“You need to buy a newspaper today,” our friend told us. “Then you will see how angry the Buddhist monks are at the Christians.”

Curious, we purchased the Cambodia Daily. The front-page headline read, “Government Moves to Limit Activities of Christian Groups.” The article outlined restrictions now enforced for Christian groups.

We also received an official statement of the law.

• Christians aren’t allowed to go door-to-door. They aren’t allowed to distribute any religious books or literature except in churches, church offices or church schools.

• Religious signs and posters are banned.

• Religious campaigns can only be held in churches, church offices and church schools. All forms of public evangelism are prohibited.

• All churches must be registered with the government, and any new church buildings must be approved by the government.

• Christians are prohibited from using money, food, aid, free English classes or anything else to entice people to become Christians.

If these guidelines are not followed, the offenders will be “re-educated.” If the problem continues after that, the Christians’ worship permit will be withdrawn and the church shut down. Foreigners will be charged legally.

We are concerned for our literature evangelists and for the many church planters here. We wonder what will happen to the large evangelistic meetings that often come here. Will evangelism become more of a small-scale thing—in-home, person-to-person and friend-to-friend? Time will tell. We thank God that we still have much more freedom here than many of our fellow missionaries in restricted countries.

We were also encouraged when we talked to some friends from an NGO who have been in Cambodia for a long time. They have observed a recurrent pattern when the government creates and enforces laws strictly. Usually within a month or two, everything goes back to the way it was before. They encouraged us that when a radical-sounding law is enforced, we should just relax and pray that it will pass. With all of you out there praying together with us, we trust this one will pass in time.

• Twitter