Printing Bibles in China

—— — One Chi­nese Chris­tian’s Adven­ture

By Broth­er Lin, A House Church Leader in Chi­na
 

My great uncle asked me to write about my recent expe­ri­ence. This is also my wish; I will begin from the 50s.

In the 50s, I was a “Judas” in the 70s, I became a true dis­ci­ple of Christ. As for the dras­tic changes that took place in between, I long for the day when I can freely share them pub­licly, and make it known to all that Christ offers the chance for repen­tance, even to a “Judas.” The pre­cious blood shed by Christ could even have cleansed all the sins of the real Judas had he been will­ing to repent. My sin was no less, but I was reck­oned right­eous by God because I received Christ, whom Judas sold, as my Sav­ior.

I earnest­ly beseech you, my friends, who have betrayed the Lord and betrayed friends as I have done, do not fol­low Judas down the path of destruc­tion. Return and kneel with me before Christ. Car­ry the cross and fol­low Him.

I remem­ber the text on my grand-father’s grave stone, “The Most Faith­ful Wit­ness of Christ.” There can be found in this world no greater praise than this. I am also a wit­ness for Jesus Christ; being Christ’s, I am not my own. Even if my tes­ti­mo­ny entails scorn, impris­on­ment or suf­fer­ing for the rest of my life, this is not what I should con­sid­er.

I will begin from the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion: 1966–1979. The Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion began with book burn­ings, home raids and pub­lic per­se­cu­tions. Chris­t­ian homes that were not will­ing to turn in or burn their Chris­t­ian books on their own ini­tia­tive were raid­ed. All Bibles and devo­tion­al books were tak­en away. My moth­er, one of the “Resis­tants,” was not will­ing to burn nor hand in the books. I helped her dig a hole under the gua­va tree behind our house. We wrapped our Bibles and hym­nals in plas­tic, and hid them there.

Unsaved at the time, I was hor­ri­fied by end­less raids and ver­bal threats. I saw grounds dug up and walls torn down in the city, and tombs pried open in the coun­try. I begged and pressed Moth­er to dig up the hid­den books; we burned them all. Lat­er when­ev­er we talked about this, Moth­er could not hide her inevitable pain. Though the house was twice raid­ed by the “Red Guards,” and the ground dug up, the area around the gua­va tree remained untouched.

My old­er Chris­t­ian sis­ter, after burn­ing her books in grief, exam­ined the ash­es with a pair of tongs. She want­ed to be sure no unburned pieces could be dis­cov­ered which might cause trou­ble. To her amaze­ment, she found a thin book­let titled Words of Com­fort almost intact, seared on only one side of the edges. It con­tained 32 pages with dai­ly Scrip­ture read­ing on each page for each month. An extra read­ing was on the first page. I can still remem­ber the Scrip­ture: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27). My sis­ter could not bear to burn the sur­viv­ing book again. She kept the book, risk­ing phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment and pub­lic humil­i­a­tion (includ­ing being dri­ven on a street parade, wear­ing a high hat.)

Toward the end of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, though they had suf­fered severe­ly both in body and spir­it, Chris­tians grad­u­al­ly stood up again. The hunger and thirst of the soul drove them to look for “heav­en­ly man­na.” I remem­ber when­ev­er believ­ers got hold of a Scrip­ture pas­sage, they would mem­o­rize it and copy it down by hand, not only for them­selves, but also for oth­ers. I once took apart a com­plete Bible that I inher­it­ed from my late great aunt and com­piled it into 36 books. After lend­ing them out, I could not by any means ask for them back. When asked, peo­ple would “lend” them back to me instead of return­ing them. Until this day, I still have a hand-copied com­plete Bible from some­one, which tes­ti­fies in full mea­sure to the earnest­ness of the spir­i­tu­al need among Chris­tians in those days.

