Henan (Fire & Blood: The Story of the Church in China) 1903689570, 9781903689578

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HENAN 河南

HENAN 河南 The ‘Fire & Blood’ Series Volume 2 Paul Hattaway

Copyright © 2009 by Paul Hattaway This edition copyright © 2014 by Piquant PO Box 83, Carlisle, CA3 9GR, UK www.piquanteditions.com All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hattaway, Paul, 1968Henan : the Galilee of China. - (Fire & blood : the story of the church in China ; v. 2) 1. Henan Sheng (China) - Church history - 20th century I. Title 275.1’18082 PRINT ISBN: 978 1 903689 57 8 MOBI ISBN: 978-1-909281-40-0 EPUB ISBN: 978-1-909281-41-7 Scripture quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a Member of Hodder Headline Plc Group. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of the International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790. Cover design by Jonathan Kearney Book design by To a Tee Ltd, www.2at.com

HENAN 河 南 – 'South of the River' Old spelling: Ho-nan Population: 91.2 million (2000) 99.5 milion (2009) 110.5 million (2020, projected) Area: 64,500 square miles (167,000 sq km) Population density: 1,542 people per square mile (596 per sq km) Capital city: Zhengzhou (2.82 million1) Largest cities: Nanyang (1.72 million) Luoyang (1.62 million) Shangqiu (1.55 million) Dengzhou (1.4 million) Yongcheng (1.37 million) Xinyang (1.36 million) Yuzhou (1.22 million) Linzhou (1.07 million) Cities: 37 Counties: 90 Major ethnic groups Han Chinese 98.2 million (98.7%) Hui 1.1 million (1.1%) Mongol 89,000 (0.1%) Manchu 67,000 (0.1%) 1 Population figures in 2009

Projected Volumes in the ‘Fire & Blood’ Series When the first volume of the Fire & Blood series—China’s Book of Martyrs—was published, a larger series was planned. This has since been revised and the projected volumes are now as follows: 1. China’s Book of Martyrs 2. Henan: The Galilee of China 3. Northeast China (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang) 4. Southwest China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Tibet) 5. East China (Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian) 6. South China (Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan Island, Hunan) 7. North China (Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Beijing, Tianjin) 8. Northwest China (Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Shaanxi) 9. Central China (Hunan, Jiangxi, Hubei, Anhui) 10. Christianity Among China’s Minorities 11. China’s House Churches

Introduction to the ‘Fire & Blood’ Series Look at the nations and watch— and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. (Habakkuk 1:5)

Most Christians are aware that God is doing something great in China, but few have ever heard just how this revival has come about. The ‘Fire & Blood’ series is an ambitious project to document the advance of Christianity in that country from the earliest beginnings to the present day. At the time when the first volume was published, the series was expected to comprise some 30 volumes, focusing on the church in each province of China. Since then the series has been shortened by proposing to combine several provinces in some of the volumes. The genesis for this project was at a meeting I attended in 2000, where leaders of the Chinese house churches expressed the need for Christians to understand how God has expanded his kingdom throughout China, both historically and today. It is hoped that these books will glorify God, bless those who read them and challenge believers in China and around the world to a deeper and more radical walk with Jesus Christ. My intention in this series is not just to present a dry list of names and dates but to bring alive the marvellous story of how God has caused the gospel to take root and flourish in the world’s most populous country. The title indicates the main themes of these books: ‘fire’ is the fire of God, who has sent the revival that has brought life and blessing to so many areas of China, and ‘blood’ is a reminder of the persecution and purging that believers in China have experienced for the sake of the gospel. Revival has not come about by accident. The church in China has endured centuries of fire and blood—preparing the ground for the present time of harvest. I have been researching Christianity in China for many years, meticulously gathering information and pictures, and have myself read more than 1,500 books—and thousands more articles and publications relating to the Chinese church. I feel that with God’s help I have turned over every stone I know about in order to obtain as clear a picture as possible

about his workings in China. ‘Fire & Blood’ will examine and document every creed of Christianity to have taken root in China. Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Three-Self churches, house churches—all those who call on the name of Jesus Christ will be included and their stories told. I consider it a great honour to write these books, especially as I have been entrusted, in the hundreds of hours of interviews I have conducted inside China, with many testimonies that have never been published before. The series will be illustrated with more than 5,000 photographs, from images of frescos made over a thousand years ago to contemporary pictures of the church. At the back of each volume from Volume 2 onwards, there will be a detailed statistical analysis providing estimates of the number of Christians living in each city and county in each province. This is the first ever comprehensive investigation of the number of believers in China—in each of its more than 2,400 cities and counties—drawing on more than two thousand sources. Such a huge undertaking as the ‘Fire & Blood’ series would be impossible without the cooperation and assistance of numerous organizations and individuals. I apologize in advance to the many people who have helped me in so many different ways whose names are not mentioned here. I thank you. May the Lord be with you and bless you! Some who immediately come to mind include my dear wife, Joy; Dwayne and Tamara Graybill; Angela Li, for her excellent translations from Chinese; and Harley Hochstetler: all of whom over the span of several years did menial tasks in our office in Chiang Mai in Thailand, such as making photocopies—more than 35,000 according to the counter on the machine!—and filing cuttings. I recall one brief trip to Singapore with Harley when we were graciously granted access to the OMF archives. Over three days, he helped me to scan 800 priceless old pictures and make more than 3,000 photocopies of articles from old magazines and books about the Chinese church. I would also like to express my appreciation to Christine Graf and Patricia Georgini, who greatly assisted me in obtaining rare publications. They never complained at my incessant requests, considering it an honour to serve Christ and his Church through their efforts. Thank you! And thanks also to organizations such as OMF, The Voice of the Martyrs, the International Mission Board and many others that graciously allowed me access to their archives, libraries, photographs, collections and personal

records; lent or gave me books; shared information and stories and generally displayed the biblical generosity exemplified by Jesus’ command, ‘Freely you have received, freely give’ (Matthew 10:8). The same applies to the publishers and institutions that have allowed me to use their material in these books, such as the Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference in Taiwan. Revival Chinese Ministries International generously provided me with hundreds of contemporary pictures relating to the church in China. Many Chinese believers, too numerous to name, have lovingly assisted in this endeavour. I recall the house-church evangelist Elder Fu who, with a young man on either side to help him walk, made his way up the stairs to my hotel room in Zhengzhou in Henan Province because he so wanted to be interviewed for this series. Although he had spent many years in prison for the sake of the gospel, this saint desperately wanted to testify to God’s great works so that believers around the world could be inspired and encouraged to live a life more fully dedicated to Christ. Like King David, the Chinese believers love to declare: Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts. … They will tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds. … They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, so that all men may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendour of your kingdom. (Psalm 145:3–4, 6 and 11–12)

Finally, it would be remiss to thank so many people without mentioning the Lord Jesus. As you read these books, my prayer is that he will emerge not merely as a historical figure in China’s past but as someone ever-present, longing to seek and to save the lost and displaying the love of the Father through his sustaining power, grace and mercy. Today, the church in China is one of the strongest in the world, both spiritually and numerically. Yet little more than a century ago that country was considered to be one of the most difficult mission fields. The great Welsh missionary Griffith John once declared: ‘The good news is moving but very slowly. The people are as hard as steel. They are eaten up both soul and body by the world, and do not seem to feel that there can be reality in anything beyond sense. To them our doctrine is foolishness, our talk jargon. We discuss and beat them in argument. We reason them into silence and shame; but the whole effort falls upon them like showers upon a sandy desert.’ How things have changed! When it is all said and done, no person in China will be able to take credit for the amazing miracle that has occurred

there. It will be clear that this great accomplishment is the handiwork of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. We will do well just to stand in awe and declare: The Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:23–24)

Paul Hattaway

A note about security: In the ‘Fire & Blood’ series, I have avoided divulging information, such as individuals’ names or other details, that could lead directly to the identification of house-church workers and leaders. The exceptions to this rule are where a leader has already become so well known around the world that there is little point concealing his identity in these books. I have applied the same general principles to the use of photographs. I have avoided using images of house-church leaders except for those that have already been published around the world for years. I have included a number of pictures of scenes of general worship, but they do not show the faces of house-church leaders, who are the principal targets of the Chinese authorities. Other images are sufficiently old—10 years or more—to present little risk now to those pictured. As a final safeguard, the manuscript was sent to several people with long experience of working in China for approval before publication. Across China, I have asked house-church leaders how much information about them can safely be shared with Christians around the world. The last thing I want to do is get believers into trouble. Once when I expressed this fear, one house-church leader laughed and told me, ‘We are already hunted like animals. We have been imprisoned, humiliated and tortured. We have been on the run from the authorities for years, and are willing to die for Jesus every day. How can you get us into any more trouble than we are already in? The authorities already know the size and growth of the church anyway. Just tell the truth and let it speak for itself!’ Editorial note on the use of Pinyin: Several different systems for writing the sounds of Chinese characters in English and other Roman-based scripts have been used in China over the years, the main ones being the WadeGiles system (introduced in 1912) and Pinyin (literally ‘spelling sounds’),

which has been the accepted form in China since 1979. In the ‘Fire & Blood’ series, all names of people and places are given in their Pinyin form, although in many instances the old spelling is also given in parentheses. This means that the cities formerly spelt Chung-king, Peking and Tien-tsin are now respectively Chongqing, Beijing and Tianjin; Mao Tse-tung becomes Mao Zedong, etc. The exceptions are where old spellings of names or places are part of the title of a published book or article listed in the footnotes or the bibliography.

Abbreviations ABS American Bible Society ANS Amity News Service BAM Born-Again Movement CCC China Christian Council CCL Christian Communications Ltd. CCRC Chinese Church Research Centre CEZMS Church of England Zenana Missionary Society CFC China for Christ CGF China Gospel Fellowship CICM Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary CIM China Inland Mission CIPRC The Committee for the Investigation of Persecution of Religion in China CMA Christian & Missionary Alliance CMS Church Missionary Society CNCR China News and Church Report CPA Catholic Patriotic Association CPL China Prayer Letter CPLMR China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report CRBC Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference CSJ China Study Journal DAWN Discipling a Whole Nation EBM English Baptist Mission FEBC Far East Broadcasting Company IBRA International Broadcasting Association IMB International Mission Board (Southern Baptists) KMT Kuo Min Tang (Guo Min Dang – Nationalists) LMS London Missionary Society NNI Network News International OMF Overseas Missionary Fellowship OUP Oxford University Press PIME Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions PSB Public Security Bureau RCMI Revival Chinese Ministries International

SAM The Scandinavian Alliance Mission SDA Seventh-Day Adventist SHU Swedish Holiness Union SMM Swedish Mongol Mission SPCK Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge TEAM The Evangelical Alliance Mission (formerly the Scandinavian Alliance Mission) TSPM Three-Self Patriotic Movement UCAN Union of Catholic Asian News VOM The Voice of the Martyrs YASS Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association ZGTZJ Zhing Guo Tian Zhu Jiao (official publication of the CPA)

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. John 21:25

Chapter 1 HENAN: THE GALILEE OF CHINA

Most people in Henan are farmers, struggling to eke out a living from the land

I

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t is appropriate that Henan should be the first province of China to be profiled in the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. Not only is it now China’s most populous province, with almost 100 million people,2 it also has the largest number of Christians and is the centre of the greatest and most sustained revival of Christianity, which has lasted more than 30 years. The coastal city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang may have claimed for itself the title ‘the Jerusalem of China’, because it contains so many churches, but some house-church leaders in Henan have nicknamed their province ‘the Galilee of China’—the place where Jesus’ disciples come from. Millions of people in Henan have come to faith in Christ during the past three decades, and this central province—though one of the smallest in China by area—has become an engine room for the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout every part of China, and even in recent years beyond the country’s borders.

Geography Henan, which is also known to Chinese people by its abbreviated name, Yu, is a landlocked province roughly midway between Beijing and Shanghai. It borders Hebei to the north, Shandong to the north-east, Anhui to the southeast, Hubei to the south, Shaanxi to the west and Shanxi to the north-west. Although it is the most populous province in China, Henan ranks just 17th in area. At 64,500 square miles (167,000 square kilometres), it is slightly smaller than England and Scotland combined, or the American state of Missouri.

The eastern and central regions of Henan are flat, constituting part of the vast North China Plain. The province is generally mountainous in the west and south. It is framed by the Taihang Mountains to the north-west, the Qinling Mountains to the west and the Dabie Mountains that separate Henan from Hubei in the south. The mighty Huang He, or Yellow River, flows through the northern part of the province. It is the second-longest river in China, and the seventh-longest in the world. Indeed, the name ‘He Nan’ means ‘south of the river’. The Yellow River has been both a blessing and a curse to Henan’s people since the first settlers arrived in the region. Regular flooding has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, giving the Huang He its nickname ‘the River of Sorrow’. To many Chinese, the wellbeing of the river is intricately linked to the wellbeing of the nation. On the massive Sanmenxia Dam in western Henan are painted eight characters that read: ‘When the Yellow River is at peace, China is at peace.’ Henan has a temperate climate, with average temperatures of 0°C (32°F) in the winter and 28°C (82°F) during the steamy summer months. Summer brings the highest rainfall of the year.

History Henan has a long history going back about 3,500 years, and is considered by Chinese people to be ‘the cradle of civilization’. Archaeological excavations show that it was one of the kingdoms ruled by the leaders of the Shang Dynasty (1700–1100 BC), at about the same time that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The first Shang capital is thought to have been located at Yanshi, west of the modern-day provincial capital, Zhengzhou. There are numerous historic and scenic sights in the province, including the famous Longmen Grottoes in the ancient city of Luoyang. Henan was the centre of Chinese civilization during the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279). In this period, Kaifeng became a city of international importance, with merchants and artisans flocking to it from all over the world. Henan also became home to tens of thousands of Jews who migrated to China along the Silk Road. Today there are only some 800 people remaining in China who claim Jewish descent, of whom maybe half live in a single neighbourhood of Kaifeng. The two cities of Luoyang and Kaifeng have each served as the capital of a long list of dynasties. In the seven

centuries since its heyday, Henan has not had such a prominent role in China, but it remains an important province. On 11 May 1938, General Chiang Kai-shek ordered his Nationalist soldiers to blow up the dyke that contained the Yellow River at Huayuankou, just outside Zhengzhou, in an attempt to halt advancing Japanese troops. Although it succeeded in this aim, this brutal measure did not consider the local Chinese population, 900,000 of whom perished in the ensuing flood.3 For eight years the river flowed unimpeded across the eastern Henan plain. Approximately 3,500 villages and towns were wiped out, leaving some 11 million people homeless and facing starvation. The devastated area was ‘ten to twenty miles wide, and all along the length of this new channel, desperate people who had lost their homes and farmland tried to stay alive in the ways that such people are wont to do.’4 The Second World War added to the suffering of the people of Henan. One missionary described the devastation that occurred in Zhengzhou as a result of the fighting: The city was a white sepulcher full of people like gray ghosts. Death ruled Zhengzhou, for the famine centered there. Before the war it had held 120,000 people; now it had less than 40,000. The city had been bombed, shelled, and occupied by the Japanese, so that it had the halfdestroyed air of all battlefront cities. Rubble was stacked along the gutters, and the great buildings, roofless, were open to the sky. Over the rubble and ruins the snow spread a mantle that deadened every sound. We stood at the head of the main street, looked down the deserted way for all its length—and saw nothing.5

The suffering of the people of Henan became only worse during the disastrous ‘Great Leap Forward’ experiment carried out by the Communists in 1958. In the ensuing famines of the early 1960s, several million starved to death. In 1975, the Banqio Dam in southern Henan collapsed following a typhoon, and an estimated 230,000 people died. This remains the greatest loss of life caused by the collapse of a dam in history.

People Henan’s huge population is divided into 17 prefectures, encompassing 90 counties and 37 cities. Of the latter, nine have a population exceeding a million people, with the capital, Zhengzhou, boasting the largest, with 2.8 million, followed by Nanyang (1.7m), Luoyang (1.6m) and Shangqiu (1.5m). A further 17 cities have a population of over 500,000.

The overwhelming majority (98.7%) of people in Henan are of Han ethnicity. The remainder belong to one or other of China’s minority nationalities. There are over a million Muslim Hui people, and nearly 89,000 Mongols and 67,000 Manchu. Along with the small numbers of people from other ethnic minorities, the Mongols and Manchu in Henan have largely lost their distinctiveness and have been assimilated culturally and linguistically by the Han majority. Henanese people are often characterized by other Chinese as being ‘honest and frugal—sometimes also a bit naive. They have, nevertheless, long been considered to have violent tempers. … Unlike the Sinitic peoples farther south, the Henanese were not stereotyped as crafty or cunning, but like the more southern peoples, they were expected to pursue luxury if given the opportunity.’6 A missionary at the start of the 19th century wrote: ‘The people are physically strong and of an independent turn of mind. In manners they are somewhat rough and not so polite as the Southerner. The province might be termed a province of farmers. The people are not fond of travel, and are consequently ignorant of anything outside their own little horizon, and are extremely superstitious.’7

Language The main vernacular spoken in Henan falls within the Northern Mandarin dialect group, though there are places where the North-western and Southwestern dialects of Mandarin are spoken. According to one source, ‘the sounds of Henanese have been characterized by other Chinese as harsh and lacking resonance. This may result from a tendency to use one-syllable words rather than the two-syllable words characteristic of most modern spoken Chinese.’8

Culture Henan cuisine is considered one of the five great schools of Chinese cooking. It is typically salty and uses wheat bread as a staple and green onions as its favourite flavouring. The Henanese also enjoy spicy dishes, often in conjunction with chicken and pork dishes. Henan also has its own distinctive opera, known as Yuju.

Economy

Henan is a relatively poor province, despite the fact that the provincial authorities have introduced extensive reforms in recent years to modernize it. Its economy has grown by an average of 10 per cent each year for the past two decades, but this has not been enough to prevent millions of rural people from migrating to the great cities elsewhere in China in search of a better income. Henan is one of China’s key agricultural provinces, ranking fifth overall in terms of production. It leads the field in wheat, cotton, sesame seeds, tobacco and leather, and its other major crops include cotton, rice and maize. Its principal industries include textiles, petroleum, building materials, chemicals, machinery and electronics, and coal-mining continues to play an important role in its economy. In recent years, Henan has seen the emergence of a growing economic divide between the ‘haves’ in the large cities and the ‘have-nots’, the millions of peasant farmers living in the countryside. It is among these impoverished, simple-hearted farmers that the gospel has found its most fertile soil. At the same time, HIV/Aids has become almost an epidemic, wreaking havoc in hundreds of villages, especially those situated along the main transport routes, where prostitution and drug use proliferate. By the end of October 2006, 183,733 people in China had reportedly tested positive for the virus so far that year, almost a 28-per-cent increase on the 144,089 recorded for the whole of 2005.9 The practice of poor people selling their blood to local hospitals has also contributed to the spread of the disease. By 2001, entire villages had been devastated by Aids and were inhabited only by the elderly and small children. The rest of their population either were already dead or were receiving treatment and care elsewhere. Drug addiction, too, is destroying the lives of many in Henan. According to statistics released by the Chinese Anti-Narcotics Commission, in 2006 there were 894,000 drug addicts in China, of whom 70 per cent were under the age of 35.10 Another social ill plaguing Henan is human trafficking. The one-child policy, which has been in force since 1979, has created a marked imbalance between the sexes, with millions of female babies aborted so that their parents could have sons. As a result, there is in many areas a lack of women available for marriage. In 2007, the China Daily reported that a woman named Ji Xiulan had been arrested in Yongcheng City for selling 118 baby

girls to families. She had bought them from impoverished families in southern China, and had been discovered only when a taxi she was transporting 13 babies in broke down. She and the driver ‘left four babies in a field nearby and went to a garage for repairs. Residents found the babies and alerted the authorities.’11

The Henan Church Although in size the church in Henan is without equal in China, its spectacular growth has come at a great price. Henan often seems to experience the most severe persecution of all the provinces of China. Assaults on believers, including beating and imprisonment, have shown little sign of abating in recent years. Rules prohibiting unregistered house churches seem to be enforced much more harshly than anywhere else in China. However, the intensity of the spiritual environment means that Henan’s Christians are a purified, bold and uncompromising body of believers. The church in Henan has been at the forefront of efforts to evangelize other parts of the country and has provided many prominent leaders of the house-church movements in China today. God has chosen the simple, rough, rural Christians of Henan to glorify his name throughout China. He has looked past outward appearances, as always, and has found multitudes of believers in Henan with hearts willing to obey and serve him. 2 Sichuan once had the distinction of being the most populous province in China, but the creation in 1997 of the separately-administered Chongqing Municipality reduced Sichuan’s population by some 30 million and relegated the province to fourth place, behind Henan, Shandong and Guangdong. Today, Henan has nearly 99 million people, to Sichuan’s 89 million. 3 Erleen J. Christensen, In War and Famine: Missionaries in China’s Honan Province in the 1940s (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2005), p9 4 Ibid., p10 5 Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder out of China (New York: William Sloane, 1946), p133 6 Leo J. Moser, The Chinese Mosaic: The Peoples and Provinces of China (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985), p62 7 Archibald Gracie, ‘The Province of Ho-nan’, China’s Millions, July 1902, p92 8 Moser, The Chinese Mosaic, p63 9 The Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2006 10 Cited in Lift Up Our Holy Hands (Christian Communications Ltd, January 2008) 11 China Daily, 19 June 2007

Chapter 2 THE JEWS OF CHINA

A family of You Tai, or Chinese Jews, proudly showing off their trilingual street sign in Kaifeng City in the mid 1990s Midge Conner

The Enigmatic Ai Tian Kaifeng City, the ancient capital of Henan Province, has the distinction of being the principal centre for China’s Jews throughout their long, twothousand-year history in the country. One of the most extensive researchers into the Chinese Jews, the Canadian bishop William White, declared that their ancestors had migrated to China in the earliest years of the Christian era. One account stated that some had arrived even earlier, in about 250 BC. Some came for trade—silk from China was much prized by the Roman aristocracy—and some to escape persecution; and they came in sufficient numbers to support synagogues along the route. In China, they lived free from persecution— indeed, they were looked upon as welcome newcomers by the immensely curious Chinese. Over the centuries, the Jews of Kaifeng intermarried with Chinese and adopted Chinese names. The Li family, for example, was thought to have been named Levi at one time.12 When Jesuit missionaries reached China in the 16th century, they discovered that Christianity had declined there to the point of extinction. During their investigations, a Chinese Jew named Ai Tian approached them to tell them of a surviving Jewish community that was scattered throughout the Empire, including at Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Ningbo and Hangzhou in Zhejiang and Yangzhou in Jiangsu. When he first visited the

Jesuit mission in Beijing, Ai saw a large painting of Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist. He thought the image was of Rebekah and her two sons, Jacob and Esau, and he bowed down to them, saying: ‘I do not usually venerate pictures, but I must pay reverence to these ancestors of mine.’13 Ai told the renowned missionary Matteo Ricci that the founder of his religion had 12 sons. Ricci initially assumed that Ai was a Christian and was referring to the Apostles, but he soon realized that he was a Jew and meant the 12 sons of Jacob, the forefathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. At the time, Ai said that there were just 10 or 12 Jewish families living in Kaifeng, though a fine synagogue survived and had recently been restored at great expense. Inside it, ‘they kept with great reverence the Pentateuch of Moses written on parchment and mounted on five rollers [which] had been there for five or six hundred years.’14 Ai went on to tell the missionaries of the existence of Jewish communities in other parts of China, though because they had no synagogues they had lost their distinctiveness. Many Chinese at the time believed the Jews to be the same as Muslims, largely on account of their common refusal to eat pork. Ricci tested Ai Tian’s knowledge of the Bible and he gladly recited many stories about Abraham, Moses and Esther, ‘using forms of proper names which struck Ricci as strange: Hierosuloim for Jerusalem, Moscia for Messiah. He said that many of the Kaifeng Israelites knew Hebrew.’15 When the missionary told him that they had copies of the Old Testament and that there existed a new Testament that told of the Messiah’s coming into the world, the stunned Jew replied that that was impossible, because the Messiah would not appear for another 10,000 years. After listening carefully to Ricci, however, Ai returned home to Henan and later wrote a letter to the Italian that said, ‘If you will come and live with us and abstain from pork, we will make you ruler of our synagogue.’16

The Kaifeng Synagogue The synagogue in Kaifeng was constructed in AD 1163. An inscription on its wall told how an initial party of 70 Jewish families had reached China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279). In 1183, the Emperor Long Xing granted permission for them to settle in the city of Pian (modern-day Kaifeng), from which they began trading. However, two other inscriptions in the synagogue put the arrival of the Jews much earlier. One says they came to China during the Zhou Dynasty (before 250 BC), while the other

claims they first appeared during the Han Dynasty (between 206 BC and AD 220). These variant dates may indicate that the ancestors of the Chinese Jews arrived at different times throughout history, probably travelling down the Silk Road from Central Asia or the Middle East.17 Other sources suggest they may have come by sea from India.18

The spot where the Kaifeng synagogue stood for centuries. In the foreground are the two stone pillars that record the history of the Jews in China.

Ricci sent a colleague from Beijing to Kaifeng in the early 1600s to follow up reports of Christian communities there. Although this man was unable to find any Christians, he discovered that the Chinese called Judaism ‘the religion of the muscle picking’ (possibly because of the biblical story of God dislocating Jacob’s hip while wrestling with him). Ricci wrote in 1608: The brother was very well received by the Jews there, who are not known by any other name than that derived from not eating the sinews of animals, keeping still the ancient rite with regard to the sinew which Jacob found shrunken after he had wrestled with the angel. They are few but they have a good synagogue where they keep with great respect the whole Pentateuch in Hebrew, rolled up after the manner of ancient books. We could not learn that they had any other books. The city is ten days’ journey from here and so it is easy to go there when we wish.19

In its heyday, the flourishing Jewish community in Kaifeng numbered around 20,000. The city became known as ‘the Jerusalem of China’,20 and the Jews rose to high positions in government, earning themselves wealth and recognition. Because of its location next to the Yellow River, the Kaifeng synagogue had to be repaired or rebuilt in the years 1279, 1421, 1445, 1461, 1480 and 1512 and then again in the 1650s. Once it housed 13 copies of the Law, but the river’s constant flooding destroyed most of them. However, years of painstaking copying and careful piecing-together of fragments meant that by 1663 this dedicated community once again possessed 13 copies of their beloved Law. By 1851, the Kaifeng Jews had long lost their ability to speak or read Hebrew and in almost every way had become assimilated into Chinese culture. Their last rabbi had died in 1810, leaving them directionless and

unable to read their scriptures. For centuries, they had intermarried with their Han Chinese and Hui neighbours, and then damage to their synagogue from yet another flood caused them to lose heart. One source says that, ‘poverty-stricken and isolated for centuries from any contact with other Jews, they demolished their own synagogue and sold the bricks.’21 In the late 1800s, even the carefully preserved scrolls were sold to Christian missionaries.22 A delegation of scholars who visited the Kaifeng Jews in 1851 made the following report: The Jews at Kaifeng are now allowed to intermarry with heathens or [Muslims], neither are they allowed to marry two wives. They are forbidden to eat pork, and are required to be strict in the observance of their religion, and to keep the Sabbath holy. … We heard also that whenever anyone was known to belong to the Jewish religion he was soon despised, and became poor; none of the Chinese would make friends with them, and they were treated as outcasts by the common people. Many of those who professed the Jewish religion did so in secret, and not openly, lest they should be despised also.23

By the time the famous American Presbyterian missionary W. A. P. Martin visited Kaifeng in 1866, all traces of the synagogue had disappeared. He managed merely to locate a neighbourhood in the city where a number of people still clung to their Jewish identity, but in name only, much as they do today.

Protestant Efforts to Reach the Jews A number of Protestant missionaries, fascinated by the presence of a Jewish community in China, visited Kaifeng and attempted to share the gospel with them, but the Jews decided that the Christian message was not for them and showed not the slightest interest. When D. J. Mills of the China Inland Mission visited in 1890, he reported: ‘I offered Mr Kao copies of the Old and New Testaments, but he said he already had a boxful of our books. We tried to interest him in the promises made to Israel, and the offer of salvation in Christ, but to all this he seemed perfectly indifferent. “I know all about it,” he said.’24

A Jewish woman and her son in Kaifeng, photographed by a missionary in 1911

Bishop William White visited Kaifeng in 1918 and became fascinated by the heritage of the Jewish community. He invited scholars to lecture the community on the history of the Jewish nation and he laid on elaborate feasts, paid for out of his own pocket. He started archaeological digs on the site of the synagogue and uncovered two stone pillars that told the history of the Jews in China. Later, he wrote an exhaustive, three-volume work entitled Chinese Jews.25 Considering such centuries of struggle and hardship, it is amazing that even today a small community remains in Kaifeng that still proudly identifies itself as Jewish. Today, several hundred You Tai, or Chinese Jews, reside in Kaifeng, and about a thousand live in the whole of China. Since the 1990 census, the Chinese government has officially acknowledged the You Tai, though it refuses to grant them status as a distinct ethnic minority (or ‘minority nationality’). Most of the inhabitants of Kaifeng are aware of the existence of the Jewish neighbourhood in their city and can direct visitors to the place where the synagogue once stood. In 1845, the author James Finn wrote a letter in Hebrew to the Jews of Kaifeng, asking them a number of questions about their origins, their way of life, their style of prayer and the holidays they observed. Twenty-five years later, he received a reply, written in Chinese, indicating that they no longer knew any Hebrew. The letter was full of despair. It said, in part: During the past 40 or 50 years our religion has been but imperfectly transmitted, and although the canonical writings are still extant, there is no one who understands so much as a word of them. … Morning and night with tears in our eyes and with offerings of incense, we implore God that our religion may flourish again.26

In 1999, a Chinese Christian house-church movement specifically targeted the remaining 800 Jews of Kaifeng with the message of Jesus Christ. More than 300 have since placed their faith in Christ, accepting God’s offer of salvation through the sacrifice of his Son.

12 Lewis C. Walmsley, Bishop in Honan: Mission and Museum in the Life of William C. White (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), p138 13 Vincent Cronin, The Wise Man from the West (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1955), p220 14 Arthur Christopher Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (London: SPCK, 1930), p1 15 Cronin, The Wise Man from the West, pp224–25 16 Ibid., p226 17 In the 19th century, members of the London Jews Society visited the Kaifeng synagogue and examined the ancient manuscripts. They found that while the main body of text was written in Hebrew, many of the rubrics and notes were in Persian, which suggests a Middle-Eastern connection. Another source specifically states that the Chinese Jews came from Persia and Yemen between 1,000 and 1,500 years ago. See Nancy Ryan, ‘Jews in the Far East Have Rich and Varied Roots’, Chicago Tribune, 23 January 1987. 18 See Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550, p2, fn4. 19 Opere storiche del P. Matteo Ricci S.I., vol.I: I Commentari della Cina (1911), p469 20 National and International Religions Report, 29 April 1996 21 Michael McCabe, ‘The Jews of China’, San Jose Mercury News, 17 November 1984 22 These scrolls and prayer books are now preserved in libraries in Israel and North America. 23 Arnold Foster, Christian Progress in China: Gleanings from the Writings and Speeches of Many Workers (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1889), pp251–52 24 D. J. Mills, ‘Ho-nan Province: An Eventful Itineration’, China’s Millions, April 1891, p47 25 This was later reprinted as a single volume, 700 pages in length. See William White, Chinese Jews (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966). 26 McCabe, ‘The Jews of China’. See also Oliver Bainbridge, ‘The Chinese Jews’, National Geographic, October 1907, p627.

PART I The Catholic Church in Henan

Chapter 3 GOSPEL BEGINNINGS

The Nestorian Stone, which displays the story of the earliest Christians in China

The Nestorians

C

hristianity in Henan has a history of over 1,300 years, but for most of that time the gospel struggled to take root in this central province of China. This very slow and difficult progress gave little hint of the explosive growth that was to occur after the 1970s, which has resulted in Henan today containing more Christians than any other province in China. Only Zhejiang boasts more Christians per head of population.27 The first verifiable Christian witness in China took place when Nestorian missionaries from Central Asia and the Middle East arrived in AD 635. By 638, 21 Persian monks had begun spreading the knowledge of Christ, and over the next few hundred years monasteries and churches were established in various parts of the country. The Nestorian Stone, which was unearthed near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province in the 1620s, has text in both the Chinese and Syriac scripts.28 The Syriac characters on the stone include references to ‘Gabriel, priest and archdeacon of the church of Khumdan and of Sarag’. These were the names of the two Tang Dynasty capitals of Chang’an (in Shaanxi) and Luoyang (in Henan). Luoyang was connected to the ancient Silk Road, the

busy route that linked China to Central Asia and saw so much traffic not only in commodities and people but also in religious beliefs. Besides the stone, there are other relics and documents that refer to Nestorian churches and monasteries in a number of places across China. One reference describes how a Persian monastery was built in the Xiushan quarter of Luoyang City. It was located next to the city’s southern market, which was a gathering point for all the foreign merchants who lived in Luoyang.29 In 2006, a tombstone was unearthed in Luoyang that was inscribed with scriptures and insignia of the Nestorian Church. Luo Zhao of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences observed: ‘To be exact, the Christian text was a China-proper ontological thesis about the Christian theology written by a prelate who had been long living in China in the late eight century.’30 The Empress Wu Hou instigated a persecution of the Nestorians in 690 after she established Buddhism as the state religion, and the harmonious relations the Nestorians had enjoyed with China’s leaders up to that point came to an abrupt end. Mobs destroyed the Nestorian church at Luoyang in 698 in the first recorded attack on Christians in Henan Province. Nestorianism survived for more than 600 years in other parts of China, such as Xinjiang, Gansu and Shaanxi, so that when Marco Polo came through on his epic journey in the 13th century he found churches in many different places; but, except in Luoyang, it seems that Nestorian activity in Henan had ceased. Over the centuries, the Nestorian movement suffered a spiritual and moral decline. In 1263, an official document alluded to the provision of horses by the Christians and other people living in Henan,31 but apart from this fleeting reference the Nestorian church seems to have largely disappeared from view.

The First Catholics By the time the first Jesuits arrived in Henan in the late 16th century, they found little evidence that any Christians had ever set foot in the province before them. According to the famous Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci, even the memory of Christianity had almost vanished from China. In June 1605, a Chinese Jew named Ai Tian, who had travelled to Beijing on business, took the opportunity to make the Jesuits’ acquaintance, and Ricci asked Ai (who was in his 60s) whether he had any knowledge of

‘Christians’. Ai did not recognize the word, but when Ricci made a sign of the cross, his visitor seemed to understand and told him there were certain foreigners who had settled in Kaifeng who ‘adored the cross’ and part of their doctrine came from the same scriptures the Jews used. He said that these believers prayed over everything they ate and drank, making the sign of a cross with their fingers. Ai further informed the missionaries that the Christians in Kaifeng— fearful of being mistaken for Hui Muslims and caught up in hostilities between the Chinese and the Hui—had abandoned their church and begun to meet in secret. The church had been converted into a temple for idol worship and the Christians had vanished from public view, though Ai was sure they still survived. He reported that ‘many kept this custom of making the [sign of the] cross, and were known by their look which was quite different from that of other persons. And he wrote the names of all the families in Henan who were descended from these people, and they were many.’32 Three years later, Ricci sent a young Chinese Catholic named Anthony to Kaifeng to see whether he could locate any of these ‘adorers of the cross’, but he met with no success. Ricci wrote that the mission failed because Sixty years ago the Chinese wished to seize the members of this religion, and they hid themselves, becoming heathen or Moors [Muslims] from fear, and to this day they do not reveal themselves. And so now, when our brother asked them these questions, they were frightened, not knowing for what purpose [he] so unexpectedly asked them this; from which we concluded that it will be necessary for some father to go there, and if he stays there a long time he will be able little by little to learn the truth.33

Further enquiry discovered that the Christians in Kaifeng were not called ‘Christians’ but rather were known by the name ‘Terza’, which seems to have been the name of the country from which their ancestors came. They were different from the Muslims and Jews in that they freely ate pork, and their religion was commonly called ‘the religion of the figure 10’ by the locals. In Chinese, the number 10 is represented by a cross. More than a decade elapsed after Ai Tian visited Matteo Ricci in Beijing before the first Catholic missionary took up residence in Henan. In the early 1620s, Nicholas Trigault of Belgium (who later became the first European to see the Nestorian Stone after it was unearthed in Shaanxi Province) established a mission in Kaifeng. Shortly after, the Jesuit priest Rui Figueredo built a church in the same city. In 1642, this suffered the same fate as the Jewish synagogue when, in

an attempt to drown 10,000 rebels, the Emperor ordered the destruction of embankments along the Yellow River. The church was severely damaged by the flood waters and Figuero was drowned, and the work was set back many years. By 1703, the Jesuit priest Giampaolo Gozani (1659–1732) was the only foreign missionary residing in Henan. He reported four churches, 12 oratories, 3,000 Christians and about 300 baptisms a year.34 In 1720, a number of Catholic families from Shanxi Province migrated into northern Henan and founded the new village of Tianjiajing. During a nationwide persecution in 1758, the governor of Henan sent a memorandum to the Qianlong Emperor, reporting a flourishing Christian community in Tongbai County in the southern part of the province. The Catholic church in Henan appears to have stagnated for the remainder of the 18th century, with no particular progress recorded. Indeed, the Catholics dwindled in number so that by 1834 there were only 500 left in the province.35 In 1865, the responsibility for establishing Catholicism in Henan passed from the Jesuits to the Lazarists, who tried valiantly to shepherd small numbers of believers scattered across vast distances. The first bishopric was established at Weihui (now Jixian), north of the Yellow River, in the 1860s.

Baldus Jean Henri, a Frenchman, came to China in 1835 and was the first Vatican nuncio appointed for Henan Province Beijing National Library

A strong anti-foreign and anti-Christian sentiment arose in the province during the second half of the 19th century, culminating with the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The general population often objected strongly to the methods employed by Catholic missionaries, while tensions worsened

during and after the Opium Wars when Britain and other foreign powers used military force to take control of key Chinese ports. The Chinese people largely associated Christianity with imperialistic attempts by foreign powers to subdue their country, and consequently there was very little interest in the gospel. The small number of Chinese Christians at the time were seen as traitors, and ‘running dogs’ of the imperialists. In the late 1860s, a mob drove a Catholic missionary out of a city in Henan with these words: ‘You burned our palace, you killed our Emperor, you sell poison to our people, and now you come professing to teach us virtue.’36

Bishop Volonteri and the Jingang Catholics In the 19th century, the centre of Catholic work in southern Henan was located in the tiny village of Jingang, just seven miles from the city of Nanyang. Jingang at the time contained only 200 people, but it boasted two orphanages and a small seminary. From the start, the local officials seemed to harbour a deep hatred towards the Catholic community. Whenever the political situation flared up, the missionaries and Chinese believers at Jingang were blamed and persecution ensued. In 1873, Bishop Simeon Volonteri (whose Chinese name was Gan) travelled to Beijing and pleaded with the Chinese authorities to protect the Catholics in Henan, only to find on his return that the provincial officials were furious that he had bypassed them and gone directly to their superiors. The magistrate at Nanyang strongly opposed the Jingang believers for years, while the city’s Confucian scholars distributed an anti-Christian pamphlet titled Xiejiao (‘The False Religion’). Volonteri saw the need to build a large cathedral that would be seen as the central rallying point for believers in southern Henan. As the edifice neared completion in late 1874, some people who were hostile to Christians assembled a small, armed mob which seized and occupied the mission for two months, and it was saved only by the determination of local Christians, who turned out in force to defend it. The cathedral was finished the following year, and won the admiration of the simple folk.37 The years 1877–78 saw a severe famine strike Henan and the surrounding provinces, resulting in eight million deaths. This was followed by a typhus epidemic that killed 500 Catholics. Volonteri and his co-workers did their utmost to provide shelter and medical care to thousands of desperate people. Those who survived the ordeal remembered the love they were shown, and

this resulted in many conversions throughout the province. Within a few short years, ‘the mission stations increased from twenty-seven to forty and by 1879, Catholics numbered 4,588.’38 In 1895, a new persecution broke out against the Catholics. Volonteri went to the Chinese authorities and insisted that they should give the believers permission either to relocate the Jingang mission to Nanyang or to build a wall around the village. The magistrates saw the second option as less troublesome for them, and provided the funds and labour for the work. In just two months, a wall some 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) long and 16 feet (five metres) wide was completed around Jingang. It proved to be providential in keeping the bloodthirsty Boxers at bay during the 1900 rebellion. When the harsh reality of the Boxer attacks dawned on the Catholic communities, Volonteri issued firm orders to those under his leadership: ‘See that each one of your missionaries strictly follows the gospel line, and that they may have no other weapon than the Crucifix. Should the Lord design to give us any martyr, be He blessed for ever. But this is a gift we do not deserve.’39 Perhaps the greatest contribution Volonteri made was his insistence that Henan should be divided from one into three vicariates apostolic. He realized that the province was too large to be reached effectively from a single administrative base, and he volunteered personally to start a new mission north of the Yellow River. When this beloved bishop died in 1904, he was seen as a shining example for the Henan Catholics to follow. One historian described him as ‘a person of frail, poor health; his asthma forced him to sleep on a folding armchair which he carried with him on difficult journeys.’40 When the first Protestant missionary to Henan, Henry Taylor, travelled through the province in 1875, he visited the Catholic mission in Nanyang and reported: Their house is situated in a very beautiful place about four miles from the city; they are now completing a magnificent chapel, upon which they have spent a year’s income. … One of them came out, and very courteously invited us in. They showed us the greatest kindness, and told us of all the persecution to which they had been subject. [At one time] there were from 8,000 to 10,000 persons surrounding the premises, and they knew not the moment when an attack might take place. The gun never left their hands. … They have fully one hundred domestics, all of whom are as willing to handle the sword as to bow down before the cross: the end is supposed to justify the means.41

By the mid 1800s, the Catholic church in Henan had become ‘especially decadent and many Catholics had lapsed into idolatry.’42 For some 250 years they had been the only Christian presence in Henan but their inability to mobilize enough workers meant they had failed to make much of an impact in the province. Even today, the Catholic church in Henan today is small compared with other parts of China. Catholics in Henan, 1625–188043,44,45,46,47

27 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 28 We shall examine the Nestorian Stone at length in the next volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series, on Shaanxi, as well as investigating the Nestorian movement itself in various volumes. 29 Nicolas Standaert (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in China Volume One: 635–1800 (Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2001), p28 30 Xinhua, 27 February 2008 31 Yuan Shih I wen cheng pu, cited in Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550, p222 32 Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550, p5 33 Ibid., p6 34 Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China: 635–1800, p560, fn64 35 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1929), p183, fn162 36 Memorandum from Protestant missionaries to a Mr Alcock, dated 14 July 1869, quoted in Parliamentary Papers (1870, vol.69, no.9), p4 37 Koen De Ridder (ed.), Footsteps in Deserted Valleys: Missionary Cases, Strategies and Practice in Qing China (Leuven: Leuven University Press, Louvain Chinese Studies VII, 2000), p58 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p77 40 Ibid., p62 41 China’s Millions, December 1875, p81 42 Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China, p238 43 Antoine Thomas, cited in Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China: 635–1800, p385 44 Nikolaus Kowalsky, cited in Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China: 635–1800, p385 45 China’s Millions, October 1875, p43 46 Angelo S. Lazzarotto, ‘A Strategist of Missionary Development in Henan: Bishop J. Noé Tacconi (1873–1942)’, in De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p58. The number of Catholics in Henan fell slightly from the 1866 estimate after a typhus epidemic struck the mission in 1877–78, killing over 500 believers. 47 De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p55

Chapter 4 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN HENAN, 1900–49

Catholic women who came from Shandong Province to Henan to share the gospel

T

he experience of the Catholic communities in Henan during the Boxer Rebellion was similar to that of their Protestant counterparts. There was little loss of life, but much discrimination and wholesale theft, leaving thousands of church members in dire poverty. In many places, the Catholic missionaries barricaded themselves inside their stone cathedrals and churches until the worst of the storm had passed. Some contemporary writers decided that much of the trouble that afflicted the Catholics in Henan was brought on by their own wicked behaviour. Whitfield Guinness of the China Inland Mission wrote of a terrible clash between Catholics and the people of Sheqi in May 1900: Hundreds of Chinese are lying dead—the result of the vengeance of Romanists over a supposed grievance. … The so-called converts and church members, availing themselves of the political influence at the back of them, oppress and rob people, threatening them with dire punishments if they do not yield to their demands. … At last the people became so exasperated that they rose and destroyed the new Catholic premises, killing fourteen of the worst offenders, some of whom they buried alive.48

Far from destroying the church, however, the Boxer persecution provided impetus for great growth in Henan. In 1900, ‘there were only four mission agencies at 12 mission stations, but twenty years later there were 67 stations with 16 agencies and 394 missionaries in Henan.’49

The Jesuits dominated Catholic mission work in Henan until their withdrawal in 1865, when the Vatican entrusted the province to the Lazarists. By the start of the 20th century, the Catholic Church had divided Henan into three main regions, with bishops at Xinxiang, Huangchuan and Nanyang. Later, Kaifeng was added as a vicariate apostolic. The year 1904 saw the arrival in Henan of the first missionaries of the newly founded Seminary of St Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions of Parma, Italy—more commonly known as the Xavierians. More trouble occurred on 6 February 1906, when a group called the Benevolent and Righteous Society (an offshoot of the Boxers) attacked a Catholic village in Henan, resulting in the deaths of six Catholics.50

Bishop Joseph Noé Tacconi The next influential figure in the development of the Catholic church in Henan was Joseph Noé Tacconi, who spent a total of 45 years in the province, most of them as bishop of Kaifeng. Tacconi reached China in 1895 and retired in 1940 after a long and fruitful ministry. His early years were deeply influenced by his mentors, Simeon Volonteri and Stephan Scarella (who became the first bishop of North Henan in 1883). Together, these three Italian bishops have gone down in history as ‘key leaders in the expansion of the whole province that caused the original flock of 3,500 Catholics to grow to 172,000 within seventy years. The three belonged to the new Italian missionary society, the Seminario Lombardo per le Missioni Estere, or Milan Missionaries, now known as P.I.M.E.’51 Tacconi had been a brilliant young man. In 1873, at the age of just 16, he dedicated his life to being a missionary, and he arrived in the Orient aged just 22. The Chinese believers gave him the name Tan Weixin, thereby adopting him into the distinguished Tan family. Almost immediately, Tacconi saw both the promise and the problems of missionary life in Henan at the time. He wrote: ‘The mission so large and promising has taken my whole heart.’52 During the Boxer uprising of 1900, there were several occasions when he almost lost his life. On 7 July, his diary recorded: ‘I flew on horseback. … Along the road, three times I was pursued by the Boxers, who tried to kill me. My coolie, who could not follow me, took refuge at Hotung in the house of our farmer; he was killed there and the whole village was burned down.’53

Much ill feeling towards Catholics remained in the years following the Boxer Rebellion. Tacconi knew that more trouble was on the horizon on account of unresolved legal disputes between Catholics and their neighbours, and so he set off for Biyang on 17 March 1902 to act as a mediator. Along the road he was met with the horrifying news of the slaughter of a small Christian village, Hujingou, that had been set on fire. A large crowd of rioters assaulted Biyang, burning the Christians’ houses. Only the army sent by the governor was able to disperse the rioters. It was clear that the mission area remained a forbidden zone for the time being.54

Shortly after this incident, Tacconi was appointed bishop of Kaifeng, even though he was just 29 years old and had only six years’ missionary experience. The work was so successful that Archbishop Celso Costantini dubbed him the ‘bold creator of the Kaifeng Mission’. Nonetheless, while his colleagues respected him, Tacconi was by no means easy to work with. It was said that ‘some of his men resented his quick judgements and sharp tongue.’55 On one occasion, he was summoned to see Archbishop Costantini in Beijing, who confronted him about his frequent demonstrations of bad temper. Tacconi accepted the archbishop’s rebuke, and returned to Henan with a more contrite attitude. The Kaifeng Mission contained several growing Christian communities, including Luyi with 1,500 believers.56 Although he was excited by the existence of these flourishing communities of faith, Tacconi was firmly convinced that if China was to be reached, the preaching of the gospel would have to be concentrated in the cities and bustling towns rather than in the villages and hamlets. He had learned this principle from his predecessor, Volonteri, who had said: ‘The Bishop must always have his see in the capital city. This has always been the sense of the Church, since the times of the apostles. Faith has always been propagated from the main centres.’57 After a decade of successful ministry in Kaifeng, Tacconi was appointed bishop of South Henan, where he had care of 18,000 Catholics and 6,000 catechumens. Always looking for opportunities to spread the knowledge of Christ, he wrote in 1922: ‘I am particularly interested in establishing schools, because I think they are presently the most efficacious and sure means to contact the middle class and ensure greater credibility and influence with the people.’58 The work he had established in Kaifeng continued to grow, and by 1937 the city boasted ‘the cathedral with its beautiful, high-rising spire, a large residence, the minor seminary, a sisters

convent with orphanage and a primary school. Inside the northern gate, land had been acquired for a convent, a dispensary and a school.’59 The 1920s and ’30s were a period of intense struggle for the Catholics in Henan, as banditry and war plagued the country. The more experience Tacconi gained, the more he insisted that Chinese Christians must learn to depend on God, not on foreign missionaries, for their sustenance and direction. He wrote: ‘May the Lord give many and solid conversions to poor China, so that solid new churches may be set up by the missionaries without having to rely heavily on Europe, as churches were established with the apostolic preaching in early times.’60 The Japanese invasion in 1938 and the violence that followed affected him deeply, and two years later he announced his retirement. When Japanese troops pushed into southern Henan, they seized and beheaded two Chinese Catholic priests at Huangchuan. Their heads ‘were mounted on poles on either side of the bridge joining the northern and southern halves of the city as a warning.’61 Tacconi had invested 45 years of his life in the Orient, ‘[for] twenty-nine of which he was Bishop, in a China torn by violence. He could no longer cope with the tragic situation.’62 During the years of Joseph Noé Tacconi’s service in Henan, the number of Catholics had increased dramatically to 170,000. Much of this growth can be attributed to the vision and leadership of this brilliant Italian missionary. Within 10 years of his retirement, the believers of Henan were to have ‘a long and harsh Calvary path to walk. … Yet today, fifty years later, considering the way most Christians have been braving persistent persecution, we may be justified in holding that for all the human limitations of past missionary work, the Henan Church was built on solid foundations.’63

The Sisters of Providence The America-based Sisters of Providence became involved in China after Bishop Tacconi visited their headquarters at St Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana in 1920 and challenged them to obey the Great Commission by sending missionaries to China. Six sisters were sent to Kaifeng, where the bishop commissioned them to start a middle school for girls. The experiences of the Sisters of Providence were to prove to be bitter-sweet during their three decades in Henan Province. Marie Gratia Luking had declared:

I know that this is God’s work and He has great designs for it. … When my mind becomes occupied about the future of this foundation, it seems a matter of such importance that I can almost sink through weakness and can only get strength by casting it all into the arms of God’s Providence.64

Her godly advice was to give strength to many of the sisters called to serve in Henan.

Sisters of Providence and orphans at the Holy Childhood Home in 1930

The first of them to die on Chinese soil was Mary Elise, one of the original six workers sent to the Orient in 1920. She perished after contracting smallpox while treating patients with the disease. When the Catholic priest Bruno Hagspiel later visited the mission, he was taken to where Sister Elise was buried in the suburbs of Kaifeng. He wrote: With the five surviving Sisters of the band, I now stood at the grave of this victim of charity. I could share fully in the emotion which filled my companions. … Sister Elise was the first of the little company to be summoned to report to her High Commander. … Of her life’s work and its crowning end they had indeed been personal witnesses; but the chief thought that must have flooded their minds at this time, as it flooded mine as we stood before this lonely grave, was the thought of what sort of report we should have to make when each of us in turn should come to be summoned by the same Commander.65

The most difficult and distressing time for the Sisters of Providence came during the Japanese war with China, which spilled over into many parts of Henan. These gentle women were exposed to scenes they had never imagined in their worst nightmares, as death and destruction reigned across the province. In 1937, the sisters recorded their struggles, just a few of which are quoted here as a sample of the daily horrors they faced while caring for sick and injured soldiers and civilians: April 20—Four died yesterday. Many are worse; some are better. We baptized several serious cases. … Sister Agnes Loyola had one man whose smashed hand was being eaten by maggots. It was simply unspeakable. Three or four times she took a fresh basin of sterile solution, and in a moment one could not see the water for the maggots.

April 24—Five men with tetanus were in the bathroom, for the hospital is terribly crowded. Three were being eaten alive by flies. … I baptized them conditionally. God grant that it will be effective. Altogether ten were baptized, one a boy of thirteen, who looked like an old man, so wan and drawn was he. His expression was beautiful as one of our Catholic students baptized him.66

The following year, 1938, was even worse. Japanese soldiers swarmed through the cities, and many Catholic women and girls were raped when they ventured outside their homes or the safety of the mission compound. The Sisters were nearly overwhelmed by exhaustion. Between April and June, they treated more than 30,000 patients, many of whom were on the point of death when they arrived at the mission. They were careful not to lose sight of the spiritual reasons for which they had come to China, so ‘they started keeping an account of baptisms. The Sisters of Providence counted 384, but the number was probably closer to 450.’67

Five of the original Sisters of Providence and Bruno Hagspiel at the grave of Mary Elise in Kaifeng

The American sisters continued to offer sacrificial service to God’s kingdom during the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and many people were introduced to Jesus Christ for the first time. During the Second World War they were arrested by the Japanese and sent to concentration camps. At the conclusion of the war, most of the sisters returned to Kaifeng to continue their work.

Ten of the 12 Sisters of Providence pictured here were arrested and sent to a Japanese concentration camp during the Second World War

The advent of Communist rule in 1949 brought yet more hardship. The new government repaid the sisters’ selfless years of service by arresting them and subjecting them to vile slander and sessions of brainwashing. By 1952, all of the workers with the Sisters of Providence had been expelled from China and had returned home to more peaceful pastures.

Zhang Delan and Mary Bai The Japanese occupied the town of Huangchuan in the autumn of 1938. When they withdrew, the Nationalists who took their place accused the Catholics of cooperating with them. Zhang Delan went to the room of a young sister named Mary Bai, who had only recently taken her vows, in order to help her pack. Before any of the sisters had a chance to escape, a drunken soldier appeared at the door and announced, ‘I want to marry Sister Zhang and I order her to hand me back a signed agreement within the space of two hours.’68 After a series of vulgar threats, he stormed off into the darkness with some other men.

Zhang Delan and Mary Bai

Zhang wept all night, while the rest of the convent sisters prayed until dawn. As the sun rose, they all gathered with the intention of making their escape, but it was too late. A squad of soldiers forced their way into the compound, and several women were taken to the Catholic hospital. The two youngest, Zhang and Bai, were interrogated together. A student later claimed that Bai knew of her impending fate. She asked her captors for permission to go to the washroom, where she told the student: ‘We are afraid that we cannot survive until evening! Their treatment of us is so brutal and savage that we can only expect death. Please pray for us, and beg the good Lord to grant us the courage to endure whatever suffering comes! We badly need God’s aid.’69 The next day, the soldiers suddenly left the hospital when their unit received a new assignment. Nobody knew what had happened to Zhang and Bai, so the priest asked the Catholic neighbours to search for them. For

several days, no sign was found of their whereabouts, until someone walking through the northern end of the compound noticed an unpleasant smell emanating from a disused well. At first, it was thought that the water of the old well was dirty and causing the smell so no further attention was paid to it. But by the eighth day, this smell became stronger, so much so that one had to cover one’s nose when passing. Some people took long bamboo poles to poke about the contents of the well. … At first, all they dragged up were twelve stone boulders and only afterwards [did they discover] the decaying corpses of the two sisters.70

The terrible ordeal the two young women had endured was evident from the marks and wounds found on their decaying bodies. An autopsy revealed that they had succeeded in retaining their virginity, and they had almost certainly been tortured and killed because of their refusal to give in to the sexual demands of their captors. According to one sickening report, Sister Zhang’s face was so bloated and swollen that it was barely recognizable; one eyeball had practically fallen out of its eye socket and there were wounds around her waist. All of Sister Bai’s teeth had been wrenched out and on her chest there were blue and purple wounds and scars. Around the waists of both of them a coarse rope had been wound three times and the end of each rope was tied to a large stone to ensure that the corpse would sink to the bottom of the well.71

The bodies of the faithful Zhang Delan and Mary Bai were lovingly buried in the garden of the convent grounds. They had been martyred on 29 November 1938. Later that same day, ‘two Chinese Catholic leaders were tried and beheaded. Their heads were mounted on poles on either side of the bridge adjoining the northern and southern halves of the city as a warning to other collaborators.’72

Six Italian Martyrs In 1941–42, the Catholic world was shocked to hear of the murders of six Italian missionary priests in Henan Province. Each one belonged to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME). When Cesare Mencattini was ordained a priest in 1934, the 24-year-old wrote home: ‘I have a feeling that I will go to China, because that’s where most of the assignments are destined this year. And this is really where I want to go, because it is currently the place where there is the greatest hope to crown our lives with the tiara of martyrdom.’73

Cesare Mencattini

In 1939, China was locked in a complicated, three-way war between the Japanese, the Nationalists and the ever more numerous Communists. The result in many parts of Henan was chaos. On three occasions Communists shot at Mencattini with pistols, their bullets grazing his head once and his back once. Two of his Chinese catechists were abducted and decapitated. Despite all the difficulties, the PIME missionaries never thought of abandoning their post. On the morning of 12 July 1941, Mencattini rode his bicycle from his home in Hua Xian to the nearby town of Qimen to celebrate Mass. He was accompanied by two fellow priests, Angelo Bagnoli and Leo Cavallini. A detachment of soldiers hiding near the marketplace opened fire on them. Mencattini was seriously wounded, but he died only after being bayoneted. Strangely, the lives of the two other priests were spared. One of them shouted to the soldiers that they were Christian missionaries and received the reply, ‘We know.’ Later that year, four more Italians were martyred in the small village of Dingcunji in Henan Province. Few people could have guessed that Antonio Barosi would end up as a bishop of the Catholic Church in China and would give his life as a martyr for the cause of Christ. Arriving in the Orient in 1925, he had struggled with language study, finding the sounds impossible to pronounce or understand. Consequently, he was sent to help the Chinese students of a Catholic school, in the hope that regular contact with them would improve his comprehension of their language. Later, he was appointed to oversee a huge Catholic work in Nanyang, involving schools, medical clinics, seminaries, orphanages and many churches. In the spring of 1940, he received a great

honour when he was appointed vicar apostolic of Kaifeng, replacing Bishop Joseph Noé Tacconi, a veteran of 45 years’ service in China.

Antonio Barosi

Nonetheless, Barosi lamented: ‘Trouble seems to follow me around, wherever I go.’ In November 1941, he asked three priests, Mario Zanardi, Bruno Zanella and Gerolamo Lazzaroni, to accompany him on a visit to the village of Dingcunji. On 19 November, the local Catholics had gathered for a celebratory lunch with the priests when an official suddenly appeared, accompanied by a squad of 16 armed men. The situation in China was so chaotic at this time that to this day nobody is sure whether the murderers were government troops or bandits disguised as soldiers. They imposed a curfew on the town, and then Bishop Barosi and Father Zanella were tied up and their mouths stuffed with paper. Then the atrocities began. … The soldiers departed at evening by boat as a cold rain began to fall. The townspeople at first believed that the priests had been taken hostage. But when they looked around, they noticed a well that had been closed with debris. Using bamboo poles, they retrieved, one by one, the bodies of Barosi, Zanella, and Zanardi. It was not until the next morning that they also found Lazzaroni’s body in the well. By all indications, he had been buried alive.74

Mario Zanardi was a gifted linguist. In 1927, just four months after his arrival at the PIME’s headquarters in Kaifeng, the locals were astonished to find him speaking, reading, writing and even singing Chinese with some fluency. Zanardi simply gave the credit to God, saying that the Holy Spirit had helped him. Throughout the 1930s, he established Bible schools, medical dispensaries and churches throughout the region. Despite many obstacles, he managed to see the face of Christ in everyone he came into contact with. He helped soldiers from all sides of the conflict, and often said that his heart was broken with compassion for the suffering of those around him.

Mario Zanardi

One report said that when the soldiers burst into the dining room, ‘the bishop spoke with them courteously, telling them the priests were in China only to preach the Gospel, but the bandits insisted that they were Italian (enemy) spies. At the signal of the “officer”, the bishop and Zanardi were bound, beaten, and gagged. Then with napkins taken from the table, the “soldiers” strangled their victims.’75 Mario Zanardi’s body was one of four pulled from the old well. This follower of Christ, who had never wasted any opportunity to preach the gospel, had completed his work in this world. Over the five years of his ministry in China, Bruno Zanella preached the gospel and served everyone in need, including Japanese soldiers. Eyewitnesses later testified that, after being seized at Dingcunji, ‘Zanella was forced to drink boiling oil and water poured out from large containers. He may have died then, or afterward when his body was thrown into a well.’76 Gerolamo Lazzaroni was another of the missionary priests slain in the massacre.

Bruno Zanella

The PIME mission was devastated by the violent deaths of five of its members in 1941. The slaughter was not over, however. The following year, another Italian missionary, Carlo Osnaghi, was killed at Yejigang in Henan Province.

Osnaghi had been shocked when he learned of the martyrdom of Bruno Zanella, who was a close friend of his. He wrote to his mother: ‘We are all at a loss. It almost seems like a dream. Let us pray that the blood of these victims will be the last. From heaven may they look down upon all of us who remain in this troubled land, so full of thorns.’77 On 12 January 1942, he was woken by a loud pounding on the gate of the mission. He ran to the door in his pyjamas, thinking there was an emergency, only to be confronted by a mob, who left him bound in a corner while they looted the property. They then decided to carry the priest and a Chinese catechist off into the mountains. For the next three weeks, the two men were moved about from place to place. In his heart Osnaghi knew that the mission would never pay the ransom of $500,000 demanded for his release.

Carlo Osnaghi

On 2 February, the bandits came to the same conclusion, and consequently the Italian became worthless to them. A shallow grave six feet (two metres) long and about three feet deep was dug next to the shack where Osnaghi and the Chinese catechist had been detained for 20 days. His fellow missionary G. Pollio later recorded the tragic details of their martyrdom: With a fierce kick they sent Osnaghi rolling into the pit; with a second kick they rolled in the catechist, who fell on top of Fr Osnaghi, and they immediately began to cover the pit with earth. … Osnaghi, finding himself tied up in the pit and seeing no means of escape, let forth with a loud wail, in which he shouted some foreign words and some words in Chinese. … While the earth was piling up upon their bodies, Fr Osnaghi and the catechist continued to cry out, until little by little their cries ceased.78

Later in 1942, yet another European priest was killed in Henan Province, at Xinxiang. Bernard Polefka, a Jesuit, was a native of Silesia, a region that straddles the border between present-day Poland and the Czech Republic. He grew up in southern Poland, before he gave his life to Christ’s service and went to China in the autumn of 1940. His goal was to reach out to

Tibetans in Gansu Province, but the war prohibited him from travelling there, so he contented himself with studying Chinese in Henan while he waited for the door to open. On 21 December 1942, Polefka and a Chinese co-worker set out on their bicycles, but their journey was cut short when they were seized by a group of unidentified soldiers. It was not until late January 1943 that it was confirmed that the Polish priest and his Chinese co-worker had been buried alive. Their bodies were never found.

John Botton

John Botton

Yet another Italian Catholic missionary was killed in Henan before the conclusion of the Second World War. John Botton volunteered to be a missionary to China, and his departure was set for 1934. His father couldn’t come to Venice to see him off, as he had a fever, and his mother stayed at home to take care of her husband. She ‘went as far as the doorway with him, kissed him and burst into tears. Almost ashamed of her tears, she closed the door and went back inside to her old and sick husband who whispered to her: “My dearest, we will never see him again.”’79 Because of the pressing need for relief work during the war, Botton was assigned to Xuzhou, where he helped the thousands of desperate refugees who had fled there. On 30 April 1944, Japanese troops approached the city and fierce fighting ensued. Another Italian priest, Ermanno Zulian, later recalled: A few low-flying aircraft appeared and fired upon us; from the ground someone replied with anti-aircraft weapons. Every one of us, nuns, women, teachers and Christians, went down into the hidden cellar situated under my bedroom. … Later, at about 5 p.m., the sound of boots in the courtyard signalled the arrival of the Japanese! Botton said: ‘They are coming! I am going out, if not they will bomb and kill us all!’ He went quickly up the wooden steps with a white handkerchief in his hand. In the doorway there were two Japanese with their bayonets drawn. Botton called out: ‘Italy! Italy!’, then he cried out and rolled back down the stairs. The soldiers

had stabbed him with the bayonets. One of the soldiers followed him down shooting. I shouted: ‘Italy! Catholic Church! There are no soldiers here!’ The soldier shouted angrily and shot again, then withdrew. Fr Botton was bleeding badly. He said to the Christians in Chinese: ‘Do not cry for me. I am happy it happened this way.’ Then, with a sigh, he said: ‘Lord, come and take me. … I am suffering greatly. … I offer my life for China.80

Throughout the evening, the 35-year-old priest slipped slowly towards death. Just before midnight, he breathed his last. He had served in China almost 10 years. The Chinese Christians were deeply moved by John Botton’s sacrifice, for they said he had given his life to save theirs. He was buried in the garden of the mission.

Other Catholic Societies in Henan A variety of Catholic missionary organizations participated in the work of reaching Henan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the smaller groups was the Canossian Sisters, founded in Italy in 1808. Starting with a home in Hong Kong, their vision for China increased and by 1892 they had established work in the provinces of Hubei, Shaanxi and Henan. The Congregation of Saint Francis Xavier for the Foreign Missions— commonly known as the Xavierians—was founded in 1895. On one occasion in 1928, the founder of the mission, Guido Conforti, returned from China and declared, ‘I saw the harvest with my own eyes! Of all the peoples of the earth, the Chinese are, perhaps, the most well-disposed to the Christian message. If only there were more missionaries.’81 The Xavierians were entrusted with a territory of more than 20,000 square miles (52,000 square kilometres) in western Henan. The total population of this impoverished area at the time was around eight million, but when the first missionaries arrived there in 1904 they found no more than 600 Catholics. Thirty years later, there were more than 20,000 believers under the care of the fruitful mission. Italians dominated Catholic missionary work in Henan until the 1930s, when the Netherlands-based Society of the Divine Word decided to concentrate its work in China in the province. It sent many priests, nuns and workers to staff the various Catholic missions throughout Henan. In 1943, the province’s nine dioceses had ‘344 foreign and 404 Chinese priests, nuns and brothers’.82 Of the nine bishops at the time, four were Italians, two Chinese, one American, one Japanese and one Spanish.

The Catholic church in Henan experienced startling growth during the first half of the 20th century. The work in the north, based in Xinxiang (then called Weihwei) north of the Yellow River, was established in the mid 1800s. By 1907, there were 5,432 Catholics in 70 churches throughout the area. In the west, there were by 1907 1,055 Catholics in eight churches, under the auspices of the Parma Foreign Missionary Society. The southern part of the province was administered from Nanyang by the Milan Foreign Missionary Society. By 1882, there were 12,000 Catholics there in 83 churches. In total, therefore, there were 18,487 Catholics meeting in 161 churches throughout Henan Province in 1907.83 By 1922, the Catholic church in Henan had grown to 51,592 communicants, meeting in 477 churches served by 52 European and 14 Chinese priests. This sharp increase represented a virtual tripling of the number of church members in just 15 years. There was more than four times as many Catholics as Protestants in Henan at the time.84 The first half of the 20th century was the golden age of Catholicism in Henan. Between 1922 and the advent of Communist rule in 1949, the number of church members more than tripled again to 170,000. This startling growth can be attributed largely to the sacrificial labours of many Chinese and foreign believers who toiled away in Henan for decades, winning the hearts of the people they served.

A group of students at the Kaifeng Catholic Academy in the 1920s 48 Mrs Howard Taylor, Guinness of Honan (London: China Inland Mission, 1930), p172 49 Intercessors for China, The Persecuted, the Poor and the Pioneer Missionaries (2001) 50 China’s Millions, May 1906, p77 51 De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p55 52 Ibid., p64 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., p65 55 Ibid., p76 56 Luyi was where two Catholic martyrs, François Clet and Jean Gabriel Perboyre, had laboured for many years. Both

men were killed in Hubei Province, Clet in 1820 and Perboyre in 1840. Profiles of these men have been included in China’s Book of Martyrs, the first volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 57 De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p67 58 Ibid., p72 59 Ibid., p75 60 Ibid., p76 61 Daniel H. Bays (ed.), Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp324–25 62 De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p71 63 Ibid., p77 64 Sister Ann Colette Wolf, Against All Odds: Sisters of Providence Mission to the Chinese 1920–1990 (St Mary-of-theWoods, Ind.: Sisters of Providence, 1990), preface 65 Bruno Hagspiel, Along the Mission Trail, Vol.4: In China (Techny, Ill.: Mission Press, SVD, 1927), pp368–69 66 Wolf, Against All Odds, pp124–25 67 Ibid., p127 68 September 8th Editorial Board, Twentieth Century Outstanding Women of the Mainland Catholic Church (Taiwan: September 8th Editorial Board, 1999), pp45–46 69 Ibid., p47 70 Ibid., pp47–48 71 Ibid., p48 72 Letter from Ruth Elliott, dated 6 December 1938, cited in Bays, Christianity in China, pp324–25 73 Mariagrazia Zambon, Crimson Seeds: Eighteen PIME Martyrs (trans. by Steve Baumbusch. Detroit: PIME World Press, 1997), p54 74 Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive History (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000), pp324–25 75 Wolf, Against All Odds, p146 76 Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, p324 77 Zambon, Crimson Seeds, p98 78 From the diary of Fr G. Pollio, cited in Zambon, Crimson Seeds, p100 79 Taken from a profile of John Botton on the website http://www.xaviermissionaries.org 80 See http://www.xaviermissionaries.org 81 See http://www.xaviermissionaries.org 82 Christensen, In War and Famine, p51 83 Bertram Wolferstan, The Catholic Church in China from 1860 to 1907 (St Louis: Sands & Co., 1909), p451 84 Milton T. Stauffer (ed.), The Christian Occupation of China (Shanghai: China Continuation Committee, 1922), p84

Chapter 5 HENAN’S CATHOLICS UNDER COMMUNISM, 1950–PRESENT CATHOLICS IN HENAN, 1907–2008 (000's) (Both CPA and house churches) 85,86,87,88

T

he year 1950 was a pivotal one for the Catholic missionary enterprise in China. The Communists, who had promised greater religious freedom, began to deliver exactly the opposite. Christians faced discrimination, then confiscation of property and arrest, followed by unrestrained persecution and ultimately, for some, martyrdom. The diocese of Luoyang had more than 50 priests, mostly Italians, prior to this repression. The Communists did all they could to obliterate the church in Luoyang. For decades, the cathedral was used to store agricultural equipment, but, despite being deprived of their buildings, the true believers in Christ continued to endure. The Catholic community in Zhumadian had 120 houses and other buildings confiscated by the Communists to be used for secular purposes. They were not returned to the Catholics until some 35 years later, in 1985.

Hundreds of Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages and other facilities were seized by the Communists in the early 1950s. This Catholic school at Changyi, which had been built in 1932, was turned into a state school.

A survey of the eight Henan dioceses in 1950 revealed a total of 125,697 practising Catholics in the province, as summarized in the following table: CATHOLICS IN HENAN, 1950

Diocese

Population Catholics % Catholics

Kaifeng

4,500,000

18,487

0.4%

Luoyang

3,000,000

10,122

0.3%

Nanyang

4,025,000

22,807

0.6%

Shangqiu

2,000,000

9,973

0.5%

Xinxiang

1,200,000

16,040

1.3%

Xinyang

6,000,000

13,654

0.2%

Zhengzhou 4,000,000

20,514

0.5%

Zhumadian 1,300,000

14,100

1.1%

125,697

0.5%

TOTALS

26,025,000

Steady Growth in Xinxiang From the 1920s onwards, the southern diocese of Xinxiang was in the charge of the Society of the Divine Word. By 1949, it boasted nine seminarians, 17 priests and 28 religious sisters. When the Communists took control of the area that year, Johannes Schutte, the prefect apostolic of Xinxiang, was forced to ‘undergo interrogations, trials, threats, and house arrest. Finally, after seven months of rigorous imprisonment and a show trial broadcast over the whole province, he was expelled “forever” from China.’89 In 1950, the Divine Word missionaries were expelled from the country, and the diocese has been without its own bishop ever since, now being administered by the bishop of the neighbouring diocese of Zhumadian. Nonetheless, Xinxiang Diocese has experienced steady growth. In 1993, the magazine Eglises d’Asie reported 13,000 Catholics in the area, from 5,000 families.90 This number takes account only of people belonging to the Catholic Patriotic Association, not of unregistered believers.

The Catholic Patriotic Association versus the Unregistered Catholics In Henan, as in many other parts of China, the Catholic church has witnessed a struggle between bishops appointed by the government and bishops chosen secretly by the underground church. The unregistered Catholics dismiss clergy appointed by the Catholic Patriotic Association, pointing out that an organization controlled by the atheistic Communist Party has no right to decide who leads God’s church. The CPA in turn

regards the underground church as an illegal, covert organization that is in defiance not only of the law but also of the teaching of the scriptures. This schism is generally worse than the equivalent rift between the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the house churches because of the Catholic Church’s heavy reliance on structured leadership. Whereas Protestant house churches can choose to start a meeting anywhere under the guidance of a leader who knows the scriptures, Catholics require bishops who can be appointed only by the Vatican. Generally, the Vatican rejects bishops appointed by the CPA, while the Chinese government, through the CPA, invariably rejects those appointed by Rome. In 1951–52, a number of priests and other church leaders agreed to join the CPA in the hope that the new organization would allow them to continue their ministries freely. They soon realized their folly, however, and many renounced their membership of the CPA, preferring to face the consequences—including probable arrest—rather than submit to an atheistic regime. In November 1951, Father He, the vicar-general of Kaifeng, signed a declaration of his intent to join the CPA. The Communist press published news of his decision widely. It took only a month for He to realize that he had made a serious error of judgement, and he issued a solemn retraction in Kaifeng’s cathedral in the presence of a number of Catholic leaders who had also joined the new government-controlled organization. In no uncertain terms, he declared: St John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah, and we should ask ourselves whether the voices we hear are really preparing the way for the coming of God. For some time my conscience has been uneasy. … We are indeed to be blamed for the grave error we made in signing the declaration. … Lord, we implore you to pardon those amongst us here who have signed it. I solemnly warn those among you who wish to follow the path of so-called reform, that you are in fact following the path to hell. You are all free to belong to the ‘reform’ party if you wish, but take heed, for you will not reach salvation that way. In future you will be held responsible for it before God. As for myself, I have no desire to lead you towards eternal suffering, but only towards God. We must hold ourselves ready for death, but not for the betrayal of our faith. When I told you that you could sign the schismatic declaration, I spoke as a man of this world. Today, however, I stand before you as a priest of God: and you will find that my counsel brings its own penalties here on earth, in the form of prison. Deo gratias.91

Father He’s fears were confirmed, and he was duly arrested for this act of repentance.

The Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Kaifeng: during the China-Japan war in the 1930s soldiers fired machine guns from the bell tower; sixty years later it still towers as a witness to the gospel.

Death and Destruction in Henan The year 1951 proved to be one of intense hardship. In Xinyang County, the superior of a congregation of Chinese nuns was executed for her faith, and all the young sisters were compelled to join the Communist army. In the same year, also in Xinyang, a layman was ‘clubbed to death for visiting a village to give instruction to a catechism class in order to fulfil the promise of the priest, who had been jailed.’92 In Kaifeng, the archbishop’s typewriter was seized by the Communists, who declared it a ‘secret radio transmitter’ and charged him with espionage. In many churches, soldiers burst in during a service to arrest the priest and dragged him from the altar. In Luoyang, one priest was charged with the ‘crime’ of celibacy. However, despite this intense pressure, most believers remained true. After a long harangue by an army commander on the benefits of Marxism, one group of Christians was asked how many of them still believed in God. Every one raised their hand. The pressure on Catholic children too was great. Five teenage girls were held under house arrest for two years while the authorities tried everything they could to make them denounce their faith. Not only did they refuse to do so, they were able to steal out of the house before dawn to receive communion from their local priest. The courage of many Catholic children astonished their persecutors. A 12-year-old girl was told that God didn’t exist and we all evolved from monkeys. She boldly replied: ‘Maybe you came from the monkey, but God made me!’93 One boy was taunted by both his teachers and fellow students. They drew a circle on the ground and told him, ‘If you step out of this circle, it means you have renounced your God.’

After many hours, he could not bear it any more. He ran ‘several miles to the nearest priest, tearful because he feared that he had deserted the Faith.’94 The Catholics of Henan continued to spread the message of Christ in many ways during the early 1950s. The Legion of Mary missionaries were forbidden to leave their mission compounds, but their Chinese disciples ‘circulated through the villages and farms … in danger of death, administering baptism to hundreds of soul-hungry Chinese.’95 One young man was warned of the dire consequences he would face if he was caught ministering for the Lord. He wrote the following courageous reply: If Catholics are persecuted here, it will be on some pretext apart from our belief in God. But so long as I continue to work openly for the faith, no one will then be deceived if trouble comes. Everyone will see that I am being put to death because of the religion I profess, and not for some trumped-up charge. It will be for me both a consolation and a glory to suffer in order to give testimony to Christ. But if, out of fear of difficulties and possible sufferings, I should give up my efforts to spread the name of God, I still could not avoid being caught in any future persecution. And in such an event, my sufferings would all be to no avail, and in my death I would be deprived of this consolation, that I have laboured for Christ and His Church. Whatever I suffer, I want it to be a testimony to my beliefs, and I want the reasons for my suffering to be clearly understood. That is what underlines the work I now do to spread the Faith.96

Many men and women set an example of similar power, and as a result the Catholic church in Henan was able to endure the brutal years of persecution that followed. Amelio Crotti, an Italian PIME missionary who was mistreated in the Kaifeng prison until his expulsion from China in 1954, shared a moving story: From my cell I heard a mother speak soothing words to her child of five, whose name was Xiaomei. She had been arrested with the child because she had protested against the arrest of her bishop. All the prisoners were indignant at seeing the suffering of the child. Even the prison director said to the mother, ‘Don’t you have pity on your daughter? It is sufficient for you to declare that you give up being a Christian and will not go to church any more. Then you and your child will be free.’ In despair, the woman agreed and was released. After two weeks she was forced to shout from a stage before 10,000 people, ‘I am no longer a Christian.’ On their return home, Xiaomei, who had stood near her when she denied her faith, said, ‘Mummy, today Jesus is not happy with you.’ The mother explained, ‘You wept in prison. I had to say this out of my love for you.’ Xiaomei replied, ‘I promise that if we go to jail again for Jesus I will not weep.’ The mother ran to the prison director and told him, ‘You convinced me to say wrong things for my daughter’s sake, but she has more courage than I.’ Both went back to prison. But Xiaomei no longer wept.97

By the mid 1950s, the Catholic church in Henan had entered a long period of darkness. The bamboo curtain fell on it, and little news came out of the province. Thousands of believers did not survive the ordeal with their faith intact, but thousands more did, and their faith was proven genuine after many years of testing. In the early 1980s, as the political situatiom in Henan finally began to improve, there was word that Catholic communities throughout the province were still clinging to their faith, though they had experienced none of the vibrant infusion of spiritual life that in many places the Protestant house churches had enjoyed.

Prison Ministry Hundreds of Catholics in Henan, including practically all church leaders, were sent to labour camps during the 1950s and during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76. Many endured more than 20 years of imprisonment on account of their faith, while many others died behind bars. Yet, despite these extreme hardships, some of them still found a way to minister the love and grace of God to their fellow inmates. Elder Yan Jingtang, a leader in a Protestant church movement known as the Little Flock, had never encountered any Catholics before he was sent to a labour camp in the 1960s, where he met a priest called Zhang Kuijin. Faced with the utter hopelessness of his situation, Yan fell into a deep depression and even entertained thoughts of suicide. He had believed in God and desired to serve him with all his heart, only to be imprisoned in terrible conditions. Zhang, however, encouraged him not to give up. Yan (who later became president of the Zhengzhou Christian Council) recalled how his persuasiveness gave me comfort, and eventually I gave up the foolish idea of killing myself. He helped and taught me in a brotherly way, and opened my eyes to see the light of Christ in patience. Gradually, I realized that we were not members of two different religions. In fact, we were brothers of the same Lord. From then on, we called each other ‘brother’. Outward differences could no longer hinder our fellowship in the Lord. We accepted each other on the basis of our belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.98

A CPA priest serving communion to his congregation

A Tug-of-War with Elderly Bishops For decades, there has been a tug-of-war between the Chinese authorities and the leaders of the underground Catholic churches in Henan. The latter refuse to acknowledge bishops and priests who have been appointed by the Catholic Patriotic Association, insisting that only the Vatican has the authority to do this. At one time in the 1990s there were thought to be seven different Vatican-approved bishops in Henan, and they in turn had ordained dozens of priests throughout the province. The government regarded these appointments as foreign interference in China’s domestic affairs and retaliated by arresting dozens of underground clergy. Some faithful Catholic leaders experienced great suffering for the stand they took. Joseph Jin Dechen, the vicar-general of Nanyang Diocese, was imprisoned from 1958 to 1973. He was then arrested again in December 1981 and sentenced to another 15 years in prison.99 He was granted an early release in May 1992, but remained under house arrest and was required to report regularly to the police.

Seven Years without a Bishop In November 1993, the CPA installed a new bishop in the diocese of Kaifeng, the 73-year-old Han Daoyi. Until then, the whole province had been without a single government-appointed bishop since 1986. However, the underground Catholics already had five clandestine bishops, in Anyang, Kaifeng, Luoyang, Shangqiu and Nanyang—men who were influential in both the government and underground Catholic circles. A few months later, on 18 March 1994, a new wave of persecution against Henan’s illegal Catholic bishops commenced when the 74-year-old bishop John Baptist Liang Xisheng was abducted by the police in Kaifeng City and was subsequently ‘reported to have disappeared’. He was detained until April 15, having been charged for ‘visiting overseas Catholics’.100 In 1992, a bizarre incident occurred at Nanyang in southern Henan. Zhang Shengdang, a 74-year-old priest, had already spent many years suffering in a labour camp in the 1960s and ’70s. He was rearrested in 1981 and sentenced to life in prison because of his zeal for the gospel. This term was later reduced to 17 years, and in 1989 he was granted medical parole. For the remaining three years of his life, he served as the priest in charge of the

government-sanctioned Catholic church in the diocese of Nanyang, even though he was still technically serving out his sentence. He was celebrating Mass on the morning of 4 July 1992 when, moments after he had drunk from the chalice, he suddenly collapsed on the floor. Emergency aid was not effective, and he passed away immediately on the spot. After Father Zhang Shengdang’s death, another Father Zhang, when he was cleaning the chalice, discovered some strange object inside the chalice. He immediately reported this to the police, and after examination it was discovered to be potassium cyanide, which is an extremely dangerous poison.101

The authorities launched a thorough investigation and charged a seminary student named Jin with murder. Jin admitted his guilt, confessing that he had poisoned the priest in an act of revenge. It turned out that he had strongly desired to become a priest and had asked Zhang for a letter of recommendation, but the latter had refused on account of his erratic behaviour. Jin became so incensed that he decided to kill the priest. More than 400 Catholic priests and laypeople came from all over China to attend the funeral. Zhang Shengdang is remembered as one who survived years of suffering and imprisonment only to be killed by one of his own students.

Zhang Shengdang

Peter Li Hongye was arrested on the morning of 25 July 1994. The 75year-old bishop, who according to a 1993 report had in his care about 4,000 Catholics in the diocese of Luoyang, including four priests and 30 sisters,102 was seized with two companions as they made their way home after celebrating Mass in the township of Yanshi. He was detained until 17 August and then placed under arrest in Luoyang. Li had previously been arrested in Yanshi in 1953 and had already spent 30 years of his life in prison. He was only released on medical grounds because he had developed paralysis. Once he had recovered, he was confined to his home village and monitored closely. He also was suffering from stomach cancer.

Li found himself in trouble again in 2001, when he was 83 years old. On 28 April he was arrested at a retreat, along with 14 nuns.103 Most of them were questioned, fined and released, but the bishop remained in custody despite his age and ill health. Another underground bishop in frail health, Joseph Zhang Weizhu, bishop of Xinxiang, was secretly arrested and interrogated in January 2000. The authorities feared that he might die on their hands and finally released him after more than 18 months in custody.104 Other sources later reported that the ailing bishop was in fact still under house arrest.105 At the time, the diocese was home to approximately 8,000 Catholics,106 most of them under Zhang’s care. Not only bishops and priests have faced trouble in Henan because of their beliefs. Countless lay men and women, in their desire to be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, have been denounced by relatives or neighbours, or by other enemies of the gospel. Many have been beaten and imprisoned, especially in the 1980s and ’90s. More recently, the authorities have chosen instead to interrogate believers and then fine them. As long as they are able to pay, they are usually released after being threatened with a worse punishment if they reoffend. The fines generally go straight into the pockets of the security officers responsible for their arrest. In some cases, however, even paying a fine is not enough. In 2003, a 35year-old Catholic woman named Wang Junying was arrested in Anyang County after she shared the gospel with a relative and was sentenced to a year in prison for her ‘crime’.107 The local police contacted her family and said that a payment of 4,000 yuan (about $500) would secure her release. They were poor people, but her extended family managed to assemble the sum and duly paid up. However, nothing was done and Wang remained in prison until her sentence had been completed. The government crackdown and attempts to control the Catholic church in Henan have resulted in many church members being unable to discern truth from heresy. Many fall into strange practices that do not conform to scripture and are easy prey for cults and sects. In 1986, for example, the New People’s Evening News reported on a man from Sanmenxia whose daughter had died after he refused to seek medical help for her illness. Long after her death, he continued to ‘kneel every day before a crucifix and prayed that God would restore his daughter to life.’108

Henan’s Catholics Today At present, Catholics in Henan are divided amongst eight dioceses in three regions: Central, South and North Henan. Growth has been steady, albeit far slower than the Protestant house churches. Henan’s Catholics rarely make the news, and little is known about their exact number and strength. In the diocese of Zhengzhou in 1950, there were 20,514 Catholics in 35 churches.109 The government took over the church buildings, and by 1985 there was just one Catholic church in the city still open for public worship. Today, however, there are some 14,500 Catholics in the provincial capital alone, which is just one part of the diocese. The diocese of Kaifeng had 18,487 Catholics in 41 churches in 1950,110 and in the whole province there were 125,697 Catholic believers.111 By 1988, the Catholic presence in Henan had reportedly fallen to just 70,000 believers in 62 churches.112 However, as with all information in China, this figure needs to be understood properly. The figure of 70,000 quoted referred only to those individuals belonging to the Catholic Patriotic Association; it did not take into account the many Catholic house churches in Henan— and in many parts of China, as a general rule, unregistered Catholics outnumber registered Catholics by two to one. Although the number of Catholics in Henan may have dwindled during the harsh 1960s and ’70s, when all church buildings were shut and meetings were banned, the Catholic church has grown steadily over the past 15 years, especially in the south of the province. Still, there is little doubt that the Catholic church has a markedly smaller presence in Henan than in other parts of the country, especially compared with the neighbouring province of Hebei, which has the highest number of Catholics in China. There are several reasons for this, one of which is the pervasive influence of Protestantism in Henan, which is widely recognized as the hub of house-church activity throughout the whole country. In the last few decades, the zealous and evangelistic Protestant house-church believers in Henan have won over many of their Catholic neighbours to their movement. In 1922, Catholics outnumbered Protestants in Henan four to one, thanks to the 250-year start Catholicism had on Protestantism in the province. Today, by contrast, Protestants outnumber Catholics at least 20 to one. This is largely the result of the joyous, living faith of the Protestants, which has drawn thousands away from the lifeless formalities of many of Henan’s Catholic churches.

Today, after almost six decades under Communism, there are approximately 588,000 Catholics in Henan, with around 196,000 attending government-approved CPA churches and 392,000 meeting in underground Catholic house churches.113 85 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, p450 86 Ibid., p84 87 Other sources list a higher number of Catholics in Henan in 1950, including 172,000 in De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p55. 88 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. A 2001 book gave a figure of 1,049,400 Catholics in Henan. See Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World: 21st Century Edition (Carlisle, England: Paternoster Lifestyle, 2001), p172. I believe this estimate is too high. 89 Karl Mueller’s biography of Johannes Schutte, in Gerald H. Anderson (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999) 90 Eglises d’Asie, 16 June 1993 91 Jean Monsterleet, Martyrs in China (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956), p95 92 Gretta Palmer, God’s Underground in Asia: The Full Story of the Red War against the Church in China, a Story of Organized Terror and Christian Heroism (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953), pp88–89 93 Ibid., p55 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., p66 96 Ibid., pp67–68 97 John Foxe (rewritten and updated by Harold J. Chadwick), The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (North Brunswick, NJ: Bridge-Logos Publishers, 1997), pp348–49 98 ‘Building Up the Church in Love’, Bridge: Church Life in China Today (January–February, 1987), p4 99 Anne Himmelfarb, The Martyrs of Maoism: China’s Persecuted Christians (Washington, DC: Puebla Institute, 1992), p26 100 China Study Journal, April 1994 101 September 8th Editorial Board, Blessings of the Divine Bounty of September 8th: In Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Sept 8th Persecution of the Catholic Church in Mainland China 1955–1995 (Taiwan: September 8th Editorial Board, 1995), p108 102 UCA Dispatch 784/B, 15–16 September 1994 103 ‘Arrests of “Underground” Bishop, Clergy and Religious Reported’, UCAN, 25 July 2001 104 ‘Ailing Bishop Released by Chinese Regime’, Zenit, 2 August 2001 105 See ‘Reported Release of “Underground” Bishop Zhang Weizhu Disputed’, UCAN, 6 August 2001. 106 ‘Bishop Zhang Weizhu Reappears after Eighteen Months’, Fides, 10 August 2001 107 ‘A Catholic Evangelist Sentenced to One Year in Labor Camp under the Charge of “Preaching Cult”’, 2003 report on http://www.china21.org 108 New People’s Evening News, 22 March 1986 109 Jean Charbonnier, Guide to the Catholic Church in China 1997 (Singapore: China Catholic Communication, 1997), p403 110 Ibid., p405 111 A good breakdown of statistics can be found on the website http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org. 112 China Study Journal, August 1994 113 For an analysis of these figures at a city and county level, see the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book.

