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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian bookstore and a sports apparel company are challenging the law, but a court recently ruled against them. They appealed the ruling, and with ADF's help, they'll keep fighting another attempt by Colorado to skirt the First Amendment. Learn more about how you can support free speech by texting WIRE to 83848 or going to joinadf.com slash WIRE.
For nearly two decades, Pastor Ezra Jin helped build one of China's most influential churches, drawing thousands of worshipers, even as the Chinese government cracked down on Christianity. After years of surveillance and the closure of his physical church, Jin was arrested last fall. He remains imprisoned in China, separated from his family and congregation.
His daughter Grace joins us to talk about his current plight, how the Trump administration has responded, and how she has hope for his return. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
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Visit joinadf.com slash wire to sign the petition today. Again, that's joinadf.com slash wire. Most of us already know we should eat more fruits and vegetables. The hard part is actually doing it consistently. Life gets busy fast.
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Chapter 2: Who is Pastor Ezra Jin and what is his significance in China?
largest nationwide church in China in October of 2025. My father, along with initially 28 other church leaders and now 18 leaders, including my father, are in detention or in jail or prison today for just their role in the church.
Yeah, I want to ask you, of course, about that. But first, can you give us a picture of how the church operates? So are these a collection of home churches, dozens of church leaders, you said? It's nationwide. How does that operate exactly?
After the Cultural Revolution, especially during the Cultural Revolution, there was such crackdown on the church that many people had to hide inside houses only to worship. And in the early 1980s, 1990s, and the early 2000s, we saw an opening up of China generally. And so even the churches started to open itself up. And so we had these bigger churches opening in public.
Chapter 3: What led to the arrest of Pastor Ezra Jin and other church leaders?
but that were still, again, kind of like my father that said, we want the church itself to be making these sacred decisions instead of being under the Chinese Communist Party's control. So they grew out of these house church movement, but became a rather unique thing that was very open.
So my father's church was founded in 2007, and at the height of our physical location, which was shut down in 2018, We were hosting Sunday services of 1,500 people coming in weekly and having like five services each Sunday. But again, in 2018, our church was shut down and we were not allowed any location to worship. And my father did not want to be persecuted.
confrontational for the sake of being confrontational. So he actually moved our services online and beyond anyone's imagination. When COVID happened, the church and its model was the first of its kind in China and it blew up. And instead of the church being destroyed by the party, it actually became truly a nationwide church. We were having 100 plus meeting places.
And again, this hybrid model, we didn't think that it was healthy to just have people meet online alone. So he really encouraged people to meet both online and offline in smaller groups. But that really also angered the Chinese Communist Party in which they wanted to control faith and they wanted to eliminate faith. But instead of being eliminated, we grew.
That's really amazing. So what should have been setbacks ended up really being used by God to grow the church tremendously.
Exactly, exactly.
Your father had opportunities to remain safely here in the U.S. if he chose to, but he felt compelled to go back to China. Why did he feel the need to do that?
Yeah, my father had many opportunities to stay in the U.S. actually. First, when he came to the U.S. in 2002 to study at Fuller Seminary. I grew up in the U.S. for many years. And in 2007, he actually moved our whole family back to China to start the church. But before then, he had the opportunity to stay and minister to churches in America. But
He felt really this love for China that was placed into his heart. And again, in 2018, when the pressure was mounting, when the church was under severe pressure right before the shutdown, my family and my father had actually also come to the U.S. with the church's blessing to see if that would de-escalate the pressure that was put on the church initially.
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