The Footprints of An Evangelist

Dr. Sung (1901–1943) was born in the province of Fu-Jian, Chi­na. He was a famous evan­ge­list and revival­ist of the Chi­nese church in this cen­tu­ry. He stud­ied in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca between 1919 and 1927. In 1926, he received a Doc­tor­ate of Sci­ence in Chem­istry from Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. In 1927, he respond­ed to God’s call­ing and returned to Chi­na to spread the Gospel to his kins­men. On his return voy­age to Chi­na, he was deter­mined “to pro­claim the gospel in Chi­na even if I shall die; as long as my kins­men can receive sal­va­tion, even if I have to sac­ri­fice my life, I will be will­ing.” He tossed all the sym­bols of his aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment-his gold­en key and mer­it cer­tifi­cate-into the ocean. After return­ing to Chi­na, he devot­ed all his ener­gy to pro­claim­ing the Gospel. His foot­prints cov­ered most of Chi­na and South­east Asia. It was with his own life that he kin­dled the fire of spir­i­tu­al revival among the Chi­nese church­es.

This arti­cle records some of the events dur­ing Dr. Sung’s evan­ge­lis­tic jour­neys to Anhui and Henan provinces in late 1937. The author, Rev. Chu Hua­ian, had accom­pa­nied Dr. Sung dur­ing the ear­ly years of these jour­neys. As a wit­ness, he record­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties and hard­ships that Dr. Sung had endured for the sake of preach­ing the Gospel. But “how beau­ti­ful are the feet of those who bring good news!” May there be fol­low­ers from our gen­er­a­tion after the foot­steps of those pio­neers who went before us.

-The Edi­tor

From Sux­i­an to Fuyang

Dur­ing the first part of Decem­ber 1937, Dr. Sung held a revival meet­ing in Sux­i­an, Anhui for eight days. Back in Jan­u­ary 1934, he had led a meet­ing there before, so this was his sec­ond time lead­ing a meet­ing in this part of the coun­try. This was the first time he did not use an inter­preter. God great­ly blessed the meet­ing. It was dur­ing the time of Japan’s inva­sion of Chi­na, which had begun a few months before. At that time, the fall of Nan­jing was just a mat­ter of days, but still, there were over a thou­sand peo­ple that came from the sur­round­ing towns and vil­lages to attend the meet­ing.

It was also dur­ing that time that Dr. Sung received a let­ter from Mrs. Sung in Shang­hai telling him that their home had been robbed and all their belong­ings and books, includ­ing the tens of thou­sands of let­ters he had col­lect­ed over the years, were all gone. He was very sad­dened and was anx­ious to go home. How­ev­er, because of the bat­tles in the area, there was no trans­porta­tion to take him home. More­over, he was sched­uled to lead meet­ings in North Anhui and Henan. So Dr. Sung sub­mit­ted to God’s will and con­tin­ued on as planned.

The very next morn­ing, after he fin­ished the meet­ing in Sux­i­an, he hired a rick­shaw to take him to Mengcheng, a south­west­ern town about 130 Li (Chi­nese mile, about 40.38 miles) away. I accom­pa­nied him on my bicy­cle. Along the way, we fre­quent­ly encoun­tered armed desert­ers who demand­ed mon­ey from trav­el­ers. For­tu­nate­ly, before we left, we had some change to give them to avoid any unpleas­ant inci­dents. We arrived at the town that night at 9 o’clock and stayed at the local church there. Elder Tian host­ed us and asked Mrs. Tian to fix us a nice hot meal. We had­n’t real­ly eat­en for the entire day and were cold, hun­gry and extreme­ly exhaust­ed.

Not too long ago, Dr. Sung was here to lead an evan­ge­lis­tic meet­ing. But this time he was just pass­ing through. The Fuyang Inland Mis­sion sent a broth­er to meet us. It was Decem­ber and cold.

Dr. Sung felt the chill of Decem­ber, and con­sid­ered that we still had about 180 Li (56 miles) of unsafe roads to cov­er with­out any inns to stay for the night. It would be too tir­ing to con­tin­ue this way for two more days. There­fore, he insist­ed on tak­ing a bus. But all the motor vehi­cles had been con­script­ed by the mil­i­tary; there were none avail­able for us. Dr. Sung had no choice but to hire anoth­er rick­shaw the next morn­ing and I fol­lowed him again on my bicy­cle.

After trav­el­ing about 10 miles, the rick­shaw dri­ver refused to con­tin­ue because his feet now hurt. So I hired the only vehi­cle avail­able to us‑a one-wheel cart. It was the only trans­port the vil­lage had. One side of the cart was for lug­gage and the oth­er side for pas­sen­gers. The dri­ver would then push from behind. It was bumpy to ride in and slow to move. Even though I had my bicy­cle, I could only push it along.

