China’s current communist tyrant, Xi Jinping, is learning an important lesson. When you persecute Christians, it produces an inverse reaction. Instead of stopping the faith, it actually causes it to grow.
In October 2025, communist authorities arrested Ezra Jin, who was pastoring one of the largest underground churches in China.
Jin, 56, was attending the prestigious Peking University, when thousands of Chinese students took the streets calling for democratic reform in 1989.
It became know as the Tiananmen Square massacre resulting in the deaths of hundreds of students.
After the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) brutal crack down, Jin questioned everything he had been taught. This led him to becoming a Christian and attending a Chinese seminary.
As part of this, he also preached at CCP approved churches. These government-sanctioned churches are forced to mix Communist ideology with the Christian faith. This includes having the words of Mao Zedong, the world’s worst mass murderer, written on the church walls instead of Bible verses.
In 2002, Jin attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. When he returned to China in 2007, he started an unsanctioned church in Beijing, known as Zion Church.
Over the next ten years, it grew from 20 to 1,500, “making it one of the largest unsanctioned churches in Beijing,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Authorities eventually forced Zion Church to install 20 cameras so authorities could monitor who was attending services. This intimidation tactic did not slow the church’s growth.
In 2018, the police raided Zion Church and closed it down. Pastor Jin then took the church online, resulting in over 100 smaller Zion churches springing up in cities across China. Its outreach exploded. As part of this, they had over 10,000 participating in online prayer meetings.
“After the shut down in 2018, Zion did not die. Zion did not wither. On the contrary, Zion even grew faster more widely across China,” said Jim Long who pastors a US based Zion Church in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
“So I think this is an embarrassment for them,” Long added.
It’s very similar to what happened in the book of Acts, after the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
“And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem,” Luke writes. “And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except for the apostles,” (Acts 8:1 NASV).
Instead of stopping the church, the persecution resulted in Christians and the gospel spreading across Asia.
In October 2025, CCP authorities arrested Jin along with 30 other Zion Church leaders across China. Jin had feared this was coming, and sent his family to live in US, a few years earlier.
When Long talked to Jin about his potential arrest, the pastor replied, “Hallelujah. A new wave of revival will follow.”
Jin remains in jail and is suffering physically because of health issues that CCP authorities refuse to treat.
Fortunately, Jin has allies, such as President Donald Trump who has brought up his arrest with Jinping.
But this has been the history of the church for centuries.
When the Romans persecuted the early Church in the first and second century, it grew so fast that by 300 AD, it’s estimated that over half of the Roman citizens were Christians.
One of the church’s earliest apologists, Tertullian, who died in 220 AD, noted the irony, writing, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”