Giv­en the unique his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, the Words of Com­fort drawn out from the fire quick­ly became a bright light shin­ing in the dark­ness. The 32 short Scrip­ture pas­sages brought com­fort to numer­ous dis­heart­ened believ­ers and applied “balm” to count­less bro­ken hearts. Under the cir­cum­stances where it was impos­si­ble to read a com­plete Bible, a verse from God always per­formed amaz­ing works. Sev­er­al brethren, dri­ven by their love for the Lord, vol­un­tar­i­ly hand-copied what they had and dis­trib­uted them to believ­ers all around. Mrs. Shao, the old lady whom you know inti­mate­ly, con­tin­ued in this work in spite of her poor health. She lat­er remained our co-work­er in stock­ing and deliv­er­ing ink-print­ed devo­tion­al books until she passed away.

We were blessed with a few copies of read­ings, yet for the mul­ti­tudes who hun­gered and thirst­ed after right­eous­ness, they were as insuf­fi­cient as a drop of water is unable to quench thirst.

The Spir­it moved with­in us. We began to have the desire to place our­selves in God’s hand, as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice. God bestowed upon us such mea­sure­less grace that we could find no excuse to turn away from His call­ing. After con­sid­er­able urgent prayers, we began our ink-print­ing work in order to pro­vide spir­i­tu­al nour­ish­ment for more believ­ers. The work began with­out much mate­r­i­al prepa­ra­tion. We bought a piece of steel board, a roll of wax paper, a jar of oil-ink, a spe­cial pen, and a brush, plan­ning to oper­ate only once.

The “work­shop” attic was 8 by 8 meters square and 2 meters high. It was just recent­ly allot­ted to me for res­i­dence by my employ­er. The time was 1974. It was indeed pre­pared ahead by God. I had had no roof to call my own since 1970 when my par­ents were sent out of town by force to be labor work­ers in the move­ment called “up to the moun­tains and down to the fields.” Our own home had been sealed and tak­en over.

The four of us in my own fam­i­ly had to bor­row one huge bed and lodge at my in-laws. As for din­ing, we four had din­ners sep­a­rate­ly in three dif­fer­ent places. The harsh sit­u­a­tion spoke vol­umes itself. Now the lit­tle one-room house and tiny attic allot­ted to us, mea­ger as they were, brought my fam­i­ly, even my moth­er, back togeth­er again.

The door of the attic, direct­ly faced the back yard of the Cadre’s Dor­mi­to­ry; behind the attic was the lob­by of the bank where I worked. The road that took peo­ple to work and back home was on the left side of the attic. The only open space was to the right, which was less than 1/3 meter, fac­ing a neigh­bor’s win­dow. Above was the bal­cony of the ex-per­son­nel man­ag­er; below was the bank’s safe-room where mon­ey was kept. Because the floor of my office was damp, besides my two beds, there were also stored in the attic 8 or 9 medi­um size wood trunks filled with doc­u­ments, which belonged to the office. Thus the actu­al area that allowed move­ment was only 2 square meters. Unless we closed the win­dows and the door, noth­ing could escape the eye of neigh­bors and peo­ple walk­ing by.

God mirac­u­lous­ly pre­pared such a “trans­par­ent” work­shop and let us work out His plan right under the scruti­ny of many eyes. To car­ry out the work in such a place was more than suit­able. “You pre­pare a table before me in the pres­ence of my ene­mies” (Ps. 23:5) was our rich expe­ri­ence then. The feast set before us in the shad­ow of death is rich­er than we can savor even to this day. He chose such an unthink­able spot to dis­play His mighty pow­er. Hun­dreds and thou­sands of devo­tion­al books (such as Streams in the Desert by C. Cow­man) and hym­nals were copied by hand, edit­ed, ink-print­ed, trimmed, pack­aged and deliv­ered out of there. Lat­er we even print­ed prob­a­bly the first and only copy of the New Tes­ta­ment in Main­land Chi­na dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.

It has always been ille­gal in Main­land Chi­na to print devo­tion­al books in pri­vate. One broth­er arrest­ed for this rea­son, was forced to lie on the floor. To “teach” him a les­son his per­se­cu­tors stepped on a thick bam­boo stick and rolled it up and down his legs. Dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, pri­vate print­ing even became a severe crime incur­ring impris­on­ment and even the death penal­ty. We began work­ing with fear and trem­bling. Time and again I prayed to God to exempt me from this task. My wish was to find “a ship going to Tarshish” to flee from God’s call­ing (Jon­ah 1:3, KJV). With the bat­tles with­in me con­tin­u­ing, I found myself work­ing when I want­ed to quit; and quit­ting when I want­ed to work.

