1807–2007: Two Hundred Years of Gospel Advances in China

By Pine Zhi­jun Wang

I

In May12, 1807, a young Eng­lish mis­sion­ary who had just turned twen­ty-five years of age, board­ed a ship in New York that was head­ed for Chi­na. After an ardu­ous voy­age that last­ed over 100 days, the ship final­ly sailed into the bil­low­ing South Chi­na Sea. Sub­merged in this young man’s thoughts were mem­o­ries of a com­fort­able life in his past and long­ings for home. At the moment, he was filled with pas­sion­ate devo­tion for the gospel work. As he gazed at the shore­line with expectan­cy, the sea wind blew around his clothes and his curly hair. He felt some­thing pound­ing in his heart, and let out a deep sigh, “Chi­na! Oh, Chi­na!”

This was Robert Mor­ri­son, the first Protes­tant mis­sion­ary to Chi­na, and the pio­neer of Chris­tian­i­ty’s fourth attempt­ed entrance into Chi­na. Yet to this young man who let out his yearn­ing for Chi­na, this coun­try was not a wide open door but an ancient mega­lith.

In the pre­vi­ous 1,000 years, mis­sion­ar­ies had endeav­ored three times to sow seeds in the crevices of this huge rock. Not because of the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the seed, but due to the strength of the mega­lith’s assim­i­lat­ing cul­ture, these attempts all failed.

Two hun­dred years before Mor­ri­son arrived in Chi­na, a Jesuit, Alexan­dre Valig­nani, attempt­ed to reach the inland of Chi­na from Macao sev­er­al times but failed. In 1606, Valig­nani, whose trek from Italy to Chi­na had tak­en close to three years, as he gazed upon this pro­hib­i­tive land, mourn­ful­ly uttered on his deathbed, “Rock! Oh, rock! When will you open up for my Lord?”(Lin)

This cry rever­ber­at­ed from the sev­en­teenth well into the nine­teenth cen­turies. Final­ly, Robert Mor­ri­son with his flesh and blood came knock­ing against this mega­lith called “Chi­na.”

II

Short­ly after, this very rock cracked into pieces and was con­quered. The break came about not through the mis­sion­ar­ies’ flesh and blood, but by Great Britain’s gun­boats. What con­quered her was not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the opi­um import­ed by the British East India Com­pa­ny and the greed of man nour­ished by opi­um prof­its.

Thus, in recent gen­er­a­tions the Chi­nese read­i­ly accept­ed the Marx­ist dic­tum, “reli­gion is the opi­ate of the peo­ple.” The shame-filled mod­ern his­to­ry of Chi­na has been a per­sua­sive foot­note to this insult­ing belief.

“Christianity=Vehicle of Impe­ri­al­ist Inva­sion” has become a rec­og­nized equa­tion. The offi­cial his­to­ry text­books of Chi­na con­tin­ue to quote this today. A famous con­tem­po­rary intel­lec­tu­al ana­lyzed this asser­tion as fol­lows: “Chris­tian­i­ty was close­ly allied with for­eign com­merce backed by gun­boats. There­fore, in the minds of the Chi­nese, this reli­gion which pro­fessed to ‘love thy neigh­bor as thy­self’ became an invader’s instru­ment. … The Chi­nese had no oth­er choice but to link Chris­tian­i­ty to for­eign mil­i­tary threats. … If Bud­dha came to Chi­na on a white ele­phant, then Jesus Christ flew in on can­non­balls” (Jiang, 36).

Since “Jesus Christ flew in on can­non­balls,” it nat­u­ral­ly fol­lows that all mis­sion­ar­ies who came to Chi­na to preach the gospel would be brand­ed as “invaders” wear­ing reli­gious cloth­ing. The May 1995 issue of Out­lines of Chi­nese His­to­ry pub­lished by Peo­ple’s Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, Bei­jing, describes the for­eign mis­sion­ar­ies’ actions and behav­iors in Chi­na in ear­ly years:

“The for­eign church­es in Chi­na are becom­ing increas­ing­ly vicious. Not only do they plun­der land and prop­er­ty, focus on tri­fles, and inter­fere with the juris­dic­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of the offi­cials, they also ele­vate them­selves as the local author­i­ties. They ille­gal­ly orga­nize armed groups, buy off local rogues as their accom­plices, and oppress the com­mon peo­ple. Among many of the so-called ‘Chris­t­ian folk’ are the wicked landown­ers, crim­i­nals, shys­ters, and local riffraff. Under the shield of for­eign mis­sion­ar­ies, they ‘com­mit all kinds of crimes.’ They wan­ton­ly extort, exploit, cheat and plun­der inno­cent peo­ple, usurp their women and prop­er­ties.

