The Four Things I Learned After Visiting an Underground Bible School

I spoke in an underground house church Bible school recently and it was anything but normal. It continues to baffle me how the church in China continues to hunger after the Lord and will do anything to study His Word, including putting their safety at risk by attending an illegal underground house church Bible School.

As I prepared to teach, I realized there were FOUR CHARACTERISTICS that made this Bible school different to a regular Bible school in the west.

The first characteristic is the Bible school in China was not legal. The government would never allow the Chinese Bible school to be legally registered, because of their lack of control over the curriculum. The government requires that all Bible schools teach from a strict set of beliefs – many of which do not line up with the Christian faith. Because the Bible school strictly uses the Bible as their guide, and not propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party, the underground school is not able to legally register.

The second characteristic I noticed is that I, as a guest speaker, had to be secretly smuggled into the school. That is not something I have ever experienced while speaking at Bible schools in the west. Few professors at western Bible schools have to be smuggled into their classrooms. If anything, students smuggle themselves in if they are late for class.

The third characteristic that made the Chinese underground Bible school different is that the students enter the classroom at the beginning of the day and do not leave until late in the evening. In order to keep outsiders from noticing the illegal gathering, the students all adhere to a strict set of rules. One of the rules is that no one, after arriving, is allowed to leave until the day of teaching has ended. Students must decide before they arrive if they are ready to make that commitment for the day.

The fourth characteristic is the uniqueness of the location. The secret Bible school was located on the middle floor of a massive skyscraper in the business district of the city. One of the businesses in the towering building was owned by a Christian believer who supports the underground house church and allows his office to be used to host the Bible school. Inside his office is a secret door, the secret door opens to an empty room. At the back of the empty room is a vault door made of steel and is several inches thick. It is that door that leads to the Bible school.

During my time at the Bible school, I enjoyed several intimate hours studying the Word of the Lord together with extremely hungry students who were thirsty for more teaching from the Bible. Though we were in a secret location, hidden from the authorities, at no time did we ever feel oppressed, because we were enjoying the liberty promised by 2 Corinthians 3:17. That freedom is not given by the government, so it cannot be taken away by the government. True freedom is experienced in the Lord and is only given by the Lord and no one can take that away.