“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”-Jim Elliot

While propaganda claims China is transforming into a democratic country, the truth is that Chinese Christians continue to be persecuted behind closed doors. In his compelling new novel Safely Home (Tyndale House Publishers), Randy Alcorn compares Christianity in America with Christianity in China and inspires readers to see heaven, not earth, as their home.

Underneath the book’s jacket cover is the beautiful painting Safely Home, by award-winning artist Ron DiCianni. In an engaging yet entertaining way, this novel challenges readers to consider what it means to follow Christ, asking themselves whether they might be willing to suffer and die for their faith.

“Many of us American Christians have never come to grips with the Lordship of Christ,” says Alcorn. “While Safely Home shows some suffering in China, it’s an encouraging book, full of hope and anticipation. Readers will see events on earth with an eternal perspective. I pray they’ll come away with a greater love for their brothers and sisters overseas, and with a deeper sense of anticipation for heaven.”

In Safely Home Alcorn uses two very different characters, former roommates at Harvard back in the 1970s. One is Ben Fielding, now a successful U.S. businessman, and the other Li Quan, a Chinese Christian. While Ben is prospering in America, Quan faces increasing persecution in China. Yet Quan’s faith gives him the hope and peace and family life that elude Ben. When they’re reunited in China, twenty years after college, Quan models for Ben a radically different way of thinking and living.

“The people who change lives,” Alcorn says, “are the ones who point us away from the world’s short-term perspective to God’s long-term perspective. Life on earth is a dot, a brief window of opportunity; life in heaven is a line going out from that dot for all eternity. If we’re smart, we’ll live not for the dot, but for the line.”

Alcorn is the founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), a nonprofit organization devoted to teaching truth and drawing attention to people with special needs, including persecuted Christians around the world. All of Safely Home’s royalties will go to assisting persecuted Christians and spreading the gospel in their homelands. “I wanted to make this my gift to the Lord and the suffering church,” says Alcorn.