Pastor Dennis Balcombe recounted the remarkable gospel revival in China after 1978, emphasizing that Asia will take the gospel to other nations across the globe.
In the first afternoon workshop of the Everyone Asia 2024 conference conducted on July 4, Pastor Dennis Balcombe, the founder of Revival Chinese Ministries International, which was set up in 1997 to serve China through training, Bible distribution, prayer, etc, and Revival Christian Church in Hong Kong, gave a speech about the revival movement in China after 1978.
Initiated by Empowered 21, the worldwide relational network to mobilize churches and the more than 650 million Spirit-empowered Christians to fulfill the Great Commission by Pentecost 2033, the Everyone Asia 2024 conference was held from July 3 to 5 in Sentul International Convention Center, Indonesia. More than 11,000 participants from 46 countries on six continents attended the conference in person.
In his lecture entitled “Revival Movements in Asia: Tens of Millions of Chinese Following Jesus,” the white American pastor who came to Hong Kong several decades ago, introduced how the gospel was revived in China before 2015.
First of all, he talked about how revival began in the early church and spread to other parts of the world. “Every revival begins with prayer and repentance among the believers. Then many experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The result of the revival is an emphasis on the Bible. People preach, teach, study the Bible, and give Bibles to other people.”
“The Christian community began on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Then next, the gospel spread throughout Europe. From Europe, it went to North and South America and to Africa. And during the 20th century it came back to Asia, the great revivals are now in Asia: India, China, Indonesia, and other nations. The goal is to fulfill the Great Commission and take the gospel all around the world and back to Jerusalem,” the “born for China” missionary added.
Pastor Balcombe continued that Asia is where 60% of the world's population lives and the Christians are now completing the Great Commission that preaches the gospel throughout the world. Despite the great revival in Asia, most of the nations also have persecution, “but we're sending our missionaries to reach the unreached people.”
The white pastor believes that those Asian nations, including China, India, and Vietnam, will eventually reach the Jewish people with the gospel in Jerusalem, which is called the “Gospel Silk Road Vision.”
Recalling the evangelistic work by Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission for China more than 150 years ago, the pastor stated that China now has some of the largest churches in the world and boasts a large Christian population.
“From 1949 to 1979, the doors of gospel ministry from outside to China were totally closed.” Pastor Balcombe said, “In 1978, Deng Xiao-ping opened China.”
After 1978, he and his team visited house churches in Henan, which saw a great revival, miracles, and great persecution in the past decades. They taught the word of God, prayed for the sick, and trained local co-workers for hours a day.
Sometimes, they disguised themselves to do ministry in China under the harsh situation in the 20th century. Pastor Balcombe was even “disguised” as a corpse, placed in a “coffin cart” and smuggled into the villages of Henan and Anhui in the 1980s and 1990s.
He mentioned Fangcheng County in Henan Province, which is sometimes referred to as the “Jesus Nest,” for there used to be many Christians (about 20% of the local population) and hundreds of preachers who traveled over China to preach the gospel.
From 1986 to 1995, many preachers received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, leaders were trained to be missionaries, and some young preachers were commissioned to other provinces for pioneer work.
Pastor Balcombe recalled an experience in Sichuan where he climbed for four hours to reach a mountainous area in the province. Before that, there were almost no Christians in the area, but one year later, there were 1,500 people meeting in local house churches. They came to Christ “due to the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit through the Henan preachers.”
“Now many house churches have their own buildings,” he said. There was a house church in southeastern China which had approximately 1,000 members in 2012. Meanwhile, “many house churches in Wenzhou have built their own buildings.”
He added that the Revival Chinese Ministries International was also delivering hundreds of thousands of Bibles from the Revival church in Hong Kong to mainland China from 1979 to 2015. There used to be the “Donkeys for Jesus” team that packed Bibles from overseas. Each member took 50 whole Bibles, carried them in their luggage bags, and took them into China. Millions of gospel tracts and booklets were also delivered to China.
