In this excerpt from Leaving Buddha, Eugene Bach introduces us to the amazing story of Tenzin Lahkpa, a Buddhist monk who had a powerful encounter with Jesus the Messiah.

Tenzin Lahkpa and Eugene Bach, Leaving Buddha: A Tibetan Monk’s Encounter with the Living God (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2019), 206 pages, ISBN 9781641231022.
Read the review by John Lathrop.

When I began to write this book, my relationship with Tenzin Lahkpa (a pseudonym) was completely new. I met him at a lunch meeting in August 2017 in western China, where our Back to Jerusalem missionary team was discussing a project to reach out to the Tibetan people. One of the pastors brought along Tenzin, a former Buddhist monk, who shared his personal testimony at the table.

When I heard Tenzin’s story, I was speechless. I was so moved and inspired by his experiences that I knew right away this was a story that needed to be shared with others.

Tenzin is not the first Buddhist monk I have met who has come to Christ (although I believe the number is relatively few), but he is the first to allow me to share his amazing story. Every time I sat down at my computer to write his personal account, I trembled with fear, knowing that it was a special project—one I did not feel qualified for due to the challenges and intricacies involved.

The first challenge was to obtain a full version of his story. I had asked Tenzin to write down his experiences so that I could translate them and make his life story available to others—but what I received was a very humble, two-page biography! Additional information came during subse­quent interviews where Tenzin felt embarrassed and extremely reluctant to talk about himself. As a Buddhist monk, he had been instructed for years to remove any sign of self-identity in an effort to obtain enlightenment. Talking about his own story and focusing on himself was the exact oppo­site of what he had been taught to do. Furthermore, like many Christians living in Tibet today, Tenzin does not see himself as anything special. He is simple and unassuming. If you were to meet him on the street, you would most likely not think twice about him.

The second challenge was that I was convinced my level of facility in the Chinese and Tibetan languages was not high enough to adequately translate Tenzin’s experiences. Thus, this book was written from a series of interviews conducted in 2017 and 2018 by five of my close colleagues and translated from Amdo Tibetan to Mandarin Chinese and eventually to English.

Third, in October 2017, a political development greatly hindered the interview process and the challenge of verifying an accurate translation of Tenzin’s story. The Chinese Communist Party came together in Beijing and passed new oppressive religious laws that came into effect on February 1, 2018. Thus, the interviews with Tenzin were carried out illegally and in secret during some of the most intense crackdowns on Christianity in China in more than a decade.

Fourth, even after scouring the material and running it by Tenzin and the translators, I still felt certain there were things I had missed or did not understand that were important. I also thought there are things I might have misunderstood or translated incorrectly. However, I have checked and double-checked the facts and events in this story to the best of my ability.

In this excerpt from his book, Jesus in Iran, Eugene Bach shares how God is using dreams and visions to draw Muslims into a relationship with Jesus the Messiah.

This chapter, “Dreams,” is an excerpt from Eugene Bach, Jesus in Iran (Back to Jerusalem, 2015), 193 pages.

I would like to state that I am not much into visions and dreams. In Christian circles, I am in the minority. After serving for more than fifteen years in the underground house church in China, I am an endangered species. I personally dislike the idea of living life based on a vision or a dream. I am not saying that it is wrong; I am only saying that I don’t like it because it doesn’t make sense to me.

I like things that I can touch, taste, smell, or measure. I like things that I can observe or hold in my hands. I watch TV shows where people are explaining to others what their dreams mean or I listen to Christians talk about the iconology of dreams and I try to learn, but I can’t help but feel like an outsider, because those ideas are so far from my own reality.

If I have an intense dream about driving a car through a crowd of Africans riding on pandas speaking Persian, the first thing that I assume when I wake up is that I ate too much chili the night before. I do not assume that God is trying to speak to me or that something in my dream is pointing to an omen in my future.