The first 50 copies of Words of Com­fort were print­ed out. Though the appear­ance was coarse and the print light, they filled our hearts with hon­ey, because we were some­how count­ed wor­thy of being used by God.

But how to dis­trib­ute them? We had thought of many ways to avoid leav­ing a trace. We decid­ed to place the print­ed mate­r­i­al in an enve­lope addressed by our son, who was then in pri­ma­ry school. I insert­ed such an enve­lope under a believ­er’s door, mak­ing sure no one was around. Though it appeared to be safe, we failed right at the begin­ning because of the unbe­lief in our hearts. My inno­cent son, though cau­tioned repeat­ed­ly, insist­ed before the peo­ple who were talk­ing about the secret envelopes, that he him­self addressed them. I almost faint­ed at his words. After that, I dared not depend on my own wis­dom any more.

On one hand we believed that God had entrust­ed us to the task of print­ing, yet on the oth­er we doubt­ed God’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect us. Such con­tra­dic­tion char­ac­ter­ized our inward strug­gle through­out our ser­vice, and caused us to do many fool­ish things. To tell you the truth, had not God placed us again and again at dead ends, tear­ing down our own devised “havens,” who knows how we would have boast­ed of our own wis­dom and dis­cern­ment today, steal­ing the glo­ry of God!

The suc­cess of our work tes­ti­fied to God’s bless­ing. Led by the Holy Spir­it, we con­tin­ued to run the race. The jour­ney was full of thorns and snares. Left to our­selves, we could not have pressed on. But the wound­ed hand of our Lord Jesus was inti­mate­ly upon us, and became the pow­er that moved us onward. After Words of Com­fort, we grad­u­al­ly moved on to print­ing short ser­mons, Bible study books, var­i­ous hym­nals, Streams in the Desert and oth­er devo­tion­al books. Among them, the hym­nals and Streams in the Desert, largest demand, were reprint­ed sev­er­al times.

It was very clear to us that God Him­self was at work through­out the print­ing process. We were but one of His innu­mer­able ves­sels. It was our unde­served hon­or that God had placed this work upon our shoul­ders. Should we have dis­obeyed, God could have eas­i­ly used oth­er ves­sels. His will could by no means what­so­ev­er be hin­dered by our dis­obe­di­ence, but we would have lost the reward pre­pared for us.

As the print­ing con­tin­ued, the vol­ume increased from a few score to sev­er­al hun­dred. The deliv­ery area expand­ed far­ther and far­ther away, from our town to oth­er places, from the South to the North. When­ev­er the books were deliv­ered, the brethren received them as their life sus­te­nance. Prais­es and thanks­giv­ing over­flowed. How­ev­er, as the vol­umes and deliv­ery areas expand­ed more and more, so was our risk of being caught and arrest­ed.

As expect­ed, the Secu­ri­ty Bureau (the Police) began their inves­ti­ga­tion as the cir­cu­la­tion of Chris­t­ian books proved to them of the exis­tence of a pri­vate print­ing. One old­er broth­er was sud­den­ly sum­moned by the chief of the Polit­i­cal Secu­ri­ty Sec­tion under the city’s Secu­ri­ty Bureau. He was ordered to turn in the Streams in the Desert and anoth­er ink-print­ed book­let. The church body earnest­ly prayed for God’s mer­cy. Lat­er the case was dropped because the police could not find any evi­dence despite their con­tin­u­al threats.

Nev­er­the­less, oth­er major and minor acci­dents occurred one after anoth­er. An old sis­ter who was deliv­er­ing books for­got her bag at a mar­ket. The key to the bank’s safe in which I had ven­tured to hide books to be deliv­ered, was lost; it had to be opened by force. A box of print­ed mate­r­i­al mailed to a city was offi­cial­ly opened and inspect­ed because the postal label on the box had been washed away by heavy rain. A broth­er’s home was raid­ed and an ink-print­ed Gospel of John was found. A sis­ter was on her way to deliv­er books and her bus was stopped for inspec­tion. A house-church gath­er­ing was inter­rupt­ed by local guards, where over 10 Bibles were tak­en away. The host was detained for more than 3 months.

