrayals of Chinese prisons.