Prophetic interpretations can really make me nervous. One time I traveled to see a mission director in the southern part of the United States who has since become a good friend of mine. We were supposed to spend some time together speaking about mission work. Instead, he had set up for me an appointment with a room full of prophets. I was sure that it was a gag. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe that God uses prophets greatly, but I like to observe; I do not participate.

I was nervous and felt out of place. “So … where are you guys from?” I asked as we waited for the elevator to move. I have lived in Hong Kong for almost half of my life, where time is short, people are busy, and the elevators move like roller coasters. After experiencing Hong Kong elevators, American elevators feel like they take a lifetime to move up or down. Someone needed to break the silence on the slow American elevator.

Eugene Bach: I travel more than 300 days a year for ministry and see a lot of different types of Christians. I speak at big churches and small churches. I work with underground house church Christians in Iran and traditional conservative churches in Europe and as different as they are all are, there is a common thread that binds us all together – our desire to see revival.

It is a universal desire among Christians world-wide.

I have been working in China for almost 20 years and during this time I have witnessed the world’s largest revival. Being involved with grassroots missions in China has thrown me into the fires of cultural immersion and allowed me to experience this revival firsthand as it was happening.

Traveling with Chinese missionaries into many closed nations has provided me with a unique perspective of the pain that exists in nations where revival has tarried.

Six years ago, I decided to start from the beginning, trace the history of revival, identify it’s characteristics, and see what we could learn to help push forward into the nations that have not yet experienced revival.

PneumaReview.com: The word “revival” means many things to many people. How would you define it?

Eugene Bach: I want to be very careful to not create a rigid definition of revival that excludes a movement of God, so for our road trip Bible study, we start in the book of Acts chapter 1 and follow what happens in the first century church.

During our road trip Bible study, Chasing Revival, we found this definition to be more accurate than others.

We believe that revival is not necessarily spontaneous – appearing out of thin air, but is rather continuation of what Jesus promised in Acts chapter 1. The revivals happening in China today are not new, but their roots can be traced back to Acts 1 in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

PneumaReview.com: What are some of the places you traveled to while making Chasing Revival?

Eugene Bach: We started in Jerusalem and followed the book of Acts into Judea, Samaria, Asia Minor, and to the “ends of the world.” This led us in a mainly western direction.

God is doing something amazing in China.

With the special permission of the publisher, PneumaReview.com presents Chapter 20 from the book by Eugene Bach and Brother Zhu, The Underground Church.

“[T]he house churches of China are growing at a phenomenal rate. Never in the history of the world have so many people in such a short time left one belief system for another without a hostile revolution. Lives in China are being transformed daily by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the display of His miraculous power” (from the back cover).

The Underground Church by Eugene Bach and Brother Zhu.

In this book, we have explored the history of the underground House Church, surveyed the main networks within the movement, and identified various elements that have helped to propel its growth. We have read personal testimonies of Chinese believers and looked at some of their experiences and trials, all of which have helped to bring their history to life. Through these examples, we can better understand concepts and situations pertaining to the Chinese church that are otherwise completely foreign to outsiders.

As discussed in previous chapters, the last few decades of Chinese church history were directed largely by the great work of God flowing out of the Nanyang region in Henan—through the networks of Peter Xu, Tanghe, Fangcheng, and others. A foreign visitor to that area would most likely look around and immediately wonder why God would choose such a place to pour out His grace. In many ways, Nanyang is about ten years behind the rest of China. It does not contain any notable foreign communities, and any foreigner visiting there is stared at and sometimes pointed out by local children who shout, “Laowai!” (“old foreigner”). One House Church worker from the Five Brothers Network described Nanyang in this way: “There are four areas of unrest for the Chinese government: Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Nanyang.” It is hard to imagine that this county has had such an impact on the entire world.

Eugene Bach speaks with PneumaReview.com about the amazing things he has seen God doing in China, Iran, North Korea, and other difficult places. What can we learn about the causes of the greatest revival of our age? How can you learn more about these Jesus movements that few others seem to be talking about?