Each acci­dent was enough to put the peo­ple involved into prison. But each time, God led us through by means that were beyond human com­pre­hen­sion. When­ev­er we called to the Almighty in time of trou­ble, His hand was there to res­cue us. We often felt as if we were walk­ing on the sea. Like Peter sur­round­ed by dark­ness and fright­ened by the roar­ing tem­pest, our feet failed to find sol­id ground. Only when we cried out, “Lord, save us!” with all our might in fear and dis­may, had we found that the Lord’s hand was car­ry­ing us vig­or­ous­ly. God has not promised us a walk with­out suf­fer­ing and tri­als, but He Him­self is with us when we suf­fer. Each expe­ri­ence in water and fire brought us to “a broad­er place” (Ps. 118:5). Our faith was strength­ened as if with lay­ers of con­crete.

The tri­als that came to us seemed to always evolve from minor to major, from light to heavy, from easy to dif­fi­cult, requir­ing a step-by-step build­ing of our faith. At times, God made use of the neg­li­gence of man, change of envi­ron­ment and clan­des­tine arrows to allow tri­als beyond our bear­ing. At the same time, he grant­ed us His suf­fi­cient grace. Many peo­ple think mir­a­cles and won­ders are rare and abstract, no longer present now as they were in days of old. They are ever present in the Bible, yet absent from dai­ly liv­ing. We would not dis­agree with them, except that we expe­ri­enced for our­selves var­i­ous mir­a­cles and won­ders through our suf­fer­ing.

As described ear­li­er, the attic “work­shop” had an unoc­cu­pied area of only 2 by 2 meters. The lids of wood trunks rest­ing on the edges of our beds became our desks. A steel board, under a lay­er of glass, was fas­tened by two met­al clips to form our “print­ing machine.” The two beds were used for page divid­ing, trim­ming, pack­ag­ing and stor­ing. It was prim­i­tive and sim­ple, but we were full of joy.

One rainy morn­ing a police­man, who had once been my col­league for a short time, sud­den­ly appeared with­out my con­sent. He climbed up the 11-stair bam­boo lad­der to reach the attic. You can imag­ine the scene as he turned on the light. Sev­er­al hun­dred copies of fresh­ly print­ed Words of Com­fort were present: some spread on the beds, par­tial­ly cov­ered by grass mats; some piled under the beds; some were in the open wood trunks. In addi­tion, ink, print­ing paper, and wax paper, etc. were all there. Though the weath­er was bit­ter cold, I instant­ly felt a chill­ing sweat from top to bot­tom. I was drenched. I could hard­ly pray in silence. The only thing I remem­ber was a weak cry in my heart for help, “O Lord.…” All oth­er words failed.

The police­man sat for about half an hour. He seemed to have detect­ed some­thing unusu­al, he rolled his eyes, and sniffed inces­sant­ly. I have for­got­ten the details as to how we weath­ered the dan­ger. I only know that God cov­ered his eyes, stuffed his nose, and dis­abled his think­ing. God turned this acci­dent into anoth­er tes­ti­mo­ny on our path of faith.

Bible print­ing was our most chal­leng­ing task. Oth­er books could be hand-copied, edit­ed and print­ed by our­selves, but the Bible is the Word of God. We dared not make any mis­take, being very cau­tious in the process. Yet upon com­ple­tion, we still found sev­er­al typos. The vast vol­umes required a lot of work, but it was too risky to involve too many work­ers. The large quan­ti­ty of print­ing paper we need­ed was not avail­able in the mar­ket. It could only be pur­chased through state-con­trolled news­pa­per agen­cies and print­ing fac­to­ries.