PART II Protestant Missions

Chapter 6 START OF THE PROTESTANT MISSIONARY ERA, 1875–87

T

he era of Protestant missions in China may have begun with the arrival of Robert Morrison in 1807, but it was to be a further 68 years before the first Protestant missionary set foot in Henan, and nine years more before the first worker was able to reside in the province, in 1884. The reason for this slow progress was expressed in unflattering terms by a missionary at the time: The Henanese farmer is conservative, independent, easily roused to anger, indifferent to discomfort or dirt, and in many districts, until recently, anti-foreign. For this and other reasons, it was very difficult for foreign missionaries to secure any foothold, especially in the larger cities. They were forced to settle in smaller places, to face opposition and suspicion on every hand, and patiently wait till more favourable opportunities came.114

Nonetheless, the missionaries persevered and prepared the ground well for what was to follow. If only by faith they had been able to see what a tremendous harvest God would produce from the soil they had toiled over for so long with little apparent success! Most missionaries were obliged to work in the countryside, and it is no coincidence that to this day the vast majority of believers in Henan live in rural farming communities. Throughout the 19th century, the Chinese people struggled to understand why there were two separate branches of the same religion, Catholicism and Protestantism. The witness of the gospel was often badly damaged by conflict between their respective followers. One anti-Christian placard that appeared in Henan ridiculed the missionaries because (as one Chinese put it) ‘although the adherents of the religion only worship Jesus, yet being divided into the two sections of Roman Catholics and Protestants these are continually railing at each other so that we have no means of determining which is right and which is wrong.’115 The history of Protestant missions in Henan began with the visit in April 1875 of a member of the China Inland Mission, Henry Taylor, and a Chinese evangelist from Hubei named Yang. Earlier that same year, the founder of CIM, Hudson Taylor (who was not related to Henry Taylor), issued an appeal for 18 new missionaries to settle in nine interior provinces. He wrote:

The difficulties are for human strength insuperable. Is not all Burma in turmoil? … Do not the latest tidings tell of Chinese troops massing in Yunnan? What again can our brother Henry Taylor and his Chinese evangelist do among the 25 million of Henan? We care not to answer that question, but we know what He who dwells in them and walks in them can do there.116

Henan was ultimately the seventh of the nine provinces entered. Henry Taylor succeeded in renting premises in the town of Runing (though he was subsequently obliged to leave). In the very first issue of the magazine China’s Millions, in July 1875, he shared his optimism about his prospects of establishing a mission base in the province: As it is your wish that I should consider Henan my future sphere, I turn my eyes towards its twenty-five millions with much desire. If God enables me—and I believe He will—to carry the gospel there successfully, I shall have cause for rejoicing through eternity. … A whole province is a vast field to fill; but if the God of all grace fills us, power and blessing must attend our efforts.117

Later in the year, he reported encouraging initial contact with the local people: We returned today from our visit to all the surrounding county cities. We were well received in each, as well as in the towns and villages through which we passed. I have not seen people anywhere so readily disposed to hear the gospel; and as for buying books, we might have sold any number, but we had to limit the sale in each place. The Lord has given us encouragement from individuals who came to ask the way to Zion. I could not rest if hindered from visiting these places again.118

On 25 April 1875, Taylor and his Chinese co-worker, Yang, had the privilege of being the first Protestant Christians to lead a Chinese person to faith in Christ. Taylor’s diary records: An old man came in, whom we invited to be seated, and then preached the gospel to him. I have never met anyone who grasped the gospel more readily. He repeated what we had been saying very clearly. … We knelt together, and asked God to save his soul. We then asked him if he truly believed this gospel. With much earnestness he answered, ‘Why should I not believe this good news?’ and seemed astonished that any could disbelieve it. He is an old scholar, and reads the character readily: we gave him some books. When we come this way again we should not be surprised to find him in the kingdom of God.119

A few weeks later, on 14 May, Taylor reported the first opposition to their preaching: Certain lewd fellows of the baser sort stirred up the people. They threw our books in the mud, stamping on them and tearing them up, cast them in our faces, and ridiculed that worthy Name by which we are called. Though this conduct was calculated to provoke us, the Lord kept us perfectly calm. … As we left them to go to our inn, some shouted out, ‘Throw the foreign devils down.’ We rejoice to be persecuted for the name of Jesus much as we mourn the cause.120

Although foreign missionaries were usually given the credit for pioneering the gospel, they would have had little success without the help of their

Chinese colleagues. Yang, the Hubei evangelist who accompanied Taylor on his first journey into Henan in 1875, continued to be a key worker in the province for many years to come. After Taylor moved on, Yang assisted another missionary, named Hunt, at Runing. When this man, too, departed, Yang refused to go home and remained in the town, faithfully sharing the gospel for several years. He later moved to Zhoukou, ‘where his labours were blessed to the conversion of not a few. As strength failed, he returned to his home, where he passed away still bearing testimony to the saving power of his Lord and Master.’121

George Clarke of the China Inland Mission

Another key Chinese pioneer was Chen, of Zhoukou. He was a salt commissioner by trade, but after his conversion to Christ he became a bold and uncompromising witness to the truth. He ‘had a gift of dramatic preaching and could hold a large audience spell-bound, as he told them the gospel story in his own graphic way.’122 God used Chen greatly in establishing a body of believers at Zhengzhou and Taikang, before his death in 1900 just before the Boxer uprising. The second journey into Henan took place in 1876. On this occasion, Henry Taylor was accompanied by George Clarke. They ‘visited a large portion of the province, selling Scriptures and tracts and preaching the gospel. [At Runing] they were blessed by seeing the conversion of two or three souls.’123 Clarke’s experiences in Henan were also published by the CIM. On one occasion, he told of a Chinese man who had received a gospel tract from them on a previous visit. When this man ‘came to the cruel treatment and death of Christ, he became enraged and burnt the book, and said he would have thrashed the man who did it.’124 The missionaries sat him down and tried to explain that Christ had offered his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.

On these later visits, Taylor found that the atmosphere in Henan had changed for the worse. Inn keepers refused to allow him to stay on their premises, and the people responded to the gospel with indifference or hostility. One morning, he left the town of Queshan, where he had managed to rent a room on a long-term basis, only to learn that local scholars had bound themselves together under a promise that they would kill the foreigner, and stationed themselves in tens of different parts of the city with this intention. The foreigner did not preach in the streets that day, so next morning they went to the inn to seek for him, but found he was gone. Enraged by their disappointment, they tore down the landlord’s sign, and threatened to set fire to the inn.125

Taylor was obliged to leave Henan after he found his way blocked by scheming officials. Although he and Clarke had successfully preached the gospel to thousands of people in many cities, towns and villages, Henan was not yet willing to welcome Protestant missionaries to live there. Three times they had been forced to flee the province and return to their base at Wuhan in Hubei. Tragically, the career of the first Protestant missionary to set foot in Henan Province ended in acrimony. One source records: Henry Taylor, ‘broken’ by the rough handling and ‘deep hate’ he had encountered in Henan, tried to find a niche in Zhejiang. Resentment made him incapable of a new start. He quarrelled bitterly with his Chinese colleague at Jinhua, and resigned from the CIM to take up a lucrative post in the Customs service. To dare to invade Satan’s domain in the hearts of men was to invite attack, and he fell wounded emotionally and spiritually. … The first pioneer to penetrate the first of the nine unevangelized provinces had become the first such casualty.126

It was not until 1884, nine years after Taylor’s first attempt, that A. W. Sambrook secured a permanent foothold in the province. He was granted permission to rent premises in Zhoukou in eastern Henan, well connected by river to the neighbouring province of Anhui and regions beyond. Three years later, he baptized his first converts. In 1886, a similar mission station was opened by J. A. Slimmon in a market town near Nanyang in southern Henan. In 1892, Slimmon visited Xiangcheng, where a long drought had brought great misery to the people of the area. The local community had hired every religious practitioner they could to pray to their idols in the hope that this would bring rain, but all to no avail. Now they challenged Slimmon and a Chinese evangelist to pray to their God for relief. Feeling that this was a heaven-sent opportunity to present the gospel, the evangelist ran around the neighbourhood to gather as many people as possible to witness this showdown, like Elijah on Mount Carmel.

With many Buddhist and Daoist priests looking on, the two Christians prayed to the Creator God. When they had finished, they started to preach the gospel to the crowd—only to find that within minutes dark clouds began to race across the sky and the people scattered to escape being drenched! Slimmon and his co-worker later returned to the town and shared the truths of the gospel with all who would listen. Many hearts had been opened by that dramatic answer to prayer.127

Xi Shengmo and the Opium Refuge

Xi Shengmo

Xi Shengmo was one of the greatest Chinese Christian leaders of the 19th century. Hailing from southern Shanxi, Pastor Hsi, as he was commonly known, was a Confucian scholar who became hooked on opium before the Lord wonderfully saved him and delivered him from his addiction. In little more than a decade, Xi started about 30 medical clinics to help opium addicts, which he called ‘refuges’. In addition to attending to their bodies, Xi and his co-workers were always busy ministering to the souls of men and women by proclaiming the gospel.128 One of the new converts of the work in Shaanxi Province was a former addict named Chang, whom Xi asked to start a clinic and evangelistic centre in Henan. However, when he arrived in a small border town he was given a cold reception by the locals once they learned that he had ‘been bewitched by the foreign religion’. As the people were starting to make plans to drive Chang out of their province, a rough-looking man came down the road, shouting and wailing. He had been beaten and robbed of all his possessions a few days before and had thrown himself on the mercy of the people, only to find none. Nobody wanted to help him, despite his desperate situation. Chang took the man,

washed his dirty clothes, fed and bathed him and gave him some money so that he could continue his journey. His charity deeply impressed the locals and won him favour. In time, they allowed him to open an opium centre in their town and many heard the gospel for the first time. Other Christians encountered similar opposition to their efforts to penetrate Henan. A medical missionary named John Kenneth Mackenzie travelled up from Wuhan by boat in the 1880s, hoping to receive a welcome to his ministry as he was accustomed to in the south. Initially, people seemed friendly and interested, but the mood suddenly changed without warning. Mackenzie wrote: From being simply curious they began to be rude, rushing alongside of us in the ploughed fields, and shouting in great excitement. The farther we advanced the worse it grew; from shouting it came to treading on one’s heels, and pushing. … Pelting began; there were fortunately no stones at hand, but the earth being dry, the ploughed fields were covered with hard clods, and these soon began to fly about our heads. … [Griffith] John was struck on the mouth with a hard lump of clay, which made the blood flow freely, and almost caused him to faint; and soon after another piece cut his scalp at the back of the head. I guarded my face with my arms, my hat well protected my head, and I received most of the blows about my head and body. We still went on, following [the Chinese preacher] Wei, who walked like a prince, calm and fearless, with his head up, just his natural self, and apparently not a bit troubled. … I was pushed down once, but Mr John and the native Christians kept the crowd off me. The people’s conduct was explained by their shouts of ‘Go back to Wuhan, and preach your Jesus there; you shall not come here.’ The standard of Christ had been raised by Wei and his friends, and the devil had consequently been hard at work, and hence this hatred.129

As more missionaries trickled into Henan during the 1880s and ’90s, the Christian message began to make an impact on more individuals and communities. In many instances, the foreign missionaries assumed roles overseeing the work, while most of the daily preaching was left in the hands of the Chinese evangelists and pastors who had accompanied them to the province. In many places, those Chinese who embraced their message experienced severe persecution for their new faith. In some cases, they could not take the pressure and went back to their old ways, but in most instances they remained true to their new convictions. Some of the harshest treatment was reserved for men from the Hui Muslim community who believed the gospel. Other new believers suffered because they refused to contribute money for idolatrous ceremonies. One 16-year-old girl in the town of Sheqi accepted Christ with great joy and peace. A short time later, she was obligated to marry a man she had never met, in a union arranged by her parents when she was an infant. Her

bridegroom was a man living in darkness, who regarded the Christian message as nonsense. There was no way the girl could escape the wedding, but she resolved in her heart not to participate in any of the spiritual rituals that were to be performed. At the point in the ceremony when the newlyweds were required to bow down and worship the gods of heaven and earth, the girl sat still and prayed to Jesus instead. This infuriated the wedding guests, and five women rushed forwards and pushed her face down to the ground before the idols. The girl wept bitterly. When her husband invited her to worship the kitchen god with him, she replied: ‘You must worship it yourself. I shall never join you, even if you kill me.’ A few days later, she sent a note to the missionaries, saying: ‘Tell the ladies not to be troubled about me. I am still trusting Jesus, and mean to do so till I die.’130

The First Church in Henan There were countless cases of persecution against the fledgling church in Henan, as Satan and wicked men tried all they could to prevent the gospel taking root in this proud province. All of their diabolical efforts were in vain. In Zhoukou on 27 November 1887, Joe Coulthard of the China Inland Mission had the honour of baptizing nine converts and establishing the first ever Protestant church in Henan.131 Hudson Taylor’s daughter, Maria, married Coulthard and moved to Zhoukou the following year.

Some of the first Christians in Henan, in 1888

The most fervent and studious of the new believers in Zhoukou was a man named Liu. The missionaries felt that they could not baptize him straight away, because his business was making firecrackers, which were used mostly in idolatrous ceremonies. However, as soon as he had given up this occupation he was welcomed into the Church, much to the joy of the other Christians. The devil was enraged by this development and Liu came under

strong attack. The people in his home village were furious, and one man threatened to take him to court on some trumped-up charge if he did not forsake his new religion. Liu went to a solitary place and wept before the Lord, asking him to intervene. A few days later, his accuser was himself sued by another man for a large sum of money, and all thoughts of action against Liu were forgotten. On another occasion, the whole village hired a sorcerer to curse Liu and to drive out the demon they believed had caused him to embrace Christianity. This man went to Liu’s home accompanied by a crowd of people and found him worshipping the Lord and studying the Bible. When they entered the room, Liu went to the sorcerer, and laying his hands upon him, said, ‘In the Name of Jesus of Nazareth I command you to leave!’ Immediately the sorcerer was rendered speechless and powerless, the evil spirit within being quite subdued. The crowd urged on the sorcerer, beseeching him to exorcise Liu, who then said, ‘In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost I command you to leave,’ whereupon the man fled as if for [his] life, shouting out, ‘He is too powerful for me, he is too great.’ The crowd wanted him to come back, but he said, ‘Do not take me to him, his Saviour is too strong for me; his prayer is too powerful and efficacious.’132

Later, three of Liu’s relatives died within a short space of time. Liu had visited each one and warned them of God’s impending judgement and the necessity to believe in his Son before they died. None of them did so. The villagers, witnessing all of these strange happenings, decided it was better to leave Liu alone, and all opposition ceased. Within a year, the whole of his remaining family had started to follow Christ.

Taikang

Li Zizeng became the first Christian in Taikang in the 1880s

A man named Li Zizeng, from Taikang, eagerly received the Lord Jesus Christ in the early 1880s, thus gaining the honour of being the first

Protestant believer in his town. He was a highly respected scholar, and his family had held leading positions in the city for generations. One day, Li was walking down a street in Taikang when there was a sudden heavy downpour, so he took shelter in a doorway with another man, who proved to be a missionary. While they waited for the rain to ease, the two struck up a conversation and the missionary gave Li some gospel booklets to take home and read. Over time, the vital truths contained in these booklets were absorbed into his heart, and he desired to repent of his sins and follow Jesus Christ. Another missionary later began visiting Taikang, staying for several days at a time to preach the gospel, treat sick people and point enquirers to the Cross. Li put his trust in the Saviour and began to share the gospel with everyone he came in contact with. When he announced his intention to follow Christ, however, the leaders of the city turned against him and he was stripped of all the social privileges associated with his position. Nonetheless, he continued to serve the Lord. Within a few years, five more residents of Taikang had been baptized and the first Christian fellowship was established. When the church had grown to 30 people, they asked Li to become their pastor. He proved to be a faithful shepherd, and the number of Christians in the town grew quickly. The China Inland Mission opened a school to provide Christian education for local boys.

Teachers and students at the China Inland Mission’s boys’ school in Taikang in 1888

Life was not easy for the first Christians in Taikang. According to the missionary Geraldine Guinness, when a man named Zeng boldly declared his allegiance to Christ, persecution, bitter and terrible, broke over his head. His father, his mother, his wife, and all the clan turned against him, and did everything they could to frighten him out of his new faith. … On one occasion we noticed his hand bound up and in a sling. At first he would not let anybody

see it; but after a time the pain was severe, and he was prevailed upon to let the doctor attend to it. What was our surprise when we found the hand inflamed and festering from the marks of human teeth. Very reluctantly the poor man had to confess that his wife had attacked him in blind fury, and had bitten his hand and arm almost to the bone. These are little indications of the state in which that poor fellow lived for months. Often, when he came round to the missionhouse to attend the meetings, his wife would follow him. … She would search him out, wherever he might be, and before the assembled people she would storm and swear, and order him out, working herself up into the most terrible passion. Sometimes, to avoid a scene, he would go with her, and then she would follow him home, through the streets of the city, cursing and raving openly, as she went along, to the delight of the onlookers and his most bitter shame.133

One day, Zeng asked the Lord to give him and his wife a son, for he believed that much of her antics stemmed from the disgrace she felt at not having produced an heir. Approximately a year later, she gave birth to a little boy. It was the start of a change in her heart, and she later became a sincere believer in Christ. It was said of Zeng that the very bitterness of persecution seemed to develop a remarkable strength and sweetness of character. His life was fragrant of Christ, and he was much used of God in leading others to a knowledge of the truth. Numbers of men in that little [Taikang] church today trace their conversion, directly or indirectly, to the beautiful life and earnest witness of dear Brother Zeng.134

The seed of the gospel was finding good soil in Taikang—until a terrible drought gripped the region. The missionaries were blamed for the ensuing famine: people believed that the presence of Christians in the town had brought about the calamity by upsetting the spiritual balance. A riot broke out, and the missionaries were obliged to flee for their lives. By God’s grace they escaped, and when the drought ended they returned to Taikang and resumed their work. However, the Chinese believers in many places continued to face opposition. In 1890, a missionary reported from Sheqi: ‘The Christians are standing well, though they have been a good deal persecuted. We need to lay ourselves out to be a great deal to them, for apart from what we are able to do for them, they get no help, no love, no sympathy, but are despised, maltreated, and forsaken.’135 After such a promising start, the Protestant church in Taikang struggled for much of the next four decades, so that when a nationwide survey was made in 1922, there were only 216 Protestant believers in the city, which had a population of 414,700 at the time—barely one Christian for every 1,900 people in Taikang.136 Today, while the population of the city has tripled since then, the number of Christians has mushroomed to more than 200,000!137 Roughly one in every six people living in Taikang is now a follower of Jesus Christ.

114 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, p80 115 Memorandum from Protestant missionaries to Alcock, 14 July 1869, in Parliamentary Papers (1870, vol.69, no.9), p26 116 Leslie T. Lyall, A Passion for the Impossible: The China Inland Mission 1865–1965 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), p43 117 M. H. Taylor, ‘The First of the Nine’, China’s Millions, July 1875, p2 118 M. Henry Taylor, ‘Tidings from the Fire of the Nine’, China’s Millions, August 1875, p24 119 M. Henry Taylor, ‘Missionary Journeys: Pioneer Work in Hon-nan’, China’s Millions, November 1875, pp60–61 120 China’s Millions, December 1875, p80 121 Gracie, ‘The Province of Ho-nan’, China’s Millions, July 1902, p93 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid., p92 124 G. W. Clarke, ‘Eighty Days in Ho-nan: From the Diary of Mr G. W. Clarke’, China’s Millions, March 1877, p31 125 ‘Providential Deliverances’, China’s Millions, October 1876, p210 126 A. J. Broomhall, Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century: Book Six—Assault on the Nine (London: OMF, 1988), p294 127 See ‘Honan’, China’s Millions, September 1892, p121. 128 An extensive summary of Xi Shengmo’s life will be found in the Shanxi volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 129 Mary I. Bryson, John Kenneth Mackenzie, Medical Missionary to China (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1887), p78–79 130 China’s Millions, July 1896, p168 131 See J. J. Coulthard, ‘The First Church Founded in Ho-nan’, China’s Millions, March 1888, pp27–28. 132 J. J. Coulthard, ‘Power over All the Power of the Enemy’, China’s Millions, March 1890, p30 133 Geraldine Guinness, In the Far East: Letters from China (London: Fleming H. Revell, 1890), p158 134 Ibid., p159 135 China’s Millions, October 1890, p141 136 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pX 137 Comprising approximately 77,000 Three-Self church members and 129,000 Christians belonging to house churches. See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book.

Chapter 7 CONSOLIDATION AND PERSECUTION, 1888–1900 EARLY PROTESTANT GROWTH IN HENAN, 1885–99138

T

he China Inland Mission was the only Protestant missionary organization working in Henan until 1894, when the Canadian Presbyterian Mission established a base in the prefectural city of Changde (now Anyang) in northern Henan. The names of such early pioneers as Johnstone, Mills, Hunt, Gracie, King and Lund are associated with many attempts to enter cities and towns north of the Yellow River.

The Canadians Arrive The Canadian Presbyterian involvement in Henan had its origins in 1888, when Hudson Taylor visited Toronto and challenged the Canadian church to send labourers into the harvest fields of China. One historian wrote of Taylor’s timely visit: ‘His presence at the Northfield conference and his recruitment for his own China Inland Mission were both symbol and catalyst of the resurgence of fervour. From that point onwards, the enthusiasm became a movement, and its growth was dramatic and inexorable.’139 By the end of the 19th century, the North Henan mission of the Canadian Presbyterians numbered 23 missionaries at three stations: Changde, Weihui (now Jixian) and the small town of Chuwang.

Howard and Geraldine Taylor

Howard and Geraldine Taylor

The CIM’s work continued to experience growth in other parts of the province. Howard Taylor, the son of the pioneer, Hudson Taylor, was born on 25 November 1862. He grew up with a love of medicine and, after studying at the Royal College of Physicians in London, graduated as a doctor in 1888. At the age of 26, he was already a skilled surgeon. However, in the same year he accompanied his father on a speaking tour of North America, and the following year he made a firm commitment to give up worldly wealth and professional acclaim in England and serve Jesus Christ as a missionary in China. He had been richly blessed by the close companionship he enjoyed with his father, and the fact that he so eagerly embraced the vision to reach China brought joy to the great missionary statesman in the years before his call home.

Canadian members of the North Henan Mission in 1894

Taylor departed for China in January 1890, still a single man. Three years later, he married Geraldine Guinness, who was also working with the CIM. She was a skilled researcher and writer and before their marriage had already had three books published, including the comprehensive, twovolume The Story of the China Inland Mission. She was the daughter of Grattan Guinness, the much loved Irish preacher who established the East London Missionary Training School in England. In 1895, the Taylors and their co-workers opened Zhengzhou (the present capital of Henan) to the Christian message. The results were very

encouraging, as almost immediately individuals started coming to Christ. Taylor’s gifted leadership and medical expertise were greatly respected by other missionaries, and were of great benefit to the Chinese people. More than a century later, the general director of the same mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship) said of the couple: Howard Taylor’s leadership was seen not only in frontline mission, but he was a powerful mobilizer, encouraging and challenging students to step out in faith for mission service. … In the minds of hundreds of students who listened to Mrs Taylor and felt the magnetism of her personality, the impression that remains the deepest is not her singular power as a speaker, but a vision of the shining face that comes to those who speak with God.140

Taylor laboured unceasingly in Henan, seeing thousands of patients and taking every opportunity to share the love of Christ with anyone who would listen. Summarizing his ministry in Zhengzhou and Taikang, he himself wrote: In the providence of God we had the privilege of opening up two new stations—the city of Zhengzhou and the adjoining city, one day’s journey away, of Taikang. We were the first missionaries to reside at these places, hence, speaking broadly, none of the people knew intelligently about the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course the very foundations of the work had to be laid, and they were laid, at some cost. The medical work was a means which the Lord used very greatly in enabling us to get at the hearts and the affections of the people in those two cities and the surrounding districts.141

Zhengzhou continued to show relative openness to the good news, especially compared with the steely response of Kaifeng. A few years later, the CIM’s Miss B. Leggat reported: It has been one of the hardest years of work, as it has been one of the most blessed, since coming to China. … During the second moon, we were busy almost daily from breakfast time until sunset; hundreds and hundreds of women listened most attentively to the gospel story. … Both Mrs Talbot and I have seldom enjoyed such liberty in telling the story of Jesus and His love, and very many of the women said they would never worship false gods again, but only seek the true.142

Four elderly Henan women who were baptized in 1899

New Labourers for the Harvest

In the late 19th century, several new mission societies entered Henan and established bases, but most were forced to quit China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. One of the most effective missions in the province at the time was the American Norwegian Lutheran Mission, which focused on the Nanyang area. Its first bases were established at Xinyang and Luoshan, but within a few years it had opened several mission stations, building hospitals, schools and orphanages. While the Norwegians concentrated on the south of the province, their fellow Scandinavians from the Swedish Mission in China focused their efforts in north-western Henan. They established a base in Xin’an, and although they encountered many difficulties and much opposition, within five years they had baptized 114 people and opened two boarding schools with 29 students.143 In the late 1890s, a vital shift started to occur in Henan and other parts of China. Many missionaries began to realize that the key to winning the country for Christ lay not in their own efforts but in the hands of the Chinese they had won to the faith. Hudson Taylor was one who promoted this development. His desire was that Chinese believers would ultimately assume the leadership of their own churches. He wrote: ‘I look upon foreign missionaries as the scaffolding around a rising building. The sooner it can be dispensed with, the better, or rather, the sooner it can be transferred to other places, to serve the same temporary use, the better.’144 Instead of taking prominent leadership roles, many of the wiser missionaries stepped back and were content with helping and advising the Chinese preachers. As a result, the light of the gospel began to shine more brightly, as people understood the message much more easily without the cultural and linguistic obstacles involved when foreigners proclaimed the good news. Writing from Xiangcheng in 1898, Mrs Archibald Gracie reported: You will be glad to know that the work here is spreading on every hand; men and women come long distances, from villages that have not even been visited by us, having heard the good tidings from natives who have carried away some of the precious seed and scattered it in other hearts. … Our Bible woman has visited a good deal in the villages, and is gladly received everywhere. … The Spirit of God is working where the foot of foreigner has never trod, and we believe that the Lord is going to work wonders in Henan.145

The CIM continued to spearhead much of the pioneer work in Henan. It baptized its first nine believers in 1887, and by 1893 it had 117 Christians meeting in five churches.146 Dixon Hoste, a British missionary who had

worked in Shanxi Province since his arrival in 1885, was made superintendent of CIM’s work in Henan in 1897. He later took the reins of the mission as its general director in 1902 and was instrumental in helping to smooth the transition after the death of its founder, Hudson Taylor, in 1905. Although small in number, Henan’s Christians were trophies of God’s grace. The missionaries had been interested more in quality than in quantity, and the transformed lives of the Chinese believers were a tremendously powerful witness to their communities. At times they were called to endure severe opposition and persecution, but they persevered and in time reaped a harvest for the Kingdom of God.

A group of missionaries in Henan just before the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900

Boxer Troubles in Henan As the dawn of the 20th century approached, resentment at the presence of foreigners in China grew rapidly. The Chinese were tired of being invaded and dominated by armies from overseas, which had seized control of different parts of the country for their own purposes. A long and severe drought across northern China exacerbated the situation, and many Chinese took it to be a sign of the ancestral spirits’ displeasure at the presence of foreigners in the land. In the summer of 1900, a widespread uprising erupted, which came to be known in English as the Boxer Rebellion. Not only foreigners were targeted but also those Chinese known to be associated with them. Thousands of native Christians—both Protestant and Catholic—were slaughtered, as were more than 300 foreign missionaries.147 The worst carnage was experienced in the provinces of Shanxi and Hebei, which border Henan. Henan itself was comparatively unscathed, due in part to the relatively small number of believers in the province at the time and in part to God’s miraculous

intervention in a number of incidents where Christians were able to escape their pursuers. Mary and Edith Lutley were two little girls among a group of 14 missionaries who tried to flee the violence in two springless carts. Leaving their base in Linfen in Shanxi Province on 15 July 1900, the fugitives were completely at the mercy of the Chinese in the hundreds of towns and villages that lay along the long route southward through Henan to Wuhan in Hubei. On 3 August, while passing through northern Henan, Mary died from an illness brought on by the hardships of the journey. Jolting along on rough, potholed roads for hour after hour had been a terrible ordeal for the sick child, and in the end her body simply gave up. The missionaries buried her outside the wall of a town they were passing through. Two weeks later, on 17 August, her sister, Edith, also died, while being pushed along in a wheelbarrow. The loss of both their precious daughters was a huge blow to their parents. After Edith perished, ‘the childless father wound the little body tenderly in a strip of cloth, then the party went its way a while. [She was] tenderly laid to rest in a lonely hillside grave.’148

The missionary H. S. Conway and the students at the Sheqi Boys’ School in 1900

The Flight from Sheqi When the missionaries heard of the trouble that had broken out in the provinces of Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi, most made plans to flee to the coast as soon as possible. Most of the fugitives were abused and beaten as they passed through towns and villages on their way to safety. At Sheqi, a group of CIM workers, including Dr Whitfield Guinness, found that the mood of the people suddenly become hostile in early July 1900. During a church service on 8 July, a large mob gathered around the building, threatening to destroy those inside. The believers prayed for God’s

protection, and were able to return home safely. The next morning, the mob assembled again and attacked the missionaries and the Chinese Christians with a hail of blows. A full-blown riot ensued. The local believers made their escape, and the small group of foreigners took refuge in a loft, where they spent the whole day committing their lives to Christ’s keeping and praying that God might preserve them for his glory. The mission home next door was set alight, and the missionaries were sure that armed men would ascend the stairs to kill them. On two occasions, young boys climbed up the outside of the building and looked into the room where the missionaries were hiding and stared straight at them. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, they failed to see them or report their whereabouts to the rioters. Darkness fell, and the landlord of the house came up to the loft and told Guinness and the others to follow him. He hid them inside a trap door above a pile of grain. The following day, soldiers were dispatched to find and kill the missionaries, and mobs marched through the streets shouting ‘Kill the foreign devils!’ For five days, the missionaries huddled together, speaking in no more than a whisper, and praying that the little baby in their midst would not betray their presence by crying. The kind landlord provided for them by pushing a pot of tea and a loaf of bread through the trap door daily. One day, a squad of soldiers searched around the hiding place. The missionaries heard them ask the landlord what was inside the trap door, to which he replied: ‘This is where I store my grain.’ Guinness recorded what happened next, after the officer ordered the landlord to open the door: I was sitting on the door—we hardly breathed, but kept praying silently to God. … I felt the door lift and pressed it down with all my weight. Mrs Conway and baby were sitting on the floor a yard away, and the others were beyond. Would he come up? Again God interfered, and the officer and his soldiers departed. Three times they returned and renewed their search for us, but as often left after a fruitless investigation. … I feared for the mother and her child. And ofttimes when rioters and searchers were all around us, smashing our own roof as well as those of neighbouring rooms, and trying to get a view of the room in which we lay, it was anxious work on behalf of the little one—many a time we could only lie hiding our faces in the dust and pray, as the sound of blows and curses immediately above us made the room shake. The hours of Tuesday slowly passed and evening found us still alive—I thought it would be our last. T’was dusk and in the court below I could see men piling up wood and straw and dried grass—they had surrounded the whole house with this flammable material. Listening intently we could hear a voice saying, ‘We will burn them out and kill them if they run.’149

Plans for a secret escape were thwarted, as it seemed the whole town was still searching for the foreigners, but God had them hidden safely in the palm of his hand. Under the cover of darkness, they were moved to a new house with the help of the Chinese Christians, who did not hesitate to risk their own lives for their friends. Incredibly, night after night while the missionaries had been in the loft, bloodthirsty men had slept in the room beneath yet the baby had not once alerted them by crying. Her father, H. S. Conway, later said: ‘God closed the mouths of the lions, and He also closed the mouth of our dear little baby.’150

Mrs H. S. Conway, who survived the ordeal along with her baby daughter

During the long hunt for the foreigners, the drought finally broke and heavy rain fell. This seemed to distract their would-be murderers, and after 12 days the river had risen sufficiently to allow boats to dock at Sheqi. Guinness believed that their best chance of escape was by boat, and they saw the rain as God’s provision. Eventually, they were able to make their way down to the river undetected and hide inside a small vessel bound for Wuhan in Hubei. They were assured that the journey would take five days, but it ended up taking 13, each filled with anxious moments. On several occasions, soldiers boarded the boat and searched it, but though they discovered the fugitives they failed to recognize them as foreigners. The women had covered their feet and hair, and they all pretended to be asleep. Guinness later wrote: ‘I was rolled over and poked in the back, and the ladies were hustled over to a corner of their couch, under which search had to be made, the officer merely remarking to our escort, ‘Your travellers are very silent.’ The strain of such moments was considerable—discovery, we were led to believe, meant riot and death.’151

The exhausted missionaries finally reached the safety of Wuhan, which was then under British control. Their appearance was dreadful: they had been wearing the same clothes for almost a month, and their bodies were unwashed and unshaven. Miraculously, the Lord had protected his servants and they all made it out alive.

The Perilous Journey of Three Swedish Women The fledgling Swedish Mission had a small number of workers stationed in the northernmost part of Henan, just inside the border with Shanxi, when the Boxer violence began. Three single Swedish women—Emma Anderson, Sigrid Engstrom and Maria Pettersson—decided to head south and hide in caves until the end of the summer, but only a week into their ordeal their presence was reported by locals. They fled the area but were intercepted by a group of armed Boxers outside the city of Xiangcheng. The rebels robbed them, even of their outer clothing, but when they threatened to cut their heads off, the three women calmly smiled and told their attackers they were not afraid to die. The Boxers then ‘looked at one another, smiled, and went away without touching us. One of them said, “You cannot die because you are devils.”’152 For weeks, these three courageous women survived, helped by local Christians, including one young man who had only believed in Christ for a month before the persecution broke out. On one occasion they hid in a maize field, and the Boxers were unable to find them despite searching all day. With a mob of 40 to 50 evil men pursuing them, the women were concealed in a boat and taken to the safety of the coast. However, after weeks of extreme hardship, another surprise awaited them. The coast of China was battered by a powerful hurricane, and as they neared Shanghai their small vessel capsized and the three women were almost drowned. They finally reached safety in Shanghai on 6 August 1900.

Alphonso Argento, the Man Who Refused to Die Alphonso Argento was born in Italy in 1873, but despite coming from the heartland of Catholicism he is remembered as a great Protestant missionary and martyr. At the age of 18, he was led to Christ through the influence of

the Waldensian Church. After reading China’s Millions, the monthly magazine of the CIM, he became deeply burdened for missionary work in China. He dedicated his life to serving God in the Orient and applied to join the CIM. At the interview, when he was warned of the risk, he boldly declared: ‘I am not afraid even to die for Christ and the Gospel. … I was led to take this step after having known Christ’s promise, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”’153

Alphonso Argento with his wife and sons

Argento was already fluent in English, French and German and, on arriving in China in 1896, he soon learned Chinese. In 1899, he established the first mission station at Guangshan (previously called Guangzhou) in the south-east of Henan Province. During a church service in the evening of 8 July 1900, a large crowd of people armed with swords and knives rushed into the chapel. As the would-be assassins pressed forward to kill Argento, someone knocked the lamp over and the building was plunged into complete darkness. The Italian crawled into a corner and hid under some rubble as the Boxers, presuming he had escaped, plundered everything they could find. Finally, Argento was discovered after he had managed to crawl upstairs and hide. He later described what ensued: With a rush they got hold of me and dragged me from under the table and on to the pile of wood [with which they planned to burn the building down]. Others took up the benches and struck me with them. … They poured kerosene on my clothes and set them on fire. Friendly neighbours, however, quickly quenched the flames, tearing off the burning part of the garment. … I was lying with my face to the ground. The rioters, seeing these neighbours wanted to save me, got hold of a pole, and began to strike me on the head and all over my body. I tried to protect my head with my hands, but had not reached the doorsteps when a very heavy blow inflicted on my head caused me to lose consciousness.154

Some of the ruffians dragged his body outside into the street, where they wanted to decapitate him, but others who sympathized with the missionary convinced them that he was already dead. Argento came to two days later.

The local magistrate was afraid he would die within his jurisdiction and ordered that the Italian should be carried by stretcher to a town 140 miles (225 kilometres) to the north. All along the route people came to stare at the half-naked missionary, who was covered in terrible bruises and caked in blood, and they urged the stretcher-bearers to put him out of his misery. At one place, Argento said later, ‘they thought I was dead, for I did not move or make a sound, although they pinched me, pulled my hair, and knocked me about—an ordeal which lasted an hour long.’155 At Xi Xian, he was treated like an animal, being left outside in the rain all night. On 21 July, after two weeks of such misery, he was carried all the way back to Guangshan, where the ordeal had begun. The locals were astonished to see him still alive, but they still had the audacity to mock his God. A large crowd gathered around him, saying: ‘God has brought you back safely, has he? Your God cannot save you. Jesus is dead; he is not in this world. He cannot give real help. Our god of war is much stronger; he protects us, and he has sent the Boxers to pull down your house and kill you.’156 Argento later recalled how wicked men ‘spat in my face, and threw mud and melon peel at me, and did what they liked. Some pinched me, others pulled my [hair], and others expressed themselves in the most vile way. All the time I did not answer a word. Some of the Christians came to see me, but had to run for their lives.’157 The cowardly magistrate, again afraid that people would kill the missionary in his jurisdiction, ordered that Argento’s journey should recommence, though now in a sedan chair. This time, they went westwards to Xinyang. A group of 30 armed Boxers pursued them, determined to kill Argento once and for all, but by obeying the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit he managed to evade them and was eventually delivered to safety on 31 July. The people of Guangshan thought they had finally seen the last of the stubborn missionary, but after a year recuperating in Europe he came back, to the amazement of everyone in the town. Here was a man who had learned to overcome fear and intimidation. In 1901, he wrote: It was the greatest joy I have ever experienced in my life to see the Christians again, and hear what the Lord has been doing during my absence; how they had been keeping close to Jesus and to one another; and how, though subject to the fiery test, they like pure gold, far from consuming, shone more brightly and were a living witness for Jesus, as well as a rebuke to their

accusers. It seemed to us all like a dream that I was back again in Guangshan. Many of the people could not believe that I was the same person they had killed!158

For the next seven years, the Italian continued to serve the Lord boldly in Guangshan, and the church grew steadily. In 1905, Argento married a Miss Bjorgum of the Norwegian Mission, and together they raised two fine boys. His head injuries continued to cause him a lot of pain, but he carried on regardless. Finally, in 1908, his deteriorating health obliged him to leave China, after a fruitful ministry that had resulted in 385 baptisms. When he arrived back in Europe, doctors found he was suffering from severe pains in his head, and in spite of the best surgical skill, he gradually became blind. Latterly he lost his memory, and the use of his … limbs. His interest in the work in China never flagged, and in a letter at the end of May [1917] he wrote, ‘I will use my strength in prayer and in intercession for China.’159

Finally, on 3 July 1917 in the Norwegian city of Trondheim, Alphonso Argento was released from the pain of this life and went to be with Jesus. He was 44 years old. The CIM paid this tribute to him: He was a man of great zeal and energy and of entire devotion to the Lord, and the work at Guangshan owed much to his intercessions during the years in which he was laid aside. The Church there has prospered greatly in recent years, and there are now nearly 800 communicants. There are 29 outstations in the surrounding district, with three paid evangelists and 26 voluntary helpers. The central church has seating accommodation for 1,400, and at the time of the annual meetings it is crowded out.160

God cannot be mocked. In Guangshan County, where evil men once said, ‘Jesus is dead; he is not in this world. He cannot give real help,’ there are today some 120,000 Christians161—following the example of the beloved pioneer missionary Alphonso Argento.

Henan’s Christians Stand Firm

Christians in Henan who survived the hardships of 1900

The CIM alone had 28 workers in Henan during the Boxer persecution, but all survived. Extraordinarily, no known Chinese Protestants were killed by the rebels in the province in the summer of 1900. Hundreds were beaten and robbed of all their possessions, including their animals and their tools, which left them in dire poverty; yet none were killed. Considering the widespread carnage in neighbouring provinces, what happened in Henan can be explained only in terms of the sovereign intervention of Almighty God, who must have determined that his children there could best advance his kingdom by living. As the dust settled on the atrocities of 1900, it became apparent that the large majority of Chinese believers not only had survived the ordeal with their faith intact but had actually grown spiritually as a result of the experience. At Zhengzhou, the magistrate made it known that he would protect all the Christians if they gave him their names and said they were willing to recant their faith, but despite this insidious demand, according to a missionary, not one of the church members was willing to do so, but sought to serve the Lord with greater earnestness than ever. … Some men who feigned to be Boxers surrounded our houses, and, banging at our doors, sought to frighten us with all kinds of threats, one of which was that a day had been fixed on which all the native Christians were to be killed. But, thanks be to God, He caused us in all matters not to fear our enemies, but to believe that this would turn out to their destruction and our salvation. We were glad to suffer reproach for the name of Christ, and we believe that these things which have happened unto us will turn out for the furtherance of the gospel. You will be glad to hear that two inquirers have been added to our number: two men whose faith is greater than ours, and who with their own hands have smashed their idols to pieces.162

In 1903, the CIM reported a total of 802 baptized believers in Henan Province, meeting in 17 churches. Two-thirds of these Christians were men, a sign of the dominant role that men had in Chinese society at the time.163 138 These figures are cited in Alvyn Austin, China’s Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832–1905 (Studies in the History of Christian Missions) (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), p347. 139 Ibid., p34 140 Patrick Fung, ‘Like Father Like Son—Dr Howard Taylor’, China Insight, February–March 2006 141 China’s Millions, 1900, p102 142 Miss B. Leggat, ‘A Year of Hard Work and Great Blessing’, China’s Millions, October 1903, p133 143 Marshall Broomhall (ed.), The Chinese Empire: A General and Missionary Survey (London: Morgan & Scott, 1907), p161 144 George Sweeting, More than 2000 Great Quotes and Illustrations (Texas: Word Publishing, 1985), p184 145 China’s Millions, October 1898, p148 146 M. Geraldine Guinness, The Story of the China Inland Mission (London: Morgan & Scott, 1893), p147 147 See China’s Book of Martyrs (the first volume in this ‘Fire & Blood’ series) for detailed accounts of more than a thousand Christian martyrs in China, including hundreds killed during the Boxer Rebellion.

148 Luella Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs: A Record of Heroic Martyrdoms and Marvelous Deliverances of Chinese Christians during the Summer of 1900 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1903), p113 149 Marshall Broomhall (ed.), Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission: With a Record of the Perils and Sufferings of Some Who Escaped (London: Morgan & Scott, 1901), p209–10 150 F. S. Joyce, ‘Address by Mr F. S. Joyce (Ho-nan)’, China’s Millions, July 1901, p96 151 Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries, p213–14 152 Ibid., p231 153 ‘The Supreme Sacrifice: In Memoriam—Alphonso Argento’, China’s Millions, August 1917, p89 154 Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries, p238. The same account also appeared in China’s Millions in November 1900. 155 Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries, p240 156 Ibid., p242 157 Ibid. 158 Alphonso Argento, ‘Spared to Serve’, China’s Millions, July 1902, p100 159 ‘The Supreme Sacrifice’, p89 160 Ibid. 161 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 162 ‘Some of the Ho-nan Christians: Extracts from Their Recent Letters’, China’s Millions, February 1901, p25 163 China’s Millions, July–August 1903, p111

Chapter 8 JONATHAN GOFORTH: ‘CHINA’S GREATEST EVANGELIST’

T

Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth

he aptly-named Goforths must rank among the greatest foreign missionaries of their era. After years of struggle, laying the groundwork by learning the language, Jonathan Goforth became an instrument used mightily by God in the early 20th century. Although his work expanded to take in many parts of China and beyond, he spent the bulk of his ministry, including its early years, in northern Henan Province. Goforth was born in 1859 on a farm near Thorndale in Ontario, the seventh of 11 children. His father always encouraged him to go to church with his mother, even though he himself did not become a Christian until late in life. Jonathan gave his life to Jesus Christ at the age of 18 and soon began his ministry of winning others to faith. His interest in missions was piqued when he heard an appeal by Dr George Mackay, a veteran evangelist to Taiwan, who had spent two years crisscrossing Canada in an attempt to recruit some new missionaries to the Orient who could continue his life’s work. Sadly, he had not been able to find a single person to take up the challenge, and as he prepared to return to Asia he lamented: ‘I am going back alone. It will not be long before my bones will be lying on some hillside. To me the heartbreak is that no young man has heard the call to come and carry on the work that I have begun.’164 Goforth later recalled: ‘As I listened to these words, I was overwhelmed with shame. There I was, bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ,

daring to dispose of my life as I pleased. From that hour I became a foreign missionary.’165 In the spring of 1885, he met a young woman called Rosalind Bell-Smith. While he was from poor farming stock, she was the daughter of wealthy, upper-class parents from London, who had emigrated from England to Canada when she was three years old. As an adult, she had been moved to pray for a husband who was fully dedicated to God and his work. One evening, before a mission meeting they were both attending, Goforth was called out of the room. Rosalind later recalled: As he rose, he placed his Bible on the chair. Then something happened which I could never explain, nor try to excuse. Suddenly, I felt literally impelled to step across four or five people, take up the Bible and return to my seat. Rapidly I turned the leaves and found the Book worn almost to shreds in parts and marked from cover to cover. Closing the Book, I quickly returned it to the chair, and returning to my seat, I tried to look very innocent. It had all happened within a few moments, but as I sat there, I said to myself, ‘That is the man I would like to marry!’166

Rosalind was able to look beyond Jonathan’s outward appearance to see a rough diamond. Soon after meeting him, she fell in love with him. Later that year, they got engaged after he asked her: ‘Will you join your life with mine for China? And will you give me your promise that always you will allow me to put my Lord and his work first, even before you?’ She immediately replied: ‘Yes, I will always.’167 She soon ‘got her first taste of the sacrifice she would encounter the rest of her life as the wife of Jonathan Goforth. Her dreams of an engagement ring were dashed when he told her that the money he would have spent for a ring must instead go for Christian literature.’168 In 1886, Goforth graduated from Knox College in Toronto and was ordained by the Presbyterian Church of Canada. His early experiences at the college had been anything but easy. He wore shabby clothes and didn’t understand city ways. To improve his appearance at college, he bought some cloth, but before he could get it sewn into new clothes, his fellow students woke him up in the middle of the night. They tied it around his neck like a cape and made him run up and down the dorm hallway, poking fun at him.169

His wife would later say of this incident: ‘That night he knelt with Bible before him and struggled through the greatest humiliation and the first great disappointment of his life.’170 Over time, however, he won over his fellow students with his godly lifestyle and his fervent efforts to reach the lost for Christ. One source noted: ‘They may have laughed at him then, but before he graduated, his classmates came to respect him so much that they raised

the money to send him to China as a missionary. They had seen his sincerity in preaching at rescue missions in Toronto, visiting prisons, and witnessing door-to-door.’171 Goforth did not hesitate to take the gospel to saloons and brothels, and many broken people were won to Christ. One night, as he walked down a street with a particularly evil reputation, Bible in hand, a policeman asked him: ‘How have you the courage to go into those places? We policemen never go there except in twos or threes.’ Goforth replied: ‘I never walk alone, either. There is always Someone with me.’172

Jonathan Goforth (back, centre) and Rosalind Goforth (middle, right) with other pioneer members of the North Henan Presbyterian Mission UCC Victoria University Archives

The couple were deeply affected by Hudson Taylor’s message when the great missionary statesman visited Toronto in 1888. When Goforth expressed interest in working in Henan Province, Taylor told him: ‘Brother, if you would enter Henan, you must go forward on your knees.’

Dangers Within and Without After studying Chinese for nine months in Shandong, the Goforths moved to the city of Anyang (then called Changde), in northern Henan, which was to be their home for decades to come. Their early years of ministry in Henan were difficult. Although the small North Henan Presbyterian Mission they had joined had only some 20 missionaries, they spent much of their time in committee meetings. A historian noted that policies changed slowly. Every male member of the mission felt it was his duty to speak on every matter that came up in presbytery, and agreed to abide by its majority decision. … The deliberations of the Henan presbytery took up more time than those of the General Assembly of the whole Presbyterian Church in Canada.173

The atmosphere in the mission frustrated Goforth, who ‘often got his dander up and pounded the table.’174 His wife later wrote: ‘With his strong

convictions concerning Divine guidance of himself, he naturally came often into conflict with other members of the Henan Presbytery, for what body of, say, twenty strong personalities could easily bend to one of their number, when some had perhaps equally strong convictions opposed to his?’175 At the same time, the Chinese in Anyang were strongly opposed to the missionaries and their message. Mrs Goforth later recalled that stories of the vilest nature widely circulated and believed did much to hinder the progress of the gospel, and make the people fear and hate us. They believed we were capable of the very worst atrocities. Were I to attempt the plain record of many of these stories British law would forbid the publication. … There we were, a mere handful of missionaries in the midst of a bitterly hostile people many of whom were only waiting and watching for an excuse to attack and murder us.176

One day, Goforth and a colleague attended a fair, where they planned to preach the gospel to the thousands of people gathered there. Though they wore Chinese clothing, their identity was soon recognized and in a few moments the crowd rushed upon them, hooting, yelling, throwing sticks, stones and clods of earth. Just when death seemed imminent a sudden gust of wind blew a tent over and scattered the articles offered for sale. As the Chinese scrambled for these the missionaries escaped.177

The Goforths realized that the rumours and suspicions about them were so rife that the only way to defuse the situation was to be completely open and friendly to the Chinese. They started what they called ‘open-house evangelism’. The local people were curious to see how they lived, ‘so they arranged tours of their house all day long. Before they would take a group of fifty people through the house, Rosalind would first preach to the women, and Jonathan would preach to the men.’178 Their visitors especially loved to inspect the floor boards, the glass windows, the furniture, the organ and the sewing machine. The kitchen stove, which sent its smoke up the chimney instead of into people’s eyes and all over the house, was an object of constant wonder. The pump was the talk of the whole countryside. What a contraption that could bring water up from the bottom of a well without a bucket! As many as 1,835 men and 500 women passed through the house on a single day and all heard the gospel message.179

Many of the other missionaries treasured their privacy and consequently disapproved of this strategy. Untroubled by the criticisms, however, Goforth wrote: Some may think that receiving visitors is not real mission work, but I think it is. I put myself out to make friends with the people and I reap the results when I go to their villages to preach. Often the people of a village will gather around me and say, ‘We were at your place and you showed us through your house, treating us like friends.’ Then they almost always bring me a chair to sit on, a table to lay my Bible on, and some tea.180

At Death’s Door The powerful revival that God brought to China through this couple in the early 20th century nearly did not happen, for Jonathan Goforth was almost killed during the Boxer Rebellion. While they were at their mission station in Anyang, he and his wife received a message from the American consulate, instructing them: ‘Flee south. Northern route cut off by Boxers.’ They were already grieving the death of their eldest daughter, Florence, who had died after contracting meningitis just days earlier. Now they had to leave the freshly-dug grave and flee for their own lives. Before dawn on 28 June 1900, the Goforths gathered their four surviving children and headed south by donkey cart, along with nine other Westerners—three men, five women and a boy—and three Chinese servants. Just outside the village of Xintian, a large mob attacked them with swords, knives, stones and clubs. The backs of the donkeys were broken to prevent escape, and then Goforth was struck down with the blunt edge of a sword, nearly breaking his neck. As he fell and held his arm up to protect himself, it was slashed to the bone in several places. When he struggled to his feet, he was struck unconscious with a club. As he regained some consciousness, in God’s providence, a rider galloped through the crowd to where their carts were and was thrown from his horse. The thrashing horse now formed a barrier between the attacking men and the missionary party. As Jonathan dazedly got to his feet, a man stood over him as if to strike him with a club, but instead whispered, ‘Get away from the carts.’ When they moved away, their attackers ignored them and started fighting among themselves over the goods in the carts.181

The beleaguered Christians received help from sympathetic villagers, who hid them in a hut and give them water and food. The next afternoon, they were sent on their way, after learning that their rescuers were Muslims who had been fearful of incurring God’s wrath if they had taken part in slaughtering the missionaries. Goforth had been hacked about the back, the neck and the head with a sword, but he miraculously survived. For weeks, he and the others continued their flight, though they were again attacked and robbed along the way. Although ‘the women concealed their rings and watches on strings around their necks inside their dresses, the ruffians tore their clothes open and wrenched the jewellery off by brute force.’182 Finally, the fugitives reached Fangcheng in southern Henan, from where a boat dispatched by the American consulate collected them and brought them down the tributaries of the Yangtze to safety on the coast. They arrived in Shanghai with nothing but the blood-soaked clothes they had on.183

Goforth later concluded that the Catholics were largely responsible for the evident loathing the people of Henan felt for Christians. He wrote: It is sad to have to say it about persons professing to preach the gospel of the meek and lowly Jesus, but the fact is the people of that whole countryside were furious against what they considered to be the tyranny and oppression of the Roman Catholics. Hatred blazed in their eyes and I am most firmly persuaded that, humanly speaking, it was only our ability to prove that we were not Roman Catholics which saved our lives. Once we could persuade a mob of that fact, its fury seemed to melt away. Again and again the same thing happened.184

Indeed, Goforth had a long battle with the Catholics, whom he held in contempt. It seems they followed him around, offering financial inducements, employment and free education to new believers if they would switch their allegiance to the Catholic Church. Early in his ministry, Goforth wrote that in one town the Catholics ‘captured almost the whole number of enquirers … sweeping away in a week the work of years.’185 He and his wife returned to Canada to recover from their ordeal, but the following year they recommenced the ministry that would win Jonathan Goforth the accolade of being called ‘China’s greatest evangelist’. The Chinese came to refer to him fondly as ‘the flaming preacher’. No doubt the fact that he had been at death’s door contributed to the fearless and tireless soul-winning that characterized the remainder of his life.

A group of Christians in Henan in the early 1900s

The Search for God’s Power When the Goforths returned to the Orient in 1901, Jonathan was a changed man. He had been grieved by the dead Christianity he encountered at home in Canada, and was dissatisfied, too, with the lukewarmness he saw among the Christians in China. Believers had embraced a new, liberal Christianity which made them carnal and indifferent towards the things of God. There were many reports like this one from the missionary Henry Ford in 1904: Here, at Taikang, we have been passing through a season of coldness and backsliding. The wheat harvest is always a severe test, even for the brightest. They are tempted to neglect Sunday. … Our hearts were very sad that so few came to the services in the midst of harvest, and on enquiry

we found that quite a number had not attempted to keep the Day of Rest. After much prayer I felt it impossible to hold the next Communion Service. Instead, we had a time of humbling before God. A number confessed with tears and sobs to Sabbath-breaking, coldness, frequent displays of temper, neglect of Bible-reading and prayer.186

Goforth studied the scriptures for an answer, declaring that ‘every passage that had any bearing upon the price of, or the road to, the accession of power became life and breath to me.’187 He read many books on revival and was deeply affected by the writings of Charles Finney. As he prayed, Goforth felt the Lord impress on him that revival would be poured out on any servant who confessed their sins, repented and was obedient in everything to the Holy Spirit. In 1904, news reached China of the Welsh revival in which God was using a young man named Evan Roberts to bring tens of thousands of people to faith in Christ. The accounts Goforth read reinforced his conviction that God wanted to pour his Spirit out in a similar way in China. In 1906, he was preaching in a remote town when he fell under heavy conviction. The Lord commanded him to go and reconcile himself with a Christian brother. Goforth attempted to argue with God, pointing out that their dispute was the fault of the other man. He tried to continue preaching, but his message was awkward and without power. So, he stopped speaking, bowed his head and promised the Lord he would go and see the man immediately after the meeting. At this point, the whole spiritual atmosphere of the meeting changed, and there were many tearful confessions of sin throughout the congregation. In the months that followed, similar public repentance occurred at every meeting Goforth addressed. The Holy Spirit moved in a mighty way, and many wrongs were made right.

Manchuria For the next decade, Goforth led revival meetings all over the country, though he concentrated on Manchuria (now the three north-eastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang). Often, he would preach for eight hours a day, to crowds of up to 25,000 people. Thousands of sinners experienced the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and multitudes of Christians were awakened to a more vital relationship with God. These meetings were often characterized by public confession of sin and repentance.188 In 1907, Goforth travelled to Korea, where he witnessed the revival that was sweeping that country at the time. He realized that this was no mere

emotionalism or man-made enthusiasm. Thousands of lives were being transformed and hard hearts made soft by the power of the Holy Spirit. His own strategy was to spend one month evangelizing in a city or town and then leave behind a Chinese preacher to nurture the new believers. He would then go back once or twice a year to encourage the fledgling congregations. Such was the speed of the mighty revival that swept through Manchuria that his wife commented: ‘Jonathan Goforth went to Manchuria an unknown missionary. … He returned a few weeks later with the limelight of the Christian world upon him.’189 This expanded ministry excited him, and he made plans for his family to travel around with him to various meetings in order to spread God’s revival fire. Mrs Goforth was less than enthusiastic, however, fearing the impact such an itinerant lifestyle would have on their family. She told her husband: ‘The plan sounds wonderful, except for the children. Think of all the infectious diseases and of our four little graves [of the Goforth children who had died in China]. I can’t do it. I cannot expose the children like that.’190 Goforth saw the situation in a very different light. He believed that God was about to do a great work in China, and expected his family to play a full part in it. He told his wife: ‘I fear for the children if you refuse to obey God’s call and stay here at Anyang. The safest place for you and the children is the path of duty.’191 Husband and wife were divided in this matter, as the loving mother refused to consider hauling her children around the vermin-infested countryside. Just hours after Goforth had warned her that the safest option was to obey God’s call, their son Wallace fell ill with dysentery. After two weeks he began to improve, and Goforth set out on an evangelistic tour alone, while his family remained in Anyang. The very next day, baby Constance fell ill. Her father was sent for, and found the little girl close to death when he reached home. Mrs Goforth was overcome with sorrow, and prayed: ‘O God, it is too late for Constance but I will trust you hereafter for everything, including my children.’192 From that point on, she and the surviving children travelled constantly with her husband, covering thousands of miles of northern China. Despite the hardships, they never lost any more of their children to sickness.

Back in Henan

Although the Goforths now had a nationwide revival ministry, they never forgot their roots in Henan and frequently returned to work in the province. In the town of Guangshan, the number of Christians increased from 2,000 to 8,000 in four years, largely due to the impact of Goforth’s preaching.193 In 1918, he led revival meetings among Chinese soldiers under the command of General Feng Yuxiang. After two weeks of powerful preaching, a communion service was held for those who had consecrated themselves to Christ, and nearly 5,000 officers and soldiers took part. Goforth reported on one of the meetings: As General Feng prayed, the tears rolled down his face until there was a pool where he knelt on the platform. While he was praying, officers all over the place were crying and sobbing and confessing their sins. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene as the Holy Spirit came down and swept over that great gathering of officers and men, cleansing and purging, and purifying and reviving.194

During the 1920s, the Goforths were severely criticized by many other missionaries, including those from their own Presbyterian denomination, who found that his methods were increasingly at odds with the mission. Goforth, in turn, accused his critics of preaching a watered-down, liberal gospel. Nor did their attacks slow down the progress of the revival, as one source notes: The Goforths met with strong antagonism from the established Presbyterian mission and church structure. Countless missionaries and pastors, both in Canada and China, disagreed with Jonathan’s focus on the need for confession. Younger denominational leaders blanched at his preaching on judgment and hell. They likewise found unpalatable his constant references to the entire Bible as God’s inspired and inerrant guide to salvation and life. Finally, his colleagues deemed his call for everyone to be baptized with the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to be the ultimate in poor taste. … The sceptics notwithstanding, revival spread through the Presbyterian wing of the Chinese church. As a result, God raised up more than 60 Chinese men and women who served full-time as evangelists and Bible teachers. Thousands of new converts were baptized (more than 13,000 between 1908 and 1913 alone), and 30 new mission out-stations were established that ultimately became command posts for planting small churches.195

After years of tension and dispute, the Goforths reached the point where they could no longer remain attached to the Canadian Presbyterian mission. They resigned from it in 1918, citing the doctrines of Modernism and Higher Criticism then sweeping the church as the main reasons for their decision. They continued their evangelistic ministry in China, but they were heartbroken that they no longer belonged to the mission in which they had invested so many years of their lives. Their sorrow soon turned to joy, however, as God took them into a new season of fruitfulness, including the

firming of Goforth’s close connection with the Chinese Christian General Feng Yuxiang.196

Lives Well Spent for Jesus For almost 50 years, Mrs Goforth proved a wonderful partner to her husband. Following the call of God cost them both dearly, and five of their 11 children were buried on Chinese soil. When Goforth embarked on a wider itinerant ministry in 1907, his wife struggled with the change and questioned his commitment to her. ‘Suppose I were stricken with an incurable disease in the homeland and had but a few months to live,’ she asked him. ‘If we cabled you to come, would you come?’ He did not answer her immediately, not wanting to sound harsh, but a few days later he replied with a reciprocal question: ‘Suppose our country were at war with another nation and I, an officer in command of an important unit. … Would I, in that event, be permitted to forsake my post in response to a call from my homeland?’197 Mrs Goforth knew that the answer was ‘no’. She never doubted her husband’s love for her, but often struggled with the intensity of his commitment to the Lord and his work. By the 1920s, notwithstanding the work of the Goforths and many other faithful missionaries, the gospel had progressed in Henan only with agonizing slowness. In 1922, the province contained just 46 foreign missionaries, 57 Chinese workers and 520 church workers. The number of Protestants at the time numbered 12,418, of whom two-thirds were men.198

A picture of the missionaries and their children at Anyang in 1910. Goforth is seated on the left-hand side, with Mrs Goforth fourth from left. Four of their children—Ruth, Fred, Mary and Wallace—are among the children seated in the front.

In the early 1930s, Goforth’s eyesight started to deteriorate and after a while he became totally blind. In 1934, he and his wife retired to Canada, where ‘China’s greatest evangelist’ finally went to his eternal reward at the age of 76. His idea of ‘retirement’ was quite different from most other people’s, however. As one historian notes,

At the age of seventy-four he returned to Canada, where he spent the last eighteen months of his life travelling and speaking at nearly five hundred meetings. He carried on to the very end, speaking four times on the Sunday before he peacefully died in his sleep. He left behind a striking testimony of what one man could do for God among the teeming millions of the Orient.199

The influential Moody Monthly eulogized him with these words: ‘The hand of God was upon Goforth in a mighty way, and his ministry was almost like that of Charles G. Finney and Evan Roberts combined.’200 Charles Turnbull said: ‘Jonathan Goforth was an electric, radiant personality, flooding his immediate environment with sunlight that was deep in his heart and shone on his face. And God used him in mighty revivals.’201 His wife, who was five years younger than him, died in 1942 at the age of 78. Three years after her death, a book she had been working on, Chinese Diamonds for the King of Kings, was published. It contained a series of testimonies of Chinese believers whose lives had been transformed by Christ. The story of Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth continues to fascinate and inspire Christians decades after their deaths. A best-selling biography, By My Spirit, was published in 1942, and Miracle Lives of China has been reprinted many times.202 Both titles were still in print at the end of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, 50 years after the Goforths had left China, their daughter Mary Goforth Moynan returned there to visit the places where she grew up. With ‘deep gratitude and joy she reported that revival was once again spreading in China, and some of the people God was using were spiritual heirs of the fires that her father … had started many decades before.’203 164 Eugene Myers Harrison, ‘Jonathan Goforth 1859–1936—The Holy Spirit’s Man in China’, in Giants of the Missionary Trail: The Life Stories of Eight Men who Defied Death and Demons (Three Hills, Canada: Prairie Bible Institute, 1973) 165 Rosalind Goforth, Goforth of China (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1937), p29 166 Ibid., p33 167 Ibid., p30 168 Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1983), p189 169 Dave and Neta Jackson, Mask of the Wolf Boy (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), pp138–39 170 Peter Stursberg, The Golden Hope: Christians in China (Toronto: The United Church Publishing House, 1987), p65 171 Jackson, Mask of the Wolf Boy, pp138–39 172 Harrison, ‘Jonathan Goforth 1859–1936’, in Giants of the Missionary Trail 173 Austin, Saving China, pp44–45 174 Ibid., p44 175 Ibid., pp44–45 176 Rosalind Goforth, Chinese Diamonds for the King of Kings (Toronto: Evangelical Publishers, 1945), pp91–92 177 Harrison, ‘Jonathan Goforth 1859–1936’, in Giants of the Missionary Trail

178 Jackson, Mask of the Wolf Boy, p139 179 Harrison, ‘Jonathan Goforth 1859–1936’, in Giants of the Missionary Trail 180 Goforth, Goforth of China, p119 181 Foxe, The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, p325 182 Stursberg, The Golden Hope, p52 183 For a detailed account of the Goforth family’s escape, see Robert Coventry Forsyth (ed.), The China Martyrs of 1900: A Complete Roll of the Christian Heroes Martyred in China in 1900, with Narratives of Survivors (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1904), pp202–18. 184 Stursberg, The Golden Hope, p54 185 Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, pp192–93 186 Henry T. Ford, ‘Zeal! Declension! Recovery!’, China’s Millions, December 1904, p163 187 John D. Woodbridge (ed.), Ambassadors for Christ: Distinguished Representatives of the Message throughout the World (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), p183 188 Other volumes in the ‘Fire & Blood’ series will contain accounts of Jonathan Goforth’s ministry in various other provinces of China. 189 Goforth, Goforth of China, p187 190 Harrison, ‘Jonathan Goforth 1859–1936’, in Giants of the Missionary Trail 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid. 194 Stursberg, The Golden Hope, p70 195 Woodbridge, Ambassadors for Christ, p184 196 The life of Feng Yuxiang is a highly controversial one, with Christian supporters and detractors in equal number. We will examine the impact of his life and ministry in a later chapter. 197 Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, p189 198 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, p84 199 Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, p193 200 Moody Monthly, November 1936 201 Harrison, ‘Jonathan Goforth 1859–1936’, in Giants of the Missionary Trail 202 See Jonathan Goforth, By My Spirit (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1942) and Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth, Miracle Lives of China (New York: Harper & Bros., 1932). 203 Woodbridge, Ambassadors for Christ, p181

Chapter 9 WHEN HEAVEN CAME TO HENAN

J

onathan and Rosalind Goforth visited the Korean peninsula in 1906 and witnessed there at first hand the power of a heaven-sent revival in which tens of thousands of lives were dramatically transformed. This spiritual renewal of the early 1900s provided the impetus that has made South Korea today the most Christian country in Asia. When the couple returned to their home station in Anyang, in the north of Henan Province, the local church leaders immediately asked Goforth to lead a week’s revival meetings among them. Some of the other missionaries were less than enthusiastic about the idea, however, believing that what their colleagues had observed was nothing more than emotionalism stirred up by human agents.

Breakthrough at Anyang

Christians gathered outside a church in Henan in 1900

When Goforth addressed the congregation in Anyang the next Sunday morning, he felt as though he was talking to a stone wall. Halfway through his message, he suddenly stopped and announced, ‘“The Spirit of God is being hindered. It is no use for me to go on speaking. Will several brethren pray?” Several prayers were offered, but they were of a very ordinary nature and clearly without spiritual power. “Stop!” [Goforth] cried. “Plainly there is someone in this audience who is hindering God.”’204 The meeting was dismissed, and everyone went home. During the months that followed, it became clear to him that the problem in Anyang lay with the resistant attitude of the other missionaries. The boys’ school had become so unruly that there were thoughts to close it down, and the whole work seemed to be unravelling. Goforth scheduled eight days of renewal meetings in the spring of 1908. Many people wondered whether he would see results in his home town of

Anyang, where people knew his faults and weaknesses, such as he had seen in Manchuria and Korea. Nonetheless, despite such doubts, a large pavilion was erected in a yard adjoining the church (which had a seating capacity of 600) to accommodate the expected overflow of people. On the morning of the second day, a number of people broke down and confessed their sins. That evening, two female missionaries, trembling under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, begged one another’s forgiveness and were reconciled. The principal of the girls’ school confessed to specific sins that she felt were obstructing God’s work. Many of the students then broke down, confessing their own sins with tears streaming down their cheeks. Hu Fenghua, one of the leading evangelists in Anyang, was asked to lead the prayer meeting on the evening of the fourth day. He bowed his head and said: I must confess my own sins before I attempt to lead this meeting. When the reports of the Manchurian revival began to reach us, I said to the other evangelists, ‘This is not the Holy Spirit’s work. It is just Mr Goforth’s way of manipulating an audience by a sort of mesmeric power. … On the second morning when I saw teacher Fan, from my own village, down in the dust, weeping like a little child and confessing his sins, I was more than disgusted. I assured myself that this could not possibly be the Spirit of God. … As the day progressed, I became more and more scornful at the way things were going. What weak creatures they must be, I thought, to give way as they were doing! On the third day, as the movement increased in intensity and the people seemed to be swept along in spite of themselves, I became a little uneasy. … What if it should turn out that I am actually opposing God? Last night I hardly slept a wink, and this morning I was like a man demented. … My heart was broken and I sobbed like a little child. I knew then that I had been pitting myself against God the Holy Spirit.205

This heart-felt confession from one of the most prominent leaders of the Anyang church brought a spiritual release to the proceedings, and more people confessed their sins and repented before God. In Goforth’s words: ‘The whole audience gave way and melted like wax.’206

From Drug Addict to Evangelist In Anyang there lived an opium addict named Wang Fulin. For years he had believed the gospel, but he remained bound by the powerful narcotic. Goforth visited him and told him that Jesus Christ was more powerful than any drug. With a sad face full of despair, Wang replied: ‘No, no, Pastor. I believe all you preach, but what is the use of believing when this opium binds me as with iron chains? … Don’t waste your time on me. I’m beyond hope.’207

The missionary knew that God could heal and restore Wang, and he would not give up. He made a commitment personally to spend as long as was necessary in a room with the addict, praying for him and helping him to overcome the symptoms. For 10 days, Wang’s body and mind were racked with awful agony. On the 10th night, he felt he could no longer bear the pain and decided to jump over the wall surrounding the house and find some opium. As he rose to his feet, a voice called to him: ‘Wang Fulin, Wang Fulin, beware! Yield now and you are lost.’ As he heard this voice he made one desperate effort, crying aloud, ‘Oh, God, help me. I will die rather than yield.’ Staggering back to his brick bed he threw himself upon it and slept till morning. He wakened, as the future proved, a new and victorious man.208

The ravages of sin had so destroyed Wang’s appearance that even years later his body looked emaciated. However, though desperately poor, he remained free from the cursed drug and grew in faith and grace. Over time, he developed into a powerful evangelist. All those who knew him were astonished at the transformation in his life, and many souls were converted to Christ through his ministry. The effects of his former life had taken their toll, however, and Wang died three years after he was saved. God had used this broken vessel in a powerful way to help to establish the Christian church in Anyang.

A Second Wind for Anyang In the winter of 1908–09, the Goforths conducted another series of tent meetings in Anyang. This time, they found an ‘open heaven’ above the work, and the results were even greater than those of the earlier meetings. Goforth reported: The Anyang blessing was the most wonderful I have ever seen. We had decided on eight days of meetings, but we continued ten days of three meetings a day. Each succeeding day was more wonderful in power than the preceding. On seven different occasions I went prepared to give an address and could not, so mighty and awful was the pressure on the people. They crowded to the front in dozens to pour out agonized confessions. Day by day this continued until the last day. … Such praying! I never heard the like. Sometimes every few minutes it would, like great waves, sweep over the assembly, hundreds joining and many in tears. They grasped the Unseen and were able to get what they asked for. Many prayed for were in a few hours seen kneeling on the platform confessing all with agonized weeping. Oh, how good is our Heavenly Father!209

J. A. Slimmon, another of the missionaries stationed in Anyang, observed these remarkable events and later wrote: One of the most striking things about Mr Goforth’s manner of conducting these meetings was his utter dependence on the Holy Spirit. He would speak, ask for a solo, or prayer, just as he was led at the time, and seemed to be taking his directions from someone on the platform beside him.

Some of the sins confessed went back to pre-converted days, and restitution was promised for things stolen three years ago; some were prostrate on the ground; some bowed down in their seats, unable to get utterance; and at times it seemed as if everyone in the tent was praying at once.210

A joyful group of believers at a Christmas gathering in 1906

The Fire Spreads As the power of God continued to be manifest in this way in Anyang, many of those who had attended these revival meetings rushed back to their villages and encouraged their relatives and friends to come and experience God for themselves. On the seventh day the place was packed out, and the large adjoining pavilion that had been erected for the meetings could not contain the crowds. So many people were gripped by the fear of God that they desired nothing more than to confess their sins and be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. As a result, Goforth was unable to deliver any message for the remainder of the meetings. Visitors who had travelled from outlying areas to attend the meetings were often deeply affected by God’s Spirit even before they had arrived at the church. Many people were found kneeling in the street or in their rooms, confessing their sins and desiring to enter into right relationship with Jesus Christ. On the seventh evening, one of the missionaries confessed that he had been opposing Goforth and telling others that reports from the evangelist’s meetings in other parts of China had been fabricated. He asked Goforth to forgive him, then turned and asked the whole church to forgive him. Another of the male missionaries heard many of the schoolboys confessing their sins publicly, in deep anguish of spirit. He laughed at this in his heart, thinking that they were just mimicking the earlier confessions of the adults—he did not believe that teenage boys could possibly commit

the kinds of depravity they were confessing. Gradually, however, the Holy Spirit had mercy on the man and he, too, came under the transforming power of God. He admitted his pride and folly, and vowed never again to pretend to know more than the Holy Spirit. The meetings were scheduled to conclude after eight days, but such was the mighty hand of God over the town that it was agreed to extend them. Goforth wrote: During these last days a number, who had held out up till then, felt that things were becoming too hot for them and tried to run away. But they found out what a difficult thing it is to escape from a seeking God. Some only got half way home, when the pressure became so unbearable that they had to turn around and come back. Others got all the way home, but, finding no relief, they returned to Anyang.211

One wealthy man, to whom the thought of confessing his sins in public was abhorrent, went back to the church and begged to be allowed to nail his sins to the foot of the cross. When he found a long line of people waiting to do the same, he cried out: ‘“I can’t wait. I’ll burst if I’m not given a chance to confess my sin right away.’ … Then followed the confession—coming like a torrent, bursting through the dam which had tried to hold it in check.’212

Wang Yi One of the Goforths’ best friends in Anyang was a preacher named Wang Yi, who lived in a village about 10 miles (16 kilometres) south of the town. He first came to Christ after visiting the couple’s home in order to find out whether the evil rumours he had heard were true. He asked Goforth if he could inspect the cellar, and after a vigorous search declared: ‘Well, we Chinese are liars. A neighbour of mine told me he had seen in your cellar great crocks filled with children’s flesh salted down.’213 Goforth shared the gospel with his new friend, who later returned with a large group of men from his village and showed them around the evangelist’s home—and cellar. Wang put his trust in Jesus, and within a short time there was a small flourishing church in his village. All the other Christians considered Wang to be a man beyond reproach, and God used him to lead 19 families in his village to Christ. In his own household, 26 of its 28 members were converted. During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Wang was severely injured and almost lost his life. In the years that followed, he seemed to grow more distant and, though he still followed the Lord, his faith was less fervent than before. Before the 1908 revival, Goforth wrote to him and asked him to

come to Anyang to participate in the meetings. Instead, Wang sent his son, claiming that he was too old to come himself.

Goforth with his good friend Wang Yi

The missionary felt that his old friend was hiding something from him, and sent the son back with a message: ‘Tell your father that he simply must come; and that if he doesn’t he will offend his best friend.’ Wang arrived the next morning, resentful that he had been compelled to attend. On the sixth morning, before breakfast, someone told Goforth that Wang was in a terrible state: ‘Late last night, he suddenly fell down on the floor as if he had been shot. Ever since he has been weeping and crying out about his sin. He has sent me to ask you to start the meeting as soon as possible so that he can have a chance to make his confession.’214 Wang finally had the opportunity to find relief by confessing his sins publicly. He explained that after the Boxer persecution in 1900 government officials had visited his home to find out how much property the rebels had stolen or destroyed. The preacher had grossly exaggerated the figures, saying he had lost six mules when in fact it was only three, and had been robbed of 600 bushels of wheat when in fact it was only 300. He was compensated accordingly, and ever since had been carrying a heavy burden of guilt for his dishonesty. Wang declared that he would use all the money he had gained by his lies to build a church in his village, and he was true to his word. Although Anyang had been mightily blessed, the church there continued to experience ebbs and flows in these difficult times. By 1922, there were 390 baptized Protestant Christians in the city, meeting in 10 churches.215 The population of Anyang at the time was estimated at about 290,000, meaning that only one in every 743 of its citizens had embraced Jesus Christ.

Today, however, the gospel seeds that were sown there a century ago have produced a beautiful harvest. There are currently about 200,000 Protestant believers—in both the government-sanctioned Three-Self churches and the house churches—throughout the city and the surrounding Anyang County.216 The combined population of the city and county is just over two million, meaning that today one in 10 people in Anyang are followers of Jesus! The efforts of the early missionaries and Chinese pioneers prepared the ground for a wonderful return of souls for the Kingdom of God in Anyang.

Chinese Diamonds A number of strangers who came along to the meetings out of curiosity and watched from outside found themselves compelled to confess their sins and accept God’s offer of salvation. One young man, whose legs had been cut off by a train, was lying in hospital in another part of the city. He knew nothing about the revival meetings, but as he lay there he came under conviction of sin and was converted. The effect of the revival spread from Anyang to the surrounding districts. At Zhangzun, more than 5,000 people gathered to listen to the gospel. Goforth preached in various parts of Henan, and his meetings invariably followed the same pattern, waiting for the Holy Spirit to remove obstructions before multitudes of people confessed their sin and drew near to God. At one town, he preached for four days without any sign of spiritual movement. Then, on the final day, a breakthrough occurred and people were transformed. One believer reported: Before these meetings there was no special interest in the gospel in my village. But today, when I went home for my noon-meal, about ninety of my fellow villagers gathered around me and asked me to tell them all about Jesus and His way of salvation. Among the new converts were two noted witches. They had Pastor Xi and the elders go back with them to their homes and hold a service. All in their families turned to the Lord.217

On many occasions, Goforth found his meetings interrupted by the demonstrations of demon-possessed people. This was at a time when demon possession was practically unheard of in the West, where most Christians dismissed any such claims as entirely fanciful. Consequently, many ridiculed Goforth when they read his reports from China. On one occasion, a woman began to shout blasphemies in the middle of his message and caused a great commotion. When a Christian woman, who was sitting behind her, grabbed her by the arm and told her to stop, the

demon-possessed woman spat all over her. At another meeting, whenever the Spirit of God moved in great power, a man was roused to intense fury and a torrent of filthy language flowed from his mouth. He was led into a side room of the church, where Goforth and the church leaders met him. Elder Wen prayed for him, and every time he mentioned the name of Jesus Christ, the man lost control. Finally, he fell to the floor, frothing at the mouth, and vomited violently. He was helped back to his feet, and he gave his life to Christ. Years later, both he and his wife were still living consistent Christian lives.

Blessings in Zhengzhou The encouraging initial response to the gospel in Zhengzhou, which was reported by missionaries in the 1890s, mushroomed into revival. In 1908, news of the extraordinary meetings conducted by Goforth reached his colleagues in that city. The Canadian evangelist was in great demand all across China and was unable to visit Zhengzhou for some time, so the church leaders there decided to go ahead and organize their own revival meetings. They reasoned that the same Holy Spirit who was doing such wonderful works elsewhere could also perform them in Zhengzhou with or without the presence of his human instrument, Goforth. Three Chinese preachers, Guo from Taikang and Li and Xu from Zhoukou, were invited to lead the meetings. The first two days did not see any breakthrough. The people sat in the pews without moving, and no confessions were made. The preachers said they had never before ministered to such a hard group of people. After prayer, it was decided to have a third day of meetings, and many prayers went up to heaven, asking God to break down the stubborn hearts of the people. On Monday afternoon, 28 November 1908, a schoolgirl stood to her feet and confessed her sin, crying out for God’s mercy. Two female missionaries reported: Suddenly, as if a great wind filled the chapel, all present were convicted of sin, and the place was filled with men, women and children weeping for their sins and crying to God for forgiveness. We felt powerless to do or say anything, but as we saw some who have caused us much sorrow of heart, and who have wrought much mischief in the church, weeping for sin, our hearts were filled with praise to God that at last they were broken down.218

A fourth day’s meetings were held, and numerous acts of repentance and reconciliation took place. These meetings were a significant milestone in the life of the Christian church in Zhengzhou.

Yang the Champion Boxer Guangshan, the town where the Italian Protestant missionary Alphonso Argento had planted such good seed, was visited by Goforth in December 1915. It was home to perhaps the strongest church in Henan at the time, a wonderful testimony to the godly example set by Argento and the other missionaries there. During eight days of meetings, 154 people were baptized and thousands more heard the gospel for the first time. One of those who came to Christ was a man named Yang, a former champion boxer. He had been the greatest prize-fighter in the region, and nobody had ever knocked him out. Many had lost their fortunes betting against him, and consequently held a grudge against him. When news got around that the great fighter Yang had become a Christian, his enemies saw it as an opportunity to get revenge on him. One day, while he was in the marketplace, a mob of men surrounded him and almost beat him to death. He was found by some friends and carried home. The missionaries wanted the perpetrators arrested, but Yang begged them not to get involved, and refused to bring charges against his attackers. A few months later, he had recovered from his injuries and was again seen walking around the town. His enemies were furious and decided that this time they would finish him off. Yang was so terribly beaten the second time that for months his family despaired for his life. He slowly recovered, and again insisted that no charges be brought against the thugs. Goforth recalled: ‘As soon as he had recovered, he went around the country preaching the gospel. He died a few years after I met him. But it was not before he had led many of his old enemies to Christ. He left a church of 600 members in his own village, and ten other churches scattered throughout the surrounding country.’219

The Wolf Boy

The ‘wolf boy’ in a terrible state after being mauled by a wolf

In a village west of Anyang City lived a 14-year-old boy named Zheng Wuze. One winter’s day, he left his home to visit an aunt. On the way, a hungry wolf rushed at him, jumped up on him and clawed and chewed his face. For months, the people of the village did all they could to relieve the boy’s suffering, but their efforts were in vain and he seemed only to be in worse pain as time went by. When it became apparent that he was soon going to die, they carried Zheng down from the mountains and took him to the mission hospital in Anyang. Such was the horror of his injuries that the ‘wolf boy’ (as he came to be known) spent almost a year in the hospital. The doctors tried to give him a ‘new face’, but after numerous skin grafts it was clear that he would remain horribly disfigured for the rest of his life. A mask was fashioned for him to wear. Through all the months he lay in hospital, Zheng impressed everyone with his positive attitude and his gratitude to the doctors and nurses. They shared the gospel with him, and found a soft heart that soon fell in love with the Lord Jesus. His mother also became a Christian. One evening, at a prayer meeting, the ‘wolf boy’ spoke out in public prayer for the first time, saying: ‘O Lord! I thank you for letting the wolf eat my face, for if he had not I might never have heard of this wonderful Saviour.’220 After recovering from the worst of his injuries, Zheng was given a job at the mission as a water carrier. He lived and worked with the other believers, growing in grace and knowledge. All who came into contact with him were struck by his patient and gentle spirit, and some followed the Lord because of his witness. Four years after his conversion, Zheng went to bathe in a

nearby river. He was swept away and drowned, but his spirit soared to be with the Lord who counted him as one of his treasured possessions.

Reconciliation and Unity Although God was moving in a mighty way in different parts of Henan, and the Christians were being renewed and empowered for service, the lack of labourers meant that many Chinese living in the countryside were a great distance from a church or any kind of spiritual help. One missionary, C. N. Lack, wrote a small book entitled Farmer Wu: The Man who Baptised Himself. It told the story of a man who found Christ but, due to his remote location, was told by the missionaries that it would be some time before they could baptize him. After reading the Bible, he decided that it was of the utmost importance for a follower of Jesus to be baptized immediately. One day, he was on a boat crossing a river when it suddenly lurched forward, throwing him overboard. As he splashed around in the water, the thought came to him, ‘Here is my opportunity to be baptised.’ So, to the surprise of the boatman, instead of hastily clambering out, he plunged once more into the cold water, offering a prayer for God’s blessing and praying for the gift of the Holy Spirit. … The theologians must be left to decide whether his baptism was valid or not; he was only too pleased to confess his Lord and Saviour. … His heart was full of joy as he returned home more determined than ever to witness for his Saviour.221

When Goforth conducted a revival conference in Zhoukou in the winter of 1908–09, the Holy Spirit convicted those in attendance in a powerful way. Meetings continued until after midnight every day as distraught people poured out their hearts to the Lord. A missionary reported from Zhoukou: Even little boys and girls seemed to be swept into the stream, and confessed to lying and swearing, or whatever it might be. I think what gladdened me most was the number of public reconciliations that took place between members who had been at enmity, or had been harbouring some grudge in their hearts. One after another would confess with tears or broken voice that he had had such a grudge in his heart against someone else, telling the time and the cause, and asking forgiveness, which, of course, was at once given. There seemed such a spirit of love and tenderness poured out upon us. … He has blessed us very manifestly, and we are hoping for great things in the time to come.222

Heaven came down to Henan during those blessed days, and thousands of people entered into relationship with God through Jesus Christ for the first time. Many Christians repented of their sins and found new freedom in their lives. People who had stolen things from their neighbours gave them back, and bad marriages were restored to health. Many who for years had been addicted to opium were wonderfully and powerfully delivered and never

returned to the drug again. Perhaps the greatest result was the new unity and love that developed between Christian leaders. Goforth recalled how pastor and elders and deacons all besought God to forgive them for the coldness and laxity of their Christian service. Many prayed earnestly for a deeper experience of the spirit of brotherly love. Others in shame confessed how they hadn’t read their Bibles, how they hadn’t prayed, how they had not made any attempt to save those around them.223 204 Goforth, By My Spirit, pp74–75 205 Ibid., pp78–79 206 Ibid., p80 207 Goforth, Chinese Diamonds, pp42–43 208 Ibid., p43 209 J. Goforth, ‘The Revival in Honan’, China’s Millions, March 1909, p42 210 J. A. Slimmon, ‘The Revival in Honan’, China’s Millions, March 1909, p44 211 Goforth, By My Spirit, p83 212 Ibid., p84 213 Goforth, Chinese Diamonds, pp24–25 214 Goforth, By My Spirit, p88 215 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pX 216 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. There were 68 Three-Self churches in Anyang City alone in 2002, according to a TSPM prayer calendar. 217 Goforth, By My Spirit, p93 218 ‘Account from Mrs Talbot and Miss Leggat’, China’s Millions, March 1909, p45 219 Goforth, By My Spirit, p111 220 Goforth, Chinese Diamonds, p95 221 C. N. Lack, Farmer Wu: The Man Who Baptised Himself (London: China Inland Mission, 1947), pp45–47 222 W. E. Shearer, ‘Gracious Revival in Honan’, China’s Millions, February 1909, p22 223 Goforth, By My Spirit, pp93–94

Chapter 10 FENG YUXIANG: THE CHRISTIAN GENERAL

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General Feng Yuxiang in 1922

he first half of the 20th century was a dire period in China’s history. Civil war, invasion by Japanese forces bent on conquest and the new threat of Communism all combined to create chaos throughout the land. The economy collapsed and inflation reduced wealthy families to beggars. Hundreds of gangs of bandits, ranging from a few individuals to large armies of 10,000 men, brought fear and anguish to the lives of millions. In the midst of this mayhem came a Chinese Christian named Feng Yuxiang, who was a senior general in the Chinese army. His remarkable story divided Christians at the time: some believed that his faith was a front, assumed for convenience, and he was really a renegade warlord; others, including the veteran missionary Jonathan Goforth, befriended him and held him in high regard. Feng was of imposing physical appearance, standing six foot two (1.88 metres) tall, and weighing more than 200 pounds (well over 14 stone, or 91 kilos). He towered above other Chinese men of his generation. His manner was described as ‘every inch a General, yet without a trace of the bombast so often seen in higher class Chinese. His manner is a curious and striking mixture of humility, dignity, and quiet power; he has a handsome, good face. He at once impresses one as true and sincere, a man to be trusted.’224 Feng was just 16 when he joined the army in 1899. He was one of a detachment of soldiers dispatched to quell the Boxer uprising in Baoding in Hebei Province, and found himself inside the mission compound, where many missionaries and Chinese Christians had been cruelly massacred a

short time before. A single female missionary came out and pleaded with the soldiers to spare the lives of the survivors. With great power and passion, she recounted what she and the others had been doing to help the Chinese people, and her words touched the young soldier. Some time later, he was stationed in Beijing when Dr John R. Mott, the American preacher and the founder of the Student Christian Movement, conducted a series of meetings. Feng signed up for one of the classes, and gradually the good news sank into his heart. In 1914, he became a true follower of Jesus Christ. Because of his integrity and God-given wisdom, he rose through the ranks from brigade commander to governor of Henan Province in just 13 months. He later became a general. And while most army divisions were known for their unruly behaviour and for pillaging and raping wherever they went, Feng’s division was markedly different. One Henan man noted: Other soldiers when they came seized our houses and public buildings and made off with anything they took a fancy to, and our wives and daughters were at their mercy, so that the people called them the soldiers of hell. Now General Feng leads his men through the city and nothing is disturbed and nothing is molested. Even the General lives in a tent, as his men do, and everything they need, they buy, and no one is abused. The people are so delighted they call them the soldiers of heaven.225

His soldiers held Feng in great respect, knowing that their commander had his men’s welfare at heart. No smoking, gambling or opium were permitted. Illiterate men were taught how to read, while their wives and families were cared for. Prayers and hymns of thanksgiving were offered before each meal. With as many as 10,000 soldiers under Feng’s command at any given time, the difference between their conduct and that of other troops was dramatic. A missionary, Marshall Broomhall, commented on the radically different approach Feng and his army took towards their enemies: He spared the lives of many southern spies who were caught and brought to him in fear and trembling. Instead of issuing orders for the firing squad, he took the men by the hand and led them throughout the city, showing to them the strength of his regiments, his horses and guns, his grenade corps and other arms, and then, handing them a sum of money, sent them back to tell his enemies what they had seen.226

On several occasions when he was stationed in Henan Province, Feng invited Jonathan Goforth to address his troops and teach them the Bible. Goforth and Feng became close friends. At one meeting, a thousand officers and their wives were present, and almost all expressed a desire to follow the Lord Jesus.227 On another occasion, Goforth spoke to 4,000 troops, and reported: ‘Five hundred of these have already been baptized, and hundreds more are enquiring.’228 Every Sunday, ‘fourteen separate church services

were conducted for [Feng’s] troops. Twelve ‘preaching places’ were erected, apparently out in the open so that large numbers could assemble— and it was estimated that, on an average Sunday, six thousand of his soldiers attended these services and listened to sermons.’229

A mass baptism of hundreds of soldiers under the command of General Feng, at Puyang in 1927 Mennonite Library and Archives

After a meeting conducted by Goforth in 1919, the missionary recorded how Feng knelt down on the platform before the audience and began to pray. Presently he broke down, and with his strong voice quivering with emotion, like Nehemiah and Daniel long ago, he confessed his own sins and the sins of the nation. He confessed that the great enemies of China were not the Japanese but the Chinese themselves, because of their disobedience in the sight of God. R. H. Mathews, a member of the China Inland Mission, was similarly inspired by his encounters with Feng’s troops. In 1921, he reported: It was an inspiration to speak to such eager faces. Young men, strong, in perfect health, and with astonishing earnestness, great numbers of them daily taking notes of the lessons. I spoke on Ephesians and questioned them daily on the preceding subjects … 1,500 voices answering as one. It was glorious! I asked, ‘What were you before you knew the Lord Jesus Christ?’ and like a thunder-clap came the reply: ‘Dead in sin.’ ‘What else?’ ‘Following like silly sheep the course of the world; serving the prince of the power of the air; giving rein to passion; without hope, without God.’ After one address on ‘No room in the inn,’ they sang beautifully, ‘Oh, come to my heart, Lord Jesus, come!’ Tears were not far away. One’s heart was strangely stirred.230

Many missionaries and believers around the world rejoiced at the news of ‘the Christian General’ and his troops, the majority of whom had reportedly repented of their sins and embraced Jesus Christ. Those who knew Feng best said that what motivated him was the dire condition of his country, and he saw his position of influence as God’s calling to help to hold back the advance of the evil that threatened to engulf the nation. A nationwide poll conducted when Feng was governor of Henan found that he was regarded as the second-greatest living Chinese person after Sun Yat-sen. Although many pacifist Christians, then as now, could not believe that a military force of any description could possibly be made up of genuine

followers of Christ, Goforth continued to report on the astonishing events surrounding Feng and his men. In 1921, he wrote: It is not unusual to find officers conducting open-air meetings on the streets. You will not see any soldiers idling around the streets, either day or night; they give all their spare time to study. There is no money spent on smoking, drinking or gambling. The men are eager to deposit any money they get in the army savings bank. … When the army arrived, there were about 300 women of ill repute at Xinyang. It has long been an army centre. The general gave orders that all these women get out within five days. The local officials urged him not to be so drastic, but allow one half to remain. ‘Not even one,’ said the general. … ‘We are the Lord’s soldiers, and cannot permit the devil to do evil before our very eyes.’231

On many occasions, Feng broke down in tears while praying for China. Charles Trumbull said of him that ‘no military man in our generation, perhaps none for centuries, seem[s] to rank with Feng in God’s plans as a soul-winning Christian.’232 Others likened him to Oliver Cromwell from an earlier era. Others were less convinced, however, and dismissed the soldiers’ faith as superficial. The most vehement critics were pacifist Christians who could not in any way reconcile the two words ‘Christian’ and ‘soldiers’.

