The Internet is an interesting tool. We can do a search and find almost anything. One topic is “religious persecution.” If you search that topic, you might find some depressing stories.

Christians, members of the Bahai religion, and other minorities are often “persecuted.” I put that word in quotation marks because if we think someone is being persecuted, someone else will tell us that we are wrong.

Be prepared for an argument.

If you want to see an example of “persecution”, here is a recent news video:

As a Christian, I don’t like religious persecution and restrictions. The most persecuted religion in the world is the Christians, the followers of Jesus. The best estimate is that there are between 2.3 to 2.6 billion Christians in the world.

Those are huge numbers, but notice the difference. 0.3 billion is a lot of unknown people. That is 300 million people who are not easily accounted for.

So where are those missing 300 million religious people? 

In hiding.

I don’t know the real number, but it is becoming impossible to count religious believers, especially in places where they are under restrictions, and where many are punished for their beliefs and practices. People know how to hide and keep themselves out of trouble.

So, what country has the largest number of Christians? Probably China, and the numbers are growing rapidly. People might choose to believe, but talking about their faith in some public places, “waving the flag”, could get them in trouble. That is true in many parts of the world. “The nail that stands up gets the hammer.”

When the Communists came to power, in China, before the year 1950, there were many Christians in China, but they were a small percentage of the population.

I think most believed that the faith of Jesus, Christianity, would disappear, as the atheistic Communist party gained power and more members.

But strangely, the number of Christians is apparently now much higher than the number of members in the official communist party, and that gap is widening. 

We can’t prove this because the nails don’t want to stand up.

So, how do we understand this? The whole world is changing around us, and we can’t see this history.

Here is an old example:

I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (Philippians 3: 4 to 6)

That is a man describing himself. His family had a tradition for more than a thousand years. In his time, he walked the walk and talked the talk, and wore the right kind of clothes. His name was Saul, and he set out to terminate that faith of Jesus. Those pesky Christians were annoying him, and the other members of his ancient community.

Slow and steady tried to win the race…and failed.

He worked hard and caused some public terror, but then he travelled to the city of Damascus to hunt down more of those Jesus people. As he was travelling, he had a spiritual experience, and he told a local king about this later:

I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice … (Acts 26: 12 to 14)

If you want to know what the voice said, just look it up on the Internet.

Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. (verse 19) 

I am skipping some details, but you can read more, if you want.

The point is, indoctrination and social control cannot put out a spiritual fire. That man Saul was changed, and after he changed his name to Paul, he spread that fire to many places. He also wrote a large part of the Christian New Testament. Other people followed his example, and that Jesus fire still burns today in every part of the world.

From that first example, persecution is a powerful establishment extinguishing the Jesus fire, or trying to. It is a simple process for anyone to make a decision to follow Jesus and generations of establishment-indoctrination cannot stop the process, but they often try.

A brick wall cannot put out a fire.

We live in an interesting world.