It was already mid­night when we arrived at a small town, Madi­anzhen, and found a small inn. We were real­ly hun­gry and asked the innkeep­er if he had any food for us. He had only some left­over chili pep­per noo­dles. Although Dr. Sung and I could not stand spicy food, the innkeep­er told us that it was cold at night and it’s bet­ter to eat some so that we would feel warm as we slept. We were so cold and hun­gry we thought if we did not eat, we would not be able to sleep. I urged Dr. Sung to take the chili pep­per noo­dles, but the noo­dles were far too spicy for us. After forc­ing our­selves to swal­low a cou­ple of mouth­fuls, we could not take any more. We had to use ice cold water to rinse our mouths.

That night we had trou­ble sleep­ing because we were cold and hun­gry. Even­tu­al­ly, we were so tired that we dozed off. How­ev­er it was a very short sleep, for we were awak­ened feel­ing itchy all over our bod­ies. I turned on my flash­light and saw a lot of ticks crawl­ing on our blan­kets. Dr. Sung jumped out of bed and said, “This place is like hell where the worm nev­er dies and the fire nev­er extin­guish­es.” He said that because he could still feel the spicy pep­pers like fire in his mouth and he itched from the bites of the ticks. He also com­ment­ed, “I am 36 years old and I have nev­er been so mis­er­able; even a men­tal hos­pi­tal in Amer­i­ca would be a bet­ter place than this. This is too much!”

After we dressed, we spent the rest of that cold and hun­gry night sit­ting on a bench. At first we could sing “At the cross, at the cross, be my glo­ry ever,” but lat­er we did not have any more ener­gy. Our teeth even chat­tered when we talked. What an unusu­al night!

Final­ly, the sun rose above the hori­zon and we resumed our jour­ney to our des­ti­na­tion over 80 Li (25 miles) in the south­west direc­tion. Because the man-pushed cart moved so slow­ly, it would take us anoth­er 10 hours or so to reach our des­ti­na­tion and we trav­eled on emp­ty stom­achs. Final­ly we arrived at Chahuamiao and there was a por­ridge stand. Hav­ing gone a day and a half with­out food, we found the plain, sim­ple and bland por­ridge tast­ing like hon­ey to us. No won­der that after Dr. Sung fin­ished his por­ridge, he gave a sat­is­fy­ing smile and said, “This tast­ed so sweet even with­out sug­ar!” Even though we only had two bowls of plain por­ridge each and no oth­er food we could feel our strength return­ing.

At last we arrived at our des­ti­na­tion, Fuyang, an impor­tant town north­west of Anhui province. We saw a wel­come par­ty of over 10 elders and dea­cons from the Inland Mis­sion wait­ing at the pier. We soon learned that Chris­tians from all over the vicin­i­ty had gath­ered in the local church since the day before wait­ing for our arrival. With­out hes­i­ta­tion, Dr. Sung announced that the evan­ge­lis­tic meet­ing would start that night. His announce­ment was greet­ed with a big round of applause.

From then on, he preached twice a day and was filled with the pow­er of the Holy Spir­it. As a result, numer­ous peo­ple repent­ed every day. He preached with such inten­si­ty that even in the cold of Decem­ber, after each meet­ing, his under­gar­ments were soak­ing wet from his sweat. Adding to his dis­com­fort, he preached with such force that his hem­or­rhoids often flared up. Even though he had already had an oper­a­tion for his hem­or­rhoids while he was study­ing in the U.S., the con­di­tion was not cured. Every night after his preach­ing he had to wash away the blood from his under­wear. Some­times, when he preached twice a day, he had to wash them twice. He often said to me, “Paul was giv­en a thorn in his flesh. Like­wise God had giv­en me a thorn in my flesh, lest I should be proud.” He also asked me not to men­tion his hem­or­rhoid con­di­tion to any­one, fear­ing that church lead­ers would ask peo­ple to wash his under­wear for him. This thorn in Dr. Sung’s flesh was with him until the day he went to heav­en.

Enter­ing Henan Province

After the revival meet­ings in Fuyang, I accom­pa­nied Dr. Sung through towns of Tai­he, Jieshou, etc. and entered Henan province. Dur­ing the height of war, no motor vehi­cles avail­able. We had to hire rick­shaws. It was nev­er peace­ful along the way.