When the peo­ple rebel against their tyran­ny, mis­sion­ar­ies use the alle­ga­tion of ‘reli­gious crime’ to exact huge sums of mon­ey from local peo­ple, forc­ing the peo­ple to pay. As a result, vil­lagers unan­i­mous­ly blame the Chris­t­ian church as the source of all evil. Dur­ing droughts, farm­ers would angri­ly sing, ‘There is no rain, the ground is parched; the church­es have blocked the skies’ ” (Jian, 408).

All in all, it appeared that oth­er than the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary pow­er” of the Box­er Upris­ing, there was no way to thwart the advance made by the for­eign mis­sion­ar­ies to end the “increas­ing­ly treach­er­ous con­di­tion” they cre­at­ed. In May 1900, with the Empress Dowa­ger’s indul­gence, the Box­ers, led by Manchu courtier Zaix­un as the com­man­der gen­er­al, ini­ti­at­ed the hatred move­ment to mas­sacre for­eign­ers, espe­cial­ly mis­sion­ar­ies and Chi­nese believ­ers. Dur­ing this move­ment, fifty-three Roman Catholic bish­ops and priests were killed along with 18,000 Catholic believ­ers; 188 Protes­tant mis­sion­ar­ies and 5,000 Chi­nese con­verts were slaugh­tered. The vin­dic­tive killing was the most severe in Shanxi, Hebei, Shan­dong and North­east Chi­na (Wang).

This “move­ment” direct­ly led to the League of Eight Nations’ war against Chi­na. At the end of the war, the vic­to­ri­ous Allies forced the Manchu (Qing Dynasty) gov­ern­ment to sign the “Xin­chou Treaty,” in which one of the items stip­u­lat­ed that the Manchu gov­ern­ment was to make install­ment pay­ments last­ing thir­ty-nine years and total­ing four hun­dred fifty mil­lion Chi­nese ounces of sil­ver. With the prin­ci­ple and inter­ests all totaled it would be close to one bil­lion ounces. The Manchu gov­ern­ment made the con­ces­sion that: “With all resources of the land, we will try to appease all the nations.”

III

Dur­ing the time when the Manchu sol­diers and the Box­ers were torch­ing the church­es, hos­pi­tals and schools in the cap­i­tal, all for­eign mis­sion­ar­ies and Chris­t­ian con­verts fled, tak­ing refuge in the lega­tion quar­ter at the Dongjiao Peo­ple’s Alley. Among them was a Chi­nese con­vert, Wang Zihou, who had with him his preg­nant wife and their five or six year-old daugh­ter. One day, Wang climbed up the lad­der and saw out­side the walls the bil­low­ing smoke and dev­as­tat­ing onslaught. He heard gun shots and the curs­ing of sol­diers and Box­ers. As he came down from the lad­der, he said to his wife, “We would be bet­ter off tak­ing our own lives than to be mer­ci­less­ly slaugh­tered.”

On June 22, 1900, Wang Zihou’s body was dis­cov­ered in the gar­den of the Su Emper­or Man­sion; he had hung him­self. A month and three days lat­er, on July 25, 1900, his wife gave birth to a son, named “Tie” (Iron).

This “Iron” became a giant in Chi­nese church his­to­ry, Wang Ming­dao. A Chi­nese saint, he spent a quar­ter of his life impris­oned by the Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment. He was a God-giv­en bea­con and bless­ing to the Chi­nese Church in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Two years after the birth of Wang Ming­dao, anoth­er giant of Chi­nese Church his­to­ry, Song Shangjie (John Sung), was born in Fengji Vil­lage, Putianx­i­an, Fujian Province. Twen­ty-six years lat­er, in 1927, on board an Amer­i­can ship en route to Chi­na, Dr. Sung threw over­board all his gold medals and hon­orary cer­tifi­cates he had earned in Amer­i­ca. For the remain­ing days of his life, he tra­versed more than half of Chi­na. In the 1930s, this evan­ge­list brought about a major revival in the Chi­nese Church with his life as a burn­ing torch ignit­ing oth­er lives. This ser­vant of God died at the age of forty- three.