What were we to do? All we could do was to pray, trust­ing that “the Lord will pro­vide” (Gen. 22:14). Since He is in charge of all, there is noth­ing too dif­fi­cult for Him. So it was proved always when we were in need of some­thing that the sup­ply appeared, no more, nor less; not ear­ly, nor late-just as we need­ed. If things had come our way more than, or ear­li­er than we need­ed them, there would have been no place to hide them. If the sup­ply had come insuf­fi­cient or late, the need would not have been met. There were sev­er­al times when as the last set of the Bible was print­ed, not a piece of wax paper or sta­ple was left; only a few pieces of print­ing paper and a half spoon­ful of ink remained. The per­fect tim­ing was beyond belief.

At the begin­ning, we did not even have one Bible at hand. We bor­rowed indi­vid­ual books of the Bible, print­ed and dis­trib­uted them one by one. We were not able to fol­low the orig­i­nal order. As I remem­ber, the first book print­ed was John. The sec­ond group includ­ed Luke and Romans. The third was Matthew and Mark, fol­lowed by Acts and some short­er Epis­tles. Then we print­ed Hebrews and the rest of Paul’s Epis­tles. Rev­e­la­tion was the last one. From the first print­ing until the com­ple­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment, two years had elapsed. We had print­ed six to sev­en batch­es and pack­aged sev­er­al thou­sand books.

Toward the com­ple­tion of the work, anoth­er dis­arm­ing and sud­den inci­dent made us expe­ri­ence what Paul felt in the ship to Italy-“we final­ly gave up all hope to be saved” (Acts 27:20).

A sis­ter on her way to deliv­er books to a cer­tain moun­tain area, was arrest­ed on the train dur­ing a raid. In the fol­low­ing near­ly four months of impris­on­ment, she refused to tell where the books came from, no mat­ter how she was pressed. As the sit­u­a­tion left her no oth­er alter­na­tives, she insist­ed that the books were copied and print­ed by her­self. How­ev­er, since the police found no print­ing equip­ment in her home, and the hand­writ­ing was proved dif­fer­ent, they did not believe what she said.

They con­tin­ued to press her. She then told them she got the books from her aunt, whose home was raid­ed the same day. Sure enough, there was still no evi­dence found. But when the aunt under­stood she was to bear the “crime” of dis­trib­ut­ing Bibles, this child­less, bare­ly lit­er­ate, poor and suf­fer­ing old woman of near­ly 80, glad­ly went to sub­mit her­self to the police. She told the police­men she was will­ing to be put to jail to replace her “sister”-her niece. In front of the furi­ous inspec­tors, she announced her “will.” If she was tor­tured to death, they need not both­er to cre­mate her. It suf­ficed to stick her in a coarse con­tain­er and bury her. The inspec­tors did not know how to respond. To this day, the lov­ing heart of this old sis­ter is a mir­ror, show­ing me my evil thoughts as I devised to escape suf­fer­ing for the Lord.

As soon as they found out the pub­li­ca­tion orig­i­nat­ed from this city, the police thought their suc­cess was immi­nent. Two sources were traced down at the same time. Three peo­ple were imme­di­ate­ly employed as the most desir­able instru­ments to detect the ori­gin of the print­ed books. They were: the “Pas­tor” of the local “Three-Self” church, who used to say, “God did not cre­ate man, but man cre­at­ed God,” the chair­man of the Three-Self Chris­t­ian Asso­ci­a­tion, who even today does not believe in the exis­tence of a true God; and anoth­er leader of the Asso­ci­a­tion, who was respon­si­ble for watch­ing believ­ers and report­ing direct­ly to the Polit­i­cal Secu­ri­ty Sec­tion. Mean­while, all print­ing fac­to­ries, sta­tion­ary stores and ware­hous­es that car­ried print­ing paper were inspect­ed one by one. Some per­ti­nent staff were watched and ques­tioned secret­ly. To end this “major crim­i­nal case” and “essen­tial case,” the Secu­ri­ty Bureau went out of its way.

