The rental of premises where the service should be held on Sunday March 5 was cancelled on Saturday night, and the police prevented several believers from leaving home.
by Qi Junzao
Bitter Winter has reported how the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, theoretically liquidated in 2018 before his pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years in jail in 2019, continues to gather “illegally” by changing locations every Sunday, in a cat and mouse game with the police.
The game continued on May 5, according to a report shared by the house church members with Bitter Winter and other human rights media. Some twelve church members were blocked at home since Friday; one sister had the tires of her car punctured; another had to deal with the fact that water and electricity supplies to her home had been cut off, a frequent harassment strategy against church members. Four believers were taken to the police station on Sunday.
On Saturday, the report says, the owner of a farmhouse reserved by the church “called us suddenly at 11 p.m. in the middle of the night to inform that they will not be able to receive us because of a ‘water pipe burst,’ and asked us to find another place and not to come.” Believers were “not surprised, because many of our co-workers have been continuously guarded, and many brothers and sisters have been summoned or warned. Power outages, punctured car tires, and other incidents happened to the members and sympathizers of our church, but everyone still regards worshiping God as the most important service in this life, and they yearn for the word of God more urgently,” the church members said.
Those co-workers who were not under police guard “went to another farmhouse in the early morning, and immediately notified the brothers and sisters to go there to worship. The Lord’s Day gathering was held online and offline, and the worship time was postponed from the usual 9:00 to 9:50. More than 100 brothers and sisters sang hymns and prayed together on site, and there were also more than 100 attending online. More than a dozen policemen and plainclothes officers soon came to the scene, and state security started to negotiate, hoping that we would leave immediately; but the co-workers refused to obey and kept the order and safety of the entire meeting. Two plainclothes policemen said that they might take all of them away today. Everyone still listened to the sermon in silence, entrusted themselves to the hands of God who loves us, and let the enemies do what they should.”
In the end, “the church held a complete Sunday meeting,” although it was recorded by the police officers. “At noon, after the worship, due to the pressure from the police, the farmhouse where the meeting was held could not receive the meals we had ordered. But the brothers and sisters left safely, after singing hymns and praying.”