IV

In the last cen­tu­ry of Chi­nese his­to­ry, we can say that the 1900 Box­er Upris­ing stemmed from anti-for­eign sen­ti­ment sup­port­ed by the Manchu princes and involved an une­d­u­cat­ed local mili­tia.

Lat­er, anoth­er anti-Chris­t­ian wave was led by a group of New Thought intel­lec­tu­als close­ly relat­ed to the May Fourth Move­ment in 1919. These intel­lec­tu­als, like the Box­ers before them, also clinched their “fists” in favor of Marx­ism and the Omnipo­tence of Sci­ence and the progress of mankind on this earth. They vowed to deal a heavy blow to the anti-sci­en­tif­ic, mind sti­fling, youth intox­i­cat­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. In their max­im was this rad­i­cal state­ment:

“Reli­gion exists out­side the realm of the human race. Man exists where there must be no reli­gion. Man and reli­gion can­not co-exist” (Wang 270).

The “reli­gion” referred to here was not just any reli­gion, but Chris­tian­i­ty.

The fol­low­ing are oth­er anti-Chris­t­ian quotes from some schol­ars and famous per­sons at the height of the Move­ment:

_ Wu Zhi­hui: want­ed to “delete the name of God, and ban­ish the soul of the spir­it ele­ment;” “If there was a God, I would pull down his pants and curse him: You vil­lain!”

_ Zhu Zhix­in: “The his­tor­i­cal Jesus is insignif­i­cant; the Jesus of new ide­al­ism and of Leo Tol­stoi are but tem­porar­i­ly usable stuff; … Jesus’ hyp­o­crit­i­cal actions do not match his words. He is a nar­row, self-serv­ing intol­er­ant and vin­dic­tive idol.”

_ Chen Dux­iu: “There is no evi­dence of the exis­tence of spir­its and gods in heav­en or on earth. All reli­gions are decep­tive idols. Bud­dha is a fraud, and so is Jeho­vah God. … they ought to be demol­ished.”

_ Hu Shi: “Based on all sci­ences … we have no need of any super­nat­ur­al sov­er­eign or cre­ator. Based on our knowl­edge of the bio­log­i­cal sci­ences, … we under­stand bet­ter that the sup­po­si­tion of the exis­tence of a good-willed sov­er­eign being can not be estab­lished.”

_ Li Huang: “By our own pow­er and by mutu­al human col­lab­o­ra­tion, we can ensure a bright future. Why do we need to ask for God’s mer­cy? … Why do we retreat to beg for his for­give­ness? Can we not redeem our­selves through our cre­ative pow­er and dili­gent efforts con­tribut­ing to soci­ety? … We should active­ly engage our hands and minds to bring about the bet­ter­ment and improve­ment of soci­ety. We should not pas­sive­ly gaze upward, pray­ing to an unknown God” (Jiang).

Chi­nese intel­lec­tu­als today, in a dif­fer­ent tone, still con­tin­ue to reit­er­ate these friv­o­lous, shal­low, fool­ish and even blas­phe­mous state­ments. We also used to make sim­i­lar igno­rant state­ments before we came to know Christ. Now is the time for self-exam­i­na­tion and repen­tance.

V

How­ev­er, nei­ther the Box­er anti-reli-gion move­ment nor the intel­lec­tu­al anti-Chris­t­ian move­ment was able to impede the Gospel advances in Chi­na. For God’s ways are high­er than man’s ways and His thoughts are high­er than man’s thoughts. Through per­se­cu­tions, the Chris­t­ian church was tried, purged to become pur­er and great­ly strength­ened. Faced with the intel­lec­tu­als’ rea­soned rejec­tion of the Gospel truth, preach­ers began to bet­ter under­stand that only the truth of the Gospel itself can con­quer. The growth of the Chris­t­ian church bears the evi­dence of God’s mighty hand sav­ing souls in Chi­na with­out ceas­ing. The num­ber of con­verts rose from slight­ly more than 113,000 in 1900 to about one and one-half mil­lion in 1949.
 

