The persecution of the Church in China is taking a dangerous dimension, as the country’s Communist Party is said to have moved to rewrite the Bible.

A report by the Christian Broadcasting Network indicates that the Communist Party has come out with its own version of the Holy Book, expunging passages that do not reflect its beliefs and making them reflect “socialist values”, intent on using the version to control the people.

This reported action by the Communist Party is the latest in its attempts to suppress the growth of the Church in the Asian nation, where the underground church is said to be exploding. It is estimated that the number of Christians in China is now about 130 million, more than the number of Christians in Nigeria.

Having failed to successfully stop the people from embracing Christianity, the Communist Party now aims to target the Bible itself to corrupt it and confuse the people, directly challenging the warning against altering the Word of God in Revelation 22:19.

For a long time, Communist China has clamped down on any form of religious beliefs, especially Christianity which it considers a threat to its continued control of the people and their thinking. Like in some Muslim-dominated countries, the Bible is not allowed to be distributed in China, with all Bible apps and Bible-related apps removed from app stores.

Similar attempts have been made by some Muslim-majority countries in their bid to stop the spread of Christianity in their countries. But this has in itself fueled the hunger for the knowledge of Jesus as fresh converts in some of those countries, such as Iran, continue to testify of more miraculous conversions and growth of the Christian faith in those places.