Near the city of Xiangcheng, we encoun­tered three local ban­dits. They asked us what we did. Dr. Sung told them we were preach­ers for Jesus. They observed that, with the com­mo­tion and tur­moil of the ongo­ing war, peo­ple could not even flee fast enough with their lives. Why both­er preach­ing? One of the ban­dits said, “We are actu­al­ly in the same pro­fes­sion; you preach heav­en’s ways, we car­ry them out.” Anoth­er polite­ly asked, “How about shar­ing with us a few dol­lars? We are com­plete­ly pen­ni­less. You are good peo­ple. I’m sure you will want to do good deeds, and you will be reward­ed as well.”

Dr. Sung asked me to give them five dol­lars and told them, “You have to believe in Jesus, Jesus saves sin­ners.” They replied, “Jesus is right, we are sin­ners.” Before we were on our way, they instruct­ed us, “After you pass Xiangcheng, if you encounter oth­ers trou­bling you, just tell them, ‘Big Broth­er San-Ma has already col­lect­ed five dol­lars from us.’ They will then leave you alone.” Through­out the rest of our jour­ney, we did not encounter any oth­er ban­dits.

It was only after we arrived at the Gospel church of Zhouk­ou that we were informed; these ban­dits would rob any­thing from any­one.

We thank God that we did not lose any of our cloth­ing or bed­ding; it was tru­ly a mir­a­cle. The most amaz­ing thing was, I had placed all of Dr. Sung’s mon­ey in my inside shirt pock­ets. If the ban­dits were to search and rob us, we would have been total­ly help­less. Praise God for pre­vent­ing the ban­dits from doing so.

It was quite late when we arrived at Zhoukuo, one of the four famous towns in Chi­na. It took some effort to locate the Gospel church. I asked the door­man if there was a pas­tor; and was told that they had a for­eign pas­tor. I asked for accom­mo­da­tions for two evan­ge­lists pass­ing through. The door­man went inside to the for­eign pas­tor and came back with the reply that we could stay with the door­man in the out­side room.

We had to make do. Dr. Sung shared the bed with the door­man and I slept on the haystack in front of the stove. Before sun­rise the next morn­ing, Dr. Sung urged me to go on our way. He said, “The door­man’s feet are so smelly that I could­n’t sleep at all. You were bet­ter off sleep­ing on the haystack.”

Before we left, Dr. Sung wrote a note in Eng­lish to the for­eign pas­tor. He accused him of lack of lov­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty for oth­er preach­ers of the Gospel, and advised him to exam­ine him­self care­ful­ly. Our rick­shaw had trav­eled about 20 Li (6 miles) when the for­eign pas­tor and his wife caught up with us on their bicy­cles. They felt very sor­ry that it was Dr. Sung that they had mis­treat­ed. They apol­o­gized pro­fuse­ly beg­ging Dr. Sung to return for break­fast with them. But Dr. Sung refused, “We are not going back. You are show­ing your hos­pi­tal­i­ty to a Ph.D. rather than an evan­ge­list. You must thor­ough­ly repent of your behav­ior!”

We lat­er arrived at the town of Xiaotan. There a small eatery was fry­ing Chi­nese bread­sticks. Dr. Sung said, “We missed din­ner last night and break­fast this morn­ing. Now that we have such yum­my food, let’s have our fill.”

At the Luo­he Sta­tion

By night­fall we arrived at Luo­he sta­tion along the Nan­jing-Han­k­ou Rail­way line. It had not been easy get­ting here from Sux­i­an on the Tian­jing-Huang­pu line, since there were nei­ther trains nor motor vehi­cles avail­able. Now we need­ed to wait for a north­bound train to Xuchang; the train sta­tion was crowd­ed with peo­ple flee­ing south. Rumors were spread­ing that the Japan­ese army had invad­ed the north­ern part of Henan Province. Train after train full of wound­ed sol­diers were trav­el­ing south­ward; none were going north, except some trains trans­port­ing mil­i­tary weapons. A sta­tion work­er sug­gest­ed that we climb atop one of the mil­i­tary trains; there was no oth­er way to Xuchang. In con­sid­er­a­tion of the fact that there were over a thou­sand peo­ple wait­ing to hear the Gospel in Xuchang, Dr. Sung said, “Let’s climb up there!”

The top of the car­go train was quite high. I let Dr. Sung stand on my shoul­ders to reach there. I was going to toss our lug­gage up before I went up. The sta­tion work­er offered, “You go on ahead and I will help you with your lug­gage.” After hand­ing me the first few pieces of lug­gage, he ran off with the final piece which was a small leather case. Reck­less­ly, I jumped off from the top of the train and chased after him. He dis­ap­peared into a nar­row street in the dark night. I came back weep­ing, Dr. Sung was so sad­dened he start­ed to weep also. The lit­tle leather case con­tained no mon­ey, only the Bible that Dr. Sung used for his preach­ing, plus his note­book and two diaries.

