Wang Ming-Dao

Wang Ming-Dao

In 1920, a young Chinese man named Wang Ming-Dao, who had been a Christian since childhood, resolved to take his faith seriously.  Writing out a list of his sins, he prayed and vowed to leave them behind.  Praying until he received assurance of forgiveness, he arose a changed man and zealously studied the Scriptures.

A teacher at a Presbyterian boarding school in Beijing, he came to believe the Biblical method of Baptism to be immersion.  Stubbornly holding to this conviction, and teaching it, led to the loss of his job.  Though the loss of his job discouraged him, he remained faithful and began preaching on his own and with a number of evangelistic campaigns in 1923.  He pastored a church called the Christian Tabernacle and also began publishing a quarterly Christian magazine which was widely read.

Beijing fell to Japanese forces in 1937.  By 1939, the Japanese occupiers insisted that all publications print patriotic slogans supporting the Japanese military.  Wang faced a dilemma: become a political publication or shut down.  He chose a third option: publish anyway without the propaganda.  He faced immense pressure from the Japanese and from other Christians and Christian groups which had capitulated to their captor’s demands.  Wang refused to join, and preached on the suffering, faithfulness, and protection that Daniel and his friends faced in Babylon.

The fall of Japan in 1945 led to the rise of Mao-Tse Tung and Communist rule in 1949.  The Communists established an organization which came to be known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) – an organization and a set of guidelines for Christian churches which included severing all ties with Western churches and organizations, agreeing to a rewritten Bible, denial of core beliefs including the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the Trinity, and other abuses of power.  Wang Ming-Dao realized this was intended to bring the church under state control and, despite intense pressure, he felt it was his duty to resist and continue to teach uncompromising Biblical truth.

Wang published a number of books between 1951 and 1954, proclaiming the Gospel and defending Biblical truth.  The TSPM ramped up its pressure and in 1954 convened a meeting to accuse him of crimes but, like Daniel in the Bible, they could find no fault with him.  Into early 1955, attendance at the Christian Tabernacle reached record numbers.

On August 7^th, 1955, police arrived at his home around midnight and arrested him, imprisoning him without a conviction.  At the time, he did not realize that his wife had been imprisoned as well.  To the Communists, his defiance was counter-revolutionary and a severe crime.  He was subjected to daily interrogations and torture and then subjected to further torture by especially-placed cell-mates.

After over a year of this pressure, Wang was informed of a number of the detainment of Christians he was close to.  Worse yet, he was told of his wife’s imprisonment and deteriorating health.  Under such intense personal pressure, Wang broke and signed a document stating he was a counter-revolutionary and confessing to his ‘crimes.’

While TSPM leadership was elated, Wang was crushed at his actions.  Plagued with guilt and remorse over his confession he, with his wife’s support, reneged on his promise to join TSPM and they were both re-arrested seven months after their release.

Wang served an additional 22 years in prison, subject to the same daily torturous interrogations faced before.  However, the Lord stood by him and he remained faithful.  He clung to a verse from Micah, “When I fall I shall arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord will be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against Him until He pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.” (Micah 7:7).

In 1979 China – suffering from famine, a result of Mao’s disastrous policies, let many prisoners go, including Wang Ming-Dao – malnourished and nearly blind from his ordeal.  He settled in Shanghai and preached again, as God gave him opportunity.  In his final years he became one of the leaders of the house-church movement which had sustained the Gospel through the dark years of Communist oppression.

Wang Ming-Dao died at home in 1991.  He shows us that Christians, even when they fail, can have a radiant witness in their faith and do great things for the Kingdom of God.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wang-ming-dao-faithful-political-coercion/

https://www.evangelical-times.org/the-fall-and-rise-of-wang-ming-dao/

Gladys Aylward

Gladys Aylward

Born north of London in 1902, Gladys Aylward left school at the age of fourteen, working as a parlor maid in the homes of London’s wealthy class.  Raised in a Christian home, she nevertheless allowed herself to be taken in by the seduction of wealth via her work.