Feng preaching to thousands of his troops at Kaifeng in 1922

After just six months based in Henan’s capital city, Kaifeng, Feng was transferred to another province by the new governor, Wu Beifu, who was wary of the Christian general. All the good that had been accomplished was quickly undone. When he returned to Henan in 1924, Feng refused to acknowledge Wu’s authority and staged a coup to remove him. He then marched his troops to Beijing and seized control of the national capital. Some accused him of treason, but he defended his actions, claiming that his intentions were to bring ‘peace and unity to the Chinese nation’.

Feng and Goforth

The later years of Feng’s life are somewhat clouded in mystery and controversy. After years of struggle, the battle-weary general travelled to the Soviet Union in 1926, where he received a rousing welcome from Red Army troops in Moscow. The Soviets looked on him as an important ally in their desire to see Marxism conquer China. One source says he was ‘loaded down with Russian arms and supplies and, in return, swore allegiance to the proletariat and promised to fight for the “consummation of the national revolution”.’233 Back in China, it was assumed that Feng would join the Communists in the civil war, but instead he struck a deal with the Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, and fought on his side. This infuriated many, and it seems that all sides concluded that Feng was a man that could no longer be trusted. One Westerner who knew him observed: ‘His ways of throwing his support first on one warring faction and then on the opposing group only confirms the form of treachery that was his innate nature.’234 Feng was finally defeated and his army disbanded in 1930. He eventually died in September 1948, on a Russian ship which caught fire on a voyage to the Soviet Union. 224 Goforth, Chinese Diamonds, p54 225 Stursberg, The Golden Hope, p72 226 Marshall Broomhall, Marshal Feng: A Good Soldier of Christ Jesus (London: China Inland Mission, 1924), p20–21 227 Goforth, Chinese Diamonds, p57 228 Ibid., p58 229 Stursberg, The Golden Hope, p71 230 R. H. Mathews, ‘Among General Feng Yu-Hsiang’s Troops’, China’s Millions, August 1921, p92 231 J. Goforth, ‘A Chinese Christian Army’, China’s Millions, July 1921, p78 232 Stursberg, The Golden Hope, p73 233 Ibid., p76 234 Ibid., p77

Chapter 11 TROPHIES OF GRACE

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Mrs Chu, one of God’s chosen vessels at Taikang

he 1910s saw steady growth among the Protestant churches of Henan, and by the start of the following decade the number of people coming to Christ had markedly increased. There was a number of notable conversions in many places, as God raised up a new generation of leaders to take the reins of the church from the missionaries who had laboured so diligently to plant the seed. It should not be forgotten, however, that the revival in Henan, while unquestionably being a supernatural visitation by God, followed decades of faithful work by a host of courageous missionaries and their Chinese co-workers. Indeed, one Lutheran missionary, observing that the renewing of the church through the revival meetings of Jonathan Goforth came at a time when Christians were exhausted and frustrated by the many years of meagre progress, reflected: How did it all happen? Well, surely, the days when the people began to fall about us, broken in conviction of sin, and seeking the answer to their one question, ‘How can I get saved?’ were not the beginning. We like to look back over the thirty years of preaching the Word as a time when the Lord was all the while preparing for this wonderful season. Many of us have to admit that we have been poor workers, and, although we have worked sincerely and faithfully, yet how we, too, needed a season of refreshing. Praise Him that it came, not only for the work, but for us ourselves as well.235

One trophy of God’s grace was Mrs Chu, from Taikang in eastern Henan. When she died in 1910 at the age of 53, she left behind a strong impression on her fellow believers and the non-Christian community alike. The Chu

family moved to Taikang in 1896, living next door to the Ford family, who served with the CIM. Chu’s brother-in-law soon believed the gospel, but she herself was bitterly opposed to it and refused to listen to anything about God. Her startled missionary neighbours later recalled that ‘she hated the sound of our singing and worship, which she could plainly hear. Often during service or prayers she stood in her courtyard screaming curses at us —even cursing us several generations back—parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents!’236 Blinded by her pride and stubbornness, Mrs Chu carried much bitterness in her heart and her violent temper spilled over whenever she thought someone had wronged her. The Ford family prayed daily for her salvation, asking the Holy Spirit to soften her heart and convict her of sin, righteousness and judgement. Gradually she became friendlier to the Christians, and when her son tragically died it broke her and she became receptive to the good news. She was a woman of little worth in the eyes of the world but she was precious to God, and what little she knew about Christ she believed and acted upon. Within a few months, she had made a firm commitment to follow the Saviour, and she slowly changed from a bitter woman into one with a warm and gentle heart. In time, she proved to be a great blessing to the missionaries. She often travelled with Mrs Ford into the countryside, visiting the scattered Christians and offering encouragement from the scriptures. Mrs Chu died after a short illness in 1910. She was sorely missed by the Christians of Taikang, and remembered as one of the trophies of God’s grace in that town.

The Jailor of Zhengzhou In Zhengzhou, a number of startling conversions took place. The city was a hotbed of witchcraft and idolatry at the time: superstition flourished, and numerous amulets and charms were worn by people in order to ward off evil spirits and curses. In the early 1900s, God worked in Zhengzhou to bring his truth and power to the people in need. In a short space of time, three new men joined the church from an interesting array of backgrounds, including a tax collector, a head cook and the town jailor. The cook first heard the gospel when he took shelter in a church doorway during a severe storm. A believer with a gift for evangelism shared the message of Christ’s love with him, and soon led him to the foot of the cross.

The jailor started attending church in the years following the Boxer Rebellion. He became acquainted with the story of Jesus, but soon drifted away and continued to seek the world. One day, he was returning home when a group of robbers accosted him. The jailor had no money on him, just three melons. He offered these to the outlaws, and they let him go without using their clubs on him. The jailor continued his journey amazed that he had been spared a beating, and found himself declaring: ‘This is surely the Lord’s hand.’ Hearing his own confession brought conviction to the man, and he realized he had been unfaithful and had hardened his heart to Jesus Christ. Right there in the middle of the road, he knelt down and dedicated his life to God. He was soon baptized and became an effective member of the Zhengzhou church. Not willing to keep his faith to himself, he ‘extended [his own blessing] to the prisoners, for he witnessed to them and gave them some gospel portions, with the result that a number became interested and [worshipped] in the prison.’237

Evangelist Wang of Zhengzhou demonstrates the use of the Medicine Tree. The people believed that by passing through the trunk they would be cured of sickness.

Jesus is Stronger than Demons At Xinye in the south of Henan, the people proved comparatively resistant to the gospel until an interesting incident occurred there in 1903, which set the town talking and piqued the curiosity of many people about Christianity for the first time. In April that year, a Lutheran missionary travelled to Xinye. After reaching the town in the evening, he began to look for a place to sleep. He was offered a downstairs room at the inn, but finding it dirty and damp he decided to sleep in the upstairs room, even though it had an idolatrous altar in it. He moved the altar to one corner and enjoyed a good night’s rest.

What he didn’t realize was that the people of the neighbourhood never went near that room, for many people in the past had encountered a demon that lived there. It was said that it ‘sometimes looks like a big snake, sometimes like a tiger, sometimes like a lion. It is fearful!’238 When the townspeople heard that the foreigner was sleeping in the haunted room, they rushed to the inn to see what would happen. They pleaded with him not to sleep there, but the missionary was untroubled and calmly declared, ‘Do not be afraid! There are certainly many evil spirits in China, but our God is stronger than all these evil spirits, and He will protect all who believe and trust in Him.’239 The next morning, a crowd gathered outside the gate of the inn, waiting to see whether the missionary had survived the night. When he appeared, healthy and happy, a report ‘went like wild fire over the Xinye District and helped a great deal to announce the coming of the gospel. Many came to hear the foreigner and to hear the new teaching.’240 Nonetheless, progress in Xinye was painfully slow. By 1922, there were only 203 baptized believers in the county.241 Today, however, the story is totally different. After three decades of powerful revival, Xinye boasts one of the highest concentrations of Christians in any part of Henan Province. There are roughly 186,000 Christians in Xinye County at present— representing about 28 per cent of the population.242

How the Gospel Reached Gong Village

The Zhang family of Xihua County. In the early 20th century, many entire families in Henan dedicated themselves to Christ.

In about 1910, many families turned to Christ at Gong Village, located about 24 miles (39 kilometres) south of Yancheng in central Henan. The

gospel first made an impact there when a man named Yang and his friend Feng attended a county fair and met a Christian bookseller. Yang bought a copy of Matthew’s Gospel and took it home with him—but, finding the genealogy of Jesus in the first hard to understand, he put the book on a shelf where it lay, unread, for the next three years. Banditry increased in the area, and the people of Gong Village were all filled with fear by the plunder and murder that were destroying the communities around them. One night, Yang was so afraid that he was unable to sleep. He remembered the strange book he had purchased years earlier, and took it off the shelf where it had lain for so long. As he read through the Gospel, his heart became strangely attracted to Jesus Christ. He seemed a good and trustworthy leader, the kind that the villagers longed would protect them from the wicked bandits. Yang was convinced that the end of the world was at hand. When he reached the account of Peter’s denial of Jesus and the rooster’s crow, Yang’s own rooster let out a loud crow. This startled him, and he was convinced that the God of the Bible was speaking directly to him, warning him to flee the coming wrath. He and his friend Feng decided they would travel at once to the nearest town that had a church and ask about the way of salvation. When they reached the town of Linying, they were just in time to hear a Chinese preacher proclaiming the gospel on a street corner. He took them to the church, and there both men received Jesus Christ with great joy. They agreed to submit themselves to Bible teaching and returned often to Linying over the following months. When Yang and Feng returned home, they smashed the idols that their ancestors had trusted in for centuries. Their hearts had been so deeply touched by the Holy Spirit that they determined to stand for Christ, regardless of any opposition they encountered. Yang became the leader of a small church in Gong Village, until he was taken ill in 1917. A missionary reported that he died full of the peace which had come to him through faith in our Lord Jesus. … Even on his dying bed he asked [the nurses] to read to him certain passages from the Bible he had learnt to love. On his death bed his friend Mr Feng became the leader. He had been an opium-smoker, but God delivered him from this awful habit. … The Christians at Gong village have now built a small chapel entirely at their own expense, and there are a number of enquirers in that village.243

At Yongcheng, in eastern Henan near the border with Anhui, a number of striking conversions took place in the early 1920s. The missionary C. N.

Lack reported on the annual convention that took place in the city in November 1921: We had three meetings a day, which were well attended, and at some of the gatherings as many as 800 were present. Several hundreds of men and women stayed for the three days on the premises at their own expense. The most distant came from as far as forty miles away. Fifty-six men and women were received into the Church by baptism. Our hearts are gladdened as year by year we notice the increasing number of those who meet to remember the Lord’s death.244

At the time, reports of 56 people giving their lives to Christ were almost unheard of in China, and this was the subject of much rejoicing.

Compassion for the Oppressed

An Anglican schoolteacher teaching a little girl how to write in the 1920s

Two blind evangelists in Henan: Yang Dedao (left) and Zhong Mo (right)

The magnificent Lutheran Hospital at Queshan in central Henan in 1913

Social work helped to open the hearts of many people in Henan to the gospel message. This took many forms, including teaching literacy, digging

wells for villages, providing relief during times of famine and flood, helping teenage girls with life skills so that they could escape prostitution and so on. The blind, lame and crippled people were often ministered to by loving Christians, who were moved by compassion for their plight. Perhaps the two kinds of people most uplifted by the help Christians provided were the lepers and the blind. Both were despised by society and were obliged to beg in order to survive from one day to the next. Hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the province were blind, often because there were no doctors for hundreds of miles to carry out simple cataract removals and other such procedures. The missionaries provided braille Bibles and set up schools where the blind could learn how to read it. Some blind Christians became great preachers of the gospel in Henan, and crowds often gathered to listen to them, amazed to see them ‘reading with their fingers’. Two of the better-known blind evangelists in Henan were Yang Dedao of Zhengzhou, who led many people to faith in Christ, and Zhong Mo, a man who learned to read Braille and often told people, ‘If I had not lost these eyes, I might not have gained my spiritual eyesight.’

Medical Missions

This man was brought in to the Xuzhou Lutheran Hospital in 1920 with his skull almost split in two. He was stitched up and released less than a week later.

Dozens of medical missionaries worked throughout Henan during the first half of the 20th century. These skilled and tireless workers willingly gave up the prospect of wealth and acclaim in their home countries in order to serve Jesus Christ in bandit-infested and disease-ridden China. At first, these medical missionaries operated from small clinics, but later some of the bigger and better-funded denominations built large hospitals in the province, some of which are still in use today. Medical outreach served several purposes for the Kingdom of God. First, and most simply, it aided the people. Second, medical missions helped both foreign and local Christians to come into contact with people who needed to hear the gospel. Whereas efforts to communicate the gospel in words often led to resistance —at times, violent—the sacrificial service provided by the missionary doctors and their Chinese colleagues melted people’s hearts. Thousands of believers later traced their conversion to Christ back to an initial contact they had at a Christian hospital or medical clinic. Many of the cases brought to the Christian hospitals were severe, especially after banditry increased during the 1920s. In January 1920, a 60year-old man was brought in to the Lutheran Hospital at Xuzhou. He had been attacked by robbers during the night and had been left for dead with his skull almost split in half by a deep sword cut. Even these doctors, who had seen all kinds of human suffering, were aghast at the man’s condition. They stitched his skull up and gave him large doses of morphine to ease his pain. Incredibly, he was released from the hospital little more than a week later, fully recovered. These before-and-after photographs show his astonishing cure.

235 Akins, ‘Seasons of Refreshing’, in Gustav Carlberg (ed.), Thirty Years in China 1905–1935 (Minnesota: Augusta Synod, The Board of Foreign Missions, 1937), p35 236 Mrs Ford, ‘Mrs Chu—An Answer to Prayer’, China’s Millions, August 1910, p127 237 E. G. Bevis, ‘From Darkness to Light: Tidings of Blessing at Chenchowfu, Honan’, China’s Millions, November 1916, p133 238 T. Ekeland, Albert Anderson and Olive T. Christensen (eds.), White unto Harvest: A Survey of the Lutheran United Mission (Minneapolis: The Board of Foreign Missions, 1919), p203 239 Ibid., p204 240 Ibid. 241 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pX 242 This figure is made up of approximately 70,000 members of Three-Self churches and 118,000 members of Protestant house churches. See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 243 ‘How the Good News Came to the K’ong Village’, China’s Millions, September 1917, p105 244 C. N. Lack, ‘The Power of God unto Salvation: Striking Incidents of Conversion’, China’s Millions, April 1922, p58

Chapter 12 TWO MISSIONARY MARTYRS

T

he 1920s and ’30s were decades of great danger in Henan, with civil war, disease and banditry rampant throughout the countryside. Two renowned missionaries, Whitfield Guinness in 1927 and Daniel Nelson in 1932, served Christ in different capacities, yet both died as martyrs for the Kingdom of God.

Whitfield Guinness

Whitfield Guinness

Whitfield Guinness was an Englishman, born in Paris in 1869. His father, Grattan Guinness, was a preacher who had once spoken at the tabernacle established by the great 18th-century evangelist George Whitefield, and when his son was born he took the opportunity to name the boy after him. When France declared war on Prussia in 1870, the Guinness family hastened to return to England. During the tumult as thousands of people fled Paris, little Whitfield was trampled under the feet of horses, yet miraculously he survived without injury. From 1883 to 1886, while he was still a teenager, he and his sister Lucy lived with relatives on the Australian island of Tasmania. Just before they commenced the long voyage around the world, he was baptized upon his profession of faith in Christ on 11 September 1883. Once in the Antipodes, Guinness decided to become a missionary, after hearing Hudson Taylor speak at a meeting. He sailed back to England and from 1886 to 1891

attended the prestigious Cambridge University, followed by five years’ study and work at the London Hospital, all to prepare him for service as a medical missionary. Finally, in 1897, he arrived in Henan Province, where his sister Geraldine—Mrs Howard Taylor—was already stationed.

A sick man arriving at the China Inland Mission hospital in Kaifeng in 1909

She was later to have the honour of writing her brother’s biography. In it, she described the huge task that faced him as he started work as one of just two missionary doctors in an area of thousands of square miles: Including Kaifeng, there were in Henan, south of the Yellow River, no fewer than eighty capitals of counties—each one representing an average population of over 350,000—in which no witness for Christ was to be found. There was, moreover, only one medical missionary in the same region—larger than the whole of England. … Imagine thirty millions of people in this southern part of the province, suffering from all the ills that flesh is heir to, practically without the succour of trained physician, surgeon, dentist, or nurse, without provision of any kind for the sick, blind, crippled, or mentally afflicted—what a mass of unrelieved human misery! And when to this was added the heart-hunger and need of these multitudes ‘without Christ … having no hope, and without God in the world’ it was enough, indeed, to make the new arrival thankful beyond words for life and professional skill, and above all for the saving message he had to bring.245

Guinness had been brought up in a strong Christian home, where the word of God was honoured and godly behaviour expected, and in his early years of ministry he struggled to come to terms with the brutal reality of life in China. During one visit to Sheqi in the south of Henan, he wrote: It is awful to see the power of the devil here. I came out from home rather wondering whether there is much difference between its manifestations in China and in our own land. But now I have no doubt about it. The power of the evil one is much less fettered here, and consequently more apparent. Personal temptations are certainly greater—we all find that; and the exhibitions of demoniac rage that we witness are terrible in the extreme. The man I am caring for bears marks of other attacks by the same nephew. One ear is sliced in half, and his back and arms are cut about dreadfully.246

During the Boxer uprising in 1900, Guinness, along with three other missionaries and a baby, miraculously escaped martyrdom at the hands of the rebels, despite being surrounded by bloodthirsty men for 16 fearful

days. Somehow their would-be murderers failed to see them as they hid in various rooms and lofts adjoining the mission premises at Sheqi.247 As the missionaries huddled together in concealment just a few feet from the men who sought their lives, Guinness managed to write some dramatic letters and notes, thinking they would be the last memorial of him and his colleagues in this world. One day, he scribbled this goodbye on a dirty piece of paper: Dear Home Ones, This may be the last time I can write to you. I sit in the dust and dirt on the floor of a barn. For three days we have been rioted, and have fled to three different spots to escape the awful wrath of the people. They little know what they do. We have had to lie down in order to be hid. … We lay still and prayed. We are tired, yet rejoicing. … We shall meet yonder in heaven.248

Weeks later, the fugitives managed to get away to safety by boat. God had spared their lives. After this dramatic escape, there is no doubt that Guinness never saw things in the same way again. The world held no attraction for him, and he spent the rest of his days wholeheartedly for eternal purposes. He served the Chinese faithfully and energetically, and always put the needs of others before his own.

Guinness and three student doctors operating at Kaifeng

Kaifeng, in the north of Henan, was a location that early Protestant missionaries prized. This ancient and important city was the capital of the province (though it later lost that honour to Zhengzhou). Foreigners were not even permitted to enter its gates until 1898, when Robert Powell of the China Inland Mission spent a night there. It was not until 1902 that he was allowed to rent a house and begin evangelistic activity. Guinness joined him later that year, and in due course was appointed to the role of chief doctor at the CIM Hospital in Kaifeng. A mere three years after the Boxer onslaught, he declared that the city had given access to the gospel: The blessing is coming. China is being opened up. The last provincial capital has flung wide its gates—the messenger of the gospel has entered in. Today, any city in China may be entered without let or hindrance. The walls of conservatism are tottering to their fall; the barriers of seclusion are broken down. China yields at last—‘the Rock’ has opened!249

During a furlough in Europe in 1905, God brought Guinness together with Miss Jane Af Sandeberg of Sweden. They were married in Shanghai on September 22, and had a brief honeymoon in Japan before returning to the work in Kaifeng. However, the harshness of Chinese society was difficult for his new bride to cope with. She came from a well-heeled family and had attended a finishing school in Paris in preparation for adult life. She later expressed some of her burdens in a comment that became famous around the world: A great ‘without’ has been written upon heathenism. Men and women are toiling without a Bible, without a Sunday, without a prayer, without songs of praise. They have rulers without justice and without righteousness; homes without peace; marriage without sanctity; young men and girls without ideals and enthusiasms; little children without purity, without innocence; mothers without wisdom or self-control; poverty without relief or sympathy; sickness without skilful help or tender care; sorrow without any to bind up the wounded hearts; sin and lying and crime without a remedy; and worst of all, death without hope.250

To the tired missionaries, testimonies of people’s lives being transformed by Christ were like living water. One Sunday in 1919, a woman named Pan appeared at the morning church service and told Guinness she had come to ‘worship God and follow the Doctrine’. When he asked how she had come to believe in Jesus, she told him how her husband had been aboard a ferry on the Yellow River when a swift current overturned it. He found himself struggling to survive in the water along with about a hundred others. In his desperation, he cried out: ‘If there be a true God, save me! Save me from drowning!’ The man felt a sudden surge of energy and strength, and was one of the few who reached the safety of the shore. Pan knew he owed his life to God’s intervention and was determined to become a Christian, having heard the gospel at the Kaifeng Christian hospital some time before. She and her husband frequently walked the six miles (10 kilometres) into Kaifeng to attend the church service on Sundays. They managed to lead some other families in their home village to faith in Christ, and remained consistent followers of Christ for the remainder of their lives. The year 1927 was to be Guinness’s last in this world. Lawlessness then reigned, with gangs of bandits (one as much as 10,000-strong) roaming throughout the country terrorizing, raping and killing. Guinness caught typhus while he was treating wounded and sick Chinese soldiers, and was already critically ill when anti-foreign mobs decided to attack the hospital. His friends could not bear to see this servant of God helplessly left behind

to die, so they smuggled him—still lying in his bed—out of the building to the railway station. They squeezed his bed into a crowded wagon heading for Beijing, where they assumed he would be protected from harm. However, two bumpy days and nights in that unventilated box proved too much for the weakened missionary doctor, and he died on 12 April 1927, soon after the train reached the capital. Although he did not come to a violent end like most martyrs in China, his life and death were nevertheless those of a martyr for Christ. His sacrificial service to the King of Kings expedited his demise and ushered him into the glorious presence of his Master. Tributes came flooding in after the news of his death spread around the world. A Swedish friend remembered him with these words: My chief impression of Dr Guinness was that Christ had been formed in him to an unusual degree. His whole life radiated Jesus … and his heart was glowing with love to the people of China. I well remember how naturally he spoke of spiritual things and how trustful his prayers were. There was nothing strained or artificial about his Christianity. He lived an overflowing life, for he knew how to receive of the fullness of Christ, not to keep it to himself, but to share it with others, making many rich.251

A Chinese Christian from Zhoukou, who had been trained as a doctor by Guinness, said: Dr Guinness, with a burning heart, sought to save men. Except at such times as he was treating patients, he was constantly giving himself to bringing them the gospel. His object was not only to save their bodies but their souls. Whenever there was a baptismal service, seven or eight out of every ten received into the church would be sure to be ex-patients, converted in the hospital.252

Whitfield Guinness was survived by his wife and two children, a son and a daughter, who were attending school in England at the time of his death. It is said that a man’s family is the best judge of his life. Some weeks after the funeral, a beautiful letter arrived in Kaifeng, written by his daughter, Mary Geraldine, before her father had fallen ill. It said: You are just the best father anyone could ever have, and I thank God for you and mother, and all you mean to me, every time I lift my heart to Him in prayer. I would so like to come and bring you my love myself, but that cannot be. … God bless you richly, daddy darling, especially on the 25th, and may His protecting care keep you safe from all harm and danger until we meet again, either on earth or in heaven—this is the earnest prayer of your own little girl who loves you more and more as the years go on.253

Daniel Nelson

Daniel Nelson

Daniel Nelson was born in the Norwegian town of Søndhorland, near Bergen, on 10 April 1853. Four years after marrying Anna in 1878, he migrated with her to America, where they bought and ran a successful farm in Eagle Grove, Iowa. Their lives were hard-working yet peaceful. They loved Jesus Christ and raised their four children in the fear of the Lord. Many missionaries to the Orient throughout history went through an elaborate and lengthy process to discern the call of God. Nelson, on the other hand, said that while he was laying shingles on the roof of his house in 1889, the call of God came upon him to become a missionary to China. He got up, threw down his hammer, climbed down the ladder and told his wife his experience of the unmistakable call of God to become a missionary to China. Anna, the winsome wife of the shingler, answered, ‘I’ll go where you want me to go.’ Thus began the romantic career of the pioneer, Daniel Nelson, one of the outstanding missionaries of his generation.254

The call to China may have been simple, but the task of getting there was anything but. His son later recalled the reaction his father got when he told people of his decision: The pastor told him he was foolish and advised him to return to his farm. He was reminded of his responsibility to his family. He was reminded that there were enough heathens in America not to mention far-away China. He was reminded that he lacked educational training. He was reminded that he was not an ordained man. He was reminded that there was no Church which had called him. He was reminded that there was no organization which would undertake to support him. He was reminded of a hundred and one difficulties. His friends thought he was unbalanced. His relatives thought he was a fool. Neighbours thought he was crazy. At best he was branded an impractical and radical idealist. Nobody encouraged him. The future looked black indeed.255

Nelson applied to a missionary organization, only to be turned down. Countless reasons for him not to go were recited, but he was sure of his call from God and refused to lose heart. Deciding to obey God at all costs, the family sold their farm and all their worldly possessions and booked passage on a ship to the Orient. When church and mission leaders saw that they

were determined to go with or without their blessing, they allowed Nelson to attend the Augsburg Seminary from 1889 to 1890, after which he and his wife were appointed to work with the Lutheran United Mission. Then, after tearful farewells, the couple and their four children set sail for China, arriving at Shanghai in November 1890. Life was difficult for the new missionaries. They succeeded in renting a small, one-room mud house near Wuhan in Hubei Province, where a fifth child, whom they named John, was born. The summers were terribly hot, and their humble home was filled with mosquitoes. In winter, sub-zero winds howled through the cracks in the roof and walls. Deep sorrow soon came to the Nelsons. Not long after their arrival, their co-worker Sigvald Netland died of cholera and his wife, Oline, also passed away. The Nelsons then lost their 14-year-old daughter, Nora. A few months later, they also lost their infant daughter. This was the darkest moment, when all the forces of hell seemed to be attacking them. Mrs Nelson was sick with cholera and all the children had dysentery. Hundreds of Chinese succumbed to the cholera epidemic and their dead bodies lay unclaimed in the baking sun. … For six whole summers Mr & Mrs Nelson and their children endured the intense heat of the Oriental climate. It was only a miracle that they did not lose more of their loved ones.256

After six years of travelling and preaching with few times of rest, Nelson suffered a physical and emotional breakdown. The Lutheran United Mission sent the exhausted man back to America for eight months in the hope that he would recover, but funds were not available to send the whole family, so his wife had to remain in Wuhan with the children for that time. In due course, Nelson returned to the Orient in better health and threw himself into the work with renewed vigour. He fixed his sights on southern Henan Province, but ‘his enthusiasm and zeal again overtaxed his strength and he suffered another breakdown.’257 This time, funds were found for the whole family to go back to America. They arrived at Portland, Oregon in 1899, and so escaped the Boxer persecution of the following year. The Nelsons again returned to China in 1902, and continued to minister in Henan for many years. From 1911 to1917, Nelson served as superintendent of the American Lutheran Mission, a startling achievement considering how he had been ridiculed and rejected when he first applied to become a missionary. Eventually, he was killed in his home at Xinyang, Henan on 8 February 1926. A large force of bandits had laid siege to the city for a month. Government troops defended it stoutly, but

one evening during a fierce encounter a bullet came through a barricaded window of the Nelson dwelling. It struck the pioneer above the temple and he passed away three hours later without regaining consciousness. For 36 long years he had given unreservedly of his strength and talent for the Chinese people—now he was killed by those he had come to serve.258

Because of the fighting, his funeral could not be held for a month after his death. His son Bert, who had seen his own bride die of illness soon after their wedding, rushed from his station in Luoshan to comfort his grieving mother. When the funeral finally took place, the overwhelming response from the local people showed how much respect they had for Daniel Nelson. Hundreds of Chinese followed the coffin as the procession slowly wound its way to the cemetery. Mrs Nelson was calm and brave. When she was asked how she felt, she answered: ‘I can only thank God for giving us so many happy years of friendship together.’259 Through his faith in God, and despite the discouragement of men, Daniel Nelson had been an outstanding missionary to China. His son Bert, who was just two years old when the family first arrived in the country, was himself martyred in Henan in 1932. Apart from those massacred together, these two men are probably the only father-and-son missionary martyrs in the history of Chinese Christianity. In a book written by Daniel Nelson Jr., the dedication page says, Dedicated to Mother Whose Husband was Killed in China after Thirty-Six Years of Missionary Service, and Whose Son was Martyred in China in 1932.260

245 Taylor, Guinness of Honan, p100 246 Ibid., p109 247 The remarkable account of the group’s survival is told in Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries, pp207–14. 248 Howard Taylor was his brother-in-law and, like Geraldine, a fellow missionary in China. 249 Taylor, Guinness of Honan, p126 250 Ibid., p188 251 Ibid., p272 252 Ibid., p299 253 Ibid., p316 254 Daniel Nelson, The Apostle to the Chinese Communists (Minneapolis: The Board of Foreign Missions of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America, 1935), p4 255 Ibid., pp4–5 256 Ibid., p7 257 Ibid., p8 258 Ibid., p21 259 Ibid. 260 Ibid.

Chapter 13 MARIE MONSEN: ‘THE MOTHER OF THE HOUSE CHURCHES’

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Marie Monsen

issionaries with the American Norwegian China Mission focused their efforts on the south of Henan Province in the early 1900s, and especially Nanyang, Fangcheng and Tanghe. Several new stations were opened between 1901 and 1914. The related, but distinct, Norwegian Lutheran China Mission, whose headquarters were in Norway, sent 10 new missionaries in 1901–02 to reinforce the Lutheran work. There was a multitude of different Lutheran missions: Scandinavians and Scandinavian immigrants in North America spawned a confusing welter of missionary societies during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. Some were Lutherans of a bewildering array of mutations; some were affiliated with the China Inland Mission; some were of other evangelical persuasions. Most came to Henan and neighbouring provinces. By the 1920s many of the groups had amalgamated in the homelands, and more had cooperated so that the Chinese churches that they established worked together as the Lutheran Church in China. Lutherans made up about 40 per cent of Henan Protestants.261

One of the 10 new Norwegian Lutheran China Mission recruits was a single woman named Marie Monsen, who stepped off the gangplank onto Chinese soil on 1 September 1901, just a year after the Boxer violence had exploded across the country. Nobody would have believed that this small, humble figure would have such an impact over the next 30 years that many Christians in Henan today refer to her as ‘the mother of the house churches’.

Submission and Surrender At the turn of the 20th century, many young Scandinavians were queuing up to emigrate to North America, and the churches in Sweden, Denmark and Norway were deeply concerned about this exodus of their best young men and women. Monsen resolved that she would not be one of them. Born in 1878, she was trained as a schoolteacher and had just completed a year studying nursing when she felt a strong call from God to become a missionary to China. In the months that followed, she was torn between this vocation and her desire to pursue a career in Norway. She was finally persuaded to become a missionary when a preacher called Tormod Rettedal reminded her of the experiences of Jonah: ‘At first he was allowed to go his own way, but God didn’t go with him on his self-chosen path. Don’t be a Jonah!’262 For three days Monsen struggled, until she finally surrendered to God with a willing ‘Yes, Lord.’ She never regretted her decision, though many years of hardship lay ahead. She was ready to travel to the Orient in the summer of 1900, but the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion delayed her plans for a year. Then, almost as soon as she arrived on Chinese soil, she faced serious challenges that threatened to force her home. Just a month after arriving in Shanghai, she fell down an iron staircase and lay unconscious for several days with severe concussion. She was to be afflicted with bad headaches for six years, which ended only after she received special prayer and anointing for healing. The mission doctor who was responsible for overseeing Monsen’s recovery from the fall strictly forbade her from both language study and teaching for two years. This was a huge blow to the fledgling missionary. Every missionary she knew had thrown themselves into a few years of language study so they could get by in Chinese—and the other deep desire in her life, to teach, was also to be denied. She had intended to work at a school for missionary children. She felt extremely frustrated—but God had other plans for this young disciple. She was still struggling with this tumultuous start to her missionary career when she contracted malaria a few months after her arrival. A fever took her close to death, and the agony she experienced in body, soul and mind broke her. She later wrote, Nothing would allay the fever and the end of my few months of life on the mission field was expected at any minute. Worse than the fever, however, was the storm that raged in [my] soul. It

seemed so meaningless to have been given the call, which had cost so much to accept and obey, to end in coming out only to die. My heart rebelled. The thing was incomprehensible.263

At the time, she could see only Satan in these attacks, but she later realized that God had allowed these hardships to afflict her so that she would value this life less than eternity, and would become a broken and humble vessel in the hands of God. Eventually, she reached a point where she was able to say: ‘Your will be done!’ On that day, her temperature dropped to normal. She was healed, and jubilantly reported: ‘I knew from that time onward that the call was all of grace.’264 Over time, Monsen realized that her plans for teaching and studying were not God’s plans for her life. The bouts of malaria and the severe headaches from her fall continued for years, leaving her chronically weak and listless. She recalled how, ‘each time I was about to take up school work, malaria sent me to bed and it had to be postponed. This happened again and again. In the end I realized that the Lord Himself had closed that door to me. It came as a heavy blow, and not until long afterwards did I see the wisdom behind it.’265 Being unable to study, or indeed to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, she was obliged to learn Chinese through conversation only. This method, which was not considered very effective, at least allowed her to have contact with Chinese women and relate to them more than she would have done had she taken the conventional route of language study. She was afraid that the mission might send her home to Norway, and so whenever she was strong enough, she threw herself into the work to try to make up for lost time. It has been said that the Kingdom of God advances through demonstrations of human weakness rather than strength, and God was working in Monsen so that his life and power could be manifested through her. Her humble nature was reflected in her honest comments. On one occasion, she said: I became fully convinced that if a Boxer Rebellion should happen again, there would be nothing of the stuff of martyrs in me. In the end the thought of a possible repetition of those sufferings became a nightmare to me, and I began to pray sincerely and earnestly, ‘O Lord, take the call away from me and send me home.’266

One night, she had a vivid dream in which she was chased by people who desired to kill her. Just as she was about to be caught by her pursuers, I was lifted up and carried in a sitting posture so that I could see over their heads. … I was filled with abundant peace and joy. Then I awoke and quite distinctly heard the words: ‘As thy days,

so shall thy strength be.’ And I sighed that it was only a dream. But the dream had a mighty influence, for from that moment I was set free from fear of death at the hands of brutal heathen men.267

She was sent to Nanyang in southern Henan, where she engaged in personal evangelism with Chinese women. This also proved to be a major struggle, and she lamented that ignorance, superstition, suspicion and hatred of foreigners built a thick wall around their hearts and it seemed impossible to break through these fortifications. At the end of each day’s work, it was as though the enemy told me over and over again with untiring persistence, ‘This is throwing your life away; you might stay here and preach to these mud walls with as much result. What might you not have accomplished as a teacher at home in Norway!’268

This lack of progress deeply disappointed her, for she had been expecting great results such as missionaries of her sex had enjoyed in many other parts of the country. One historian, commenting on female missionaries of that period, has said: The early women who went to China gave their time and energy to the ‘women’s world’ which could not be reached by men, and this remained their focus for many decades afterwards. However, the turmoil of war, civil unrest and the social and economic changes of the twentieth century combined to bring down the barriers between the two worlds of men and women. Even in the early years of missionary endeavour, people were surprised at the willingness of Chinese men to attend some of the women’s meetings: they had such hunger for Christian teaching that they did not mind who gave it. Increasingly the women were asked to include men in their meetings. When revival came, people were meeting God through what they heard, and whether the speakers were male or female no longer mattered; they were mere channels for the message.269

A God-Given Discontent For most of Monsen’s first term of seven years in China, this intense struggle with discontentment continued. Towards the end of that time, she started to feel deeply discouraged about the methods and achievements of the mission she was part of, and the lack of power in her own ministry. She asked many missionaries why their experiences were totally opposite to those of the early church in the Book of Acts. She was distressed when she heard a senior missionary ‘with a name’ state categorically that we could not expect to see real Christians like those in the West before the third generation. A new-comer could not raise her voice in controversy with the experience and wisdom of a senior; but in her heart there was, from the first time she heard this view expressed, one continual, inveterate protest against it: ‘The Bible doesn’t say so.’270

She found a clue to why the missionaries were so ineffectual when the faith of an elderly, uneducated Chinese woman challenged her to the core. The

old sister moved into a room right next to hers, and the paper-thin walls meant that Monsen could hear all her prayers and petitions to God. Her neighbour prayed loudly and frequently, and was never afraid to ask her Heavenly Father for things the Norwegian had never dared to ask for because of her conservative Lutheran upbringing. She later recalled: I could hear everything she prayed about, and could watch how her prayers were answered. There seemed to be a great difference between the result of her praying and mine. More than once when I heard her pray, I thought, ‘That will never happen,’ but just ‘that’ did happen. It took some time for me to discover the explanation. She had a living, childlike faith, and to her God difficulties were not difficulties. I had more doubt than faith, so to me difficulties were so tremendous that it would have to take time for God to answer. That is to say, I discovered that I was an unbelieving believer!271

Here was a kind of Christianity more akin to that of the early church, and she wanted to experience it for herself. In 1907–08, news of the tremendous revival sweeping the Korean Peninsula reached Henan. Monsen read the accounts of Jonathan Goforth’s amazing ministry and something clicked inside her. Here was New Testament Christianity being demonstrated, with similar results! She longed to travel to Korea and experience the revival for herself, and she began to pray, asking God to provide the necessary funds so she could make the journey. She later recalled: ‘As I prayed for money and looked for an answer, a definite word was sent instead: “What you want through that journey you may be given here, where you are, in answer to prayer.” The words were a tremendous challenge. I gave my solemn promise: “Then I will pray until I receive.”’272 The moment she accepted this promise from God, a fierce battle ensued… Having pledged myself, I set out to cross the floor of my room to my place of prayer, in order to pray this prayer of revival for the first time. I had taken no more than two or three steps before I was halted. What then happened can only be described as follows: it was as though a boa constrictor had wound its coils around my body and was squeezing the life out of me. I was terrified. Finally, while gasping for breath, I managed to utter the one word: ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ Each time I groaned out the precious Name, it grew easier to breathe, and in the end the ‘serpent’ left me. I stood there dazed. The first conscious thought was: ‘Then prayer means as much as that, and that my promises should be kept means as much as that.’ That experience helped me to endure through the almost twenty years which were to pass before the first small beginnings of revival were visible. Truly, God works unhurriedly!273

God’s Spirit started to stir the little Norwegian firebrand, and Christians and non-Christians alike were astonished at the power and authority with which she ministered his word to them. This power was spiritual in nature, for her voice was always soft and calm, and she never shouted or bellowed out her

message. All traces of the fear of man left her, and all she desired was to know Christ and to stand up for the truth and for the purity of his Church. Monsen was deeply troubled by the compromised lifestyles many missionaries and Chinese church leaders lived, and she challenged them strongly. The question ‘Have you ever really been born again?’ burned through Henan, and in many other parts of China, as God expanded her ministry and made it nationwide. Many Chinese Christians, and even missionaries, realized, when their faith was held up to the light of the word of God, that they had in fact never been born again. Christianity may have been pasted over their lives as a veneer, but they had never been thoroughly converted to Christ or repented of their sins. Another favourite message of hers concerned ‘picking unripe fruit’. She warned Christians not to try to bring anyone into God’s kingdom who was not prepared to repent of their sins fully and to follow the Lord wholeheartedly. She reasoned that many of the problems in the church stemmed from the inclusion of lukewarm believers who had never truly been saved. A colleague wrote: Some of Miss Monsen’s methods were unorthodox, but she was wielding a spiritual sword, the Word of God. She took nothing for granted, since she had found through previous experience that sometimes professing Christians, even Christian workers, lacked a definite commitment of themselves as sinners to the grace of God. … Miss Monsen preached sin and law, sin and law, sin and law, until you felt that you were sitting before the judgement seat. It was a new experience to most, but it stirred them up to get sin dealt with and bring it to the Cross.’274

When she visited the town of Zhenping, one of the Lutheran missionaries described her methods in great detail: Miss Monsen’s plan was first to destroy the false security of the church members. She spoke of the various kinds of patches the unsaved used to hide behind when they tried to persuade themselves they were saved. She then spoke of sin, one sin at a time. It had cost her several days of prayerful struggle before she became willing, as she expressed it, to ‘descend into the miry cess-pool of sin’ in connection with the sixth commandment, against adultery. But it turned out that one of Satan’s well-nigh impregnable strongholds was at last broken into when this particular sin was brought out into the open.275

As news spread throughout the country that a single woman was challenging missionaries and church leaders about their very salvation, it is not surprising that a chorus of criticism broke out. Ironically, one of the main charges against her from her colleagues was that she was a Pentecostal, and her ministry was based on emotionalism. The facts, however, were that she belonged to a Lutheran mission, and that all or most

of her ministry was among Lutherans, Southern Baptists, Methodists and CIM workers, none of whom were Pentecostal.

Six Chinese evangelists in Henan in 1933. God raised up many such preachers during the revival.

Far from preaching so as to stir up people’s emotions, every report said she was a very gentle woman. Even a contemporary historian seemed a little confused as to how she was so effective for Christ. ‘She was by all accounts softly-spoken,’ he wrote, ‘and it is not altogether clear why she prompted such a strong response.’276 Nonetheless, throughout Monsen’s ministry in China, even up to the day of her departure, allegations of ‘emotionalism’ were hurled at her, however much they were refuted by eyewitnesses at her meetings. In 1930, the missionary Mary Crawford wrote from Shandong Province: None of these ‘Born-Again’ revivals had the least taint of sensationalism about them. The singing was the usual mediocre singing of the congregation. … Miss Monsen herself is one of the quietest speakers I have ever heard, but anyone with any discernment at all could see and feel that she was depending upon the promises of God in a remarkable way.277

Perhaps the principal source of the criticism of her ministry was the simple fact she was a woman. Most Christians at the time believed that women were not permitted to preach or minister in any way. Monsen never tried to argue her position, but just continued to share as doors opened to her, and rested in the knowledge that God was with her. A modern-day Chinese house-church leader says of her ministry: Marie Monsen was different from most other missionaries. She didn’t seem to be too concerned with making a good impression with the Chinese Church leaders. She often told them, ‘You are all hypocrites! You confess Jesus Christ with your lips while your hearts are not fully committed to Him! Repent before it is too late to escape God’s judgment!’ She brought fire from the altar of God.

She told the Christians it wasn’t enough to study the lives of born-again believers, they themselves must be born again if they were to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Such teaching discarded the usual emphasis on ‘head

knowledge’ and showed each individual they were personally responsible before God for their own inner spiritual life. Hearts were convicted of sin and fires of revival swept through the villages of central China wherever she went.278

Confession and Restitution In place after place, Monsen’s messages were followed by deep confessions of sin and practical acts of repentance. People who had stolen things from their neighbours or friends were convicted by the Holy Spirit and returned them. One man filled a wheelbarrow with things he needed to take back to their rightful owners. Ancient grudges between people were renounced and forgiven. Men confessed to beating their wives, and women confessed their own sins—including infanticide, which was prevalent in that society even as it is today through gender-selective abortion. At one meeting, Monsen was taken aback when the women broke down in tears. One by one, they admitted: ‘I have killed three.’ ‘And I five…’ ‘I took the lives of eight of my children.’ ‘And I of thirteen, but they were all girls.’279

She was both horrified by the black deeds the women had done and thrilled that they had confessed them before the throne of God. She wrote: ‘It was the first time … that I heard women, who knew we regarded the killing of infants as sin, confess that they themselves had committed this particular sin. They all knew, of course, of many others who had done it. This was the first time I had seen the Holy Spirit deal with a whole group—a miracle indeed.’280 After the Spirit had dealt with church members in a particular place, invariably there followed a time of evangelism as cleansed men and women went out to surrounding villages and towns, proclaiming the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. Whereas previously many believers had been able only to speak of Christ’s transforming power, now they were able to demonstrate it in their own lives. Thousands of people, seeing the difference, put their trust in God. On numerous occasions, people came to faith in Christ after having a dream or vision of God’s impending judgement. Some had dreams that revealed the true condition of their lives. One woman testified that ‘a

shining figure had appeared to her and told her that this was her last chance of receiving salvation.’281 Monsen’s deep longing that the Chinese would experience a biblical kind of Christianity was being answered.

Monsen with the widow of the famous Chinese pastor Xi Shengmo in 1929

In one meeting, the convicting presence of the Holy Spirit was so real that a soldier who had strayed into the building knelt in repentance and received new life in Jesus Christ. Immediately the joy of being forgiven overwhelmed him, and peace flooded his beaming face. He stood up and declared: It will be a short life of joy for me here on earth, but I shall be saved from myself and my sins for ever. Will you pray together for me until you hear a shot from the military camp? I stole some ammunition and sold it, and there is a death penalty for that. I must go back now and confess to the Captain. … We shall meet again in heaven.282

The presence of Almighty God was so tangible in those meetings. The soldier had not been pushed into the Kingdom of God by theological argument or human persuasion. Indeed, he had never heard a word of the gospel until he walked into the church that day. Now he was willing to die in exchange for the new life he had just experienced. The young man ran off, with a radiant smile on his face. Monsen recorded: We stood there praying in a ring, holding one another’s hands. We thought it was a very long time we had to wait, praying and listening for that shot. Suddenly he was there again in our midst, smiling. He had confessed everything and given a careful, detailed account of what he had stolen. The Captain sat silent a moment, then sighed heavily and said, ‘As you have now become a new man and will not steal any more, I don’t see why you should die. You may go.’283

The response of people to the conviction of the Holy Spirit was not always positive. Occasionally people fled in terror when the terrible power of God descended upon them, including even some church leaders and elders. People often said to Monsen, ‘Your words are like knives’ or ‘Your words strike me like thunderbolts.’ One elderly Christian said: ‘All my wrongdoings have been spread out before me like wares piled up on a counter.’284

A Wall of Fire Over the years, as God continued to mould the Norwegian missionary, she lost the fear of man and was frequently saturated with peace and a bold faith, even in the most dangerous circumstances. These were times of lawlessness and murder throughout the Chinese countryside. The civil war had reduced the country to anarchy and economic collapse, and mobs of hundreds of armed men pillaged and raped their way through towns and villages. One night, even as the town she was in was being ransacked by outlaws, Monsen received a powerful vision that greatly strengthened her faith. She felt two heavy blows on the right shoulder, and then she clearly heard the words ‘The Lord is a wall of fire round about his people.’285 Immediately, fear was replaced by the peace of God. She later recalled: ‘It was as if the roof had been lifted off the house, and sitting up in bed I was surrounded by a very high wall of fire. It gave out no heat. A swarm of arrows came flying from beyond the wall, but not one of them reached me. The vision lasted perhaps only a second or two.’286 Most missionaries in China at the time, and especially women, were too afraid to travel because of the threat of violent crime. Many times Monsen was advised to stay at home, but she would always pray and if God guided her to go, she would set out regardless of any perceived dangers. On one occasion, she was on a raft drifting down a bandit-infested river. A robber came to the bank, pointed his gun at the passengers and ordered the boatmen to stop. The missionary turned to face the man and began to pray that God would intervene. Suddenly, ‘he began to run more swiftly than [we] had ever seen a Chinese run before.’287 Later, the boatmen were told that the man had fled because he saw a great angel protecting the raft. On another occasion, three armed men jumped out from behind a rock as Monsen was passing by in a donkey cart. They seized the donkeys and pointed a gun at her, but she prayed: ‘Lord, thou art a wall of fire between them and me.’ She stared at the men for a few moments, and later recalled: I was kept perfectly calm and without fear, even peaceful. The wall of fire was there between us. Not a word was spoken. Then the bandit who had been aiming at me turned to the other two and said, ‘Let go the animals, these people may continue their journey.’288

Her profound confidence in the Lord’s promises spread to many of the Chinese women, for she taught them that nothing ever happens to the child of God apart from his will. This revelation banished all their fear. Often

when their town was threatened with attack, the Christians would come together and call on the Lord in prayer, only for the bandits to change direction unexpectedly and leave them unmolested. On countless occasions, lust-filled men tried to lay hands on Monsen with evil intentions, but she prayed and trusted God and each time the danger passed. Once, a wicked mob invaded the town where she had been teaching the word of God. Dozens of people from the neighbourhood climbed over the walls of the mission compound, clutching little bags of valuables, reasoning that there was less chance of being attacked and robbed at the mission than in their homes. Bullets whistled about the heads of the people gathered there, and gunfire and even loud explosions were heard for several hours as the bandits plundered and killed. Throughout this ordeal, the Christians calmly prayed for God’s protection. The next day, neighbours from across the street came to visit Monsen and the other believers, and told them that from time to time, when the firing had been less intense, they had poked their heads out of their front doors to see what was going on. More than one non-Christian family asked whether they could come into the compound next time there was an attack by outlaws, ‘since you have protection.’ Monsen asked them what they meant, and they explained: ‘Three soldiers stood on guard up on the high roof of the Gospel Hall, one at each end and one in the middle. A fourth had been seated on the porch over the main gate. These soldiers had kept watch in every direction.’ ‘Who do you think it was?’ ‘Soldiers the General had sent to protect you.’ ‘Did they look like the General’s soldiers?’ ‘They were taller than any soldiers we had seen.’ ‘Were they armed?’ ‘We didn’t see that, we only saw their silhouettes, we didn’t dare take time to look at them carefully.’ ‘Could you see their faces?’ ‘We saw them best of all.’ ‘How was that?’ ‘They shone.’ . . . ‘It must have been angels on guard.’289

Gradually, Monsen matured from the nervous young lady she had been when she first arrived in China into a powerful servant of God who had learned to hear and trust the Shepherd’s voice in all circumstances. Once in 1929 she was travelling aboard a ship off the coast of Shandong Province

when a group of pirates boarded the vessel and took it over. For 23 days, until they eventually left the ship, she calmly and prayerfully prevailed upon these bloodthirsty men not to harm any of the passengers.290

My Father Runs the Trains At the height of her ministry in the Orient, Monsen was in great demand. She travelled widely around more than a dozen provinces, sharing the message God had placed on her heart. Everywhere both individuals and whole churches were transformed, and many were pressed into the kingdom of heaven. At one town, she planned to leave by train on a Saturday afternoon after the conclusion of some powerful meetings. She had an appointment at a town some distance away and needed all the connecting trains to arrive on time. As she was praying that morning, however, the Lord clearly told her that she should not leave the town until Monday. When she told this to the senior missionary, he immediately replied that it couldn’t be God telling her to stay, for there were no trains on Monday and she would be sure to miss her appointment. She returned to her room and again asked God for guidance. Again the words came: ‘Leave on Monday.’ She had no idea why God had said this, and her colleague was becoming increasingly agitated; but Monsen could only reply: ‘Yes, Lord, I will obey. I believe you will see that I catch a train on Monday.’ The peace of God filled her heart and she was assured that all would be well. She assured her colleague, ‘My Father runs the trains’—but when he realized that she would not change her mind, he angrily expressed his displeasure. On the Sunday evening, the local Chinese pastor asked Monsen if he could talk with her. He admitted that he had never experienced the inner peace of God in his life, and asked how he could be saved. She led him to true faith in Jesus Christ, and he received the Lord with great joy. Monsen realized that this was the reason why God had delayed her departure. At breakfast on the Monday morning, she asked the other missionary whether he would be kind enough to drive her to the station. He protested that there was no point, because there were no trains running through that town on Mondays. After some discussion, however, he acceded to her request—perhaps so that he could show her how foolish it was. They made their way through the narrow streets and just as they pulled up outside the station, there was a train, preparing to depart. Monsen later recalled:

In the few seconds before the whistle sounded for departure, I heard that the provincial governor had telegraphed for the new carriage he had standing there and it had to be sent immediately at express speed to the capital, the very city I had to reach that Monday in order to catch a northbound train. We flashed past every station. Never before nor since has it been my lot to travel in such a magnificent carriage.291

A Long-Lasting Legacy In the early 1930s, Monsen received news that her elderly mother back home in Norway needed care. She was torn between continuing the fruitful ministry God had given her in China and returning home, but over time the Holy Spirit showed her that her service in the Orient had come to its conclusion. She returned to Europe in 1932, leaving behind thousands of new believers in Henan Province and other parts of China, and hundreds of zealous churches that had once been full of lukewarm Christians.292 Although she never returned to China, the impact of her ministry was felt for decades. Leslie Lyall, who was himself later used by God to bring revival, arrived in the Orient just three years before her departure. He observed: The pioneer of the spiritual ‘new life movement’, the hand-maiden upon whom the Spirit was first poured out, was Marie Monsen of Norway. Her surgical skill in exposing the sins hidden within the Church and lurking behind the smiling exterior of many a trusted Christian—even many a trusted Christian leader—and her quiet insistence on a clear-cut experience of the new birth, set the pattern for others to follow.293

Many people tried to explain how she had been so effective, but all attempts to do so in human terms failed. Her power came not from any tactic or technique but from the Holy Spirit. One Lutheran missionary asked: But what was it anyway? Why did people get so pricked in heart? Never had we seen anything just like this, such conviction of sin, confession, such seeking for grace, antagonism, criticism, and what not! … Some people rejoiced, feeling it was a work of God, others trembled, fearing something evil had come upon us. All the time the messages were going on, calm and steady as ever, and with the pricking going deeper and deeper, and getting more and more people. … And the speaker? What it cost her to go on far beyond a reasonable service for her strength no one knows. What a struggle she may have had to thus stand before us so calm and yielded to God and in such spiritual power. … How grateful we should be that the Lord chose one like her to bring in the revival in earnest.294

The church in Henan was to experience a time of great anguish and trial when the Japanese invaded China in 1937. Later, the rise of Communism inflicted decades of oppression on the Body of Christ, so that many onlookers believed that the church in China had been totally eliminated. Yet many Christians were able to withstand the storms that buffeted them for so

many years because of the message and example of the little woman from Norway. In 1950, as fierce persecution threatened to obliterate the Christians in Henan, one church leader declared: ‘We could never have been able to face the attack that came … if the Lord had not sent us the revival of the years after 1930. Now, we are able to stand in the evil day. The foundation that was laid then stands sure.’295

The unveiling of the memorial headstone in honour of Monsen in Bergen in Norway on 1 September 2001

In the early years of Monsen’s ministry, after she went through the dark experience of falling down the stairs and contracting malaria, she often felt tempted to return to the comforts of her home country. She remained in Henan, however, and persisted in the call God had placed on her life. At her lowest point, when the mission work in Nanyang seemed entirely fruitless and no one showed any interest in the gospel, God consoled her with this promise from the Bible: ‘A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time.’296 There were only a few dozen Christians in Nanyang when God gave her this assurance, and there was no mass turning to Christ there during her years in China. In 1922, there were just 318 baptized Protestant Christians there,297 and yet today Nanyang is one of the strongest Christian areas in the whole of China. Nanyang City contains more than 415,000 believers, representing nearly 25 per cent of its population of 1.7 million people.298 Many house-church leaders have emerged from this blessed part of southern Henan. God has truly made the little church in Nanyang into ‘a strong nation’. For this reason, many Christians in the province today, more than a century after Monsen began her ministry in China, still refer to her fondly as ‘the mother of the house churches’.

Honouring Marie Monsen Monsen continued to live in the Norwegian city of Bergen until 1962, when she went to her eternal reward at the age of 94. Decades later, in 1999, Brother Yun, whose remarkable story has been told in the best-selling book The Heavenly Man, happened to be visiting Bergen and was asked by some local pastors whether he would like to visit Monsen’s grave. He hails from Nanyang, where she spent most of her time in China, and was very excited at the prospect. He later wrote: I wondered if any other Chinese Christian had ever enjoyed the privilege I was about to enjoy. When she came to our part of China there were few Christians and the church was weak. Today there are millions of believers. On their behalf I planned to offer thanks to God for her life.299

On arriving at the cemetery, Yun was shocked to discover that Monsen’s grave had been left untended for many years, and was now just a patch of grass without a headstone. In Chinese culture, such dishonour is considered to be an insult to the deceased, and Yun was deeply grieved. With a heavy heart, he sternly told the Norwegian Christians who were with him: You must honour this woman of God! I will give you two years to construct a new grave and headstone in memory of Marie Monsen. If you fail to do this, I will personally arrange for some Christian brothers to walk all the way from China to Norway to build one! Many brothers in China are skilled stonecutters because of their years in prison labour camps for the sake of the gospel. If you don’t care enough, they will be more than willing to do it!300

Thanks to the prompting of Brother Yun, on 1 September 2001—exactly 100 years to the day since Marie Monsen first set foot in China—more than 300 Norwegian Christians gathered in the graveyard in Bergen for a special ceremony of prayer and dedication. A beautiful new headstone was unveiled in her memory. 261 Christensen, In War and Famine, p52 262 Marie Monsen (trans. Joy Guinness), The Awakening: Revival in China, a Work of the Holy Spirit (London: China Inland Mission, 1961), p22 263 Ibid., p24 264 Valerie Griffiths, Not Less than Everything: The Courageous Women Who Carried the Christian Gospel to China (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2004), p247 265 Monsen, The Awakening, p25 266 Marie Monsen (trans. Joy Guinness), A Wall of Fire (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1967), p15 267 Monsen, A Wall of Fire, p16. The scripture she heard is Deuteronomy 33:25 (KJV). 268 Monsen, The Awakening, p25 269 Griffiths, Not Less than Everything, p245 270 Monsen, The Awakening, p27 271 Ibid. 272 Ibid., p28 273 Ibid. 274 Victor E. Swenson, Parents of Many: Forty-five Years as Missionaries in Old, New, and Divided China (Rock Island, Ill.: Augustana Press, 1959), pp187 & 189–90

275 Gustav Carlberg, China in Revival (Rock Island, Ill.: Augustana Book Concern, 1936), pp70–71 276 Daniel Bays’ biography of Marie Monsen, in Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions 277 Griffiths, Not Less than Everything, p261 278 Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway, The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun (London: Monarch, 2002), pp19–20 279 Monsen, The Awakening, p39 280 Ibid., p40 281 Ibid., p43 282 Ibid., pp122–23 283 Ibid., p123 284 Ibid. 285 Zechariah 2:5 (KJV) 286 Monsen, A Wall of Fire, pp27–28 287 Ibid., p42 288 Ibid., p55 289 Marie Monsen (trans. Joy Guinness), A Present Help (London: China Inland Mission, 1960), pp37–38 290 This story will be told in full in the Shandong volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 291 Monsen, A Wall of Fire, p62 292 Even today, there is some dispute about why Monsen returned to Norway. While the official reason given has always been that she needed to care for her mother, others claim that her radical style of ministry was more than the Lutheran mission could cope with and it removed her from the field despite being in the midst of powerful revival. Norwegian Christian friends have told me that the one thing that infuriated the mission was her baptism as an adult, which demonstrated in effect her opposition to the Lutheran practice of baptizing children. At the time, this issue was being fiercely debated in Norway, and strongly defended by the Lutheran Church. Whatever the true reason for the sudden end of Monsen’s missionary career—in the midst of revival at the age of just 54—she never publicly contradicted the official line. For years after her return to Norway, her ministry was largely rejected; but her books inspired so many hundreds of thousands of people in Scandinavia and around the world that over time her legacy has been accepted by most Lutherans and today they hold her in great honour. 293 Griffiths, Not Less than Everything, p261 294 Akins, ‘Seasons of Refreshing’, in Carlberg, Thirty Years in China, pp39–40 295 Monsen, The Awakening, p86 296 Isaiah 60:22 (KJV) 297 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pXI 298 This figure is made up of approximately 145,000 members of Three-Self churches, 245,000 members of Protestant house churches and more than 25,000 Catholics. See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 299 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, p16 300 Ibid., pp16–17

Chapter 14 KAIFENG: AN ELUSIVE TARGET

Bishop William White of Kaifeng being pushed around in a wheelbarrow, a common form of transportation in China in the early 20th century

M

any missionaries longed to establish evangelistic work in Kaifeng, in the north of Henan, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was an ancient and important city, and at the time was the capital of the province (though it later lost that honour to Zhengzhou). The presence of the largest Jewish community in China was also an unusual attraction to the foreign Christians. Bishop William White of Canada was one of the strongest advocates for both the Jews and missions in Kaifeng in the early decades of the last century. He even collected the remains of Jews and ‘shipped them to the University of Cincinnati in the United States.’301

A Crack in the Wall Since it was such a proud and prestigious city, the authorities in Kaifeng determined to do all they could to prevent Christianity taking root there. In the late 1800s, even Chinese Christians were not permitted to enter its gates and were severely punished if they attempted to do so. Despite these obstacles, however, God found a way to penetrate its walls and gain a witness for himself. In 1881, a man named Zhu noticed someone selling books by the roadside outside the city walls. This man was a Chinese colporteur from the neighbouring province of Hubei. Zhu stopped and bought a book, but moments later a local scholar named Wang rushed up to him and warned him that if he tried to read it he would go blind. Angrily, Wang kicked the colporteur’s box over, scattering his gospel books in the

dirt, and attacked the man himself, beating and cursing him. Then he ordered the bystanders to gather up the remaining books and burn them. None of this deterred Zhu, and he went home and began to read the book he had bought, and several others he had hidden up his coat sleeve while the other people had been picking them up to destroy them. Among the books he now had were copies of the four Gospels and tracts entitled ‘A Christian Catechism’ and ‘A Guide to Heaven’. As he read these, the Holy Spirit touched his heart. He was convinced that the message of Christ was true and that the idols he had worshipped since his youth were false, so he destroyed them. He felt uneasy about keeping the good news to himself, so he told his neighbours. Within a short while, everyone started calling him ‘Zhu the Christian’. Zhu did not meet another Christian for years, but he continued to grow in Christ by studying the Gospels and praying. He developed a deep fear of God after Wang, the scholar who had so viciously attacked the bookseller outside the city wall, suddenly lost his mind and became dangerously insane. ‘[The] local magistrate had him chained to a large millstone in an outhouse. The poor maniac would not allow himself to be clothed, and he remained naked to the day of his death some ten years later. Heaven’s judgment on this man awed Zhu.’302 One day, he heard that some missionaries had settled in the town of Jixian, several days’ journey to the north. Zhu visited them and was formally converted to Christ and received instruction. When two colporteurs visited him in 1898, they found him meeting with a group of disciples for worship in a tea shop. In the same year, the missionary Robert Powell of the China Inland Mission spent a night in Kaifeng. Until then, foreigners had not been permitted even to enter the city’s gates. It was a further four years before Powell was allowed to rent a house and begin his evangelistic activity. In Zhu, he recognized a ‘fine, warm-hearted and strong character, one who, from the way he managed his band of followers, might have been a Pastor of long standing. In all there were about thirteen who seemed established in the faith, while others were under instruction.’303 Sidney Carr and Whitfield Guinness, later to become one of China’s most famous missionary statesmen, joined Powell in 1902. By the end of that decade, several more mission organizations had sent workers to the city.

The Canadian Anglicans began work in China in 1906, establishing their national base and episcopal seat in Kaifeng the following year.

Breaking Up Hard Ground Jonathan Goforth was twice asked to come to Kaifeng and hold revival meetings there. On the first occasion, he experienced no freedom of the Holy Spirit in the meetings. It was as though many present were strongly opposing the work of God in their hearts and nothing could be done until that wall of resistance had been broken down. During the final meeting, a doctor named Gao cried out to a colleague: ‘God is being held up here because of us. We are at enmity with each other and everyone knows it. Let us get rid of this hindrance.’304 The other man immediately stood up and confessed his part in the quarrel. This honest display of emotion, so rare in the Chinese culture of the day and so frowned-upon, caused the whole audience to break down. A large number of people were deeply affected. Many cried out for God’s mercy at the tops of their voices. Gao, the man who had courageously taken the first step, was later used greatly by God as a pioneer missionary in Gansu Province. During Goforth’s second visit, in November 1908, nothing seemed to happen for eight days. Japan’s armed forces had inflicted extreme misery on China just before these meetings and the whole country felt vengeful towards them. A number of students in the public schools had written vows of undying hatred for the Japanese with their own blood. The boys at Kaifeng’s Christian school were confused as to how they should respond to the national disaster. The situation was exacerbated when a note was delivered to them from the girls’ school, which said: ‘We thought you were men, and that you would naturally take the lead in the defence of your country. But we now see that we were mistaken. You’re such a bunch of sissies. We’re so disgusted with you that we’ve decided to send you some girls’ clothes to put on.’305 This had all happened just before Goforth’s arrival in the city, and so the atmosphere was understandably tense. The evangelist finished the series of meetings without any breakthrough, but while the school principal was taking him to the railway station Goforth encouraged him to continue them without him. The principal thought: ‘If this man, who has so much experience, is unable to do anything, what can I do?’ Nonetheless, he called

the boys together for a meeting—and once the most senior Chinese teacher had confessed that he was a frequent smoker and had lied when he had been confronted about it, it was as though a spiritual dam had burst. Goforth recorded: Conviction swept over the students, the non-Christians as well as the Christians. One of the nonChristian students, a boy who had been the ring-leader in every insubordination and devilry, was terribly broken up and was the first to confess his sins. Many of the boys followed his example. By the following afternoon as many as 55 of the non-Christian students had professed Christ as their Saviour.306

In 1909, the missionary C. Howard Bird remembered how God had visited the Christians through Goforth’s ministry. He wrote: There has been quite a different spirit amongst the members since that visitation. … It was an especial joy on Whit Sunday to see thirteen (eight men and five women) enter the church by baptism. … All but one are from the city itself, an exceptional thing in China, where the majority of the converts are from the country. It is an especial subject for praise that Kaifeng, formerly such a hard city, should now be bearing such fruit. … The local church members now number thirty-six, besides five or six belonging to churches in other places.307

Bible Women

The 84-year-old Sister Yun (left) and 74-year-old Mrs Song, two of the earliest believers in Kaifeng

One of the greatest blessings in the early days of the church in Kaifeng (as in many places throughout the country) was the emergence of ‘Bible women’. These were women who had had a profound experience of Christ and desired to make him known. Because of the strict barriers between men and women in China at the time, the task of reaching and teaching women was primarily left to other women. In Kaifeng, two elderly women made a great impact on the lives of others in the early 20th century, before they both passed away in 1917. Mrs Song had lived a life of depravity and hopeless opium addiction before she met the Lord and gave her life to him in the late 1890s. During and just after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, when the church was scattered and the

missionaries had fled, the fledgeling Kaifeng church met in her home. She grew in grace and faith and was a great help to the missionaries in the hospital work, where she ministered to both the patients’ physical and their spiritual needs. Sister Yun came from a family of Vegetarians. At this time in China, this was not merely a dietary choice, as for many in the West today, but a commitment to a strict religious sect. Yun spent all her time travelling around and visiting idolatrous temples and monasteries, where she offered incense to the gods. One day, she was befriended by the missionary Mrs Howard Bird, who lovingly introduced her to Jesus Christ. Although she was now a believer, the grip of vegetarianism was so strong that it took a further two years before she was able fully to break her vows. Few Vegetarians embraced the gospel in China at the time. A missionary described the experience of one woman in Henan after her conversion to Christ: She heard the gospel for the first time that day, and she said: ‘I have given my whole heart to the idols; but now I give my whole heart to Jesus.’ She was asked, ‘Are you willing to break your vow?’ She said, ‘Yes, I am.’ They prepared an egg for her, and put it in a basin. She took the basin, and said, ‘I will first pray to Jesus,’ and she knelt down and prayed, and then ate the egg. That does not mean very much to us, perhaps; but oh! It means so much to some of these women who, by abstaining from meat, have been storing up merit for years and years. When they see the Cross and the Lord Who died for them, and when they realize that the work of salvation is completed and that the merit is all God’s, then they can break that chain.308

For the next decade the elderly Sister Yun was a blessing to many in Kaifeng. She never missed a meeting, and remained steadfast to the Lord despite much persecution from her relatives. Nonetheless, despite these encouraging manifestations of God’s grace, the gospel faced tremendous obstacles in Kaifeng and progress was painfully slow. Indeed, by 1910 the number of Christians in the city had fallen slightly: there were 12 foreign Protestant missionaries, seven Chinese coworkers and just 34 baptized believers. The arrival of Whitfield Guinness brought a great blessing to the work in Kaifeng. He was joined by another missionary doctor, Sidney Carr, and together their sacrificial service in treating thousands of patients at the Good News Hospital gradually broke down some of the anti-foreign sentiment in the city. The two men were instrumental in training a small group of Chinese doctors, to maximize the tremendous potential that medical missions had in reaching people.

The 1910s saw steady growth in Kaifeng. In 1922, a groundbreaking survey by the China Consultation Committee found that there were 455 baptized Protestant believers in the city.309 At this time it was home to 922,000 people, meaning that only one in every 2,000 residents of Kaifeng was also a citizen of God’s kingdom.

The missionary doctors Sidney Carr and Whitfield Guinness with a group of trainee doctors at Kaifeng

General Feng’s Influence The same year saw the arrival of the Christian general Feng Yuxiang. His troops, who had been stationed in Shaanxi Province, were transferred to Kaifeng in May 1922 to help to secure the city from hordes of bandits who were ravaging the countryside. Feng was appointed governor of Henan and immediately set about ruling in accordance with the laws of God. Mrs F. S. Joyce, a member of the China Inland Mission, celebrated the difference he and his soldiers made to the city: Oh, those wonderful six months of General Feng’s administration in Kaifeng! It became a transformed city for the time being and the heavens seemed open above us. … He began by cleansing the Governor’s yamen [administration] of bad men and women of ill-fame and all idle hangers-on, and all traces of idolatry. … Where the devil for centuries had been worshipped God was glorified, and from all over the city, from camps and soldiers’ quarters, came hymns of praise to God. The military band often used to play hymns as they marched along the streets. … Together with six hundred soldiers gathering around the Lord’s Table we rejoiced in that day and opportunity. What a change took place in the city!310

Unfortunately, this godly influence was to last only as long as Feng’s governorship. After just six months, the Christian general was transferred to another province by the new governor, Wu Beifu, who was jealous of his popularity. When they heard the news, the people were dismayed, for they knew that, with Feng gone, the reforms he had introduced to the province would soon be reversed. They were right.

Two Christian workers in Kaifeng in 1932

The 1930s and ’40s saw the Protestant church in Kaifeng come of age. During the Japanese invasion of 1938, it was stretched to the limit taking care of the 14,000 refugees who flooded into the city from the countryside. The CIM was able to house 900 of these people, of whom 400 were children under twelve years of age and the rest women and girls. Only 26 were Church members, whilst 40 odd were connected with Christians or had some knowledge of Christianity. This left some 800 who needed to know Christ and what He could do for them. … One girl was being trained for the life of an upper-class prostitute, in whose home the previous night much incense had been burned in the vain hope of protection being given. How gladly she heard the message of salvation and received the Lord. … Then there was the little Wang girl who was only six years old, but had such a clear knowledge of salvation that she led both her brother and mother to the Lord. … The impress of those weeks meant that a number of girls and women came to the point of decision and asked for baptism.311

The steady growth of the Kaifeng church continued right up to the advent of Communist rule in China. The number of believers increased to more than 1,000, and new worship halls were built to accommodate them. The struggle for the soul of China’s ancient capital city had been long and difficult but, thanks to the sacrifice and perseverance of God’s servants, good seed had been sown that was to produce a harvest for the Kingdom of God. By the start of the Communist era in 1949, ‘thirteen denominations had churches in Kaifeng, though the actual number of Christians was small.’312 After more than three decades of persecution, the mid 1980s witnessed the re-emergence of visible Christianity in Kaifeng. By 1986, a number of Three-Self churches had reopened in the city. One source noted: ‘Kaifeng’s Protestants are served by one bishop (a former Anglican), 10 pastors, and 25 evangelists.’313 A 1985 article in Time magazine reported: ‘Government officials have recently admitted that in Kaifeng … [approximately] 10

percent of the people are Christians, compared with only one percent in 1949.’314 The early pioneer missionaries would scarcely have believed that today Kaifeng City has 69 Three-Self churches alone,315 in addition to hundreds of house churches. The city, which now has a population of 850,000, certainly boasts a total of over 60,000 Protestant and Catholic Christians.316 Although the concentration of Christians in Kaifeng is still lower than in most other parts of Henan Province today, the strength of the church is nevertheless a remarkable miracle considering that the first evangelists battled for years merely to be allowed to enter the city. 301 The biography of W. C. White, in Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions 302 Marshall Broomhall, The Bible in China (London: China Inland Mission, 1934), p146 303 Ibid., pp146–47 304 Goforth, By My Spirit, p102 305 Ibid., p103 306 Ibid., pp104–05 307 C. Howard Bird, ‘Blessing and Baptisms at Kaifeng’, China’s Millions, November 1909, p165 308 Mrs J. P. Brook, ‘Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy’, China’s Millions, July 1919, p79 309 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pX 310 Mrs F. S. Joyce, ‘Trial and Triumph in Honan’, China’s Millions, July 1924, p108 311 China Inland Mission, Through Fire: The Story of 1938 (London: China Inland Mission, 1939), pp19–20 312 ‘Christians in Northern Henan Province’, Bridge, September–October 1986, p4 313 Ibid. 314 ‘The Puzzle of the New: Open-Door Economics and a Search for Spiritual Renewal’, Time, 18 March 1985, p40 315 According to a TSPM prayer calendar published in 2002 316 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book.

Chapter 15 THE MENNONITES

A group of Mennonite evangelists with the missionaries Boehr and Roth at Puyang in 1928

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Mennonite Library and Archives

he General Conference Mennonite Mission was one of the most successful Christian organizations in northern Henan in the decades preceding the advent of Communist rule in 1949. Its work was centred on the eastern suburbs of the city of Puyang, which at the time was called Kaizhou and was in the now-defunct province of Chihli. After the People’s Republic of China was founded, the provincial borders were redrawn and most of Chihli became part of the new province of Hebei, but some areas were merged into Henan, Shandong and other provinces. The Mennonite work in Puyang commenced in 1911 with the arrival of the missionaries Henry and Maria Brown, but progress was painfully slow. In 1913, the Browns baptized the first eight believers, but a number of these drifted away into sin and unbelief. In 1915, three new recruits, P. J. and Jennie Gottschall and Talitha Neufeld, arrived and gave some impetus to the work. Another Mennonite couple who were later to prove key were C. L. and Lelia Pannabecker, who got to Puyang in 1926. In all, between 1911 and 1927 23 different Mennonite missionaries arrived in this part of China. Their field had a total population of more than two million people. The missionaries started schools and medical clinics in an attempt to attract people to the gospel, and the initial resistance gradually broke down. They laboured hard in the cause of Christ, but over time the realization dawned that they could not reach the Chinese people effectively until they stepped back and allowed Chinese Christians to take the lead in the work. In many parts of the country, including Henan Province, the spread of the

gospel was limited as long as foreigners retained control of the Chinese church. A daughter of missionaries observed: On the mission field, the sheep had been separated from the goats. The worldly and unchristian of the Caucasian race stuck to the large cities and had little if any commerce with the missionaries. On the mission fields of the interior, the unrepentant heathen spoke Chinese and did not darken the door of the church; they came to the clinics and schools as recipients of the missionaries’ benevolence and largesse. The Chinese Christian might rise to positions of power, might find employment in the church, but a glass ceiling placed the missionaries at the top of the Christian hierarchy in practice accountable only to God.317

Once the Mennonite missionaries relinquished control into the hands of Chinese Christians, the results began to flow and thousands of people gave their lives to Christ. By 1923, their work had grown to include 10 small churches. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the only Mennonite missionaries left in Puyang were two single women, Marie Regier and Elizabeth Goertz. The day after the declaration of war, they were arrested by the Japanese occupation forces and held inside a Catholic church. Regier was sent to an internment camp in Shandong, where she was one of hundreds of Westerners imprisoned until the end of the war.318

James Liu and Stephen Wang

James Liu Mennonite Library and Archives

Stephen Wang Mennonite Library and Archives

Two of the outstanding church leaders to emerge in the Mennonite church in Puyang were James Liu and Stephen Wang. They served Christ faithfully throughout their lives, helping the church in Puyang to survive the onslaught of Communist persecution in the 1950s and ’60s. Liu was born in 1904 in the village of Huayuan, a short distance from the city. His family then had no knowledge of the gospel: his father was an alcoholic and his mother an idolater. Liu’s uncle was the first of the family to embrace Christ. He was not afraid of the scorn of others in the community, and frequently visited the missionaries and attended church meetings to learn more about Jesus. Henry Brown, who baptized him, was appointed pastor of a small church in a nearby town and through his influence Liu’s father, Liu Lianxing, also gave his life to the Lord. His mother’s conversion followed soon after. Liu’s father was invited to teach in a Presbyterian school in Anyang, the city where Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth had served so faithfully for many years. In 1914, as his family walked along the road towards their new home in Anyang, Liu later remembered his father joyfully singing, ‘My home is in heaven.’ The boy, who was just 10 years old at the time, asked his father why he was so happy and he replied: ‘My son, I’ve found the real Saviour. I’ll follow him forever to my death. You’ll gradually understand it.’319 In 1917, the family moved back to Puyang, where Liu’s father became an evangelist associated with the Mennonite Mission. Liu himself first opened his heart to the gospel in fifth grade, under the influence of his English teacher, Hazel Kaufman. He attended Bible classes and little by little came to understand the claims of Christ upon his life. He recalled: Some of my relatives said to me, ‘If you believe in Jesus and are a Christian, the missionaries will take you to another country and dig out your heart and eyes.’ As a result, I was scared and

stopped attending catechism class. Later, I realized that their statements were not true, and resumed attendance. I was baptized in 1920 at the age of sixteen.320

He was later invited to go to university in America, where he excelled. On his return to his own land, he became a leader of the Christian community in Puyang, but in 1960 he was afflicted with cirrhosis of the liver. For three years he lay in hospital, praying daily that God would heal him. The answer came in an unexpected way. His wife was told that ‘toad powder’, a traditional Chinese medicine, would improve her husband’s condition. She duly caught some toads and ground their internal organs into powder, and fed a little to him each day. His liver recovered, and he was able to go home. While he was recuperating, Liu became hungry for meat. The dire state of the economy in those days meant that meat was scarce, so Hazel killed some rats and fed her husband their flesh. He did not know what he was eating, but was grateful for the protein. For the next two years, he and his wife could afford only to eat porridge twice a day. The Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966 and the darkest time for Christians in China began. Two years later, Liu was summoned to the school where he used to teach, and was imprisoned there in his old classroom. The Red Guards did all they could to break his faith, but his confidence in God’s word was unshakeable and no amount of ridicule or brainwashing could make him deny Jesus Christ. During this period, he was compelled to eat mouldy old cabbage leaves and was accused of being an American spy. Finally, in 1971, he was allowed to return home, to see his beloved wife for the first time in three years. Stephen Wang’s father spent his time playing cards and smoking opium, until God got a hold of his life and he became one of Brown’s first converts in Puyang. Immediately, he developed a hunger to reach the lost people around him. Wang later said of his father: He was an eloquent speaker, fluent and clever. He could explain the profundity of the gospel in simple terms, so common people liked to listen to him. On the other hand, he often quoted the classics and included old sayings in his speeches, so scholars liked to hear him too. Many people were moved to become Christians after they heard him preach.321

Like his friend James Liu, Wang himself became a Christian through the loving example of his missionary teacher. He, too, travelled to America to attend college and then returned to China to face great trials and hardships during the Cultural Revolution.

Henry Brown’s Vision In 1917, people in Puyang ridiculed Henry Brown when he built a church with enough seats to accommodate 700 people. At the time few Chinese locally showed any interest in the gospel, but the missionary must have had a glimpse of the future, for he pressed on with the construction work undeterred by the criticism and the laughter—though in 1922, five years after it was completed, there were still only 42 baptized Christians in the city322 to meet in this huge building every Sunday. After the Communists came to power, the Mennonite church was confiscated by the authorities and used for other purposes. Brown had been obliged by the Japanese occupation to leave China in 1941, and the building gradually fell into disrepair. The spiritual environment in China began to grow a little warmer in the late 1980s, and in 1993 the church was finally returned to the Christian community. There were holes in the roof and many repairs needed to be done before it could again serve as a house of worship, but the believers set about it with boundless enthusiasm. A foreign Christian brought a gift of $12,000 from a Mennonite mission in America that wanted to help with the restoration, but the local believers politely refused the money, saying they had enough of their own to finish the job. Puyang was one of the poorest places in the province and for many Christians the work involved great sacrifice, but they completed the repairs and the church was officially reopened in October 1994. More than a thousand people crammed into the sanctuary for the ceremony, with many more standing outside in the courtyard. The church has continued to overflow with worshippers ever since. Although he had long before gone to be with his Lord, Brown’s faith and foresight finally were vindicated. He had envisioned a day when God would pour his Spirit out in China and churches would be filled with hungry souls. In 1995, the director of the Inter-Mennonite China Educational Exchange wrote an open letter to the late Henry Brown, in which he commended the missionary posthumously for the great faith he had displayed many decades earlier. Part of the letter reads: I wonder what the people thought when you began building this church in what was then their small town. Perhaps there were comparisons to the foolishness of Noah and his ark. After all, who would come and fill your building, thus identifying themselves with this religion of the West? But on this Sunday morning, 78 years after the building was completed, I just thought I would tell you that you really should have built it a bit bigger. Even though I was a half-hour early, I

had to struggle and be pushed forward to the front of the church. How many people did you intend for this place to hold, anyway? … I took a few minutes to do a rough estimate of the size of the crowd. Yes, there were really about 700 sitting and some 300 standing in the aisles for the four-hour church service. Just a word about the courtyard. You could have made that larger as well. They had to shut the front gate because there is no more room there either. I think the overflow is gathering by the school you helped build across the road.323

Today, the small seed of the gospel that had taken so long to germinate in the first half of the 20th century has now produced a mighty tree that gives shade to many weary and thirsty travellers. Today, there are more than 40,000 Protestant Christians in Puyang City, meeting in both governmentsanctioned Three-Self churches and house churches, and an additional 87,000 Christians in the neighbouring Puyang County.324 Only someone with the faith of Henry Brown could have envisaged such a harvest as this.

Hundreds of hungry believers spilling out of a church meeting Asian Report 317 Christensen, In War and Famine, p29 318 One of the other prisoners, who died in the camp, was Eric Liddell, the Olympic champion and missionary to China whose life was featured in the film Chariots of Fire. 319 Robert Kreider, James Liu and Stephen Wang: Christians True in China (Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life Press, 1988), p12 320 Ibid., pp20–21 321 Ibid., p17 322 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pVI 323 Myrrul Byler, ‘A Letter to Henry Brown, Mennonite Missionary to Puyang (1911–1947)’, Amity News Service, June 1995 324 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book.

Chapter 16 REVIVAL SHOWERS, THE 1930s AND ’40s

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Chinese women studying the Bible in Yancheng in 1933

he powerful impression made by Marie Monsen’s ministry across Henan did not fade after her return to Norway in 1932 to care for her elderly mother. Indeed, the fire of the Holy Spirit that had burned so brightly in her meetings was carried further by several other key Christians. The 1930s and ’40s were desperately difficult for the Christians in Henan, with the plague of lawlessness and crime destroying entire communities; but the revival fires that burned in Henan and many other parts of the country broke out with perfect timing. The church had struggled through the 1920s. Hardship and violence had brought fear and despondency to many Christians. In 1928 alone, Bishop L. H. Roots estimated that about half of the missionary forces left their stations during the year. There were losses in the missionary force due to failing health and lowering of morale. There was much destruction of property and curtailment of the work due to closing of churches, schools and hospitals. … The sad fact is that in some crucial cases trusted Chinese Christians went back on their faith, while a considerable number of church members proved to have no root, and so, in the time of persecution, stumbled.325

These depressing observations were echoed by the Chinese Christian leader C. Y. Cheng, who wrote in 1929: Not a few of our Christian people feel utterly depressed and exhausted; a kind of flatness seems to reign in the hearts of many—a lack of spirit and energy to make any forward move. The bitter experiences of the past and the uncertainty of the future have made many shy of attempting great things for God and expecting great things from God.326

To this toxic mix was added the invasion of China by Japan’s armed forces, and the untold suffering it inflicted on the population. It was at this low ebb of spiritual life that God intervened and sent streams of living water to refresh his dry and thirsty church. Despite these intense trials, most

Christians in Henan clung to their faith, and there were many testimonies of God’s protection and grace during the Japanese occupation.327 Millions of Henanese people were reduced to absolute poverty, forced to roam the streets begging and scavenging for food to survive. The 1940s saw increasing conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists, led by Mao Zedong. Throughout these difficulties, however, the church continued to grow in strength and grace throughout the province. The believers little knew that this reinforcement of their spiritual foundation was to prove essential in helping them to survive the onslaught of an even darker time when the Communists would treat the church with even greater brutality. When the veteran Lutheran missionary Victor Swenson looked back on his many years serving Christ in Henan, he fondly recalled the mighty impact of the revival in the early 1930s: The hearts of Christians were burning within them. The joy of a close, new walk with the Lord spread from one community to another, from one province to others and even across the ocean. … These were days of heaven upon earth, days when Christians’ minds were occupied largely with eternal values, when there was a willingness to listen for hours to the Word of God and to make restitution, and when there was a willingness to testify and spread the Word.328

Anna Christensen The many critics who had attacked Marie Monsen’s ministry because they were opposed to women preachers may have felt relieved to hear of her departure from China in 1932, but their relief was short-lived, for it seems the Norwegian’s spiritual mantle was passed to another female Scandinavian revivalist: Anna Christensen from Denmark. Her ministry was very similar to Monsen’s in the kind of searching messages she preached, and the results obtained through the power of the Holy Spirit. Like Monsen, Christensen had spent many years in China being prepared by God before her ministry blossomed. She arrived in the Orient in September 1914, after 13 months’ training in London with the China Inland Mission. After a decade of service in China, she visited Denmark for a break, returning in 1926 to assist an evangelist in special village meetings in Shanxi Province. After three weeks of these, 19 families had burned their idols and started on a journey with Christ. In the 1930s, Christensen’s ministry quickly expanded to become nationwide. Everywhere she went, Christians were refined and empowered and scores of unbelievers found salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ.

She often spoke in Henan in this period. In mid 1933, a revival broke out among the staff and patients at the Kaifeng Hospital, where Whitfield Guinness had laboured faithfully for many years. According to the historian of revival J. Edwin Orr, the staff were deeply moved, conscience money being presented, along with the restitution of many things stolen or pilfered. In Zhoukou and Zhengzhou, in the same province, Anna Christensen’s message was given with searching power. Men and women were gripped by her messages, and many were the results recorded. Powerful in the autumn of 1933, the revival was still continuing in Kaifeng, Zhoukou, and other Henan cities, the work of grace having been thoroughly effective. The spiritual awakening continued into 1935 in Henan. Of one town it was said that, during some special meetings, even before they commenced and after they ended, the Holy Spirit mightily convicted men and women of sin, resulting in confessions in spite of the risk of ‘loss of face’.329

When Christensen visited the town of Yancheng in central Henan in 1933, one deacon who lived at an outstation walked 60 miles to hear the word of God. A tremendous visitation of the Holy Spirit occurred as the shy Danish woman quietly shared the message God had placed on her heart. Her fellow missionary Henry Guinness reported: ‘Praise God, we had a wonderful time of blessing. … No appeals were made, and there was no special emotion, but the spirit of conviction was present and hidden sin was brought to light and put away.’330 Christensen’s ministry continued primarily in other provinces of China, but she left many churches on fire for Christ throughout Henan.