Ardu­ous­ly, I got on the roof of the train. The train pulled away from the sta­tion in the chilly night wind. It was dan­ger­ous for us up there because there were no hand rails on the roof. For­tu­nate­ly, the train moved very slow­ly, oth­er­wise we might eas­i­ly have fall­en off.

At mid­night the train pulled in to Xuchang. We found the church by day­break. We told the pas­tor and elders how we had the lit­tle leather case stolen. They rushed to the police sta­tion request­ing assis­tance to search for it, inform­ing them that it was lost around the Luo­he sta­tion area. The church even dis­patched some mem­bers to con­duct their own search at the town of Luo­he, post­ing all over the streets and alleys a “Lost and Found” reward of $20 for the return of it. At that time, $20 was a large sum of mon­ey. This was all to no avail.

Accord­ing to the sta­tion man­ag­er, these thieves often imper­son­at­ed a sta­tion work­er to steal pas­sen­gers’ lug­gage. When they found no mon­ey inside the bag, they would just toss the case away. It was a pity that the two diaries could nev­er be replaced. Dr. Sung still men­tioned this inci­dent on his sickbed at Xiang­shan, Bei­jing in 1942, as it was quite regret­ful to him.

Christ­mas in Xuchang

The leather case was stolen on Christ­mas Eve in 1937, that same night that we trav­eled to Xuchang on the roof of a mil­i­tary train.

At noon on Christ­mas day, Rev. Ai Nian­shan of the Luther­an church pre­pared a two-table ban­quet to wel­come Dr. Sung. At the table with Dr. Sung were the lead­ers and VIPs of Xuchang and at my table elders and dea­cons of the church. After Rev. Ai intro­duced Dr. Sung to every­one, he also intro­duced the may­or of Xuchang seat­ed to the left of Dr. Sung, and the chief jus­tice of the court to the right. Then there were the police com­mis­sion­er, and the pub­lish­er of the Xuchang Dai­ly.

By this time, I detect­ed Dr. Sung get­ting impa­tient. When Rev. Ai intro­duced the lead­ers of the church at my table, Dr. Sung stood up imme­di­ate­ly and com­mand­ed me to switch seats with him. He said, “I am a ser­vant of the Lord. I came to lead evan­ge­lis­tic meet­ings. I should be seat­ed with broth­ers and sis­ters from the church. You go and min­gle with those offi­cials.” We expe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar occur­rence in Mengcheng in the past. Dr. Sung was always vehe­ment­ly against church­es hold­ing any unnec­es­sary social gath­er­ings dur­ing revival meet­ing time. He said, “We are one fam­i­ly as broth­ers and sis­ters; we should have the joy of eat­ing togeth­er as a fam­i­ly. Why do we invite these big shots? It would be fine to invite them to come for the mes­sage. But to solic­it their flat­tery and to have them for show, that is wrong.”

I had to obey Dr. Sung at the time and seat myself between the may­or and the chief jus­tice, exchang­ing chitchats with them. I had just turned 18 and was only a hymn leader accom­pa­ny­ing Dr. Sung. I did not know what to say in front of these high offi­cials. I qui­et­ly prayed. Then as we ate, I start­ed telling them how Dr. Sung came to know the Lord and how he received God’s call to be an evan­ge­list. The Xuchang Dai­ly report­ed this dia­logue the fol­low­ing day. After din­ner, as these VIPs were say­ing good­bye, Dr. Sung invit­ed them to come to the evan­ge­lis­tic meet­ing that evening. They all agreed to come but none of them showed. They had heard of Dr. Sung’s fame for a long time and just want­ed to take a peek at him.

The only pur­pose of Rev. Ai Nian­shan was to let Dr. Sung know of his social stand­ing with the elite at Xuchang; he pos­sessed some pow­er. Dr. Sung advised him face to face lat­er, “Jesus came to be with the sin­ners and tax col­lec­tors, not to be with the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Jesus came not to save the right­eous but the sin­ners.” Judg­ing from his sub­se­quent actions, Rev. Ai did not real­ly heed the admo­ni­tion from Dr. Sung.

At Xuchang, because over 1,000 peo­ple came, the meet­ings were held in the open space behind the church. Japan­ese planes flew over­head every day, but the Lord grant­ed us safe­ty through­out the meet­ings.

On New Year’s day, 1938, we took a south­bound refugee train to Xinyang, a city in south­ern part of Henan Province.

-Chu Hua­ian came from Main­land Chi­na, is a pas­tor, cur­rent­ly resides in US. From Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, Decem­ber, 1997, Vol. 1, No. 4.