In her mid-twenties, she went to a revival meeting and recommitted her life to Christ.  She became very active in sharing her faith.  Learning about missions work in China, she felt very convicted to go.  Gladys was accepted to training with China Inland Mission in 1929, despite her lack of education.  She excelled in the practical work, but failed the classroom work – having a very tough time with the Chinese language.  Her classroom failures resulted in her being dropped from consideration for the organization.

Undeterred, she went back to work as a maid, planning to get all the expenses to pay for herself to go to China within three years and secured the patronage of a lady missionary already on the field.  Her frugality and prayers resulted in earning all she needed in less than a year.  Traveling by train through Siberian Russia into China, at a time of war between the two countries, the trip itself was fraught with adventure and danger, including being detained by Russian authorities and having to covertly enlist the aid of the British Consulate to smuggle her into China.

Her initial job was taking care of mules.  Her mentor had set up an inn and a mule stop for travelers.  The provided a place to sleep, food to eat, and care for the animals.  In this context, Gladys became very fluent in Chinese and used the opportunity to witness to many travelers, and won many to Faith.

After her mentor passed away, Gladys was offered a job by the Chinese government as a foot inspector.  The government of China had recently outlawed the practice of “foot-binding” – tightly binding the feet of young girls to change the size and shape of their feet as they grew.  Gladys had the authority of the government to go into homes and check on the feet of these girls.  This opened many doors to many families who otherwise would have never in their lives met a Christian, let alone an evangelist.  The Gospel was shared hundreds of times in this context, and many more were won to faith.

In her time there, at one point the local leader instructed her to intervene in a prison riot.  At 4’ 10” tall she was hardly an imposing figure, but the leader had heard her speak that a Christian had nothing to fear and directed her to walk into the prison and stop the riot.  Stepping in the midst of the angry mob she shouted, “I cannot hear when everyone is shouting at once!  Choose someone to be your spokesman and send him to me!”  The designated person told her of overcrowding, lack of food, and a hopelessness among the inmates.  Gladys promised to advocate for reforms and oversaw changes that brought in regular food.  She arranged for looms and a grindstone for grain so that the prisoners could be productive and useful in their incarceration.

In 1936, she saw a woman and a young girl begging by the road.  The young girl had sores and was obviously malnourished.  Speaking to them, she became certain that the child did not belong to the woman but was there as a ‘prop’ to aid in begging.  Gladys purchased the child for a small amount of money – this child becoming the first of over 100 children rescued by Gladys in the next two years.

In the Spring of 1938, Japanese bombs began to fall on the city.  She initially tried to stay but as the fighting got closer to the city, Gladys knew she had to leave with her children.  The Japanese had blocked the main roads leading into and out of the city, so she had to take her over 100 children over treacherous mountain paths.  Their food ran out, but that 12-day journey was rife with God’s blessings.  One night, a Buddhist priest hid them in his temple while they slept.  Another night, a group of Chinese soldiers came across them – providing them with food and guarding them while they slept the night.

Gladys had hoped to find boats waiting to help them cross the Yellow River, but when they arrived all the boats were gone.  Broken, Gladys broke down and wept until some of the children approached her and asked why they couldn’t ask God to part the sea for them as He did for the Israelites.  Admonished, Gladys called the children to her and they prayed and sang hymns.  Hearing the music, a Chinese officer found his way to them and was able to arrange for some military boats to transport them across the river to safety.  When the children had reached the safe haven, Gladys collapsed.  Taken into medical care, it was discovered she had Typhus. 

Gladys Aylward took many months to recover.  Greatly weakened, she was flown back to London where she took many opportunities to speak about the need for the Gospel in China.  After the war, she returned to China.

When the Communists took over and expelled Christian missionaries, Gladys moved to Taiwan and established in orphanage, taking in abandoned children.  She died in 1970 and is buried in Taipei.

The story of Gladys Aylward is captivating, and it was while she was still alive.  In 1957, a biography about her was published, entitled The Small Woman.  The book became the impetus for a 1958 movie called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness starring Ingrid Bergman in Gladys’ role.  When Newsweek magazine reviewed the movie and summarized the plot a reader wrote in, believing the story to be fiction, to say, “In order for a movie to be good, the story should be believable!”