Liu Daosheng

Liu Daosheng

In Monsen’s later years of ministry, she was often accompanied by two Chinese Lutheran evangelists, Liu Daosheng and Wu Zhenming. Indeed,

the knowledge that these two men—and others—were doing such a good job proclaiming the gospel helped to soften the blow for Monsen when she left her beloved China. The ministry of Liu, Wu and other Chinese evangelists was so effective that revival was reported among the churches of six different mission societies in Henan. Liu was a native of the county of Nanyang in southern Henan, the same area that produced many great Chinese Christian leaders of a later generation, including Brother Yun. Liu’s mother was a devout Buddhist whose influence on him was such that by the time he was a teenager he had a deep understanding of Buddhist teachings. His father, a scholar and merchant, died suddenly when Liu was 14 years old, and this loss had a big impact on the impressionable young man and he hungered to know the truth about eternal life. At the age of 20, Liu became seriously ill. His life was filled with despair and he spent months in a deep depression, wanting to die. The only reason he didn’t kill himself was that he didn’t want to cause his mother grief. One day, he was wandering along the streets of Lushan when he heard a voice coming from inside a chapel. He stopped at the door and listened, and was immediately intrigued by the strange message being preached. Subsequently, he recalled his thoughts: ‘“This is a better place than any in the world. This message cannot be heard in any other place.” … Later on I heard a man praying, and this was wonderful to me, as we were brought into the very presence of God. I went back home and prayed to God alone in much fear and trembling.’331 For several months, he read all he could about Christianity and attended every meeting that was held. The dark cloud he had been under lifted, and the young man saw a hope for the future. He started a business and spent all his spare time reading God’s word and praying. After a series of meetings at the Lushan mission station, he testified: The burden of sin was heavy on my heart, and I could not sleep. I prayed, but got no relief. This condition continued for some months longer. Then after I had prayed time and again in the church, the Lord finally appeared to me Himself. The experience I had is not easy to speak about. The glory of the Lord made me tremble, and as I saw Him on the cross, the burden of my sin became heavier. I fell to the floor and could not even pray. I could only say, ‘Lord, save me; Lord, save me!’ As I beheld this vision, faith was given me and praise flowed into my heart. The following day I went home full of joy. Everything was new.332

Liu proved to be such an effective evangelist that in 1909 he was appointed a full-time preacher. He first met Monsen in 1917, when she visited him in

hospital after he had had a serious accident. He had fallen while trying to jump into a moving cart and had broken some ribs and injured his spine. In the late 1920s, Liu experienced a refreshing of his own spiritual life, and many people began to accept Jesus Christ through his ministry. Despite his successes, he continued to be a broken and contrite man. He struggled constantly with his sinful nature and was often found weeping in prayer, both for the salvation of others and for the state of his own soul. He was described as a humble, unassuming man, who lives close to his Lord. His messages, couched in simple, everyday language, are Scriptural and Spirit-filled and come home to the hearers with singular power and effectiveness. Pastor Liu deals unsparingly with sin in all its forms, usually taking up one sin at each meeting and in this way producing conviction and contrition. When the hammer of the law has done its work of breaking to pieces the stony hearts, he allows the balm of the gospel to do its appointed work of healing and bringing peace to sin-burdened souls.333

In 1931 he attended one of Monsen’s meeting, and the Norwegian missionary asked him to give his testimony. This was the start of a powerful and fruitful partnership between the two, and they began to minister together frequently in Henan and other parts of China. Liu accompanied Monsen to one of her last revival meetings in Xuchang, in central Henan, in March 1932. Through these two jars of clay, the fire from God’s altar spread to the local Christians there, bringing a holy hush and eager expectancy never before experienced. Then the Chinese pastors and evangelists began their fearless preaching of the Word, resulting in a deep conviction and contrition designated ‘sin sickness’. The thoroughgoing repentance was followed by joy and zeal for the salvation of others. It was a genuine revival.334

One missionary described how Liu had a God-given ability to preach sin so that even the most ignorant old woman can have no excuse that she cannot understand, and in such a way that even the most educated have to respect his message. That preacher! But, does he only preach? No, one could equally say … for who can get at the individual like he can? How he can always search them out! No one escapes his clever eye and big heart. … And this man too, like so many of the instruments that have really been used during this revival, comes and goes with equal unobtrusiveness and humility, giving all the glory to the Lord.335

Liu visited Miyang, in the south of Henan, in 1933, bringing ‘the most powerful revival yet experienced’. He preached one message, ‘You must be born again,’ which resulted in ‘intense conviction. The missionaries had never seen anything like such contrition, Chinese beating their fists against the wall, or on the floor, before pouring out their hearts in confession.’336 An expression of Liu’s own contrite heart can be found in a prayer request he wrote in 1934, in the midst of mighty revival:

During these years the grace of God has been great towards me. As to the future I have to rely on the grace and love of God and to press on. I also hope that my friends will pray for me, that I might be saved from backsliding and causing disgrace to His name. At the same time I pray that the Lord may protect me and keep me, so that my completed life story may redound to the glory of the Lord.337

Wu Zhenming

Wu Zhenming

Wu Zhenming came from a long line of professional gamblers, who travelled around the countryside swindling people of their money. His father and four of his five brothers were murdered because of their trickery and deceit. Wu, not surprisingly, chose a different career path from his relatives. He possessed a brilliant mind and aspired to become a lawyer and a government official so that he could avenge his father’s death. In 1911, he met a Lutheran missionary, C. O. Spira, who offered him a position as a teacher in a mission school. Wu accepted, and after a few years of being exposed to the message and lives of the Christians, he was baptized and went to seminary. He graduated with honours in 1924, and in 1930 was ordained pastor of the church at Yuzhou. He later wrote: If Christ had not come into my life, given as I was to all kinds of unmentionable sins from early childhood, my fate would have been like to that of members of my family or worse. Thanks to God, He gave me His Son Jesus Christ. … He has saved me from utter destruction. He has given me a happy home life. He has given me the hope of eternal life.338

The Lutheran missionaries considered Wu ‘our most gifted speaker … From the first, he has lived an outwardly exemplary life.’339 Wilson Fielder of the Southern Baptists wrote of him, ‘We have rejoiced in the work of Wu Zhenming in our church. He has conducted evangelistic meetings for us, and I want to tell you we have a great prize in him. He is a wonderful

preacher.’340 And yet, amazingly, Wu himself was to testify that he had not been truly born again until the revival of 1932. He had already won the respect and admiration of men, but Monsen was not so sure that her colleague had truly experienced new life in Christ. At the close of one of their meetings at Xuchang, she asked him repeatedly: ‘Are you saved?’ The first time she cornered him, he answered: ‘Yes, I have been leading evangelistic meetings, and many people have been convicted of sin and saved in them.’341 Monsen did not care about men’s reputations but only about their souls. She urged Wu to pray about the matter. The next morning, he met with her after breakfast. She pointed out certain scriptures to him, and he confessed his sins to God. He later admitted: ‘I had never seen myself so black as I did that morning. Wouldn’t you think that I who have preached the Word for about twenty years would know a verse like John 3:16 from memory? Well, when Miss Monsen had me read that verse it was as though I had never seen it before.’342 After hearing his testimony, a fellow believer asked him: ‘“Pastor Wu, do you think that if you had died before you had this experience you would have gone to hell?” “I don’t see how I could have gone to heaven,” he answered.’343 Not surprisingly, many Christians who heard of Wu’s ‘conversion’ felt very uncomfortable with its implications. One missionary asked: Do you find this account repugnant? You would have to have been there to realize how very much in order it seemed to us all to put things right in our lives and in our relationship with God. We were facing His holiness and seeing the uncleanness of our filthy rags, even our spiritual self-righteousness. No one could help but examine himself, and from this sprang the joy of a clear conscience freed for fresh obedience to the will of God.344

From the day Wu claimed to have experienced salvation for the first time, it was said, ‘he has shown a greater power in his preaching and a great passion for souls. God has used him and is using him to bring many of his people from darkness to light.’345

Revival in Xiangcheng In 1933, the Lutheran United Mission announced that its workers were filled with hope by the spiritual movement among their congregations. The revival brought ‘united and continuous prayer, noonday prayer meetings at all stations, constant and faithful preaching of the Word and distribution of tracts and scripture portions’.346 In Xiangcheng, a missionary reported,

the problem of deadness in the church had long been exercising us, and God had more and more opened our eyes to the answer. Truly we were on holy ground those days, and still are, praise God. It seems almost too sacred a thing to write about, for we have seen the thoughts of many hearts revealed and lives laid bare before God. One method which was manifestly used of the Spirit was the personal question, put to almost every Church member, ‘Are you saved?’ or ‘Are you born again?’ and ‘What proof have you?’ These questions … though resented by some, brought tears to the eyes of others and set them thinking. A sense of facing eternal realities solemnised all.347

In 1934, the local churches organized a systematic preaching campaign to take the message of Christ to as many people as possible. Every church in the county held daily meetings for worship and prayer, and in addition all villages within walking distance were visited for preaching. In this way approximately 500 villages and hamlets in this thickly-populated district were reached, some several times. Cornets, concertinas, mouth organs, and, failing these, bells, were all called into use to gather the crowds to listen, while numerous well-prepared posters formed the basis for perhaps most of the messages given. These posters have proved of immense value. With very few exceptions the doors have been wide open.348

One elderly Chinese pastor had been deeply troubled by the revival when it first came to his district in the early 1930s. He went home angry, and realized that the reason for his feelings was that he secretly wanted to hold on to certain sins he had harboured in his heart for more than 50 years. A few months later, he repented. In 1934, he wrote: Things are different now in my ministry. I have been out myself conducting revival meetings. In one series of meetings about eight hundred attended, and the Holy Spirit was poured out in a wonderful way. Among the brethren there was much grief of spirit and confession of sin; but praise God, when the Christians got right with God, the unsaved were converted, too. During these meetings about one hundred people were saved.349

John Sung, Andrew Gih, and the Bethel Band

Two of China’s greatest preachers, John Sung and Andrew Gih

In 1926, the Bethel Mission of Shanghai invited Pagey Wilkes of the Japan Evangelistic Band to speak at its annual conference. His God-inspired messages were powerful and wide-ranging, and many young Chinese men

and women dedicated themselves to lives of personal holiness and fervent evangelism. A young postal worker named Andrew Gih became the leader of a new ministry called the Worldwide Bethel Evangelistic Band. After holding successful revival meetings in Shanghai and other coastal cities, the members of the Band travelled to some of the interior provinces, including Henan, where they preached a message of repentance, the new birth, holiness and the fullness of the Spirit. Several of its members were musical, so music and new choruses became a feature of their campaigns. Everywhere they went they urged revived churches to organize their preaching bands and to move out in church growth. As an old pastor said, ‘The fire of the gospel has been lit and it is going to keep burning like a prairie fire!’350

The Band conducted meetings in Kaifeng in March 1933 with John Sung and Gih, the best-known preachers among their number.351 Initially, their reception in the city was disappointing, ‘but there were eventually about fifty who came out for Christ.’352 When the Band went to the railway station at the conclusion of the meetings, a great crowd of Christians accompanied them. Someone remarked: ‘Well, we asked the Lord to save everyone in our group, and he has just about done it. Let’s see who is left here unsaved.’ Gih later recalled: Standing near us was one who had not yet yielded. I put my hand on his shoulder and started talking to him. In a minute we were down on our knees by the baggage while he confessed his sins to the Lord. Everyone bowed their heads and there were tears in many eyes as the old fellow made things right with God. … I don’t know when this church has had such a testimony to the power of God!353

The Band travelled on to Anyang, the city where Jonathan Goforth had blazed a trail of revival earlier in the century. Unfortunately, they found that the Christians there had backslidden, embracing the liberal Presbyterian theology that Goforth had spent years fighting against. The missionaries in Anyang were opposed to the ‘out of date stuff’ the Band preached, such as repentance from sin and consecration to Christ. Nonetheless, despite this cold reception, John Sung wielded the two-edged sword of the Spirit, preaching the great and essential truths of salvation. The whole congregation was so moved that they all began to cry to God, among them the pastor of the church, who acknowledged that he was not born again. After being fully converted, he determined that he would henceforth preach only the fundamental doctrines of the faith.354

Sung and Gih revisited the city later in 1933 and found that things had much improved. This time, ‘instead of a couple of hundred hearers, a thousand people attended the meetings, the whole situation having changed since the conversion of the pastor.’355 Those Presbyterian missionaries who

refused to change their ways, however, found themselves increasingly at odds with the local believers who had been touched by fire from God’s altar. The latter ‘recognized the revival for what it was, a spiritual springtime in the church. … Together [they] prayed for an extension of God’s work through the awakening which was so wonderfully stirring the Christians and the unsaved.’356 Sung was a man with the fire of God in his heart and an uncompromising commitment to truth. During one of his trips through Henan, he and another evangelist, Chu Huaian, reached the town of Zhoukou late at night. They went to the mission compound and asked the gateman whether two evangelists could stay the night. The man went and asked the resident missionary, who said the two preachers were not permitted to stay inside the buildings but could sleep on a haystack in an outer shed. That night, Sung could not sleep on account of the smelly feet of one of the mission workers, who also slept in the shed. The next morning, the two preachers continued their journey by rickshaw. Before they left, Sung wrote a letter in English rebuking their host. Chu recalled that he accused the missionary of lack of loving hospitality for other preachers of the gospel, and advised him to examine himself carefully. Our rickshaw had travelled about 20 li (six miles) when the foreign missionary 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 PhD rather than an evangelist. You must thoroughly repent of your behaviour!’357

On another occasion, Sung was invited to hold revival meetings in Xuchang. On his arrival, he was taken to a special Christmas banquet attended by all the social elite and VIPs of the town. He was introduced to the mayor and seated to his right, alongside the police commissioner and the publisher of the local newspaper. The evangelist felt uncomfortable being placed with these ‘important’ people and told one of his co-workers to swap places with him, declaring: 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 these officials. … 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.358

Remarkable Answers to Prayer

The revival in Henan was accompanied by many miraculous answers to pray. The sick were healed, the demon-possessed were set free and thousands of sinners received a new heart through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. One illiterate old Chinese woman who had experienced new life in Christ lived in a poor house that had fallen into a state of disrepair. The straw roof leaked in several places, and one of the large wooden beams had slipped out of its socket and was in danger of falling. News came that a large storm was bearing down on the town, and the woman tried to get straw to patch up the holes in her roof. She also tried to hire a workman to put the beam back in its place. Unfortunately, there was no straw available and no one was willing to help her. The woman’s son wanted her to leave her unsafe house and stay with a friend, but she believed that her Heavenly Father knew all about her situation and would protect her from danger. She prayed often, asking God to watch over her. When the storm struck that night, ‘[a] fierce wind shook the house—and, to their joy and wonder, shook the beam into its place again! It poured rain, but none came through the roof. In the morning they found that the wind had blown a lot of straw from a neighbouring roof over to theirs and filled up the holes!’359 On another occasion, a terrible famine reduced millions of people in Henan to absolute poverty. The collapse of the economy meant that many missionaries, too, struggled to survive these harsh years. One family went without any protein for months because of the food shortages. One day, they noticed a lot of pigeons roosting on the tower of their mission house. They thought what a delicious meal the birds would make, and considered how to catch them. First, they tried a catapult, but it proved hopelessly inadequate. Other ideas were tried, without success. Then, one day, the father of the family realized they would never be able to catch the elusive pigeons. He knelt in prayer and simply asked their Heavenly Father to let them have some. A short time later, a fierce snowstorm engulfed the town. Early the next morning, the man heard someone calling from outside the house: ‘Do you want any pigeons?’ He looked out and, he later recalled, ‘there scattered about were the frozen birds, fallen to the ground. In less time than it takes to tell this, we hurried out and picked up nine pigeons straightaway. What a delicious dinner we had that day!’360

More than 40 new Christians at baptism class in Xuzhou in 1930

Fruit that Lasts As with all revivals throughout history, there were those who strongly opposed what was happening, believing that it was based on emotion and exaggeration, or even that it was a work of Satan. The veteran missionary Victor Swenson, who worked in China for 45 years, summed up the effect of the 1930s awakening thus: The revival was not without its difficulties. The devil was busy counterattacking. Whenever the Holy Spirit is working mightily, it seems as if the devil tries to sow seeds of pride and discord. Some of those who went through a terrible emotional strain and then found peace tended to judge others who had not had the same experience. They doubted the sincerity of other Christians and exhorted them to make certain of their salvation. Some, with less spiritual skill than Miss Monsen, tried to use her methods, and the result was anger and bitterness at times. … Looking back on it all now, we feel that it was a small price to pay for the lasting results we saw in the lives of Christians all over our field. The revival … continued in its effects on through the rest of our time in China. Those who had lived through those days of brokenness before God could never be the same again. Life had a new quality of devotion to Him. We had seen God’s Spirit working at floodtide, and we had a new concept of His greatness. The Christians were bathed in a new spirit of love that bound them together as never before.361

Undoubtedly the greatest miracle and answer to prayer during this period was seen in the number of hardened sinners whose lives were transformed through repentance and faith in the Son of God. Whereas just a few years before it had been considered a great breakthrough for even one individual to come to Christ, now it was not uncommon for a hundred people to be saved in a single meeting. In Fangcheng County in southern Henan, the missionary David Adeney discovered a mountainous district in 1941 where ‘there must be at least a thousand Christians. … Many of them really love the Lord and have a very strong faith in the power of Christ to heal the sick.’362 Throughout the whole province, thousands upon thousands were given grace to confess their sins, and through faith in the cleansing power of Christ were filled with power, love, and zeal for their fellow men. … Formerly they had heard of Christ, read about Him, and accepted Him as a matter of intellectual belief. Now through the revival they had come to know Him as a living Saviour. They now knew

His saving power and mercy. This created a new and living fellowship between them and their Lord. … The revival flames spread from person to person, home to home, city to city. The church became a Bible-reading church, and a church with a baptism of love.363

The events of the 1930s shook many of the Lutheran missionaries, most of whom had come from ultra-conservative churches in their home countries. Nonetheless, the majority found themselves being swept along by the streams of living water flowing in Henan at the time. One official Lutheran history records how pastors, pastor’s wives, evangelists, Bible women, old and young church members, baptized and unbaptized, old people, young people, students, and children … came, one by one, broken over their sins and sinful condition, seeking forgiveness and a new life in Christ. Oh, those hours, in some ways sad, but after all so happy, when we could be on our knees with the convicted, listening to their confessions, and having that great joy of pointing them to the promises of the Word!364

Anointed for Burial: the 1940s The effects of the extraordinary awakening that so deeply affected the province in the 1930s continued to last into the following decade. The ’40s was in many ways a period of consolidation for the Protestant church in Henan. The gains of the ’30s had stretched the missionaries and the Chinese church leaders to the limit, and the greatest need of the day was seen to be theological training, so that the thousands of new believers—many of whom were illiterate—would have a strong foundation in the truth of God’s word. These challenges were articulated by many leaders of the time. William Nowack of the Ebenezer Mission in Miyang wrote: ‘At our main station the new inquirers have been coming in so fast that it is almost impossible to keep track of them all, and many homes have been taking down their false gods during the past few months.’365

A Henan Christian leaders’ conference in 1941

This is how he described the scene when the revival fires swept through Miyang: The Lord visited us with the most powerful revival that we have had here thus far. … Never before had we seen such mighty conviction of sin rest upon a Chinese audience, though we had seen much of God’s wonderful working in the past. Some were pounding the benches with their hands, and calling out, ‘I am face to face with God, I am face to face with God,’ while others could be heard to say, ‘I am going straight to hell, there is no hope for me.’ Several struck their heads with their fists out of sheer hatred of themselves, while one or two seemed to feel that even hell itself was too good for such great sinners as they were. Many were unable to eat or sleep for several days and nights, until they had made full confession of their sins, and then, through some passage or message from God’s Word, had received the assurance of His forgiveness.366

The years during the Second World War saw a cooling of the revival. The struggle to survive became everyone’s chief concern, and dramatic experiences such as those in Miyang related above became less frequent. Despite the hardships, however, most of the very many people who had found Jesus Christ in the 1930s remained true to their faith, and often new people were added to the community of believers. In the 1940s, the church began to place a greater emphasis on reaching those parts of society considered more shameful by others. Daniel Nelson Jr., whose father and brother were martyred for Christ in China, continued to serve in Henan and reported: ‘Buddhist vegetarians, opium sots, adulterers, thieves, hypocrites have been converted, and the testimony of their renewed lives is powerful. There has been a fresh impetus to witness for the Lord, even children taking part in the spreading of the gospel.’367

Seven sisters from the Ding family. They were all dedicated Christians and members of the Anglican church in Henan.

Most of the missionaries in Henan at this time were godly, no-nonsense types. When Oscar and Mina Hellestad prepared to leave the Orient in 1940, after almost 40 years in China, the local believers at Guangshan wanted to honour their faithful service by erecting a monument in their memory. The farewell service was held on 13 October 1940. The church

was packed with well-wishers, but just as someone was about to announce the plans for the monument, Hellestad heard of it. Standing up, he declared: I want to make it very clear that no monument of any kind should be erected to my wife and me —now or ever. I appreciate your kind thought, but if you want to honour us in the best possible way, carry on the work that we have been doing here. That will be the best monument. If you have already collected money for this, there are so many ways in which it could be better used. I hope that you will understand that we deeply appreciate this gesture of love—we will never forget it—but remember that my wife and I are but servants of God; it is to Him that any honour you want to express should go. By your love you have already erected a lasting monument in our hearts. Let any other expressions of your love be in the form of service to God and to man.368

Compared with the meagre results from the first 30 years of Protestant mission work in the province, the 1930s and ’40s had seen explosive growth. By the time the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, there were between 100,000369 and 120,000370 Protestants in Henan. The missionary era drew to a close, but in general the missionaries had succeeded in laying a solid foundation for the church in the province. It was to survive the onslaught of the coming decades, and would then be built up into a mighty edifice in later years. 325 Cited in Carlberg, China in Revival, p20 326 Ibid., p21 327 One such book outlining the struggles and victories of the Henan church during this period is Palmer A. Anderson, In the Crucible: Being Incidents Showing the Power of the Gospel in China (Canada: The Canada District Young Peoples’ Luther League, no date). 328 Swenson, Parents of Many, pp184–85 329 J. Edwin Orr, Evangelical Awakenings in Eastern Asia (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1975), p79 330 Henry Guinness, ‘Floods upon the Dry Ground’, China’s Millions, August 1933, p150 331 Carlberg, China in Revival, pp85–86 332 Ibid., pp86–87 333 Ibid., p84 334 Orr, Evangelical Awakenings in Eastern Asia, p78 335 Akins, ‘Seasons of Refreshing’, in Carlberg, Thirty Years in China, p43 336 Orr, Evangelical Awakenings in Eastern Asia, p78 337 Carlberg, China in Revival, pp90–91 338 Ibid., pp100–01 339 J. L. Benson, ‘Our Chinese Co-workers’, in Carlberg, Thirty Years in China, pp74–75 340 Swenson, Parents of Many, p187 341 Ibid. 342 Ibid., p188 343 Ibid. 344 Ibid., pp188–89 345 Benson, ‘Our Chinese Co-workers’, in Carlberg, Thirty Years in China, p75 346 Orr, Evangelical Awakenings in Eastern Asia, p80 347 F. S. Joyce, ‘A New Thing’, China’s Millions, November 1932, p214 348 ‘Stories from the Annual Reports’, China’s Millions, June 1934, p113 349 Swenson, Parents of Many, p196 350 Leslie T. Lyall, God Reigns in China (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), pp169–70 351 Full profiles of John Sung and Andrew Gih will appear in later volumes of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series, on Fujian and

Shanghai respectively. 352 Leslie T. Lyall, A Biography of John Sung: Flame for God in the Far East (London: China Inland Mission, 1954), p107– 08 353 Andrew Gih, Launch Out into the Deep (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1938), p43 354 Lyall, A Biography of John Sung, p108 355 Orr, Evangelical Awakenings in Eastern Asia, p78 356 Swenson, Parents of Many, pp201-02 357 Chu Huaian, ‘The Footprints of an Evangelist’, Christian Life Quarterly, vol.1, no.4 (December 1997) 358 Ibid. 359 China’s Millions, February 1930, p25 360 China Inland Mission, The Obstinate Horse and Other Stories (London: China Inland Mission, 1955), p40 361 Swenson, Parents of Many, pp190–91 362 David Adeney, ‘An Earnest Spirit’, China’s Millions, March–April 1941, p27 363 Swenson, Parents of Many, pp198–99 364 Akins, ‘Seasons of Refreshing’, in Carlberg, Thirty Years in China, p42 365 Carlberg, China in Revival, p134 366 Ibid., pp134–36 367 Ibid., p139 368 Barbara Jurgensen, All the Bandits of China: Adventures of a Missionary in a Land Savaged by Bandits and War Lords (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1965), p177 369 ‘Christians in Northern Henan Province’, Bridge, September–October 1986 370 China Study Journal, vol.9, no.2 (August 1994)

PART III The Refiner’s Fire

Chapter 17 THE CHURCH GOES UNDERGROUND, THE 1950s

An elderly pastor teaching the Bible

W

Asian Report

hen Chairman Mao Zedong announced the foundation of the People’s Republic of China from a podium in Tiananmen Square on 1 October 1949, roughly half of Henan had already been under Communist control for years. Missionaries were divided over what they expected to happen to the church under Communist rule. Some feared the worst, citing the fate of Christians in the Soviet Union. Others looked forward to the dawn of a new era of freedom and progress for Chinese Christianity. The Methodist missionary Geneva Sayre, who ran a large Bible school in Kaifeng and a children’s school in Zhengzhou, took a very positive view and urged her colleagues to remain in Henan. She reported that the Communists had been extremely friendly to her and ‘told me that I was free to go preaching the gospel in the country or anywhere I chose, and under their protection.’371 This dismayed Chinese church leaders in other parts of the country, who doubted her claims because they were hearing of intense persecution of native believers throughout Henan. One church leader, Thomas Lee, judged that Sayre was ‘naïve, and, in effect, working for the Communists since she took up some 80 cases of medical supplies for distribution by their agencies’.372 In fact, the Communists gradually imposed more and more restrictions on her work, until in November 1951 she was expelled from China by the same people who had once promised to protect her religious freedoms. As early as February 1950, just four months after the founding of Communist China, news came from Henan of a crackdown on Christian

activity. China’s Millions reported: ‘In all their testings [the province’s believers] have not surrendered their faith or resorted to compromise. Christian witness continues in the hospital at Kaifeng, although conditions are most difficult. They report that church services in the city continue as usual, with smaller but stronger congregations. Refining fires have proved the faith of many.’373 By the end of 1951, there were very few foreign missionaries, Protestant or Catholic, left in the province. Many churches had been compelled to close and Chinese pastors were being detained and questioned. Some congregations had had the foresight to see the approaching storm and had made plans for survival without the aid of church buildings, clergy and organized meetings. Others had been hoping for the best and were caught unprepared when the persecution commenced. These were soon decimated, and individual believers were left to find spiritual sustenance and fellowship for themselves. Throughout the 1950s, each successive year brought yet more severe repression and persecution to the church. Hundreds of Chinese pastors and other prominent leaders were rounded up and sent to labour camps, many for stretches of 20 years or more. Church buildings were taken over by the government and used for a variety of secular purposes, including as offices, granaries, barracks and gymns. By 1954, it was clear that Mao desired nothing less than the complete eradication of Christianity from his new China. Brother Yun has told of the horrors of these years for the faithful in Henan: In my home area of Nanyang believers were crucified on the walls of their churches for not denying Christ. Others were chained to vehicles and horses and dragged to their death. One pastor was bound and attached to a long rope. The authorities, enraged that the man of God would not deny his faith, used a makeshift crane to lift him high into the air. Before hundreds of witnesses, who had come to falsely accuse him of being a ‘counter revolutionary’, the pastor was asked one last time by his persecutors if he would recant. He shouted back, ‘No! I will never deny the Lord who saved me!’ The rope was released and the pastor crashed to the ground below. Upon inspection, the tormentors discovered the pastor was not fully dead, so they raised him up into the air for a second time, dropping the rope to finish him off for good. In this life the pastor was dead, but he lives on in heaven with the reward of one who was faithful to the end.374

When the revival of the 1930s had come to Henan, the Christians at the time had not understood that the blessing poured out on them was meant to fortify them for life under an aggressively atheistic regime. With the benefit of hindsight, a missionary wrote in the late 1950s: ‘As we consider the grip

of godless Communism on China today, we can realize how God was preparing a people for His name. We are often short-sighted, but God takes the long view. He was making preparation then, by the work of His Holy Spirit, for a sturdy, earnest church that could stand persecution.’375

The True Jesus Church

True Jesus Church believers in Zhengzhou praying towards Jerusalem in 1987 Bridge

The True Jesus Church is an indigenous fellowship founded in 1917 in Beijing by Paul Wei. Adopting a curious mixture of conservative Anabaptist, Seventh-Day Adventist and Pentecostal theology, it emphasizes being filled with the Holy Spirit, requires women to cover their heads during worship and baptizes converts only in ‘living’ water such as rivers or lakes. Its members face towards Jerusalem—westward from China—when praying, and they hold their services on Saturdays, in accordance with the Jewish Sabbath. In many areas they do not celebrate Christmas, on the grounds that there is no scriptural precedent for it. Typically, their worship meetings are extremely reverent and orderly. In the years before Communism, the True Jesus Church was one of the three fastest-growing Christian groups in China, alongside the Little Flock and the Jesus Family. In 1949, it had 115,000 members throughout the country.376 They were harshly persecuted by the authorities in the 1950s and were obliged to disband, though members continued to meet secretly in groups of just three or four. To most observers, it seemed that the church had been obliterated. After 35 years of silence, believers associated with the True Jesus Church suddenly and unexpectedly resurfaced in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan,

in 1987. A few dozen adherents, mostly women, began meeting in a room before a large banner reading ‘Glory to Jesus’. They explained to a visitor that some songs they had committed to memory had helped them to retain their faith during the Cultural Revolution. Chanted in unison, these songs exhorted believers to keep themselves pure and not deny Christ. One of them ran: True Church, source of good things, hear me sing a song of believing in the Lord. If you want to know how good it is to believe, let me tell you one by one: A child who believes does not curse; an adult who believes does not go astray; A girl who believes becomes able and virtuous; a boy who believes follows the correct path; A bad person who believes becomes good; a lazy person works fast; A blind person who believes is able to see; a lame person is able to walk; A deaf person who believes can hear; a dumb person can sing; A possessed person who believes is rid of demons; a sick person does not need medicine; A smoker who believes ceases to smoke; a drunkard does not drink; If the whole family believes in the Lord, both men and women, old and young, sing happily together; Many good things, full of hope—Jesus is leading us to heaven. May I offer a piece of advice to all of you? Think about it yourself. Whoever wants to be blessed, come quickly to the church of the Sabbath. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Jesus is leading us to heaven.377

Today in China, the church is concentrated in the coastal areas of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian Provinces. In Jiangsu, an official report in 1995 stated that about 450,000 of the 1.2 million Protestants in the province at the time were believers associated with the True Jesus Church tradition.378 Unfortunately, however, these believers usually refuse to have anything to do with other Christians. Many other believers in China today who have had contact with the True Jesus Church consider it to be extremely legalistic and struggle to understand its exclusive doctrines and lifestyle.

The Tragedy of Dong Shaowu

Dong Shaowu in 1956 Bridge

Born into a poor but godly Christian family in Xiangcheng County in 1894, Dong Shaowu made a commitment to serve Jesus Christ at an early age. When he was old enough, he travelled to Hunan Province to study at the Changsha Bible School, and later at the Jinling Union Theological Seminary in Nanjing, where he had a wealth of knowledge of the Bible deposited in his heart and mind.

The small congregation of the True Jesus Church in Zhengzhou in 1987, just after its unexpected re-emergence Bridge

In 1949, after the Communists swept to power, he was questioned and warned. After moving back to his native Henan, in 1950 he was placed on a list of the 10 most wanted people in China and he went into hiding. By the following year, all the other nine had been found dead. Dong had no income and at this time was barely able to survive. His poverty obliged him to move away from the city and this saved his life, as the authorities couldn’t locate him. At Easter 1954, he received some money from his son and was able to travel to Beijing, where he visited the Christian Tabernacle, where the great patriarch of the Chinese church, Wang Mingdao, presided. Dong stayed in Wang’s house and was asked to speak at the Easter services. He and Wang became close friends, and Dong later described his time in Beijing as the happiest of his life.

By May 1958, the winds of persecution were howling all around Dong. His friendship with the hated Wang was proof enough that he was a counter-revolutionary and he was accused of betraying China to the Western imperialists. A ‘struggle session’ was organized to break his spirit. It lasted 21 days and ended only because everyone had to break to gather in the wheat harvest. Dong returned home with his mind in turmoil from the constant strain of being questioned and manipulated. In mid July, he was instructed to return for questioning. This time, the Communists beat and kicked him constantly, forcing him to kneel on a concrete floor for hours at a time while they berated him with all kinds of false accusations. One report says: Struggles became fierce and cruel. Dong was scolded, beaten up, spit at, forced to kneel. … All kinds of vicious abuses were hurled at him. … A month of endless struggle left Dong without rest. His health deteriorated rapidly. He was infected with acute hepatitis and jaundice. His whole body turned yellow. … From August 31st to September 6th, it was a struggle day and night. The interrogators had shifts. Dong must stand alone, however. He was then 64 years old. He was no longer able to sustain the torment, either physically or mentally.379

7 September was a day off for all the other prisoners except Dong. After a long morning of physical and mental torture by Public Security Bureau officials (including one man who at the time, and for more than 30 years after, was an active committee member of a Three-Self church in Henan), Dong reached a stage where he could take no more. Some time after five o’clock in the afternoon, he asked the officials if he could go to the toilet. After a long while waiting for his return, one of the guards went to fetch him. He found Dong’s body slumped over on the floor. He had drowned himself in the urinal. Even his death did not please the torturers, however, and they charged him officially with having ‘committed suicide to escape punishment’. There is no doubt that he was driven to take his own life by the unrelenting torture he was subjected to.

Dong Shaowu with his son at Easter 1954 Bridge

That evening, as news spread around the town that Dong Shaowu was dead, a local deacon boldly came to the PSB office and claimed the body, which he washed and prepared for burial. Six other people volunteered to help to bury it, at great personal risk to themselves—among them a 14-yearold believer. They covered the face of their beloved pastor with a straw hat and wrapped his corpse in an old mat. Dong was buried in a hole in the ground at an unmarked cemetery outside the south gate of the city. His death caused some believers to become bolder and readier to proclaim their faith. At a meeting the following evening, the deacon who had come for his pastor’s body stood up and declared his commitment to Christ. Immediately after the meeting, he was arrested and sent away to a labour camp, and was never heard of again.

371 Geneva Sayre writing in Missionary Tidings, cited in Christensen, In War and Famine, p233 372 Christensen, In War and Famine, p233 373 China’s Millions, February 1950, p15 374 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp20–21 375 Swenson, Parents of Many, p197 376 A detailed article on the True Jesus Church will be included in the Beijing volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 377 ‘Building Up the Church in Love’, Bridge, January–February 1987, p3 378 Amity News Service, March 1995 379 ‘The Bitter Experiences of Rev Dong Shaowu’, Bridge (date misplaced)

Chapter 18 THE SILENT YEARS, THE 1960S AND ’70S

I

n the late 1950s, Chairman Mao launched ‘the Great Leap Forward’, which actually proved to be a great leap backward for the Chinese people. In Henan, millions starved to death. The extreme hardship and Mao’s xenophobia together led to severe persecution for Christians. By the 1960s, practically every church building in the country was closed to worship. As thousands of believers were killed or imprisoned for their belief in Christ, China shut itself off from the rest of the world and a long period of silence began. When an American delegation paid a visit in the 1970s, Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, arrogantly told them: ‘There is not a single Christian left in China. Christianity has been consigned to the history section of the museum.’ She was wrong. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, the church in China was at its lowest point. All its activities were driven underground. Nonetheless, God preserved a remnant of a few faithful believers, who continued to meet in secret during those dark years. No pastor remained to shepherd the flock, and so elderly, uneducated women led most of the meetings. In many places, the flame of the gospel was kept alive by small groups of illiterate women. However, the God they served had said that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit. To all outward appearances, the church in China had died; but God, who is able to raise the dead, was to have the final word.

The Campaign to Renounce Religion In the 1960s, Henan Province was chosen as one of three experimental zones (along with Zhejiang and Inner Mongolia) in an anti-religion drive by extreme elements of the Communist Party. The ultimate aim was to eliminate Christianity once and for all and consign it to the history books. Horrific persecution ensued, with many officials revelling in acts of inhuman cruelty. Although it would seem to be practically impossible to gather statistics for Christians in Henan during the silent decades of the

1960s and ’70s, given that they all went ‘underground’, government sources were to estimate in later years that there were 78,000 Protestant believers in Henan in 1965, just before the start of the Cultural Revolution.380 If this figure is accurate, it would indicate a huge drop in the number of Christians in the province since 1949, when there were 120,000 Protestants.381 In all likelihood, the 1965 estimate is too low. Testimonies from believers who endured these difficult years suggest that in fact the church continued to flourish and grow in Henan even amidst its darkest struggles. A pastor from Shaanxi Province, Zhu Chengxin, told how a visit to Henan in 1975 invigorated his faith. He spent 28 days in the province, conducting many services each day. The following account of his travels gives us a clear sense of how the Holy Spirit was moving in Henan at the time: Every evening he hurried out after eating in order to reach the place of worship in time for the midnight service. Seeing the hunger and thirst of the Christians moved him to tears. When he felt it was finally time to leave, local Christians were reluctant to let him part. One Christian brother stood up and said, ‘You cannot leave; I have prayed to the Lord not to let you go.’ He then abruptly rode off on his bicycle. Zhu was puzzled by the statement and action; not until two days later did he understand what they meant. Knowing exactly what route Zhu would take in leaving the village, the brother had rushed to inform the woman in charge of the home gathering along the road that the ‘servant of God’ was coming her way. She immediately sent several sisters to wait at the cross-road. When Zhu passed that way, he was easily identified because of his Shaanxi accent. He pleaded with the women to let him proceed. Instead, they fell on their knees and asked the Lord’s mercy. They had been longing for someone to preach to them. They had waited two days on the road for his arrival. Seeing no way out, Zhu and his companion agreed to return to the village with them. … Over a hundred people came to hear Zhu preach that evening.382

Feng Jianguo, a leader of the Tanghe house-church movement, remembers the Cultural Revolution as a time of great tension and darkness, but also as a time when God poured out his Spirit through powerful signs and wonders. In 2001, I asked Feng to explain what it was like to be a Christian in Henan during the 1960s and ’70s. He replied: During meetings we had to turn out our lights and cover the cracks in the doors and windows so nobody could spy on us. The believers would come to the meeting one by one, so that neighbours would not notice. I felt we were very close to one another in those days. If caught, we would be made to wear large dunce hats and be paraded in public. People would attempt to humiliate us by shouting and spitting on us. Many church leaders were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Many were elderly men who had benefited from foreign connections. They lived comfortable lives and had nice homes. It was easy for the authorities to find them because their lifestyles made them stand out from other people. Some of them fell away under pressure and they denounced Christ. In a short time, almost the entire church leadership was wiped out and the sheep were left without shepherds.

The 1960s and 1970s were very difficult for the house churches. They had little direction or leadership. With no Bibles, each person did what seemed right in his own eyes. Most of the people who came to Jesus in that time did so because they received healing. They didn’t care for the truth of eternal life and holy living; they just wanted to be well in this life. I was imprisoned from 1975 to 1980. We were treated very cruelly the first year. Our food was terrible and often we had to sleep on human waste because the toilets in our cells would overflow. We were beaten and tortured frequently. Being a ‘counter revolutionary’ made us the worst kind of criminals. Each month we were taken outside to different towns to be mocked and ‘struggled against’ by the public. Often we were paraded before huge crowds in stadiums. I remember, however, that sometimes when the crowd were railing against us, they would fall silent when it was announced that we were Christians. It was obvious that many people didn’t believe that Christians were enemies of the state. Some believed China had benefited greatly from Christianity in the past. Often people were found who gave false testimony against Christians. One young man named Ma, who was only about 20 years old, accused us continuously for ten days, making up crimes we had never committed. He enjoyed lying and saying disgusting things against the servants of God. On the 11th day, Ma failed to turn up for the accusation meeting. We asked the guards what happened to him and they told us that Ma had suddenly dropped dead the previous evening from a brain haemorrhage. There was another young student about 17 years old. He had a Christian background but had backslidden. He stood on a platform and attacked us, telling lies. After a few days he was paid ¥30 by the PSB for his false testimony. When he returned home he could not sleep because whenever he closed his eyes he saw a man trying to kill him with a knife. His conscience tormented him. Then he remembered that the Bible said Judas had betrayed Jesus for 30 silver pieces, so to placate his mind he decided to spend the money to buy things and give them away to people. Everyone knew that he had made his money from giving false testimony, however, and they would not accept the gifts because they were paid for with the blood of innocent men. For several nights the young man’s torment continued and he could not sleep. Every time he turned the lights out he saw visions of people trying to kill him. Finally he repented before the Lord. God forgave his sins, and this man has followed the Lord ever since. In 1975 there was much pressure on all the children of God. Everyone who believed in Christ was required to register their names with the village leaders. Some weak brothers decided to avoid the cost by denying Christ in public, but then they went home and asked the Lord for forgiveness. In that way they thought they could continue to believe in secret. When they told me to do this I firmly said, ‘No! This may be a way to escape persecution, but the Lord said that if you deny him before men He will also deny you before the Father in heaven.’ One brother who had encouraged me to do this sin was suddenly struck blind. He is still alive today but has never regained his sight. He has been following Jesus for a number of years but has not received the full blessing from the Lord. We visited the Zhoukou Three-Self church and led many of the members there to Christ. We then formed the first house churches in the area. At first the TSPM members there rejected us, saying we were criminals and therefore couldn’t be trusted. However, God gave us favour, and when the people saw the miracles He did through us, many left the TSPM and started house churches. There was one man, 27 years old, who was possessed by demons. He had raped and murdered his own mother. He had become more like a demon than a human. The whole neighbourhood

was afraid of him. His own family rejected him and brought him to us to see what we could do. We prayed for him for 46 days. Then he was delivered. Through this and other experiences the news spread that the Christians were trustworthy and God was alive. God gave us great influence among the TSPM members. This was the start of the foundation for the house churches in Zhoukou. Today there are countless house churches there.383

During the ‘silent years’, Christians in Henan could only gather secretly in small numbers for prayer and fellowship The Voice of the Martyrs

The godly example of many elderly Christians during the 1960s and ’70s left a powerful legacy for the new generation of church leaders at the time. Peter Xu Yongze, who later established the millions-strong Born-Again house-church movement, recalled the time he visited a dying saint in the 1960s: I went to visit elderly Brother Wang, who was in his 70s. He was a leader in the Lutheran Church at Pingdingshan in Henan Province. When I arrived he was lying on his bed, very sick and partially paralysed. All around on the floor were blankets used by the brothers and sisters from his church who had decided to surround him with their love and concern. They would not let their beloved pastor die alone. I sat on the side of his bed and held his hand. He told me, ‘Young brother, please start preaching! China needs the Word of God. Please start preaching!’ His request struck deep into my spirit, and I felt that this was God’s command to me. The Lord showed me I needed to stop my selfish living and to put His kingdom first. This experience has continued to leave a strong impression on me to the present day.384

Later, Xu explained how difficult it was for Christians to share their faith during the Cultural Revolution, when a spirit of fear gripped many believers’ hearts. On one occasion, he had taken refuge in his family home after escaping from prison. He was hiding under a bed, and his family had agreed that they would knock twice if anyone approached the house. He recalls:

One day I heard two knocks on the bed. I slowed my breathing and listened carefully. Three women came to the door of our home and addressed my father. One of them said, ‘We are three hungry women. We are not hungry for food but hungry to meet Jesus! We heard that you are Christians. Can you please tell us about Jesus?’ During the Cultural Revolution no one could be trusted. The government had spies everywhere, and normal citizens were encouraged and rewarded to spy on other people in their communities and to report any suspicious or ‘unpatriotic’ activities. My father was suspicious, thinking they may have been sent by the government to spy on us, so he asked them, ‘Please sit down and tell me about yourselves. Where do you come from?’ The more they talked, the more convinced I became that these women were honest seekers of the truth. Their hunger for the gospel had been aroused after one of them received healing when a Christian prayed for her. Even from beneath the bed I could hear the sincerity and eagerness in their voices. These ladies were typical of what was happening all over China at the time. People were disillusioned with their lives, and a great spiritual hunger had awakened in the hearts of millions. My father, however, had been so hurt by the years of deceit and hardship that no amount of pleading by the three women could persuade him to help. My heart raced within me! I knew they were like hungry little lambs, deeply thirsting for some spiritual milk, but my father’s heart was like stone. He told them to leave. As they walked outside our home the three women were so upset that they stomped up and down, shaking the dust off their feet as a testimony against us. I was deeply grieved and told my dad, ‘If we turn away such hungry people whom God has clearly sent to us, how can we expect to have God’s blessing on our family?’ This incident left a very deep impression on me. I determined I would never turn away people who came seeking the Lord. As far as possible I have tried to share the gospel with people, regardless of whether it suited me or not at the time. If we truly belong to Jesus, we must not try to dictate to God when He can use us. We belong to him 24 hours a day, every day. The early 1970s was a difficult time for the Church in China. All public gatherings were outlawed, so the church truly went ‘underground’. Many believers did not meet at all for years, while others gathered the courage to meet in tiny groups of just two or three people, where they would whisper prayers to the Lord and encourage one another. Even such small meetings were dangerous. If caught, the participants would be arrested and sent away to a prison labour camp. The light of the gospel was truly like a flickering candle in China during those dark days. Satan wanted to completely extinguish the flame, but God had a great plan. It was a time of burial. The church went underground, awaiting the resurrection power of the Lord. After about one month with my family, it was time to move on. I was placing them all at great risk by being there, and there would have been severe consequences for them as well as me if I were caught. Early one morning, before the break of dawn, I quietly slipped out of our house and away from our village. The first place I headed to was Xiao Zhao village, the home of the three women who had been told to leave by my father. It was not far away. I found the three women and explained that I was a believer in Jesus. One of the women had the family name Ma. She was suffering from stomach and chest pains and asked me to pray for her. I prayed in the name of Jesus Christ and He immediately healed her. Not only had her body been healed, but her spirit was also released from its burden of sin that day. These precious women lapped up every word I spoke, welcoming the Lord into their hearts with great joy. I stayed with them for half a day. They cooked a delicious meal for me, and I taught

them several songs from the Scriptures. They wanted me to stay, but I knew I had to keep moving. These dear sisters, in their innocence, would have been punished severely if the police found out they had harboured a wanted criminal. As I left, they gave me a handkerchief. I opened it and found a five-Yuan note tucked inside. This was the first donation I had ever received! I later heard that these three elderly sisters stirred up their village with the message of Jesus. Many people came to their homes and asked them to teach what they knew about God. Their boldness and hunger for the Lord was infectious. They experienced many miracles, some of which left the entire village in awe and wonder. On one occasion Sister Ma felt a great burden to visit another woman who lived on the other side of the village. As she got ready to leave her home a thunderstorm broke and torrential rain fell. Sister Ma did not own an umbrella or a raincoat but decided she would run to the house as fast as she could. When she arrived, everyone was amazed that not a single drop of rain had fallen on her! Her hair and clothes were perfectly dry, and even her shoes showed no sign of the water that had turned the dusty streets into mud. Many people believed in Jesus after they saw this unusual miracle. Every evening after dinner the three women prayed together before heading out into the village to preach the gospel. Often they continued ministering throughout the night into the early hours of the morning, such was the hunger for God’s Word. People in China at this time were so desperate and so spiritually dry that the slightest spark from the Lord would set them ablaze! In those remarkable times, the Lord instantly healed every sick person who was prayed for, and the fame of Jesus spread rapidly. These women were the instruments God used to bring a great revival to their village, which later spread to surrounding communities in Zhenping County. Today there are still a high number of believers in that area. The local Three-Self church heard about the conversion of the three women and tried to stop them. When the local police investigated and found out how many miracles had been performed through these elderly sisters, they were afraid to do anything and decided it was more prudent to leave them alone!385

Going the Extra Mile The Christians of Henan often pray that their attitude will be one that embraces suffering as a gift from the Lord. With that outlook, they are willing to go the extra mile, and there is nothing evil men or the world can do to destroy them. During the Cultural Revolution, Brother Shui of Fangcheng County was forced to parade in public wearing a large ‘dunce’ hat made of heavy bamboo. The people came out to mock and abuse the ‘criminals’ who wore them. When Brother Shui was among the prisoners to be so exhibited, the police were unable to find a spare hat for him, so he had to walk without one. This deeply upset him, because he wanted to bear the reproach of the Lord. Each prisoner’s ‘crimes’ were written on their hat, and for Christians they often wrote: ‘This person believes in Jesus.’ This was meant to be humiliating, but many Christians wore the hat as a badge of honour for their

Lord. It was a witness to unbelievers, who could clearly see the peace and joy on the faces of the Christians in contrast to the other prisoners. So, Brother Shui cried out: ‘O Lord, why did you forget me?’ On the second day, a dunce hat was found for him, and he was overjoyed. His face shone and tears welled up in his eyes as he walked through the streets. Now he was considered worthy to suffer for the name of the Lord. After the parade, he asked the police if he could keep the hat and take it home with him when he was released from prison, as a reminder of his ‘crimes’. Although they found his request strange, they consented; and when Shui returned to his farm, his neighbours were amazed to see him herding his cows and sheep wearing the dunce hat. They thought he had lost his mind and his sense of shame, but he was simply a man who loved Jesus with all his heart. For him, the hat was a treasured souvenir of the day the Lord allowed him to suffer for the name of Jesus. The authorities were furious when they saw him embracing what was meant to be his disgrace, but they realized that there was nothing they could do to make him change his ways or renounce his Lord. Brother Shui served God wholeheartedly until his death in 2000. In 1966, in the small town of Yunyang in Nanzhao County, another Christian was made to wear a dunce hat and was paraded through the streets as a criminal. Everyone knew that this man had been completely blind for many years. The people came out and beat him and smeared dirt and rubbish on him and railed against him. A guard had been placed on either side of him in order to lead him forward, but suddenly this brother began to shout: ‘Please don’t guide me any more! I can see! I can see!’ God had miraculously opened his eyes right in the midst of his persecution.386

A Famine of the Word of God In 1967, with the Cultural Revolution in full swing, the fire of God continued to burn throughout many parts of Henan. In the village of Lishan in Fangcheng County, a small boy became afflicted with smallpox and his life hung in the balance. A doctor was summoned, but after taking one look at the boy he shook his head and left. The house-church historian Danyun records what happened next: A young believer got up, laid his hands on the child and the boy immediately got up and began to play! There were only a handful of Christians in this village at first. But eventually all the villagers believed in Jesus. After that, nobody was interested in taking part in commune plays or other

entertainment. On the hillsides, the shepherd boys sang and danced before the Lord. In the fields, the labourers praised God aloud as they worked. The village women who usually gathered by the stream to do their laundry ceased arguing and sang from the depths of their hearts. The whole village was full of the harmony of praise. … The number of believers increased by leaps and bounds, as neighbouring villages turned to Jesus. Before long, there were more than 300 Christians and they quickly outgrew the meeting place.387

In the 1970s, people had become so deprived of a sense of reality and peace that there was a tremendous hunger for God’s word among both Christians and unbelievers. The house-church leader Peter Xu shared with me one example of how desperate many people were to hear the truth in those days: People could not get enough Bible teaching. Their souls were so dry that they were willing to sit under the fountain of God’s living water for as long as they could. All other activities such as work were meaningless compared to the chance of learning the Bible and being in the Lord’s presence. In 1975 I visited the mountains in Nanzhao County. There was a Christian in Nanzhao who was also a highly regarded local government official, so large meetings could be held in his neighbourhood without any security concerns. He came to Christ when God miraculously healed him from a serious illness. When this brother heard that I was in the area he asked me to teach the believers the next morning. There were so many people crowded into the house that there was no room for me to stand at the front. Instead, I propped myself up in the doorway and shared from God’s Word. Finally in the late afternoon I was exhausted and couldn’t speak any more without collapsing. I asked the leader to come and take my place but he refused. Immediately I received an inner prompting from the Lord, ‘You should not stop. Keep feeding My sheep.’ I continued, expecting that when the sun went down the meeting would be dismissed. I was wrong! The leader said, ‘We have notified many brothers and sisters and they are coming from far away. You cannot leave; they haven’t even arrived yet!’ Some of the believers walked for more than 70km [43 miles] to the meeting place. The Christians of Nanzhao were so hungry for God’s Word and they lapped up everything. I shared for five days straight, stopping only late at night. I spoke so long that my mouth became dry and my lips almost stuck together. Ignoring my exhaustion, I kept preaching on the Creation, fall of Man and salvation of the Cross. Heavy rain began to fall on the second day. I was sure the meeting would be halted, because many brothers and sisters were sitting on the ground in the courtyard of the house. The leader, however, had other ideas. He said, ‘Let’s cut the branches from the trees!’ Using the leafy branches they constructed some makeshift shelters for people to sit under in the rain. They didn’t care that water was trickling down their faces and soaking their bodies. All they cared about was hearing more of God’s Word. I continued preaching until around midnight. The Holy Spirit came in great power and many people repented of their sins with great agony on their faces. I knelt down next to some of them and listened to what they were praying. There was great pain because people realized their sins had pierced the Son of God. They continued in travail. By the time the sun came up the next morning, many of the brothers and sisters were still kneeling in the dirt, deep in prayer. By now, the morning had not only dawned outside, but God’s light had dawned in the believers’ hearts.

Agony and pain had been replaced by joy and peace. We stood up together and praised the Lord for his mercy and grace.388

God’s Wrath Leads Many to Repentance Those who have persecuted Christians in Henan have done indescribable things over the years, but they have not always had things their own way. Some government officials who ordered a crackdown on the church were suddenly struck with cancer, while relatives of others began to die in accidents. Both the officials and the community knew they were being judged for their actions against God’s people. There was one notorious man who had been particularly brutal, showing neither mercy nor remorse. The one person this man loved dearly was his young daughter, who was the apple of his eye. One day, he returned home to find that she had suddenly become insane. For weeks she was unable to respond normally to her parents or anyone else. Leading doctors and psychiatrists were brought in to treat her, but to no avail. She could utter only one sentence for all this time. Constantly, day and night, she declared: ‘You should stop persecuting the Christians. You should stop persecuting the Christians.’ Finally, realizing that God’s wrath had fallen on him, the official decided he would not persecute God’s children any more. On the very day he relented, his daughter was restored to sanity.

The church in Henan began to grow in the 1970s despite severe restrictions Asian Report

A Tongue-Tied Officer During the Cultural Revolution, there was a police officer in Henan who persecuted believers severely. He said vile things against God’s people and was always busy making plans for more arrests. One day, this man stuck his tongue out and found he was unable to pull it back into his mouth. He

visited many doctors but nobody knew how to help him, until one of them told him he should ask a Christian to pray for him. So, he visited the home of one of the Christian leaders he had persecuted. At first the family was afraid to see him, but when they saw his tongue sticking out and realized that he was unable to say anything intelligible, their fear turned to pity. They understood that he wanted them to pray for him, but they knew that if he was healed he would go straight back to opposing them. Accordingly, they told him: ‘There is no way we will pray for your physical healing unless you give your heart to Jesus Christ and believe in him. And after you receive Christ, you need to agree that you will come to our meetings regularly, and learn to love and serve God with all your heart.’ The officer was told to kneel down and repent, and as he did so, God healed his tongue. This man became a believer and stopped oppressing the church, and he remained a Christian for the rest of his life. This incident was the start of a great revival in that village, and many families came to know Jesus.

The Obedience of Sister Chang One day, God spoke clearly to a house-church leader named Sister Chang, instructing her to do something that made no earthly sense. He told her to preach the gospel on the steps of the county Public Security Bureau office. The more she prayed about it, the more unmistakably the inner voice of the Holy Spirit urged her to do it. Finally, she realized that she had no option but to obey God. She packed a small bag, fully expecting to be arrested and taken to prison. Standing on the top step outside the PSB office, she bravely proclaimed the gospel to astonished onlookers. Within a few minutes, several officers dragged her inside and put her under arrest. She was sentenced without a trial and sent to the local women’s prison, where she was placed among thousands of lost souls. Boldly and lovingly she conveyed the message of Jesus’ love and forgiveness to her fellow inmates, and also to the guards. The fire of the gospel spread quickly, and within a mere three months 800 women believed in Jesus. The whole atmosphere of the prison changed dramatically, and now sounds of praise and worship were heard echoing down its hallways and round the courtyard. God poured his Spirit out on the hungry souls, and many miraculous healings took place.

The prison director was greatly impressed by this change in the atmosphere, and was able to trace it to the preaching of Sister Chang. He had her brought to his office and told her: ‘You have made my job easy. There is no more fighting between the women, and they have become gentle and obedient. We need more people like you working here. Today we have decided to let you go free. We want to give you a full-time job here in the prison, and will pay you 3,000 yuan [about $375] a month. We will also give you a car and your own driver, and will find you comfortable accommodation.’ She listened to his offer, and then declared: ‘Twenty years ago, I became a disciple of Jesus Christ and he has been wonderful to me. I don’t believe that your offer of a car, driver and salary falls in line with what Jesus wants to do with my life, and I belong to him. All I want to do is preach the good news.’ Nonetheless, despite her rejection of his proposal, the director released Sister Chang from the prison that very day, and she continued her ministry for the Lord.

1971: A Turning Point Many house-church leaders in Henan look back on 1971 as a significant year for the underground church. Peter Xu believes that it was a real turning point in the history of the Chinese church. It was in this year that many people began to get disillusioned with the Communist system and contemplated the purpose of life. Christians were called by the Holy Spirit to fully repent of their sins and to present their bodies as living sacrifices. As believers began to share the gospel, amazing things happened, the like of which we had rarely witnessed in China before this time. Sick people were healed, demons were cast out and the precious blood of Jesus Christ changed many lives. Before the Cultural Revolution, many of the Christians in our part of China came from a conservative Lutheran background. Prayers were read from a book, and hymns were sung with expressionless faces and joyless hearts. In 1971, God transformed his church and crowned it with overwhelming joy. Small prayer groups sprang up all over China. Often, these groups consisted of just two or three spiritually hungry believers who were so overcome with the presence of the Lord that they simply had to meet together to gain some relief. The threat of persecution could not stop them. They forged ahead, desperate to take hold of their inheritance in Christ. By the power of the Holy Spirit, these small prayer groups were like the links in a chain of blessing throughout our nation. The church began to re-emerge, as these small groups of believers made contact with each other in their area. God brought forth a huge revival. The Cultural Revolution was still in full swing in 1971, but God did not care about the plans of Man. He started his own revolution. Who could have ever believed that in the midst of our darkest struggle God would bring revival and resurrect the Chinese church? This resurrection was completely the work of God, as all resurrections are. As thousands of house churches across China emerged, there was not a single

human being who could claim any of it to be his or her work. This was purely and simply a work of God. There were no church growth manuals and no human strategies implemented. As I travelled around China, still on the run from the authorities, I fellowshipped with believers in one town or village, who would then arrange for me to visit Christians they knew in the next place, and so on. Soon I found all these faithful believers were part of a massive collection of fellowships through southern Henan Province, south into Hubei and Hunan Provinces, and beyond—like links in a giant chain. I soon became aware that God had done something wonderful, which words cannot adequately describe. There are so many testimonies of how God moved in great power in the early 1970s that I hardly know where to begin. Let me share a few that come to mind. In a village near Pingdingshan City lived an elderly Christian lady who was used by God to pray for the sick in the name of Jesus Christ. Soon her reputation spread, and many coal miners beat a pathway to her door, asking for prayer so they could be healed. Miracle after miracle took place. Such was the power of God and the open spiritual atmosphere in China at that time that all who came for healing were touched by the Lord. Dozens of men received the gospel and dedicated their hearts to God. When they returned back down the mineshafts, these men had not only been healed physically, but they had become new creations in Christ and bold witnesses of the power of the gospel. In Nanzhao County, a deaf mute was brought to a meeting and God completely healed him. An old blind man around 70 years old was also brought to a meeting. God opened his eyes and he could see perfectly. The Lord even touched people whose eyesight was deteriorating through old age. Elderly believers suddenly found their sight was renewed and their faces became bright and younger-looking. They didn’t need to use their glasses any more after tasting God’s goodness. In the Tongbai Mountains in southern Henan, there lived an old sister named Su Xing who had been illiterate her whole life. She had never attended school, as was common for rural females of her age in China at the time. Su Xing was a warm-hearted sister who liked to share the gospel with people, but because she could not read the Bible, the church was reluctant to send her out as an evangelist. The believers in her home area prayed earnestly for the Lord to help her, and a miracle took place. Without any attempts to teach her to read, Su Xing was suddenly able to read fluently from the Bible. When asked how this occurred, she simply replied: ‘I just point my finger at a word and the Holy Spirit tells me what it means.’ The funny thing was that this sister could read only from the Bible. She was unable to read any other Chinese characters, whether in newspapers, street signs or any other place except in the Bible. She zealously preached the good news far and wide, and testified to the great miracle God had done for her. Later she was imprisoned because of her bold witness and suffered much for the name of the Lord. Over the years, people have asked me how the house churches started up. The honest answer is that God did a sovereign miracle and all the glory belongs to him. It had nothing to do with the hand of Man.389

A Multitude of Miracles Some house-church leaders, when asked about the different kinds of miracles that occur in China, respond by saying: ‘All the miracles recorded in the Gospels happen at least once, somewhere in China, every year.’390 One such miracle that both amazes and confounds onlookers is the supernatural multiplication of food. In southern Henan, this miracle

occurred several times in the early 1970s. A Bible teacher named Qinlu found that large crowds of believers frequently came to his house to hear him teach from the word of God. His family wanted to feed these precious guests but they were poor and had already exhausted their resources. Then, one day, when Qinlu’s sister took one basket of wheat to make flour, who would think that when this one basket of wheat was milled it would become two baskets of flour? There were more amazing things. Qinlu’s house had only one small wok, and usually when they made porridge, at the very most it could only provide food for six people. With ten or more preachers, there were always twenty people who ate, and they always had leftovers. For many years there were meetings in Qinlu’s home. Sometimes there were 40 or 50 people, sometimes over 100. Qinlu used his wok each time to make food and everyone ate until they were full. Hallelujah!391

His bold and zealous evangelism soon got him jailed. He was released in 1978, to find the churches in southern Henan in a pitiful state. Many elderly leaders were in prison, there was nobody to shepherd the flock and many believers had stopped meeting together. Qinlu set to work to try to rectify the situation. He travelled tirelessly by bicycle among the mountain villages, exhorting the struggling Christians and re-establishing them in fellowship. The historian Danyun records: After this time of difficult work, the churches began to experience revival. Every time Qinlu held a meeting, many people came together. God gave him great strength and every time he preached many people were moved and repented with tears. Once he went to Wanhe to preach on a mountain slope, and about 2,000 came to hear the preaching. The Holy Spirit moved mightily in the meeting and many were enlightened. They repented before the Lord with weeping and untold numbers were greatly revived.392

In 1979, the police rounded up over a hundred Christians associated with the Fangcheng house-church movement. The raid was carried out after dark, and so they decided to lock the believers up in a cell so they could get a good night’s rest before they started to process their detainees the next day. The house-church leader Zheng Shuqian recalls what happened during that dramatic night: Throughout the night we sang and prayed and worshipped together. It was a time of glorious fellowship. With tears in our eyes, we sang a song about the Lord’s suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was as though we were there with Jesus. We all broke out weeping and wailing from the depths of our heart. At three o’clock in the morning, a 14-year-old girl who had been arrested with us shared that she was very worried because her school had warned all the students that if they ever attended a house-church meeting they would be expelled and would lose all chance they had for future education. We could tell that she was very upset. She expressed a hope that she could escape the cell before the guards came the next morning and recorded her name. She pleaded with me, ‘Uncle, uncle, please help me go home!’

I gently said to her, ‘How can I help you? The iron door is securely locked and the windows all have iron bars across them. There is no way out.’ But the pleas of the girl touched my heart so deeply that I decided I would try whatever I could to get her and the other children out, even if it meant a worse punishment for me the next day. I took a chair and tried to smash the windows with it. I then kicked against the door with all my might, but nothing budged. Then one of the brothers said, ‘Uncle, why don’t you pray and ask God to open the door. Command the door to open in Jesus’ name!’ I put down the chair and ran to the door. I prayed and cried out to God on behalf of the children. But nothing happened. I felt emotionally exhausted, as though I had reached the end of myself. I prayed again, and suddenly one of the brothers who had his back against the door said he felt something loosen, but wasn’t sure. Then he stood aside and we all watched the heavy door open by itself! When the police woke and saw the prison door open, they knew it was more difficult for them to explain the escape to their superiors than it was for them just to act like nobody had been arrested in the first place.393 380 Tony Lambert, China’s Christian Millions: New Edition Fully Revised and Updated (Oxford: Monarch, 2006), p249 381 China Study Journal, vol.9, no.2 (August 1994) 382 ‘Where Two or Three Have Met Together’, Bridge, September–October 1993, pp9–10 383 Personal interview with Feng Jianguo in May 2001 384 Personal interview with Peter Xu Yongze in October 2003 385 Ibid. 386 These two testimonies were told to me by Zhang Rongliang in March 2002. 387 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns (Kent, England: Sovereign World Books, 1991), p298 388 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 389 Ibid. 390 Personal communication from a house-church leader in October 1999 391 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, p243 392 Ibid., p247 393 Personal interview with Zheng Shuqian in March 2001

PART IV The Three-Self Church in Henan

Chapter 19 THE THREE-SELF CHURCH IN HENAN TSPM CHRISTIANS IN HENAN 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399,400

T

he official number of Three-Self Christians in Henan has risen gradually over the past 20 years. Tony Lambert stated in his 2003 survey of the Chinese church: ‘TSPM estimates put the number of believers as high as 5 million. … In 2001 there were 1,100 registered churches and 5,000 registered meeting-points. … However, there are only about 100 registered TSPM pastors, aided by 394 elders and some 3,000 registered evangelists.’401 The latest official TSPM figure for Henan is 4,585,000 in 2004.402 Earlier TSPM figures for the province include 700,000 in 1986 and 830,000 in 1988. These figures do not include the millions of unregistered Protestant house-church Christians found throughout the entire province. A 1996 report stated: ‘The number of baptized Christians is now estimated at about 1.5 million, with an additional 2 million seekers who have yet to be baptized.’403 Pre-1949 sources record between 100,000404 and 120,000405 Protestants in Henan at the time, so even if Christians who worship in Three-Self churches are taken into account, the spread of Christianity in Henan has been spectacular.

The large Three-Self church at Zhumadian in southern Henan Bridge

Choosing Sides Of all the provinces in China, perhaps nowhere are the division and hostility between the official, registered Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the unregistered house churches as stark as in Henan. Although the housechurch believers fully understand that millions of sincere Christians attend TSPM churches, many of their leaders regard the politically-appointed hierarchy of the TSPM as corrupt and morally bankrupt enemies of the gospel. As a result, the overwhelming majority of house churches has refused to register or unite with the TSPM in any way. Many house-church leaders believe that if they did register, it would be tantamount to denying Christ, and would rather die than compromise their spiritual freedom. From the time the TSPM first resurfaced in Henan in 1980, the movement made statements that immediately placed it in a position that most housechurch Christians found unacceptable. Lambert recalls that in early 1980 the Preparatory Committee for the TSPM … issued a Patriotic Covenant for Henan Christians. The directive attacked the influence of certain unspecified ‘bad people’ who engaged in ‘illegal activities’ and urged Christians to attend only ‘normal’ religious activities. It forbade the propagation of religion outside the officially reopened churches and ‘designated points for religious activities’. … It also prohibited itinerant evangelism, and ordered Christians not to welcome ‘freelance evangelists’ (ziyou chuandao ren) to their localities to preach. This reveals both the effectiveness of such freelance evangelists in spreading the gospel at grass-roots level, and also the government’s and TSPM’s concern to root out such activities.406

The strong anti-TSPM stance of thousands of house-church leaders was reinforced by the following statement issued by the Religious Affairs Bureau in 1987: ‘We must draw a clear distinction between the Bible and Party policy. Where the Bible and the Party policy conflict, we must unwaveringly implement matters according to Party policy.’407 Two respected China-watchers commented:

This is further documentary proof that the TSPM is inextricably linked with the Party organs at all levels. This document makes it clear that if a conflict arises over loyalty to the Party or to Christ, then the Christian must be loyal to the Party. Communist ideology cannot allow for any other allegiance. … If the United Front Work Department has its way, Christ is not the Head of this church, but the Party is.408

Remarkably, the first leader of the TSPM, Wu Yaozong, went as far as to declare: ‘God has taken the key of salvation away from the Church and given it to the Communist Party.’409 It is little wonder, then, that the majority of Christians in Henan and throughout China have refused to submit themselves to such an organization.

China and the Church Today

In the early 1980s, just after the TSPM had been re-established in Henan, the Three-Self leaders released their 10 ‘Don’ts’—a list of things Christians were forbidden to do. The house churches poured scorn on this unbiblical list and dubbed it ‘the Ten Commandments of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement’. Once the house-church leaders had read these prohibitions, their opposition to the TSPM was cemented. They would not and could not obey such commandments. Moreover, the house churches already broke every one of the ‘Don’ts’. One house-church leader commented: The fifth ‘don’t’ says, ‘Do not travel from commune to commune to spread religion.’ But the Lord’s command is, ‘The gospel is to be preached to the whole world.’ Many hunger and thirst after righteousness; in grief and sorrow they beg to hear the gospel. We may not, indeed cannot, turn a deaf ear to them and disregard them totally. … All the brothers and sisters who travel to spread the gospel risk their lives. They can be arrested at any moment.410

Over the past three decades, Western Christians have spoken out against the house churches in China and told them they should ‘obey the laws of the land’ and register with the Three-Self Church. In Henan, every housechurch leader I have interviewed has testified to how they or their congregation have experienced actual persecution by the TSPM in the past. Often, TSPM pastors have informed the police of the location of unregistered house churches and got their members arrested. In some cases,

TSPM pastors even played an active part in the arrests. Unsurprisingly, many thousands of house churches in Henan and throughout China steadfastly refuse to submit to the TSPM. Those foreign Christians who are tempted to condemn the house churches would do well to reflect on these believers’ experiences and realize that they have taken a stand on principle and that their consciences do not allow them to submit to such an organization. In the early 1980s, one house-church leader denounced the TSPM in these extreme terms when he was asked how he regarded it: We try to expose the TSPM to those brothers and sisters who still don’t understand. We’re trying to pull them away from the TSPM, and we think we can do it. We’re praying with all we’ve got, and we tell those brothers not to unite. … So we call them—the TSPM and the China Christian Council—whores, partners with Judas. They are the church of Baal. We must kill that whore so that all will know they’re not of the Spirit. Last year, we held prayer meetings, praying that the Spirit’s power would come to burn that whore to death.411

Peter Xu Yongze, whose church movement grew to include thousands of unregistered house churches in Henan and throughout the country, has tried to help Western Christians to understand the refusal of the house churches to register with the TSPM by asking them what they would do if confronted with the same choice: Some people in the West have said we should be good citizens of China and obey our nation’s laws by registering our churches with the government. To that, I ask you to place yourself in our position and see if you would be willing to do this. Imagine if your church had leaders appointed by an atheistic government. You could not preach the gospel to anyone outside the scheduled church services, and you could not instruct or baptize your children until they were 18 years old. Imagine if your church leaders were forbidden to teach certain parts of the Bible such as the Book of Revelation, the Second Coming of Christ, casting out demons, and other key passages. If your pastor did so, he could be arrested. Imagine if songs and messages were frequently required in your church that reinforced your submission to the government and their system. And to top it all off, imagine that the leaders at the top of this religious structure were avowed atheists who did not even believe in God! If you enjoy your freedom in Christ in America, Europe, Australia, or wherever you may live, consider the above questions and ask yourself if you would still be keen to register your church with the government if you were in our shoes. Right from the start, my family decided there was no way we could join the TSPM. The choice was quite simple. We are the Bride of Christ, purchased by the precious Blood of the Lamb. How could we ever submit to an organization that proudly advocates atheism? The Three-Self is not a church, even though people often call it the ‘Three-Self Church’. The official name, ‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement’, shows it is not a church but a political movement carefully designed to control the spread of Christianity.

Are there real believers in the TSPM? Yes, of course there are! I have personally known many of them. There are countless sincere believers who love the Lord. Over the years the house churches have not had an issue with the individuals who attend these churches. When talking about the TSPM I find it necessary to make a clear division between the believers and the leaders of the organization.412

Despite such obvious issues—and not least the fear of state control—it is undeniable that millions of people in Henan have entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ through the testimony of the men and women who attend TSPM churches throughout the province. In recent years, it has become apparent that there is less animosity between the TSPM and house churches in Henan than before. The Holy Spirit is clearly untroubled by whatever man-made labels people try to put on his kingdom and has worked powerfully to feed people’s hunger, responding to all who call out to him with a sincere, repentant heart.

Struggles in the Three-Self Church As the political environment in China become more benign in the 1980s, many TSPM believers applied for the return of church buildings that had been confiscated by the Communist authorities during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. In some cases, the government was unwilling either to hand them over or to compensate the Christians for their loss. The re-emergence of a legal Christian church in the 1980s presented many difficulties. In 1993, one observer noted: ‘The Church in Henan Province has many facets, and it is facing huge challenges in terms of an acute shortage of church leaders, a low educational level of the believers in rural areas, as well as tensions between church people and government officials in some places.’413 In Ru’nan County, the first official TSPM ‘meeting point’ was established in the late 1980s only after a high-ranking national official from the Religious Affairs Bureau had visited the area and rebuked the local cadres for not implementing the law. Over the next few years, pressure from the RAB resulted in no more than 11 more meeting points in Ru’nan, a woefully inadequate number for a county with one of the highest concentrations of Christians in Henan today. More than 180,000 Christians live in Ru’nan, which has experienced waves of powerful revival throughout the 1980s and ’90s and right up to the present day.414 In some parts of Henan, the process of getting church buildings returned has been a painful one. In the mid 1990s in Shangcai, for example, a group

of Christians who applied for the return of a church-owned house that had been taken over by a cotton-trading company were beaten up by its irate workers.415

Believers Robbed by Greedy Religious Officials A letter written by a TSPM believer in July 1993 reveals some of the struggles that registered churches in China have today. The main organ for religious control is the Religious Affairs Bureau, a body of Communist Party appointees who by definition must be atheists. The letter, sent by Liu Kun from Henan Province, states: Our church was founded a good few years ago, and at present more than 500 people worship there. … Recently several unexpected developments in our county mean that there is no way for us to carry out the work of the church. (1) On Christmas Day, 1991, the county RAB issued each place of religious activity with a signboard, for which they charged us ¥160 [about $20], although they were only made from a couple of pieces of glass. On May 3 this year they issued our church with a ‘licence’, which cost ¥40, and at the same time took back the sign which they had issued previously. (2) Individual cadres use their power and influence to force all the churches in the county to promote the sale of tea, religious pictures and crosses, as well as insisting that we subscribe to the journal of the United Front Work Department. Each church must take two copies at ¥12 each. If we do not do these things, they say that we are unpatriotic and do not do what those in power tell us to do. … (3) Certain leaders of the county lianghui (TSPM and China Christian Council) often come to each church to eat and drink, and moreover demand money, depending on how much money is collected in the offerings. The most any church has to pay is ¥100 per month, while our church, according to regulations, has to contribute ¥40 per month. However, our church only receives ¥10–20 a month in offerings. What should I do, as someone responsible for managing the financial affairs of the church? (4) Our church in the past has asked elders from other areas to come and baptize believers. After the elders had finished the baptism and had left, the county lianghui notified us that they required baptism fees, some ¥146 in total. Should we pay these ‘baptism fees’? There are many other examples, which I will not detail here. … If these problems are not resolved soon, there will arise many opportunities for heresy, and there will be unimaginable chaos in the Church in this country.416

Not only have TSPM Christians struggled to obtain suitable buildings for their meetings, but many have run into obstacles in trying to register with the government. A number of problems have occurred in Zhumadian Prefecture, which in the early 1980s was declared an ‘area without religion’ by the authorities. Perhaps out of embarrassment at not being able to justify this claim, the local government has long been notorious for blocking or

ignoring applications from Christians in the flourishing church there for official recognition.

Students and staff of the TSPM seminary in Henan Bridge

In many other parts of Henan, too, the authorities have ignored applications from believers who wish to take the legal route and register with the Three-Self Church. In 1996, the Amity News Service, which is tied to the TSPM and the China Christian Council, listed some troubling reasons for the breakdown in this process: Sometimes meeting points can only get registered after local RAB officials have been bribed. Such bribes can be outright ‘under the table’ money, or come in the guise of local fees. … In other cases, RAB officials have the registration certificate framed elaborately and charge the cost to local congregations. As many rural congregations in Henan are very poor, such actions are a clear abuse of government power.417

Some congregations whose applications for registration were rejected were then subjected to fines and discrimination by the local authorities, who ‘punished believers for their supposed disloyal behaviour’.418 The following letter, written in 1995, tells of one group of house-church Christians who attempted to register their fellowship: A brother, my sister and I lead a congregation in our village. According to the provincial religious act, each village is only allowed to have one registered church. Ours is therefore considered illegal and is being persecuted by the authorities. Recently we were warned that if we continue to meet they will arrest our preacher and fine us ¥2000 [about $250]. He won’t be released until the fine has been fully paid. What should we do? We are reluctant to attend services in the registered church here because the preacher doesn’t speak from the Bible—for instance, once he said that lying is not a sin. When we confronted [him], he accused us of being Pharisees.419

The Henan Seminary Seeing the need to train church leaders, the Henan Christian Council investigated the best location for a seminary in the province in the early 1980s. It chose the north-western city of Luoyang, but the seminary was not

to open until October 1989. In the early years, only 50 students were accepted per year, but this number gradually increased as the seminary expanded. There are a few basic principles it observes. Each student must agree to return to their home church when they have completed their studies, for example, and their fees must be paid by their home congregations. The seminary instituted these principles in order to strengthen the relationship between its students and their home churches and to discourage its graduates from going off to pastor churches in more attractive parts of the country, as graduates from other seminaries in China have done. When one traveller visited the Luoyang seminary in 1993, he reported that its 53 students hailed from no less than 49 counties of Henan. When he asked them why they attended it, one replied: ‘Three years ago, in the county where I come from, we had six meeting points and one church with a total of around 800 members. Since then, several thousand have joined our church.’420 Another added: ‘In my county new churches are being built, and they are filled up immediately; they cannot accommodate all the people.’421

Sheep without Shepherds Like all other parts of China, Henan has a serious shortage of church leaders and workers to take care of its Three-Self believers. More than a thousand students have graduated from the Henan Seminary in Luoyang since 1989, but they have been little more than a drop in a bucket in a province whose authorities acknowledge almost five million TSPM members. Even if every graduate ended up shepherding God’s flock in Henan, they would still each have 5,000 Christians to care for—and unfortunately many of them do not serve in the ministry long. Church leaders ‘find themselves trapped in a spiral of ever-worsening poverty, until they finally have no choice but to leave home and become migrant workers.’422 Some of the statistics from Henan are frightening. In 1996, the 50,000 TSPM Christians in Gushi County had just one pastor, while Zhumadian Prefecture, with an estimated 200,000 believers, was served by just two pastors and nine elders.423 By 2001 there were just 100 TSPM pastors in the province, along with 394 elders and 3,000 evangelists.424 There were 1,100 registered churches and 5,000 meeting points—mostly registered house churches—at the time, meaning that on average each official pastor in

Henan was responsible for 61 congregations. One article noted: ‘On average, one pastor has to care for 20,000 believers.’425 Exacerbating the problem is the restrictive process by which the TSPM assesses potential leaders. One Henan Christian expressed his frustrations in 1997 thus: There are many spiritually young believers here, and few preachers have seminary education. Sermons during Sunday worship are often shallow. Seminaries would like to recruit educated young people, but most of them are not willing to dedicate themselves to the ministry. I would like to attend a seminary, but am 46 years old and do not meet the age requirement. I would like to dedicate my remaining years to the Lord. May the Lord use me.426

The dire lack of church leaders has led to many TSPM believers falling prey to cults such as the Eastern Lightning in recent years. One reporter commented on the situation in Luanchuan County in northern Henan: Illiteracy is high, and there are no pastors there. A church in the town is being built by the local Christians through donations, but they still do not have enough money to finish it. Several of the old men in the congregation have sold their coffins and burial clothes to get money for the church building. Others came down from the high mountains and sold their eggs in town to get a small donation for the church, or sold their best crops and kept back the inferior ones for themselves to eat just so they would have something to give to the church. In three or four Yuan amounts (50–75 cents US) they have filled the church collection box. It takes many of the believers two to three days of walking to reach the church. … If people from the villages want Bibles, it takes them several days of walking to get to the village because there is no bus. … They take about ten new believers a week into the church there, so the need for Bibles is quite high.427

Cumbersome Structures The unregistered house-church networks in Henan also struggle to find enough trained leaders, but their ratio is far better than the TSPM manages. A large part of the TSPM’s problem results from its structure. Its churches and meetings often follow the Western pattern, with a defined hierarchy, ecclesiastical robes, elevated pulpits, traditional, clergy-dominated worship and leaders who have spent several years at a seminary. The house churches, on the other hand, have long since done away with most of these as irrelevant hindrances. The members of each congregation lead their services and plan their activities under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and each house-church network has established large-scale training schools to strengthen their congregations and prepare new leaders. Those who value the traditional Western church structure often criticize the house churches as uneducated, casual and open to theological errors. Many house-church leaders, on the other hand, look at the monolithic,

ponderous organization that is the Three-Self Church and thank God that he has liberated their own congregations from such cumbersome structures. In 1997, Compass Direct conducted an enlightening interview with a highranking Communist Party official who was also a Christian, who confessed: If you are a Christian, you are not free to practise your faith as you choose. You are obliged to keep it private and practise it only in officially supervised settings. Chinese officials have made a silly mistake about religion. They equate it with public worship. They think if you can pray and sing in a church, then you are free. They have no concept of Christianity as a way of life.428

Overflowing Meetings Despite the problems that confront Three-Self believers in their efforts to serve Christ openly, the TSPM churches have experienced constant growth throughout nearly every part of Henan Province. Most of their members are simple-hearted people who desire to worship Jesus Christ and make him known to their neighbours. A 1990 report from Luoyang Prefecture told of the vibrant Christians in the TSPM churches there: We visited the Xigong District, where there are more than 2,000 believers who worship in more than 24 homes and are led completely by lay people, although when possible one of the pastors from the churches in town visits and preaches or gives some training. … The church service we attended was held in several homes of a big cement apartment block linking the apartments by a PA system. Believers filled the outside corridors, protected from the rain by a plastic tarp rigged up to keep them dry. That night there were Christians on the stairway three floors down and three floors up. They grabbed our hands as we walked up the stairs and thanked us for helping them get Bibles. In the apartment, they sat in every available spot, on beds, on stools on the floor, and parked in the spaces between furniture too tall to sit on.429

Similar stories of overflowing meetings and a great hunger for God’s word are commonplace from Three-Self churches in Henan. One Western Christian who travelled throughout the province in 1993 reported: What struck us the most was the tremendous growth of the church. Almost every church or meeting point we came to was overcrowded with worshippers. And several of the newly built churches, some of them huge buildings with a seat capacity of 1,500–2,000, were still not large enough to accommodate everyone. We listened to many stories of how the church in a certain area only had a few hundred Christians before Liberation in 1949, was closed down during the hardships of the Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976, and with the reopening of the church in 1979– 1980, grew immensely. And is still growing; some of the churches have multiplied their members as much as fifteen to twenty times since 1949.430

Ji Tai, a graduate of the Jinling Union Theological Seminary in Nanjing, returned to China after studying in Germany from 1988 to 1991. In 1993, he conducted a five-week training seminar at Hua Xian in northern Henan, starting on Chinese New Year’s Day and continuing until the end of February. Those dates were chosen because there is little farm work to do in

midwinter, so rural Christians generally have more spare time then. Ji explained that many churches or meeting points in the countryside only see an ordained minister once or twice a year. They are led by people who have only recently become Christians, preachers with a limited understanding of the Bible. Many among the congregation cannot read. This opens up the possibility of untrained people spreading heresies and false teachings under the cloak of Christianity. We need to provide crash courses for these evangelists and lay leaders so that a Biblical message is preached that both reflects the gospel and satisfies the widespread hunger for faith.431

Expecting no more than 100 Christians to attend the training course, Ji was shocked when more than 500 turned up on the first morning. Some had made their way by bicycle from villages more than 60 miles (100 kilometres) away, bringing with them a sack of rice and some vegetables for nourishment over the five weeks of the course. Others had come by donkey, horse cart or tractor. The training conducted at Hua Xian was technically illegal, because the local congregation who hosted it had had their application rejected by the local authorities. The outspoken Ji, who years later was excommunicated by the TSPM because of his strong views and his support for Christians in the unregistered house churches, rebuked those authorities in these words: These meeting points are not against the state. They want to be registered. It is the state that makes them illegal without any reason. … Unfortunately, some local Christian councils and Three-Self committees side with the local authorities and even speak out against unauthorized meeting points. We were left in peace by the authorities, but some people were quite afraid of being arrested. Some participants from other counties told about police harassment and persecution. The closure of meeting points by the police, seizure of Christian literature, fines and arrests—all of this happens.432

If the intention of the Chinese government was to control the spread of Christianity through the Three-Self Church, its plan has backfired badly. Revival fires have burned throughout many parts of Henan since the 1980s, with new believers caring little what church or group they belong to. Millions of people, desperate for an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, have met him as their Lord and Saviour. In Lushan County, the local Religious Affairs Bureau conducted a religious census in June 1987. It was shocked to find that there were nearly 100,000 Christians in the county.433 Reluctant to report its findings to the provincial authorities for fear of attracting special attention, the RAB ‘was at first only prepared to register 27,000 baptized Christians. However, after negotiation, they finally agreed to register 50,000.’434 The number of

Christians in Lushan has grown substantially since 1987, and today the county has approximately 170,000 Protestant Christians, representing approximately 20 per cent of the total population.435

A hand-written Bible, lovingly copied during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s The Voice of the Martyrs

From Persecutor to Preacher Believers in every part of Henan have stories to tell about the importance of the Bible in their lives. One woman named Ying grew up in a Christian home, but when the excessive persecution of the Cultural Revolution broke out, she opposed her own mother and told her to abandon her ‘superstitious’ belief in Jesus. Her mother refused, as she was a devoted Christian. In a fit of rage, Ying prepared a list of 800 names of believers and handed it to the Red Guard, who promptly arrested many of them. Not content with that, she burned all the Bibles and hymnals her mother had been safeguarding on behalf of Christians throughout the area. However, the loving Heavenly Father, who sees the pain of people’s hearts, did not abandon Ying. He reached out and saved her, causing her to repent in deep sorrow for her wicked deeds. A seed of faith was planted in her soul, but she was unable to nourish it because of the lack of Bibles in China during the Cultural Revolution. How she wished there had been just one Bible she had not destroyed! Meanwhile, her father was arrested on account of his faith and sent to prison. Ying cried out to the Lord for a year, asking for a Bible so that she could learn his word. She was willing to give everything she had for a copy, but her family had become very poor. When she visited some Christians and offered them some bags of grain in exchange for a Bible, they told her that no amount of grain would ever make them part with their beloved scriptures. One day, she heard there was a Bible in a nearby village. Clutching her baby, she staggered along the path through the rice field to

the village and begged to see it. The Christians there did not believe her and, thinking this was a ploy to get them into trouble with the authorities, sent her away. Finally, after a year of seeking, her desperate prayers were answered. An old woman had hidden copies of the four Gospels and she took the risk of lending them to Ying. Like a hungry beggar she devoured the word of God, memorizing as much as she could before she had to return the Gospels to their owner. Over time, she managed to borrow other parts of the Bible, and she copied down every word by hand. After a while, she had copied down half the Bible, while another Christian had been busy copying the other half. Together, they had a complete Bible, painstakingly written out by hand. Sister Ying, like the apostle Paul, changed from being a persecutor of Christians to being a mighty preacher. God used her throughout the Luoyang area to lead hundreds of people to faith in Jesus Christ.

Startling Growth in Baixing Starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, church growth has been spectacular in every part of Henan. The following examples are typical of hundreds more throughout the province. In the town of Baixing in Qinyang County, in northern Henan, the Christians began meeting in the home of an elderly believer in 1984. They were determined to meet legally with the full knowledge of the authorities, but by 1988 the number of believers had grown so large that meeting in the house proved impossible. The Christians collected 4,000 yuan (approximately $490) and bought a courtyard, which they developed into a space where hundreds of people could gather and worship. The local authorities, anxious about the growing church, claimed that its members had violated building regulations and in 1991 tore the new structure down. The Christians in Baixing were undeterred and, again pooling their resources, purchased a large tract of unused land. Members of this determined congregation offered their hand-tractors, hauled in stones and organized their own building squad. Every day, older women from the congregation cooked food for those working at the building site. Within fifty days, a new church building 21 meters long and 11 meters wide was finished. One church member commented, ‘When sisters and brothers work together, give their hearts and their strength, unite and rely on the Lord, so much can be accomplished.’436

In August 1992, a new, 1,200-seat Three-Self church building was opened in Baixing. It was soon filled to overflowing, so that several services had to be held every Sunday.

Incredible Commitment in Luoyang In the district of Guanlin, not far from Luoyang, more than 20,000 Christians were refused permission until 1991 to build their own church. The government gave them a piece of land, but to pay for the construction they needed a massive sum of about 450,000 yuan ($55,000), which was completely out of their reach. According to official statistics, the average income in Henan at the time was 380 yuan ($46) a year. Undeterred, 600 of their number donated the materials and their labour free of charge so that the church could be built. Even unbelievers, seeing the commitment and dedication of the Christians, volunteered to help them. The women and girls in the congregation lovingly cooked food and brought it to the construction site every day. In December 1991, just eight months after the land was acquired, the huge church was completed. The Christians of Guanlin were so overcome by the experience of God’s generosity and encouragement throughout the project that they named it the Heavenly Grace Church. In the end, thanks to the self-sacrifice of this congregation, their church had cost them just 6,000 yuan ($730).437

The Church in Jiaozuo When foreign Christians visited Jiaozuo during Easter 1993, they were amazed to find banners hanging on the city gate proclaiming ‘Christ is risen!’ The Three-Self church there was crammed with worshippers, while another 1,500 people crowded into the courtyard outside to listen to the service on loudspeakers. In 1996, TSPM leaders estimated that there were at least 87,500 baptized believers in the prefecture. House-church leaders claim a total Christian population of two to three times that number. Over the years, many members of Three-Self churches—including leaders —have experienced Christ in such a dramatic way that they have been forced out of the TSPM. The following letter, received from a Sister Wong, tells of such a spiritual journey: I was a Three-Self pastor in my city but the message we preached did not help me or our people. I thirsted to find the true message about Jesus, so I began to pray. One day the Holy Spirit came down and opened my eyes. I fell down on my knees and repented in the presence of the Lord and was baptized by the Holy Spirit.