On the oth­er side, as the brethren heard about the sit­u­a­tion, house-church­es in dif­fer­ent places vol­un­tar­i­ly orga­nized var­i­ous prayer groups, call­ing out to God day and night. Their prayers formed an insu­per­a­ble wall of iron and bronze between Satan and us. A severe bat­tle was pre­sent­ed. On one side was the dic­ta­tor and their under­lings, hold­ing guns, hand­cuffs, and author­i­ty to kill. On the oth­er were emp­ty-hand­ed Chris­tians, who would not even lose one hair with­out the per­mis­sion of the Lord who made heav­en and earth.

It was clear who was the win­ner and who was the los­er. The fact that we are still out­side the bar of “law” and can write to you from here today, is the best answer, because “thus far has the Lord helped us” (1 Sam. 7:12).

At that time my sit­u­a­tion became very dan­ger­ous. Because our kind brethren spread the news, more believ­ers came to know me. At least a few score of peo­ple who used to be igno­rant about the ori­gin of the pub­li­ca­tions now learned that we were the work­ers. A few peo­ple even told oth­ers I had been arrest­ed and some of them broke into bit­ter tears. Some came to where I worked to see me. A broth­er who was too old to walk sent his young grand­son to me to inquire of my safe­ty. Though it great­ly enhanced the dan­ger of my expo­sure, God’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect also became more vis­i­ble.

Large quan­ti­ties of Bibles were then still being print­ed but could not be dis­trib­uted, since there was no way to dis­perse them. What could we do? When men came to their own wits end, the only thing left was to look up unto Jesus, the author and per­fec­tor of our faith. The net of the police was pulled tighter and tighter. The inves­ti­ga­tion nar­row­ing down and almost about to fall on my head. To con­tin­ue or to quit required an imme­di­ate deci­sion.

Fac­ing such extrem­i­ty unex­pect­ed­ly caused us to calm down. Since we were half way through, we could not stop though we want­ed to. Besides, there was not even a place to hide the print­ing mate­r­i­al. Should­n’t we speed up and con­tin­ue our work? We laid our­selves in God’s hand, did not stop, did not escape, but worked over­time all night long. Fin­ished copies were dis­trib­uted at once. We were ful­ly aware that whether print­ing 100 copies or 1000, we faced death just the same if caught. Oth­er than sit and wait to be arrest­ed, we would rather work a lit­tle more for the Lord before we died. Maybe one more per­son would be saved, or one hun­gry believ­er fed just because we print­ed one more Bible. My life was saved by the Lord Jesus, and I dared not hes­i­tate nor refuse to give it up by excuse for Him.

The things I am recall­ing now with ease were expe­ri­enced at that time under unspeak­able ten­sion. Almost each night as I went to bed, I would ask, “Lord! Is tonight the last time to sleep in my own bed?” When in the deep of a night, the sound of motor­cy­cles drew near, as if stop­ping by the build­ing, (motor­cy­cles were main­ly mil­i­tary or police vehi­cles then) I would ask, “Lord! Is it time for me to be put into prison?” When at work, occa­sion­al­ly sum­moned by the cadre in charge of polit­i­cal work, I would ask, “Lord! Are there police­men with him hold­ing hand­cuffs?” I under­stood clear­ly that God who made the Sodomites search out­side Lot’s house in vain became “weary try­ing to find the door.” As He lived in ages of old, yet is He liv­ing today, and shall live for­ev­er more.

God used the Secu­ri­ty Bureau’s inves­ti­ga­tions to be the fuel dri­ving us to work day and night. We not only fin­ished print­ing the last book of the Bible, but also dis­trib­uted them. As the print­ing paper fell under spe­cial con­trol, and the sales and man­age­ment staff were being watched, our print­ing work came to an end. Though lat­er there were grad­u­al­ly more devo­tion­al books print­ed, the work was done else­where by oth­er brethren.

Of the grace of our Lord, and the love of our Lord, I desire to speak but can­not find expres­sion. I desire to write but can­not find appro­pri­ate words. I desire to know with my heart, but can­not fath­om its great breadth and depth. Thus I feel, I am bathed in the ocean of the Lord’s love.

-Broth­er Lin is a house church leader in Chi­na. This arti­cle was tak­en from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, 1998, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1998, pp. 8–12.

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