<\/p>\n
For believers in China, persecution and oppression aren\u2019t abstract ideas to be debated; they are reality.<\/p>\n
That\u00a0lived experience\u00a0for Christians in the People\u2019s Republic of China \u2014\u00a0an unabashedly communist nation \u2014\u00a0served as a muse for actor Brett Varvel, who stars in and directs \u201cDisciples in the Moonlight,\u201d a film set in the American midwest and exploring what it might look like if Christianity and the Bible were outlawed in the United States.<\/p>\n
To understand the crux of Varvel\u2019s movie, though, viewers need to grasp what\u2019s happening to Christians in China.<\/p>\n
The evangelization of China was on the rise in the late 20th century, though there\u2019s evidence from the Pew Research Center suggesting\u00a0it has since slowed. Nevertheless, the CCP, alarmed by the number of Christians in the country, seemingly \u2014 and heretically \u2014\u00a0took to heart the old adage, \u201cIf you can\u2019t beat \u2019em, join \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n
As CBN News\u00a0has reported, Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s regime has, in addition to\u00a0destroying church buildings\u00a0and\u00a0arresting ministers, undertaken a decade-long process to sinicize the Bible, that is, to infuse it with communist propaganda and recast Jesus as a murderer and sinner.<\/p>\n
For example, it reimagines the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. In the New Testament passage, the religious leaders bring to Jesus a woman who has sinned. In response, He tells the crowd only those who are without sin can stone her. One by one, the men walk away, leaving Jesus alone with the adulterous woman. He then forgives her and tells her to \u201csin no more.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in the CCP-edited version of that passage, it states:<\/p>\n
Jesus once said to the angry crowd who was trying to stone a woman who had sinned, \u201cHe who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.\u201d When his words came to their ears, they stopped moving forward. When everyone went out, Jesus stoned the woman himself, and said, \u201cI am also a sinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varvel\u2019s film,\u00a0now streaming on Angel, draws heavily on that sinister reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just that the Bible has been outlawed,\u201d Varvel said on CBN\u2019s \u201cFaith in Culture.\u201d \u201cBut it has been changed, and all the offensive language has been taken out, a government-sanctioned, approved text has now been distributed, and you basically now turn in your copy of the Bible for what we call [in the movie] the \u2018Enlightened Truth Bible.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Varvel, a devout Christian, argued there have been \u201cglimpses\u201d of persecution for Christians even in the U.S., were there is freedom of speech and religion.<\/p>\n
More than anything, he said, the movie led him to imagine what he would do if that level of persecution came to America.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven with the freedoms we currently have, what are we doing with it?\u201d Varvel asked about believers in the United States. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how convicted I was when, one night, in the development of this project, I got my wife and my kids in the living room with me and we got together every single Bible in our house and we put them on the coffee table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, he continued, there were 17 copies of Scripture in their home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just was this sobering moment of realizing how much I take it for granted,\u201d the actor said. \u201cAnd how I\u2019m not doing enough with my faith, enough with my freedom, and I desire this [movie] to be a shot of adrenaline in the arm of a believer, to be bold about their faith, to be unashamed about what Jesus has done for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varvel went on to reference Romans 1:16, in which the Apostle Paul wrote, \u201cFor I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes \u2014\u00a0Jews first and also Gentiles\u201d (NLT).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of the pressure off of us,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s not us who\u2019s going to change anybody\u2019s life. It\u2019s the power of God\u2019s Word and the Holy Spirit and we just have the opportunity to be faithful and be His messengers. And that\u2019s really what I hope people take away from \u2018Disciples in the Moonlight,\u2019 to realize God\u2019s Word is absolutely true, it is where we find all morality, it\u2019s where we find the instruction manual for life, but it is also how we get to know the God of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
He encouraged listeners to \u201cget serious about God\u2019s Word, get serious about our faith, and not be ashamed of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can catch our full conversation with Varvel in the vide above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For believers in China, persecution and oppression aren\u2019t abstract ideas to be debated; they are reality. That\u00a0lived experience\u00a0for Christians in the People\u2019s Republic of China \u2014\u00a0an unabashedly communist nation \u2014\u00a0served as a muse for actor Brett Varvel, who stars in and directs \u201cDisciples in the Moonlight,\u201d a film set in the American midwest and exploring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2265,236,45,2266,2268,2269,2264,971,2267],"class_list":["post-10596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-actor","tag-america","tag-bible","tag-brett","tag-explores","tag-idea","tag-outlawed","tag-scary","tag-varvel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}