When I returned to the Three-Self church I preached the message of God’s salvation. Many believers began to cry and confessed their sins. This annoyed the other leaders in the church. They decided to stop my ministry and I left without any regrets. Later a group of believers came to my house and asked me to feed them with the true message from the Lord. We started our house meeting but my home soon became too small so we relocated to a cave.438

Mother Jia Bridge

Old Sisters Faithfully Preserve the Gospel in Wuyang Wuyang County, an impoverished area of central Henan, was formerly a mission field of the China Inland Mission. The CIM began work there in 1887 and soon built a church on North Street in the township of Wuyang. The advance of the gospel was extremely slow, however, and by 1924 the congregation still numbered only 36.439 In the 1930s, the missionaries redirected their efforts from the township to the surrounding countryside and the number of believers grew more quickly, as the rural Chinese showed more interest in spiritual matters (as they generally still do today). This in turn stimulated the church in the township, so that soon two more churches in Wuyang were opened for worship. By the time the Communists came to power in China in 1949, the total number of Christians throughout the county was close on 1,000.

The small band of believers at Wuyang in 1988 Bridge

In the 1950s and ’60s, the authorities put a stop to religious activity in the township, so that no visible sign of Christianity could be detected. Times were extremely difficult for believers in the countryside, too, though meetings were still allowed there until 1957. After that, all religious assemblies were outlawed. Nonetheless, God preserved a remnant, and a few faithful people continued to meet in secret during those dark years. No pastors remained to shepherd the flock, so most of their services were led by elderly, uneducated women. One such faithful saint was Mother Jia, who first believed in Christ in 1941 at the age of 36. Being the only Christian in her family, she was opposed and criticized by her relatives, but she had been touched by Jesus and decided never to turn back. When the churches were forced to close, she began to call her Christian neighbours together to meet in her home. Because those who came were also illiterate, there was no one to preach when they met and so their activities were confined to singing and praying. Between 1964 and 1971, the meeting of these elderly women came under attack, and Mother Jia was interrogated and forced to confess. … To avoid further problems, the women changed the time of their meetings to midnight and the number of participants was limited to three or five each meeting.440

When the long winter of persecution finally started to thaw throughout China in the mid 1980s, so many people came to faith in Jesus Christ that the established believers could not keep up with the work of taking care of them. In Wuyang, the home of Mother Jia was used for meetings, but it soon was too small to accommodate all the worshippers. Accordingly, the members of her house church decided to register their congregation with the TSPM. The local Three-Self committee was chaired by Brother Li Shitou, who before his conversion had been a notorious drunkard and chainsmoker. Mother Jia had prayed for Li without ceasing until he gave his life to Christ and was transformed. He believed and was baptized in 1976. Being a government cadre, Li could not openly confess his faith because in China only atheists are allowed to hold government positions. Nonetheless, in 1979 he decided to announce that he had become a Christian anyway and face the consequences. Surprisingly, he was allowed to keep his job. In 1986 he attended the theological seminary in Nanjing, and the following year he returned home to establish the Three-Self church in Wuyang. This continued to grow, and 52 new believers were baptized during the Spring Festival of 1988. After the ceremony, these new converts joined over 600 other members of the

newly-formed North Street Church, nearly half of whom had been baptized the previous year.441

Hu Sini Bridge

Thus, from a small group of faithful old sisters who refused to stop meeting during the Cultural Revolution God had accomplished a beautiful thing in Wuyang for his glory. Mother Jia has since gone to her eternal reward, but the work has continued to flourish. Today, there are approximately 50,000 Protestant believers in the county, meeting in both Three-Self and house churches.442

A Kernel of Wheat The church in Wuyang reached its lowest ebb in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Without any leadership, it was left to a small group of illiterate women to keep the light of the gospel glowing. However, the God they served had said that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit. In Wuyang, as in many other parts of Henan, the church began to come back to life. The harsh years of the Cultural Revolution had left an emptiness in people’s hearts and they were eager to fill it. Zealous preachers travelled from village to village proclaiming the gospel. The small church in Ludian, just 7.5 miles (12 kilometres) north-east of Wuyang, grew steadily. Between 1978 and 1988, the number of believers there increased tenfold. Much of this growth can be attributed to an elderly woman called Hu Sini, whose tireless efforts led many to the Cross. Many of the house-church believers in Ludian belong to the Church of the Narrow Path, which holds that the Three-Self churches have taken the broad path, compromising their faith by registering with the government. The antagonism between the TSPM Christians and the members of the Church

of the Narrow Path continues to this day. In 1982, evangelists from both sides of the divide were invited for training in Kaifeng City. The magazine Bridge reported that during the class ‘accusations and insults were traded between the two camps, and by the time they returned to Wuyang, they had stopped speaking to one another.’443 One wonders how many people in the county might have come to Christ if the two main representatives of his Church there had expended as much energy seeking to win souls as they have in attacking each other’s point of view.

Revival in Zhumadian The prefecture of Zhumadian is located in the south of central Henan. In the early 1980s, this region was officially declared to be ‘without religion’. In 1996, however, Three-Self church leaders estimated that there were at least 200,000 Protestant believers in the prefecture—and estimates from TSPM sources are notoriously conservative. House-church leaders in Zhumadian reckon that the true number of Christians in the area is at least half a million. The local authorities, angered and embarrassed by the spread of Christianity, refuse to register any more Three-Self churches or meeting points, but the church continues to grow anyway. Technically even the TSPM-affiliated churches in Zhumadian are illegal, but they have been given no choice. In some counties, no new church permits have been issued for more than 10 years. Officials seem to have taken the attitude that if they ignore the Christians, perhaps they will go away. The opposite has been the case. God has proved that he does not need human permission to display his grace and power.

394 According to Bridge (September–October 1986), ‘Now, there are nearly 600,000, and close to 700,000 if enquirers are included in the count.’ 395 In 3,087 churches (China Study Journal, vol.9, no.2 [August 1994]) 396 Tony Lambert, China’s Christian Millions: The Costly Revival (London: Monarch Books, 1999), p198 397 Amity News Service, March 1996. This figure included 1.5 million baptized TSPM believers and two million who had not yet been baptized. 398 Tony Lambert, The Resurrection of the Chinese Church (Wheaton, Ill.: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1994), p310 399 Amity News Service, November–December 2004. Tony Lambert notes that this figure appears to be ‘very conservative’ (China’s Christian Millions [2006], p250). 400 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 401 ‘Survey of the Chinese Church—Part III’, Global Chinese Ministries, April 2003 402 Amity News Service, November–December 2004 403 Amity News Service, March 1996 404 ‘Christians in Northern Henan Province’, Bridge, September–October 1986 405 China Study Journal, vol.9, no.2 (August 1994) 406 Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church, p81 407 ‘Supreme Loyalty: The Bible or the Party?’, China News and Church Report, 8 July 1988 408 Ibid. 409 Cited in Li Shixiong and Xiqiu (Bob) Fu (eds.), Religion and National Security in China: Secret Documents from China’s Security Sector (unpublished report, 2002), p18 410 Jonathan Chao (ed. by Richard Van Houten), Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves: Chinese Christians Tell Their Story (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1988), p197 411 Chao, Wise as Serpents, pp145–46 412 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 413 Lennart Hamark, ‘Visit to the Church in Henan Province, Part II’, Bridge, September–October 1993, p19 414 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 415 ‘Uneven Implementation of Religious Policy in Henan’, Amity News Service, March 1996 416 Tianfeng, July 1993 417 ‘Uneven Implementation of Religious Policy in Henan’ 418 Ibid. 419 Far East Broadcasting Company, Letter no.9523, September 1995 420 Hamark, ‘Visit to the Church in Henan’, p18 421 Ibid. 422 ‘Where Have All the Evangelists Gone?’, Amity News Service, January–February 2000 423 ‘Growing Christian Community Short of Pastoral Workers, Buildings, Bibles’, Amity News Service, March 1996 424 ‘Three Plentifuls and One Shortage: Churches in Henan Province’, Amity News Service, December 2001 425 Ibid. 426 Letter from Zhang, China News and Prayer, December 1997 427 ‘The Church in Luoyang’, unpublished report by an anonymous Christian worker, 1990 428 ‘Persecution in China: A Party Member’s View’, Compass Direct, 24 October 1997 429 ‘The Church in Luoyang’, 1990 430 Hamark, ‘Visit to the Church in Henan’, p18 431 ‘Training Course for Five Hundred Evangelists in Henan’, Amity News Service, March 1993 432 Ibid. 433 Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church, p143 434 Ibid., pp143–44 435 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 436 ‘New Church in Qinyang, Henan Province’, Amity News Service, April 1992 437 Hamark, ‘Visit to the Church in Henan’, p18 438 Letter from Sister Wong to Asia Harvest in August 2002 439 ‘The Indigenous Church of Wuyang’, Bridge, April–May 1988, p3 440 Ibid. 441 ‘The Indigenous Church of Wuyang’, Bridge, April–May 1988, p4

442 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 443 ‘The Indigenous Church of Wuyang’, p5

Chapter 20 CAPTURING HEARTS

O

ne of the key ways in which the Three-Self churches have reached out to unbelievers in Henan is through community development and relief work. In this chapter, I want to highlight some of the many ways the TSPM has made a positive difference in people’s lives in the province and in so doing has opened thousands of hearts to the claims of Christ. As one report noted: ‘In China, although people are allowed freedom of belief, open evangelism is discouraged by the government. The church thus has to rely on the witness of the lives of its believers, and the church is very creative in its evangelistic witness.’444

Outreach to Aids Sufferers HIV/Aids has become a major scourge in Henan, especially in villages along the main transport routes, where it has been spread rapidly by prostitution and drug use. Thousands of innocent people (including some Christians) have inadvertently been infected with HIV/Aids as a result of their extreme poverty. One publication laments: 60% of the people in many villages in Henan Province have contracted Aids because they have been selling their blood to make a living for a long time. These people include some Christians who have passed away. As a result of their insufficient understanding of the Bible, some Christians have lost their faith in God and have stopped going to church because they think God cannot cure them of the disease.445

In 2004, Zhang Liwei, the deputy general secretary of the Amity Foundation, said: ‘Cases of HIV infection are increasing at such a dramatic rate that the worst estimates put the number of infected people [throughout China] at 10 million by the end of the year 2010 if the current situation remains uncontrolled.’446 In response, the Three-Self Christians in Henan commenced outreach to Aids sufferers. In one village, Shang Quan, believers found 30 children who had been orphaned as a result of the epidemic. Approximately half of these were from Christian families. In many cases, people in Shang Quan ‘had contracted HIV/Aids as a result of selling their blood to earn money to pay their children’s school fees when, as regularly happens in this part of Henan, the crops fail. The people who go from village to village buying blood, known as ‘blood snakeheads’, use unsterilized needles which can spread infection quickly.’447

Zhang recalled: I was moved by the plight of these our brothers and sisters as I listened to them. In response, we shared words of exhortation with them, reminding them of the Lord as the Good Shepherd who will be with them as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We prayed for them and assured them that we will share their needs with the wider Christian communities.448

The Henan Christian Council launched a number of practical initiatives to ease the suffering of families being decimated by the virus. Those that were unable to sustain themselves by growing crops were given pigs to rear. The 30 orphans at Shang Quan were taken care of. Most of the money for these impoverished country folk was provided by Three-Self churches in urban areas. Christian volunteers have been trained to travel around villages giving Aids-awareness talks, and the Amity Press in Nanjing has provided Bibles for distribution among those living with HIV/Aids.

Christians’ Love Attracts Many to God The year 1998 was one of sorrow and suffering for millions of people in Henan as floods devastated the province. Countless families lost everything they owned. In response, many Christians displayed the grace and love of God to their destitute neighbours. Their witness resulted in tens of thousands more people becoming citizens of the Kingdom of God. In Song Xian, in north-western Henan, one Christian man used his entire life savings of 8,000 yuan (about $1,000) to buy a boat so that he could ferry people about on the floodwaters. He refused to take any money from elderly or sick people, from children on their way to or from school, or from Christians going to worship. To those who could afford it, he charged a nominal fee to cover his operating expenses.449 This example of practical love is just one of thousands that were seen in Henan. Many sin-hardened hearts were softened by such acts of compassion, resulting in growth throughout the church. An earlier series of natural disasters in the province, in 1986, saw the Christians respond in a similarly generous way. After a sustained period of drought, hailstorms and hurricanes, thousands of farmers in Luoyang were left without any crops at all and were facing tremendous hardship. The TSPM churches in the area collected 7,500 yuan, together with over two tons (2,150 kilos) of grain, 12,000 items of clothing and a ton of wheat.

These were distributed in Christ’s name among the needy in the counties of Luanchuan and Ruyang.450

Floods ravage a Christian village in Henan The Voice of the Martyrs

Christians Contribute to Economic Development As China opened up to the outside world in the 1980s and ’90s, believers in Henan sensed that they had a larger contribution to make to their communities. The economic boom was uneven in its effect, with wealth blessing one household and unemployment blighting another. Many people suffered as economic reforms left them behind. In the village of Jianshi, in the township of Daqiao in Neixiang County, more than half of the population are Christians. The villagers were formerly known throughout the area to be extremely poor, always needing government assistance to help them to survive. In 1992, local Christians started a fruit-and-vegetable-growing project using modern, scientific methods. By 1995, Jianshi had become the most prosperous village in the township. Its residents were subsequently able to help neighbouring communities to establish their own enterprises.451 Encouraged by the success of their fruit-and-vegetable project, the believers in Jianshi then formed a cooperative with a total of more than 6,700 workers, producing and marketing many different goods including woollen sweaters, shoes and traditional herbal medicine.452 Similar initiatives across the province have increased the standing of Christians in the eyes of local people, and have generated the money to support evangelists and fund other Christian work. Throughout Henan, many Christians have found themselves running businesses as they applied biblical principles of thrift and generosity to their lives. In Shangshui, a woman named Su Xueling began a company called Gospel Noodles after she claimed to have been inspired to do so by God. Her story was told in no less a publication than the Wall Street Journal in

2005. Her father was a veteran soldier of the Communist Revolution, and she had never heard of Jesus until she was well into her 30s. At the time she was caring for her husband, who was dying from a brain tumour, and a nurse suggested that she might find peace in Christ. She didn’t know where to begin, so she bought a Buddhist statue and prayed to it. This did not bring any solace to her soul and so she stopped. Her husband died, and she was left with a medical bill of 96,000 yuan (about $12,000) and two sons to bring up. She resigned from her badly-paid government job and started a small business making noodles, which she sold door-to-door by bicycle. Su’s income was still barely enough to make ends meet, but in 1998 she was walking near a Three-Self church when she says she heard an audible voice saying: ‘Sister, you’re late. Come!’453 She span around to see who was talking to her, only to find herself alone. Entering the church, she embraced the good news and gave her life to Christ. After experiencing salvation, Su raised more than 800,000 yuan (about $100,000) in capital and bought machinery to produce a line of noodles, and six delivery vans. Good News Foodstuffs Ltd was born. The business was soon booming and money rolled in. Su used the profits to ‘start a seminary and trained hundreds of evangelical preachers to spread Christianity across China.’454 The Emmanuel Gospel Seminary, though officially registered with the China Christian Council, had a strong emphasis on evangelism, and even offered Arabic language classes so that its students could prepare for missionary work in the Middle East, as part of the ‘Back to Jerusalem’ vision of the Chinese church. Su employed 70 people, and the seminary grew to more than 200 students. She also became a member of the regional legislature. In Communist China, however, such open Christian proselytization is rare and usually short-lived. Su’s connections with local government did not help her, and after a government investigation in May 2004 Gospel Noodles had to close and the seminary’s licence was revoked. As part of the ‘evidence’ against her, the police found one of her business cards in her apartment. On the back of it were printed the words ‘Turn China into an aircraft carrier for spreading the gospel.’ Party deputy secretary Zhang Qi ‘summoned Ms Su to his office, accusing her of counter-revolutionary acts and using religion to abet the infiltration of foreign forces. … He said, “If you weren’t a People’s Congress deputy, you would be arrested.”’455 Su struggled for a time, wondering whether she

had misunderstood God’s intentions for her life. She eventually decided not to return to the noodle business and instead made plans to open a private school in Shangshui.

Caring for the Elderly One segment of Chinese society in danger of being forgotten in the relentless pursuit of economic prosperity is the elderly. Wang Zhaohua, the chair of the National Committee on the Elderly, pointed out in the mid 1990s that ‘the number of people over 60 in China has now broken the 100 million barrier. This number increases by 3 per cent each year. By the end of the century, we will have 132 million old people, representing over 10 per cent of the total population. We are becoming a country of the elderly.’456 Churches in Henan have been concerned for the elderly Christians in their midst, especially those Three-Self congregations that are 70–80 per cent made up of such believers. Many elderly Christians in China are men and women who have lived through decades of persecution, especially during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76. They have retained their faith and are a shining example to the Christians of younger generations. One report notes that they have ‘accumulated a wealth of talents, skills and experiences [that] contribute to the life of the church and outreach to society.’457 In Kaifeng, one Three-Self church set up an ‘old people’s peace and comfort home’ in the eastern suburbs of the city. Its aim is ‘to make sure that no one within the church lacks care. The home has a clinic, and each resident receives a monthly physical check-up. The home is run entirely by volunteers from within the local congregation.’458 This has provided a strong witness of Christian love to these believers’ neighbours and relatives.

Medical Outreach Probably the most influential of the myriad forms of Christian social and community development programmes in China is medical outreach. The Three-Self churches in Henan operate a number of mobile medical teams. These doctors and nurses, most of whom are committed Christians, take their medical expertise to impoverished rural areas. In 2002, the Luoning Christian Hospital was established in western Henan to allow ‘patients to come for medical check-ups who normally cannot afford to see a doctor’.459 Hundreds of patients were treated, but

unfortunately funds were scarce and the hospital was obliged to close after just two years. A Christian intern and evangelist named Zhang Weiming was distressed to learn that this tremendous ministry had faltered. This 34year-old man secured personal loans, replaced the management and changed some of the staff, and reopened the hospital in September 2004 under the name of Amity Hospital Luoning. Within months, word had spread throughout the region and large numbers of sick and poor people came seeking treatment. Many of those who benefited from the service were Christians. When he was asked about the hospital’s operating costs, Wang explained: ‘Our salaries are very low. Doctors come for the sake of God’s love. The most important qualification we look for in potential staff is that they must have a loving heart. Without this willingness to provide loving care, not even the most qualified person will be hired.’460

Zhang Weiming (right) with one of the doctors of the Amity Hospital in Luoning Amity News Service

Providing Bibles In the mid-to-late 1980s, many Christians started to travel to rural areas in China to visit local believers. Invariably, they found simple-hearted people who were desperate for the truth of God’s word. Pastor Zhang of Luoyang recalled: When the church reopened in 1980 we only had one Bible; it was mine. We soon got our first group of 60 Bibles … and we gave them to pastors, elders, and lay people who served in the church. Even then it was not enough. What could we do? We called a meeting to decide. The ones who got Bibles were very very happy. The ones who did not get one were very very sad and some cried. We started getting more Bibles after 1982, and many more after the Amity Press started printing. … Why are Bibles still so tight now? Because people are becoming Christian all the time and we can’t estimate the numbers, but it is very many.461

Sister Li, also from Luoyang, described how believers longed for the word of God:

Just after the Cultural Revolution in my village, only a few people had Bibles. Most believers had no Bible. Now we have more than 1,000 believers and after the Amity Press began printing Bibles, we received more than 200 Bibles. When we saw the Bibles, all the old believers had tears in their eyes. When we brought Bibles back to the village the believers all fought over them. Once I went to Kaifeng and when I came back I carried ten Bibles with me, but over 100 people surrounded me and I was almost pulled to pieces.462

When some TSPM preachers travelled to remote areas of southern Henan in 1989, they were touched by the response they received: It was early in the spring when we reached Nanyang, but during the first few days after our arrival there was a considerable fall of snow, and the weather turned suddenly cold, with the roads quite muddy. We were rather concerned that this might influence the attendance at the meetings. But when we arrived at the Nanyang church, the sight that met our eyes made us realize how small our faith had been. The church itself was full to capacity, and in addition the rooms adjoining the church itself were packed. I asked one of the women who had come, ‘With such heavy snowfall, don’t you feel cold?’ She promptly replied, ‘When such an opportunity as this to hear the gospel comes so infrequently, what difference does a bit of cold weather make? After all, our hearts are on fire.’ There was an elderly Christian in Sheqi who had originally planned to come on his own to the meetings. But having attended one meeting, he hurried back home and urged his wife to come with him to the next session. … In order that we might satisfy the requirements of the local Christians, wherever we went we had to increase the number of meetings we addressed. Originally we had planned to preach during the day, and to hold discussions during the evenings. But as it turned out, the evening meetings very often turned out to be occasions for preaching, and discussions had to be crowded into the programme wherever possible. … Every time we were about to leave a place, the Christians would try to persuade us to stay a few days longer. Sometimes they would even surround our car to prevent it from leaving. When we took leave of them, they would always ask the question, ‘When are you coming back?’ Perhaps the words of an old Christian in Lushan can be taken to represent the feelings of all of them, when he said, ‘I have been a Christian for more than forty years, and I have heard a great many people preaching and have been moved by them. But never have I been so deeply moved as during your visit. Your preaching has enabled me to see the moving of the Holy Spirit. He has not only irrigated our parched hearts, but he has led us on into the truth. He has opened up our spiritual vision, enabling us to distinguish right from wrong. I am convinced that this leading by the Holy Spirit is merely a beginning, and that it will continue into the future. May the Holy Spirit lead you back here once again!’463

Throughout the 1990s and on into the 21st century, Bibles gradually became more readily available in the cities of China thanks to the excellent work of the Amity Press in Nanjing. Multitudes of believers living in impoverished rural areas are still unable to get hold of Bibles, however, due to a combination of poverty and geographic isolation. In response, the Henan Christian Council has conducted extensive Bible-selling tours of rural areas, distributing hundreds of thousands of scriptures to hungry believers.

The Henan Christian Council distributing thousands of Bibles to eager Christians in Lankao in 2004 United Bible Societies

In April 2004, the Henan Christian Council invited two leaders of the United Bible Societies to accompany it on a trip to Lankao County, about 30 miles (50 kilometres) east of Kaifeng City. Kua Wee Seng, the Asia Coordinator for the UBS, reported: I will never forget the scene that awaited us as we pulled into a small village tucked away in Lankao County in Henan Province. Instead of finding a village of a few hundred people, we were exuberantly greeted by 8,000 Christians who applauded as we entered the village compound. This was Jianzhuang village, and was meant to be just the first stop on a trip to 10 villages to distribute 5,000 Bibles to Christians who had lost their copies when the Yellow River flooded last summer. The floods destroyed the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people. … When news got out that the Henan Christian Council intended to distribute these Bibles, Christians across Lankao County were determined not to miss out. They found out the first stop that the distribution van would make on its journey, and those who were able to made plans to get to Jianzhuang early that day. For many, it was a long and difficult journey, some travelling on foot for many miles, and others arriving en masse in trucks. … When we arrived in Jianzhuang village, we were ushered into the midst of the crowd, who broke into applause. We were moved by the overwhelming need for the Bible by these people, but we were unable to provide a copy for all 8,000 of them. … As we were leaving the village, many people came to shake our hands and thanked us for the gift of the Bible. There were tears in the eyes of some. We thanked the Lord for the opportunity to help provide Bibles for some of them, to meet our sisters and brothers and be inspired by their fervent love of the Bible in the midst of their poverty and difficulties.464

Creative Believers in Luoyang The ways Christians in Henan have found to express Christ’s love for people are myriad. Multitudes of people in Henan have been affected by the faith and love of both the Three-Self and house-church Christians throughout the province, whose deeds have played a key role in the tremendous revival that has swept, and continues to sweep, China’s most populous province. The following lengthy report from Luoyang, which

sheds light on some of the creative methods of outreach the believers have employed, is a fitting way to conclude this chapter. At the Luoyang Peony Festival, which runs for two weeks at the end of April, hundreds of thousands of people come to Luoyang to see the splendour of its peony gardens, filled with delicate pink, purple, yellow, and white blooms. When they come, in the middle of Luoyang’s most popular peony park which is filled with lanterns and special light displays, rides for children, and exhibits, you can find a special tent set up by the Christians from churches all over Luoyang City. The tent is plain, with benches set up on one side and tables for serving tea on the other. Above the tables is a simple sign on white cloth with red characters: ‘Christian Free Tea Station.’ Inspired by Jesus’ words, ‘And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will not lose his reward,’ the Christian churches, house churches, and meeting points around the city united their efforts to provide tea for the visitors to the festival. … Over 100 people volunteered to service the Free Tea Station at the park, and they estimate that at least 100,000 people had stopped for tea. Believers boil water using their own family’s stores of coal, and supply tea leaves from their own homes. They proudly told us that it was their very best tea leaves that they had carefully put away in preparation for the festival. The boiled water is taken to a collection point, and then carried on shoulder poles through the city to the park, where volunteers staff the booth from morning to late at night ready to serve tea to anyone who needs it. The night we visited, there were many believers hard at work, both young and old, including an 85-year-old retired woman minister who had been there all day. Many of the visitors were people from the countryside with limited resources, who especially appreciated the free cup of tea. No verbal evangelization was necessary. In that carnival atmosphere … to suddenly come on a little oasis of polite, happy people working hard for no pay may be one of the most dramatic Christian witnesses that the church could ever give. Pastor Zhang told us, ‘We needn’t say anything. Our deeds alone evangelize for us. The light of God shining through our deeds touches other people.’ An official in charge of the park, speaking of the Free Tea Station, said, ‘Oh! You have captured the people’s hearts!’ In the book of comments kept at the Free Tea Station, one visitor wrote, ‘If believing in Jesus inspires you to do this, then I want to know how to believe,’ and another wrote, ‘Where does your love come from? If it comes from God, then I can believe in Him.’ One of the workers at the stand told us how a retired professor had brought his granddaughter to the Park for the day. They stopped at the Free Tea Station because, he said, they saw that it was very clean. When they had finished drinking, he asked how much the tea cost, and was quite shocked that it was free. He attended church the following Sunday, and told them at first he had thought, ‘They are so foolish. They didn’t want money. Why not charge just a little? Everything costs money!’ But then he suddenly realized that their spiritual level was very high. They were thinking not of themselves but others. So he came to church to find out more about it. This is a fairly common thing in Luoyang, according to the church people there. One of the Christians there reported that he became a Christian when he attended a church service for the first time and an old woman with bound feet insisted on giving up her seat for him so he could sit during the service.465

444 ‘The Church in Luoyang’, 1990 445 Pray for China, no.174 (December 2003–January 2004) 446 ‘Prayer and Practical Support for Victims of HIV/Aids in Henan’, World Report, no.397 (November 2005) 447 Ibid. 448 Ibid. 449 Amity News Service, September 1998 450 Tianfeng, November 1986 451 Amity News Service, January 1996 452 Amity News Service, April 1995 453 Charles Hutzler, ‘As Christianity Rises in Cities, China Tries to Manage It’, Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2005 454 Ibid. 455 Ibid. 456 ‘Caring for Older Christians in China’, Chinese around the World, May 1999, p23 457 Ibid., p24 458 Ibid. 459 Katrin Fiedler, ‘Battling Disease, Struggling with Dialects: Amity’s Mobile Medical Team Visits Luoning’, Amity News Service, July–September 2005 460 Ibid. 461 ‘The Church in Luoyang’, 1990 462 Ibid. 463 China Study Journal, vol.4, no.1 (April 1989), pp57–59 464 ‘Thousands Gather to Await Bibles in Small Village’’ World Report, no.387 (August–September 2004) 465 ‘The Church in Luoyang’, 1990

Chapter 21 A HOTBED OF CULTS

The multitudes of new Christians in Henan have been specifically targeted by a variety of cults.

F

RCMI

or a number of reasons, not the least being that it is still not easy for Christians in rural areas to get access to Bibles, cults have flourished in Henan and caused destruction both on the fringes of the church and among unbelievers. Speaking of Christians, one publication lamented: ‘With no money to obtain Bibles and lacking the ability to read them if they had any, many believers can easily be swayed from the Truth.’466 Many of China’s most prominent cults, both pseudo- and non-Christian, either originated from Henan or boast a substantial membership in China’s most populous province. For that reason, Henan has been dubbed a ‘hotbed of cults’. We have a church near here which neither reads the Bible nor speaks the truth of God in meetings. They said, ‘Whoever cannot dance is not filled with the Holy Spirit, and is not a genuine Christian.’ An old-age woman said, ‘I am afraid I can no longer attend the church meetings because I really can’t dance at my age.’ FEBC, Letter no.11395, 15 December 1989 There is no church in our village. My mother and other Christians go to the ThreeSelf church not far away from our village. My aunt is a born-again Christian. She told my mother that she could only be saved if she went to the holy mountain. My mother believed and went there with several sisters. When the Three-Self church realized that they no longer go to their church, they informed the Public Security Bureau. The PSB put my mother and other sisters in prison. They were freed in one week after we paid a ¥200 [$24] fine for each of them. They were persecuted and teased by people on the street. Having seen their experiences, some seekers have decided not to believe while some believers lost their faith. FEBC, March 1993 The work of the Gospel is prospering now in China. We can talk about Jesus Christ freely. People know that believing in Jesus is good. However, sheep are many while

shepherds are few. Biblical teaching is inadequate and thus many believers are still immature in their spiritual life. They do not fully comprehend the truth. At times there are false teachers who say, ‘Jesus is coming, so offer your money now.’ An elderly brother gave ¥2000 to one of them who then ran away. We are grieved because if he had known the truth, he wouldn’t have been deceived. FEBC, Letter no.8568, September 1995

A number of sources have drawn attention to the impact of cults in China, but sometimes observers gain the impression that the cults are affecting the church more than they actually are. While they are certainly dangerous, and a problem for Christians, it is worth noting that perhaps only five per cent of believers in Henan have changed allegiance and joined a cult. The overwhelming majority remain true to Jesus Christ. This proportion is comparable with the percentage of Christians in Western nations who join pseudo-Christian cults such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a multitude of other sects.467 Asked how the cults were affecting Henan’s house churches, one housechurch leader said: They are having a significant impact. Their members have secretly entered our churches and hidden for up to two years, acting like Christians. Slowly they gather information about which house church leaders have financial needs or sexual needs. Once they have won the congregation’s trust they come in and try to seduce the leader with money or sex. They are extremely devious. Once the leader realizes he has been trapped, the cult becomes very angry and violent and refuses to let them go. Some Christians have had their arms and legs broken when they tried to leave. More than one has even had his eyes taken out. The cults will not let people leave at any cost. Eastern Lightning is the worst cult by far. The others are devious but do not have the same resources or organization as Eastern Lightning.468

There are many grievous stories of Christians being deceived and abused by cults in Henan. For example, in March 1990 a stranger walked into a sleepy village near Fangcheng in the south of the province. Encountering some Christians, he told them he could take them to meet Jesus. Other villagers came to listen to this persuasive man and his extraordinary offer. The lives of these villagers were extremely hard: they were poor and had to work their fields from sunrise to sunset. The prospect of meeting Jesus and being released from their struggles was attractive. After accepting an ‘offering’ from the villagers, the man told them that Jesus would appear to them on the banks of a nearby river. Dozens of people excitedly surged towards the river, where they waited patiently for the Saviour to appear. The stranger, meanwhile, slipped away. The day wore

on until the shadows lengthened and the sun started to set. The Christians grew increasingly agitated as the hours passed, until finally, unable to contain his frustration and desperate to see Jesus, one of the believers waded into the frigid waters. Some 19 others followed him, oblivious to the fact that they could neither swim nor withstand the strong current. The rest of the crowd stood silently on the river bank, staring gloomily into the gathering darkness. All night, they waited for their friends to return and, as the long hours passed, they feared the worst. When the morning dawned, their fears were confirmed. All 20, in their zealous haste, had drowned.469

On 1 October 1989, the police prevented a mass suicide of more than 100 people in Henan’s Tongbai County after a preacher called Xiong Chenhua called on his followers to drink poison in order to ‘bring on the return of Jesus’. According to the periodical Security, twenty or so farmers’ wives, who were known as ‘Ministers of State’, dressed in specially made yellow nylon gowns, knelt on the ground, awaiting the arrival of the self-styled ‘Servant of God’, Xiong Chenhua, who would proclaim ‘The Message of the Journey to the Kingdom of Heaven’. On hearing the message, they would assemble a hundred or so Christians, who would drink poisoned wine and pesticide, and then ascend in a body to heaven. They waited for a long time, but Xiong failed to turn up to proclaim his message, whereupon a dozen policemen who had heard about the event hurried to the spot and prevented the disaster. Some time later, Xiong and his accomplice, Zuo Guoxuan, admitted that they had been deceiving some rustic Christians and, by taking advantage of their piety, had swindled them out of their money. In 1988, Zuo Guoxuan realized that the zeal of the women who had come to his house to take part in various activities had somewhat abated, and so he set about taking further steps in creating disorder, by proposing to enrol certain ‘Ministers of State’. By means of this trick he deluded some people into regaining their former zeal for taking part in his movement.470

Other reports tell of cases in which people have drowned while trying to walk on water as Jesus and Peter did, and there have been several incidents of women ‘attempting to emulate the story of Abraham and Isaac by sacrificing their sons because of simplistic and literal interpretations of the scriptures.’471 The veteran China-watcher Tony Lambert has warned: ‘While we rejoice in what God is doing in China, we must not put the house churches on a pedestal. In many rural areas, the churches are growing quickly, but the people are often uneducated peasants, with backgrounds steeped in folk-religion, ancestor worship, Buddhism and the occult. This makes them very susceptible to false teachings.’472 Many observers are quick to blame the lack of biblical knowledge among the house churches for providing a favourable environment for cults to flourish and deceive multitudes in Henan. It is certainly true that many alarming situations have developed among the house churches, but it should

also be noted that tens of thousands of Christians who belonged to government-approved Three-Self churches have also fallen prey to cults. In 1993, one magazine drew attention to the sad case of TSPM believers practising heretical teachings in Dengfeng County in Henan. The article explained: Many local peasants formerly practiced vulgarized forms of Buddhism and Daoism. Closely related to feudal superstition and folk religion, these forms are strictly prohibited by the government. For this reason, some peasants have turned instead to Christianity. … Some ideas and practices of folk religion find their way into the church, causing confusion and tension from time to time. For example, the concept of the Trinity is not easy to understand. Some peasants preach four different Jesuses: the person prophesied by Isaiah, the son of Mary, the crucified Jesus and the risen Jesus. They also differentiate two crosses: the red cross of Jesus and the white cross of Satan derived from the Chinese character for ‘evil’. Jesus is viewed somewhat along the lines of a big god of former times or as the agent of God’s power of punishment and reward.473

As the threat of cults has increased over the years, church leaders throughout Henan have tried to fortify their members against these deceptions by providing training courses. In 1995, the Weidu Three-Self church organized a seminar after many members of its congregation left to join a sect. More than 1,200 people went to five evening services. Several of those who had left the church attended and decided to return to the fold.474

The Problem of Defining Cults in China While it is clear that there are many dangerous, heretical cults operating in Henan Province, many genuine disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ have also found themselves and their churches branded as ‘evil cults’ due to the problem the government has in distinguishing between real cults and Christian groups that refuse to register with the authorities. This is exacerbated by the fact that the authorities have frequently labelled as cults Christian house-church groups who refuse to register with the Three-Self Church. Moreover, many house-church Christians believe that the authorities call them ‘evil cults’ simply because it provides a convenient excuse to persecute them. China’s constitution, on paper at least, guarantees freedom of religious beliefs. It recognizes five major groups as valid—Buddhists, Catholics, Daoists, Muslims and Protestants—and identifies three more categories of religious believers: ‘unregistered groups’, ‘cults’ and ‘feudal superstitions’. One researcher has noted:

In spite of official acknowledgement of their existence, these groups are not offered the same rights and guarantees as those that belong to registered groups. The distinction between these various groups is somewhat blurred and it can be hard to know when a religion is deemed legitimate, when it becomes a cult or when it is a ‘superstition’.475

To complicate the picture further, great difficulties arise when accusations are made against a particular group. In many cases, claims of illegal activity or doctrinal error have proved to be false or at least exaggerated, yet the authorities have used them nonetheless as a pretext to suppress a number of house-church networks. Many members of Three-Self churches are glad that the government is cracking down on certain unregistered groups they regard as heretical and dangerous, but many house-church Christians see the talk of ‘cults’ merely as a cover for state persecution. This has been the experience over the years of house-church groups such as the Born-Again Movement, the Fangcheng Church and the South China Church among others. The Chinese term xiejiao zuzhi is often translated ‘cult’ or ‘evil cult’ in English. In April 2000, the Ministry of Public Security defined a xiejiao zuzhi as any entity that (a) sets up an illegal organization in the false name of religion; (b) deifies its leaders; (c) fabricates and spreads superstition and heterodox beliefs in order to excite doubts and deceive the people and recruits and controls its members by those means; and (d) systematically disturbs social order and injures the lives and property of citizens.476 This definition is full of holes. If a village has a small Christian fellowship that worships in someone’s home, it could easily end up being charged with one or two of these offences. Concocted stories of the worship of leaders have been circulated in the past, while accusations of ‘spreading superstition and beliefs that excite doubts and deceive the people’ can be made against claims that Christ can heal sickness and that he will return, and even to teaching on tithing. As one mission newsletter points out: It’s interesting to note some of the official charges brought against house church leaders to ‘prove’ they are cult leaders: 1. They teach [that] followers should give 10% of their income to the work of the church. 2. They say [that] only those who know Jesus will go to heaven, while all unbelievers will be condemned to an eternity in hell. 3. People often shout and cry out in meetings, confessing their sins before God. 4. They pray for the sick to be healed.

5. They preach [that] the world will come to an end when Jesus returns. How do these charges measure up with what you believe? Would you be labelled a cult member if you lived in China?477

A Chinese government document circulated in 2002 examined various ‘cults’ in China and provided brief summaries of their history and practices. A glance at the information on Peter Xu Yongze and his Born-Again housechurch movement (also known as ‘the All Sphere Church’) immediately reveals major factual errors as well as a use of loaded language that demonstrates how easily a conservative evangelical house church can be demonized. The document states: The ‘Basic Draft for Establishing Churches’, compiled by Xu Yongze, advocated the goals of ‘Realizing the Christianization of Chinese culture, the evangelization of the whole nation, kingdomization of the church, and to co-reign with the Lord.’ He vilified the [Communist] Party and government as ‘the enemy’, ‘the devil’, the ‘Red-clothed Monster’, and instigated the believers to fight against the devils in power. … Some of the core members spread such rumours as ‘The world is coming to an end, and the tribulations are coming.’478

Again, a more balanced view of Xu’s church finds that the booklet cited was actually a church-planting manual that encouraged believers to preach the gospel in unreached areas. It is widely used even today, and is seen by many Christians as an excellent rallying call to evangelism. The truth is that Xu and his church have never taken a political stance. Their focus has always been on winning lost souls by spreading the good news of Christ’s salvation to as many people as possible. Nonetheless, in November 1995 the general office of the State Council identified the BornAgain house-church movement as an ‘evil cult’ and launched a series of severe persecutions against its members. Hundreds of Christians from the fellowship have been jailed and tortured for their faith. When I met Xu in China in 2001, he told me that more than 300 of his church members were in prison at the time. This example shows the inherent dangers for Christians in China today, where simple-hearted believers who want to follow Jesus can easily be turned into wanted criminals by the stroke of the Communist government’s pen. In 1995, the South China Morning Post reported that the authorities in Zhoukou had warned house-church Christians about their practice of putting up posters around the town to advertise their meetings. On 11 June, a public statement was issued by the People’s Government of Xihua County alleging that people were being tricked into joining these groups under the banner of Christianity and that the groups engaged in illegal and unlawful activities, rumour-mongering, cheating people and disturbing normal

production. In the name of their exorcism and healing, they swindled people out of their money, sullied our women, put people’s lives and property in danger, disrupted family planning and interfered with the country’s education.’479

In the nearby district of Tiankou, one notice demanded that all ‘sect members’ must turn themselves in to the authorities within three days and attend re-education classes. Failure to do so would result in a fine of 500 yuan ($60) per person. One Christian was reported as saying: ‘We are too frightened to stay at home because they could come and pick us up any time. We sleep and worship in the fields.’480 Although house-church Christians have been the major target in a succession of crackdowns on ‘evil cults’ in Henan, belonging to a ThreeSelf church apparently does not guarantee protection. On 6 March 2006, a TSPM church in the village of Qiaozhuang was raided during a course on the Bible. The authorities accused the believers of conducting ‘illegal cult training’. Three pastors, Liu Tuanjie, Li Xueqin and a sister named Ma, were arrested and released only after paying a fine.481

Some cult members have been ‘planted’ in Christian congregations, sometimes waiting patiently for years before they reveal their wicked agenda. RCMI

Such complicating factors mean that any discussion of house churches and cults should be entered into with great caution, in the awareness that information about a particular group may be false or at least exaggerated. It would be wise to bear in mind the possibility that people who are jailed for being involved in a cult may in fact be true brothers and sisters in the Lord. It is alarming to read that some church leaders around the world have defended the persecution of house-church Christians in China on the basis that they are arrested not for their faith but because they are ‘lawbreakers’. The remainder of this will give an overview of the most prominent and best-recognized cults in Henan.

Eastern Lightning

In the mid 1990s, a new kind of persecution fell upon Christians in China— not the doing of a totalitarian government or angry mobs but a much more insidious threat, from a wicked and dangerous cult called the Eastern Lightning, which seeks to destroy God’s true children through infiltration, deception, entrapment and violence. Each year, the list grows of Christians who have been harmed by this cult. The Eastern Lightning (or Dongfang Shandian in Chinese) was founded in 1989 by Zhao Weishan.482 Zhao was an unhappy member of a church who rejected its teachings and broke away with several other members to start a new group. They called this ‘Church of the Everlasting Fountain’, and Zhao began to refer to himself as ‘Powerful Lord’. The cult grew rapidly, and they managed to secure substantial financial support which enabled them to set up an underground printing house, producing tens of thousands of booklets setting out their views. By 1991, the cult was outlawed and the printing press shut down, but they already had thousands of followers. Although it originated in Heilongjiang, the Eastern Lightning (also translated ‘Oriental Lightning’) quickly spread to Henan and the neighbouring provinces of Anhui, Shaanxi and Jiangsu, and then to most of the other provinces of China. In 1993, Zhao changed the name of the cult to ‘Real God’ and claimed that he had received divine revelation on the verse ‘For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.’483 This is how the cult came to be commonly known as ‘the Eastern Lightning’. Zhao sent out his chief lieutenants to spread their influence among thousands of people throughout Henan. Many of the people they persuaded to join the cult were illiterate members of rural house churches who had little knowledge of the Bible and so were susceptible—but they also target educated university students. The Eastern Lightning spread with remarkable speed to at least 22 of China’s provinces, and today it is believed to have millions of members. Instead of trying to convert unbelievers, the cult seems to have decided that it is better to deceive existing Christians. It is prepared to target nominal believers, but its chief goal is to attack church leaders and others with the most influence. Its methods have included financial inducement, beating and torture, sexual seduction and brainwashing. Pang K. H. of the Chinese Christian Church of Saipan, in Guam, has issued a clear warning:

The satanic cult ‘Eastern Lightning’ is one of the most evil and deceitful cults I have ever seen in China. They are positively wolves in sheep’s clothing; they attack Jesus Christ, twist and defraud the Bible, destroy families and lives, causing great hurt and destruction to Christians who have been bought by the precious blood of the Saviour! They are devils dressed as ministers of light, workers of Satan, and false prophets after the ways of Balaam. May the Lord have mercy upon the elect that they may be able to discern, to reject all lies and the deceitful words from Satan. May our brethren be on the alert! May the deceived quickly repent and return!484

The Eastern Lightning seems to have targeted every part of the Body of Christ in China. In 1997, Tianfeng, the official magazine of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, expressed alarm at the inroads the cult was making into the movement’s congregations. It published several articles exposing the cult and advising its readers on how to defend themselves against its devious influence. Even the Catholic Church has seen many of its most senior leaders lured into the Eastern Lightning. According to an official report of the Chinese government: ‘This cult is hastening its efforts to infiltrate underground Catholic churches so as to increase its strength by uniting with other underground powers. … Underground Catholics in areas such as Zunhua, Fengnan and Qianan have joined hands with this cult.’485 Its followers believe in a female Messiah who allegedly came to this earth in 1990. She lives in Henan, where she is waiting for the appointed time to reveal her true identity to the world. Like all cults, the Eastern Lightning rejects the authority of the Bible and takes every opportunity to attack it. It claims that the scriptures were dreamed up by Moses and other writers, who were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. Tony Lambert notes: ‘They deride the Scripture, so beloved by Chinese believers. [The cult claims:] “No one has the qualifications to study Scripture. No one can understand that book. All who follow the female Christ must throw aside the Bible.”’486 In the mid 1990s, the Eastern Lightning adopted a new, openly aggressive strategy against China’s Christians, and especially believers belonging to Protestant house churches. Violence and torture became increasingly common. Xiao Peng was a 30-year-old preacher from the village of Dafangying in Sheqi County, in Henan. In October 1998, he rejected the Eastern Lightning’s false teaching and urged other believers to do the same. The cult hated him intensely, and one evening some of its followers lured him out of his village. The evildoers cut his face with knives, his blood pouring out, staining his clothes in red. They quickly stunned him with steel pipes, and cut off his right ear. Fortunately he was discovered in time and was sent to the hospital. His life was spared, but the disfigurement not only caused

great pain and suffering to him, but also caused his family great loss and grievous emotional pain.487

Thousands of Christians across China have been beaten, tortured or poisoned by the Eastern Lightning. Hundreds of believers are still missing —and, although most of these may have ended up changing sides and joining the cult, there are dozens of people who are known to have died as a result of the Eastern Lightning’s brutality. In the two-month period of November and December 1998, nine cases of beatings and murder happened to house church co-workers in Nanyang County, Henan Province. These house church co-workers were severely attacked by the cult members, all because they had been defending the truth, and resisting the Eastern Lightning cult. Some of the injured co-workers had their legs or arms broken, and some had their ears cut off. The scene at the time was too horrible to be looked at. Even unbelievers were filled with indignation, and condemned the evildoers for their inhumanity.488

Even secular newspapers in China have reported crimes committed by the Eastern Lightning. The Henan Rural News summarized the evil deeds of two of its members, Liu Shunting and Zhao Fating, in 1998: They put people who opposed them or had any disagreement with them on a ‘black list’, and took revenge on these people by attacking them one by one. For nearly two months, from the beginning of October to November 1998, the two of them, armed with daggers, steel bars, powdered lime and other equipment, lured their victims out of their villages on the pretext of praying for the relief of illness, and carried out eight separate ferocious criminal attacks, disfiguring their victims, breaking their legs, cutting off their ears, etc. They seriously injured nine people. … Five of their victims had both legs broken, one had one leg broken, and two had their right ears cut off.489

In March 2002, an old Christian woman who had followed the Lord faithfully for many years was attacked by her own daughter, Zhang Songyun, who had become a member of the Eastern Lightning. After failing in her efforts to convert her to the cult, Zhang ‘tried to gouge out her mother’s eyes with her fingers. Although the mother didn’t become completely blind, she is still having a hard time recovering her sight. When Zhang learnt that her mother didn’t lose her sight, she sent her son to grandma’s home and had him break her arms.’490 The cult continues to operate throughout China today, wreaking havoc among Christians in many areas. In recent years, even Western missionaries have been targeted by the Eastern Lightning, which sends attractive young women to seduce and then blackmail the men. In March 2004, I received an email from an American missionary who had served in Henan for four years. After a pretty young woman with the Eastern Lightning tried to seduce him, he learned that

they have a group here, and they are targeting me. From what I’ve learned, they won’t give up once they’ve made initial contact. If I ‘ignore’ them, then I’m likely to get abducted. They may already have a spy somewhere near to me, as it seems they have a lot of information about me. I have people in the U.S. praying for me, but none of them really understand my situation. Today I reminded some of them to keep praying and they replied, ‘Oh, still the same thing as last time?’ They don’t understand the urgency and danger.491

Awareness of the cult increased when it kidnapped 34 senior leaders of the Henan-based China Gospel Fellowship network of house churches on 19 April 2002. Although they were all released after a few weeks, they were in such a dreadful state physically, emotionally and mentally that it took more than a year of prayer before they started to feel restored to normality. The cult warned the house-church leaders that if they made public any information about the kidnapping, its members would kill their wives and children. Ironically, given the secretive nature of the cult, the kidnappings brought it to the attention of millions of Christians around the world, who learned about it via the internet. Many prayed for the destruction of the Eastern Lightning and for the safety of the abducted church leaders. Other housechurch leaders who had been tricked into joining the cult quickly put out books that warned believers of its methods, and hundreds of thousands of copies were circulated throughout the Chinese church. As a result, Christians are today less susceptible to the diabolical tricks of the Eastern Lightning. The China Gospel Fellowship released the following defiant statement in the aftermath of the abduction of its leaders: We want to express our thankfulness to God here, that with His sustaining, with many overseas brothers and sisters’ fervent prayers and intercession in tears before God, and also with the interference of the police, all of the kidnapped co-workers have been gradually released. However, a few of them are not doing well physically because of the drugs given to them. Please pray for them. All returned co-workers know deeply that they have been through a spiritual battle. Although they were tempted, enticed and threatened in every way, they have been able to hold fast to their faith in the Lord, to overcome the temptations and enticements by faith, and to refuse the heresies of the female Christ. Consequently, the Eastern Lightning conspiracy to undermine and destroy the church has ended in utter failure.492

‘The Perfect Way to Eternal Life’ In 1991, a new cult started to gain prominence in the county of Biyang in Henan after Chang Zhuang, Zhang Yunguang and others from Yin Village in the Taihang Mountain area distributed leaflets they had secretly printed

promoting their beliefs. Named ‘the Perfect Way to Eternal Life’, this cult emerged from a group called ‘the School of the Four Gospels’ which had been founded by Zheng Liansheng from Miyang County. Zheng, who had a history of mental illness, responded to what he claimed was a revelation from God by tearing up the Old and most of the New Testament and keeping only the four Gospels. His influence grew over simple rural people, and many new Christians were confused and decided to follow this new teacher. The leaders of the Four Gospel sect once discussed the circumcision of the Jews and decided that this was a way they could test their commitment to God. The three men decided they would circumcise themselves. A man named Miao went first, ‘but the razor was too sharp and he accidentally cut off his reproductive organ, and the other two, seeing the blood flowing, ran away.’493 When the Perfect Way to Eternal Life group started, its founders decided to add the Book of Revelation to the four Gospels, and claimed that the formation of their group constituted the Second Coming of Christ. They told people that only by joining their sect could they be saved, and that there was no point in praying or singing to God. They instructed their followers to sell all their land and other possessions, including even their farm animals and their furniture, and to try to steal cash from their families for an offering to the Perfect Way to Eternal Life. They justified this by teaching that taking things from one’s own family was not stealing.494 Little is known about the influence of this cult today.

The New Lord Almighty Church A new group called ‘the New Lord Almighty Church’ appeared in Neixiang County in the west of Henan in March 1991. It recruited new members secretly and propagated its message by distributing thousands of cassettes and pieces of literature. Claiming to believe in Christ, the ‘church’ reportedly provoked the government and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement with the political, anti-Communist tone of its messages. According to the TSPM magazine, Tianfeng, the sect asked its members in one cassette message: ‘Why do those who hold the reins of authority in China once more oppress you? It is because the Great Red Dragon can never have its fill of cursing and attacking us. But it is precisely when we are being oppressed and threatened that I shall bring my sons to maturity, and shall mount a

powerful counter-attack against the Great Red Dragon and its offspring. Thereafter I shall deal with them.’495 Apart from the claims made in this article, no other information is available about the New Lord Almighty Church. Herein lies the problem with the classification of cults in China today. For the government and the TSPM, this one statement in one cassette message about the government of China is more than enough to label the ‘church’ as an ‘evil cult’ and consign it to the despised realm of enemies of the state. However, for all we know, that statement may have been a prophecy spoken during a meeting, or a piece of teaching taken out of context. In fact, many genuine Christians around the world would have little or no problem with the words just quoted, believing that God’s iron sceptre will indeed smash all the kingdoms and political systems of the world one day. The available information about this group is so scant and so selective that outside observers cannot know whether they are a genuine cult, with unbiblical doctrines on such essentials as the nature of Christ and the source of salvation, or are indeed Bible-loving Christians who seek to obey God’s word and who have been subjected to persecution through a clever misrepresentation of their beliefs by an atheistic government and a statesanctioned church who oppose anyone who refuses to accept their control. Other small heretical groups sprang up in Henan during the 1980s, but it is uncertain whether they are still active today. One such is the Way of Fasting sect, whose members eat only one meal a day.496 Another is the Kneel and Incense Sect, which used to be led by a man who said he ‘obtained oracles from the Holy Father which permitted him to go to heaven once a week. He saw all kinds of spectacles in heaven. He saw the oracles of the Holy Father written on a tablet [which] he copied down as the revelation of the Holy Spirit.’497 I shall discuss later, on page 263–64, the complicated situation of the so-called Local Church, one part of which (who came to be called ‘Shouters’, ‘Yellers’ and other names) embraced heretical teaching. There are, indisputably, many true Christians in Henan who belong to the Local Church, but there are also many who have fallen prey to false doctrine and false practices. Other cults and sects have a strong presence in the province, but these will be profiled in other volumes of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. They include the controversial San Ban Puren, or Three Grades of Servants,498 the Wise Virgins, Mentu Hui (‘the Disciples’) and Beiliwang (‘The Established

King’), whose founder, Wu Yangming, was executed in 1996 for raping 19 women.499 The following letter, written by a Christian from Henan in 1997, tells of the confusion the various cults and sects have caused in one area: In the mountainous region where I live, Christians are scarce and scattered, without good shepherds. During meetings it is common for the Bible to be misinterpreted. Our spiritual quality is very low. I myself converted to Jesus Christ in 1984. I could barely read, write, or understand the Bible. My spiritual growth has been very slow. Though there are few Christians, there are many sects and cults: soul-dancing, law-abiding, taking unleavened bread. Many of those who have been excommunicated by the church deceive naive women and form their own church. These churches confuse the truth and obstruct the sacred work of preaching the Gospel. Believers also have disputes about whether we are saved once and for all, or several times. Most favor the latter.500 466 ‘Religious Deceiver Drowns Twenty Believers’, China News and Church Report, 31 August 1990 467 According to Operation World, America boasts a total of 134 million ‘church members’. This figure includes all descriptions of Christians—Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox—as well as 3.6 million Mormons and 980,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses. These two sects alone therefore constitute 3.4 per cent of ‘church members’ in America. See Johnstone and Mandryk, Operation World, p658. In Britain, there are 146,640 Jehovah’s Witnesses and 120,130 Mormons among 6.45 million ‘church members’—a total of 4.1 per cent (Ibid., p650). 468 Personal interview with Brother Timothy in March 2001 469 ‘Wolves Scatter China’s Sheep’, Asian Report, report 196 (vol.25, no.4—July–September 1992), p19 470 Tianfeng, January 1991 471 ‘Inability to Disciple the Vast Number of New Converts to Christianity Provides Fertile Ground for Heresy in China’s House Churches’, China News and Church Report, 7 August 1992 472 News Network International, 21 July 1992 473 ‘Where Two or Three Have Met Together’, pp11–12 474 Amity News Service, March 1995 475 Caroline Fielder, ‘Real Change or Mere Rhetoric? An Evaluation of the 2005 Regulations on Religious Affairs a Year On’, China Study Journal, Spring–Summer 2007, p33 476 Ibid., p34 477 ‘Henan Province: The Galilee of China (Part 1)’, Asia Harvest, no.65 (May 2002) 478 Ibid., p29 479 South China Morning Post, 3 July 1995 480 Ibid. 481 The Voice of the Martyrs, The Persecution Prayer Alert, 16 March 2006 482 Zhao Weishan entered America in 2000 and was granted refugee status on the basis of his claims of religious persecution. It is believed that he now lives in the New York City area, from which the Eastern Lightning runs its operations throughout North America. 483 Matthew 24:27 484 Rev Pang K. H., ‘China’s Cult of Satan: Lightning of the East’ (Saipan, Guam: September 2000), cited in Paul Hattaway, ‘When China’s Christians Wish They Were in Prison: An Examination of the Eastern Lightning Cult in China’, article posted on the website http://www.asiaharvest.org, April 2002 485 Li and Fu, Religion and National Security in China, p79 486 Tony Lambert, ‘Lightning from the East: A New Cult’, China Insight, OMF International, March–April 1998 487 Testimony from the China Gospel Fellowship, on its website http://www.chinaforjesus.com 488 Pang, ‘China’s Cult of Satan’ 489 Henan Nongcun Bao [Henan Rural News], November 1998. English translation in China Study Journal, vol.16, no.1 (April 2001) 490 Ibid. 491 Personal communication from a missionary dated 2 March 2004 492 Testimony from the China Gospel Fellowship, www.chinaforjesus.com 493 Chao, Wise as Serpents, p136

494 Tianfeng, September 1991 495 Tianfeng, May 1992 496 Chao, Wise as Serpents, p136 497 ‘Problems in Henan: Reports from Itinerant Preachers’, China and the Church Today, vol.4, no.2 (1982), p2 498 The Three Grades of Servants will be profiled in the Heilongjiang volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. Although the group appears to have been founded in Henan, its principal leaders were executed in Heilongjiang in November 2006. 499 The Established King cult will be profiled in the Anhui volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. The group was founded in that province in 1988. 500 FEBC,Letter no.20533, May 1997

PART V Henan’s House Churches

Chapter 22 THE GALILEE OF CHINA PROTESTANT CHRISTIANS IN HENAN (Both TSPM and house churches) 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 506, 507, 508

T

he house churches of Henan, found in large numbers in every county and town, are part of the fruit of perhaps the greatest, the most sustained and numerically the largest revival in the history of Christianity. The growth of the church there has been staggering, considering that in 1949 there were only 120,000 Protestants in the whole province. God has moved in an extraordinary way throughout Henan, empowering his church and sending believers forth to reach the lost with great gifts of the Spirit and heaven-sent boldness. Perhaps the region of Henan where the fires of revival have burned most brightly is in the south of the province, especially in Tanghe, Nanyang and Fangcheng. These three counties could be described as ‘the revival triangle’ of Henan, with hundreds of thousands of Christians found in each today. Every church movement in these areas has expanded to become a nationwide ministry with many millions of believers. In recent years, they have even begun to send workers beyond China’s borders as part of the Back to Jerusalem vision to reach Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu nations for Christ. The large numbers of Christians in the coastal city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province like to refer to their city as ‘the Jerusalem of China’ because of the multitude of churches there. Some house-church leaders from southern Henan have responded by dubbing their area ‘the Galilee of China’, after the region where Jesus’ disciples came from. Before the advent of Communist rule in 1949, the mission history of the Revival Triangle was dominated by Lutheran organizations. Hundreds of faithful Lutheran missionaries laboured for decades, most seeing little fruit.

With few exceptions, they did not believe that either miracles or the gifts of the Spirit were for Christians today. Many would have been greatly surprised to go back to Tanghe, Nanyang and Fangcheng today to see the zeal and the hunger for God of the believers there and to hear some of their countless testimonies of the extraordinary signs and wonders that accompany the house-church ministry to the lost. Indeed, in the late 1990s the Norwegian Lutheran Mission did send representatives to Henan Province, and they reported that the number of believers in Lushan County had grown from 2–4,000 in 1949 to 80–90,000 in 1999.509 Bearing in mind that when the foreign missionaries were expelled, there were at most 120,000 Protestants in all of Henan’s 127 counties and cities, this tally from the one county of Lushan must have astonished them. The dynamic spiritual power that is evident in the house churches today was clearly an ingredient added by God during the decades of persecution and struggle that started in the 1950s. However, the Lutherans had laid a solid foundation of systematic biblical teaching among the believers before their expulsion from China, and this strengthened the Henan church and enabled it to survive the ferocious storms that followed. When the winds started to abate, the fellowship of believers that emerged from the devastation was glorious, shining and strong. One veteran missionary summed up the extraordinary events that unfolded in Henan between the 1950s and the 1980s thus: For many years Henan Province was the scene of concentrated missionary activity. Today there are ten times more believers, in just that one province, Henan, than there were in all of China when the missionaries left. This is a significant finding. The seed that was sown many years ago is now bearing fruit. When the last Western missionaries left China, they left behind them a faithful, if small, group of believers. Years of persecution, hardship, disease, famine, and just the passage of time whittled this number down considerably. They became a tiny remnant battered about in the ugly, swirling red sea of Communist Revolution. But wherever they were, these Christian believers became beacon lights pointing to Christ. Without this tiny remnant there would have been no one to introduce the people of China to Jesus Christ.510

An Earthy Christianity For those who have yet to enjoy the privilege of fellowship with the housechurch believers of Henan, it may be helpful to balance one’s high expectations with some down-to-earth reality. The house churches of Henan, as of other parts of China, can be rough in several ways. Whereas in

Western countries ‘church’ is often led by a smiling, well-dressed and wellspoken pastor who teaches from an elevated pulpit or stage while the congregation sits passively in rows of seats or pews, Chinese house churches in general have a totally different style. The majority of believers come from farming backgrounds. They are extremely poor by Western standards, have received little education as the world sees it and care little for outward appearances. What matters to them is the inner, spiritual life. They have a passion to reach the lost, and a willingness to suffer for the sake of the gospel. Their faith has been forged in the furnace of affliction, and all the ‘bells and whistles’ of the Western church mean nothing to them.

A house-church training centre in Henan Province Paul Hattaway

Most house churches use no instruments in their worship, save perhaps for a tambourine. They sing a cappella, and the words to most of their songs are either taken directly from scripture or are peppered with Bible verses. These believers have not been taught that they are supposed to have a permanent smile on their faces, and accordingly most services tend to be very real, as people share their burdens and struggles with one another, often with tears. Those foreign Christians who have the opportunity to visit house churches in rural Henan are often taken aback by the poverty and earthiness they find. I have attended some house-church meetings at which the congregation shed so many tears that after a few hours—given the custom of nose-blowing that is prevalent throughout China—the concrete floor of the meeting place was so slippery I could have skated from one side of the room to the other. In another village, I was shown to the room I would be staying in, and given an empty ice-cream tub and an empty bottle. I asked

my host what they were for, and was told that as the toilet was outside, I was not allowed to use it in case a neighbour caught a glimpse of me and told the police that a foreigner was staying there. During house-church training courses, which can be anything from a few days to several weeks in duration, the male students usually sleep like sardines on the floor of the classroom. Often, they are so full of joy and excitement that they cannot help but stay up talking about the Lord and praying together, before catching just a few hours’ sleep before morning prayers. The female students similarly all sleep in another room. Such cramped quarters don’t seem to bother them at all. As one believer told me, in all seriousness: ‘This is good practice for later when we will need to sleep like this in a prison cell.’ There are hundreds of such training centres throughout China today. A few years ago, a missionary in China was told by his Chinese Christian friends that the founder and leader of their house-church movement was visiting their city the next day, and if he went to such-and-such a restaurant he would have the opportunity to share a meal with this man. The missionary was thrilled at the thought of meeting such a man of God, who had served the Lord faithfully for more than 30 years, many of them in prison, and had overseen the growth of a church movement that now had more than five million members throughout the country. The next day, the missionary turned up at the restaurant on time and found a group of seven or eight Chinese gathered. He recognized several Christians he had met before, and saw a few other people he didn’t know. The conversation was casual, so he assumed that the great house-church leader was yet to arrive. One of the men at the table was a roughly dressed man of middle age. His shoes were filthy, his shirt was stained, and there were bits of straw sticking out of his unkempt hair. An unpleasant smell wafted from his direction. The missionary was a little embarrassed by this, and thought he must be a beggar the Chinese believers had invited to their table so that they could give him a meal and share the gospel with him. After a few minutes, the local Chinese pastor announced to the missionary: ‘I want you to meet Pastor Feng.511 He is the founder and senior leader of our nationwide church movement.’ Of course, he motioned towards the man the missionary had assumed to be a beggar. After shaking his hand, Pastor Feng explained that he had been in a rural village the previous night, visiting some Christians. He had set out after dark to return to the city, but had got lost and had had to sleep in a haystack until morning.

His shoes had been ruined walking through the rice paddies, and he hadn’t had a chance to have a shower. The kind of Christianity practised by the house churches in China is generally rough and basic, probably not unlike that practised by men like Peter and his fisherman brother, or by John the Baptist. Outward appearances count for little, for inside a believer’s sometimes shabby clothing beats a heart that is devoted to Jesus Christ. One pastor from Europe had longed for years to visit some house churches. He had often reported on the revival in China to his home congregation, and prayed that one day he might have the chance to meet some of the brothers and sisters face-to-face. That day arrived, and he flew to a major city in Henan, from which he was driven to a house in the countryside. In the van that took him there, he was told to keep his head down so that none of the local people would see a foreigner coming to their village. When they got to the house, he was asked to go in quickly, and the gate was locked behind him to keep out any prying eyes. Making his way upstairs, he found a mid-sized room already packed with joyful believers. Some of them had walked for several hours to listen to the foreign teacher, and they welcomed him warmly into their midst. The pastor was already feeling a little ill from the strong diesel fumes that had filled the van, and he noticed that the room had tinted, double-glazed windows. These had been put in so the Christians could worship together without fear of being heard by passers-by on the street who might be tempted to report their meeting to the authorities. Unfortunately, it was midsummer, the windows of course were closed and no fresh air was able to flow into the room. The intense heat and the pungent air was making the pastor feel more queasy by the minute. He looked around the assembled believers, and saw one hundred pairs of feet pointing back at him. Most of the farmers had taken their shoes off and left them outside the door, and the stench of all those sweat-stained socks proved too much for their visitor. Before he could even open his Bible, he vomited so violently that the front row of his audience had to leap out of the way. Anyone who is used to a comfortable lifestyle should be warned if ever they receive an invitation to fellowship with a rural house church in Henan or elsewhere in China. Many visitors have been greatly perturbed at having to go for several days—or even longer—without a chance to have a shower or to wash their clothes, being deprived of sleep and perhaps having to travel hundreds of miles on potholed roads, with vehicles weaving in and

out and speeding around blind corners on the wrong side of the road. The whole experience may cause sensory overload for the unsuspecting. In the cities it is possible to meet Christians in rather more comfortable surroundings, but the precious believers in the Chinese countryside surely practise an earthy style of Christianity.

A Glorious Mess From a spiritual point of view, too, Henan’s house churches are often not what foreign visitors expect them to be. Those who believe that church life should be ordered and sterile may be shocked by the reality in China. Many people assume that a church that is experiencing powerful, New-Testamentlike revival must be clean, structured and highly unified—a near-perfect representation of Christ’s Body here on earth. Such assumptions are soon shot down for those who spend any length of time with the house churches. They have plenty of problems, temptations, trials and weaknesses. They differ over theology, and some of their members fall into sin and others cause division, just as in the New Testament church.

Henan’s house churches are characterized by a love for God and a zeal to preach the gospel RCMI

As you will soon notice when you read the profiles of prominent housechurch leaders in later chapters of this book, some of them are highly controversial figures. There are many who love them, but there are many who loathe them. The fires of controversy are often stoked by those both inside and outside China who love to air strong opinions on the house churches. Unfortunately, some of those opinions are ill informed and have done nothing to advance the gospel. On the other hand, there are a number of controversies that do seem to have substance. I have tried in this book to present a balanced view of each house-church movement and its leaders, but many people feel so intensely about the church in China that it seems

impossible for anyone to write or say anything about it without causing deep offence to some. For all their weaknesses, the Chinese house churches do resemble the early New-Testament churches in that the vast majority of the believers are fully committed to Christ, willing both to die for him and to live every moment for his glory. They have endured decades of hardship, including imprisonment and torture, and have remained faithful to Jesus. From out of the furnace of affliction they have come forth as refined vessels, preaching the gospel at every opportunity and seeing God move in great power. Their focus is on a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and on making him known. All the struggles of the church in Henan closely mirror those experienced by the apostle Paul and other church leaders in the Book of Acts. They, too, saw powerful revival and tremendous church growth, and at the same time encountered countless challenges and difficulties every step of the way.

The ‘No-Name’ Group—China’s Largest House Church? In the following chapters of this book, we will examine some of the major Henan-based house-church networks, such as the Born-Again Movement, the Local Church, China Gospel Fellowship and the Fangcheng and Nanyang Churches. Each of these has experienced astonishing growth since its humble origins in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and each now has millions of members throughout the country. All are well known to China observers, and their leaders have been written about by other researchers. However, in the course of my travels around Henan and other parts of China, I have become aware of a little-known group of house-church believers who made a firm decision at the time they were established in the mid 1990s not to use any name or accept any labels whatsoever. This group, which began after five young leaders in the Fangcheng Church movement left after their vision was discouraged by more senior leaders, has grown exponentially throughout China and today, according to some trusted sources, this ‘no-name’ house-church network may indeed be the largest in China. There are a number of clear advantages for this group in its God-given strategy of remaining nameless. It makes it practically impossible for the government to persecute its members on a wide scale. Certainly, many of its

meetings have been raided and its members arrested over the years, but it has never been targeted for systematic destruction like the recognized house-church movements, simply because the authorities have no way of identifying its members or ascertaining its size and the extent of its impact. In addition, the ‘no-name’ group has never appeared on the government’s list of ‘evil cults’ because—well, it doesn’t have a name. The leaders of this group are a collection of godly men, some of whom were in their 20s when they split away from the Fangcheng Church. They are smart men who have been quick to see what God is doing in China and have adjusted their strategies accordingly. They felt uneasy with the strongly centralized structures in place in the Fangcheng and other housechurch networks, and believed that God wanted them to abandon that pattern for one that gave the local church fellowships more control over their own operations. To them, maintaining fellowship and a loose network of interrelated churches is more important than having one or two key people at the top of a leadership pyramid. While the leaders of this group came originally from the Fangcheng Church, they have little contact with it now. They continue to honour its founder Zhang Rongliang and others as the ‘uncles and aunties’ of their Christian experience, but they cannot agree with their style of leadership or the ‘top-heavy’ structure of their network. This mysterious group has sent evangelists to some of the most remote areas of the country, and revival has resulted in the north- and south-west of China and other regions. It has focused on ministry to China’s ethnic minorities, and since 2001 has also been sending missionaries abroad as part of the Back to Jerusalem initiative. In recent years, it has also established fellowships of Christian businessmen throughout China in much the same way that the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowships function in the West. Over the years, its leaders have strongly resisted pressure from some of its members to adopt a name. They insist that it should be enough for people simply to say they belong to Jesus Christ. In 2007, one foreign Christian who works closely with this network said: Throughout the whole country, including all the various streams and divisions, this group now numbers about 16 million believers. That number is very tentative and subject to change, but it is definitely in the ball park—considering that it is China—ball park figures are not bad. The other house church networks in Henan are easier to categorize and wrap your head around, but this group has tapped into something big. They are the largest group of all of the groups that we work with.

This group has adapted the quickest to the growing suburban areas and are actively spearheading Back to Jerusalem work by sending out workers in a methodical way. They have also appointed, trained, and use mission directors to conduct the selection process—which is a testimony to their adaptability and willingness to train and adapt for the mission at hand. … It is really exciting.512

Eight Types of House Church Many people outside China fail to understand the extreme complexity that exists among its house churches. The first thing to note is that house churches do not necessarily meet in houses. For historical and cultural reasons, and because of the continuing threat of persecution, these believers gather wherever they can. I have heard of meetings in barns, forests, wheat fields, schools, restaurants, factories, boats, shops, prisons, hospitals, office complexes, caves, buses, trains and cars, on mountaintops and the roofs of apartment blocks, and even inside a public toilet block. One large congregation of several thousand people meets in a huge replica of Noah’s Ark. And some even meet in church buildings. House churches can range in size from two or three individuals to 10,000 or more. The average size is probably about 40–50 people in rural areas and 20–25 in cities. Furthermore, there are many different structures of house church. The China analyst David Lin has identified eight principal types of house churches in China today, all of which are found in Henan Province. This is a summary of his categories:513 1. Traditional Model. During the Cultural Revolution, all church activities were banned and church buildings were confiscated. House churches emerged all over China, intent on standing for the truth and zealously proclaiming the gospel to the lost. Millions of people have come to faith in Christ due to the witness of such traditional house churches. Their main emphasis tends to be on the spiritual life of believers, suffering and the Cross. One disadvantage of this model is that decades of suppression have led to a lack of comprehensive and systematic training, so that many members have a less than thorough knowledge of the Bible. 2. Amphibious Model. This refers to groups of believers who accepted Christ and were baptized in a Three-Self church but as they grew spiritually realized that, given the doctrinal and political limitations of the Three-Self churches, they could not properly pursue an intimate relationship with the Lord in fellowship with other believers. These Christians frequently meet in their own homes. They often stay in contact

with the TSPM, but also depend on house churches for the development of their spiritual life. This ‘amphibious’ model is dominant in rural towns. 3. Foreign Missionary Model. Since the country began to open up again to the outside world in the 1980s, many foreign missionaries have come to China to engage in evangelistic work under a host of different legal guises, including as university students, English teachers, businessmen and community development workers. They engage the local people through friendship and share Christ’s love and message with them. Often, the Chinese who they lead to the Lord form their own fellowships, and the missionaries (who are often restricted by both their legal status and their inability to speak the language) leave their new converts to run them. Sometimes these believers have an inflated regard for Western Christians, and later struggle to connect with other Chinese believers. 4. ‘Overseas Returnee’ Model. Since the early 1980s, China has sent more than half a million people to study in other countries throughout the world. Many come into contact with Christians for the first time while abroad and find Jesus Christ. After they have completed their studies, they return home, often to leadership roles in commerce or other fields. Today, there are tens of thousands of believers in China who found Christ overseas, and many have formed fellowship groups with others like them. The large cities such as Shanghai and Beijing have many such house churches. Their background means they often struggle to relate to the indigenous Chinese house churches. They usually remain in contact with the overseas churches they once belonged to, and tend to have borrowed from them a more structured view of church life. 5. Cultural Model. Recently, a number of famous universities in China have conducted courses on religion, especially studies in Christian culture. As a result, by learning about the benefits Christianity brought to the West, some students have been exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ and have put their faith in him. Many of these belong to the country’s most highly educated intelligentsia, and because their level of education is higher than the vast majority of leaders from either the Three-Self or the house churches, they are tempted to look down on other expressions of Chinese Christianity. On the positive side, they are able to share the gospel with other scholars in a way that others cannot. Many have written academic papers presenting their faith from a theological and

philosophical viewpoint. Such Christians often meet together on university campuses in the major cities. 6. Virtual Church Model. When all church buildings were closed during the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of thousands of people found Jesus Christ through media ministries, especially shortwave gospel radio broadcasts from ministries such as Far East Broadcasting and Trans World Radio. In some places, as many as half the believers trace their salvation experience back to listening to radio broadcasts. These continue to exert a powerful influence today, but many Chinese are also being introduced to the faith through internet ministries, including chat rooms set up by Christians to discuss their faith. Virtual churches, Sunday-school classes and even seminaries have been established in front of radios and computers throughout China. There may be millions of believers in this category across the country today. In some places, whole villages have turned to Christ and now find spiritual nourishment gathered around a radio set. People who have found the Lord through the media are often either unwilling or unable to join with other Christians. The obvious disadvantage of this model is the potential lack of human contact and mutual accountability. 7. Imperialist Model. After all the foreign missionaries were expelled from China in the 1950s, the facilities they used to propagate the gospel, such as churches, chapels, hospitals, schools and orphanages, were confiscated. Since the 1980s, China’s more open economy has allowed a number of foreign mission organizations and denominations to return to the country with the aim of re-establishing their earlier work and reviving their influence. Often, they are vigorous in passing on their denominational idiosyncrasies to local Christians, and some even impose their name and structure on house churches. They tend to have abundant funds and other resources, which help them to meet their goals. Although the individuals involved in such outreach tend to be true and sincere believers in Christ, the methods they employ can be destructive to the life of the Chinese church. God spent decades pulling down denominational barriers between believers, and those who wish to rebuild them should go carefully. 8. Synergetic Model. Each of the previous seven models has its strengths and weaknesses, but some of these competing models appear gradually to be combining into a new model. For example, some fellowships of former students returned from overseas are related to traditional urban churches;

some churches founded by foreign mission organizations are beginning to merge into local house churches; and so on. Moreover, the widespread urbanization of China means that traditional rural believers are migrating to the cities and forming synergetic churches there. This had produced some fellowships made up of individuals from a wide range of social and economic backgrounds, with CEOs of multinational companies worshipping alongside street sweepers. This model is able to combine different strengths in a complementary way. Each Christian has to be patient and understanding of those from a different church background, but as long as they are, this model has the potential to be a powerful manifestation of the Body of Christ as revealed in scripture.

House-Church Leaders’ Bold Call to the Government For almost the entire time since they were established in the 1950s, the house churches in Henan have kept out of politics and have made no political statements of any kind. Many of the churches are rooted in missionary teaching influenced by Brethren and Anabaptist theology, which states that children of God should not involve themselves in civic and state affairs. Surprisingly, however, on 22 August 1998, 12 house-church leaders representing eight different church networks conducted a secret meeting in Henan Province and, without any warning, boldly issued a seven-point appeal to the government. The document, titled ‘A United Appeal by the Various Branches of the Chinese House Church’, was without precedent in China. It stated: 1. We call on the government to admit to God’s great power and to seriously study today’s new trends in the development of Christianity. If it were not the work of God, why have so many churches and Christians been established in China? Therefore the legal system and the United Front should update their policies against religion lest they violate God’s will, to their own detriment. 2. We call on the authorities to unconditionally release all house church Christians presently incarcerated in prison labour camps. 3. There are approximately ten million believers in the Three-Self Church but 80 million believers in the house Church, which therefore represents the main stream of Christianity in China. The Three-Self Church is only one branch of Christianity. In many spiritual matters it has serious errors. 4. We call on the senior leadership of the Party to begin a serious dialogue with house church representatives to achieve better mutual understanding, to seek reconciliation, to reduce tensions, and to engage in positive interaction.

5. We call on the government to clearly define a ‘cult’. This should be according to internationally recognized definitions and not just according to whether or not people join the Three-Self Church. 6. We call on the authorities to end their persecution of the house churches. History has proven that persecution of believers who fervently preach the gospel will only bring harm to China and its rulers. The legal system should end its practice of arresting and imprisoning house church preachers and lay people, confining them in prison labour camps, or imposing monetary fines as punishment. 7. The Chinese house churches are the channel through which God’s blessing comes to China. The persecution of God’s children has blocked this channel of blessing. Support of the house churches will certainly bring God’s blessing. We sincerely hope the government will respond positively to this united appeal. Signed, the Leaders of the following house church movements: Word of Life Church The Little Flock Church The Pentecostal Church Ling En Movement Lutherans Baptists Presbyterians The Local Church

International reaction to this appeal was generally favourable. Compass Direct described it as ‘the most important document to come from unregistered churches in China in the last two decades … a highly unusual and bold initiative.’514 The China watcher Tony Lambert echoed these sentiments: ‘This remarkable document in many ways marks the coming of age of the house church movement. … The statement shows a confidence in the sovereignty and providence of God as the controller of human history. Maturity is shown in the absence of any denunciation of either the government or the TSPM.’515 Others were less convinced, however, and wondered whether this move by the house churches would weaken their vision and their focus in preaching the gospel. One publication expressed its concerns: From the very beginning, the House Church has always declined to be involved or to be used in political situations. Its sole focus is to spread the gospel according to the teaching of Scripture. The petition … reflects an aspect of religion being linked with political issues. This is contrary to the real purpose and desire of the House Church. … Changing its incohesive structure might produce a united force and a non-negligible voice. This could be a great advantage in the quest for freedom and democracy, but this may be detrimental for the spreading of the gospel.516

The Chinese authorities did not make any formal response to the appeal—at least, not with words. They showed what they thought of it by increasing the harassment and persecution of the house churches throughout Henan Province. Within a year, many of the signatories of the statement were in prison. Just a month after the statement was released, Zhang Rongliang lamented: ‘The Chinese government got angry and decided to crack down on Christians.’517

Strengths and Weaknesses of the House Churches House churches are also known by a variety of different names, including ‘home churches’, ‘family churches’ and ‘underground churches’. The congregations considered to be house churches in this book are those that have not registered with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The reasons for that refusal to register are many and have been outlined elsewhere in this book, but they include the belief that an atheistic government should not be permitted to control or influence the Body of Christ and that only Jesus Christ is the head of the Church.

Henan’s house-church believers meet in many places. Here, a small Bible-study group gathers in a humble home.

Some Western writers have pointed out certain weaknesses in China’s house churches, such as the tendency of some leaders to put their ministry before their families, and an apparent inability to provide thorough theological training to their members. One journalist has harshly opined that While some house church leaders are knowledgeable about textual and traditional Christianity, too many house church worshippers gravitate to the most superficial and most heterodox elements of the religion. Though some house churches, especially those in urban areas, seriously study Biblical themes, often house churches focus on the unthinking and the superstitious— miracles, instant salvation, acts of physical transport such as weeping and shouting.518

It has become commonplace for some Western Christians to say: ‘The greatest need of the Chinese house churches today is training.’ Others have

made statements such as ‘The revival in China is a mile wide but only an inch deep.’ This latter comment is offensive to many Chinese believers, implying a spiritual shallowness in their church that I have certainly not encountered. Rarely is any mention made in the West of the extraordinarily thorough Bible training courses that most of the house-church networks provide. Everywhere I have travelled throughout China I have been privileged to meet Christian men and women with a far deeper knowledge of and commitment to the Bible than can be found in most other countries around the world. Furthermore, their knowledge has been gained more from practical experience than from a classroom blackboard. The Born-Again house-church movement provides perhaps the most exhaustive theological training for its members, with classes ranging from a simple, seven-day introduction to the gospel to a multi-level theological seminary course that takes several years to complete.519 It is easy to point out weaknesses among the house churches, but there are also many strengths that should be celebrated. David Adeney, a former missionary to China, was astounded by what he found when that country’s iron doors slowly creaked open again in the late 1970s, after almost three decades of isolation. Amazing testimonies emerged of pastors gaining their release after 20 years or more in jail and wondering whether they would find anyone in their town or village who remembered their name. When they reached home, they found that not only had people been praying for them all those years but their church fellowships had grown three, five or even 10 times larger during their imprisonment. In his book China: The Church’s Long March, Adeney joyfully documented the strengths the Chinese house churches had developed during their years of hardship. These are some of the most important of them:520 1. The house churches are indigenous. They have discarded the church culture of the West and have developed their own forms of ministry, whose dynamics flow from their freedom from bondage to any institution or tradition. 2. They are rooted in family units. They have become part of the Chinese social structure. The believing community is built up of little clusters of Christian families. 3. They are stripped of non-essentials. Much that we associate with Christianity is not found in Chinese house churches today. Thus, they are extremely flexible. One believer remarked: ‘In the past we blew trumpets

and had large evangelistic campaigns. Some believed, but not great numbers. Now we have very little equipment … and many are coming to the Lord.’ 4. They emphasize the lordship of Christ. Because Jesus is the head of his Body, the Church must put obedience to him above every other loyalty— it cannot accept control by any outside organization. The house churches obey the word of God and resist every attempt to force unscriptural practices on them. 5. They have confidence in the sovereignty of God. When from a human point of view all hope was gone, house-church Christians in China saw God revealing his power and overruling in the history they were living through. 6. They love the word of God. They appreciate the value of the scriptures and have made sacrifices in order to obtain copies of the Bible. Their knowledge of the Lord has deepened as they have memorized and copied out the word of God. 7. They are praying churches. Believers who were surrounded by people who were seeking to destroy them, and who had no hope of human help, were obliged to depend on God, and in simple faith expected him to hear their cry. Prayer was not only communion with God but also a way to share in the spiritual conflict. 8. They are caring and sharing churches. A house church is a caring community in which Christians show love for one another and for their compatriots. Such love creates a tremendous force for spontaneous evangelism. 9. They depend on lay leadership. They have had to, because so many Chinese pastors have been put into prison or labour camps. Their leadership consists of people from various walks of life who spend much of their time going from church to church teaching and building up the faith of others. 10. They have been purified by suffering. The church in China has learned first-hand that suffering is part of God’s purpose in building his Church. Nominal Christianity could not have survived the tests of the Cultural Revolution. Because those who joined the church were aware that it was likely to involve persecution, their motive could only be a genuine desire to know Jesus Christ.

11. They are zealous in evangelism. No public preaching has been officially permitted. People came to know Christ through the humble ministry of believers and through personal contact between friends and family members. The principal means of witness in China today is the personal lifestyle and behaviour of Christians, accompanied by their proclamation of the gospel, often at great personal risk.

501 Guinness, The Story of the China Inland Mission, p147 502 Austin, China’s Millions, p347 503 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, p84 504 In 2,140 churches: China Study Journal, vol.9, no.2 (August 1994) 505 Lambert, China’s Christian Millions (1999), p198. The 2006 version of the same book gives a 1965 figure of only 78,000 (p249). 506 An unpublished survey by house-church leaders throughout Henan, conducted in 1988–89. This survey has been mentioned by several sources, including Lambert in China’s Christian Millions (1999), p250. Four years earlier, in 1985, the respected China missionary Leslie Lyall wrote: ‘Knowledgeable observers believe there may be as many as ten million Christians in this province’ (Lyall, God Reigns in China, p172). 507 Johnstone and Mandryk, Operation World, p172 508 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 509 Utsyn, June 1999, cited in Global Chinese Ministries in March 2000. Even this figure would seem to be too low, as another source as far back as 1981 gave a total of 92,500 Christians in Lushan County. See ‘Great Growth in Henan’, Pray for China, no.70 (January–February 1986). 510 Paul E. Kauffman, Piecing Together the China Puzzle (Hong Kong: Asian Outreach International, 1987), p94 511 Not his real name 512 Personal communication from a missionary in November 2007 513 Adapted from David W. Lin, ‘House Churches at Their Best or the Worst Times—A Short Paper on Unifying Diverse Church Models’, unpublished report 514 Cited in Antioch Missions, China Prayer Update, November 1998 515 Lambert, China’s Christian Millions (1999), p57 516 ‘The Hidden Dangers for the House Church’, Pray for China, no.147 (July–August 1999) 517 David Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’, The Weekly Standard, 28 September 1998 518 Jua Kurlantzick, ‘Move Over, Confucius’, The New Republic, 6 September 2004 519 Comprehensive details of the Born-Again Movement’s theological training courses are provided in ‘The BornAgain Movement’. 520 Adapted from David H. Adeney, China: The Church’s Long March (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1985), p206

Chapter 23 SUFFERING: THE SECRET TO CHINA’S MIGHTY REVIVAL

House-church Christians in Henan boldly commemorate the death of one of their members despite government warnings not to meet publicly.

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tories of revival and of miracles are always wonderful and edifying to read, but in China the reasons for the advance of the Kingdom of God need to be put into context. We need to consider the exhaustive chronology of suffering, torture and even martyrdom that China’s believers have suffered. The revival has been the consequence not just of prayer and earnest endeavour but also of an intense ordeal that has driven the Christians to the foot of the cross. They have then taken up their own crosses and followed Jesus Christ in brokenness and humility. God has found many servants he can trust with his gifts and his power, and the result has been one of the greatest revivals in the Church’s history. Many of Henan’s Christians have gained a fresh perspective on suffering. They have come to understand that their lives are truly in the hands of God, and whatever he allows to happen to them, whether it be good times or very bad, they should learn to accept it and trust him. Brother Yun is one housechurch believer in Henan who developed an unshakeable perspective on persecution after countless arrests and imprisonments and the most horrible tortures. He wrote: When a child of God suffers you need to understand it is only because the Lord has allowed it. He has not forgotten you! The devil cannot snatch you away! …. The first time I went to prison I struggled, wondering why God had allowed it. Slowly I began to understand He had a deeper purpose for me than just working for Him. He wanted to know me, and I to know Him, deeply and intimately. He knew the best way to get my attention for a while was to give me rest behind bars. Now, if I hear a house church Christian has been imprisoned for Christ in China, I don’t advise people to pray for his or her release unless the Lord clearly reveals we should pray this way.

