“Is this the day I die?”

Quan stiffened at the shout behind him. The voice rang with authority. “You meet in the night like the criminals you are. How dare you defy the law? In three minutes we will shoot every man, woman, and child who does not declare himself loyal to the people rather than the gwelios, foreign devils.”

This book was given to us by a friend in the church and we have both been powerfully touched by the underlying themes and challenges in it.

In the book we meet an American business executive who has no idea what his brilliant old college roommate is facing in China. When they’re reunited in China after twenty years, the men are shocked at what they discover about each other.

Thrown together in an hour of encroaching darkness, both have to make choices that will determine not only their destinies, but the destinies of two families, two nations . . . and two worlds!

While this is a fictional story, this is not art for art’s sake. There is a very strong message in this story of a westernised man who has lost his Christian faith. He travels to China, where he meets his college roommate, who is practicing Christianity in the midst of the most awful persecution.

We encounter the courage and bravery of followers of Jesus in a persecuted context, are confronted by the insidious nature of much of what we find in western culture, as well as extraordinary insights into the Father Heart of God.