Seventh Day Adventist Members Driven Out

China Aid is reporting on the recent persecution the Seventh Day Adventist church has had to endure.  This reminds me that free worship is a blessing and that not everyone has that blessing.  Please keep this church in your prayers.  More at China Aid.

SHANGDONG-Jinan Seventh-day Adventists were shaken when local officials barged into their rented building, disturbing members as they met for worship, and forced them to terminate their lease.

On February 27, 2010, Director Zhang Jie of Jinan Office of Religious and Ethnicity Affairs, heading up a group of officers from the Bureau of Religious Affairs and Public Safety, burst into the church. They abruptly rebuked the members, threatened to ban the church, and ordered them to stop all activities by March 5, 2010. The 200 members filed out of the church in tears and gathered in the yard.

The office director of Huaiyin Religious and Ethnicity Affairs believes the church should be banned altogether because it did not “register and join the Three Self Church.”

Currently the church does not have a building, and its property has not been returned. But members continue to meet in open spaces to worship and fellowship, refusing to be daunted by persecution or lack of a building.