Before a chicken is hatched it is vital they are kept in the warm protection of the shell for 21 days. If you take the chick out of that environment one day too early, it will die. Similarly, ducks need to remain confined in their shell for 28 days before they are hatched. If you take a duck out on the 27th day, it will die. There is always a purpose why God allows His children to go to prison. Perhaps it’s so they can witness to the other prisoners, or perhaps God wants to develop more character in their lives. But if we use our own efforts to get them out of prison earlier than God intended, we can thwart His plans, and the believer may come out not as fully formed as God wanted them to be.521

Peter Xu Yongze has even gone as far as thanking his persecutors and feeling ashamed that he had not been able to reach them with the gospel. He says of officers who tortured him in prison: They were young men who had been raised in the same part of China as me, but whereas I grew up in an atmosphere of Christian love, they grew up presumably in an atmosphere of hate and violence. I felt deep compassion for my torturers and pain at my own shortcomings. If I had done my job and preached the gospel more widely, then perhaps these young men would have heard about Jesus and received a changed heart. I owe these torturers a great debt. Firstly, I owe them the debt of the gospel, and secondly, I am in debt to them because God used them to discipline me and make me more like Jesus. What a great privilege it is to partake in the ‘fellowship of sharing in his sufferings’ (Philippians 3:10). Whenever I experienced this kind of persecution, I can honestly say before God that I never hated the men who did it. They are lost souls, operating out of ignorance. This is why Jesus was able to say, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34) as he hung dying on the cross. In China there have been many persecutors who tried to destroy the Church. Later they became wonderful Christians. Like the Apostle Paul they went from one extreme to the other, from total darkness to pure light. Their testimonies inspired me to view my persecutors as potential brothers who had not yet experienced salvation, rather than as enemies. I also felt a great debt to these men because even though they didn’t realize it, by beating me they were fulfilling God’s blessing in my life. By allowing me to partake in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, I was honoured to be called a child of God. What a great privilege it is to be blessed in such a way!522

Such an extraordinary perspective on suffering, and on God’s sovereign care for his children, has led to many remarkable stories coming from Henan. In 1994, a 50-year-old female preacher from the province was in the middle of a three-year sentence for evangelizing when the prison authorities, wanting to increase their income, told her family they were willing to release her on bail. Her relatives gathered all their savings and … travelled by bus for several hours to bail her out. When [they] arrived at the prison and told her of their intention, she protested, ‘Why have you come to bail me out? I am fine here! I’m given chores in the prison kitchen. I come into contact with a lot of people this way—workers and prisoners, and I get to preach the gospel to them. I don’t want to leave. I will serve the remainder of my sentence.’523

One of the boldest and most outspoken of Henan’s house-church leaders is Zhang Rongliang, the leader of the Fangcheng Church, another group that today has millions of members. In 2002, Zhang, who has spent many years in prison for the gospel, told me: Once a British pastor visited us in Fangcheng and asked where our Bible seminary was. I answered him: ‘Our only seminary is when we go to prison. That’s where we learn the most from the Lord.’ In this prison seminary we have learned many valuable lessons about the Lord which we could never have learned from a book. Consequently, we have come to know the Lord in a deeper way. We know his goodness and his loving faithfulness to us. In one leaders’ meeting a few years ago, I joked before lunch that only those who had been in prison were allowed to eat. But then everyone sat down to eat! Every single person in the room —approximately 120 brothers and sisters—had spent time in prison. You see, we do not believe it is the government or evil people or the devil who sends us to prison and causes us to suffer. We believe it is the Lord who allows us, by his grace, to suffer for his name. Anything that happens to us, whether good or bad, comes from the hand of God. This is not fatalism. Rather, we believe that our Heavenly Father is in complete control of a Christian’s life. Not a single hair on our head can be harmed unless it is his will. Therefore, if he wants us to go to prison to suffer for his name, who are we to complain or fight against it? It is much better when we go gladly and with a song of praise in our heart. We totally forgive those who abuse and even torture us. If we don’t, then the Lord won’t forgive us for our sins and we will be filled with hatred and thoughts of revenge that will destroy us. Our only option is to truly love those who persecute us. Because of this love, many policemen and prison officers have repented and given their lives to Jesus over the years.524

At the same time, many Christians in China are reluctant to talk about the suffering they have endured themselves, unless they can do so in a way that gives glory only to God. One house-church leader, Pastor Yu Han, has explained: Christians in China don’t make a big thing of persecution. They prefer to talk about the great things God is doing—revivals here and there, how many people are being saved, etc. Why focus our attention on persecution? The persecution is now more lenient than the past, so the Christians don’t make a big thing of it.525

Perhaps the most detailed and enlightening explanation of why there is still persecution in China today, when the government apparently guarantees freedom to worship, has been given by the principal founder of the BornAgain Movement, Peter Xu Yongze. He says: Many Christians around the world have been told there is religious freedom in China. Some have visited and been impressed by services in large cathedrals where everything seemed as normal as a church service in the West. Let me explain something here that is essential for people to understand about why house-church believers are persecuted in China. Firstly, you need to understand that in a way we choose to be persecuted. It is true that we could join a Three-Self church, settle down and agree to the restrictions placed on us. In a sense, it is

true that people do have the freedom to believe in God if they choose; and as long as they keep it to themselves and confine their activities to within the four walls of a government-sanctioned Three-Self church, they will not experience any persecution for their faith. However, there is a tremendous level of persecution for Christian discipleship in China today. Millions of believers have been so deeply changed by the power of Jesus that there is no way they can remain silent and keep their faith to themselves. They have drunk so deeply from the well of God’s grace that they must tell others where to find water to quench their thirst, and China is a desperately thirsty land. The moment Christians in China refuse to sit in the church pews and keep our faith to ourselves, we immediately become law-breakers and persecution results. Millions of house-church Christians in China today face daily harassment, fines, beatings and imprisonment. The leaders are especially targeted. Yet Christians around the world need to realize that this is the path the house-church believers have chosen. Every morning, we have a choice to make: Should we choose to be a mere believer today, or a disciple? Every day, millions of men and women, boys and girls, decide they want to be a disciple of Jesus and to obey his commands regardless of the risks involved or the hardships they will face. Because so many make this daily choice to be Jesus’ disciples, China has experienced a tremendous revival for more than 30 years.526

Experts at Escaping Because of the intense danger that can threaten them, the house-church Christians in Henan have become expert at discerning the promptings of the Holy Spirit. There are countless reports of meetings dismissed in a moment because the preacher suddenly felt uneasy in his spirit, only for the police to turn up minutes later to find an empty room. Some house-church leaders have spent years on the run. They cannot go back to their home villages because they would be immediately arrested if they were seen there, so they travel constantly from one place to another, preaching the gospel and building up their fellow believers. Many leaders in these difficult circumstances have narrowly escaped the clutches of the authorities on dozens of occasions by hearing, and obeying, the Holy Spirit. Many have been woken from heavy sleep in the middle of the night and told to run or hide. Minutes later, the police have burst into the building to find their quarry gone. Of all the escape techniques employed in Henan, surely none is as dramatic—or humorous—as that described by the journalist Alex Buchan, who wrote: I met an evangelist in Henan Province once who had managed to elude the authorities by perfecting an astonishing escape technique. He would preach standing on a small box. Then, if police surrounded the church, he was able to unhinge his shoulders, tuck his legs up behind his neck, and contort himself to fit into this tiny box. An accomplice would then pile a hymnbook or

two on the top. When police burst in, he was nowhere to be found. They never thought of looking for the evangelist in the box, believing it too small to contain a man. ‘Where on earth did you get the idea to do that?’ I asked him, wondering if he had been a circus contortionist. ‘Oh, the Lord gave me a Scripture,’ he replied, absolutely deadpan. I racked my brains for Scriptures that mentioned any Houdini-like prophets, but eventually I asked, ‘What verse did he give you?’ Back came the reply, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3:30). It saved him on numerous occasions from being jailed.527

Peter Xu has faced criticism from some Christians since he moved to America in 2001. He explains: Sometimes I am asked why I tried to escape from prison. I have been challenged as to whether this is something a Christian should attempt to do, as it runs contrary to the laws of the land. Our motivation for all our actions should never be one of opposing the government or purposely wanting to disobey the law, but rather of obeying God and preaching the gospel. We should be most concerned about obeying God, for he is higher than any government. In many things the law of God and the law of the land do not contradict each other, but in certain things the two clearly clash. At such times, we must always obey God. A clear conscience before God is a wonderful gift to possess, even if it means we have offended the earthly authorities in the process. In China, many house-church Christians believe we must discern what God’s will is when we get arrested. We believe that on some occasions the Lord has a prison ministry waiting for us that we must accept, while on other occasions we sense it is the interference of Satan that has led to our arrest, for our adversary is always trying to stop the advance of the gospel in any way he can. There are times I have felt that I should escape from prison, and did so, and other times when I felt no such prompting of the Holy Spirit, and spent years behind bars. My 1971 experience in prison, albeit just a few months long, helped shape my perspective. I saw the potential for winning many souls for Christ in prison. The house churches in China today have the attitude that if God allows a believer to go to prison, he or she should understand that it is God’s ministry for them to preach the gospel to the prisoners. This is indeed a high calling. We have found no one in China more receptive to the good news than people languishing in prison. It is a wonderful opportunity for the Kingdom of God, because most of the non-Christian prisoners are full of hate, violence and despair. The child of God who ends up behind bars often seems completely different: peaceful, joyful and full of hope. This difference is stark, and over the years many thousands of people in China have been saved by the blood of Jesus because of the witness of Christians in prison. All of the house-church leaders in China today have spent time in prison because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Some have spent six months or a year in prison; others have been incarcerated for more than 20 years. Later in my life I learned that many Christians around the world pray for freedom of religion in China, and pray for the collapse of the government system that allows persecution. While I fully understand and appreciate that people’s motives are to help their fellow Christians, we need to understand that there is a higher and far more important issue involved than whether or not we are persecuted in China—the real issue is the advancement of the Kingdom of God. When God’s

kingdom is advancing, he is glorified and multitudes of people can be saved from the eternal torment of hell. If the Kingdom of God can be advanced more through no persecution, then we should submit ourselves to that course. Our prayer should be: ‘Not my will, but yours be done, Lord!’ This does not mean that when we are being beaten and tortured in China we enjoy it. Far from it. But if we are aware our suffering is because of our faith in the one true God, then we can endure whatever shame is thrown at us, confident that God will work good from our situation and bring glory to his name.528

The Most Brutal and Corrupt Police Force in China

A large house-church meeting in a rural part of Henan Asian Report

The house-church Christians of Henan Province seem to have suffered more regular and more ferocious persecution than those of any other part of China. This constant assault takes its toll on believers, but overall their leaders have accepted that the opposition they face from local officials is part of God’s special plan for them. By embracing repression rather than struggling against it, these believers make it virtually impossible for the authorities in Henan to achieve their aim of eradicating Christianity. Many house-church leaders have even told foreign visitors that instead of praying that the Communist government would topple, they should pray it would remain in power, since the persecution keeps the church in China strong and reliant on the Lord for every breath. Chinese Christians are routinely robbed of all their possessions when they are arrested. Officials sometimes raid their homes for no other reason than to see what they can steal and sell to make money for themselves. Even foreign Christians who have been arrested in Henan in recent years, after being interrogated, have been released with nothing more than the clothes they were standing in. One Westerner in 1994 had his laptop computer, mobile phone, video equipment, cash, credit cards and even spare clothes

and shoes confiscated by the Public Security Bureau. When he asked for them back, its officers laughed. In many parts of the province, the populace has become exasperated by the behaviour of the authorities. They rule by fear and bribery, and have lost all the respect of the common people, who even make up derogatory rhymes and songs about them. This one considers one of the most visible vices of many of Henan’s PSB officers: Day in and day out they are drunk, sipping revolutionary fine liquor. Because of drinking, they have damaged the Party spirit and ruined their own appetite; they have drunk up the administrative budget. They have caused the eyes of their wives to be brimming with tears, so that they sleep back to back at night. Awake, they go to sleep with others. Their wives report them to the [Disciplinary] Commission. The commission … comforts them and finally takes a clear-cut stand: ‘It is wrong not to drink when offered; we are also drunk every day.’ The wives then go to the Women’s Federation. The stand of the federation is even more straightforward: ‘Adultery is not a crime. Sleep with whomever you want. We are drunk every day too. It is more convenient for the leaders to fondle in drunkenness.529

No action is ever taken against the Henan police, even though their actions violate Chinese law. Any complaint falls on deaf ears, and the chance of an investigation being conducted by a higher authority is extremely unlikely. In any event, as one woman has put it: ‘There is no point complaining to one wicked authority about another. Nothing will happen. All crows are black.’530 Certainly, the Christians in Henan do not believe they should press for their legal rights, but, like the early church, they choose to ‘joyfully accept the confiscation of their property’ (Hebrews 10:34). Their calm and consistent witness infuriates their tormentors even more and the darkness in the hearts of many officials makes them react violently to the shining good deeds of the Christians, but their light cannot be put out. The believers continue to pray for those who persecute them. It is little wonder that the simple rural people of Henan are coming to Christ in large numbers, for multitudes are attracted by the purity and integrity of his followers and come to them for leadership and moral direction. The relentless discrimination and harassment the house-church believers have faced from this abusive police force continues to this day. Some misinformed Christians who are more familiar with life in the larger cities of China have played down claims of persecution coming from Henan, with some insisting that such reports are exaggerated or simply false. One

veteran missionary, Werner Bürklin of China Partner, has even gone so far as to say, preposterously: ‘In my many years of ministry in China I have yet to find a Christian who has been incarcerated because of his or her beliefs. I do not say that this has never happened in China. Others insist that this has happened many times. If it is done, however, believers do have legal rights to defend themselves.’531 Peter Xu has summed up how many house-church leaders in China have felt about the many senior figures in the Western church who have ignorantly spoken out against their congregations: We could scarcely believe how many Christian leaders from around the world have swallowed the lies of the government and Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Many times we have shaken our heads in disbelief as seemingly one Western church leader after another has come to China, been given a tour of a few selected churches by the TSPM and been so thoroughly deceived that they have returned home to issue statements that ‘there is no persecution in China,’ or ‘there are plenty of Bibles available.’ Such statements are a slap in the face of house-church Christians. Hundreds of pastors and evangelists languish in prison today, solely because they love Jesus and refused to compromise their faith. Hundreds of families have been split apart through hardship; thousands have been crippled, maimed for life or fallen ill. Some have even lost their minds as a result of beatings and torture at the hands of the authorities. All of this is hard enough to endure, but to then be denounced by many Christians around the world is the cruellest blow. Still, the Lord has allowed this to happen so that we can be like Jesus, for the Old Testament foretold: ‘If someone asks him, “What are these wounds on your body?” he will answer, “The wounds I was given at the house of my friends”’ (Zechariah 13:6).532

The indisputable fact remains that multitudes of house-church Christians in Henan have suffered greatly for their faith, and for their refusal to join the TSPM. This suffering, however, has had the effect of fanning the flames of revival throughout the province, so that today Henan boasts the largest number of Christians of any province in China.

521 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp312–13 522 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 523 Su Shan, ‘The Way of the Cross’, Asian Report, vol.27, no.6 (November–December 1994), p14 524 Personal interview with Zhang Rongliang in August 2002 525 Su, ‘The Way of the Cross’, p14 526 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 527 Alex Buchan, ‘God’s Nutcases’, Compass Direct, 1 January 1998 528 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 529 Ibid. 530 ‘From the Diary of a Traveler: Churches in Zhumadian and Zhoukou, Henan’, Bridge (date misplaced) 531 Werner Bürklin, Jesus Never Left China: The Rest of the Story (Enumclaw, Wash.: Pleasant Word, 2005), p114 532 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003

Chapter 24 FIRE AND BLOOD: REVIVAL AND PERSECUTION IN THE 1980S

House-church Christians in the south of Henan in the 1980s preach the gospel at the funeral of one of their members as they follow the bullock-drawn coffin

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he repression of the Henan house churches is too extensive to record in full. Thousands of believers have been beaten, imprisoned or maimed. A few examples will suffice here as an indication of the widespread brutality that has inflicted throughout the province, but only eternity will reveal the true scale of the terror and of the obedience and dedication to the gospel that the many unknown saints of Henan have shown in the face of it. This is a brief résumé, year by year, of both revival and persecution in the province since 1980.

1980: ‘A Phenomenal Year for the Church in Henan’ The start of the 1980s introduced a few years of comparative calm for the house churches in Henan—compared, that is, with the excessive punishment meted out to them in the 1970s and then again in 1983. The Christians were still under pressure and a number of arrests were made between 1980 and 1982, but these years are typically remembered as ones of tremendous growth and revival in Henan as in other parts of the country.

Unusual signs and wonders occurred that caused whole communities to believe in Christ. Brother Yun recalls: The year of 1980 was a phenomenal year for the Church in Henan. We remember it as the year when God constantly did outstanding miracles and divine healing, and the words of Jesus supernaturally came to many people. That wonderful year saw tremendous growth in the Church. Later, many of the converts from 1980 became leaders of God’s Church throughout China. … In one meeting in the Nanyang area hundreds of people—Christians and unbelievers alike—saw a vision of a beautiful boat floating on a sea of clouds above the meeting place. Many sinners repented and gave their lives to Christ as a result of this sign and wonder. In Fen Shuiling (‘Watershed Hill’) Village, also in Nanyang, an unbeliever was dying after a protracted illness. His family had never heard the gospel. One evening Jesus appeared to that man and said, ‘My name is Jesus. I have come to save you.’ Fen Shuiling Village is situated in a remote mountainous area where preachers had not yet visited. It had no church or pastor, so when I first visited there I was surprised to find the gospel had spread to many villages and that dozens of families had put their faith in Christ. Jesus Himself had preached the gospel to them! These new believers were now hungry to receive teaching from His Word.533

The believers in Henan were desperate for good teaching from the word of God. Whenever a gifted preacher ministered to them, several hundred people would gather to listen. Sometimes, they would hide the preacher’s shoes so that he couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. A Christian woman called Sister Chan from the south of the province experienced both tremendous heartache and overwhelming joy in the first year or two of her walk with God. After first believing in Jesus Christ in 1979, she was opposed by her hard-hearted husband. Then, five months after she had become a Christian, he was electrocuted in a work accident and died. Sister Chan faced a future as a lone parent with three young children to raise. Grieving deeply, she had a picture of her husband enlarged and framed, and placed it on her mantelpiece. The more she looked at it in the weeks that followed, the more sorrowful she became, until she had lost all sense of joy and peace from the Lord. One day, a Christian woman came to visit Chan, but as soon as she entered her home this woman fell down dead. Terrified by this calamity, Chan fell to her knees and cried out to God for mercy, while her eldest son ran several miles to ask some other Christians to pray. While he was away, Chan realized that the picture of her dead husband had become an idol to her and had robbed her of her spiritual life. As she repented, she later recalled, ‘a miracle took place. The dead sister came back to life. The Lord loved me, but he knew my heart, and he knew that I loved the world and vanity. He

had wanted me to forsake all idols, look to him alone and serve him singlemindedly. I ripped the photo and threw it into the fire.’534 Even more bizarre things were to occur in her home. One day, an elderly Christian woman came to see her. As her visitor knelt down to pray, Chan’s young daughter cried out: ‘My legs hurt!’ They ignored her and continued praying, but the girl began to scream—and suddenly died. Then, Chan says, My eight-year-old daughter jumped on the bed and embraced her dead sister. For no rhyme or reason she, too, died. … Then the old sister who had come to pray with me immediately stood up and went to lift up my older daughter. Strangely, she also fell over on the floor and died. It was too much for me. I was scared to death and did not even know how to pray. I sobbed and prayed at the same time, crying ‘God, please save us!’535

Her neighbours heard all the furore coming from the house and rushed over. They found Chan praying to God, while three dead bodies were slumped on the floor and the bed. They reported it to the supervisor of the work unit and he sent a cart to the house to collect the corpses. Mockingly, he asked Chan later: ‘After all this, are you still going to believe in Jesus?’ She replied: ‘I not only believe, but I will believe to the end. I must be a testimony to you so that you can believe in Jesus too.’ The supervisor retorted, ‘Nonsense. Take the dead bodies to the hospital. Superstition cannot save you. You have been a victim of superstition.’ Then, the Spirit of the Lord came upon me. I stood up and declared boldly, ‘We are not going to the hospital. Our Lord will certainly save us.’ Those words barely left my mouth when a second miracle took place. My daughters and the old sister simultaneously came to life again. The supervisor was astonished beyond words. He left in a huff.536

Sister Chan later looked back on these peculiar events and realized that they were part of God’s training for the life she was to experience. She subsequently spent many years behind bars for the sake of the gospel and endured countless beatings and other harsh treatment, but she was used by God to lead hundreds of women to Christ, both in prison and after she was released.

1981: A Chronic Shortage of Bibles In 1981, a monumental incident took place that was to give a huge boost to the growth of the house churches in Henan and other parts of the country. On 18 June, a large barge containing 232 tons of Chinese Bibles evaded Chinese naval patrols to unload its precious cargo onto a beach near Shantou in Guangdong Province. The delivery, which was codenamed ‘Project Pearl’ and directed by the American missionary Brother David,

meant that multitudes of desperate believers were to receive their first-ever copy of God’s word.537 Tens of thousands of these Bibles found their way to the Christians of Henan Province. A letter of heartfelt gratitude from ‘the Church in Kaifeng’ exclaimed: Thanks be to the Lord for His grace! You, through many hardships and risks, have brought us food, the Word of the Lord, to meet our needs. You perceived the great love of the Lord and knew our lack, and you satisfied our requests, helping our spiritual growth and edifying us in the Word. Your Christ-like love is selfless love, an example which we should all learn from. Having God’s Word, we are now able to distinguish true and false, to discern the spirits, to select the correct pathways. We treasure this Precious Book very much for we know it did not come to us in an easy way. Today we have the precious Word of the Lord. May the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give us a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, that we may fight a good fight. Your love has satisfied the hungry flock who thirst after righteousness. Your labour has not been in vain and will be blessed by God forever. Our cup overflows!538

Nonetheless, deep concerns were expressed by some at the lack of Bibles. The Hong Kong newspaper Pai Shing revealed: Last August [1981] there were several tens of thousands of believers in one particular county. But there were only about 30 copies of incomplete Bibles, one old pastor and three seminarytrained missionaries shared by more than 1,000 meeting points in the whole county. This kind of shortage is reaching a disastrous level. What makes the situation worse is the shortage of Bible and doctrinal teachings, causing the emergence of heathenism in the mountain districts. Many witchdoctors practise witchcraft behind the name of Christianity and this has caused a lot of internal disturbances inside the house churches.539

The reporter was nevertheless able to see a bright future for the gospel in China and predicted that Christianity would one day be the country’s dominant religion—a remarkable claim to make in 1981. He wrote: Even though there are various kinds of difficulties and crises, Protestants in China today, whose main body is in the house churches, are growing rapidly. It has become an irresistible historical trend. … Protestantism has gradually become the motivating power of millions and millions of lonely, depressed and empty-hearted people. In the ideological sphere, Protestantism will surely become the leading ideology among the Chinese people. Prospects are very bright.540

Also in 1981, the house-church leader Jin Dechen was arrested and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in Yuxian. He had already been jailed from 1958 to 1973. He was finally released in 1992, after a total of 27 years behind bars.541

1982: The First Inter-Provincial Preaching Teams

This year is remembered as a highly significant one for Henan’s house churches, when many of them sent their first evangelistic teams outside the province. Peter Xu Yongze recalls what happened to one of these: In 1982 we decided to send a team of evangelists to eastern Sichuan, after we were challenged to do so by some women there who had become Christians. The women were originally from Henan, and had received the gospel while visiting their relatives. After a group of 30 Christians gathered together for prayer, 17 were chosen to carry the gospel to Sichuan. My sister Yongling led the women’s team. The workers represented the first time an organized evangelistic team had been sent out by the house churches in Henan. One team travelled to a place called Da Hong Long (‘Big Red Dragon’) in Guang’an County. In the first month God did many wonderful works and revival broke out. The local authorities were furious to find the gospel spreading in their area—which happened to be the hometown of Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping—and initiated a severe response. Thirteen of the evangelists were arrested, badly beaten, and sent back home to Henan.542

Ten years later, Xu travelled to Guang’an County, to the place where his sister and the other evangelists had been arrested in 1982. The local church leaders he met with told him that even though the light of the gospel had burned for only a month when it was first brought to them, the church had grown steadily since and by 1992 almost half the people in the county had become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. God had accepted the evangelists’ humble sacrifice. Because of the ten year Cultural Revolution and natural disasters, almost all Bibles were lost. There were only a few copies left in the whole of our prefecture. We borrowed one Bible and copied it by hand day and night, until we finished copying the whole of the New Testament. It is really precious. God has been reviving His churches here from the winter of 1980 onwards, and the number of believers increases every day. Our desire to have a Bible is much more important than our daily physical needs. In December 1980 I visited a meeting in a mountain area and my deepest desire was fulfilled! I could not help shedding tears. Three co-workers and I cried over the Bible for more than an hour. In our daily life, God uses His Word to direct and lead us. His Words are our light, our bread, and our strength. When we face Satan’s temptations, God’s Word is our weapon for victory. When we are weak, His Word is our strength. Our church is experiencing great revival, and we preach the Gospel widely. We do everything we can to let others know God’s words. Sometimes we share at marriages and funerals. Many people become believers. The needs here are so great, that even if we had a large truck full of Bibles it would barely reach our needs. We believe that God is rich, He is glorious, and He will meet all our needs. May His glory last forever! Amen. Letter to Open Doors, 23 March 1982

In May 1982, a powerful letter arrived in Hong Kong from a Christian in Henan. Entitled ‘All Who Live Godly in Christ Jesus Will Suffer Persecution’, it provides a wonderful insight into how Chinese Christians view persecution and suffering, as well as giving details of the brutal treatment they were experiencing at the time. It is worth quoting the letter at length: Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, On behalf of the brothers and sisters in Henan Province I send greetings to the members of the Body overseas! Today the Church here is being greatly blessed by the Lord and the number of people being saved is increasing daily. Every day the Good News of God is proclaimed more and more. … The proverb ‘When good is one foot high, evil is ten feet high’ is true. Yet the growth in the life of the Church has been promoted even by the servants of the devil. Wherever the Church flourishes there are difficulties. The revival has grown up in such circumstances. If Jesus had not been crucified, nobody today could be saved. If there is no testing by fire, then true faith would not become apparent, and if the Lord did not train us, we could not become instruments fit for His use. If the rock was not split open, the living water could not have sprung forth. Therefore difficulties are the means for promoting life and revival in the churches. Recently the gospel here has once again been greatly promoted, because ten brothers and sisters were imprisoned, beaten, and bound. They regarded their sufferings for the Lord as more precious than the treasures of Egypt. They started to preach the gospel in the poorest and most barren areas. One day they went to a certain commune where they met those who attended a Three-Self church. Those people only believed in the four Gospels and tore up all other books of the Bible. They were not separate from the world. It was a confused situation, so that when our co-workers preached the truth to them, no one listened or received it. So the preachers prayed and were greatly moved by God. They split up and went to different places to preach. As soon as they opened their mouths, the power of God came forth. They preached with tears streaming down their cheeks, causing the passers-by and street merchants, Christians and non-Christians, to stand still and listen. Even the fortune-tellers were moved by the Holy Spirit and burst out crying. Many people, after hearing the Word of the Lord, forgot their food, their work, and even forgot to return home. This went on until the evening, and still people had not dispersed. The brothers and sisters preached until they were exhausted but still the crowd would not let them leave. … Then the authorities made a move and seized the believers, dragging them away one by one. They bound them with ropes and tortured them with electric batons. They also slapped their faces with their shoes and knocked them unconscious, but when they came to, they continued to pray, sing and preach to the bystanders. One little sister, just 14 years old, was beaten senseless. When she revived she saw that many people were sympathetic to them because of their persecution, so she again began to preach. Her words were few and her voice faint, but the people could not stop themselves from crying out, and they repented and believed in Jesus. When the believers were bound and beaten, many people noticed that their appearance was lively and gracious, and that they were smiling. People asked them why they did not feel ashamed. They asked where these young people’s power came from. Many were led to faith in Jesus by their example.

At this point many people who had not accepted the preaching earlier came to listen. Many people who attended Three-Self churches also came to know Jesus. Those who had not received the truth came to understand. The brothers and sisters in that area saw the young preachers bound and forced to kneel on the ground for more than three days without food or water, and beaten with sticks until their faces were covered with blood and their hands were black from the ropes. Yet they continued to pray, sing, and praise the Lord. The watching believers were cut to the heart, and wished to share in the persecution and be bound with them and cast into prison. In this area the flame of the gospel has spread everywhere. There had never been a revival like this before, but through this persecution this place has truly received the seeds of life. May everyone who hears of this give thanks and praise for the revival of the church in this area. Dearly beloved brothers and sisters—in men’s eyes this was all an unfortunate happening, but for Christians it was like a rich banquet. This kind of lesson cannot be learned from books, and this sweetness is not usually tasted by men. This rich life does not exist in a comfortable environment. Where there is no cross, there is no crown. If the spices are not refined to become oil, the fragrance of the perfume cannot flow forth, and if the grapes are not crushed in the vat, they will not become wine. Dear brethren, these saints who went down into the furnace, far from being harmed, have had their faces glorified and their spirits filled with power, with greater authority to preach the Word and a far more abundant life. The Lord will have the final victory in their bodies, and will put Satan to shame. In fact, Satan could find no way to make them renounce their faith, and they were released. Recently our fellow-labourers in three counties here have had greater courage to preach the gospel because of what happened. Those who have not been imprisoned feel ashamed. They see that these ten all carry the scars of the Lord Jesus upon their bodies, so the others are full of regrets and long to receive this kind of punishment so that they too can bring greater glory to the Lord’s Name. Dear fellow-workers in the Word, God has placed us in these last days to wage war so that the number of those saved will increase through us, and that His will shall be fulfilled through us in this generation. He desires that we advance into Glory with Him, so making the most of the very short time left, let us continually do the work of the Lord, for there are still many souls who have not been rescued, and many lambs wander in the mountains and high peaks without anyone to seek and find them. May the Lord’s peace place a burden to preach the gospel on each labourer’s heart, and give a spirit of prayer to each Christian so they will become prayer warriors. Let no one in the Lord be lazy or idle. … May God give you a heart faithful unto death or until He comes. All who have such a heart will obtain a great reward. The Lord will come soon. Lord Jesus, I desire you to come! Emmanuel! From a weaker member of the Body 6 May 1982.543

1983: The Anti-Spiritual-Pollution Campaign In the summer of 1983, the Chinese government, concerned at the explosive increase of crime in the countryside, launched a campaign to systematically eradicate ‘undesirable elements’. Thousands of criminals—real and supposed—were rounded up and executed throughout the country. One source states: ‘In 1983 the rising crime rate resulted in perhaps 1 million

arrests, and there were at least 10,000 executions. Many of these were held in public as a lesson for the people.’544

A house-church gathering in Henan Asian Report

Countless Christians were also caught up in the frenzy, with some paying the ultimate price for their faith in Jesus Christ. In Lushan County, for example, 100 house-church leaders were arrested on 5 June, and more arrests followed on 22 July and 16 August. Ten of them were still in detention in mid October, having been cruelly tortured by their captors.545 Seven of their number were eventually put on trial together in 1986. Among those sentenced were Qin Zhenjun, Xue Guiwen, Wang Baoquan, Zhang Yunpeng and Zhao Donghai. The last two were jailed for 14 years and 13 years respectively.546 The harvest is more than ready but the labourers are so few. Young brothers and sisters thirst for the Lord’s Word. We have only three labourers to serve tens of thousands of believers. The labourers felt very inadequate and exhausted. They did not have enough time with the Lord so they felt dry themselves. They had no more to feed the flock. When these labourers shared this with our brothers and sisters yesterday, they burst into tears, yet the believers are still so hungry. There is no spiritual food to feed us. Asian Report, no.142 (April 1983)

A further 24 house-church leaders were arrested and tortured in Nanyang County, and this pattern was repeated in many other parts of Henan. According to one report, In [this] Province alone, over 110 house church pastors and itinerant preachers are still in detention or in prison. Some of those arrested after July 1983 have now been sentenced to three to five years in prison. … The local Public Security Bureaus are given quotas for arrests. To fill the quota, Christians conducting home meetings or doing evangelistic work were often arrested along with thieves and other criminals.547

Hundreds of other house-church leaders managed to flee the province and spent months in other parts of China until the police operation had ended. An elderly Little Flock leader from Ye Xian in Henan called Pastor Bai was arrested and charged with being associated with the so-called Shouters sect. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for ‘holding illegal religious meetings and receiving religious literature from overseas’.548 Such arrests were prompted by the government’s insistence that all Christians must attend Three-Self churches. In response, a Christian from Wuyang County wrote: The leaders of the open church (that is, TSPM) don’t allow us to preach the gospel to everyone, nor to have private meetings. Nor are we allowed to preach on the resurrection, the soul, or the Book of Revelation. There are false brethren who accuse us to the government. If we obey their ‘Three Self Principles’ we can get Bibles; if we do not obey the TSPM they are very hard to obtain.549

The crackdown of 1983 proved to be a catalyst for even more startling Christian growth, as multitudes of believers resolved to serve God more wholeheartedly and to value their lives in this world less than eternity. The bold witness of Henan’s believers knew no bounds. They were not afraid of witnessing to Communist Party members and officials, so that the official Party magazine, Red Flag, was obliged to issue a stern warning reminding Party members that they were not permitted to believe in religion. Such warnings did nothing to slow down the rate of conversions, however. One Party Committee secretary in Henan was afflicted with cancer of the oesophagus. After four months he was scarcely able to eat, and doctors told him he had little time left to live. The government paid him a sum of money and the local work brigade sent 500 bricks to his home so that he could arrange for a grave to be built. However, his wife had heard that many sick people who believed in Jesus had been healed. She encouraged her husband to also believe in God, but he refused, saying: ‘I persecuted many believers during the Cultural Revolution. Why should God cure me?’ His mother-in-law, a Christian, told him that the Lord did not come to call the righteous, but to call sinners. So he believed. His mother-in-law gave him a bowl of soup in Jesus’ Name, and he drank it in faith. The next day he could take a bowl of noodles, and by the fourth day he was eating porridge and recovering rapidly.550

The most famous incidence of Christian martyrdom in 1983 involved the Shi family of Zunzhuang Village.551 Earlier that summer, a relative named Meichun had become sick and sought prayer from this family; but several days later she died. Because they were widely known to run an illegal house

church, the Shis were worried that the authorities might use this woman’s death as an excuse to persecute them. So, they stayed at home and packed their bags in expectation of being arrested, praying fervently and committing their lives into the hands of God. Soon, several Public Security Bureau officers came to the house and arrested all except the youngest Shi children. Shi Lishi and her son Wuting were charged with murder. A remarkable scene ensued in the packed courtroom the next day. Shi Lishi was tried first. She spoke about Meichun’s terminal illness, but when she told how the Shis had tried to pray for her, it so incensed the judge that he instructed the guards to kick her to the ground. They then beat her with batons until she passed out. A bucket of cold water was thrown over her to revive her, but she still refused to confess to something she had not done. In a rage, the judge sent her back to her cell. On the way, the bruised and bloodied woman passed some of her crying children and she whispered to them: ‘Remain strong! We are considered worthy to suffer reproach for the Lord.’ Next, it was the turn of Wuting to be interrogated, followed by his brother Wuming. When ‘the two brothers returned to the cell they were an unrecognizable mass of purple bruises and bloody wounds.’552 Then came the testimony of three of the children. To the astonishment of the judge, each member of the family claimed responsibility for Meichun’s death. He had never seen anything like it in his many years presiding over criminal cases. On every other occasion, the accused had done everything they could to deny any guilt, but in this case each new witness claimed to be the culprit. Such was the love this family had for God and for one another that each of them preferred to take the punishment themselves than to see their mother or another member of the family suffer for a crime they hadn’t committed. The public sentencing of the Shi family was arranged for the morning of 30 August 1983. A theatre in Shanzui Village was booked for the spectacle and the whole community was present. Not a single seat was empty. The assembled crowd gasped and shrieked as Shi Lishi and her eldest son, the 35-year-old Wuting, were sentenced to death. Her 24-year-old daughter, Meizhen, received a term of 15 years, while Meiying, the sister of the deceased woman, was given life in prison for her ‘part’ in the ‘murder’. The youngest son, Wuhao, was given 10 years, Wuming four years and 16-yearold Xiaoxiu was sent to jail for two years.

When the condemned Wuting passed his wife in the hallway of the prison, he said: Meiying, my beloved wife, why are you crying? How can I not drink the cup that the Lord has given me? Don’t you realize that we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord? Therefore, whether we live or die we are the Lord’s? Beloved Meiying, it is only that I will be one step ahead of you. Before too long, we will be together again, never to be apart. Don’t be sad. Be strong and courageous. Whatever happens, you must live fully for the Lord. Don’t waste any time.553

On 14 September 1983, Shi Lishi and Wuting were taken for execution to a place known as ‘Frog Mountain’. Wuting briefly saw his wife and told her: ‘Meiying, I will go first. I will wait for you in Father’s house. Goodbye!’ Both of the condemned Christians were perfectly calm and smiled to their friends and relatives. There was no fear. The house-church historian Danyun recalled the moment when mother and son left this world for their heavenly reward: Mrs Shi turned towards the soldier at her side and smilingly asked him, ‘Can I be allowed to pray?’ The soldier nodded his silent approval. Mother and son knelt down, lifted up their heads heavenwards and prayed to the Saviour who created heaven and earth: ‘We ask you to forgive our country and our people for the sin of persecuting us. Save our country and the people. Forgive the sins of those who harmed us. Lord, we ask you to receive our spirits.’ Bang! Bang! Blood spurted out of Mother’s head and her soul entered Paradise. Wuting, however, was not yet dead. He turned to look at the soldiers behind him and saw they were so frozen with fear they could not fire a second time. But two other soldiers … raised their pistols and fired at Wuting. He slumped over, his brains and blood splattered all over the ground. Suddenly, there was a heavy downpour, with thunder and lightning flashing. But all the rain could not wash away the blood of the innocent that was spilled there on the execution ground.554

When those members of the family still at liberty collected the two martyrs’ bodies for burial, they found a note in Shi Wuting’s coat pocket. It said: It is now finished. Do not be sorrowful for me. I am only going to that place before you. Love the Lord fervently and hold steadfast to His Word. Later, you will also go to the Heavenly Father and meet me. He that endures to the end shall be saved. For my funeral, make it very simple. Take care of [my] two children and let them know that I died for the Lord.555

Meiying eventually received a reduction in her life sentence and was released in July 1996. During the thirteen-and-a-half years she spent in prison, she and her sisters-in-law often shared the gospel with the other inmates. She later said: The prison had about 500 people held there. After some time, more than 400 came to know the Lord. Some prisoners, who were so sick that they couldn’t work, were brought to the hospital and doctors said there was no hope—but then the Christians in prison prayed for the sick and

they were healed. … Consequently, even the officials had to stand back and look—thus many people came to know the Lord. … If they would only say ‘I don’t believe’ they could get a one year sentence reduction—they didn’t even have to say they didn’t believe in Jesus, but praise God, even the new Christians had the strength from the Lord not to say this.556

The brave witness of the Shi family continues to this day. They remain dedicated followers of Jesus Christ, and their testimony of courage has strengthened multitudes of believers throughout China.

1984: The Arrests Continue In the year following the dire events of 1983, unregistered house-church believers continued to be arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Many went into hiding, fleeing from the onslaught. Those who stayed at home suffered greatly. In mid February, 13 more Christians were arrested in Lushan, five in Dengfeng, four in Yu Xian, five in Ye Xian, two in Luoyang and four in Fuguo.557 The list of charges against those arrested in Lushan recalled the xenophobic Cultural Revolution: linking up with foreign reactionary forces under the cover of religion to overthrow China’s proletarian dictatorship and socialist system, sending information abroad, receiving foreign aid and printing, distributing and broadcasting foreign reactionary books and tapes. They have deeply engaged in illegal liaison, actively developed their organization, cheated the masses of their goods, held frequent meetings, shouted, disturbed social order, damaged social peace, damaged the construction of the Four Modernizations, damaged our nation and the people’s livelihood, and disturbed and destroyed normal religious activities.558

One itinerant female evangelist, who was responsible for 10 house churches, told of the trials the churches went through at this time: Most meetings were in Christian homes, with numbers ranging from several dozen to several hundred. Very large meetings were held in caverns. As people were busy in the fields during the day, most meetings were held at night. Sometimes they went on until dawn and the Christians wanted to go on! Although the cadres leading the production teams knew about us, they didn’t interfere, and some of them were converted. … During the wave of persecution [in 1983], I realized with sorrow that my work was inadequate. In the past I had stressed knowledge and reason, but I had also laid too much stress on miracles and healing. When the persecution came, I saw clearly that my message was ‘wood, hay, and stubble’ and that many believers had not stood the test, but had gone back or even fallen. But this experience also refined the family of God and it made me deeply aware of the precious reality of Christians praying for each other in times of suffering. … Through these fiery trials more fruit is being harvested and even more Christians are engaging in itinerant evangelism and holding meetings. They are also praying more.559

The need for Bibles continued to be acute in Henan. Believers were willing to pay 30–40 yuan (then worth about $8–10) for a Bible—more than a

month’s wages for most farmers. One greedy Christian was caught by the police selling Bibles that ‘he obtained for free from city Christians. [He was] then beaten and thrown into jail. Some other Christians regarded this as the judgement of God because he had made merchandise of the Word of God.’560 The last days are drawing near. Angry waves are rising. The unrighteousness of the world and unlawful acts are on the increase. Amongst Christians, people are betraying and attacking each other. There is much disease and men’s hearts are full of fear. The saints are facing tribulation. … In the work of curing spiritual diseases, I often am in danger of imprisonment, but I am not concerned about my bodily suffering. We must work for the Lord while it is still day, and not fear suffering. After the brethren here who were in prison had been released, they were despised and rejected by everyone, including their relatives and friends. … Brother X was injured when he was beaten with a pistol by the head of the Religious Affairs Bureau while he was being interrogated. For the present he has been allowed home. They wanted to give him some money, for his convalescence, but he did not want it! He is so strong and pure and does not wish to be tempted into taking money from the authorities. He would rather suffer and maintain the purity of a believer. ‘A Letter from a Christian in Henan Province’, Pray for China, no.60 (May– June 1984) I was miraculously saved from an electric shock in 1983. … God did not stop His work in me. One year later my life changed. That night, my wife and several Christian ladies in our village had a communion service. My friend and I went out to chat and drink. I arrived home before my wife and lost patience as I waited for her to return home. When she came home I was very angry and I whipped her. I told her my anger would stop only when the belt I was using broke. Strangely, after a short while it did break! My wife wasn’t resentful but kept quiet. This made me feel shameful. I could not sleep that night. I asked myself why I beat my wife, who had done nothing wrong. I cried painfully and woke her up to ask her for forgiveness. I thought of God and doubted if He would accept a bad person like me. She told me God loves me and is the Savior of all who believe in Him. I confessed my sins and prayed with her. FEBC, no.3924, August 1999

In August 1984, 50 Christians were arrested in Tongbai County in the south of the province, as the authorities struck back against the tremendous success the house churches had been enjoying. According to one report, they ‘have been conducting baptismal services twice a month. At each service 200 people have been baptized.’561 All 50 were still in detention in November.

Also in 1984, a 31-year-old house-church leader named Song Yude was imprisoned for ‘distributing reactionary religious material … slandering China’s officially sanctioned church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and establishing a network of illegal house churches in Henan and Hubei Provinces’.562 He was not released until eight years later. One believer was being threatened with a gun during a savage beating when the weapon accidentally fired, causing him serious injury. The local authorities sent him to hospital, paid his medical expenses and released him without charge.563 Another was ‘interrogated at night, tortured, and then disappeared completely.’564

A late-night Bible study in Henan Bridge

A 49-year-old Christian man, Zhang Wuji from Baiyu Village, was horribly tortured to death. His sister, Zhang Ronghua, wrote a letter, later translated and published in the American magazine Christianity Today, which outlined what happened to him: My brother had been persecuted many times for his belief. The last one began … when the officers from the Public Security Bureau called him out from his home to outside the village. … In a fury these officers used an electric baton to hit him until he was lying unconscious. He was in their hands for over one month. Later … under the guise of medical treatment, they forced him to drink a kind of medicine. Knowing that it was white arsenic, a poison, my brother refused. Then several officers pressed him, forcibly prying open his mouth and pouring the poison down his throat. But seeing that he did not die, the officers said in surprise, ‘It is weird; this guy is still alive!’ Again they pried open my brother’s mouth, inserting the baton into it. A finger-sized hole was burned into his tongue.565

When they saw that Zhang was at the point of death, his tormentors sent him home so that the authorities could claim that he died with his family and not while in custody. Following some herbal treatments, his health suddenly improved and he regained his speech, and it was during this period of coherence that he told the details of his experiences at the hands

of the police. However, the poison had had its effect and his condition gradually deteriorated again. On 10 August 1984, Zhang Wuji passed into eternity. I am very busy. In Henan Province there are over 100,000 believers in just a few counties. In the whole province there are dozens of Christians on the run who cannot return home. They live a peripatetic life constantly on the move. There are still 36 believers in prison, or in reform through labour. I visited the relatives of 10 Christians who had been imprisoned. As I left the tears ran down my cheeks. I myself was in prison doing reform through labour 23 years, but I never wept. But when I saw the old mothers, the wives and the children whose sons and husbands had been imprisoned for the Lord’s sake, I could not control my emotions. … They were full of joy and thankfulness and without complaint. The local believers look after the families of those in prison more than their own families. Pray for China, no.67 (July–August 1985)

1985: A Tidal Wave of Revival The years immediately following 1983 saw explosive revival all across China, until the influx of new believers into the churches was like a tidal wave. It was truly a time of great power. People seemed to find few obstacles to believing in God. News of the tremendous revival in Henan reached the ears of believers throughout the country and around the world. One pastor from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou decided to travel to Henan to see for himself. He found meeting points in almost every village and was impressed by the godliness, the trusting faith and the Bible knowledge which characterized these groups. … One pastor said, ‘It is God who is mightily at work today! We are doing nothing.’ That very morning he had baptized 114 people, a typical weekly event for him. It has been estimated that in recent years throughout the province up to 3,000 baptisms may have been taking place every day of the year, and in all these groups young people were in the majority. … Knowledgeable observers believe there may be as many as ten million Christians in this province.566

Open Doors received a similar letter from five Chinese Christians who visited several villages in Henan to witness the move of the Spirit in 1985. They wrote: Wherever we went, we felt that we were in the time of the apostles—filled with the Spirit, excited and on fire. Signs and wonders also followed us and confirmed what we preached. Therefore many people came to the Lord. In those villages alone, more than ninety-five percent of the peasants have come to the Lord. The minimum attendance at each meeting point is 400–500 people. Big meetings will have more than 1,700. All are held in the open air no matter if it rains or shines. We were so amazed to see their love for the Lord.567

At the same time, the arrests and beatings continued throughout the province. A house-church leader named Du Zhangji was arrested and sentenced to four years in jail for ‘opposing the Three-Self Patriotic Movement’.568 Other house-church leaders charged with this ‘crime’ received longer sentences. Kang Manshuang received a five-year prison term, for example, and He Suolie eight years.569

1986: Exponential Growth As the house churches experienced exponential growth throughout Henan, the need for Bibles became acute. A limited number were being printed at the time by the Three-Self Church, but house-church believers found it difficult to get hold of these and were obliged to travel the great distance to the southern city of Guangzhou to get bags of Bibles that had been smuggled across the border from Hong Kong by foreign Christians. One house-church leader reported: The last time we came to Guangzhou we got 900 Bibles, mostly New Testaments. When we went back to Henan, there weren’t even enough to give one copy to every group of several hundred believers! There were meeting places and evangelists to whom we couldn’t even give one copy of the New Testament. … The revival is the Lord’s doing. … There was a paralytic over 50 years old, who had gone to all the hospitals without being helped. Then someone told him about the gospel, and he believed. After three or four months of praying, unexpectedly he began to be able to walk by himself. Many people were astonished and believed as a result. Then there was also someone who had cancer, whom the hospitals couldn’t heal. He was told he only had a few months left to live. But then he received the Lord, and after praying continuously his cancer was healed.570

A house-church preacher named Zhu Baoshan was arrested in the spring of 1986 after the Three-Self Church accused him of preaching without permission. Two days later, he was incarcerated. Zhu prayed to the Lord and asked him why he had allowed his servant to be detained. According to one report, God told him he would be in prison for 20 days, and that he would lead 17 convicts to Christianity. Brother Zhu shared the gospel faithfully, but only met with ridicule and rejection from all the prisoners. On the 14th day of his imprisonment, a brawl broke out and one of the prisoners was killed in the skirmish. Because the jailers knew they would have to give an account for the incident, they went to Brother Zhu and said, ‘We heard you Christians have power to pray for the dead and bring them to life.’ They then made Zhu a promise: ‘If you pray for this dead prisoner and he comes to life, you will be released. Otherwise we will sentence you to 15 years of prison.’ The prisoner had been dead for seven hours and 20 minutes. Zhu prayed and the prisoner was miraculously revived. When

Zhu was released six days later, he had led 17 convicts to Christ just as the Holy Spirit had told him earlier.571

Zhu continued his ministry until he was arrested again in March 1987. In one year of freedom he had led more than 3,000 people to the Lord.

Young believers with arms raised during a time of fervent intercessory prayer Asian Report

Peter Xu Yongze relates a particularly marvellous miracle that occurred in Jiaozuo County in 1986: There was a poor family in Jiaozuo who had faithfully served the Lord for many years. They were like the poor widow who hosted Elijah. God’s provision never ceased for this family, as they were constantly hosting guests and conducting training for many visiting students. They often did all the cooking for dozens of people, yet on many occasions they found that, strangely, they had just as much food left at the end of the school as they had at the beginning. During the harvest season in 1986 they collected wheat from their field and placed it inside a large barrel. They continued to use the barrel frequently, yet were amazed to find that the amount of wheat in it never diminished! One evening the family heard a noise coming from the granary. As they went to check on it they heard what sounded like a small explosion. They raced into the granary and found that the sides of the container had split open and a huge amount of wheat was lying all over the floor. The barrel had not been able to hold the blessing from the Lord!572

1987: A New Openness to the Holy Spirit Beginning in the mid 1980s, many house churches in Henan Province were influenced by the Pentecostal teachings of the American missionary Dennis Balcombe. Many later testified that they experienced a new openness to the Holy Spirit, which gave a boost to their ministries and increased the number of lost people who were reached. One young preacher, Brother Yang, shared the following testimonies from his ministry in 1987: A co-worker and I went to a meeting. There was a 40-year-old lady, possessed with demons, who came into the meeting. While I was preaching she continually screamed at us and cursed the church. She was disturbing the whole meeting so that I could not continue to preach.

I then asked the whole congregation to kneel down and pray. … I laid my hands on her and started to pray in tongues. … After a while, she fell on the floor like a dead person. Then after a few minutes, she woke up and was normal, completely restored! Because of this miracle, many people in that village believed in the Lord. Once we conducted a meeting, and 600 believers with 200 non-believers attended. The meeting was in a home church, and the house was so packed that many people had to climb up on the roof or sit on the trees in order to hear the message. … I saw an old lady who was praying desperately before God. I asked her what she wanted from God. She told me that her 19-year-old daughter had been blind since birth and she was asking God to heal her. Her daughter then stood up and I prayed for her in front of 800 people. After I prayed, I asked her if she was able to see. She responded, ‘Yes.’ Then I moved my fingers to test her sight. Upon seeing this instant miracle of healing, the whole congregation spontaneously sang Psalm 150 in praise to the Lord. That night many blind and paralyzed people were healed, and because of these miracles, the whole village came to the Lord.573

There were few high-profile arrests of Christian leaders reported in this year, as the house churches enjoyed a brief respite. We were permitted to meet in a small village. Since then, our congregation has grown rapidly from 500 to 1,000. However, those who oppose Christ will not tolerate the spread of the gospel. Some sisters and I were put into jail. We prayed and sang like Paul and Silas. After half a year, we were all released. However, all my spiritual books including the Bible were confiscated. I prayed with tears and asked God to prepare another one for me. Bibles were offered as gifts to those who are thirsty for the Word of God. I was so happy that I burst into tears. I thought of God’s love and the help which was given to me by my brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for China, no.85 (August–September 1988)

1988: ‘Walking Bibles’ By 1988, as China continued to open up to the outside world, a steady trickle of foreign Christians began to visit the believers in Henan Province. Instead of pastors being required to make the long journey down to the southern city of Guangzhou to collect Bibles that had been smuggled in from Hong Kong, some of the teams of foreign Christians now brought large loads of Bibles on the train up to Henan and delivered them in person to the house churches. As a result, many believers from overseas experienced rich fellowship with the province’s Christians. One visitor to Henan soon discovered the huge appetite the believers there had for the word of God. He thought that one or two meetings had been arranged for him, but as his hosts conveyed him to the many places he was required to speak at, it soon became apparent that he could preach for months without meeting the needs of these spiritually-starved Christians. Because of pressure from the authorities, it was decided to limit the number

that attended each meeting to 140—otherwise, he was assured, many more would have come. The preacher reported: The weather was extremely hot, and the meeting place very crowded, but the Christians did not seem to mind. About 15 sat on a wooden plank bed. Others sat on low stools, but most of the people sat on the floor. Seven dozen stood in the doorway and at the open windows; many strained to hear from the next room. … I spoke for several hours as the believers listened with rapt attention. The air became stifling, but hardly anyone moved. In fact I could barely move a step myself for the crowd at my feet. Someone noticed how I was perspiring and brought me a pail of water and a cloth to wipe my face and arms. … Almost all of the leaders had spent several years in prison for their faith. Many had been used by God to perform miracles of healing and deliverance from demon-possession. They seemed to know the Scriptures by heart. When I started to quote a verse, they would finish it. They were like walking Bibles. … I never saw such intense hunger and yearning for deeper experiences with God. The Christians were not interested in trite, shallow talk. They wanted to know more about the Holy Spirit’s power and the gifts of the Spirit. Some of the pastors dropped to their knees spontaneously, asking our friends to lay hands on them. ‘Pray for me,’ one pastor urged. ‘I have 2,000 people in my congregation and I need the Holy Spirit’s power.’ Another pleaded, ‘Come preach in my city. Our church has 3,000 believers who need to understand the Word.’ ‘I only have 500 in my church,’ said a third pastor, ‘but we need instruction, too.’574

A 1988 report on the church in Henan brought to light some of the astonishing growth—and persecution—that house-church believers were experiencing at the time: In Luoyang, some local PSB officers believed in Christ because of the witness of imprisoned evangelists. In Zhenping, in January alone, about 2,000 people believed. Among them they have only one reference Bible. … In Runan, Henan, eight evangelists were arrested in the beginning of the year. But after several months over 500 people came to know Christ. The church was revived; there were meetings everywhere. One of them met in the home of the head of the local Public Security Bureau because his relatives had become Christians. There they preach Christ from village to village, holding what they call ‘Life Meetings’, in which they speak of the essentials of the Christian faith. Each time these meetings are attended by over a hundred people. At their meetings they call for volunteers to offer themselves for full-time itinerant preaching, and many young people do. Therefore, house churches continue to grow unabated in spite of the rampant clampdown.575

1989: Revival Spreads to Disillusioned Students On 4 June 1989, the Chinese government responded to pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing by sending in tanks and infantry to kill thousands of defenceless students. The slaughter caused

deep disillusionment among millions in China, who realized that the answers they sought to life’s problems were not to be found in Marxist ideology. As a result, tens of thousands of university students throughout the country began to study Christianity and many found Jesus Christ in the midst of their despair. In September of that year, the police raided a house-church meeting and arrested scores of worshippers. Each one was fined between 250 and 450 yuan (then worth roughly $65–120). Those who were unable to pay were sent to prison.576 One of the leaders at that meeting was Brother Timothy, who recalls: In 1989, when I was just 17 years old, I was preaching on the Book of Philippians near Zhumadian, in the Huang Mountains. I was preaching on the verse in which Paul taught that to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21), when suddenly 40 PSB officers surrounded our meeting place. More than 100 of us were arrested, but I managed to escape in all the commotion. I was already a long way away when I realized I had left my only precious Bible in the house. I went back to see if I could retrieve it and was arrested. The officers kicked me to the ground with their steel-capped boots, beat me with sticks and punched me with their fists. Strangely, I didn’t feel any pain while they were beating me. They took me to the police station in handcuffs that were too small for my wrists, so they cut in and I had no feeling in my hands. At the station they whipped my back with a bicycle chain. For years I bore the scars on my back. I was in prison for only 15 days but they were the longest days of my life! They almost beat me to death. During their beatings all I did was fully concentrate on Jesus, his word and his sufferings.577 533 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp49–50 534 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, p91 535 Ibid., p92 536 Ibid. 537 More than 25 years later, Brother David shared the full story in a book he co-wrote with the author, Project Pearl: The 1 Million Smuggled Bibles that Changed China (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2007). 538 Letter to Open Doors, 10 August 1981 539 Chu, ‘The Protestant House Churches’, Pai Shing, 1 February 1982 540 Ibid. 541 Open Doors, February 1993 542 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 543 Pray for China, no.49 (July–August 1982) 544 Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p542 545 Pray for China, no.57 (November–December 1983) 546 Himmelfarb, The Martyrs of Maoism, p44 547 ‘Pastors Sentenced as Criminals’, Asian Report, vol.17, no.3 (May–June 1984), p6 548 Himmelfarb, The Martyrs of Maoism, p44 549 Letter from Wuyang County, dated 23 March 1983, cited in Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church, pp82–83 550 Asian Report, no.145 (September–October 1983) 551 An extended account of the martyrdom of Shi Lishi and Wuting can be found on pp556–58 of China’s Book of Martyrs, the first volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 552 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, p222

553 Ibid., p230 554 Ibid., pp234–35 555 Ibid., pp236–37 556 Dan Wooding, ‘A Life Sentence for “Sister Quan”: The Moving Story of a Courageous Chinese House Church Leader’, cited on the website http://www.jesus.org.uk 557 Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church, p90 558 Lushan Xian Renmin Jianchayuan Gonggao (Public Notice of the Lushan County People’s Procuratorate), cited in Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church, p90 559 ‘News and Testimony from Henan’, Pray for China, no. 62 (September–October 1984) 560 ‘Persecution and Revival in Henan Province’, Pray for China, no.58 (January–February 1984) 561 Pray for China, no.64 (January–February 1985) 562 News Network International, 26 June 1992 563 ‘News and Testimony from Henan’ 564 Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church, p91 565 Christianity Today, 11 March 2002 566 Lyall, God Reigns in China, p172 567 Paul Estabrooks, Secrets to Spiritual Success (Kent, England: Sovereign World Books, 1996), p145 568 Himmelfarb, The Martyrs of Maoism, p42 569 Ibid. 570 Chao, Wise as Serpents, p165 571 Revival Chinese Ministries International, The Challenge of China, April 1988 572 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 573 Revival Chinese Ministries International, The Challenge of China, September 1997 574 Asian Report, no.175 (November–December 1988) 575 Chinese Church Research Centre (newsletter), 25 April 1988 576 Himmelfarb, The Martyrs of Maoism, p48 577 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001

Chapter 25 FIRE AND BLOOD: REVIVAL AND PERSECUTION IN HENAN IN THE 1990S

Shi Suhan about to be tortured in Qingfeng County. This was one of a series of shocking pictures to emerge from China showing actual persecution of Christians taking place. The officers involved posed for the pictures thinking they would enhance their prospects of promotion, but the photographer sent copies overseas before going into hiding. CIPRC

1990–91: A More Relaxed Time The first two years of the 1990s brought a relative respite for Henan’s house churches. In many ways China’s leaders were still reeling from the impact of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of June 1989, and for a while their attention was diverted from the Christians to the pro-democracy activists. The years following the massacre saw a great spiritual harvest of university students and intelligentsia across the country. There were no arrests of believers in Henan reported in 1990 until September, when Zhang Yonglian, a house-church leader in his mid fifties, was apprehended during a meeting in Fangcheng County. He was repeatedly beaten while in detention, and in August 1991 was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.578 In May of that year, a house-church Christian in Henan was arrested while transporting Bibles she had received from the southern city of Guangzhou. The following month brought news of several more arrests of believers in the province. In a raid on one meeting, 20 were detained, and each was

required to pay a fine equal to more than four months’ salary before they were released. In the south of the province, a further six pastors were arrested and charged with sending evangelists to Shaanxi and Sichuan.579 In late 1991, more than 50 Christians associated with the Born-Again house-church movement were arrested in the provinces of Henan, Shanxi, Guizhou, and Liaoning. Twenty of them were sentenced to three years’ hard labour, while at least 18 were detained without trial.580 With the rate of arrest increasing as the year wore on, it seemed that the respite enjoyed by Henan’s house churches had come to an end, and 1992 promised to be a difficult year.

1992: Preaching outside the Prison Gates On 20 April 1992, the Public Security Bureau began a crackdown on the house churches throughout the province. In June, one report said that in Henan ‘hundreds of house church leaders and itinerant evangelists have been arrested for “illegal religious activities”, including at least 80 house church members from Queshan County.’581 On 8 September, 120 house-church Christians and three foreigners were arrested when the training session they were conducting in Wuyang County was raided by the police. Twelve of the detainees were released after each paying a fine of 90 yuan ($12) for ‘living expenses incurred while in detention. However, when they returned home, they found their houses stripped bare of personal belongings including Bibles, furniture, clothes and cooking utensils.’582 The remaining 108 Chinese detainees were ‘moved to a variety of locations, some in other provinces, and are reported to have been repeatedly interrogated and beaten.’583 By January 1993, all the arrested believers had been freed, except for the 38-year-old Ma Shuishan, the owner of the house where the meeting had been held.584 Several of those released said they had been ‘subjected to psychological and physical abuse during their imprisonment, including repeated interrogation, beatings, and sleep and food deprivation’.585 This mass arrest did not achieve the desired results for the authorities in Wuyang, however. One report stated: On the first day in prison, the 120 preachers were all together in the courtyard and so began to sing and worship the Lord. This infuriated the PSB who then dispersed the believers around the prison. This did not stop the worship, however, and when the believers were ordered to stop worshipping, they sang all the louder. According to Sister Han, ‘After all we were already in prison, had lost all our earthly goods and were being beaten and tortured. What more could they do to us? Great boldness came upon us.’ …

There has been a significant growth in the number of Christians there as a result. Not only that, but it appears that following the publicity surrounding this persecution, the Wuyang police chief has been removed and transferred to a lower position elsewhere. … The Christian leaders involved in the incident have decided that they will no longer fear persecution. They have become very bold in their preaching of the gospel, even to the extent of preaching outside the prison gates upon their release.586

Many of the arrested believers were natives of Fangcheng County. After their release, they returned home with a new passion and daring for Christ. According to one report, they went out and preached the gospel, encouraging the ordinary believers to do the same, and 16,200 people were saved in the space of 20 days in that county alone. … Since that time many more have believed, bringing their estimates of the number of new believers in the whole of Henan converted through this one group’s ministry to be at least in the upper tens of thousands.587

The practice of fining Christians who had been arrested became common throughout Henan in 1992. After a mass arrest in the township of Zhaohe in Fangcheng County, the PSB fined its detainees 800 yuan (roughly $110) each. This amount was more than a year’s income for many farmers in the region at the time. Those Christians who could not pay found that ‘all of their possessions [were] taken away including those necessary for making a living, such as tools and draught animals, and necessities like clothing, bedding and cooking utensils.’588 One day our pastor’s face was full of sorrow because he was being attacked. During Christmas service, our congregation of 2,000 was disturbed by the local authorities. They recorded every believer’s name. Then the villagers broke into our homes and stole our food. Our pastor was put into prison and our church was closed down. Anyone who tries to meet will be fined. Our church has been closed until today. Letter from Sister Wang to FEBC, June 1993

1993: Persecution Brings Greater Boldness Nonetheless, the gospel continued to advance in Henan by many different routes. Shortwave gospel radio broadcasts from overseas have long played a crucial role in the spread of Christianity in China, and ministries such as Far East Broadcasting, Trans World Radio and the Sweden-based IBRA Radio have provided invaluable support to the Body of Christ there. The following letter from Henan gives an indication of the impact that such broadcasts have had on the people of China: We are a group of atheists that are not successful in our careers. Because of our similar situation, we became good friends and always flock together. We became a burden on society, doing

nothing, and being idle all day. We were forgotten by this world and had nothing to hold on to. We became isolated and wasted our lives. One evening, we were gambling when I turned on the radio. Suddenly, there came a stream in the desert. We were attracted to a sweet, friendly, kind and tender voice, and stopped everything to listen. It led our hearts to the love of the wonderful and merciful God. Even after your broadcast had concluded, we were still flowing in that beautiful dimension, travelling in the heavenly kingdom afar, and did not come back for a long while. We, as atheists, have been greatly shaken. We could not help longing that God would be with us, bless us, and his joy be upon us. May all the suffering people obtain happiness, and may love fill this world. Since that time we have always gathered to listen to your program, and we have learned a lot.589

In 1996, another such letter said: I am an atheist. I lead an honest and hard-working life. However, I experienced many difficulties in my life, especially after retirement. Besides leading a poor life, family members are disunited. My children are disobedient. I was so depressed that I nearly lost the will to live. One day, I happened to listen to your programs. They are like nourishment to my wilted life. I am willing to walk the road of the Lord.590

During a meeting with house-church leaders in 1993, an IBRA Radio executive asked them whether they still needed the station’s gospel broadcasts. He explained that there were many pressing needs around the world and if the Chinese no longer saw a need for them, IBRA would reallocate its resources elsewhere. When this was translated for the Chinese believers, There was a stunned silence, followed by an outcry. With expressions of bewilderment and apprehension, they turned to one another and began talking anxiously among themselves. ‘No, you cannot stop,’ blurted out 30-year-old Li Hu. … ‘It’s like cooking rice. When the water starts to boil, you can’t turn off the fire. If you do, the rice won’t get cooked. The gospel is bubbling in China now, and Christian broadcasting is fuelling it. You cannot turn off the fire at this crucial time!’ Unable to contain their distress, others joined in the conversation. ‘Over 90 per cent of Christians in China listen to Christian broadcasting,’ they said in unison. ‘It is their spiritual food. Some would rather go without rice for a day than not listen to Christian broadcasts.’591

Near the end of 1993, a mass arrest of house-church believers took place in Sheqi County. At the start of the year, the local authorities had declared that any unregistered gathering of more than five Christians in one place would be considered illegal. When the believers refused to stop meeting, the PSB launched a series of raids, detaining many Christians without charge. Those it arrested were required to pay stiff fines for their ‘crimes’. Delighted with the amount of money coming in, the authorities decided to add to it by going to the homes of known members of house churches and asking them whether they believed in Jesus. When they said yes, the Christians were

detained until they admitted to having attended ‘illegal’ meetings and had paid large fines.592 Believers in Sheqi said that the principal motivation for the harassment was ‘a desire on the part of local cadres to get money for funding their public projects, since they receive precious little from the central government.’593 Local Christians claimed that it was not unusual for the police to beat them in order to extract confessions. Sometimes they are tied up or handcuffed and beaten with electric truncheons or sticks. On occasion, these beatings are quite harsh. One Christian from Taihe Township in Sheqi County who was detained in April of this year said that he had refused to ‘confess’ despite severe beatings from the PSB, which so infuriated them that they took him to the first floor of the police station and poured boiling water on his head, whereupon he admitted his ‘crime’. At the time, this caused half of his hair to fall out.594

Far from being deterred by this persecution, the Christians in Sheqi insisted that it ‘has brought revival and greater boldness to the churches, since those who endure it are more fearless than they were before.’595 Although accounts of the experiences of Chinese Christians in prison are often sickening, there are also a large number of wonderful testimonies of how God has worked miracles in even the darkest and most hopeless places. For example, in 1993 a young Henan house-church leader called Brother Joseph was arrested and thrown into prison. He received a savage beating from the guards, who knocked him unconscious and broke his collarbone and ribs. They then threw his battered and bloody body into a cell that already contained about 30 prisoners. This grim room contained just one bed, and a single bucket for a toilet. In charge was a hardened criminal who had already established a protection system within the cell. No one was allowed to sit on or touch his bed. When the prison guards threw in Brother Joseph’s unconscious body, however, even this unfeeling man had compassion on him, and he laid him on the bed. Our situation is not good. The Public Security fines us without reason. They said that our meetings are illegal and disturb the society. The fines range from ¥300 to ¥500 [$35–60]. They detain us until we make the payment. Despite the situation, the meetings here have carried on as usual. We hold all-night prayer meetings, discipleship training, set up Bible study classes and serve the Lord as a team. Letter from Brother Huang to FEBC, February 1994

At around two o’clock in the morning, according to the testimony of the other inmates, a supernatural light appeared to hover over Joseph’s body,

and it shone on him for several hours. The other prisoners were terrified and backed into the opposite corner of the cell, crying out to the guards to come and let them out. The guards, too, saw the light and were afraid. By sunrise, Brother Joseph had regained consciousness. He had not seen the light at all. Considering the serious injuries he had received the previous night, he was much recovered and his broken collarbone and ribs appeared to be healed. Not surprisingly, the first question his fellow prisoners asked him was: ‘Who are you?’ He replied, ‘It doesn’t matter who I am, but I believe in Jesus Christ.’ Joseph led 28 of the other inmates to faith in Christ.

1994: Stirring Up Trouble for China Countless miracles took place throughout Henan as the revival continued. Peter Xu Yongze remembers one miracle that occurred in 1994: A Christian woman in Nanyang grew seriously ill and died. For two days she had stopped breathing and was certified dead. The Christians gathered around her, and with many tears they pleaded with God to bring her back. She was the life of her local church, and everyone loved her deeply. They could not imagine being without her joyous spirit in their midst. Suddenly, the woman came back to life and sat up straight! I visited her a few days after this miracle took place. She was so humbled by her experiences that she could not speak. The Lord was eager to have this sister in heaven, however, and her return to the church was only a temporary one. About one year later she died and went to be with Jesus forever.596

In November 1994, a Taiwanese preacher and 152 house-church leaders were arrested in a raid by the police in Zhoukou. The Taiwanese was interrogated for five days before being deported. All but 10 of the other detainees were released after paying fines of 1,000 yuan ($118) each. The authorities claimed that the money was to cover the cost of their food and accommodation in prison but refused to issue any receipts, ‘promoting speculation that the money [had] gone into the pockets of local officials, rather than into state coffers’.597 The 10 Christians who still remained in custody several months later were believed to be those the police had identified as senior leaders plus some who were unable to pay the fine or had refused to do so.598 It later emerged that Ren Ping, one of the Chinese involved, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour.599 Jiang Zemin, President of China, in 1995 We are engaged in a secret struggle against the church. Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’

In February 1994, an incident took place in Henan that polarized Christian opinion both inside and outside China. A matter of days after the introduction of new laws to control the religious activities of foreigners, seven foreign believers—three Americans, two Indonesians and two from Hong Kong—were arrested in Fangcheng County. The group, led by the well-known pastor Dennis Balcombe of the Hong Kong Revival Christian Church, had attended an all-night prayer meeting with members of the Fangcheng Church. In the early morning of 11 February, the house where they were staying was raided by some 70 PSB officers, who beat and kicked two of them—until they realized that they were not Chinese citizens. The foreigners were interrogated at a PSB guest house and, in defiance of the Geneva Convention, denied access to their embassies and families. Four days later, they were expelled to Hong Kong. There, they faced a host of reporters from both local and international media that had heard about what had happened. Balcombe spoke freely about their experiences, and later travelled to Washington and London, where he testified to politicians and the media. The incident occurred at an important time when the American Congress was reviewing China’s ‘Most Favoured Nation’ trading status. The missionary’s testimony at a congressional hearing embarrassed the Chinese government, which seemed to feel humiliated that events in an insignificant rural area of the country had received such widespread international coverage. The value of the cash and other items confiscated in the raid, including cameras, personal stereos, videos and a computer, was later estimated at HK$120,000 (approximately $15,500).600 The South China Morning Post reported that Balcombe was ‘furious about his ordeal’ and was considering taking legal action against police to recover his goods and clear his name. … He said, ‘They could not have treated us worse than they did. … We were arrested unlawfully, denied our basic human rights, robbed, assaulted and then unceremoniously kicked out of the country before we could clear our names or do anything about it. It was a nightmare, like something out of the movies.’601

Meanwhile, most of the Chinese believers who had been at the meeting when the raid took place had managed to escape, but three leaders of the Fangcheng Church, Zhang Rongliang, Tian Mingge and Zheng Xintai, were in custody. They were severely beaten before being released several weeks later. Balcombe’s decision to publicize his mistreatment was both strongly supported and severely criticized by other Christians. Some said it was good

that the outrage had received such extensive coverage, as this drew attention to the kind of persecution that is the common experience of Chinese believers. Others, however, said that Balcombe’s angry protest would only create more problems for them, and they pointed out that his tone was in marked contrast to the attitude of house-church Christians, who tend to suffer in silence. Some anxious Christian ministries said that the whole business only confirmed the Chinese Government’s suspicions about foreign ministries doing work in the mainland—i.e. that they are essentially political in nature and aim to foment ‘peaceful evolution’. As such, it could result in efforts by the authorities to clamp down more tightly on such groups. Yet other observers felt that the impact of publicity would be negligible, and that the work of the [Christian] ministry would go on as before. Indeed, one church worker suggested that ‘kamikaze’ Christians such as Rev Balcombe play an important role in helping to spread God’s kingdom, though he added that he would not want ‘a room full of them’.602

It does appear that Balcombe caused severe loss of face to the Chinese government. Hong Kong’s principal pro-Beijing newspaper, Wen Wei Po, implied that the veteran missionary had ‘deliberately provoked the incident in order to stir up political trouble for China’.603 For the next eight years, he was unable to get a visa to enter its borders. The church here is desolate and without a pastor. It’s difficult to preach the Gospel because of widespread heresies and suppression from the local authorities. Some officials even ask for bribes. We do not have money and refuse to pay, therefore they forbid us to gather together. Some fellow Christians have boldly exposed false teachings, but their efforts seem ineffective. … My youngest son is two years old. I would like to offer him to the service of God for the rest of his life. FEBC, no.8570, August 1995 The government has prohibited Christians from gathering and worshipping without registration. Any offence is subject to a fine of ¥500 [about $60]. Many meeting places have been raided and forced to stop gathering. Some pastors were caught and detained. Two devoted workers in our church were also detained for one week. They were not allowed to go home until they signed some statements showing their willingness to disband the congregation. We dare not preach the Gospel nor meet openly. … Like a roaring lion the devil prowls around looking for someone to devour. He also fools the unbelievers, preventing them from knowing and accepting the true God. There are temples everywhere in our nation. My fellow countrymen worship many false gods and idols. They also worship Mammon. When some people get rich, they spend their days and nights on feasts and drinks. They gamble, hoping that money can be accumulated by luck. Their hearts are burning with lust. It is difficult to find justice and fairness in China. The rich and the officials always make use of their position and information for their own interest at the expense of the vast majority, illiterate farmers in particular. Concerning myself, I am in great distress because my husband wants to divorce me. Although he isn’t a

Christian, he was not against my belief before. However, he strongly opposes me now. Sometimes when I go home late he locks the door and leaves me outside alone. Yesterday he drank a lot of alcohol. In an outburst of temper he tore my Bible into pieces and broke my radio set. He also broke into my sister’s home and quarrelled with her. He openly claims that he will divorce me. I am now staying in my aunt’s home. Please pray for my husband and advise me what to do. FEBC, no.8181, August 1995

1995: The Fear of God Grips Henan In 1995, three female evangelists travelled to Xinye County in southern Henan. Within a week, their preaching had prompted 1,100 people to repent and many people had been healed from sickness. At one open-air meeting, an unbeliever approached, cursing the sisters at the top of his voice. They tried to ignore his filthy remarks. After the meeting was over, some other unbelievers came up and asked how they could continue without responding in a similar vein, and how they even appeared to feel compassion for this vile man. The three women replied: ‘We leave this man in the hands of God.’ At the very moment they said this, the blasphemer fell to the ground and died. The fear of God fell on everyone who witnessed this judgement, and many more people repented and accepted the Lord.604 Elsewhere, something highly unusual occurred while a group of evangelists were sharing the gospel. According to eyewitnesses, something like a video or slide projector illustrated their words. As they spoke about the crucifixion, everyone could see the Lord hanging on a cross. As soon as the preacher said, ‘Jesus was born in a manger,’ the whole crowd could see a manger in front of them. This went on for four hours, with over 1,000 eye-witnesses. Almost everyone there repented and believed in the Lord. They all said, ‘God is real and lives among you. What can we do except thank him and believe in him?’605

Throughout the length and breadth of Henan, the fear of God gripped people’s hearts, and thousands were swept into his kingdom. One man who had been paralysed for eight years was also developing leprosy; he was completely healed of both conditions after the believers prayed all night for him, and God even restored his skin. A man who had worshipped idols for more than 70 years warned everyone to stay away from those who believed in Jesus because there was ‘a group of people dressed in white who always followed the Christians’.606 During one meeting, a 22-year-old woman was suddenly seized by evil spirits and fell to the ground, foaming at the mouth. After bystanders examined her and established that she was dead, they went to notify the

authorities. However, one young evangelist insisted on trusting God to perform a miracle. Afterwards he recalled: ‘A spirit of worship fell in the meeting, and everyone began to praise and dance before the Lord for a long time. Eventually, she came to life and rose to her feet! We were so excited! Within an hour she was eating a bowl of noodles with us. What a mighty God we serve!’607

An elderly Christian woman, Miao Aizhen, being electrocuted by a police officer, Meng Shanlong, using an electric baton at the Wenshu Village police station in Yuzhou CIPRC

The systematic persecution of the house churches in Henan continued in 1995. In July, the South China Morning Post reported that more than 200 house-church Christians had been arrested in three separate police raids in Zhoukou over the previous eight months. The believers were required to

pay large fines and attend ‘re-education classes’. At one of these raids, on 12 March, 42 Bible-school students were arrested. The officers were ‘very rough, hitting and kicking the believers, and slapping the sisters in the face so hard that some of them bled badly as a result. … They were later released after paying fines of between ¥300 and ¥1800 ($35–$212).’608 The next large-scale crackdown in the Zhoukou area took place in early June when the PSB seized 68 Christians from their homes or workplaces. They were accused of being members of outlawed cults and summarily charged with engaging in unlawful activities, rumour-mongering, cheating people and disrupting production. In the name of their exorcism and healing, they swindled people out of their money, sullied our women, put people’s lives and property in danger, disrupted family planning and interfered with the country’s education work.609

In the end, six of the city’s foremost Christian leaders were sent to labour camps. Two women, Xu Qiying and Wang Xiuling, and one man, Wang Changqing, received sentences of three years.610 It later emerged that the 52year-old Wang Changqing had been arrested only 10 days after being released from a previous imprisonment for preaching the gospel. Such ferocious attacks on house-church Christians in Zhoukou prompted many believers to sleep in the fields so that they would not be at home if the police came to arrest them. The justification given for the crackdown was that it was a legal move against the ‘Shouters’ sect, but all the believers in Zhoukou who suffered arrest denied that they had any connection to the Shouters. One leader stated: ‘We have never had anything to do with the Shouters. We oppose them because what they preach is against the Bible. The police are using this as an excuse to attack us.’611 The real reason for the persecution, according to one leader, was that the city had become one of the strongholds of Christianity in the province. Incredibly, house-church leaders reported that in 1995 there were at least 33,000 known house churches in the whole of the prefecture.612 God was also working powerfully among the Three-Self churches there. By 1999, the city had one main Three-Self church and 18 meeting points, catering for a total of 30,000 believers. Each service at the main church was attended by ‘2,000 to 3,000 people who eagerly shared their testimonies before the sermon’.613 This region had once been considered the most violent and resistant to the gospel in Henan. Countless attempts to establish the church there had resulted in severe beatings, by both the people and the authorities. However,

by persevering even to the spilling of their blood, the followers of Jesus Christ had finally overcome this resistance and great revival had ensued. Henan’s preachers have continued to proclaim the gospel despite many difficulties and setbacks. Sometimes they have encountered demonpossessed people and have had to consult the scriptures to find out how to deal with them. Brother Timothy, a young house-church leader, recalls an incident in 1995: We have found that our workers on the front lines who are struggling with hidden sins are often accused out loud by demon-possessed people, who are able to reveal their sins by the power of Satan. This led to much embarrassment, and some brothers became afraid of such confrontations because of the humiliation of their lives not being holy in every area. In 1995 the church was in great revival, so the demonic disturbances became more prevalent. Four co-workers and I went to a small town near Zhumadian, and preached the gospel to many unbelievers. While I was speaking, a demon-possessed woman disrupted the meeting. Numerous people had received the Lord, and it seems the demons in the woman couldn’t stand it any longer. The woman shouted and ran around savagely beating people. At home we have church elders present who control situations such as this, but I was away from home and had just four believers with me. I lifted my hands and prayed to the Lord. I shouted, ‘In the name of Jesus, be bound!’ Suddenly the woman knelt down, lifted her arms above her head, and looked as if she was bound by an invisible rope! Her eyes were wide open and she stared at me, but she couldn’t move or talk. Nobody could move her; she was like a heavy rock. The fear of God came upon the people. No one dared to go near her because the Lord was in that place. Many people were astonished. I continued to preach until midnight and hundreds of unbelievers believed in the Lord. Many people thought the woman was suffering to kneel down like that for two hours, so they came to me and pleaded, ‘Servant of the Lord, please have mercy on her and set her free.’ I told everyone to be quiet and explained that the Lord Jesus is almighty and all-powerful. No one dared to make any noise. Then I prayed and the Lord released her. She sat down on the ground and was normal. She immediately received Jesus as her personal Saviour. The next night when I preached, this new sister sat on the front row and enthusiastically said, ‘Amen!’ to everything I preached. She went from being a bitter, crazy woman into a submissive and joyful servant of the Lord. Much later, I was told that she was still following the Lord and had become a very committed Christian.614 I used to be a Chinese opera singer who always skipped Sunday services to make money. After God had reminded me repeatedly, I finally gave up singing in operas and have now joined a Christian band to preach in villages. Since my family is nonChristian, they always urge me to return to the opera group. Letter from Sister Yan to FEBC, August 1996 I live in a village. Since graduating from junior high school, I have been knitting carpets at home. Not many people like this kind of monotonous work but I do because I can listen to your broadcast, meditate on God’s Word and praise Him at the same time. Our church is made up of many house church groups. As the number of believers increases, we are short of preachers. … I encounter much difficulty in sermon preparation. Even if I have prepared thoroughly beforehand, my

mind becomes blank on stage. I hope that God will give me strength to overcome my shyness and transform me to become His faithful servant. FEBC, no.12729, February 1996 I was baptized a long time ago but still have doubts. Sometimes I even wonder if I have been born-again or not. Thus when I was asked to serve in my church, I hesitated. I am also worried about my poor health. My husband is an unbeliever. One night I was out at church. When he came home and didn’t see me, he was very angry and tore my Bible into pieces. I was sad and blamed myself for not putting the precious Bible into a safer place. Since that time, whenever I come home late from church he loses his temper and scolds me. We must serve the Lord. Yet the pressure from my husband and my own spiritual and physical weakness hinder me from doing so. I am confused and distressed. FEBC, no.16342, May 1996

1996: Two Christian Martyrs The revival continued throughout Henan in 1996. In some ways, it differed from the revival of the 1980s, which had been largely centred around supernatural healings and demonstrations of the Holy Spirit’s power, which had attracted millions of people to Christ. In the mid 1990s, the revival continued to burn strongly even though the messages generally tended to be focused more on sin and repentance. Meetings featured intense confessions of sin, and on countless occasions the fear of God struck awe into the hearts of whole communities. The fire of God touched every single city and county in the province, and spread to many other parts of the country. There was also a greater emphasis on teaching new believers by the mid 1990s, whereas the multitudes who were saved in the 1980s often lacked foundational training as the older Christians were utterly unable to cope with the vast numbers of people coming to Christ. This is not to suggest that miracles were no longer commonplace in Henan, however. One report in August 1996 told of a 52-year-old Christian woman who visited the home of a man who had died and prayed for him. After one-and-a-half hours, he suddenly came back to life and was found to be completely free of the disease that had caused his death. ‘[His] family and relatives had gathered for his funeral, and you can imagine the great rejoicing and powerful witness this was to the whole community.’615 Two Henan house-church believers died for their faith in Jesus Christ in 1996. In January, a pastor named Shi Yunchao perished as the result of the severe torture he had received some years before after being arrested for

preaching in Qingfeng County. Shi had first been arrested in 1983, when he was 55 years old, and had been sent to a labour camp for four years. On 10 July 1989, he was leading a house-church meeting when PSB officers broke in with handcuffs and batons. One of the officers, a man named Yang Shoushan, shouted: ‘Old diehard! It is you again!’ He handcuffed Shi, cursing, ‘You never repent, even when your death time comes!’ Then Shi Yunchao was taken to the Qingfeng Jail. His howls and shrieks under torture rang out so far that those Christians locked in the jail could hear it clearly. On July 10, 1993, he was released from prison. But he could no longer live a normal life as a healthy person. His health failed to improve. He died on January 17, 1996.616

On 26 May 1996, a 36-year-old woman named Zhang Xiuju also received a martyr’s crown after being killed in Xihua County. She was dragged out of her home by PSB officers in the middle of the night and after being beaten continually throughout the night, she died the next day. The authorities returned her body to her parents and gave them 5,000 yuan (about $600) in an attempt to keep the family quiet.617 Officials in her home town disputed this story, insisting instead that she died jumping out of a car while in police custody. Local Christians dismissed this claim, pointing out that the scars and rope marks around her wrists were consistent with torture techniques commonly used by the authorities. Last month I suddenly fell ill. Half of my body was paralyzed. I could not move or talk. I was taken to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with having a blood clot in my brain. After staying in the hospital for one month, with the help of Almighty God and the care of doctors, I recovered well and was discharged. … This is a blessing of God and a miracle of the Holy Spirit. I praise the Lord from the bottom of my heart. The grace of the Lord is surely abundant to me. When a person suffers a stroke at 70 years of age like me, it usually leads to death or being permanently paralyzed. I give thanks to the Lord even more, it is true that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. I have decided to commit the rest of my life for God’s use. I won’t be ashamed when Jesus Christ comes again. FEBC, no.18958, April 1997

On 24 September 1996, a PSB raid in Tanghe County captured several key house-church leaders, including Elder Feng, Brother Zheng, Brother Xin, Sister Li and Sister Luo. They were tortured in an attempt to make them reveal the names and the whereabouts of the other leaders of their movement. During the interrogation, Sister Luo, who had recently been released from prison, sought to take responsibility so that she could protect the others. The officials beat her so severely that she fell unconscious for several hours. One of the men was beaten for nine days and nights until he

was close to death. All of them were poked with electric cattle prods, which sent hundreds of volts of electricity through their weakened bodies. Elder Feng, who had previously spent seven years in prison for his faith, was 72 years old and thus unable to do hard labour. He was kept in custody without charge. The other four were sentenced to three years in the Luoyang Prison Labour Camp.

