Bob Fu is not only an advocate for the persecuted but a survivor of persecution — and he’s calling believers to pray for those who do evil against them.
Fu and his wife, Heidi, were house church leaders in China in the 1990s. But then, in 1996, the intrepid believers were stopped in their tracks: they were arrested, charged, and imprisoned for two months for “illegal evangelism,” Fu said on a recent episode of CBN’s “Faith vs. Culture.”
Fu’s arrest came when he was, as he says, serving as “God’s double agent,” teaching English to Chinese government officials while sharing his faith with an unauthorized group of Christians.
“On the one hand,” he explained, “I was an active underground church leader sharing the Gospel, planting churches in the universities and even an underground Bible school [and], at the same time, God humorously gave me three years [of] opportunity teaching English to the Communist Party leaders in Beijing.”
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“I got my mission fund[ed] directly by the Communist Party every month,” Fu added. “So praise the Lord.”
In the years since their own experience with persecution, the Fus launched China Aid, an advocacy organization offering legal assistance to Christians wrongly arrested in China, and they’re now urging believers in the West to remember their persecuted brothers and sisters in the communist nation.
Fu called Christians to live out the words of Hebrews 13:3, in which it is written, “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (NIV).
“You cannot sit idly when a fellow brother or sister in Christ is suffering as [part of] the same body of Christ,” he said. “That’s the primary concern and motivation as really a way to serve the Lord [because] when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers and no matter where they are — in China, Iran, North Korea, Nigeria — they are one part of the same body of Christ, the same church.”
Later in “Faith vs. Culture,” Fu encouraged Christians to pray for the persecutors and even for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leader of the very government that persecuted him and Heidi so many years ago.
“Pray for the persecutors, for their repentance and forgiveness and for their salvation, for Chairman Xi Jinping as well, despite his ruthless persecution,” he said. “We also need to know that this — the end, the outcome of this war — has already been decided. How many rulers, [no matter] how ruthless they were, have tried … and the number of Christians in China has reached over 130 million … despite the nonstop persecution from the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Xi Jinping should be a little bit smarter, actually,” Fu added. “If he wants to accelerate the church growth, just keep on going. This persecution will prove to be futile and doomed. God’s church will never be destroyed and God’s people will never be torn down by simply chaining them physically. Their souls and their prayers will never be stopped — even in prison cells.”
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