You talk about crimes in the 20th century, and smuggling operations that happened, what do you think of? I bet you don't think of the 1,000,000 bible smuggling operation into China do you? China as a country is communist and therefore the state decides what is right or not. However with this comes the persecution of Christians, infact millions and millions of them. Most Christians have to go to underground churches or just deny they are Christian fullstop to prevent the state taking action. Then to top this off foreigners can't take any books or pages of writing into the country without it being checked, and as soon as the see it's religious or in anyway going to 'affect' the state it's banned.

So back in 1981 on June the 18th the world reacted this, and spectacularly, embarking on the biggest smuggling success of the entire century. China had just come out of it's cultural revolution, where before this Christians were virtually wiped out of the country, anyway now it was made slightly easier to be a Christian. But because of the happenings before there was a major shortage of bibles in the country, and the people desperately needed them because it's God's word they want to read about. Opendoors which is a major Christian charity helping persecuted Christians, were behind the plan, their leader was Brother Andrew who wrote the books Light Force and God's Smuggler. In the latter it was about how he smuggled Bibles into the once Communist Eastern European countries.

So that night the Bibles were loaded onto a massive tug boat in Hong Kong, and they set off on their journey. However because the operation had been delayed by a few months they were entering the typhoon season of Asia. In the end they had no option but to go ahead with the mission otherwise it would be 4 months until they could next try, despite the captain saying it was crazy. Then as they left a typhoon was reported, they had to protect the tug with it's incredibly expensive load, they tried to shelter it in a local port, but reports confirmed the tyhoon was going directly into them. There was no option to pray, since the whole mission was to spread God's word, quickly this spread around the world thanks to Opendoors and Christians prayed for them. Then suddenly the whole sea went calm and the typhoon changed course, they were free to go! Even now it wasn't safe as there were China patrol ships everywhere on route to where they wanted to drop the bibles, but somehow they didnt sense anything was unusual!

The bibles were all waterproof, and a barge was dropped off and helped take them to the shore. Some insider Christians were at the beach waiting to help out, other bibles reached further down the coasts. Unbelievably the mission was successful, the persuted Christians had bibles! The mission code named Project Pearl rocketed throughout the world, it just shows anything is possible with God. Also in the years to follow the Chinese Christians who helped out on the beach were still being quizzed on the project, but by then it was too late. Recently the government has started to print a few more bibles, but still there are millions in the world who just don't have access to them. God cares for every single one of his believers and we need to, too. I just loved this story when I heard about it for the first time, as it shows we can help them, and make a difference. We need to unite, as things we can do when we are can be beyond all imagination, I hope you all found the story interesting, and just remember that we are so lucky to be in a society of free speech and free actions. But we do need to pray for those who are in need, as China isn't the only country in this situation, for example there are thousands of Christians living in Palestine in terrible conditions, and yet the world just thinks of Palestine as Islamic. They and other Christians need our help.

Hope you all have had a good week, and have a good weekend ;-)
Luke