1997: A Systematic Plan to Crush the Church In 1997, an official report was leaked to the outside world that showed that the Chinese government had a systematic plan to crush the house churches, both Protestant and Catholic, throughout the country. It mentioned Henan as a specific concern because of the high number of zealous believers there. It said: ‘The greatest problem in the case of Christianity is the various cults and the privately-established house churches [that] spring up continuously.’618 In a fascinating interview, Compass Direct spoke with a ‘high-ranking Communist Party official’ who was also a follower of Christ, and asked him whether there was religious persecution in China. He replied: I make a distinction between persecution and discrimination. There is very little persecution, but massive discrimination. When you become a known Christian in China, you automatically lose certain rights. It is harder to obtain a job, a good education, and trips abroad, etc, because the society is run by the Communist Party for professing communists. … By persecution I think of Christians being thrown in jail, beaten, harassed, and physically abused. There is very little of that relative to the size of the Christian population. I may be too far up the tree to know what’s going on at the roots, but I would be very surprised if there were more than a couple of hundred people incarcerated for their Christian faith. The last two years have seen hundreds of arrests, but few have been sentenced, and most released. That is regrettable, and it is wrong to say there is no persecution, but it is minimal when you consider the Christian community may number more than 50 million. In China we are used to millions being persecuted, and that is an enormous improvement. Even of those jailed, in nine cases out of 10, the government has a very good reason. … There is much more religious freedom today than 20 years ago, and all indicators suggest that there will be much more freedom in 20 years. … The bad news is, the 1990s have seen a regression—the mid nineties quite a strong regression—of this general trend.619

The official quoted above may have been sincere, but his sincere beliefs did not change the reality for the Christians in Henan. At one stage, housechurch leaders in the province estimated that 40 per cent of all prisoners in labour camps were there because of their faith in Christ. In early 1997, 50 out of 126 inmates at the Henan Number One Labour Camp were serving terms for unregistered house-church activities. According to Freedom

House, roughly 300 house-church believers were incarcerated in Luoyang Prison in the 12 months between July 1996 and June 1997.620 Another source says that 79 out of the 300 inmates in Zhengzhou Prison were Christian evangelists; while in another labour camp for men, over 100 of the 600 prisoners were Christian pastors or evangelists.621

An elderly woman sheds tears of repentance as she meets Christ. The Voice of the Martyrs

The most significant arrests in the province in 1997 occurred on 16 March, when eight senior house-church leaders were picked up in Zhengzhou as they gathered for an important meeting on unity among the house churches. Brother Yun was one of their number. In his book The Heavenly Man, he tells of his attempt to escape the clutches of the police: When we arrived we found the apartment door ajar. We walked in and were faced with an array of guns pointed right at us! The officers started to take our belts off and bind our hands behind our backs. The only thought in my mind was to escape. Before my hands had been bound, I backed up towards the window. In a flash I opened it, shouted ‘Run!’ and jumped out, feet first. I never expected the PSB would have about a dozen officers waiting below the window. I awkwardly crashed to the ground and, because of the height of the fall, badly injured my feet. The officers on the ground never imagined someone would be bold enough to jump out the window, so for a brief moment I looked at them, and they looked at me, and we both shouted in shock and surprise! The officers rushed to me, held me down and viciously kicked and beat me. They stomped on my legs and chest with their heavy boots, and pulled my hair back and pistol-whipped me. My bones crunched and snapped under the savage blows and kicks. They then produced a dreaded electric baton and tortured me with electric shocks. I was thrashed so severely that all I could do was curl up and focus on Jesus, trying not to pay attention to the blows. Finally, I fell unconscious. … When I awoke I was in a holding cell at the Zhengzhou City Public Security Bureau headquarters. Brother Xu and the other leaders were with me. I was covered in mud from the officers’ boots and my ears were swollen from being beaten. We learned [that] the order to arrest us had come all the way down from the central government in Beijing. They had somehow learned that we were planning to unite. The house churches were

already a thorn in the flesh of the atheistic Communist state, and to think about what might be accomplished if we unified brought terror to the highest levels of the government. The order from Beijing forced the Henan provincial authorities to treat our case extremely seriously. Not understanding that God’s Kingdom is not a kingdom of this world, they feared our unity talks would result in the formation of a political opposition party that would threaten the stability of the country.622

The eight arrested were Peter Xu Yongze, Enoch Wang, Wang Baoquan, Feng Xian, Mu Sheng, Qing Jing, Elder Qiao and Brother Yun. Six weeks later, Brother Yun miraculously escaped from the prison despite his crippled legs, in a story that has been verified by other prisoners and is now well known through its inclusion in The Heavenly Man. The other seven received prison sentences of between two and three years. All of us here have a heart to follow God closely. There are considerable businessmen in our church. Some of them pursue God earnestly, but some are occupied by their work and do not have time to read the Bible or attend church. One of our sisters who is fervently seeking God is forbidden to go to church by her husband and parents-in-law. Her husband even threatened to divorce her if she insisted on going to church. … This sister is very upset and depressed. She loves God very much. FEBC, no.756, October 1998 Maybe I am too critical, but I think the Christians in our village are not truly consistent in what they say and what they do. They talk a lot about faith and love, but don’t show these in their actions. Daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law quarrel, and so do husbands and wives. This kind of behaviour is not only despised by nonbelievers, but also dishonours God. Nowadays, I would rather stay home and listen to the radio than go to church. Am I drifting away from the Lord? Letter from Sister Guan, FEBC, August 1998

1998: Six Months of Mayhem The first six months of 1998 were a period of relative calm for Henan’s house churches, but a concerted crackdown in the second half of the year saw the arrest of dozens of church leaders throughout the province. Three weeks after the People’s Republic of China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which upholds freedoms of speech, assembly and religion, the authorities arrested 70 house-church leaders during a meeting on 26 October at Wugang in central Henan. After the police started beating and kicking the Christians, a number of people managed to escape in the chaos. One house-church leader, an elderly man who had been arrested 13 times before on account of his faith, was hit on the head by a police baton and developed a large lump. In the end, more

than 40 house-church leaders suffered a lengthy detention, in addition to three visiting pastors from Taiwan. The group of 40 were put on a bus and taken to the city jail for interrogation. On the way there, one of them escaped by jumping from the window of the moving bus. He ‘landed in an alley right between two walls. There he found a pile of straw, where he hid himself during the police search with flashlights.’623 Another Christian, Li Qingrui, was able to escape the cordon of armed officers, but a policeman pursued him and shot him in the thigh, causing him serious injury. He was taken to the hospital emergency room and admitted for treatment. Later, as he was recovering, local believers helped him to escape. A nationwide warrant was issued for his arrest. One of those detained was a 26-year-old woman called Cheng Meiying. She lay unconscious for three days after receiving a severe beating from the police. Open Doors reported that she was ‘lashed with a wet rope and hit repeatedly on the head with a baton. Although the authorities released Cheng when she regained consciousness … she had completely lost her memory.’624 It was later confirmed that she had suffered permanent brain damage. She had been a prominent evangelist who, according to other believers, had been ‘directly or indirectly involved in the establishment of several thousand house churches and the conversion of several hundred thousand people. She was one of the most influential house church leaders to attend the national meeting.’625 Despite the tight security in Henan at the time, more than 140 key housechurch workers from different groups decided to meet together in a factory owned by a Christian businessman in Nanyang on 5 November 1998. Five foreign Christians also took part in the meeting. The factory had a high cement wall surrounding it that blocked any view from the street outside, and the only structure tall enough to overlook it was a water tower several hundred yards down the road. At one stage, some of the believers reported seeing some men climbing to the top of this tower, and on the third night of meetings, as a Western missionary was giving a presentation on ministry to Tibet, the electricity supply to the building was suddenly cut. It was a moonless night, and the factory was plunged into total darkness. The missionary gave an eyewitness account of what happened next: The Chinese leaders immediately realized that trouble was at their door, but before we had a chance to escape, hundreds of armed policemen and cadres charged into the complex, completely surrounding the believers. The darkness was lit up by streaks of gun-flash as the

police fired their weapons into the air. In the pandemonium that ensued, no one knew if the bullets were being aimed into the night or if Christians were being shot. Armed with loudspeakers and generator-operated floodlights, the chief PSB officer screamed at the believers to remain on the floor, or be shot dead. What followed was a most touching example of Christ’s love. The police formed a tight circle around the Christians and mercilessly beat and thrashed them as hard as they could. Old women were kicked in the head with steelcapped boots, jaws and ribs cracked as batons were wielded with brutal force. Through the dark room and surreal atmosphere, I could see the senior leaders of the house church movements shielding their flocks from the worst of the blows by placing their bodies between the demonically-inspired officers and the defenceless believers. The shepherds were willing to lay their lives down for their sheep.626

When the violence subsided, all the Christians were pushed into the back of army trucks and taken away for interrogation. They were all given heavy fines, and many received extra beatings in custody. Medical care was denied to the injured. When the officials had identified everyone, they were delighted to discover that they had caught some of the biggest names in the Chinese church, some of whom had been on their ‘most wanted’ lists for years. The authorities in Nanyang tried to justify their strong-arm tactics with the ludicrous claim that people had been ‘hauled away only when they resisted. Some shot at the officers with home-made rifles.’627 The state-approved China Christian Council tried a different tack: it simply denied that any arrests had taken place at all.628 The extremely tight security around the factory when this raid took place meant that it was impossible for anyone to escape. So many police were deployed that they stood three deep around the entire perimeter of the compound. When someone shouted, ‘The PSB are here!’, many of the believers immediately tried to escape through the doors and windows, but they found themselves literally falling into the hands of the authorities. Incredibly, however, there was one young house-church leader who did get away that night. A few years later, Brother Timothy told me how God led him to safety: Hundreds of policemen and soldiers surrounded our meeting place. They were all armed and fired bullets into the air to scare us. They rounded us up and told us to get on the ground in the middle of the courtyard. We were beaten and then separated and taken to different rooms so they could try to identify us. Those who had ID cards were placed in one room and those who refused to give their names were placed in another. Fully armed soldiers were stationed at the gates of the factory to ensure nobody could escape. When it was my turn to be questioned, I felt like God’s Spirit prompted me to go to the toilet, even though I didn’t need to. The guards had a secure system in place. No more than one person at a time was allowed to use the facilities so they could keep a strict watch on all the prisoners. A

guard was placed outside the toilet block. His job was to report in a loud voice, ‘One going in,’ and then ‘One coming out’ when that person was finished. When I walked to the toilet, however, I noticed that it seemed like the guard and the other soldiers, who were standing at two-metre intervals, could not see me at all. It was as if I was invisible. Nobody spoke a word to me, and the guard whose job it was to report people using the facilities said nothing at all when I approached. As I left the bathroom I felt moved by the Holy Spirit to keep walking towards the gate of the compound. This was, in the natural sense, completely impossible. Yet I was encouraged because it seemed God had somehow blinded the guards and given me favour to escape. I walked briskly down the pathway, passing many armed soldiers. None of them seemed to notice me and nobody said a word to me. Their eyes did not appear to be following my movements or acknowledging my presence. Sun Yuxi, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in 1999 ‘Nobody has been arrested or detained because of religious beliefs. If religious believers are arrested, it is not because of their religious beliefs but because they have taken part in criminal activities.’ Mark O’Keefe, ‘China Widens Crackdown on Faithful’, The Oregonian, 18 September 1999 I walked through the iron factory gates to the street outside. A large crowd of onlookers had already gathered to witness the arrest of the Christians, so I simply walked into the crowd and blended in with them. Then I walked off into the dark. One Christian sister who had not been in the meeting was standing in the crowd and saw me escape. She was shocked and amazed! She ran after me and took me to her family’s home, where they cared for me and allowed me to stay a while. All other brothers and sisters were arrested. Many of them were cruelly treated and the leaders were sent to prison. Those who had tried to escape were severely beaten until they were unconscious. I don’t know why God allowed me to escape that night, but I thank the Lord for the leading of the Holy Spirit.629

In December 1998, a further 13 house-church Christians were arrested in Shangqiu County and threatened with imprisonment if they failed to pay 2,000 yuan ($240) each.630 This incident brought down the curtain on 1998 —a year that had started peacefully and concluded with brutal persecution for the Christians of Henan.

1999: Overwhelming and Extraordinary Growth In January 1999, 46 Christians were arrested in Henan for participating in illegal worship services. Some suffered abuse and torture. In Fangcheng County, a group of believers had ‘gathered for Sunday worship at the home of Pastor Chu Changen when 15 policemen entered and announced that

they were conducting illegal religious activities.’631 The entire congregation was taken to the local PSB detention centre. On 9 April, PSB officials arrested 12 Christians in the village of Qiuzhuang as they were holding a prayer meeting. A week later, a worship meeting in Kang Village was raided; more than 20 believers were arrested, and 37 bicycles were confiscated. Nine days after that, on 25 April, 25 believers were rounded up in Sui Xian County and beaten, detained and fined.632 Their Bibles and other Christian literature were taken from them. On 23 August, a further 31 house-church believers were arrested at a prayer seminar in Tanghe County. One of those captured was Zhang Rongliang, the well-known founder of the Fangcheng Church. Initially there were fears that the six main leaders might be executed, but instead in December they were to be sentenced to ‘re-education through labour’. Zhang Rongliang and Zheng Shuqian were given three years each, Shen Yiping and Wang Jiasheng two years and Feng Jianguo and Jing Rongqi one year each. The others who had been arrested were not identified as key leaders by the authorities and were released after paying fines of between 2,000 and 10,000 yuan ($244–1,220) each. In September, Compass Direct reported: The number of Christian leaders jailed for their faith in China jumped to over 160 as mass arrests of Protestant house church teachers and evangelists took place in August. ‘More mass arrests are expected,’ said a house church leader. ‘We have known since the spring of an increased level of government monitoring of our activities—especially in southern Henan—and were not surprised by these recent swoops.’ … Over 60 arrests were made, and 31 remain in jail.633

Just days before the end of the millennium, on 27 December 1999, a further five house-church leaders associated with the Born-Again Movement were arrested in their homes. Each was sentenced to two years’ hard labour.634 I am serving a young people’s fellowship and have pioneered Sunday school work. This work is very hard because of the constraints from our environment. We have no systematic teaching material nor a regular place to study. … But amazingly the work continues. Whenever I see the children memorizing Scripture or copying down hymns and worshipping together, I am filled with indescribable joy. … Hallelujah! But I am not so optimistic now about the state of the gospel here. In the early eighties there was explosive growth and we saw a dozen, and then a score, of new meeting points set up. But now, although numbers have not dropped, there are few believers who are deeply rooted in the truth. Global Chinese Ministries, 13 August 1999 I was born to a poor family. When I was studying in secondary school … I felt that life was meaningless. I was depressed for a long time. One day my cousin ran to

my house happily. She said there was a church meeting in progress and invited me to go and listen to God’s Word. When I came to the living God I was deeply impressed by the enthusiasm of the brothers and sisters and the love of God which surpasses everything. After listening to the preaching of the pastor, I understood that Jesus was our Lord. He suffered [and] was crucified on the cross and resurrected for us. Thank God for using His Blood to clean my dirt and give me eternal life. FEBC, no.11473, June 1999

As the 1990s drew to a close, Christians in Henan looked back on a time of persecution, but also of overwhelming and extraordinary growth. The gospel continued to flourish throughout the province, and most believers regarded repression not as a curse but as an opportunity to grow in Christ and share the gospel with the needy men and women in prison. On one occasion in Henan, the police burst into someone’s house while a meeting was in progress. ‘Who owns this house?’ they demanded. ‘Jesus does,’ came the reply. ‘But who lives here?’ they shouted. A man stepped forward and said, ‘I do,’ and was immediately taken by force to work in the coal mines for 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. The police are complaining that the whole district is becoming Christian. The believers do not look upon the persecution as something negative. In fact, they look at their labour camp experiences as an opportunity to serve the Lord in the coalmines, and they gladly serve their sentences. Now, almost the whole mining community has accepted Christ as their Saviour.635

578 Himmelfarb, The Martyrs of Maoism, p59 579 Ibid., p51 580 Ibid., p45 581 China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report, no.121 (May–June 1992) 582 ‘House Church Raided’, Pray for China, no.116 (January–February 1994) 583 ‘108 Christians Remain in Detention after House Church Raid’, China News and Church Report, no.2047 (6 November 1992) 584 ‘Last Eight Believers from Wuyang Raid Released’, Chinese News and Church Report, no.2081 (15 January 1993) 585 ‘112 House Church Leaders Arrested in September Raid Now Free’, Chinese News and Church Report, no.2078 (January 1993) 586 China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report, no.127 (May 1993) 587 Ibid. 588 ‘Persecutors Prefer Issuing Fines over Imprisonment’, Chinese News and Church Report, no.2142 (January 1993) 589 FEBC, no.8578, 2 July 1989 590 Letter from Liu to FEBC, July 1996 591 Asian Report, no.203 (January–February 1994) 592 ‘Persecution Reported in Sheqi County of Henan Province’, China News and Church Report, no.2264 (23 December 1993) 593 Ibid. 594 Ibid. 595 Ibid. 596 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 597 ‘Church Leaders Detained in November Set Free’, China News and Church Report, no.2393 (10 February 1995) 598 South China Morning Post, 19 January 1995 599 ‘Extensive Persecution of Christians in Henan Province’, China News and Church Report, no.2430 (14 July 1995) 600 Marc Lavine, ‘Keeping the Faith’, South China Morning Post, 20 February 1994 601 Ibid. 602 ‘Update on Rev Balcombe’s Expulsion from China’, China News and Church Report, no.2288 (4 March 1994) 603 Ibid. 604 DAWN Friday Fax, no.31 1995 605 Ibid. 606 Revival Chinese Ministries International, The Challenge of China, no.2, 1995 607 Ibid. 608 ‘Extensive Persecution of Christians in Henan Province’ 609 Ibid. 610 South China Morning Post, 31 August 1995 611 Pray for China, October 1995 612 DAWN Friday Fax, no.31 1995 613 Global Chinese Ministries, December 1999–January 2000 614 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001 615 Epistles to the Cyber Church, 23 November 1996 616 Christianity Today, 11 March 2002, p41 617 China News and Church Report, no.2521 (9 August 1996) 618 See Paul Davenport, ‘Chinese Central Government Intends to Eliminate House Churches: Recently Surfaced Documents Prove Pressure on All Unregistered Activity Coming from High Levels’, Compass Direct, 21 November 1997. 619 ‘Persecution in China: A Party Member’s View’, Compass Direct, 24 October 1997 620 Cited in ‘Henan Province: Ripe for Harvest (Part Three)’, Asia Harvest, no.67 (July 2002) 621 China Prayer Letter, no.148 (September–October 1998) 622 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp241–43 623 ‘Recent Persecutions in Central China’, China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report, no.149 (November 1998–February 1999) 624 ‘Christians Rounded Up’, Open Doors, February 1999

625 ‘Continued Persecution of Protestants’, Media Work Press Releases and Statements, 24 November 1998 626 Personal interview with a missionary in January 2000 627 ‘Christians “Beaten in New Blitz on Worship”’, South China Morning Post, 11 November 1998 628 See Amity News Service, December 1998. 629 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001 630 ‘Chinese Authorities Detain 25 Worshippers in House Church Raid’, press release from the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement, 4 May 1999 631 South China Morning Post, 26 January 1999 632 ‘Chinese Authorities Detain 25 Worshippers in House Church Raid’, TBH Online, 5 May 1999 633 Compass Direct, September 1999 634 Compass Direct, January 2000 635 Report from the New Life League, cited in The Voice of the Martyrs, August 1999

Chapter 26 FIRE AND BLOOD: REVIVAL AND PERSECUTION IN HENAN IN THE 2000S The government-appointed Catholic bishop of Beijing, Michael Fu Tieshan, to a gathering in Washington in 2000 We often hear the same people, the same forces who like to point their finger at the current state of religion in China, but facts speak louder than anything else: there is no religious persecution in China. South China Morning Post, 28 August 2000 Report in the Chinese press in May 2000 A television preacher from the United States today praised China’s progress in human rights and religious freedom, denouncing some reports on China as ‘distorted and unbalanced’. ‘Many Americans and other peoples around the world have a distorted and an unbalanced view of China from the reporting on Chinese progress in human rights and religious freedom,’ Paul Crouch, president of the US-based Trinity Broadcasting Network said this afternoon at a news briefing with the local press. Crouch, who preached in churches in Beijing and Shanghai in his previous visit to China years ago, said he has personally seen that Christians can openly practice and profess their faith in China, adding that the Bible is publicly printed and freely distributed. Report in the Xinhua (‘New China’) and People’s Daily newspapers, 12 May 2000

2000: The Martyrdom of Liu Haitou

A

t the dawn of the new millennium, certain church and mission leaders in the West were claiming that persecution of Christians was a thing of the past and China enjoyed religious freedom. The Chinese government and the Three-Self Church continued to tell believers in the West that no Christians in China were persecuted for their faith and none were in prison, and that religious freedom was guaranteed in the country’s constitution. To their shame and disgrace, some Christian leaders in the West have chosen to believe these lies, and in doing so deny the persecution of the thousands of suffering Chinese who love Jesus Christ. On the ground in Henan, it was not difficult in 2000 to find thousands of Christians with experience of imprisonment. In January, more than 300 leaders of the Born-Again house-church movement alone were behind bars

for the sake of the gospel. The movement provided Asia Harvest with a list of more than 600 of its members who had been crippled or badly injured by beatings by the police or prison guards while in detention.636 In response to such statistics, those who blindly insist that there is religious freedom in China either say that the reports of persecution are made up or dismiss it callously as the punishment not of religious faith but of individual law-breaking. These positions are consistent with the claims of the Chinese government. In China, it had become clear throughout the 1990s that there were certain seasons when persecution reached a peak and others when there was a comparative respite. The difficult times occur when the central government in Beijing sends directives down to the provinces, ordering the authorities there to clamp down on the house churches. Thus, for the first seven months of 2000 things were relatively quiet in Henan, but in August a wave of repression broke over the church once again. One source later summarized: ‘In [that] single month … another 142 believers were arrested in Henan as authorities continued their crackdown on unregistered churches.’637 On 10 August, 12 members of the China Gospel Fellowship were arrested in Yucheng County.638 A few weeks later, on 26 August—ironically, at exactly the same time that a delegation of religious leaders from China was travelling throughout America trying to convince politicians and religious leaders that there was complete freedom of religion in their country—130 Christians affiliated to the Fangcheng Church were arrested in Xihua County, after 50 PSB officers swooped on their meeting place in the village of Dawangzhuang. The raid was widely reported because three American citizens, Henry Chu, Patricia Lan and Sandee Lin, were among those detained. Although the three foreigners were soon released, the timing of these arrests caused deep embarrassment to the delegation in America. The Bishop of Beijing, Michael Fu Tieshan, had just told a meeting in Washington: ‘We often hear the same people, the same forces who like to point their finger at the current state of religion in China, but facts speak louder than anything else: there is no religious persecution in China.’639 The American State Department spokesman Richard Boucher described the arrests as ‘deeply disturbing’, and his country’s ambassador to China, Robert Seiple, denounced the Chinese government’s ‘inhumane, brutal

treatment of people on the basis of faith’.640 Stuart Windsor of Christian Solidarity Worldwide commented: As official Chinese religious leaders are touring America, the Chinese are arresting American religious believers. The contradiction between the official presentation and the reality of the situation is clear for all to see. China continues to deny religious freedom and to pursue policies that are in blatant contravention of human rights standards. If she wants her rhetoric to be believed, she should act in accordance with it.641

Of the 130 Chinese who had been arrested, 70 were transferred to the Xihua County jail. The rest were released after paying fines. Many later said they had received severe beatings, and some had been mercilessly tortured. The evangelical China Gospel Fellowship, which had been labelled an ‘evil cult’ by the government’s religious-affairs official Ye Xiaowen, suffered another blow in August after 53 of its Bible-school teachers, students and evangelists were arrested.642 The love of the Christians in Henan for each other is the bond that holds them together and has made them such a powerful soul-winning church. One example of this selfless love was seen in 2000 when a Christian was imprisoned for his faith. Another believer, who himself was being sought by the authorities, could not keep himself away from his fellow soldier of Christ. Undeterred by the risk of being identified and arrested, he went into the prison to visit his co-worker, hoping to encourage him and strengthen him with the word of God. After a sweet time of fellowship, he left. Moments after he had gone out through the main gate, the prison authorities realized that they had an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Their officers rushed out to the street, but he was already gone. Among the many stories that illustrate the commitment Henan’s believers have to the gospel, one perhaps stands out above all others. Whereas in the West many Christians who desire to serve God are restrained or even crushed by the weight of committee meetings and endless bureaucracy, there are few such impediments among China’s house-church believers. In April 2000, a foreign missionary visiting a house-church meeting felt impressed by the Lord that there was someone there who had not obeyed the call to be a missionary. After he had asked the assembly seven times whether anyone present had disobeyed a specific call, a young single woman came forward and revealed that the Lord had clearly told her to be a missionary to Myanmar (Burma) a few years earlier, but she had become immersed in her studies and her career and God’s call on her life had been pushed into the background.

After an intense time of prayer and worship, the young woman was prayed for and commissioned by those present. The meeting ended just before midnight, at which point the young woman left and the missionary assumed she had gone home for a good night’s rest. The next day, he noticed that she was absent and asked where she was. ‘Oh, she left this morning,’ one of the other students replied. ‘Left? Where for?’ the missionary asked. ‘Well,’ someone said, ‘she was called to the mission field last night, so she lined up a partner and they left on the bus at 4am this morning. They have gone to Myanmar!’643 Yet another Christian was added to the roll of Henan’s martyrs in 2000. The 21-year-old Liu Haitou644 died on the night of 15 October in Xiayi, after being severely beaten by the local PSB. Liu was arrested on 4 September when the police raided a house-church meeting he was attending. Subjected to daily beatings and weakened by the prison’s poor hygiene and barely-edible food, he developed a high fever and started vomiting. He already had a kidney condition. Liu’s parents were first notified of their son’s arrest on 28 September, three-and-a-half weeks after he was taken into custody. They were ordered to come down to the local PSB office and pay 5,000 yuan (approximately $600) for his release. As a poor farming family they had no way to raise this sum. Liu was harshly beaten with different kinds of sticks and other tools, and the brutality brought on a relapse in his kidney condition, causing him to faint on several occasions. The other Christians in the prison pleaded with the authorities to give him medical treatment, but their requests were ignored until 15 October, when, realizing that Liu was dying, officers took him to the prison hospital (though for some hours they refused to remove the iron shackles from his ankles). The authorities then tried to evade responsibility by releasing him. One report said: ‘When Haitou’s father carried him for emergency medical treatment, the weighty leg irons still bound him, right up to six hours before his death. Haitou never complained. There were no struggles with death. He left quietly and peacefully in the middle of a dark night, amidst his mother’s tearful prayers.’645 That night, he died in the arms of his loving mother. His face radiated peace and joy as he told her: ‘Mum, I am very happy. I am fine. Mum, just persist in our belief and follow him to the end. I am going now, Mum. Pray

for me.’646 As he lay back in his mother’s arms, his final word as he left this world was ‘Amen.’

Liu Haitou

Liu Haitou had been a Christian for only 18 months, yet he had gained a reputation as someone who served God with all his heart. In jail, he had shared his meagre food rations with his fellow prisoners, hoping that they might see the goodness of Jesus in his life. His commitment is summed up in this excerpt from a letter he wrote: By His unlimited great love, the Lord saved me. He leads me to eternal life and entitles me to become a son of God. How can I ignore His salvation and freely accept His grace without doing something for Him in return? More than 90% of people in China don’t know God. My heart is broken. If the Lord is going to use me, I am ready to give my life to Him and start the journey of serving Him.647

2001: Of Whom the World is Not Worthy Since the majority of believers in Henan’s house-church movements are from rural farming areas, there tended to be an assumption that the house churches were incapable of taking the revival fires that had burned so brightly in the villages into the more sophisticated cities. This has clearly proven to be untrue, however, and the church has grown exponentially in major cities since the turn of the millennium. In 2001, Sister Wang, a former TSPM pastor and now a house-church leader, tells of the growth enjoyed by the churches in the provincial capital, which has a population of 2.8 million people: Today in Zhengzhou I would estimate about ten percent of the population are Christians, among both TSPM and house churches. The TSPM have several very large churches here. The authorities are still opposing and persecuting the house churches, and our meetings are frequently interrupted. Despite this, the house churches are growing rapidly in Zhengzhou. God

has gifted us in drama, dance and song to present the gospel to the people. In just one outdoor meeting during the New Year festival, more than 2,000 people received the Lord! Part of the reason for our revival is the kind and merciful way we have treated our persecutors. This has given a powerful witness to them, and won us the respect of the people. On one occasion after I was arrested I told the officers, ‘I am very sorry that I have troubled you so much. I am sorry your laws make you feel you need to visit our meetings so often, just because of our desire to go to heaven. You officers do your job very well!’ The Lord softened the officers’ hearts and they stopped their car on the side of the road and told me I could leave. I got out and went back to the meeting.648

However, the churches in that city have struggled to nurture enough leaders, as the following letter from a believer in the city pointed out: Today we have 30 city churches in Zhengzhou, but only ten fulltime workers; the harvest is great but we are short of workers. We are especially lacking Bible teachers, and have to beg other churches to send their teachers to us. Please pray for us and may God send some teachers and workers to our midst. If you know some overseas believers who are gifted teachers, please send them to us. Let’s serve the Lord together!649

At about 10 o’clock in the evening of 22 March 2001, a 32-year-old woman called Gu Xiangmei was getting ready to go to bed when Li Bin, the assistant director of the Xinye police station, climbed over the wall around her house and forced his way inside. He searched everywhere and seized a set of worship tapes and a book as evidence that Gu was a Christian. He took her to the Hang Yun police station and subjected her to five separate interrogations before formally arresting her. She testified from prison: He used electric shock on me, and pinched my fingers and back with pliers. I lost consciousness several times because of the pain. Li Bin tried to force me to admit that I worshipped God. I kept silent all the time so they couldn’t get anything from me. … In the detention house, I am exhausted every day, and I don’t get enough to eat. In the morning we are given a small bowl of thin noodles and hard, steamed bread, and in the evening we only get a bowl of thin noodles, which we call ‘tiger’s diarrhoea’. On April 19, Xinye County police sentenced me to be in prison for two years for associating with cults and breaking the laws. Li Bin and Li Yanpu handcuffed me and took me to Shibali Women’s Labour Education Centre, where I have been ever since.650

On 29 June 2001, a group of house-church believers living in Jia Xian County were pursued by a group of PSB officers. They managed to escape and, realizing that it was too dangerous to return home, made their way into the Zhiyun Mountains, where they hid in a cave for months. All the while, they faced great hardship, struggling to find enough food to survive and distressed by not knowing what to do next. Since 1997 we have witnessed the preachers of our mother church twisting the truth. Though we have shared God’s Word with them on numerous occasions, the situation has not changed. At the end of 1998 they made a public proclamation:

‘One cannot be saved by trusting the Bible but only through our preaching. All intercessory prayers are censured and all meetings are to be stopped. The number of people called by the Lord has been met, so there is to be no more sharing of the Gospel.’ This decree has truly deceived many believers. We have determined to break relations with this church. Is this the right thing to do? FEBC, no.4741, January 2001 Our church has a young people’s fellowship for teenagers and twenty-year-olds. Praise God, since it started with two members in 1998 it has grown to several dozen! Now many more lost souls are being gathered in! They join us and become children of God! I know that being a Christian is not just repenting in one’s heart but there also must be change in one’s conduct, speech and life. Even if we suffer for the Lord, we are blessed! No one has suffered more than our Lord in His sufferings for us. Global Chinese Ministries, March 2001 I live in the countryside. The nearest church is twenty miles away, built by American missionaries 80 years ago. Since the church is far away, we (21 people altogether) worship and fellowship in a brother’s home and invite preachers from the church to pastor us. I find it difficult to evangelize in our village because most villagers worship pagan gods. Some of them say they will believe in our God only if He appears before them. According to my own will, I just want to ignore them and spend all my time studying the Bible. However, when I understand the fact that Jesus commands all His followers to spread the Gospel and extend His kingdom on earth, I realize that my attitude is wrong. FEBC, no.3041 (date misplaced)

2002: A Chronicle of Abuse Although the incidence of detention and torture of house-church Christians in China did not increase in 2002 over previous years, the reporting of them increased greatly thanks to two American-based ministries run by Chinese ex-prisoners. From New York, the Committee for the Investigation of Persecution of Religion in China (CIPRC) posted hundreds of accounts of the repression of believers on its website, while the China Aid Association, led by Bob Fu Xiqiu, a house-church Christian who had himself suffered persecution, operated out of Texas.651

House-church believers in Henan who were forced to become fugitives on account of their faith in Christ. These Christians from Jia Xian are living in a cave. CIPRC

Huang Xikai being tortured by the police in Kaifeng in June 2002 CIPRC

Hundreds of reports of persecution in Henan were published in 2002.652 They are too numerous to list here, but it is sufficient to provide a sample of the kind of treatment the province’s Christians were subjected to. In June, a house-church Christian named Huang Xikai was arrested along with four other believers and taken to the Kaifeng County detention centre, where he was tortured in an attempt to extract a confession. He was bound and hung from a pole, just as pigs are when they are taken to market in China. Amazingly, photographs of his torture were smuggled out of the country and published around the world. His tormentors agreed to have their pictures taken because they believed the images would improve their prospects of promotion, but the photographer later gave the pictures to a Christian ministry. President George W. Bush, in a speech given at Tsinghua University, 22 February 2005 Ninety-five per cent of Americans say they believe in God, and I’m one of them. When I met President Jiang Zemin in Shanghai a few months ago, I had the honour of sharing with him how faith changed my life and how faith contributes to the life of my country. Faith points to a moral law beyond Man’s law, and calls us to duties higher than material gain. … Regardless of where or how these believers worship, they are no threat to public order; in fact, they make good citizens. My prayer is that all persecution will end, so that all in China are free to gather and worship as they wish. Just hours after President Jiang Zemin told George Bush that the People’s Republic of China had freedom of worship, 70 Chinese police stormed a Christian service Thursday, arrested 47 elderly Christians for 'illegally gathering', and confiscated their Bibles. … Before the US leader had even boarded Air Force One, China’s state-controlled media put out their version of Bush’s morning address. Almost half of the speech—large chunks extolling American liberty and urging China to relax its political and religious restrictions—was simply hacked out in the transcript released by the official New China News Agency. Christianity Today, 27 February 2005

More than 100 believers were meeting in the home of Wu Feng in Song Xian County on 24 July, when a large number of police surrounded the

building. They beat the congregation and stripped the house of everything of value, including 20 quilts. Seventeen Christians were formally arrested, and detained for 15 days.653 On 25 July, a 30-year-old Christian sister named Du Yuzheng was arrested on the outskirts of Xingyang City as she was sharing the gospel with an unbeliever. She was punched and kicked so savagely that she fainted three times. One officer ‘fiercely punched her face, pulled her hair and stamped [on] her toes. Such torture lasted for another night. Her whole body convulsed and her face was swollen and distorted.’654 A mass arrest of more than 40 Christians took place on 5 August in Lushan County. All their Bibles and spiritual books were confiscated, even though many of the former had been legally printed by the governmentapproved Amity Press. Two Taiwanese citizens were expelled from the country, and the local believers were beaten and fined before being released.655 Two days later, another mass arrest was carried out in Neihuang County, where a total of 33 believers were seized. Eleven were charged with ‘illegal gathering’, and the remainder were fined.656

Cai Xiangdong being tortured by the police in Xiayi in August 2002 CIPRC

On 9 August, a 34-year-old Christian woman called Cheng Dajun was dragged from her bed at night. Ten officers ransacked her house, and she was then taken to the local police station in Xiayi County and charged with ‘believing in God without permission’. The men tied her arms behind her

back, attached an electric wire to one of her fingers and electrocuted her. They seemed to find a demonic glee in torturing their helpless victim, putting the wire on her neck and her arms and pouring cold water over her. Next, they pulled up her trousers and electrocuted her on her thighs and private parts, before flogging her with a leather belt.657 The whole session lasted four hours—at a time when representatives of China’s government and state-sanctioned church were touring the world assuring all who would listen that their country enjoyed complete religious freedom and that no one there was persecuted for their beliefs. Cai Xiangdong was arrested by the police in Xiayi County at midnight on 10 August. He was taken to the Kongzhuang Village police station, where he was told that believing in God was against the law. He was brutally tortured for days. Three officers, led by the 56-year-old chief of the police, a man called Xie, held him down and forced water into his mouth until he felt he would die. They then turned a fan on on full power and directed the cold air at him throughout the night, which made his condition worse. The next morning, when Cai still refused to confess to any crime, his clothes were removed and various parts of his body were electrocuted. Li Xian, the director of the local Public Security Bureau, then kicked him to the ground, stamped on his face and threatened, ‘I will cut off your penis if you don’t confess!’658 Graphic pictures of Cai’s torture were smuggled out of China and published around the world. He was released two days later, after paying a fine of 1,000 yuan ($120). Two Christians called Duan Tiedan and Zhao Fuchun were put in a cell with convicted murderers who had been told by the authorities they could torture the believers without fear of any repercussions. These evil men pulled their hair out and practised martial arts on them until the skin on their chests turned black. Finally, the two Christians fell unconscious. They were released three weeks later, after paying fines of 4,000 yuan ($490) and 1,700 yuan ($210) respectively.659 Wu Hongmei and Guo Xinqing were detained in Shangshui County on 25 October. Guo was slapped repeatedly in the face and beaten with a shoe until her face swelled up and oozed blood.660 Three days later, Cui Fugao and Zhao Lanchun of Shangqiu City were dragged out of their homes during the night and interrogated at a police station. Cui managed to escape, but Zhao was kicked to the ground and then made to raise her arms in the air. When her arms became tired and started to drop, a police officer called

Yang Weijiang put a cigarette lighter under her palms, forcing her to lift her arms higher. Whenever she moved her hands, Wang Junfeng, the local Communist Party director, hit her fingers with a ruler. She finally fell unconscious. When she came to, she was kicked and punched for another two hours, with a towel stuffed into her mouth to silence her cries for mercy. She was released after 15 days when her family sent a gift of money to the chief of police.661 Similar stories of police thuggery and abuse were commonplace throughout Henan in 2002. Wang Chunhua, a 34-year-old woman from Xiayi County, was dragged out of bed on the night of 7 October and tortured for being a follower of Jesus Christ. Her left arm was tied to a chair, then her right hand was cuffed and connected to an electric wire. After starting the generator, the officer used the other wire to stick into her hands and neck, making her scream miserably. Ten minutes later, Wang disconnected the wire from the cuff and then wrapped the wire around her right thumb. Again, he stuck the other wire onto her hands and neck. With the current passing through her body, she screamed desperately louder and louder. At this moment, Associate Director Xie muffled her screams with a dirty towel.662

The police feel they have really ‘hit the jackpot’ when they are able to raid a well-attended house-church meeting, as it means they can fill their wallets with tens of thousands of yuan in fines. On 13 October, more than 50 Christians were arrested at the home of Ding Yongxiang in Yongcheng. Ding was required to pay an exorbitant sum of 7,000 yuan ($850)—a huge sum for most people in this part of Henan. Zhu Guihua was fined 4,000 yuan ($490) and Xu Chaxia 3,000 yuan ($365).663 On 2 November, three female Christians, Zhao Junge (aged 17), Zhang Jihong (23) and Cao Xiuzhi, were arrested in Wugang and taken to the local police station to be questioned through the night. The interrogators demanded to know the extent of their evangelistic activities, but the women just prayed silently. Infuriated, one officer howled: ‘If you refuse to confess, we will take off all your clothes and bind you to the stairs, beat you up, and insert steel batons into your body!’664 The following day, Sister Zhang was ordered to kneel down. She was whipped and kicked in an attempt to force information from her, but still she resisted. Then, ‘the policemen took turns to sexually assault her for about four hours.’665 Subsequently, she was sent to a detention centre for 15 days, where she was told: ‘You are a gangster. Today the world belongs to the Communist Party. Believing in God is forbidden.’666 The director of the centre, a man named Chen, sexually

assaulted her many times. Even after she was released, on 20 November, she said she felt as if she had fallen into hell and was full of fear every night. More than 60 Christians were arrested in Baofeng County on 23 November, after they had gathered in the home of Ma Zhangshun. More than a dozen officers suddenly arrived in four vehicles and arrested the whole congregation, which ranged in age from 15 to 68. They were all fingerprinted and threatened, and released only after paying fines of between 30 and 140 yuan ($4–17).667 The list of cruelties inflicted on Henan’s house-church Christians in the year of 2002 alone is seemingly endless. Ma Wenguang had a chopstick inserted into his ears,668 Sister Xie Ciangzhi’s head was whipped with a rope669 and Guo Qingxue of Shangqiu had his head rammed against a wall as he was told, ‘Privately believing in God is against the law. You can be charged as an anti-revolutionary and sentenced to 3–5 years in jail!’670 An elderly woman was locked in a room and left to freeze until her whole body trembled and her joints ached,671 two female believers, Zhu Chulian and Jiang Yonghua, were ordered to take their clothes off in public672 and 11 elderly Christians including the 80-year-old Miss Zhang and the 77-year-old Shang Chenlan were arrested and their Bibles confiscated in Luyi County.673 In Nanyang, the husband of Wang Tongzheng, a 40-year-old Christian woman who had been arrested, was shown pictures of naked men and women and told that all Christians practised nudity and committed adultery with each other. After the police assured him that they could ‘rescue’ his wife if he agreed to pay them 5,000 yuan ($610), he took out a loan and secured her release after 28 days in detention.674 Cai Lianyi of Xiayi County suffered the dreadful ‘water torture’ on 9 August. Two basinfuls of water were poured into his mouth and nose until he passed out. The next day, he was beaten with a baton until he again fell unconscious.675 On 21 August, the police slapped and kicked Sister Ling Wang of Zhengyang County and threatened to rip her clothes off and show pictures of her naked on television unless she admitted that she worshipped in an unregistered house church.676 On 6 October, Sister Qu Houyun of Xiayi County was threatened with electric shocks to her genitals and breasts unless she supplied information about the other believers she met with.677 On 18 November, Cao Qingjun of the same county was suspended by his

toes and hung from the ceiling all night, after his feet had been stamped on and seriously injured.678 In Yucheng County, a Christian named Yang Xiuhua was taken in to the police station on 22 November and made to stretch out on the floor. Officers then punched her in the ribs and hit her fingers with a ruler until they turned blue. She screamed for mercy, but the torturers merely ‘lit two cigarettes and inserted [them] into her nostrils until her stomach was greatly upset and she vomited. The policemen then choked her.’679 On Christmas Eve, Sister Peng Suyun was seized while sharing the gospel and helping people to understand the true meaning of Christmas. At the police station, she was beaten so severely that the wooden club being used broke, so Officer Li Lanjin carried on beating her with an electric baton instead. By Christmas morning, her body was a mass of bloody welts.680 Almost all of these incidents seem to have been motivated by the hope that local authorities could make some money by fining Christians. Complaints were made to higher authorities, but nothing was ever done. In this way, millions of yuan were extracted from believers throughout the length and breadth of the province.

2003: The Struggle Continues Shocking pictures of actual persecution continued to emerge from China in 2003. Although it is painful to look at images of people being treated so cruelly, many house-church believers were glad that they were smuggled out of the country because they brought to light the stark reality of their long struggle with the authorities. Chinese believers are frequently amazed to hear that many Christians around the world have swallowed the lie that there is no repression in China. As the much-persecuted Brother Yun said after leaving the country in 1997: The government and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement have fooled many Christians around the world by insisting there is freedom of religion in China, freedom for people to choose. They boldly claim Christians are no longer persecuted for their faith. My own personal experiences—as well as those of thousands of other house church believers— are quite the opposite. On one occasion when I was arrested the authorities let me choose whether I wanted to be shocked with an electric baton or whipped with a rope. They mocked me and said, ‘This is your free choice.’ There is ‘freedom’ of religion in China only if you’re willing to do, say, live and worship exactly as the government instructs you. Anyone who desires to live a godly life and obey all of Jesus’ teachings will soon find out how much freedom there really is.681

A house-church Christian named Jiang Dongyun was seized in Qingfeng County in north-eastern Henan. She was taken to the local PSB office and there she was abused for some three hours by a 30-year-old officer called Lu Dengkun, who stamped on her ankles. Jiang later testified that he ‘stood on my feet and ground them in a rolling action. As I screamed in pain, he used a piece of cloth, which was full of shoe polish, and stuffed it into my mouth … Subsequently, he fondled my breasts, at the same time pinching and twisting them hard.’682 The sorry tale of persecution in Henan for the year 2003 began early. The South China Morning Post reported that an extensive clampdown on the Born-Again house-church movement had been underway in the province since 27 December 2002. Church meetings had been raided in a number of towns and 176 members had been ‘dealt with’.683 On 2 January, a 55-yearold woman named Cheng Yuanrong was working at home in Nanyang County when four police officers burst in. They confiscated her Bibles and religious books and were so vile to her that she collapsed from fear. Not content with that, they took her to their headquarters and left her outside in the bitter cold, handcuffed to a pole. Cheng kept her silence, however, even while they slapped her repeatedly. She was detained for 21 days until her family paid 1,000 yuan ($120) for her release.684

The revival in Henan has come at great cost to the house-church Christians. In these pictures, Jiang Dongyun is being tortured by Public Security Bureau officers in Qingfeng County on account of her devotion to Jesus Christ. Jiang was also sexually abused during the three-hour session. CIPRC

A 40-year-old Christian woman named Wang Xia was arrested in Nanyang County while preaching in someone’s home on 8 January. Several officers took it in turns to kick her and beat her shoulders and back with a baton as they demanded to know the name of her church leaders. They stamped on her ankles, and then one officer, Zhang Qiang, ‘took off one of his own

shoes and jammed it into the woman’s mouth.’685 Wang’s family had to come to the police station and pay 1,000 yuan for her release. Early in the morning of 12 January, the police raided the homes of five Christians in Xiayi County and arrested six believers. At the police station, they were abused and tortured all day. Sister Hou Xinzhi was forced to kneel on the ground while the cowardly officers punched and kicked her face. Li Xian, the party director of the local PSB, ordered her to confess or ‘we will chop off your arms!’686 The following day, the police released all six after extorting between 500 and 1,560 yuan ($60–190) from each of them. Chen Xiangchong, a 16-year-old Christian from Changcheng County, went to a friend’s house on 20 January to share the gospel with him. They were both arrested, and were beaten up at the Fengqiu police station. Chen’s heartless tormentors stripped off his coat and tied a rope around his neck, then threatened to brand him with an iron they were heating in the fire. The torture lasted all night, and at dawn they hung the teenager up by his toes.687 Another man, Ding Shulin of Yucheng County, was tortured in a similar way and told that unless he revealed to the authorities where he had got his Christians books from they would kill him and make it look like suicide.688 I am a 20-year-old man born in a small mountain village in Henan. I grew up knowing God’s love. My father was a leading Christian worker. … Last year, I attended a Bible school run by a teacher from South Korea. He had great faith and set up two smaller classes. The teacher said he could never abandon his 100 students because they were the future hope of the Chinese house churches. But last November, the school was discovered by the Public Security Bureau. The secret meetings of the students were reported by some of the church leaders. We never would have imagined that they would betray their own people! My Korean teacher was sent home and not allowed to return to China. Several other students and I were detained by the police for a day. When we came out, we saw that many of the students were waiting for us, and we embraced each other weeping. Thus our Bible school was brought to an end. Now I am at home quietly waiting on the Lord. I long for the time when there will be another opportunity for theological training. This is the longing of the other 99 brothers and sisters. Please pray for us. Compass Direct, 8 February 2003

A mass arrest occurred on 3 April, of more than 120 leaders and key workers who had come together from a number of house-church networks in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Xinjiang, Hebei and Beijing, along with some Chinese believers from overseas, to pray and discuss ways to work together

to spread the gospel throughout the country. Later in the evening, three police trucks arrived at the scene and carried off ‘80 mattresses, blankets, woks, steam cookers, seven bags of Bibles, and some meat products’.689 Two female evangelists from the neighbouring province of Anhui, the 38year-old Yu Zhonglan and the 45-year-old Guo Yuhua, were arrested in Xiayi County on 15 April and interrogated separately. Yu was slapped and kicked after she refused to name the person who had led her to faith in Jesus Christ. She was struck around the head with a ruler until it broke, and the officer then got a wooden club and beat her with that. Frustrated with the lack of progress, this man tied her all around and pushed her to kneel on the ground, placing three bricks on her legs. The police punched and kicked her. While pushing against her back, they pulled her arms up which were tied behind her body, making her scream out of extreme pain. At the same time, Sister Guo Yuhua was similarly tortured. Such interrogation lasted for 14 hours. But they did not give in.690

The next day, one shameful officer, a man of 50, punched Guo in the chest five or six times and then struck her face with a heavy book. He then used an electric cattle prod repeatedly to administer shocks to her chin and other parts of her body. Guo’s face swelled up and blistered, and blood poured from her mouth. After this wicked man rammed her head into the wall, she fell unconscious to the floor. When she came to, a second officer ordered her to remove her clothes and another man sexually abused her. On 19 April, the families of Yu and Guo paid the police 3,000 yuan ($365) and the tortured women were released. In August, a new round of persecution against Henan’s house churches began. On 28 August, a mass arrest of 170 believers was carried out in Nanyang County. After the 14 principal leaders had been identified, the rest were fingerprinted, cautioned, fined and then released. Finally, the year ended in much the same way as it had begun. On Christmas Eve, shortly after the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, had travelled to America and reiterated that there was now freedom of religion in China, about a hundred Christians were interrupted during a service in Fengqiu County by a police raid and their 60-year-old leader, Li Shansong, was taken away and mistreated.

2004: Problem, Solution, Salvation At the start of the 20th century, the fundamental structure of the house churches in Henan began to change as people migrated to the cities in huge/large numbers in search of better pay. Families became separated and

congregations lost many of their most promising potential leaders. Those Christians who had moved to the cities now faced the powerful temptations that urban life brings, and many lost their earlier fervour for Christ. Nonetheless, the powerful ministry of Henan’s house churches has continued, with an emphasis on both evangelism and the discipleship of believers. Many house-church evangelists are taught that when they enter a new village they should first pray and ask God to show them what the greatest need of that community is, and should then trust him to meet that need. This style of evangelism, which invariably brings a demonstration of the power of God, dramatically touches the lives of people who have been brought up to believe that there is no God and no spiritual realm. The strategy these preachers employ can be summed up in three words: problem, solution and salvation. In one place, the greatest need of the community clearly related to a demon-possessed woman who tormented the villagers. So violent was she that the farmers took a roundabout route back to their homes each day so that they wouldn’t have to pass through the gateway near where the woman lived. The whole community lived in fear of her supernatural strength—she had even managed to snap some heavy chains that had been put on her. A group of house-church evangelists prayed and fasted before entering the village, asking that God’s power would be manifested and the name of Jesus exalted among the people. They found the woman and cast the demons out of her, and she became calm for the first time in years. Almost everyone in that village became a Christian as a result of the great miracle they had witnessed.

Wang Guizhen and Xing Baoying, imprisoned for downloading material from a Christian website China Aid Association

One missionary with close connections to the house churches in Henan has shared the following testimony of another occasion on which

evangelists experienced a great breakthrough after providing a solution to a community’s problem: One day, two young female evangelists went to one village, where all the people—about 300— derived their income from pig farming. A week before the Christians arrived, a highly infectious bacterial disease started to kill the villagers’ pigs. The normally energetic pigs developed high fevers, and their tails, which were normally curly, just hung down limp. Each pig was dying, one by one. When the two sisters arrived at the village, they didn’t have to look far to discover what the greatest need of the people was. If all the pigs died from this disease, they would be financially ruined. The preachers saw hundreds of dying pigs, lying in the mud, foaming at the mouth and about to die. In front of the villagers, the two young women (one of whom was a teenager) lifted up their Bibles and started to pray for the pigs in the name of Jesus. After a few minutes, something started to happen. This may not suit your theology, but the power of the Holy Spirit came upon the pigs, and more than 400 pigs were instantly healed. They stood up, their tails became curly again, and they started to jump around. Some of them jumped over the fence and ran throughout the village before they were recaptured. Three hundred people had watched these events unfold. The Christians then declared in a loud voice, ‘This Jesus is the Lord. He is the living Son of God and he has helped you this day.’ Every person in the village was saved.691

In January 2004, about 50 Christians, including three prominent church leaders, were arrested in different parts of the province, Qiao Chunling, aged 41, was taken into custody in Luoyang, Deborah Xu Yongling (58) in Nanyang and Zeng Guangbo (35) in Deng Xian. Zeng managed to escape two days later and went into hiding, but was recaptured on 1 March while trying to cross the border between Inner Mongolia and Russia. Some reports in the West linked these arrests to the impact that a recent book and series of DVDs on Christianity in China were enjoying in the West.692 The case that gained the most attention was that of Deborah Xu Yongling, the sister of the principal founder of the Born-Again house-church movement, Peter Xu Yongze. Arrested on 24 January, she was taken to a secret location and interrogated at length. Christians around the world were asked to pray for her, and a few months later she was released. Also on 24 January, another 19 leaders from a new house-church group with some 100,000 members were arrested in Deng Xian while attending a marriage seminar run by a Chinese pastor from Hong Kong. All their valuables were confiscated, and eight of them were then taken away to an unknown location and tortured.693 On 25 July, a 34-year-old Christian named Wang Guizhen was arrested in Linying County. After a harrowing time in the local detention centre, she

was formally charged with attempting to ‘subvert the government’.694 A closer look at this serious charge reveals that Wang and her husband, Xing Baoying, had ‘purchased a computer, writeable CD ROM, and other equipment as their crime tools, and illegally downloaded materials from the “Christian literature” website, then burned into a CD for selling and spreading.’695 Wang and her husband were both sent to a labour camp for their ‘crimes’. The full impact on her of this traumatic experience was brought home as soon as she was released from the camp in March 2006, 20 months after her arrest. She made her way to the railway station in Zhengzhou and went into a restaurant for a meal, but the waiter drove her from the premises. Wang had no idea why she had been treated in this way, but then her husband found her and as soon as they saw each other they burst into tears. Both of them had been reduced to skin and bones and were dressed in rags. Nonetheless, Wang’s faith shone through and she declared: ‘We understood that our days in the camp were only a short break. A longer road awaited us. The path of preaching the gospel is rough but our pace should be firm and unshakable. Though tears covered our faces, our hearts are happy because God has promised that we will arrive in Canaan after going through the wilderness.’696 The month of August saw a fresh wave of persecution break over the province’s house churches. On 6 August, more than a hundred house-church leaders were rounded up in Tongxu County. Three children aged between eight and 11 were also among those arrested, and they wept as they were dragged away.697 Most of the detainees were released after paying a fine, but the authorities identified six people as the ringleaders of the group and charged them formally. They were imprisoned for three years each.698 One illiterate peasant woman from near Luoyang City became a Christian late in life. Overtaken by zeal for the Kingdom of God, she resolved to do all she could to reach the lost before her days on earth came to an end. She bought some gospel tracts and visited a popular tourist site in Luoyang where thousands of people, both Chinese and foreign, go to see the ancient Buddhist caves and stone carvings; and there she exhorted the Buddhist pilgrims to turn from their sins and believe in Jesus. The guards at the site warned her to leave, but she refused and so the PSB was called in. Its officers didn’t want to lock up an elderly woman, but her stubbornness left them no option. Her family was notified that her bail was set at 1,000 yuan

($120), and if they paid it they could come and take her home. However, when a pastor went to the detention centre with the money, the sister protested and refused to leave. She scolded him: ‘Don’t get me out of here! There are mostly bad sinners here. In here I can freely tell them about Jesus. I’ve learned a better way to serve Jesus now!’699 She was finally released three years later, having led many of her fellow prisoners to Christ. She returned home and immediately resumed her evangelistic activities.

Gu Junqing China Aid Association

President George W. Bush, speaking in Beijing in 2005 A society that welcomes religion is a wholesome society, it’s a whole society. People should be able to worship freely, and I shared that with Chinese President Hu Jintao. USA Today, 21 November 2005

2005: ‘Your Meetings are Illegal’ By 2005, the prosperity that had been flooding the large cities of China also began to transform the material lives of many people in rural areas. As the country changes, so the gospel continues to sweep multitudes of people into the Kingdom of God. In 2005, a Henan house-church leader named Liu Sheng wrote: We received the 4,100 Bibles and 650 study Bibles from your contact. Praise the Lord! In the past twelve months the Lord has graciously enabled us to reach more than 60,000 souls for Christ, and we are now praying and striving to nourish these newborn babes in Christ. Without God’s Word this is impossible. The Scriptures you sent us were received like hungry children longing for good and satisfying food. Please pray that we will be able to receive at least 50,000 more Bibles from the hand of the Lord, so that none of our new believers would be without a copy of God’s holy Word.700

After a relatively quiet first half of the year, strong waves of persecution again assailed the church in Henan. Between June and August, believers were arrested in at least four locations throughout the province, the towns of Lizhuang, Xuzhai, Qiaogou and Fenggang Town in Gushi County. In total, between 400 and 500 Christians were rounded up, from a total of 15 different house churches. All of those detained were released after paying fines ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 yuan ($245 to $610).701 The Argentine-American evangelist Luis Palau, speaking in Beijing on 18 November 2005 Even in the United States, you can’t get away with defying order. I feel that registering is a positive thing for the followers of Jesus. Believers should live in the open, especially when the Chinese government offers it. Jesus said we are the light of the world and that we should not be kept hidden or in the dark. Therefore, believers should share their faith openly. If I were Chinese, I would definitely register. Not registering only leads to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. China Daily, 19 November 2005, cited in the Washington Times, 28 November 2005 Palau, reconsidering that statement 10 days later I regret some of the remarks I made to reporters during my recent trip to China. It’s not my role as an evangelist to suggest that churches in China should register. My role is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. … It would deeply pain me if any of my comments would provoke any kind of trouble for God’s saints in the People’s Republic of China. And I pray our sovereign Lord would not allow it.

At eight o’clock in the morning of 24 June, more than 50 police and PSB officers in three large trucks and numerous cars surrounded the village of Hezhai in Qi Xian County. Despite not having a search warrant, they arrested about a hundred pastors who had come from all over the province for training and fellowship. Most of them were released after being interrogated, but nine leaders were kept in custody and charged with ‘engaging in an illegal religious gathering’. Private property including ‘cash, chairs, TVs, books, blankets and rice were confiscated and carried away by the police trucks.’702 In early July, a training seminar conducted by the China Gospel Fellowship in Zhengzhou was raided and more than 100 participants were arrested. They were released after paying the now customary fine.703 Another 100 believers from the same movement had been arrested in a similar raid in the neighbouring province of Hubei the year before. The South China Church, which is based in Hubei, has experienced extreme persecution since the start of the new millennium.704 Hundreds of its members have been imprisoned and tortured, and its most senior leaders

have been given death sentences that were later reduced to life in prison. The church is also active in Henan, and on 2 August 2005 one of its meetings was raided in Zaoyang. A foreigner called Eric was among the 42 believers detained and interrogated. A bold 25-year-old named Gu Junqing later recalled her experiences at the police station: Qiu Yunfei (the head of the criminal investigation unit) took my hands and cuffed my little finger. He pulled me around the room, swinging on the cuffs. He then cuffed my hands behind my back, sat down on the sofa and callously laughed at me. He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to look at him. When I didn’t want to look at him, he kicked me in the back. I fell down to the floor. Smilingly he asked, ‘Is it comfortable?’ It was so painful that I cried. My heart just called out to the Lord. Since he couldn’t get anything out of me he took the cuffs off me. On 5 of August I was transferred to a detention centre in Tanghe County. At the police station Cui Hanlin (from the Religious Affairs Bureau) forced me to sign several arrest warrants. I was not allowed to look at the contents. … Cui said, ‘You invited foreigners to come to you, wanting to gain religious freedom through Americans. Don’t even think of it! Freedom of religion is under the protection of the law, but it is only when it is recognized by the country. You don’t believe lawful religion and don’t go to recognized churches; instead you go around everywhere preaching religion. I tell you, whatever the country has not sanctioned is illegal. Without the approval of the country you cannot go everywhere preaching religion. Your meetings are illegal.’705

Reports of Chinese Christians being arrested and tortured seem to make little impression in the Western media, but on the rare occasions that American citizens find themselves in custody, the news is usually broadcast by all the major outlets. This is what happened when five American church leaders were arrested in the cities of Luoyang and Yichuan on 15 August 2005. The Luoyang raid also caught 27 Chinese believers.706 A further 29 house-church leaders were arrested on 12 December after a raid on a meeting in Xincai County that had been convened by leaders from Henan and Anhui Provinces to ‘discuss how the house churches can effectively help a large group of peasants who had contracted Aids’.707 Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 2006 China’s a long way past the Cultural Revolution—a long way past a situation where there is a systematic attempt to block out or extirpate religion. Response from the house-church Christian and author Yu Jie Dr Williams only visited churches officially sanctioned by the state. Nor did he see or talk to any real Christians. His view of China’s religious conditions is very positive, but this isn’t in accordance with the facts. The Times, 24 October 2006

2006: Silencing the Lawyers

As a new year came around, China was assuming a position of growing importance in the world community. Well-presented officials continued to tour the world proclaiming that religious persecution in their country was a thing of the past. Perhaps their government assumed that events in faraway villages in Henan were unlikely to be reported to the international media. However, China’s new prominence is obliging it to become more transparent. Modern technologies such as the internet and mobile phones have allowed news of arrests to spread quickly around the world, and evil deeds previously done in darkness are now frequently exposed to the light. On 13 March 2006, about 100 police officers raided a house-church meeting in the village of Zhangsi in Wenxian County. The meeting, which had been convened to organize Eastertide services to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, was being held in the home of the 71-year-old Ma Wenqing, a well-known pastor from a respected Christian family, whose parents had welcomed many foreign missionaries to their home during the 1930s and ’40s. Just after the meeting concluded at 6.30pm, as the participants were making their way home, truckloads of police arrived. One account says: Many Christians were panic-stricken, some ran, and some were blocked in the house. Those who walked on the highway heading home slipped into wheat fields scared at the sight of the public security personnel, but most were captured and dragged into vehicles of public security. A few of them were brutally beaten in the wheat field. According to narrations of house church leaders later, three policemen from the public security bureau pinned down a young man in the wheat field and beat and kicked him with their fists and feet. They beat him so hard that several young Christian women were paralyzed with fear and couldn’t speak; other young Christian women watching the beating cried out.708

The authorities arrested 80 of the believers—most of whom were members of the Fangcheng house-church network—after stealing all the cash they were carrying. Most of the local Christians were then released, but those the police identified as leaders were beaten and tortured with electric batons. A report stated: Pastor Li Gongshe, 51, who is handicapped and showed the police his handicap certificate, was continuously beaten by a police officer named Wang in front of the police chief and the political director. Pastor Li was hospitalized for treatment of a broken rib caused by a police beating. One Christian lady, 21-year-old Shan Ailing, was forced by the police to strip during the interrogation at a local police station. … Most of the released including a 15-year-old Christian girl Li Hongmin from Nanle County, Henan Province, had experienced torture and abuse by interrogators during their 15 to 30 days’ detention.709

The Wenxian incident angered many Christians in China, who thought that arresting people for celebrating Easter marked a return to the draconian

days of the Cultural Revolution. One of the imprisoned pastors, Li Huimin, found a lawyer and appealed against his sentence—a move that showed that the country’s legal system was slowly coming up to international standards. He also filed a complaint against the officers who had beaten him brutally when he refused to sign a confession that he belonged to a cult. On 16 May, he lodged an appeal to the Puyang People’s Government for a review of his case. When this was dismissed, he filed a lawsuit with the People’s Court of Hualong District. On 20 August, even though the court agreed that the Easter celebration constituted an illegal gathering, his prison sentence was revoked. However, the China Aid Association noted: ‘Though this is the first example in China of a Christian winning such a lawsuit, it is too early to believe it is a sign that the Chinese government is changing its policy on religious freedom.’710 A further 28 Christians were arrested in Fugou County on 18 May. Twenty-three were released later that day and another two were released later after paying a fine, but three believers in their fifties were sent to Ba Yi Prison, including Chen Xuelan, the 58-year-old woman who owned the house where the meeting was taking place, and the 52-year-old pastor Li Shunmin. Following the lead of the Christians in Wenxian, the three found a lawyer and appealed against their sentences.711 This new development of Christians in prison securing legal aid and appealing against their sentences seems to have shaken the Chinese authorities deeply, especially in provinces such as Henan where the Public Security Bureau had spent decades persecuting and torturing Christians with impunity. Realizing that they could not stop the trend towards greater transparency in implementing the law, the authorities chose a different path and attacked the few Chinese lawyers who were willing to represent Christians. In 2006 and 2007, a succession of human-rights lawyers—some Christians and some not—were themselves arrested. Others were intimidated and threatened with serious consequences if they took on cases of religious persecution. On 17 January 2006, there was even an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate one prominent lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, in Beijing.712 Dear Brothers and Sisters in the West, Thank you so much for blessing our fellowships by providing Bibles for us. The growth in numbers and in spiritual strength that our fellowships have experienced in recent years is in large part due to our members having the Bible to feed upon daily. In the past we were very happy to share one Bible for an entire group; some

of our churches did not even have a single Bible and they had to borrow from others. Thankfully in recent years Bibles have not been as scarce as before, but as the Church continually grows so rapidly it seems that we need even more than we did a few years ago! We have a goal that not only would each member of our fellowships have their own copy of God’s Word, but we want to see each believer equipped with an extra copy to share with a person near them that has a strong desire to learn more about Jesus Christ. Just to meet this need within our network alone, 2,138,000 copies are needed and that must be multiplied many times over to meet the current needs of all the house churches in China. Please continue to pray for us that we will be strong in the Holy Spirit as we face opposition and persecution because of our faith. It is truly an honour to share the sufferings of our precious Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you so much for sharing God’s precious Word with us! Letter received by Asia Harvest in April 2007

2007: ‘It is Truly an Honour to Share the Sufferings of Jesus’ The new year started in much the same vein as other years for the house churches of Henan. On 6 January, the police in Xiuwu County raided a Christian gathering in the village of Chencun. Eleven worshippers were taken into custody; two were released the next day, but the other nine were interrogated and beaten in detention.713 They were finally allowed to return home after 15 days. During that time, no legal certificates were issued with regard to their arrest, their detention or their release. No doubt the authorities in the province had become alarmed after the successful lawsuit filed by Li Huimin the year before. One source noted: ‘It is believed the police deliberately did not provide the Christians any legal evidence to prevent future lawsuits.’714 On 6 March, the home of the house-church leader Dong Quanyu and his wife, Li Huage, was raided by the police of Nanyang County. A total of 33 Christians were arrested, including three visiting preachers from South Korea. The authorities also took away many personal possessions, including mobile phones, a computer and Christian books. Dong and the other detainees were released 10 days later, after the local police station was inundated with phone calls from Christians around the world in response to a press release describing the arrest. When Dong’s wife went to the station to request the return of their personal property, she was ‘beaten heavily’ and then arrested and held for 10 days for ‘disturbing the public order’.715

Over the summer, a crackdown on house churches intensified as nervous Chinese authorities put into effect a plan to silence any potential dissent before the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Just before lunchtime on 14 July, four military policemen went to the home of Pastor Fu Fengtu in the city of Pingdingshan and there arrested four Christians, including Fu’s wife, Gao Chinxia.716 On 17 August, three pastors were held for five days after they were found with Sunday-school literature in the village of Zaolin in Xincai County.717 On 18 November, the much persecuted China Gospel Fellowship suffered a further blow when 40 of its leaders were arrested in Xiancheng County. Twenty-one were released six days later, but the rest, including the leader of the movement, Shen Yiping, were kept in custody.718

Dong Quanyu and Li Huage China Aid Association

More arrests followed just before the end of the year. Five house-church leaders were detained in Luyi on 4 December, and dozens of other believers from their churches were also taken in and interrogated. Pastor Liang Qizhen, the vice-president of the China House Church Alliance, was tortured for several hours on 16 December.719 Five days before Christmas, the police raided a Christian celebration attended by more than 70 people at a church in Shangqiu and arrested the three people leading it.720

2008: An Unfinished Chronology At a time when many voices were trumpeting China’s improved humanrights record to the world, house-church believers in Henan continued to suffer persecution for their faith. Bai Cheng, a house-church leader from Luoyang, was arrested while he led a Bible study on 29 January. He was charged with leading an ‘evil cult’, and his car and two computers were seized as ‘evidence’.721

On 18 February, two female theological teachers, Dong Shanshan and Xu Yuanyuan, were taken by 12 PSB officers from the Luohe railway station.722 Their whereabouts were still unknown when this book went to press. On the same day, 70 house-church leaders were arrested in the city of Shangqiu during a Bible course at the home of Brother Xue Weimin that was attended by more than 250 Christians. More than 20 officers took part in the raid and took away 80 people they supposed were leaders, cramming them into 10 vehicles. Ten of the detainees were released after interrogation, but the rest were charged with participating in an illegal cult.723 This injustice was the last entry in this chronology of persecution of the followers of Jesus Christ in Henan Province when this book went to press— but it is certain that before the ink on this book is dry there will have been more arrests and abuses. If the outrages listed above were all that has happened to the believers in Henan, that would be bad enough; but they are just a sample of the many thousands of incidents of detention and torture that have taken place over the years. Some are simply too gruesome to put into print. God keeps a thorough record of such things, however, and will one day avenge all the brutal treatment that evil men have meted out to his children. It has been said that Henan is ‘the Galilee of China’—the place where Jesus’ disciples come from. The province boasts the largest number of Christians in China, and over the last 30 years has experienced most powerful revival than any other part of the country. It is important that readers understand that this revival has come at great personal cost for these believers. They have shed much blood and endured extraordinary trials of their faith over the years. The intense pressure has produced multitudes who are ready to sacrifice their lives to see the Kingdom of God come to their province and their country. Not so many years ago, Christians in Henan faced decades in prison for the sake of the gospel. In recent years, however, the longest sentence imposed has tended to be three years, and most believers who are arrested are released after paying a fine. If the level of persecution in Henan continues to diminish, it remains to be seen whether the church of Jesus Christ in China’s most populous province will maintain the same fervour for the Lord and for preaching the gospel.

636 This led Asia Harvest to establish the China Living Martyrs Fund, which to this day provides support to people who have been incapacitated by persecution, and aid to the families of those in prison. See http://www.asiaharvest.org for details. 637 Intercessors for China, The Persecuted, the Poor and the Pioneer Missionaries (2001) 638 South China Morning Post, 28 August 2000 639 Ibid. 640 Tony Carnes, ‘China’s Smack Down’, Christianity Today, 11 September 2000 641 ‘China Continues to Detain 130 Christians’, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 25 August 2000 642 Carnes, ‘China’s Smack Down’ 643 International Mission Board, The Commission (June 2002) 644 Early reports, including that in the South China Morning Post of 20 October 2000, incorrectly gave his name as Liu Haitong or Liu Hongtong. 645 Xiao Ruozhi, ‘A Martyr at the Turn of the Century’, Christian Life Quarterly, vol.4, no.4 (December 2000) 646 ‘Brother Liu Haitao’s Martyrdom in Henan, China’, The Mandate Christian News, 3 February 2001 647 Ibid. 648 Personal interview with Sister Wang in March 2001 649 Letter received by Asia Harvest in October 2006 650 ‘“New” China: Same Old Tricks’, Christianity Today, 11 March 2002 651 The reporting of the CIPRC seemed to diminish around 2005, and in many ways it has been superseded by the work of the China Aid Association. 652 See the website http://www.china21.org for hundreds of testimonies of the persecution of Christians in China. 653 ‘Over Hundred Henan Christians Were Assaulted among whom Seventeen Arrested’, CIPRC, posted on http://www.china21.org 654 ‘Henan: A Female Christian Brutally Tortured’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 655 ‘Henan Police Arrested Forty-Plus Christians Together with Two Taiwanese Missionaries under the Charge of “Religious Infiltration”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 656 ‘Twenty-Nine Henan Christians Arrested during Meetings’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 657 ‘Electric Shock plus Heavy Fine: The Way Police Treated a Female Henan Christian’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 658 ‘The Police Threatened: “I will Cut Off Your Penis if You Don’t Confess!”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 659 ‘Two Christians Confined with Murderers and Tortured to Faint’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 660 ‘Three Sisters Detained, Tortured and Fined’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 661 ‘A 25-Year-Old Police Placed a Lit Cigarette Lighter under Her Palm’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 662 ‘The Police Wired the Electric Wire around Her Thumb’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 663 ‘Fifty More Christians Arrested in Henan Province’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 664 ‘Female Christians Sexually Harassed’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 665 Ibid. 666 Ibid. 667 ‘Henan: Over Sixty Christians Aged from 15–68 Arrested’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 668 ‘The Police Threatened, “If Don’t Confess, the Chopstick Will Go Into Your Ears”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 669 ‘The Police Threatened: “We’ll Hang You Up if You Refuse to Confess!”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 670 ‘Privately Believing in God Could Lead to 3–5 Years in Jail’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 671 ‘Henan People’s Police Treated an Old Christian with “Air-Conditioning”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 672 ‘Two Female Christians were Ordered to Take Off Clothes in Public’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 673 ‘Eleven Christians were Fined including a Seventy-Seven-Year-Old’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 674 ‘The Police Coaxed the Husband “Everyone Joined the Religious Groups Would Commit Such Adulteries!”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 675 ‘The Police Said, “No Religious Freedom? You are All Anti-Revolutionary Organizations!”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 676 ‘The Police Grinned Viciously, “Confess or Not? If Not, We will Tear Off Your Clothes”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 677 ‘The Police Threatened, “We will Shock You Naked with the Electric Baton”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org

678 CIPRC, ‘He Was Tortured for Five Days’, www.china21.org 679 ‘Police Zhang Wei Ordered “Use the Next Torture”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 680 ‘Police Continued Beating Her with Electric Baton after the Wood Club Broken’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 681 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, p70 682 ‘People’s Police “Enforcing the Law”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 683 Josephine Ma, ‘Police Crackdown on Underground Religion’, South China Morning Post, 21 January 2003 684 ‘An Old Woman was Handcuffed on a Power Pole in a Freezing Cold Winter’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 685 ‘A Female Preacher in Henan Province was Brutally Beaten by Police’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 686 ‘Hold Up Your Arms Unless Tell Who Taught You the Faith! Otherwise Cut off Your Arms’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 687 ‘Sixteen-Year-Old Preacher Brutally Tortured’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 688 ‘Confess or Kill You and Make it Look like Suicide’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 689 ‘Police Besieged an Assembly of More than 200 People in Henan Province’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 690 ‘The Shameless Police Forced Her to Lift Up Clothes’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 691 Personal interview with Brother Ren in September 2002 692 For example, see ‘China Arrests Dozens of Prominent Christians’, Christianity Today, 16 February 2004. 693 ‘19 Evangelical Church Leaders Arrested for Marriage Seminar, Torture Reported’, China Aid Association, 12 March 2004 694 ‘Reeducation through Labor Camp, the Darkest Place’, China Aid Association, 30 April 2006 695 Ibid. 696 Ibid. 697 ‘More than 100 House Church Leaders Arrested in Henan’, China Aid Association, 6 August 2004 698 ‘Notice of Criminal Detention and Further Arrests Following Mass Arrest in Henan’, Assist News Service, 20 August 2004 699 Asian Report, no.266 (November–December 2004) 700 Letter received by Asia Harvest in March 2005 701 China Aid Association, 17 August 2005 702 ‘Nationwide Crackdown on House Churches in China’, China Aid Association, 29 June 2005 703 ‘House Church Leaders Arrested in Zhengzhou, Henan’, RCMI Prayer Request, 19 July 2005 704 Both the church and its experiences will be profiled in depth in the Hubei volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 705 ‘Gu Junqing, “The Law Must Use Force and Coercion to Exert Obedience”’, China Aid Association, 1 May 2006 706 ‘Five American Church Leaders Arrested in Henan’, China Aid Association, 17 August 2005 707 ‘Twenty-Nine Chinese House Church Leaders Arrested’, China Aid Association, 12 December 2005 708 ‘Special Report on Persecution and Abuse in Henan Province Regarding the Case of Arrest in Wen County on March 13, 2006’, China Aid Association, 26 June 2006 709 ‘Crying Out to God from Behind Bars: Heartbreaking True Stories inside China’, China Aid Association, 19 April 2006 710 ‘Henan Court Revokes the Re-education through Labor Decision: First Time a Chinese House Church Christian Has Won Such a Lawsuit’, China Aid Association, 25 September 2006 711 ‘28 House Church Pastors Detained in Henan for Independent Religious Service; Prominent Rights Lawyers Intervene’, China Aid Association, 8 June 2006 712 The Voice of the Martyrs, The Persecution Prayer Alert, 18 January 2006 713 ‘Christian Service Raided in Henan Province’, China Aid Association, 15 January 2007 714 ‘9 Arrested House Church Leaders in Henan Released after 15 Days of Detention’, China Aid Association, 26 January 2007 715 ‘The Wife of a House Church Leader Sentenced to 10 Days’ Detention’, China Aid Association, 19 March 2007 716 China Aid Association, 19 July 2007 717 ‘Chinese Government Launches Nationwide Campaign against Uncontrolled Religious Activities’, Assist News Service, 24 August 2007 718 ‘Forty House Church Leaders Detained in Henan’, China Aid Association, 28 November 2007 719 ‘House Church Christmas Services Raided during Worship Service’, China Aid Association, 19 December 2007 720 ‘Annual Report of Persecution by the Government on Christian House Churches within Mainland China: January 2007–December 2007’, China Aid Association, February 2008

721 ‘Christian Leader, Bai Cheng, Detained in Henan Province’, China Aid Association, 31 January 2008 722 ‘Two Female House Church Alliance Leaders Detained in Henan’, China Aid Association, 20 February 2008 723 ‘70 House Church Leaders Detained in Shangqiu City, Henan Province’, China Aid Association, March 2008

Chapter 27 THE NANYANG CHURCH Nanyang: Part of the Revival Triangle

Prayer meetings in Nanyang are noted for their intense fervour Asian Report

Scriptures around the door frames of a Christian’s home in Nanyang Bridge

Nanyang County, and the prefecture of the same name in southern Henan, is one of the three adjacent areas of China that have experienced tremendously powerful and sustained revival since the late 1970s. These three areas— Tanghe and Fangcheng being the others—could be labelled ‘the Revival Triangle’.

A house-church movement known simply as the Nanyang Church emerged from this area and now extends throughout most of the country. Thousands of evangelists have been sent out from Nanyang over the years to every province in China, and even beyond its borders as part of the Back to Jerusalem initiative. Missionaries from Nanyang now work in at least a dozen other countries, and the area has produced some of China’s outstanding Christian leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries. Of the three large church movements to emerge from the Revival Triangle, the Nanyang Church is perhaps the least known and the most difficult to research. Its members have tended to avoid contact with foreign Christians, and have gone about their work for the Lord faithfully but quietly. One source in 1988 stated that there were at least 100,000 Christians in Nanyang County at the time.724 Today, the Nanyang Church has established churches all over China. Unlike some of the other house-church networks, it tends to care little whether Christians identify themselves as part of its movement. Its focus is simply on establishing the kingdom of God and seeing believers grounded in God’s word. As a result, it is difficult to estimate how many Christians in China ‘belong’ to the Nanyang Church. However, one experienced missionary who works with it closely has said that in 2007 its leaders claimed that the movement numbered between seven and eight million believers nationwide.725

Persecution Fails to Stop Revival The Nanyang-based house church has experienced decades of sustained persecution from the authorities, yet this has served only to strengthen its resolve and assist the spread of the gospel throughout China. Asked what it is like to visit Nanyang, one house-church leader from the area replied: Thousands of homes have Scripture written around the door frames, with phrases like ‘Jesus’ Blood Saves’. Many people quietly live out their Christian lives, seeking to serve God better. In some villages every person is a believer, while in others there are few believers. In Nanyang County alone our church has more than 200,000 believers.726

Over the years, the Nanyang house churches have witnessed countless miracles. Their leaders tend to downplay these rather than publicize them, being reluctant to draw attention to themselves. They always point out that the greatest miracle they have experienced is the miracle of salvation and the wonder of seeing God change people’s hearts on the inside. Sometimes it takes years of relationship and trust before the believers open up and

share their testimonies about some of the great things God has done in their midst. These include several unambiguous cases of dead people being raised back to life, a string of miraculous prison escapes and countless examples of healing. Thousands of people in Nanyang and beyond have witnessed such miracles and openly given their lives to Christ as a result. On one occasion, the gospel was preached with great power in the village of Hongqiao in Xixia County. Even the students in the state school sang Christian songs during class time. The children’s infectious joy could not be contained. The teachers were amazed, for when the students in one class started to sing, those in the adjacent classroom also joined in worshipping the lover of their souls, Jesus Christ. Because the teachers and school administrators couldn’t suppress the children’s desire to worship, the PSB was called in. More than 300 Christians in the village were arrested, out of a total population of just over 1,000 people. Those who were blessed to suffer for the Lord became even stronger in their faith, and they all committed themselves to full-time ministry. Now practically everyone in this village has been saved. In a similar incident, one of the better-known evangelists and leaders from Nanyang, Brother Yun, remembers the enthusiasm and joy of a group of new Christians in Gao Village in Nanyang in 1974. Yun received a Bible after 100 days of prayer, and was immediately told by the Holy Spirit to go to the west and south to preach the gospel. When he arrived at Gao Village, the people gathered round him and pleaded with him to read the Bible to them. He closed his eyes and recited the Gospel of Matthew. When he had finished, he says, I opened my eyes, and I saw how God’s Word had captivated everybody. The Holy Spirit was convicting them of their sins. They all knelt down and repented with tears flowing down their cheeks. That night, even though I was just 16 years old, I learned that God’s Word is powerful. When we share it with a burning heart, many people are touched. At that first meeting, thanks to the power of God, dozens of people had given their hearts to Jesus. … The people of Gao Village lovingly said goodbye to me with many tears in their eyes. The fire of the gospel in that area started to burn that day. Not only did it burn to the West but also to the South. Later we encountered much persecution and suffering for the faith, but in those early days everything was sweet and wonderful. God poured His Spirit out to many desperate souls. Like thirsty men in the desert, they gleefully drank in the water of God’s Word. Even though I was just a teenager, the Lord enabled me to lead more than 2,000 people to Jesus in my first year as a Christian. … When I first shared at Gao Village the Lord gave me Scripture songs to sing before the people. They wrote down the words so they could remember them.

One of the songs was taken from the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus tells us if someone strikes us on the right cheek, we should turn our other cheek to him as well. Another song taught how we are to rejoice greatly when we are persecuted for the sake of the gospel. Yet another song explained how we should never be like Judas and deny our Master. After so many people came to Jesus at once, it caught the attention of the authorities. All the Christians in Gao Village were arrested and taken to the police station. The officers demanded to know, ‘Who brought the Name of Jesus to you? How did you all come to believe in this superstition?’ The believers were filled with overwhelming joy. The only thing they would say was, ‘We won’t be like Judas! We won’t betray our Lord Jesus!’ The officers started to beat them and they rejoiced even more. They said, ‘Please, sir, hit us on the other side of the face as well!’ The Christians were laughing and rejoicing. The officers grew tired of beating them and finally said, ‘You Christians are all crazy!’ After a final warning, they sent them all home.727

The Man with Two Heads In 1994, a well-known Nanyang doctor, an elderly man called Chen, developed a cancer in the side of his face. The cancer grew to enormous proportions, until from a distance it looked as though he had two heads. The ear on that side of his head moved a considerable distance from its proper position as fluids gathered and made it bulge out. His appearance was so hideous that people often turned away in horror and disgust when he walked down the street. As his condition worsened, Chen suffered terrible pain and was unable to sleep. He visited a specialist and was bluntly told that there was nothing that could be done for him. He was instructed to go home, put his affairs in order and prepare to die. The specialist gave some poison to Chen’s 12year-old grandson, who had accompanied him, and advised him to slip it into the old man’s tea so that his life could be ended ‘mercifully’. Later that afternoon, as the boy walked down the street, he wept uncontrollably for his beloved grandfather. He knew he couldn’t do what the doctor had urged him to do. His wailing attracted the attention of various people, including a house-church evangelist who stopped the boy and asked him what was wrong. In response, he told the story of what had happened earlier in the day. The evangelist said: ‘Whatever you do, don’t put the poison in your grandfather’s tea!’ He wrote on a piece of paper and said: ‘Please bring your grandfather to this address at seven o’clock.’ In intense pain and distress after not sleeping for three months, Chen made his way with his grandson to the address the man had given them, not knowing what or who they would find there. When they arrived, they found

a house-church meeting in progress, with a preacher sharing the word of God. Despite Chen’s shocking appearance, he continued his message. After he had concluded, the preacher laid his hands on each of Chen’s ‘heads’ and prayed a simple prayer, asking God to heal him. The old doctor returned home that evening with no apparent change in his condition, but he fell asleep and only woke 13 hours later—the first rest he had had in three months. All the same, the next day he still had two ‘heads’ and did not look any better. Chen and his grandson rushed back to the house of the evangelist, who told them not to worry: God had already healed him, but it would take a little time for his physical appearance to reflect the spiritual reality of what had happened. Over the next few days, Chen’s condition gradually improved. One week later, he had been completely healed and his appearance had been restored to normal. His ear had returned to its proper position and even the skin where his face had ballooned out now looked unscarred. After Chen and his grandson became disciples of Jesus Christ, the doctor’s conscience was troubled because for years he had deceived people by selling them fake herbal pills that he knew had no medicinal value. Chen repented and immediately went to his clinic and threw the pills away. He kept the bottles, however, but made some new labels for them that said: ‘Whatever problem you have, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be healed!’ Hundreds of people in Nanyang had seen Chen’s condition before and after his healing, and no one could dispute that a great miracle had taken place. The doctor became a bold evangelist, and by 1996 he had led more than 300 people to faith in Jesus Christ.

Miraculous Provision in Nanyang The extreme poverty of most of the Christians in Nanyang means that they have often faced financial challenges as they have sought to serve God and spread the gospel. Many evangelists have gone out in faith with no support from their congregations, simply because the church had no money to send them. Yang Deling, the wife of Brother Yun, had the prospect of overwhelming struggles after her husband was imprisoned while she was pregnant with their first child in 1984. At home with only Yun’s elderly mother to help with the farm work, she cried out to God for help. They had to plant the

crops that year, and were so poor that if the crops failed they were likely to starve. Deling recalls: We had no clue what we were doing. We decided to plant sweet potatoes, but didn’t know how to do it. I found out later that we should have planted the roots about two feet apart. I had planted them just a few inches apart! All summer long our neighbours who heard about my foolishness mocked us and made fun of us! The news spread rapidly and I was the butt of many jokes. Then in autumn, all our neighbours started cursing because they had very poor yields from their harvest. Their sweet potatoes were only the size of tennis balls. When we pulled up our sweet potatoes, we found they were almost the size of basketballs! It was a great miracle and everyone knew God had taken care of us. Our neighbours respected us more from that moment on and they didn’t view my husband as a cursed criminal any more, but as a man who’d been unjustly incarcerated. Our neighbours saw ‘the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not’ (Malachi 3:18).728

Three years later, with Yun still in prison with no prospect of being released, a second miracle took place on the farm. Not knowing how to plant wheat seeds, his wife placed them so close together that they blanketed the soil. Later, just a week before the wheat harvest, a severe hailstorm struck the village. Deling recalls that she rushed outside when the hail started and could already see some of our neighbours’ wheat fields had been completely flattened by the storm. Yun’s mother and I fell to our knees and cried out, ‘God, have mercy on us!’ A great miracle happened. Our field was the only one protected by the Lord. All our wheat was standing upright, untouched by the hail. Everyone else’s fields in the whole area had been obliterated. People came out of their homes after the storm subsided and saw how the Lord Jesus Christ had protected us. It was another powerful testimony to them. While we enjoyed thick, healthy wheat that year, our neighbours had no harvest and were forced to use what was left of their crops as food for their animals.729

Elder Fu, the Elijah of China One of the founders of the Nanyang house-church movement is Elder Fu. Born in 1935 in Henan’s Lushan County, Fu moved to Nanyang with his family when he was 31 years old. Over many decades he has faithfully proclaimed the gospel and has personally led tens of thousands of people to faith in Jesus Christ. Through these years, he has been arrested on countless occasions, and severely tortured and mistreated in every conceivable way. Today, some of his coworkers have nicknamed him ‘the Elijah of China’ (though it is a name he would never use himself).

One of the cruellest forms of torture that is used in Chinese prisons is known as ‘the water dance’. Victims are stripped naked and taken into a room with a few inches of water covering the floor. Below its surface are hundreds of sharp tacks and nails and pieces of broken glass. An electric current is passed through the water, which makes the victim ‘dance’ around to avoid the shocks—and as he does so, his feet are shredded. The pain is unbearable, and many people have died and others have gone insane after undergoing this hideous and barbaric torture. In 1983, the authorities arrested all of the Nanyang house-church leaders and subjected them to the water dance in frustration at not being able to locate and arrest Brother Yun. When the ordeal was over, the men were taken outside and chained to trees, and the chief of police told them they would be released only if they revealed where Yun was. One of them whispered to Fu: ‘We are going to die because of Brother Yun.’ Fu shouted back: ‘No! We are not suffering because of Brother Yun. We are suffering because of Jesus Christ!’

Teenage Girl Raised from the Dead In 1992, an 18-year-old girl, from a Christian family, was raised from the dead in southern Nanyang Prefecture, near the border between Henan and Hubei. For weeks she had been sick with a fever, and finally she had succumbed and died. Two days later, the family doctor happened to be passing through her village and saw people mourning at the house. He asked what was wrong and, when he learned of the girl’s decease, inspected the body and issued a death certificate. On the third day after she had died, her funeral was about to begin when Fu came to the village with some of his colleagues from his house church. They asked for the coffin to be opened, and then for more than three hours, standing around it, they worshipped the Lord. Suddenly, Fu started to pray that life would return to the girl’s body. The power of God came upon her and she sat up. Her astonished relatives helped her out of the coffin and gave her something to drink. Subsequently, the parents took their daughter and her death certificate and travelled around the area, testifying that Jesus Christ had raised her from the dead. Six entire villages, totalling more than 6,000 people, turned to God. Fu went on his way, not wanting attention drawn to himself. His life has been full of so many thousands of incredible things that he struggles to recall specific miracles. When I had the privilege of interviewing him, some

of his co-workers told me I should ask him about two other occasions when he saw dead people raised back to life. His response was to hesitate, either because his deep humility made him reluctant to share such stories or because even wonders such as these had slipped from his memory among thousands of other extraordinary occurrences. Like other house-church leaders, he looks only forwards and doesn’t dwell in the past.

A Chosen Vessel Elder Fu is a compassionate man of prayer. Tears often fill his eyes when he prays. Here is a summary of my 2002 interview with ‘the Elijah of China’: I thank the Lord that I have five children, four boys and one girl. They all serve the Lord. Today I cannot go home because the Public Security Bureau is looking for me, so I am always travelling around. The hardest times have been when I have been in prison, and other times when I have been despised and attacked by villagers when I have tried to preach the gospel to them. However, it is all good. I became a Christian in 1976 at the age of 41. I grew up in a non-Christian family, and first heard the gospel from my mother-in-law. At this time I was living in Nanyang County, just a few miles from the village of Brother Yun. My mother had breast cancer so we all prayed for her and the Lord healed her. After her recovery she lost her sight for two weeks. I prayed for her eyes and the Lord healed her again. I had only believed in Christ for a few days but God used me. There was a young girl who broke both her legs in an accident. I prayed for her and she immediately stood up and started running around. In those days, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, there were few Christians in our area and practically no Bibles. God blessed me and allowed me to bear fruit for Christ right from the beginning. On one occasion I went to Hubei Province. In 48 days I led more than 100 people to Christ. It was God’s ministry, not mine. One man had a bad back and couldn’t stand upright. When I prayed for him he was immediately healed and he went home and led his whole family to Christ. The Lord sent me to prison for five years between 1983 and 1988. During that time I led 40 inmates to Christ. Later I was in another prison labour camp in Luoyang from 1996 to 1998, and led 38 prisoners to the Lord. I also led a prison warden to the Lord. As punishment, the guards tied my hands behind my back for so long that I had no feeling in my hands and arms for two months. One day a brother visited me and gave me a tiny smuggled Bible. I kept it well hidden in the cell. The prisoners took turns watching for guards, so whenever they motioned a guard was coming I would slip the Bible back into its hiding place. A man was placed in my cell in an attempt to get me to divulge where I was hiding my Bible. This man acted like he was a believer but I knew that he was ‘planted’ by the authorities. Despite this man’s ill intentions I led him to the Lord and he became a true believer. In Luoyang Prison the wardens knew that God was with me, so they didn’t let me stay in the normal cell with the other prisoners. They made me sleep out in the toilet for one month. Despite my surroundings I worshipped, prayed and preached for the Lord continually. In that way more prisoners heard the gospel because they all had to use the toilet, whereas if I had been confined to my cell fewer people would have come into contact with me.

