By Abdul Masih —
President Trump was unable to secure the release from Chinese prison of Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri in his 2-day summit with his counterpart in Beijing.
Therefore, Pastor Jin — whose Zion Church founded in 2007 has become one of the largest unregistered church — will remain in jail patiently enduring his persecution with trust and peace.
“Don’t worry about me. I find great comfort in being able to endure this little suffering for the gospel,” Pastor Jin wrote in 2025. “When I heard that many of our young ministers, deacons and elders have been imprisoned, I was so heartbroken. Now that I’m experiencing these things myself, I feel more at peace.”
In China, as with any communist nation, there can only be one supreme leader. That’s why Xi Jinping and cohorts are deeply anxious about Christianity, whose supreme leader is God. (They also worry about Islam, whose supreme leader is Allah.)
International observers marked the L for Trump on the ledger of his visit May 14-15, but it may wind up becoming the downfall of Xi. Anytime you take on the Living God, it’s not going to end well for you.
Xi declined Trump’s request for Jin’s release because it’s considered a matter of internal security. The CCP worries about quelling dissent internally more than anything else.
Notwithstanding, Zion Church was never a dissenter. “We do not oppose dialogue with the government, nor do we confront it,” Jin said.
Where they ran afoul of their Chinese overlords was refusing to install surveillance cameras into their Beijing sanctuary, which was subsequently confiscated by the CCP. (They meet in houses now.)
Zion also resisted the contamination of doctrine; Xi pushes for the “sinicization of religion” to make it a supporter of communist rule.
Simultaneous October 2025 raids arrested or disappeared 30 leaders, including Jin. The scale and coordination appeared similar to the types of raids the FBI does to dismantle terror networks or crime syndicates in the United States.
His uneasiness with religion aside, Xi’s decision to crack down on the church is sure to backfire. When the church is persecuted is when it most grows and thrives.
“I can never understand how the Marxist leaders don’t get this: the more you press down, the more the church spreads. Christians have a long history of dealing with chains and oppression,” says Jeff King, of International Christian Concern. “Nothing stops them.”
Pastor Shen XiaoMing, who leads some 10M believers, relates how he practically thanked police interrogators: “All the times you were chasing after us, our church growth exploded. But the times when you stopped arresting us, then the church growth slowed down. In hindsight, I feel like you helped plant the church.
“We suffered for years. We were tested and tried. Persecution didn’t destroy us. It refined the church. It caused us to grow. The church shouldn’t fear suffering; it should fear worldliness.”