Gladys Aylward appeared to be an unlikely candidate for mission work, but God chose her and gave her great determination to do the work.

 

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/missionary-gladys-aylward

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/73.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Aylward

Samuel Lamb

Lin Xiangao (known in the West as Samuel Lamb) was raised as a believer, born the son of a Baptist pastor in 1924, in the mountains overlooking Macau, China.  Following in his father’s footsteps, he preached his first sermon at age 19, shortly before Mao Zedong’s full-scale persecution of the Church.  Lamb was first arrested in 1955, accused of being a counter-revolutionary. 

He served 18 months before his release, and was arrested a second time in 1958, this time sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.  He served his sentence in a coal mine, where his task was to couple coal cars together.  He worked underground in low light and in very hazardous conditions, and continued to teach as he was able.  Working like this killed or severely injured many men, but Lamb emerged from his sentence in 1979 unharmed.  His wife died a year before his release, but Samuel was not allowed to attend her funeral.  He said later that her death “was like an arrow from the Almighty, until I understood that God allows the pain, the loss, the torture; but we must grow through it.”

Lamb was targeted mainly for his refusal to merge his house church with the Three Self Patriotic Church (TSPC), the state-controlled church.  The TSPC forbade the teaching of the Gospel to children under 18 years of age, denied many fundamentals of the Christian faith such as the Virgin Birth and Christ’s literal, physical resurrection.  China’s control of the state church led to their teaching principals geared more toward government support rather than Christian beliefs.

In 1979, Lamb resettled in Guangzhou, where he began to teach English and converted many of his students to Christ.  He soon restarted his house church, which quickly grew and had to move to a much larger building.  The church continued to grow, and began to occupy multiple buildings and had meetings several times per week.  According to the Open Doors organization, his church was a conduit for many thousands of Bibles and other Christian literature smuggled in from the West – Open Doors numbered the pieces of literature at over 200,000.  Even so, he adamantly taught his congregation that they should submit to the authorities in all things, except for when doing so directly opposed the teachings of the Scripture.

Suffering was a frequent topic of Rev Lamb’s sermons.  “I can understand Job’s victories and Job’s defeats,” he often said.  “It taught me that grumbling does not help.  Not against God and not against those who persecuted me.”  He taught what he called the “Holy principle of persecution”, which was that persecution has only one outcome: more growth for the church.

His church was raided again in 1990.  Lamb was arrested and his congregants were admonished not to attend services any longer, but Lamb was released the next day.  Though many in the church were intimidated into not coming the following week, Lamb and a few brave souls met the following Sunday without incident.  Soon the church was larger than ever, numbering over 5,000 regular attendees. 

Even though his congregation was still illegal, Samuel Lamb’s church was not bothered again, up to his death in August, 2013, at the age of 88.  Even so, he was prepared for more suffering.  He kept a bag packed with a change of clothes, shoes, and a toothbrush – prepared in the event of his arrest so he could just pick it up and go.  At his death, over 30,000 people spontaneously crammed the streets of Guangzhou to pay him homage.

His church was raided again just before Christmas, 2018, as part of the Communist Party’s new crackdown on Christian worship.  Since 2016, the Communists have sought an ever-increasing dominance over everyday life.  The government has banned online sales of the Bible, burned crosses, demolished churches, and forced many places of worship to close.  Many church members have been instructed by the authorities to sign letters stating they no longer believe in Christianity.  The church has, in many cases, again been forced to move underground and meet in secret.  If Samuel Lamb’s “Holy principle of persecution” is to be believed, we should be excited for the long-term spiritual growth of the church in China.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/death-of-pastor-samuel-lamb-leaves-hole-in-the-chinese-church-says-open-doors-usa.html

https://www.christianpost.com/news/chinese-police-raid-childrens-bible-class-shut-down-underground-megachurch.html

https://www2.cbn.com/news/news/china-strikes-again-shuts-down-third-underground-church-weeks

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/december/china-churches-early-rain-rongguili-wang-yi-samuel-lamb.html