During the coronavirus outbreak, poor Christian villagers in China have been ordered to renounce their faith and replace displays of Jesus with portraits of Chairman Mao and President Xi Jinping or risk losing their welfare benefits.
Religious liberty magazine Bitter Winter reports that officials with China's Communist Party visited believers’ homes in Linfen, a prefecture-level city in the northern province of Shanxi. While there, they ordered residents who receive social welfare payments from the government to replace crosses, religious symbols, and images in their homes with portraits of China's communist leaders.
If Christians resisted the order, officials annulled their subsidies.
“All impoverished households in the town were told to display Mao Zedong images,” a local pastor told Bitter Winter. “The government is trying to eliminate our belief and wants to become God instead of Jesus.”
Recently, an official in the eastern province of Shandong stormed into the home of a local Christian. While inside the Christian's home, the official posted portraits of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping and reportedly said, “These are the greatest gods. If you want to worship somebody, they are the ones."
In Jiangxi’s Poyang county, a Christian woman in her 80s was removed from the government’s aid list because she said “Thank God” after receiving her monthly 200 RMB (about $28) subsidy.
The Communist Party previously targeted images and photos of Jesus as part of its campaign to “transform believers in religion into believers in the party.”
Take a look, friends. This is the spirit behind Marxism; it may take a while to manifest its totalitarian impulses, but it is a spirit apart from Christ, indeed it is anti-christ.
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“The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked. The LORD has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet” (Nahum 1:3).