VI

Yet God per­mit­ted even greater tribu-lations to come upon His Church. Begin­ning in 1952, the Church passed through “the val­ley of the shad­ow of death.” God’s own pres­ence, “His staff and His rod” were a con­stant source of com­fort for His chil­dren. One let­ter writ­ten by main­land believ­ers to over­seas Chris­tians states:

“In the past forty years, impris­on­ment has become the way of wit­ness­ing for tens of thou­sands of Chris­tians. Many have suf­fered tremen­dous­ly in prison for twen­ty to thir­ty years and some have been mar­tyred for the Lord. Those not impris­oned were the old and weak, women and chil­dren. They have been sub­ject­ed to prej­u­dice, polit­i­cal harass­ment, finan­cial depri­va­tion, sur­veil­lance by neigh­bors, and alien­ation from rel­a­tives and friends. Their chil­dren were not allowed to receive any edu­ca­tion­al ben­e­fits or obtain employ­ment. They were treat­ed as unfit for mar­riage.

In the midst of such grave hard­ship, we have cried out to the Lord in tears, ‘May You turn Your face away from our sins and hear our prayers!’ We have been remind­ed of our sins and repent! For years we loved the world and the love of the Lord was not in us. We repent of our unseen pride, boast­ful atti­tudes, cov­etous­ness, jeal­ousy, impure thoughts and adul­tery.

Our church­es have engaged in much fac­tion­al­ism, pol­i­tics and rival­ry. Now both inside and out­side of the prison, both Chris­tians and church­es repent togeth­er. For forty years, all of us have con­tin­u­al­ly sought God’s for­give­ness. For ‘with­out holi­ness no one will see the Lord’ (Hebrews 12:14). In great calami­ty we now real­ize, ‘Judg­ment begins in the house of the Lord’ (I Peter 4:17).

We dili­gent­ly study the Bible and have come to know the pow­er of every word, and that every verse is life. We have begun to delight in med­i­tat­ing on the pre­cepts of the Lord day and night. We read in the morn­ing and we read in the evening. We car­ry the Bible in our pock­ets so that we can study it at any time. We do not let His Word depart from our lips nor from our hearts. His Word is the source of life and the riv­er of liv­ing water.

We pray at all times and have come to real­ize that prayer is a Chris­tian’s breath­ing. In the morn­ing when we wake up to the cal­lous real­i­ty, we pray for peace for the day at the open­ing of our eyes. We derive our strength from God. We pray in all places, call­ing on His name. We fast and pray and sin­gle-heart­ed­ly bow before Him.

We break into small groups in our gath­er­ings, … our fel­low­ship meet­ing is our oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet God. His pres­ence is sweet as hon­ey and rich as pre­cious oint­ment in our gath­er­ing even in the midst of our suf­fer­ing. He gives strength to the weak, rest to the weary, joy to the sor­row­ful and com­fort to the bro­ken­heart­ed.

We learn to endure, know­ing that ‘those who endure to the end will be saved.’ We prac­tice obe­di­ence and cast aside the flesh and world­ly wis­dom, for we are aware of the fact that ‘the weapons with which we fight are not the weapons of the world. On the con­trary, they have divine pow­er to demol­ish strong­holds’ (2 Cor. 10:4). We under­stand that ‘every­one must sub­mit him­self to the author­i­ties. For there is no author­i­ty except that which God has estab­lished’ (Rom. 13:1). But in mat­ters that are con­trary to God’s will, we also under­stand that ‘we must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29).

Our path has been full of hard­ship, bit­ter­ness, depri­va­tion and shame. It has been filled with weak­ness­es, bewil­der­ment, vac­il­la­tions and waver­ing. It has been a path of exhaus­tion, soaked with blood and tears. Yet God’s com­pas­sion has paved our way, His mer­cy is with His help­less peo­ple. He has repeat­ed­ly proven His amaz­ing grace towards us, so that we may see the grace of Jeho­vah in the land of the liv­ing. We sow in tears on this path and reap with shouts of joy. By the pow­er of Christ, we have over­come time and time again on this path. We have a new song every day” (Pro­claim).

VII

Why has the num­ber of Chi­nese Chris­tians increased fifty fold in less than half a cen­tu­ry, to over 50 mil­lion? The answer lies in the per­fect will of God for Chi­na and the pow­er of the Gospel. Only when the Gospel seed was buried in the soil moist­ened with the believ­ers’ blood and tears, did a lush for­est of new lives emerge.

