In recent years many studies have focused on what's taking place in Communist China among Christians. The reason people are studying is because when the Communists took over in China there were several hundred thousand Christians. The churches were closed, the Red Guard went on a rampage, and anywhere they found a cross, they tore it down. The cross was despised. Christians were put in prison and driven to the countryside.

In recent years, with the new administration in Communist China, the relaxing of those rules and regulations, and the reopening of churches, they discovered that there are multiple millions of Christians. Up until the Communists took over, when people were free to do as they please, they had hundreds of thousands. Once the persecution took place, suddenly Christians began to multiply, and there are multiple millions.

Paul Kaufman, who has been there along with his family and observed what's taking place, has written a book called China: The Emerging Challenge. In that book he gives a clue as to why during days of persecution millions of people would come to know Christ. He talks about the Jesus Family of northern China. In 1942 there was a tremendous drought in northern China. Aid began to pour in from the outside to help those people who were starving. The Jesus Family refused to take the aid. They continued to feed their people--not only that, but to give away the harvest. They worked up from 10 percent to 20 percent, and finally they worked up to where they gave away 90 percent of what they harvested. They supplied the food for five hundred people from forty-three acres of land. And the Communists could do only one family per acre. Somebody said to the leader of those people, "Why would you refuse aid when others were starving?" Listen to what he had to say. He said, "Those foreign churches would have robbed us of our anchor. It is our financial needs that drive us to our knees and force us to cry to him."