When I heard that we would be handing out Bibles to Chinese people, I wasn’t quite sure how that would work. I always thought Bibles in China were illegal. I’ve heard stories about the torture and horrific acts that happen to people when they hand out the Word of God there. But here’s the deal – this is pretty cool – every Chinese person is allowed to bring one Bible into the country!
Here’s part of my crash course lesson in the Chinese culture. Chinese people are not used to giving and receiving gifts, so giving a Chinese person a Bible may not work the first time. In order to work with this cultural norm, we actually had three posts that we handed out Bibles. Most, in fact, did pass up the first post without taking a Bible. The second post got a little more action and the third post saw the most because at that point they had been asked three times and they knew it was really a free Bible that we wanted to give them – no strings attached, it was theirs if they wanted it.
The neatest thing to watch was people who passed all three of our posts and then turned around and came back to get one.
On average most Chinese people read a lot. They read like 3-4 hours a day. So along with the Bibles we handed out a bag that contained a Jesus film and a ‘What to do now that I’m a Christian’ video, plus more information that would help them along the way in their Christian walk.
That night we handed out about 320 Bibles. This is an awesome way to get Bibles into China. Real Bibles, not the kind they can register for that has parts of the Bible mixed with other junk. Please pray for this ministry. These people are great and they truly care about the Chinese people.
Of course with any opportunity to share the Word of God, opposition will be found. The very first person who took a Bible from me was thrilled to have received this gift until her friend noticed what she had done. Her friend grabbed her arm and slung it down as she removed the Bible from her hand and then handed the Bible back to me. Thankfully this night most people gladly took this precious gift. Even one of the tour guides told his whole group to go back and get one, which they all did.