(Author’s note: Some­one asked me ques­tions relat­ed to the above when I was in a meet­ing in the South part of the States, and I shared: “The proof from Bib­li­cal rev­e­la­tion and the hap­pen­ings on Main­land Chi­na indi­cates suf­fer­ing is the secret of the Chris­t­ian church’s growth.”)

Shall we share this “mys­tery” with the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment? They have caused trou­ble and suf­fer­ing for the church for decades, deal­ing hard­ship to the Chris­tians, which have only result­ed in man­i­fold growth of the Chi­nese church. Once they com­pre­hend this unique method for growth for the church, will they change their tac­tics, and allow it to devel­op in com­fort and free­dom? Would the results then be that the com­bi­na­tion of the sin­ful envi­ron­ment and human weak­ness leads the church to shriv­el­ing and cor­rup­tion?

VIII

Two Hun­dred years-1807–2007. As we posi­tion our­selves in the year 1997, we look towards twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Chi­na. Any intel­lec­tu­al with a new­born Chris­t­ian life must exam­ine his rela­tion­ship with his coun­try and his peo­ple as he embraces his Gospel mis­sion. He will care­ful­ly con­sid­er ways to share the sweet taste of the Chris­t­ian life with his kins­men in the next decade.

He may very well have been one of the patri­ots who agreed with the slo­gan: “Save the Coun­try with Sci­ence,” or one who advo­cat­ed: “Save the Coun­try with Democ­ra­cy.” But now that he has been saved through Christ, he does not mere­ly chant the slo­gan, “Save the Coun­try with the Gospel,” lest he con­fuse the gen­uine Gospel audi­ence. The Gospel mes­sage is to save men and their souls. Trans­formed lives and nature may bring about nation­al democ­ra­cy, free­dom and pros­per­i­ty; but as we under­stand it, these are mere­ly “by-prod­ucts” of the Gospel.

IX

Chi­na, yes­ter­day, today and tomorow, is, and must be God’s Chi­na. The Lord Jeho­vah said, “The time is com­ing when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” (Jer. 31:31).

The time has come for the Lord to make a covenant with the peo­ple of Chi­na. God’s “covenant” with us is this: “I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my peo­ple. No longer will a man teach his neigh­bor, or a man his broth­er, say­ing, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the great­est. For I will for­give their wicked­ness and will remem­ber their sins no more” (Jer. 31:32–34).

The Lord Jeho­vah will be the God of the Chi­nese; the day is com­ing when the peo­ple of Chi­na will be His peo­ple. The day is com­ing when the Chi­nese peo­ple “from the least to the great­est” will all know God.

“Praise be to the name of God for­ev­er and ever; wis­dom and pow­er are His. He changes times and sea­sons. He sets up kings and depos­es them. He gives wis­dom to the wise and knowl­edge to the dis­cern­ing. He reveals deep and hid­den things. He knows what lies in dark­ness, and light dwells with Him” (Dan. 2:20–22).

Notes
Con­sult The Mem­o­ra­bil­ia Col­lec­tion of 170 Years of Chris­tian­i­ty’s Entrance Into Chi­na, edi­tor, Lin, Zhip­ing, Taipei: Uni­ver­sal Light Pub. Co., 1977.
Jiang, Menglin, West­ern Trends, quot­ing from Cri­tiques on Recent Reli­gions in Chi­na, by Ye Ren­chang, p. 36, Taipei: Song of Songs Pub. Co., 1993.
Jian, Baizan, ed., Out­lines of Chi­nese His­to­ry, Revised, vol. 2, P. 408, Bei­jing: Peo­ple’s Pub. Co., 1995.
Wang, Zhix­in, The His­to­ry of Chi­nese Chris­tian­i­ty, p. 231, Hong Kong: Chris­t­ian Lit­er­a­ture Pub. Co., 1979.
Ibid., p. 270.

All quotes from Cri­tiques on Recent Reli­gions in Chi­na (Loc. Cit.).

Quotes are from Pro­claim Mag­a­zine, May/June issue of 1997, Petaluma, CA: Chi­nese Chris­t­ian Mis­sions Pub. Co.

-Pine Wang, from Chi­na, is chief edi­tor of Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly. This arti­cle was tak­en from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, June, 1997, Vol.1 No. 2, 1997, pp. 5–9.