PneumaReview.com: You have written books about Christianity in China, North Korea, and Iran. How did you become interested in writing about the persecuted church?

Eugene in Delhi, India.

Eugene Bach: Firstly, I am not an author. I have written books, but writing is not my gift. It is not something that I am good at. What I have written comes out of a sense of duty rather than a traditional interest. My background is in special operations in the US Military. As a former US Marine, I feel much more comfortable working with my hands, crawling in mud, and shooting weapons than sitting at a laptop writing, but as I have traveled around the world I realized that there are not many things that are written about certain areas of the world where Christians are persecuted.

If I desire to study the history of the western church in America and Europe, I will undoubtedly find a plethora of books that fill thousands of libraries from floor to ceiling. I will find endless discussions, websites, university courses, and computer programs to help me understand and learn more about the places, dates, and people involved in American and European revivals.

In contrast, the world is witnessing the world’s largest revival take place in China. What is being written about it? Who is recording it? What will the coming generations use to reference it?

The largest revival of any Muslim nation on earth is taking place in Iran. What is being written about it? There are so many pastors, missionaries, and evangelists that are doing amazing things and seeing tremendous church growth, but their stories are largely unknown to the rest of the world.

PneumaReview.com: The growth of the church in China has attracted worldwide attention. What are some of the key factors that have contributed to this tremendous growth?

Eugene Bach: I do not want to pretend that I know the perfect answer to this question. I am not an expert on the house church in China. After having lived in China for more than 17 years, I have learned that the term “China Expert” is an oxymoron.

I want to be extremely careful not to glorify persecution. I do not want to peddle a theology that profits from the pain of persecution, but I cannot deny the role that persecution has played in the growth of the church in China.

PneumaReview.com speaks with Eugene Bach, a spokesman and leader of the Chinese mission movement, Back to Jerusalem, about their vision and the amazing things they have seen God do as they carry the good news to the world’s most restrictive places.

Please tell our readers where and when the Back to Jerusalem Movement began.

The Back to Jerusalem vision is a call to the church in China to take the Good News to the unreached nations between China and Jerusalem. It was independently birthed over 90 years ago in two separate locations in China – Shandong Province with the Jesus Family and then later on with the Northwest Spiritual Movement and the Back to Jerusalem Evangelistic Band from central Henan Province.

What is the vision of the Back to Jerusalem Movement?

Quite simply, The Back to Jerusalem vision is nothing more than the Great Commission given by Jesus in Acts 1:8 and Matthew 28:18-19. The Back to Jerusalem vision is the commission given to the church in China to join the efforts of the global Body of Christ to evangelize the lands between the walls – the restricted nations between the Great Wall of China and the Western Wall of Jerusalem.

The vision is bigger than a ministry. There is a ministry called Back to Jerusalem, but it does not own the vision.

The vision is bigger than any denomination. There are many denominations involved in the Back to Jerusalem vision – from conservative Amish to charismatic Apostolics – but the vision does not belong to any denomination.

The vision is bigger than any personality. There are several well-known believers involved in the Back to Jerusalem vision, but not one of them owns it. It is not a personality driven vision.

Eugene Bach with Pastor Zhang Rongliang

The majority of the Chinese involved in the Back to Jerusalem vision today come from very simple uneducated agrarian backgrounds. They reject titles and only refer to themselves as brothers and sisters. Even the most senior pastors in the traditional underground house churches with millions of believers, who have embraced the BTJ vision, only wear the simple title of brother or sister.

What types of ministries does Back to Jerusalem support? In addition to Bibles, what other resources do you supply?

With more than 2,000 active Chinese Back to Jerusalem missionaries working in the land between the walls, it can only be said that we actively support a smorgasbord of activities that cause trouble in nations that are currently closed to the Gospel. Those activities range from missionary training, mission exposure, missionary support, ministry equipping, and platform creation through business, disaster relief, humanitarian aid, or education.

Other resources include emergency aid during disaster relief efforts, business training and investment, alternative energy units, and a variety of electronic communication tools.