by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - A US lawmaker has told a House Select Committee that China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) government is rewriting parts of the Bible in order to increase its power and suppress the Gospel, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
During a hearing of the House Select Committee on the CCP, Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) attested that China’s Chairman Xi Jinping is on a “quest to make the faithful serve the party rather than God,” ICC reports.
Gallagher explained to the Select Committee that Chairman Xi announced during the CCP’s 19th Party Congress in 2017 that the government intends to pursue “the Sinicization of Chinese religions and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist.” This process involves forcing the church to teach government-approved messages, and has now extended to rewriting parts of the Bible.
Gallagher referenced two instances in which the CCP has rewritten Scripture, ICC reports. The first instance is from a Chinese university textbook in which the Gospel of John account of Jesus telling the woman caught in adultery to ‘go and sin no more’ is changed to “Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death,” Gallagher said.
In Gallagher’s second reference, CCP authorities in Henan province reportedly “forced Protestant churches to replace the Ten Commandments with Xi Jinping quotes,” changing the first commandment from, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” (Exodus 20:3, KJV) to, “Resolutely guard against the infiltration of Western ideology,” ICC reports.
China ranks 16th on the US Open Doors World Watch List 2023 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.