Pastor Seized One Year Ago Still Missing In China’s Detention Archipelago

Pastor Wang Yi  - Image Source: Barnabas Fund

By Helen Raleigh - Posted at The Federalist:

Published December 9, 2019

One year after his arrest, Pastor Wang Yi is still in Chinese detention. Let us all pray for him and the thousands of innocent Christians facing persecution under the oppressive Chinese regime.

This Dec. 9 marks the one-year anniversary of the Chinese government’s raid on the Early Rain Covenant Church in the city of Chengdu, in Sichuan province, China. Chinese police arrested about 100 church members, including Pastor Wang Yi and his wife Jiang Rong, and ravaged then sealed church property.

One year later, most of the arrested church members including Wang’s wife have been released, although Jiang’s movement is restricted and she is under government surveillance. However, there is still no word about the fate of Wang and several other church elders.

Wang founded the Early Rain Church in 2008. Unlike other house churches that have gone to great lengths to avoid attracting the government’s attention, the Early Rain Church never sought to hide its gatherings from the public eye, even posting its sermons online. By 2018, Early Rain had become a prominent house church presence with 500 followers and its Sunday sermons often attracting as many as 800 attendees. It also ran a kindergarten, a seminary, and a Bible college.

Prior to the December raid, Wang and his wife, along with two dozen churchgoers, were detained by Chinese police on June 4, 2018, a few hours before their planned prayer service for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. They were later released, but the government closely monitored their day-to-day activities.

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• Pray for and read more about Pastor Wang Yi at the Barnabas Fund.