By Asaiah Logan —
In May 2025, a Chinese freight train arrived in Iran, inaugurating a trade link that cuts travel time in half and evades trade sanction monitors in the Strait of Malacca. Each train coming into Iran and leaving Iran can carry 500 tons of freight.
This may be a way that Iran is receiving vital military aid (maybe the reason Iran was finally able to shoot down an American F-15). And it is a way Iran can circumvent international sanctions on its goods; China can transport and then bring to international market Iranian goods.
This is part of the sinister Sino connection of Iran-China, partners in opposing American and Western Civilization. China gets cheap oil from Iran.
But the so-called CRINK Axis (China-Russia-Iran-North Korea) is not just an opposition to the United States. Especially the Iran-China connection runs deep in history — and it’s not all nefarious. Their collaboration dates back to the Persian Empire running trade along the Silk Road to the Chinese Empire.
Along that Silk Road, the first missionaries reached China in 635 A.D. They were Persian (today’s Iran).
They were believed to set up a monastery complex near Xi’an of which the capstone is the Daquin Pagoda. Some scholars think it was only a Buddhist monastery, but all or most signs of Christianity would be erased in 845 A.D. after the Tang emperor Wuzong banned foreign religions and oversaw the destruction and abandonment of Christian outposts. The Xi’an Stele from 781 AD (now in the Beilin Museum) attests to the “Religion of the Light.”
Reportedly, the giving went both ways.
“The oldest church in Iran is in a city called Tabriz and it was rebuilt by the Chinese empress as a thank you for sending missionaries to China so many years ago,” says Eugene Bach of the Back to Jerusalem initiative.
The Christian reciprocity continues until today.
At the same time that there are 100s of Chinese military advisers in Iran, there are also scores of Chinese missionaries in Iran.
“I am convinced that the violence that wea are seeing played out in Iran today is a direct reflection of the spiritual battle that is taking place in Iran,” Bach says. “As we watch the news of US strikes and Israeli strikes and Iran striking everywhere else that that this is a culmination of years of spiritual warfare.”
In 1979, there were only 500 Christian converts in Iran (not counting Armenian and Assyrian Christians). Today there 1M-5M believers.
“The majority of Christians that I meet with today in Iran came to Christ by way of a dream,” Bach says. “This has been spiritual warfare for the last two decades.”
Iranians are sending missionaries to other nations, like Afghanistan, Bach says.
“I just got a report two weeks ago from one of our missionaries that is serving there,” Bach says. “It said in the month of February alone, they baptized 100 new believers in Afghanistan.”
Note: Christians in America, take to your knees and pray, don’t cringe and wring your hands and worry. Whether America and Israel win or lose militarily, God is winning spiritually.