After being released from prison I immediately resumed my ministry of travelling around preaching the gospel and visiting churches. During the daytime I evangelized non-believers, and in the evenings and night-time I pray without ceasing for my fellow brothers and sisters. I do not pray out of worry. I pray because we love one another. I usually do not sleep more than one hour per night. I rise at 2am and pray to 7am. Then I work for the Lord all day, and pray again in the evening and the night-time. The Lord wants me to carry my cross every day and share the gospel with everyone I meet. The Lord has called me to be an intercessor and has had to teach me many things about his will and his ways. He has shown me his heart for people, and has helped me see the needs of others. Because Jesus is in my heart I cannot help but share him with everyone I meet. Today I have so many prayer requests that I pray without ceasing. Every day I pray for more than 60 different people I have met whom the Lord placed on my heart. I pray for each of them by name four times per day.730

God has required me to do some surprising things. Once while I was in prison I went to eat but I couldn’t lift my left arm. The Lord told me, ‘I want you to pray for five prisoners, then you can eat.’ After I prayed for them my arm became normal and I ate my lunch. On another occasion I suddenly found I couldn’t speak or move. I wondered what was happening and the Holy Spirit told me, ‘I want you to pray for the Body of Christ in Xuchang [a part of Henan Province].’ The moment I began to pray for the Christians in Xuchang, my voice returned and I was able to move again. Without Jesus, I am a complete failure. Jesus’ truth is in me and my family. Jesus is the Lord who always lives in me in abundance. When I am on the move, I just walk and preach like Jesus. When I rest, I pray with Jesus. The Lord has been good to me and has always given me favour. He gives me abundant peace, joy and a bright future with him. He is the God of compassion and peace in all circumstances. In a single month in 1990 the Lord gave me three grandchildren, born on the 5th, 16th and 21st days of the month. My neighbours were so envious of me. They complained, ‘This guy is never around. We don’t know where he goes. He never works in the field. Yet heaven has blessed him with three grandchildren in one month. Why does he and his family have such joy?’731

Brother Yun, loved the world over as ‘the Heavenly Man’, has been a close colleague of Elder Fu for more than 30 years. When he and his wife, Deling, were married, Fu led the service. Deling tells a story of a dramatic incident involving Fu in Yenzhang in 1983, which caused the fear of God to fall on people throughout the area: In the early 1980s, we enjoyed sweeter fellowship and closer unity than ever before. The pressure meant we had to rely on the Lord and on each other for our very survival. The love of the brethren brought great comfort to my heart. At this time we also witnessed the greatest number of miracles in our ministry for the Lord. Supernatural visitations, divine healings and people being delivered of demons were common occurrences. In my village of Yenzhang a Communist Party Secretary named Zhang had persecuted and tortured Christians for years. Like the Apostle Paul before he met Jesus, Zhang seemed to

delight in destroying the church. One brisk winter evening my mother, Brother Fu, some coworkers, Yun and I went to Yenzhang village. We visited a Christian family and prayed for them. About thirty Christians gathered so we decided to have a meeting. A neighbour overheard our worship and made a report to the Party secretary, Mr. Zhang. He sent a team of Public Security Bureau officers to the house. They came with batons and ropes to arrest us and take us to the local police station. The Party secretary had a brother who lived in a nearby village. This man had a mental illness. At exactly the same time that the PSB were dispatched to break up our meeting, the devil put a murderous spirit into the mind and heart of the secretary’s brother. That insane man grabbed his 80-year old mother and murdered her by cutting off her head with a rusty knife. He then threw her corpse into a latrine outside the house. Brother Fu was leading the singing when the officers ran into the courtyard of the house where we were meeting. The police kicked in the door and beat Brother Fu severely with their batons. For what seemed like an eternity they tortured the elderly man until he was almost dead. They then bound his unconscious body tightly with ropes. There was nothing we could do but pray for our beloved pastor. … That night they left us in the cell, intending to deal with us at daybreak. During the night a chilling report came to the secretary, ‘Your younger brother has killed your mother! Your mother’s body has been found lying in the latrine with her head cut off!’ The secretary ran home and forgot about persecuting us. In the morning we heard the news and cried out to the Lord to have mercy on the secretary and his family, that they might repent and receive forgiveness. When the secretary reached his home he found his brother lying on his bed. He asked him, ‘Where is our mother?’ He replied, ‘I’ve already killed her and thrown her body in the latrine.’ The secretary shouted with great anger, ‘Why have you done this terrible thing?’ The insane man replied, ‘Why have you been persecuting the Christians? Because you have persecuted them, I have killed our mother.’ He then pulled out the long rusty knife and tried to attack his own brother, but was prevented [from] doing so by the PSB officers who had accompanied Zhang. They bound him and took him to the police station. The PSB and all the people in the area believed this incident was the judgment of God on Zhang’s family for persecuting Christians. The authorities left the believers alone from that time on. This incident amazed everyone in the village. They all confessed, ‘Jesus truly is the living God.’ The entire village became Christians and received baptism. All the Christians showed genuine love and compassion to the secretary and his family for their loss. The family was deeply touched and they all humbly received Jesus. … Many of the new Christians from Yenzhang Village made commitments to serve the Lord wholeheartedly. They decided to take the gospel to other areas that had never heard the Name of Jesus before.732

Brother Yun One Christian to emerge from the Nanyang house-church movement to become a blessing to the wider world is Liu Zhenying, better-known today as Brother Yun. After finding Christ as a teenager in Henan during the Cultural Revolution, he became an outstanding evangelist, leading thousands of people to Christ in the midst of China’s mighty revival.

After enduring more than 30 arrests and three lengthy prison sentences on account of his faith, Yun left the country in 1997 and has since been travelling around the world, sharing his testimony and his vision. His ministry continues to bless thousands of people, and God has uniquely gifted him to communicate to a Western audience. His talent for evangelism did not remain behind in China, and everywhere he goes he continues to lead people to Jesus Christ. The story of his life has been told in detail in The Heavenly Man. In this brief profile, I will summarize some of the main points of his testimony, as well as touching on some of the experiences he has had and the criticisms he has faced since leaving his own country.

Brother Yun, a gift from the Nanyang Church to the rest of the world IMB

Brother Yun first met Jesus Christ in 1974, at the age of 16. His father was in an advanced stage of cancer, but after the family called on Jesus to heal him, he was restored to health. Yun hungered for a copy of the Bible, but in those days Bibles were extremely scarce. After an elderly Christian told him that only God could provide heavenly bread, Yun began to pray and fast. For 100 days he cried out to God for a Bible and ate only one small bowl of uncooked rice a day. Finally, with his parents afraid that he was losing his mind, God gave him a vision of two men coming with heavenly bread. Moments later, the same two men knocked on the door of Yun’s home and gave him a Bible. Immediately, Yun was called to minister to ‘the west and south’. He went into villages throughout Nanyang County and simply read the scriptures to

crowds of astonished onlookers. Such was the intense hunger for spiritual truth that in the first year he led more than 3,000 people to Jesus Christ. After he married Yang Deling, persecution became their regular companion as the two of them travelled throughout the province, strengthening the believers and preaching the gospel of salvation. On one occasion, the police surrounded a village where a house-church meeting was in progress and captured Yun as he was trying to leave. They wanted to know exactly where the meeting had been held so that they could arrest more of the believers, but he refused to tell them. When they demanded his name, he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘My name is Heavenly Man,’ to try to warn the other Christians of the danger they were in. They heard his shouting and fled. As a mark of respect, they gave Yun the nickname ‘the Heavenly Man’ and it has stuck to him to this day—and is now the title of his best-selling autobiography.733 He was finally put in prison in 1984. Such was the brutality inflicted on him there, by both the guards and other inmates, that he decided it would be better to die than to risk revealing the names of his Christian brothers and sisters. Refusing to answer any questions, he began a fast, rejecting both food and water. However, God did not accept his desire to die and he sustained Yun’s body supernaturally. Many miracles took place during this period, and the town of Nanyang was alive with talk of a ‘miracle man’ in prison who continued to live even though he neither ate nor drank. Finally, after 74 days, Yun’s body was so shrivelled up that he weighed just 66 pounds (30 kilos—less than five stone). The wardens were afraid they would have to give an account of how they had allowed a prisoner to starve to death, so they invited his family to the prison to try to get him to talk and to eat again. However, even his own wife didn’t recognize his tiny, battered and bloodied body, and all his relatives thought it was a trick. Only when his mother identified him by a birthmark did they believe that it was indeed Brother Yun.734 He broke his long fast by taking communion with his loved ones. When he was returned to his cell and spoke to his astonished cellmates, it was with such spiritual authority that those sin-hardened men all fell to their knees and repented. After his release from prison in 1988, Yun continued his itinerant ministry. God had gifted him as an evangelist, and everywhere he went people found Jesus Christ. By 1991, however, Yun says he had allowed his ministry to become an idol, and God warned him that he had forsaken his first love. He

was rearrested after proudly ignoring warnings to flee, and had to serve another three years behind bars, this time at the notorious Da’an Prison Labour Camp. He was released early for good behaviour and resumed his ministry. This time, he perceived that the greatest need in the house churches was for training and so he organized underground Bible schools throughout Henan and other parts of the country. The next few years continued to be stressful for him and his family, which now included a son, Isaac, and a daughter, Yilin. At this time, Yun also became deeply burdened by the disunity amongst the various house-church networks in Henan,735 and he was instrumental in trying to bring the senior leaders of several different groups together. He was in a unique position to do this because throughout the 1980s he had maintained contact with many of them. In 1996, some painful initial meetings between house-church leaders who had not spoken to one another for years bore fruit when they established the Sinim Fellowship, the first attempt at unifying the province’s house churches since the early 1980s. Although not all of Henan’s house churches were involved, several of the largest groups reached a new level of cooperation. A Sinim Fellowship meeting was arranged at an apartment in Zhengzhou in March 1997, but the authorities were tipped off and were waiting for the participants to arrive. When Yun saw the situation he jumped out of a second-floor window, but there were officers waiting below and as a result of the fall and the severe beating they gave him his legs were broken, so that he was unable to walk. Other senior house-church figures, such as Peter Xu Yongze and Enoch Wang, were also captured, and when the news reached the outside world there were grave fears that they would all be executed. The order for the arrests had come from Beijing, where it seems that talk of unity among the house churches had deeply alarmed the government. Yun and the others were harshly tortured in their first few weeks in prison. Yun says that this was the lowest point in his life. He complained to God, and reminded him of the call he had been given him years before, to preach the gospel to the west and the south. As he lay in solitary confinement, propping his legs up against the wall at night to lessen the pain, the guards nicknamed Yun ‘the cripple’ and mocked him. On the morning of 4 May 1997, however, he believes the Holy Spirit instructed him to escape from this maximum-security prison. This was confirmed by Peter Xu, who had

encouraged him to consider doing so several times over the preceding weeks. Yun stood up and walked out of the prison, oblivious to the pain of his broken legs. As he went down the stairs and through a succession of iron gates, the armed guards along the route seemed to be unable to see him. He crossed the courtyard and went out through the main gate as some of the prisoners watched from the windows of their third-floor cells. When he reached the road outside, a yellow taxi-van immediately pulled up and the driver told Yun to get in. He was free. Years later, he recalled that the whole thing unfolded like a dream and he expected to be shot in the back at any moment. Yun went into hiding with the help of the local Christians, and a number of guards lost their jobs after the authorities investigated how a ‘cripple’ had managed to escape from a maximum-security prison. Years later, the American Bible teacher John Bevere shared a story in his 2004 book Drawing Near: A Life of Intimacy with God to illustrate the power of intercessory prayer. Although he does not know Brother Yun, the details of the story he tells match those of the evangelist’s 1997 prison escape. Bevere relates that a Christian woman named Esther, who manages the Australian office of his ministry, was cleaning her living room one day in the 1990s when suddenly she felt a tremendous burden to pray. As she knelt there, interceding with great intensity, She kept seeing in her spirit a Chinese man kneeling on a dirty floor moving his hands in circular motions as if cleaning it. As she prayed she felt the urge to cry out, ‘Get up! Get up! Get up!’ After praying for quite some time she felt a release in her heart and went back to her housework. Approximately five months later a New Zealand man who is a missionary to China came to their Bible school and was sharing a story of a Chinese pastor who had been persecuted in prison in mainland China along with another pastor. The other pastor looked at this Chinese pastor and told him that God was going to release him from prison. With this in their hearts they went about their daily prison cleaning chores. Soon afterward the guard decided to send all the prisoners back to their cells except for this pastor. He was now alone in this room cleaning the floor when he suddenly heard a voice intensely saying, ‘Get up! Get up! Get up!’ Not being able to ignore what he heard, he stood up and walked out the door. Amazingly it was unlocked so he opened it and walked undetected right out of the secured prison, and when he got outside there was a taxi sitting right in front of it. He got in and was driven away. Esther was so excited to think that this could have been what she was praying about months earlier. She went up to the missionary (whom she had never met before in her life) after he spoke, and found out it was the exact day in her prayer journal that she had been praying in her living room.736

After Yun was reunited with his family, they moved to Shandong Province and kept a low profile there as the authorities launched a manhunt to try to recapture him. Finding that many house churches were now too afraid to invite him to participate in their meetings, Yun began to think of the possibility of moving to another country. He then met a Taiwanese-German businessman, who offered him the use of his Taiwanese passport. Yun accepted the offer and on 28 September 1997 he boarded a flight from Beijing to Frankfurt. On landing in Germany, Yun applied for asylum as a refugee and after months of investigation by the authorities he was given it. The same man who had allowed him to use his passport to leave China helped him to settle in Germany, but the relationship soured when it became apparent that the man had planned to make money out of Yun’s ministry. He kept Yun as a virtual prisoner for the next year; later, he turned against him and has spent 10 years since doing all he can to discredit him. He even travelled to China and told lies about Yun to persuade three elderly church leaders, none of whom had any relationship with Yun, to sign a statement denouncing him as ‘China’s con man’. Yun was condemned for saying things he had never said and making claims he had never made. Today, looking back on this experience, he realizes that he made a mistake in using this man’s passport to leave China. He knew that God wanted him to leave, but thought he knew best how to accomplish God’s will. His error resulted in 10 years of slander against him and his family. Regarding the three pastors who have so harshly attacked him, Yun has said: In the presence of the Lord I would like to say I hold absolutely nothing against the men of God who wrote the booklet about me, and I have completely forgiven them. In fact, the booklet did not reduce the deep respect I have in my heart towards these men. I know that one day we will embrace before our Father in Heaven and any misunderstanding will be forgotten as we worship the Lamb of God together. If anyone has any questions about my story, or any other enquiry, I am very willing to meet either publicly or privately and answer any questions that anybody may have. Let’s put aside all hindrances and march forward hand in hand for the sake of the kingdom of God!737

In 2001, Yun’s family also fled from China, via Myanmar (Burma), and were granted refugee status by Germany. However, Yun himself was arrested while leaving Myanmar and was beaten severely before being sentenced to seven years in prison for travelling with unofficial documents.

Undeterred, he shared the gospel with as many prisoners as he was able to communicate with, and led a number of Chinese men serving life sentences to faith in Jesus Christ. There were fears that China would put pressure on Myanmar to return Yun to his own country, where he would face possible execution. The Chinese embassy sent officials to the prison to see him, but he refused to meet them. Then, after hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world began praying fervently, Yun was released after just seven months and seven days behind bars. Since being reunited with his family in Germany, he has continued to travel widely, exhorting the Western church to follow God more wholeheartedly. The publication of his book in 2002 raised his profile. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have now been inspired by his testimony—though others have chosen to criticize him harshly and cast doubts on his integrity. In many ways, reactions to him in the West have expressed whatever is in the hearts of those he has come into contact with. Many who do not believe that miracles happen today have rejected his story as untrue or exaggerated. His experiences bear no resemblance to their own Christian walk, some reason, and so his testimony must be false. The history of the Church has shown that it is easier for a sleeping church to dismiss the messengers of change that God sends than to accept their teaching and perhaps their correction. Chinese pastors living overseas seem to be among Yun’s fiercest critics. Many have been quick to believe whatever they read about him on the internet, or any gossip they hear, but few have been willing to follow the biblical principle of actually confronting him about any of his supposed sins and deceptions. Through all his experiences in the decade since leaving China, Brother Yun has remained a humble vessel, full of love and grace for his detractors and for all those he comes into contact with. Without question, God has used him powerfully, both through his book and through the more than 1,000 meetings he has preached at around the world. During a trip to Malaysia in 2004, for example, more than 1,200 people made first-time commitments to follow Jesus Christ at his meetings. By 2005, his friends and colleagues were becoming tired of the ridiculous rancour against him from the Taiwanese-German man and others, and so an article entitled ‘An Open Letter regarding the Heavenly Man’ was published on the internet that gave the background to the campaign of disinformation against him and named who was behind it. As a result,

almost immediately, the opposition to Yun died down dramatically.738 He has since continued to minister powerfully and fruitfully, and many doors of opportunity have opened to him. Since leaving China, Yun has stayed in frequent contact with his former house-church colleagues in Nanyang and other parts of the country. They love him dearly, and he misses the close fellowship he once enjoyed with his brothers and sisters in the midst of a mighty revival. Sometimes he has become frustrated with the condition of the Body of Christ in the West, but he realizes that God has called him to minister to those who are struggling and to help them to walk in closer communion with Jesus Christ. Yun is not a remarkable man but a simple man who encountered a remarkable God. Like all of us he has problems in life, but he is the first to acknowledge that he is a normal man who has weaknesses. His ministry around the world has won him both admirers and detractors in large numbers, but those who have been involved with him personally appreciate that he has been chosen and equipped by God uniquely to help the struggling church in the West by bringing to it some burning coals from the revival he grew up in in Henan. Many house-church leaders in that part of China remember Brother Yun as someone who never found anything too difficult to trust God for. His childlike faith and obedience to the living Christ have inspired many to follow him wholeheartedly.

Brother Yun praying for people in Europe

Brother Timothy The Nanyang Church has developed many godly young leaders who have spread out across China and been used by God to bring thousands to faith in Christ. These intrepid evangelists usually go out with no money or support, and have to trust God for their daily needs. Many are the testimonies they can give of God’s wonderful grace and provision. Brother Timothy is one

such young leader from Nanyang. By the time he was in his mid twenties, he already led a network of house churches spanning several provinces and including tens of thousands of believers. Timothy has experienced God’s power in a marvellous way, though he has also suffered much for his faith despite his youth. When asked to share some stories of events that have brought great glory to Jesus Christ, he recalled two instances of people being raised from the dead. The first occurred in 1991. A young boy named Li Baotang attended primary school in his village. His parents were not Christians, but his uncle was. Every time his uncle tried to share the gospel, however, his parents strongly opposed him. One day, the little boy fell very sick and became totally paralysed. Timothy recalls: We heard the news that the boy was dead. The nearest hospital was 30 kilometres [19 miles] away. The uncle came and carried the dead boy to our home, which also served as a house church. When he arrived at our door he had already been walking for an hour and it was obvious that the boy was completely dead. He had no heartbeat and his body had turned pale. The church immediately started to pray for him. After the first prayer those standing near the boy felt he had started to slightly breathe again. They laid hands on the boy’s body and prayed a second time and suddenly Li Baotang sat up, alive. This happened in my home and I witnessed it with my own eyes. Today he is about 20 years old and is preparing to be a pastor.739

Timothy’s second testimony also concerns an event in Henan Province: In 1993 I went to Biyang City to preach for the first time. I had only received a little teaching on healing. While I was speaking on the first day of a three-day meeting, I was asked to pray for a 50-year-old man named Chang, who was dying of mouth cancer. This unbeliever was very wealthy and was a well-known Communist Party secretary in Biyang. He had been transferred to the main hospital in the provincial capital, but by the time he reached Zhengzhou he had deteriorated and was close to death. He was rushed to the hospital. The staff then called Chang’s wife to break the bad news. They told her he was close to death and would not recover. Chang’s family were distraught and they made plans to travel to Zhengzhou. His wife had a Catholic friend in Biyang. She said that Christians could pray for sick people, even if they were dead. Somehow the Catholic sister found me and asked me to come and pray. Because the man was a well-known public figure, visitors who wanted to see him at the hospital had to get permission beforehand. To help me gain access, I was given the man’s name card and told to go to the hospital at a certain time. The next morning I travelled to Zhengzhou and went straight to the hospital. I was quite nervous and not sure what the Lord’s will was in all of this. At the hospital none of the staff paid any attention to me because I was just a poor farmer. Finally a nurse looked at me with disdain, and said, ‘You’re too late. Communist Party Secretary Chang died last night.’ I was shocked to hear that he was already dead, and asked where his body was because I had promised his family I would pray for him. The nurse thought I was stupid but saw my determination and told me his body was in the refrigerated morgue in the hospital basement. I went down to the basement and an attendant asked what I wanted. I told him that I needed to pray for Mr Chang. I was met with an amused look but the man took me to a line of refrigerated

boxes, located Mr Chang’s, and opened the small door. His body slid out and I saw he was truly dead. The blood had drained from his body, and his identification tag was tied around his big toe. I was very scared as I had never prayed for the sick before, let alone for a dead man. His skin was frozen and ice cold. Despite my circumstances, I knew the Lord could do whatever he wanted to do. I closed my eyes and prayed for Mr Chang. It was a simple prayer and I prayed in a hushed voice. I leaned forward and said, ‘Mr Chang, I know that you can hear me. I know that Jesus can bring you back from the dead because he wants to glorify his name in your life.’ By now, the morgue attendant had gathered several of his co-workers and they stood at a distance, sniggering at the sight of a farmer praying for a dead Communist leader. I had a very simple faith in God. I did not believe God would raise the man from the dead on that day because I thought people had to be dead for three days before they could come back alive again. I had read that both Jesus and Lazarus were resurrected after three days, so I thought if God was going to raise Mr Chang I would need to return two more times. I finished praying, thanked the workers for letting me pray for Mr Chang and told them I would be returning at 10 o’clock the next morning because I wanted to pray for him again. They laughed and looked at me like I was completely insane. The next morning, more than 20 hospital workers gathered to watch me pray for Mr Chang. News had quickly spread around the hospital and they were all eager to witness the sight so they could get a laugh. Again his body was pulled out of the refrigerator and I closed my eyes and prayed for him. He had now spent one-and-ahalf days in the freezer and was still very much dead. While I was laying hands on the corpse, I leaned forward and whispered, ‘Mr Chang, if you are unable to talk, then I command you to move your eyes in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ I looked closely and the man’s eyes twinkled a little. This greatly increased my faith because I knew that God was at work. Nobody else in the room was close enough to see his eyes move, however, and they thought the whole thing was a great joke. I prayed Bible verses out loud and asked the Lord to prove that the scriptures are true and that a dead man can come back to life in Jesus’ name. I also prayed loudly so that the others in the morgue would hear the gospel through the words I was speaking. My prayer was an evangelistic prayer, with a short summary of the message of salvation included. I held on to the promise from the Lord and kept praying for the man. After a while, the crowd were not so amused. I think they could feel the presence of the Lord and they became serious-minded and attentive. I announced that I would return again at 10 o’clock the next morning and would pray for Mr Chang for the third and final time. His body was placed back in the refrigerator, the door was locked and I walked up the stairs and returned to the place I was staying. On the third day, I was amazed to find that such a large crowd had gathered to witness my prayer that it was difficult to get past them and into the basement. Dozens of people were lining the stairs leading down to the morgue, and many more were waiting inside the room. People were talking and sniggering among themselves, but everyone was watching closely to see what would happen. The morgue attendant again produced Mr Chang’s body and I prayed for him. I asked the Lord to glorify his name by healing this man, saving his soul and the souls of the many witnesses crowded into the room. Nothing appeared to change, so I thanked the attendants and left the hospital, as I had to make my way to the train station and travel across country with a team of evangelists going to Gansu Province. I never saw what happened after I left the hospital, but a few days later the believers in Zhengzhou contacted me with an urgent message. They said that about 20 minutes after I left the hospital, the dead Mr Chang suddenly sat up and started coughing. The terrified attendant and his co-workers watched as he coughed up a large,

dirty ball of blood and puss, which was the cancer in his mouth. It spilled out of his mouth and onto the cold, hard floor of the morgue. Mr Chang was healed and alive. He asked for food and water because he was hungry and thirsty. As you could imagine, the news of Mr Chang’s miracle quickly spread to the upper floors of the hospital and all of those who had come to witness the prayer came rushing down to the basement to see if it was true. All of the hospital staff saw Mr Chang alive. His grieving wife was called to the hospital, where she received her husband back from the dead. Every single person who saw this miracle dropped to their knees and confessed that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God. In the Lord’s providence, I never witnessed Mr Chang come back to life but everybody told me about it later. I thank the Lord that I wasn’t there, because maybe all the people would have thought it was due to my own power if he had sat up while I was praying for him. By raising him from the dead after I had left, everyone clearly understood that God himself had performed a miracle, and all the glory and honour went to the Lord. When I first heard what had happened, I was pleased but did not dwell on it. It was just an act of Almighty God. In those days, the revival was burning so intensely that miracles were taking place at every single house-church meeting and thousands of people were coming to Christ every day. Miracles were not something we concentrated on, they were merely the evidences that confirmed the message we were preaching about Jesus was true. The whole Chang family came to Christ. They left Zhengzhou and went home to Biyang. I know his wife and his daughter are very strong believers today. From what I have been told, Mr Chang is still alive today, eight years later.740

The overwhelming majority of house-church Christians in Nanyang come from rural farming communities. As it is poor in economic terms, a growing number of Christians have left the area in recent years to look for work in the major cities. In many instances, these men—and sometimes women— leave their families behind but send their wages home once they find work. This new dynamic has brought fresh challenges to the house churches of Nanyang. In some places, there are few men left in the villages and the churches are filled with women and children. In 2001, Timothy voiced some of his concerns about the problems facing these churches: In the rural areas, many of the believers live in incredible poverty and hardship. Most of the brothers have no choice but to leave the farm and their families to look for work in the cities. Each farming family was required to pay an annual tax of 200 yuan [about $25]. This was impossible, even after they sold everything they were able to grow in the fields and sold all of their meagre possessions. Recently, Beijing has increased the tax to 500 yuan per family. This is more than anyone can bear. This tax is forcing all of our young men and potential leaders away from their families to the cities, which places our house churches under great pressure. This is why when you come to our meetings you will see many more sisters than there are brothers. In the cities, the brothers often have no spare time because of work, and the temptations of city life mean their spiritual relationship with the Lord suffers. The love of many people’s hearts is growing cool. Many are forsaking their first love for Jesus. Even though the ministry seems to be expanding here and there, many leaders no longer have the

time to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear his voice. The spiritual quality of the house churches is therefore decreasing.741

724 ‘Three-Self Preaching Team Sent to Henan’, China News and Church Report, no.1284 (30 November 1988) 725 Personal communication in November 2007 726 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001 727 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp37 & 40–41 728 Ibid., p164 729 Ibid., p165 730 During the interview Elder Fu pulled a roll of paper from his coat pocket that listed the names of more than 60 people he prayed for daily. 731 Personal interview with Elder Fu in July 2002 732 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp75–77 733 Some critics have attacked Yun for having this nickname, even seeing it as blasphemous. Yun, however, has always pointed out that all Christians are heavenly men or women. 734 So extraordinary was this experience that every eyewitness I interviewed almost 20 years later was reduced to tears when they remembered how Yun looked that day. 735 See ‘The Struggle for Unity’ for more information. 736 John Bevere, Drawing Near: A Life of Intimacy with God (London: Thomas Nelson, 2004), pp178–79 737 ‘An Open Letter regarding the Heavenly Man’, posted on www.asiaharvest.org 738 Ibid. 739 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001 740 Ibid. This story has been confirmed to me by several house-church believers from the area. 741 Ibid.

Chapter 28 THE BORN-AGAIN MOVEMENT (WORD OF LIFE CHURCH)

House-church believers in China frequently have lengthy prayer meetings at which they intercede passionately for their nation

O

Asian Report

ne of the largest, most influential and yet most controversial housechurch networks to emerge from Henan Province is known by a variety of names. The Chinese government has labelled it an ‘evil cult’ and call it ‘the Crying Sect’, or simply ‘the Cryers’ or ‘the Weepers’. Its own members call it Sheng Ming Zhi Dao Hui (‘Word of Life Church’). Other names given to it have been ‘Living Truth Church’, ‘Word of Truth Church’ and Quanfanwei Jiaohui, which has been translated variously as ‘Full Scope’, ‘Total Scope’ or ‘All Sphere Church’. However, most Christians inside and outside China refer to it as Chong Sheng Pai, or ‘the Born-Again Movement’. Peter Xu Yongze, its principal founder, has told me: I am grieved that we became known as a distinct group within the house-church movement in China. Outsiders commonly called us by the name Chong Sheng Pai in reference to the fact that our teaching emphasises that people must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of God. We have never accepted this name, which was manufactured by outsiders. Another name that people have given us is ‘Full Scope Church’. I also do not accept this label. If I ever have to use a name, I use the generic Sheng Ming Zhi Dao Hui, because all Christians belong to the true, living Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.742

Of all the major house-church networks in China, none seems to attract as much controversy both within and outside the Christian church as the BornAgain Movement. For years, it has been a key target of the Communist

authorities. Waves of brutal persecution have been unleashed against its members, and all manner of slanderous accusations have been levelled at them. One reason for the special hatred the government appears to have for this movement is that it is highly organized and systematically structured, with dozens of efficient training centres throughout the country that equip hundreds of new evangelists and church leaders through a variety of Bible courses. The Born-Again Movement is not afraid to make specific and ambitious plans to win people to Christ, and it generally achieves its goals. Its mission statement encapsulates its vision: With spiritual life as the foundation, Building the church is the central task. Breakthrough comes through the training of workers. Using our present locations as bases, Expanding outwards in all directions, Radiating to cover the entire country.

Inside a Typical Born-Again Meeting Many Christians who have never visited China would find it difficult to imagine a typical house-church meeting. Although meetings vary in style from place to place and from fellowship to fellowship, they are almost always marked by the tremendous intensity of the commitment and zeal shown by those who attend. In 2000, an American visitor to a Born-Again Movement leaders’ meeting in Henan Province summed up some of his impressions of the gathering: This was a time of retreat and refreshing for them and a hardship tour for me. We started before 6:00 each morning and finishing between 10:30 and 11:00 each night. I probably taught a little over ten hours of that time each day. We took time out to eat three meals a day, which we ate in the training room. The men also slept in the training room. The rest of the time was spent in prayer and singing. They usually stand to sing. Whenever they sit, it is on short stools about six inches high. The morning prayer is the longest and averages about two hours in length. Morning prayers are always done kneeling on the concrete floor. I must confess that I had to stand and stretch every ten or fifteen minutes. They often weep during their prayers and rolls of toilet paper are available to use, although some people don’t bother and blow their nose directly on the floor so it can become quite a mess after a while. When standing to pray (later in the day) they sometimes direct everyone to raise their hands. Again, their endurance put me to shame. Some of these prayers lasted up to 30 minutes during which they would never lower their arms. I had to rest my arms every few minutes.

They pray with great fervour and focus. I would say that their prayer times are a primary method they use to communicate ethos and passion, as well as to teach. The prayers and songs, and I presume sometimes the testimonies or teaching, are contributed by any member as he or she feels led by the Spirit. They usually read Scriptures in unison. The original plan was for me to teach that group for only one day, but they kept extending it until I insisted I should leave.743

Fuelled by this kind of fervour for the things of the Lord, it is little wonder that the Born-Again Movement has been able to win millions of people for Christ all across China.

The Early 1980s: A Brutal Beginning Throughout the 1970s, the church that later came to be known as the BornAgain Movement was essentially a small network of house fellowships in the south of Henan Province, started by Peter Xu Yongze and his coworkers.744 There was no thought of establishing any kind of organized church in those days. The fire of the gospel was spreading rapidly from family to family, village to village, and the Christians were busy trying to keep track of all the wonderful things God was doing. Peter Xu came to be recognized as the principal leader of the movement almost by default. He had made a firm commitment to preach the gospel publicly in 1968, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. His bold stance and his knowledge of the Bible won him the respect of other Christians, who naturally gravitated towards his leadership. Xu came from a well-to-do family in Zhenping County, where both his parents were schoolteachers and he had enjoyed a good education. His ability to analyse situations and present the truth won him great respect among his peers, most of whom were uneducated farmers. The origin of the Born-Again Movement could be traced back to 1982, when the churches in southern Henan decided to send a team of 17 young evangelists to the neighbouring province of Sichuan. (Previously, their work had been confined to their home province, but this was the start of what was to become a nationwide ministry.) After arriving in Sichuan, the evangelists spread out into different counties. God did a wonderful work, and many people gave their lives to Christ. The authorities responded with a severe persecution, and 13 of the evangelists were caught and badly beaten. When the 17 returned to Henan, battered and bruised, on 13 August 1982, Xu and four colleagues went to the railway station in Zhenping to welcome them home. There the police pounced on them and dragged them to the local station, where they were cruelly beaten for weeks. Xu and the others

were then sent to prison. Undeterred, the church regrouped and dispatched more workers to Sichuan to replace those who had returned. Over time, their courage and persistence brought in a great harvest of souls for the Kingdom of God. In 1983, a widespread crackdown on criminals resulted in the arrest and ill-treatment of hundreds of house-church leaders. Hundreds more fled to other provinces, where they had to remain constantly on the move while the authorities were hunting them. With hindsight, we can see that God used the persecution of 1983 to give many of these leaders a nationwide vision for the salvation of China. During the summer of that year, many Christians took refuge in the mountains of Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces and in so doing spread the flame of the gospel to those areas. Within two years, the Born-Again Movement had expanded from a church based predominantly in Henan to one that was sending teams of workers to such far-distant parts of China as Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Guizhou and Heilongjiang. In August 1983, Xu felt led by the Lord to write a booklet which he titled ‘Building Up the Chinese House Church’. The contents of this widely circulated document can be summarized as seven main points: 1. We will preach the salvation of the Cross. Those who accept Jesus must clearly understand the salvation of the Cross. Believers must experience true repentance through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. They must experience true peace that comes from forgiveness, so that they are truly delivered from the power of sin. When believers preach, they should be able to give a clear testimony of God’s grace and salvation in their own lives. 2. We must walk the way of the Cross. After a person clearly understands that he has been saved, he should learn to deny himself through Bible reading and prayer. He should follow the Lord on the way of the Cross, becoming a dedicated disciple. He should learn to consider suffering as a weapon for the Lord, willing to serve and suffer with Christ, overcoming all struggles through the victory of the Cross. We must continue to proclaim the gospel, despite persecution. This is the secret of victory for Jesus—walking in the way of the Cross. 3. We must realize that the Three-Self Patriotic Movement is a harlot church. We must keep ourselves separate from all misrepresentations of Christ’s Body on the earth. All the house-church members should be fully

aware that the TSPM is not a church but a political organization set up to serve the atheistic government. It is used as a tool to persecute the house churches. Therefore, we should refuse to join the TSPM. 4. We must establish the Church according to biblical principles. The Church is the Body of Christ and not a building. The true Church is a group of believers who are truly saved and who serve the Lord together according to the various gifts he has given us. We must trumpet the truth, while being aware of the tricks of the TSPM. We must use the gifts of life and truth to build up Christ’s Body. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the Church and he desires that we unite with one another. Through many tests and trials we will be aware which co-workers have a faithful heart like our Heavenly Father. Then we can appoint these faithful co-workers to different areas of service and ministry. 5. We must nurture the spiritual life of all churches. We should show mercy and serve each other practically. God told us, ‘Feed my sheep.’ We must be faithful in prayer meetings, Bible studies, revival meetings and pastoral care, so that we can build up the flock and provide spiritual food according to the different needs in the house churches. 6. There must be good communication between all the leaders and coworkers. We must visit all those elderly, suffering believers who have blazed the way for us. We will establish communication meetings—in accordance with Ephesians 4—where we can talk about our differences with meekness and humility. We should visit and have fellowship with those who have suffered much in the past, so we can learn from them. We should record their testimonies so that new believers can be encouraged by their godly example. 7. We must be faithful in outreach and evangelism, fulfilling the Great Commission, to reach the one billion people in China. God needs pioneer workers, those who are willing to go to unreached areas. We have a burden for our fellow countrymen, and so we are eager to preach the gospel everywhere. We will hold meetings, inviting our relatives and neighbours so they can hear the gospel. We encourage believers to go and visit their friends and relatives in other provinces so that many new churches will be established.

Bible Training and Seminaries

Xu and his leadership team soon saw the need to develop a system that would enable them to provide a theological foundation for the thousands of new believers in their churches, as well as more extensive training for those called to the ministry. As David Aikman points out, Xu thought that, in the excitement about all of the healing miracles apparently taking place, China’s house church networks were not doing enough to disciple and develop solid Christian lives among the new converts. Xu focused on building up a network of Christians that, in his view, were really attentive to a repentant, moral lifestyle.745

After their evangelistic teams returned to Henan, they were desperate for fellowship and keen to learn more of God’s word before heading back into the field. As a result, the first training school was held. Xu recalls: Our first retreat had four teachers. They poured their lives into the returned evangelists, feeding their weary spirits, souls and bodies. The evangelists returned to their work with renewed vision and sharper weapons for the fight. News of these special seminaries spread rapidly throughout China, and soon many of our workers asked if they could attend the classes. We determined in our hearts to serve these brothers and sisters as if we were serving the Lord Jesus. We established a number of different types of training meetings to meet different needs. The running expenses of the schools came from donations from Christians all over China. Some gave money or sacks of food, while others donated their time to serve the students and teachers. The Lord showed us we should conduct a variety of training schools to meet the needs of the Church. Here is an outline of different training courses we have available: Evangelistic meetings. During three days and nights we cover the basics of the Bible, introducing unbelievers to the gospel and discussing simple topics such as where people come from and where they are going after they die. Our aim is to show unbelievers the purpose of life and their need for Christ’s salvation. Most of the people who come to these meetings realize they are lost and give their lives to the Lord. People who wish to attend an evangelistic meeting need to be invited by a Christian, who has first prayed and discerned that each individual is a genuine seeker. Those who are invited must first agree to certain conditions before they will be accepted. These include that they will remain on the property where the meeting is being held for the entire duration, and that they will come with a serious mind to study and learn. Life meetings. Seven-day meetings for those who desire further understanding of the Bible. In Life meetings we cover topics such as the creation of the world, the fall of Man, the judgement of God and the sacrificial love and redemption of Jesus Christ. These meetings help people to receive the life of God into their hearts, to be forgiven for their sins and to be born again by the Spirit of God. Leaders of a Life meeting usually fast and pray for three days before it begins, asking God to remove any sin or attitude that may dilute the power of their message, and asking God to sanctify their teaching so that the Holy Spirit might change the lives of those who attend. Truth meetings. These range from seven to 15 days’ duration. In the Truth meetings we teach more detailed biblical principles. These are designed to help people become disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. We teach the seven principles of the house churches, explain why we do not register our churches with the government, and cover other matters of interest. By the end of these meetings our aim is that students would have a clear understanding of God’s grace and love and be able to discern God’s calling in their lives.

Short training class. Ranging from 21 to 40 days in length, these classes emphasize the life and parables of Jesus Christ, his miracles, death and resurrection, and his Second Coming. These short courses are for people wanting to go deeper in their walk with God and preparing them to be ministers of the gospel. We examine 151 chapters of the Bible that deal with the life and teaching of Jesus, and have detailed question and response times. Students are required to memorize certain passages from the Bible. In all these classes we are open to the direction of the Holy Spirit and do not stick to a rigid schedule. Sometimes the Lord leads us into times of deep prayer and intercession, other times to heartfelt debate and discussion. This class has an emphasis on two-way interaction between students and teachers. Those students who graduate from the Short Training Class are then qualified to assist the leaders of the Life and Truth meetings. First-stage theological seminary. Only those who have graduated from the previous classes are permitted to attend our deeper theological seminaries. Students must have completed at least six to 12 months of service in their local church before they are allowed to come. Each student must bring a work report card, filled in and signed by his or her pastor. The first-stage seminaries last for three to four months and are geared for people who believe they have a serious call to be fulltime ministry leaders. By ‘full-time’ we do not mean paid workers. All of our workers are volunteers. We teach on the various trials and difficulties that are likely to occur in the ministry. All the students and faculty live together, eat together and pray together. We closely examine each student, seeing if they are ready for the rigours of ministry. At the conclusion of the seminary only the most outstanding students graduate, while others are encouraged to go home and prepare more if they want to become full-time ministers. Those who graduate are qualified to teach in Truth meetings and the Short Training Class. Second-stage theological seminary. After the graduates from the first-stage seminary have spent one to one-and-a-half years in full-time ministry work, they are able to attend the second-stage seminary, which lasts from between six to 11 months. In this seminary we study each of the 66 books of the Bible, examining the background, history, main themes, key verses and so on, of each book. In this class we use textbooks that have been printed inside China. Because all of the students involved in this second-stage seminary have already tasted full-time ministry, I believe the lessons they learn are able to be better applied to their lives, because they come aware of the kind of spiritual depth they need in order to minister the gospel effectively in today’s China. Third-stage theological seminary and other advanced classes. There are other advanced training classes that we first established in 1991. These include training for workers who are called to be missionaries as part of the Back to Jerusalem mission. The classes last about four months and teach subjects such as cross-cultural communication, foreign language learning, a history of missions and how to cooperate with overseas churches. There is a different teacher for each week of the class, so we need to find 16 teachers on specialized subjects. The teachers usually come in pairs and stay for two weeks with the students, sharing teaching responsibilities for that time. Overall, there are 10 different training levels we have available in our church. If someone were to do all of them consecutively it could take several years of study. Throughout China we currently have dozens of training centres. Thousands of men and women have been trained and equipped for the Lord’s work. Without these God-given strategies, I have no doubt the church would have struggled to advance, and believers would not have matured into the disciples they are today.746

One of the strongest supporters of the Born-Again Movement throughout the 1980s and ’90s was the late Jonathan Chao, the head of China Ministries International. Chao, who was widely respected around the world as a balanced commentator on Chinese Christianity, defended the movement against charges of heresy. He wrote: The Life meetings of Peter Xu’s church are a marvellous way of giving enquirers and new believers a thorough grounding in the entire plan of salvation from Genesis to Revelation with opportunity to respond in prayer and confession to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. There are many people in China who have turned to God through radio ministry or through signs and wonders, but who have not heard the gospel in its entirety. These meetings bring them to knowledge of their sinfulness together with an understanding of the Atonement and appreciation of God’s love as expressed in Christ’s death. I have not found this type of evangelistic meeting anywhere else in China. It is like the apostolic preaching of the cross and is presented by those who have dedicated themselves to its preaching. The changed lives bear witness to the working of the Holy Spirit. No wonder people want their relatives to attend them, even though they have to wait their turn. No wonder the gospel is spreading like wild fire throughout many parts of China. This is why the demand for such evangelists far exceeds the number available. After my field trip I have come to appreciate the ministry of this group. It seems that their critics have not been there to see themselves and have therefore based their criticisms upon rumours. In view of this I would encourage people to be absolutely sure of the facts before labelling such groups as heretical. I personally look forward to the time when I can attend one of these Life Meetings and be revived by the Holy Spirit.747

Deborah Xu Yongling

Peter and Deborah Xu, partners in the gospel for many years, on the Great Wall of China

One of the most joyful, determined and bold Christian leaders to emerge from Henan Province is Deborah Xu Yongling, the younger sister of Peter Xu Yongze. Born in 1946, she grew up close to her brother, and the two later became the most easily identifiable leaders of the Born-Again Movement. Peter Xu says this of his beloved sister: ‘I have always had a precious and close relationship with [her]. We have never argued or spoken

harshly to each other. By the tender mercies of our Lord, Yongling grew up to become my close co-worker in the gospel.’748 Later, during the years her brother was in prison, Deborah Xu was elected to lead the movement by its 15 regional leaders. Her infectious zeal has attracted many to Christ. At the age of 17 she had already made a firm commitment to the Lord to remain single for the rest of her life and devote herself to his service. Other women in the church have also accepted this call and stayed single. Her brother recalled: Once, when Yongling was still a teenager, I looked inside her Bible. She had written her vow to the Lord inside the cover, promising to remain married to the Lord Jesus for the rest of her life and never to give her body to a man. When I read these words, I was moved to tears. I told her I supported her decision. In the 1970s, many single men were attracted to my sister because of her purity and holiness. They could see that she was a special lady, and numerous suitors tried to win her attention. They all failed, however. Her heart already belonged to another—the Lord Jesus.749

In the early 1970s, Deborah Xu was often interrogated by the military police. The Communist Party secretary of the local community, a man named Gua, put a lot of pressure on her, wanting to marry her off to one of his relatives. When she refused, it enraged both him and his wife, who treated her harshly. Gua, who was also the head of the work unit, made her toil in the fields every day. She was given the same quota to fulfil as the men, but did the work without complaining. She had to be careful what she said and did, as the village secretary was always looking for an opportunity to send her away in revenge for rejecting his approach. One day, he decided that she should face a public trial. He was eager to invent some lies about her so that she could be sent to prison. A stage was erected and hundreds of people came to accuse her of all manner of made-up crimes. The young Christian woman was not anxious, however. She sat down and meditated upon the Lord, submitting her heart to God regardless of what would ensue. She felt no fear. Gua stood on the platform and lambasted Deborah with vile words. While he was speaking, half a dozen officials arrived by bicycle. They were wearing white uniforms, indicating their high rank. Everyone took it as a bad omen for the accused, as only the worst kind of criminals could bring these men out of their offices. The officials climbed onto the platform, and the secretary stopped his tirade. One of the men shouted to the crowd: ‘In your work unit there is one very bad person who has caused a great

disturbance and brought shame on you all. Today we are going to expose and root out this bad element.’ Deborah continued sitting on the ground with her head bowed, silently praying to the Lord. The village secretary, though surprised by the unannounced arrival of these high-ranking officials, was pleased they had come. It meant that the young Christian woman was in deep trouble. The official went on: ‘The evil person we have come to punish today is not a stranger to any of you. His name is Secretary Gua.’ Deborah could not believe her ears. She thanked the Lord for delivering her, and her heart burst with joy. Gua was put on trial on the very platform he had had erected for her. The local believers could not help but think of the biblical story of Haman, who was hanged from the very gallows he had built for Mordecai’s execution, as recorded in the Book of Esther. Many years later, both Gua and his wife were to give their lives to Jesus Christ and become his disciples. Gua’s heart, once so full of hate, was to be a living sacrifice to our Lord. For more than four decades, Deborah Xu has continued to serve Jesus Christ faithfully throughout China. Several times she has been imprisoned, but her zeal for the lost has never dimmed. She was one of the first 17 evangelists sent to Sichuan in 1982, who brought tremendous revival to many areas. Thousands of men and women across the country have been personally led to faith in Christ by this firebrand of a woman. At the same time, she has been subjected to a good deal of criticism and scorn from both inside and outside the church. She has not allowed these attacks to affect her, however, and has always been quick to forgive. Humble and selfeffacing by nature, she is reluctant to talk about herself, but loves to talk about the Lord. She is an encyclopaedia of testimonies of what God has done in China, and seems to be especially fond of incidents with a humorous element. For example, in 2003 she told me how one housechurch training school in Henan had gone undetected for years despite being located just down the street from a police station. She said: We have held meetings here for eight years without any trouble from the police. We train as many as 80 believers at one time, for a period of three months. One day, a man who lives next door to the training school noticed large numbers of people entering the house, yet never saw them leave. He got suspicious and started to record how many people came in and how many went out of the entrance. One day soon after he started doing this, the Lord struck him so that he was unable to count or write any more.

Another neighbour grew suspicious of what was happening in our training school, so he climbed onto his roof to get a better view into our courtyard. He slipped and fell off his roof and broke his leg. Since then, we have had no problems.750

On 24 January 2004, Deborah Xu, then 58 years old, was arrested in Nanyang. She was sleeping on the second floor of her niece’s home when two female officers burst into the house and seized her. She was taken to an undisclosed location and interrogated by the police; but Christians around the world prayed for her, and she was released eight weeks later. The following year, she joined her brother and her sister-in-law as a religious refugee in America, where she continues to share the gospel enthusiastically amongst the Chinese community and to help many to come to know the Saviour of the world.

The Fire Continues to Burn The Born-Again Movement continued to grow throughout the 1980s and into the early ’90s as revival swept many parts of China. Thousands of house churches were established, and areas of Henan were so thoroughly evangelized that it was difficult to find anyone in some counties who had yet to hear a clear presentation of the gospel. Peter Xu has noted: Sometimes I have been asked to explain how our church in China grew so large, as though I had some secret strategy or formula that unlocked God’s revival. The truth is that the church grew as God wanted it to. In fact, most of the growth took place during times I was in prison. A true work of the Holy Spirit does not depend on the gifts and abilities of a few individuals. If it does, it will not last long.751

Xu, who had been arrested in 1988 when he tried to call on the American evangelist Billy Graham in Beijing,752 was released from prison in 1991. For three years he had received little news about the progress of the BornAgain Movement, and things had changed so rapidly that he did not know many of the new leaders who had emerged during his absence. On his first day of freedom, he was taken by his sister to meet some of the housechurch leaders in that area. He recalls: Most of them were young men who had never met me. It had been 10 long years since I had been able to minister in Nanyang. I was so glad that they warmly welcomed me and treated me with respect. There have been other house-church leaders in China who spent so long in prison that after they were released a whole new generation of leaders had risen up in their place, and the old leader had been long forgotten and was not appreciated any more. As news of my release spread through the church, a nationwide leaders’ meeting was arranged in Nanyang. The leaders of each of the seven regional teams came from all across China, and we worshipped and made strategic plans together for 15 days. Most of the leaders were different from the ones I had known previously. I noticed that many of the new leaders had been among

the 17 young evangelists who had first gone to Sichuan in 1982. That team had come home bloodied and battered, but God had seen the purity of their sacrifice and had promoted them into key leadership positions. The church was growing rapidly in areas where little had happened before my imprisonment. The three North-East China provinces, formerly known as Manchuria, had maturing churches with many thousands of believers. In 1992, I saw the first signs that our vision to take the gospel to the minority groups of China and beyond our borders was being realized. That year we held four foreign-language classes, where evangelists were trained in Mongolian, Russian, Korean and English to help further the advance of the gospel.753

The Born-Again Movement is Labelled an ‘Evil Cult’ The Chinese government became increasingly afraid of the Born-Again Movement because of its highly organized methods and the tremendous success its evangelists seemed to enjoy wherever they went. Severe persecution had done little to stop the progress of the movement, so in the late 1990s a new tactic was employed in an attempt to stall it. The rearrest of Peter Xu in 1997 provoked an international outcry against China. Diplomats, human-rights organizations and the media all took Beijing to task over its treatment of the evangelist. In response—with Xu behind bars and therefore unable to answer—the authorities spread a succession of allegations about him and his church movement. Beginning with articles published in Tianfeng, the official magazine of the Three-Self Church in China, Xu was branded a heretic and the Born-Again Movement a cult. At the same time, the government began a sustained clampdown on the movement, invoking a new law against ‘evil cults’ to try to crush it once and for all. Initially, the principal criticism against the movement concerned its overemphasis on crying. It was claimed that it taught that a person must cry for days to prove they had truly repented, otherwise they could not be saved. Some people who had followed Christ for years had reportedly been told that their salvation was not genuine if they had not cried at the time they received Christ. Rumours circulated among other Christian groups in China about secret rituals lasting for days in dark rooms at which people were whipped up into an emotional frenzy so that they would cry and shout to the Lord. Some who were unable to cry had even (it was said) been physically beaten by leaders, in an attempt to ‘help’ them to gain their salvation. These allegations all contributed to a general perception that the BornAgain Movement was either an out-and-out cult or, at best, a borderline

church that merited deep suspicion. Some other house-church networks, perhaps angered by incidents of the Born-Again Movement ‘stealing’ their sheep, were quick to believe the accusations. On the other hand, some conservative Western evangelical Christians who had intimate knowledge of the Born-Again Movement and its leaders defended them strongly against these attacks. In the forefront of the detractors of Xu and his church was Han Wenzao, the head of the government-approved China Christian Council. Han claimed that Xu had been arrested not on account of his faith but for ‘criminal activities under the cloak of religion’. He issued a lengthy statement that was a mixture of outright lies and more subtle deception. It asked: Why has Xu Yongze been detained? What kind of person is he? In the early 1980s, Xu Yongze split from the ‘Shouters’ sect and illegally built up the so-called ‘Full-Scope’ heretical church. He claims that crying is the only true mark of the Spirit, that people should cry when they pray, cry when they meet, and cry when they worship. He once said something to the effect that ‘You need to cry and sob out loud, for only then can you be reborn to salvation.’ He also wantonly made speeches about the end of the world being nigh and disaster imminent, thereby confusing and poisoning people’s minds. He would bring people together illegally so as to stir up his gullible listeners and encourage them not to continue with their daily work and lives but instead gather them together every day in one place to cry hysterically. This resulted in many people losing their minds and losing control of their lives, causing great harm to their mental and physical health and seriously affecting the life and work of the people around them. … As for his declaration concerning the ‘end of the world’, this is exactly in line with other false heretical teachings around the world at this present time. These actions by Xu Yongze completely depart from Biblical teaching and the Christian path of truth, and are simply not Christian at all. In recent years, his activities have grown increasingly more unscrupulous and have intensified, posing an even greater threat to society. Thus, in March, Public Security authorities in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province took Xu Yongze into detention in full accordance with the law as laid down in the ‘Regulations for the Management of the Registration of Social Organizations’ and the ‘Regulations on Punishments for Infringements of Public Order’ of the People’s Republic of China. Could this kind of person ever be called a ‘famous religious personality’? As to his detention, it is by no means some form of persecution on the part of the Chinese government but only a routine criminal case. This past year, the US and the Japanese governments have both taken severe legal measures against the heretical Branch Davidian and Aum Shinrikyo sects respectively, employing helicopters and armoured cars in order to intervene. Why then can China not carry out the detention and investigation of Xu Yongze? Why is a double standard being applied to pass judgment on certain incidents?754

In comparing Peter Xu and the Born-Again Movement with David Koresh and the Branch Davidian sect in America of which 82 members were burned to death in 1993, and with the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan which came to prominence after a poisonous gas attack on the Tokyo subway system killed twelve and injured more than 5,000 others, the Chinese

government had clearly gone to new lengths in its decades-long campaign against Xu and the church he led. If it could not defeat them by force alone, it would try also to discredit them through lies. By launching this new propaganda tactic, the government attempted to change the perception that Xu was a prisoner of conscience—a hero of the faith—and to reduce him to the rank of a dirty criminal and dangerous heretic. It is no coincidence that the attacks on his character came at the start of his prison sentence, when Xu was unable to reply to the accusations levelled against him. A number of outrageous accusations were made against the leaders of the Born-Again Movement. One Communist Party member claimed: Xu Yongze has been getting more and more unorthodox in recent years, as well as abusing his power within his own movement. Other house churches have called him a cult leader. There is evidence that some of his followers are total charlatans who have been hiding lights up their sleeves and then shining them in dark, crowded rooms as ‘the light of the Spirit’.755

In 2001, I met with all the senior leaders of the Born-Again Movement and specifically mentioned this charge about hiding lights up their sleeves. None of them had ever heard it before—it was apparently only reported overseas —but they all burst out laughing when I repeated it to them. They assured me that nothing of the sort had ever happened and that they would never tolerate such a thing. Although Han’s statement convinced many that Xu’s imprisonment was an act of law enforcement rather than of religious persecution, other Christian leaders defended Xu strongly and denounced the attack on him as baseless slander. The late Jonathan Chao wrote an article that exposed the errors in Han’s accusations. He explained: Shedding tears or crying during prayers of confession and even regular praying is a common phenomenon among most house churches, especially those in Henan. It is true that Xu’s group cry often during prayers, but they have never required crying as a requirement for being saved. This is a slander made by Han and by others who are not so friendly to Xu. But crying cannot be made a standard for determining a heretical leader. Preaching the second coming of Christ is part of the Christian faith. It is a mark of orthodoxy, and not heterodoxy. Disbelief in the second coming of Christ and the ending of the world makes one a heretic. However, Xu’s group seldom preaches on the end of the world. Their emphasis is on the salvation of the cross, emphasizing repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ as the condition for being born again. … In view of this analysis, Han’s charges have no grounds. This is real slander. Han’s statement is intended to counter overseas opinion that the arrest of Xu has been cited as an evidence of religious persecution in China. His intent obviously is to relegate Xu to the category of a heretical group which conducts illegal activities and thereby deserves political action. … The Christian world must not be fooled by the deceit of Han Wenzao, who is not an ordained minister of the gospel. He has been doing political work for TSPM for more than four decades. Many people in China believe that he is a high-ranking Communist Party member. Now he has

replaced Bishop Ding as the head of the China Christian Council. He can speak with authority for the Party, but is not qualified to speak on church affairs or evaluate orthodox theology according to Scripture. Christians around the world must continue to pray for the release of Xu Yongze and pray against the slanders now being spread by Han Wenzao.756

The Christian ministry Compass Direct also came to Xu’s defence: Stung by international criticism of China’s religious rights record, China’s most senior church official, Dr Han Wenzao, Chairman of the China Christian Council, vehemently denied on June 23 that the arrest and detention of famous house church evangelist Xu Yongze in March was an act of religious persecution. Seventy-four-year-old Han argued that Xu was ‘basically not a Christian at all,’ but a heretic, comparing him to America’s David Koresh, and added that Xu was arrested as part of a ‘normal procedure for dealing with illegality,’ presumably because his house church was unregistered. Evangelical China watcher Dr Jonathan Chao described Han’s attack on Xu as ‘real slander,’ saying the statement was carefully designed to criminalize Xu so that his prosecution would not appear to be on religious charges. Compass China analyst Paul Davenport agrees: ‘By saying Xu is not a Christian, the Three-Self are washing their hands of him … there is no way they will defend him from the government now.’757

Brent Fulton of the Institute for Chinese Studies believed that the BornAgain Movement was one of the most conservative and fundamentally evangelical of the house-church networks in China. He also thought highly of Xu, declaring: ‘He is caring, very sincere. He is smart in a strategic sense. He knows how to organize a huge band of evangelists.’758 Unlike most of the accusers, who have not bothered to meet Xu or visit any of his congregations, Chao had personally attended Born-Again training sessions so that he could judge their beliefs and practices for himself. His findings had been published four years earlier in 1993: Life Meetings constitute the basic ministry of this group and are similar to the revival meetings conducted by John Sung during the 1930s. … The meetings are conducted as retreats for 20–30 people lasting for three to six days depending on local circumstances. The retreat format is used so that the enquirers may be exposed to an undisturbed and continuous period of instruction in the Biblical teachings of salvation. … The meetings begin at around five o’clock in the morning with prayer and end at half past eight or nine o’clock at night, with two meals a day. The rest of the time is spent on praying, singing or preaching. The content of the teaching in these Life Meetings covers God’s entire plan of salvation. … Throughout this process, the emphasis is on sin and the love of God expressed through Jesus and His work on the cross. During these sessions the people come under the illumination and conviction of the Holy Spirit and start to confess their sins before God. They cry out in repentance and confess their sins, item by item before God. In some cases this is done with loud crying and beating of the chest. At this point the leaders stop preaching and let the Holy Spirit do His work. The evangelists never require anyone to see light or hear a voice in order to be saved [as some have claimed]. The audience is instructed that if the Spirit of God illuminates them and convicts them, they should come to Him in humility, confess their sins, and turn to Christ.

This confessing process usually takes two to three hours depending on the person, during which time they often cry because of the realization of their sinfulness. This is not the only time when crying occurs however. It also happens when the love of God is presented to them. They begin to cry especially when they hear about the suffering of Christ on the Cross. This is because they realize that their sins caused the death of Jesus and that he died for them. This crying is a result of a deep appreciation of God’s love and Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. The third time people cry is at the end of the retreat when they begin to feel a heavy burden for their unsaved friends and relatives. They then spend many hours praying for these unsaved ones often with weeping. There have been reports that people at these meetings cried non-stop for three days. However, this is not the case, as there are periods of worship and listening to the Word of God being preached in between the times mentioned above. After this field trip I have come to appreciate the ministry of this group. It seems that their critics had not been there to see for themselves and had therefore based their criticisms upon rumours. In view of this I would encourage people to be absolutely aware of the facts before labelling such groups as heretical.759

Those with the closest relationship to the Born-Again Movement have said that the leadership completely renounced and rejected the ‘crying doctrine’ and earnestly taught their followers to correct the error. However, many observers believe that in a huge network of millions of believers it is not possible to influence all of the lower levels of the movement, where this extreme doctrine was reportedly taught.760 David Aikman notes that both Xu and his sister ‘insist that weeping was not considered a theological requirement of Christian salvation. But enough lower-level leaders of the Born-Again Movement emphasized the weeping requirement to convince outsiders that weeping had acquired a sort of theological value.’761 Many investigators have found the vast majority of believers in this movement to be totally committed to Jesus Christ, to the Bible and to evangelism and church planting across China and beyond. When Xu finally emerged from prison in 2000, he discovered that there had been a fundamental change in people’s perception of him. Many now doubted his credentials as a Christian leader, and suspicions abounded regarding the ‘crying heresy’ and other issues. When I interviewed him in 2003, I asked him specifically to respond to these charges. He said: One of the strangest accusations that has been levelled against us, and me personally, is that we are the ‘Crying cult’. This stemmed from a lie first circulated in China by the Three-Self Church magazine that we teach that if anyone wants to be saved, he or she must first cry for three days and three nights. Let me clearly state that this is absolutely ridiculous. I have never taught any such thing, nor have I preached anything that could possibly be construed that way. If this were true, then I would not be saved myself. I sometimes weep before the Lord, especially during times of intercession, but these are not often and may last for a few minutes, not three

days and nights. Perhaps once or twice I may have made some people cry because my preaching went on too long. Now, I should say that it is true that people in our meetings often weep before the Lord when the Holy Spirit touches them and convicts them of sin. But never have we said this is a requirement for salvation or that people need to do it to obtain some kind of level of spirituality. We have always held that it is only by the grace of God, through faith, that a person can be saved. Nothing else. Certainly not by crying. When this lie was first invented, it spread throughout China like wildfire. Some house churches that we had not been closely connected to for a number of years also started to believe it, and the rumour spread even further. Troubled by the accusations, I called a meeting of all our regional leaders. Every one of them assured me they had never taught such a foolish thing, and never would. Just to make sure, I sent a letter to all the leaders in our churches, notifying them of what others were saying, and charging them not to teach anything that could possibly be construed as giving support to the so-called crying doctrine. I knew that we were absolutely innocent of such ludicrous charges. It was clear that there were people set on making trouble for us by spreading such nonsense. We prayed together and committed it to the Lord. We determined in our hearts not to lose our joy or to diverge from our focus and call—to preach the gospel to all people and to build up the Body of Christ. Another false charge against us—commonly accepted by many—is that we are part of the ‘Shouters’ sect. This is the nickname given to one part of the Local Church in China, because of their practice of shouting scriptures aloud in unison. Again, just how we ever came to be accused of being connected to the Shouters is a mystery. We have never had anything to do with them whatsoever. The charge that our church was part of the Shouters first surfaced in an issue of Tianfeng, the official magazine of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. It is completely without basis.762

Under Fire from Within The new strategy employed by the government and the Three-Self Church to discredit Xu and the Born-Again Movement would not have had much success if their lies had not been believed by some members of the Body of Christ. There were Christians, both inside and outside China, who gave credence to the accusations by repeating them as fact. To this day, there are many in the worldwide church who still regard Xu as the leader of a cult. Few of his detractors have the courage to meet him, however, and few have any personal knowledge of his beliefs or the practices of his movement.763 By the start of the 21st century, many of his wounds were being inflicted from within the church, as verbal darts rained down on him from the mouths of other Christians. The irony of the charge that the Born-Again Movement is a cult is that theologically it probably has the most conservative evangelical doctrine of any of the large house-church networks in China today. The largest evangelical denomination in America, the Southern Baptists, have been

comfortable working with the movement in the past because they have so much in common—not least a belief in the doctrine of eternal security (‘once saved, always saved’). One Pentecostal writer sums the movement up as follows: [They] represent an interesting mixture of conservative theology and experiential piety. They expect to see miracles, pray for healing, and look to the Holy Spirit for supernatural guidance and deliverance. At the same time, they are generally quite closed to some manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit, such as prophecy and tongues. … The first time I met Xu he was on his way to try to raise from the dead one of his workers who had suddenly died.764

Three elderly Chinese house-church leaders believed the accusations against Xu and the Born-Again Movement to be true, and together they wrote a booklet to ‘expose’ it as a cult. The authors were Pastor Samuel Lamb, Li Tian’en and Moses Xie. Each of these men had spent 20 years or more in prison for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In response to their booklet, Xu said: I was advised to travel to Guangzhou to meet with Samuel Lamb … A mutual friend wanted me to go and defend my reputation and explain our position to him. After much prayer, I felt that there was no point in trying to defend my reputation. When we are attacked and slandered, it is always a temptation to want to rise up and show everyone the truth, trying to clear our name in the process. Our sinful nature hates it when our reputation is questioned, because to a selfcentred person, reputation is very important. I have completely forgiven these men of God. The booklet did not reduce the respect I hold towards these men. China owes much to these gospel warriors.765

An outdoor house-church meeting

The Persecution Intensifies This new campaign to criminalize the Born-Again Movement brought massive suffering upon its members, and especially its leaders, in the years following 1997. By the start of the 21st century, more than 300 of its leaders were in prison, and 6–700 of its members had been permanently crippled or mentally scarred by persecution and torture, which made them unable to continue in Christian ministry.766

Between December 2002 and April 2003, a large number of members of the Born-Again Movement in Henan were arrested. The South China Morning Post reported: ‘Meetings of church followers in Chuandong, Qiliping, and Xiaguang Townships were raided and 176 followers “dealt with” on December 27 and January 6.’767 Earlier, just before Christmas 2002, the police in Luyi County raided a meeting in the home of Cui Xiuhong. Thirteen Christians were taken to the Wangpiliu police station, where they were separately beaten and tortured.768 On 9 February 2003, three believers who had been arrested many times before—Shao Ziying, Zhao Xiurong and Jing Diying—were seized during a meeting at Shao’s home. The chief of the police broke through the door and howled: ‘You guys again! You still haven’t changed after several arrests!’769 The three men were threatened and obliged to pay a fine, but they boldly continued their meetings as soon as they were able to. Two days later, more than 60 members of the movement were rounded up by over a hundred PSB officers who surrounded their meeting place in Yiyang County.770 Subsequently, on 27 February, a church leader named Yang Gongchan from the city of Gongyi was seized at his home and taken to the Baitupo detention centre. During his interrogation, ‘the police flogged him using a whip to make him confess.’771 The attacks continued. During the night of 27 April, four police cars and a truck drove into the village of Fanpo near Yuzhou and made their way to the home of Zhang Zhongfang. There, officers arrested 15 believers who had gathered for fellowship and Bible study, including Zhang Fan, their hostess, who protested with a quavering voice: ‘We didn’t do anything wrong. We just believe in Jesus…’ Before she could finish, a policeman picked up a stick and struck her. He and his colleagues then kicked and pushed her into the truck and ordered her to be silent. Two other Christians were dragged into a car and beaten up.772

The Growth and Fragmentation of the BornAgain Movement From its humble beginnings during the Cultural Revolution, when Peter Xu Yongze and other preachers in southern Henan refused to remain silent, the Born-Again Movement grew to embrace millions of believers by the late 1980s. Thousands of churches were planted in a relatively short time. There have been some wildly divergent estimates of how many members the

movement had at its strongest point, ranging from just a few million to 10 million in 1997,773 and on up to 23 million.774 The truth is that even its leaders do not know, as Xu has explained: We never kept a record of exactly how many churches or Christians were being established, as we didn’t want to fall under the same severe judgement that Israel did after David conducted a census [see 1 Chronicles 21:1–17]. We believed the main issue behind this punishment was that by examining the strength of Israel’s armies, David was in effect wresting control of the situation from God. The Lord had won their battles for them, but now David wanted to be in charge. I have noticed that many Western Christians really like to know about numbers. They want to know how many millions of believers we have in China, how many baptized, how many fellowships, etc. The honest answer is, we don’t have any. It is God’s work, and it all belongs to him. For this reason we did not want to offend God, so we avoided keeping numerical records.775

Nonetheless, he was able to give some indication of the massive size and spread of the movement: Between April and November of 1996 we held advanced training classes for many of our senior leaders. In that seven-month period we trained more than 4,000 house-church leaders from various parts of the country. Many of these leaders were responsible for multiple numbers of fellowships. At the end of 1996, we calculated there were between 10,000 to 12,000 full-time leaders in our group. This figure only included evangelists and overseers of the church. If local pastors, elders, deacons and other workers are included, there were at least 30,000 workers. However, in many cases one evangelist may be responsible for several different congregations. These figures may sound impressive, but you need to realize there are more than 2,300 counties and cities in China, with an average population of more than 500,000 people in each. There remains much work to do. Let me explain how our church is structured from the bottom up. When we have seven house churches in one geographical area, we form an administrative organization called Tong Gong Hui. Various workers are appointed to serve at this level and help the church function smoothly. When we have a collection of seven different Tong Gong Hui groups, they are organized into a local committee. Each local committee therefore represents 49 individual churches. When we have seven local committees, they are formed into a council committee (thus representing 343 churches). When we have seven council committees we form a regional committee. Each of these regional committees therefore theoretically represents 2,401 churches. Finally, each of the seven regions we divided China up into consisted of seven regional committees. This means there were 16,807 churches in each of the seven regions, or a total of over 117,000 churches nationwide. Of course, nothing ever works as smoothly as these numbers suggest, but this is the structure of our church in China. Whatever growth has eventuated has all been the work of the Holy Spirit. No person can take any credit for what he has done. ‘The Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes’ [Psalm 118:23].776

In 2001, when Xu and his family found themselves unable to minister in China with the freedom they once had, they suddenly left for America, where they were welcomed as religious refugees. Deborah Xu Yongling

joined them in 2005, and they now live and minister in the Los Angeles area. It does appear that subsequently the Born-Again Movement, which formerly had a strongly centralized leadership, fragmented into numerous smaller church groups with no central structure. One accusation levelled against Xu over the years was that he controlled the movement too strictly. According to one publication, when he left China ‘[the] movement practically disintegrated overnight.’777 The former Time reporter David Aikman claims that the movement’s leadership ‘[fell] into turmoil after Xu’s departure.’778 Tony Lambert of OMF says: ‘The “Born-Again” has fractured into five or seven smaller factions, has come under severe government pressure, and is widely regarded as extreme, or even heretical, by main-stream house churches.’779 My enquiries reveal that while the millions of believers who once belonged to the Born-Again Movement continue to worship the Lord, they have since formed into numerous localized fellowships and loose networks. Some of these groups feel deeply hurt by their past experiences and refuse to have any contact with foreign Christians. In fact, the new decentralization of Henan’s house churches seems to follow a pattern that is emerging throughout China, among the members not only of this movement but of the house-church movement as a whole. Many believers have become disillusioned with pyramid-style church structures, where a small number of leaders at the apex attempt to control vast networks encompassing millions of people. That old model is rapidly being replaced by one of loosely connected fellowships that see their principal roles as establishing local Christians in the faith and sending out workers to reach unevangelized areas. However, while this new approach promises to continue the advance of the Kingdom of God throughout China, the complex fragmentation it entails means that it is practically impossible for outsiders to gain a clear picture of the current size and activity of the Born-Again Movement—or indeed whether it still exists in any cohesive and recognizable form.

742 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 743 Confidential report from a mission leader in April 2000 744 The following goes into these years in detail as part of the testimony of Peter Xu Yongze. 745 David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003), p88 746 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 747 China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report, September–October 1997 748 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 749 Ibid. 750 Personal interview with Deborah Xu Yongling, June 2003 751 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 752 See the following on Peter Xu Yongze for a detailed account of this incident. 753 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 754 Amity News Service, 20 June 1997 755 ‘Persecution in China: A Party Member’s View’, Compass Direct, 24 October 1997 756 China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report, no.143 (September–October 1997) 757 Compass Direct, 1 July 1997 758 Christianity Today, 13 July 1998 759 China Prayer Letter and Ministry Report, March 1993 760 The whole subject of the ‘crying doctrine’ is still shrouded in uncertainty. There are a number of church leaders in China today who testify that they were present when Xu or his sister personally taught it. 761 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p88 762 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 763 In 2003, I was involved in some meetings in South-East Asia attended by Peter Xu Yongze. The senior pastor from one of the largest churches in that country came to the hotel and enjoyed rich fellowship with Xu, not realizing who he was. At one point, this man uttered a vitriolic attack on ‘that heretic, Xu’, declaring him to be a wicked man who deserved to be punished for all his crimes and errors. Incredibly, Xu just sat there quietly and did not defend himself even once. He merely said, ‘Hallelujah! Thank you, Lord Jesus!’ as the catalogue of his supposed misdemeanours was presented to him by his unsuspecting accuser. Finally, Xu asked if they could pray together before his visitor had to leave, and he began: ‘Heavenly Father, I thank you for letting me meet this dear brother today. I ask you to search my heart and convict me for any wrongs I have committed against you or your people.’ It suddenly dawned on this pastor that the very man he had been speaking to was Peter Xu Yongze! He got up and left the room immediately, and declined to attend any more of the meetings. Such is the immature response of many Christians who would rather believe rumours than find out the truth for themselves. 764 Luke Wesley, The Church in China: Persecuted, Pentecostal, and Powerful (Baguio, The Philippines: AJPS Books, 2004), p48 765 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 766 So I was told by leaders of the Born-Again Movement in January 2000. The needs of these persecuted men and women (and hundreds more from other house-church movements) led to the launch of the China Living Martyrs Fund in 2001, which aims to support each worker with $25 a month. See www.asiaharvest.org for more details of this project. 767 Ma, ‘Police Crackdown on Underground Religion’, South China Morning Post, 21 January 2003 768 ‘Henan: The Police Raid a House Church’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 769 ‘The Police Howled, “You Guys Again!”’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 770 ‘Henan: Sixty More “Reborn” Christians Arrested during Assembling’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 771 ‘The Police Flogged Him Using a Whip’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 772 ‘“We Just Believe in Jesus…” Before She Could Finish, the Police Picked Up a Stick’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 773 International Christian Concern, 19 August 1997 774 Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’ 775 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 776 Ibid. 777 Asian Report, no.276 (July–August 2006) 778 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p94 779 Lambert, China’s Christian Millions (2006), p250

Chapter 29 PETER XU YONGZE

K

Peter Xu Yongze in 1975

nown as a quiet and contemplative man, highly educated and well versed in the Chinese classics, Peter Xu Yongze rarely talks about his life and his experiences. I am thankful for the opportunity in this book to share the contents of an extensive interview I conducted with him in 2003. When I first met him, I was deeply impressed by his demeanour. A humble, gracious and loving man, he is very personable and approachable. This man, who may be the most misunderstood and criticized Chinese Christian of his generation, spoke candidly about the path his life had taken, the mistakes he had made and his passion for the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that readers will listen to Xu’s testimony and discover more about him before rushing to judgement, as so many have done.

Childhood On 6 October 1940, a boy was born to the well-to-do Xu family of Cao Wang Village, near Zhenping in the south of Henan Province. They lived in a large house that boasted a total of 23 rooms, located on the main road to Zhenping. Coming from four generations of Christians, his parents named their firstborn Yongze, meaning ‘Eternal Blessing’. Both of them were schoolteachers. A few days after his birth, Yongze’s grandparents wrapped him in a white cloth and took him to the church, where he was placed into God’s protective hands. The Lord’s help was soon required when the infant developed pneumonia. He suffered convulsions and stopped breathing. His mother, who was also a trained nurse, examined the little boy and pronounced him dead. He later recalled:

My body was wrapped up by one of our servants and I was placed outside the house near the front gate of the courtyard. They didn’t want our neighbours to know I was dead at this stage, so they placed some straw over me to obscure me from public view. Later, my grandmother returned home and received news of my death. She immediately dropped to her knees and cried out to the Lord, ‘Almighty God! This is the grandson you have given me. Why has this awful thing happened?’ She lifted the straw off my body and held me in her arms. Walking back and forth, she prayed out loud to the Lord. Suddenly, I let out a cry.780

When he was six years old, a little sister, Yongling, was born. The pair of them, later to be known to Westerners as Peter and Deborah Xu, were to become two of China’s most influential—and—controversial church leaders. Xu cannot recall a specific time when he became a true follower of Christ, though he does remember sneaking into his grandparents’ room at the age of five so he could kneel at their bedside and pray for them. Such was his burden for prayer even then that he couldn’t sleep until he had interceded for the people the Lord had placed on his heart. In the autumn of 1945, the little boy had a vision that deeply affected the rest of his life. He recalls: Even at that age I had a deep longing for the Lord. I wanted to see him and know him. One day, my cousin took me down to the Zhao River to wash our clothes. When we arrived at the riverbank, she rolled up my trousers, took off my shoes and let me play in the shallow water. As I stood in the water, I felt the presence of the Lord as I beheld the beautiful sight in front of me. The cloudless sky was perfectly blue, set against the glistening golden wheat fields across the other side of the river. I was just five, yet I felt overwhelmed with God’s beautiful creation. My spirit was enveloped in God’s love and my whole being was soothed with the tranquillity of the moment. While I was gazing at the blue sky, suddenly a large white table appeared. It was square, with four legs and handles. I was thinking about what it meant when I saw the heavens open. It was as though a curtain in the sky was drawn back. An old man came out. He had white hair and a white beard that went all the way down to his chest. He wore a long, white robe that stretched down to his feet. In his hands he carried three large books. The man walked to the table and placed one book in the centre, with the two other books on either side of it. He stood in front of one of the books and closed his eyes, like a person engaged in silent prayer. The man’s face looked so peaceful and merciful, more beautiful than I have ever seen before or since. Suddenly, the heavenly curtain opened again and I saw another two elderly men come out. These two men looked exactly like the first. They, too, had white hair, white beards and long, white robes. They quietly walked to that same table, and each man stood behind his own book. They, too, closed their eyes and meditated in prayer. I continued to stand there in the water, motionless, my eyes focused on this remarkable sight. I was overwhelmed with joy and amazement. I felt as though a spotlight from heaven was shining just on me, like a huge waterfall was spilling into my heart and soul. I was both excited and awestruck at the same time. This vision continued for approximately 45 minutes, until finally I heard the voice of my cousin saying, ‘Yongze, let’s go!’ My cousin did not see a thing in the sky that day.781

Marriage In 1960, Xu moved to Datong in Shanxi Province, where he gained qualifications as a railway mechanic. As he progressed through his twenties, his relatives back in Henan began to put pressure on him to get married. His mother met a young woman she approved of and, according to the custom of the time, arranged a wedding day. The couple were united in matrimony in 1965, but things started to go wrong soon after. According to Xu, Before our wedding, I knew that my future wife, Liu Shifang, was not a born-again Christian. Her family came from a Catholic background, but it was not the same kind of faith my family had. I was a young man, 25 years old, and I proceeded with the marriage out of spiritual pride. I felt that once my wife came and joined my family, our godliness and good example would surely result in her becoming a Christian. I was so sure of this happening that I didn’t even consider that it might not. Soon after my marriage, I received a very clear calling from the Lord to be a preacher of the gospel. I knew his call was upon me and he would open the doors and make a way for this to happen. On one hand I had received a clear call of the Holy Spirit, and on the other I had married an unbeliever. This may seem very strange now, but I didn’t worry too much about it at the time. My spiritual pride didn’t allow me to face the reality of the situation in light of the scriptures. I believed somehow God would combine the two together and everything would work out fine.782

Just a few weeks after his wedding, Xu was arrested and imprisoned for 40 days, along with 7,000 other people in the area, as part of a campaign to ‘cleanse’ China from undesirable elements. He was picked on for his refusal to join the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. In the detention centre, he was obliged to endure long brainwashing sessions. Some of the other prisoners could not endure the intense mental torture these entailed and committed suicide by banging nails into their heads with bricks. There was no indication of how long Xu was to be incarcerated, but then, on 29 November 1965, he says, I suddenly heard the Lord tell me, ‘When December starts, you shall be released.’ It was just two days before the start of December, and there was absolutely no sign that I would be released; but I had a deep peace in my heart that it would happen just as the Lord said. On the evening of 30 November, I was told I was to be transferred to another prison the next day, where I would commence a lengthy sentence. I couldn’t understand this, as it was contrary to what the Lord had told me. At about 11 o’clock at night, eight officials congregated inside my cell. They sternly told me, ‘This is your last chance, Xu. For many weeks now you have stubbornly resisted our kind attempts to help you. You must write your full confession. Tell us the whole truth and we will be lenient to you! If you continue to be obstinate, we will not be responsible for your fate.’ One of the prison leaders spoke up: ‘Xu, after we saw you last night we had a meeting among ourselves, and we know that you will not change your stubborn ways. You are of no use to us, no

use to the Communist Party and no use to our country. You are just a waste of our time, and we would be better off without you.’ I was free to go. I picked up my bag and followed a guard out of the prison. It was the morning of 1 December, and by God’s grace I was able to spend the Christmas month at home with my family. When I told my wife what had happened in prison and how God had called me to preach the gospel, she wept. She told me: ‘You have a responsibility to provide for your family. If you just preach, how will we eat?’ I tried to tell her that God promises to provide the needs of all those who serve him, but it was no use. I told her, ‘Although God has called me, I will wait until you realize God’s call and our whole family can serve him together.’783

As a result of the unsanitary conditions in the prison, Xu contracted tuberculosis and spent the next few months at home in bed coughing up blood. He was unable to work and his family had nothing to live on. In desperation, Xu and his wife—whose name means ‘Fragrance’—prayed together, asking the Lord to help them. Before the first anniversary of their wedding, they had had a daughter, whom they named Gen Sheng (‘New Life’). The following year they had a second daughter, Gen Xin (‘New Creation’). They were now a family of four. Fragrance was deeply concerned that her husband might go missing at any moment. During the Cultural Revolution, many ‘undesirable elements’ were thrown into vehicles and never seen again. Xu laments: Over time, she grew tired of travelling around with me to different places and started to despise my ‘spiritual accomplishments’. She longed for some stability and a safe environment to raise our children, but I could provide neither. In my immaturity and pride I somehow thought I could lift her up to a higher spiritual plateau where I was, and everything would be fine. Fragrance grew tired of my efforts and the unrelenting pressure, and in the end she decided this plateau I had invented in my mind was not something she wanted to attain after all. Fragrance needed a husband grounded here on the earth who provided her needs every day and encouraged her in life’s struggles, more than she needed a husband with his pious head in the clouds.784

The family moved south to the province of Hubei, but the authorities continued searching for Xu and the situation was very tense. Fragrance decided to return with their two daughters to her parents’ home in Henan and bought bus tickets for the next morning. That night, they all came and sat on the end of Xu’s bed and Fragrance told Gen Sheng and Gen Xin, ‘Tonight you must say goodbye to your father. You will not see him for a while. He is staying here, and we are going away.’ About a year later, Xu’s wife and children returned to Hubei and for a short time the family was reunited. As soon as Fragrance saw her husband, she burst into tears. He admits:

Only then did I begin to understand the deep pain I had caused in her heart. On that brief visit, she became pregnant with our third child. Not seeing any chance of a normal life with me, Fragrance left again for Henan. She took Gen Xin with her, while it was decided that my oldest daughter, Gen Sheng, would remain with my mother. I remember little Gen Xin did not want to go. She held on tightly to my leg and wept when it was time for them to go to the station. It breaks my heart to say it, but this time it was permanent.785

Fleeing for the Gospel In 1968, Xu began to preach the gospel openly in public. One day, he climbed a rugged mountain near his home and prayed: ‘Dear Lord, please revive your church in China!’ His boldness obliged him to flee from the authorities, who wanted to stamp out his ministry before it had a chance to grow. On one occasion, in 1968, he hid with his parents and his sisters inside a cave in a remote part of Yunmeng County. The authorities discovered their whereabouts, but Xu managed to escape by slipping past 20 policemen outside the cave. He recalls: My mother grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Son, you too must run!’ There was no earthly way I could escape. The cave was surrounded by armed officers who could have easily stopped me. My mother then called out, ‘I am an old lady. I need to use the toilet. Please allow the young man to help me walk to the toilet!’ Then, without waiting for a reply, she grabbed my arm and we walked outside the cave. The officers continued to focus their attention on the entrance of the cave, perhaps not realizing that I was the one walking away on my mother’s arm. When we had gone some distance from the cave, my mother sternly told me, ‘You must run.’ I started to sprint as fast as I could.786

His father and his sisters were captured and put on public trial near their home in Zhenping County. Xu says that Many familiar faces came to watch the spectacle. Some came to lie and shout accusations at my father. Others came to watch silently like spectators at a play. During the staged performance, certain ‘witnesses’ were produced as evidence of my family’s crimes. Despite the pressure of the situation, my father and sisters had an unusual calm on their faces, and a peace that only comes from an indwelling Jesus. Suddenly the trial took an unexpected turn. The Holy Spirit came upon my sister Yongling with great power and she started shouting at the top of her voice, ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’ The officials presiding over the trial were both shocked and furious. They commanded her to shut up, but she continued to shout God’s praises as loudly as she could. Finally, my father turned to her and calmly said, ‘Precious daughter, we don’t need to be alarmed. If we live, we live with Jesus, and if we die, we will be with Jesus.’ At the end of the trial, my father and sisters fully expected to be shot dead, but for some reason the sentence was delayed, and they were sent back to our old home at Cao Wang Village to wait until a verdict had been reached.787

Meanwhile, not knowing what had happened to his family and still being hunted like an animal by the PSB, Xu fled to Hubei. He was offered work at

a brick kiln in Nanzhang, where he remained from 1969 to 1971, making bricks. The salary was just 64 yuan (about $8) a year, but it was enough for him to survive. For the whole time he was in Hubei he had no news of his family, but in 1969 Fragrance had given birth to the little boy who had been conceived just before she returned to Henan. He was named Lai En, meaning ‘Coming Grace’. Xu laments: I never had the opportunity to see him grow up and take his first steps. I could not receive or send any letters to my family during this time. All I had to rely on was prayer. Every day I prayed earnestly for my wife and children, my parents and sisters, and for the church in China. During these two years I believe God taught me many special lessons that I needed for the future. It was a place where I could meditate upon the Lord and learn to hear his voice. I also suffered from tuberculosis for much of my time in Nanzhang, yet I had no choice but to continue the heavy work every day. During the entire two years I never changed my clothes. I owned just one set of clothes and was too poor to consider buying another. During the winter months the cold was intolerable, and in the heat of summer I developed lice on my skin because of my filthy rags. There were so many lice in my old rags that I guess they got used to living on me and didn’t bother biting me after a while. My one pair of trousers rotted away and disintegrated. I used strands of grass to hold them together the best I could, but after a while they ended up looking like a skirt.788

In December 1970, the workers at the kiln received their annual payment. Xu wanted to spend some of his salary on a hot water bottle and some clothes for his aged mother, so she could keep warm. He travelled to the nearby city of Xiangfan to buy them, but as he was drinking a bowl of soup at a restaurant near the railway station there, a policeman approached him and told Xu to follow him. Xu was interrogated until midnight, but the officer felt that he was hiding something and sent him to the Xiangfan Military Unit Detention Centre for further questioning. Xu remembers: As I sat in the holding cell with the other new arrivals, I asked the Lord to release me from the detention centre before Christmas. Straight away, we all heard a loud clanging noise. The lock on the outside of the door had fallen to the ground and the door was open. This may sound strange, but I was so scared that I couldn’t find the courage to attempt an escape. I sat there with the other men and didn’t move. Instead, I prayed a new prayer: ‘Lord, please help me to get out before the New Year!’ When I was first interrogated, I didn’t want to expose my true identity, as this would get both my family and me into trouble. They knew I was from Henan because of my accent, but I refused to tell them my real name.789

The authorities in Hubei decided to send Xu back across the border to Henan. This worried him, as he realized that his true identity would soon be discovered and he would then be in serious trouble. The local PSB contacted their colleagues in various counties to see whether anyone

answering Xu’s description was wanted, and he was recognized as the man who had escaped their net several years earlier. The government planned to sentence him at an open trial in March 1971, and in the climate that prevailed at the time it was likely that he would be condemned to death. However, early one morning, shortly before the date set for the trial, a dense, freezing fog enveloped the prison where Xu was being held. He had been given the job of collecting the waste from the toilets, and as he walked through the yard he felt that the fog was the God-given opportunity he had prayed for. Quickly, he returned to his cell and woke another Christian, a Brother Li, and told him they should attempt an escape. Brother Li didn’t know what to think. One minute he had been asleep, the next he was being told the chance to escape had come. I noticed that the waste bucket in the cell needed to be emptied. I placed a stick under the handle so I could carry the waste at arm’s length, and sternly told Brother Li, ‘Come and help me!’ We each carried one end of the stick, with the bucket in between us, and made our way into the courtyard. Because of the freezing conditions, nobody else was in the yard at the time. When we arrived at the toilet, I put the bucket down on the ground and said to Brother Li, ‘Quick! Let’s go!’ Without hesitation, we climbed onto the toilet roof, jumped blindly through the fog onto the roof of the women’s toilet and slid down the wall on the outside. In just a moment we were outside the prison. I ran as fast as I could down the road, struggling to see anything because of the fog. Brother Li ran in the opposite direction. As I stumbled along, I heard the approach of a donkey cart. I ran alongside and asked the driver if he would give me a lift. He helped me onto the cart and we trudged along, away from the prison. I was concerned because we were going so slowly, so I asked the driver, ‘Friend, I would like to help you because of your great kindness to me. Please come and sit back here and let me take over the driving!’ As soon as I had control of the reins, I made the donkey race along as fast as it could go. Soon I had put a considerable distance between the prison and myself.790

Once again, Xu had escaped the grip of the authorities. Desperate to see his beloved parents and sisters, he made his way home and enjoyed an emotional reunion. His family decided to hide him, and got him to lie down under some planks of wood that they placed beside the bed and covered with straw. Whenever a stranger approached the house, his family knocked twice on the bed to warn him to keep still. For the next month, Xu stayed concealed next to the bed. The only contact he had with outsiders was when a few trusted Christian men from the village came to the room late at night and Xu taught the word of God to them. After a month, his family heard that his pursuers were closing in on him. Once again, Xu said goodbye to them and returned to his ministry on the run. That was the last time he was ever to see his father. His family

remained under house arrest in Zhenping for several years, until the respected patriarch died in 1975.

The Origins of a Church Movement In those tense days, Xu never thought he would ever establish a church movement that would later number millions of believers throughout China. He desired simply to preach the gospel and carry his cross for Christ, regardless of whatever came his way. In 2003, he shared with me the events that led to him coming to be recognized as a leader: Many people have asked me how I came to be a house-church leader. I never planned to be a leader at all. His call to me was to preach the gospel, and I was doing this. The believers all knew and respected me, because most of them were uneducated farmers who had not learned to read or, at best, were semi-literate. I was able to read and came from an educated background, so I was respected. Secondly, I still carried around a gold-edged Bible that a brother had given me in Hubei Province. This precious Bible caused great astonishment wherever I went. Another reason I was so loved by believers was because I had been persecuted for my faith. Persecution was widespread all across the nation, and I was able to relate to those who had been beaten and imprisoned for the gospel. Those families felt comfortable welcoming me into their homes, because we had shared the same experiences. Somehow, over the years I came to be viewed as a leader by the believers I had come into contact with. In 1980, many house-church Christians felt the need for a meeting where all the pastors and evangelists from different areas could come together for fellowship. Because I had been travelling so widely for many years, they chose me to be one of the speakers at the gathering in Nanzhao County. Over 100 house-church leaders came from all over Henan, Hubei and Anhui Provinces. We met together for eight days. At the end, it was suggested we have an annual gathering. The revival fires, which had started in 1971, continued to spread out across China for the rest of the decade. Miraculously, I was not arrested again for the whole of the 1970s. The Lord supernaturally protected me from harm, and I was able to travel widely and preach the gospel, even though I was on the ‘most wanted’ list issued by the central government.791

Throughout the 1970s, most house churches consisted of just a handful of believers who gathered in secret to pray and encourage one another. By the start of the 1980s, however, these churches had grown exponentially in Henan, and fellowships of 500 or 600 people were not uncommon. In 1982, the Christians in Henan decided to send a team of evangelists to the east of Sichuan Province. This was the start of what was later to become a nationwide ministry. Seventeen young believers, including Xu’s sister Deborah, were chosen to go. The authorities responded with a severe persecution, and 13 of the evangelists were caught and badly beaten. When the 17 returned to Henan, battered and bruised, on 13 August 1982, Xu felt responsible for them and went to the railway station in Zhenping to

welcome them home and see what medical assistance he could get for them. The authorities were waiting, and they pounced on Xu and four of his coworkers. They dragged them to the local police station and beat them cruelly with a thick wooden board. Xu recalls what happened next: They smashed our heads, hands, chests and every part of our bodies. Part of the board splintered off, such was the fury of the attacks. This, however, was just the start of what they had in store for us. Next, we were told to lie down on the floor, and officers bound our hands and feet with a rope. While we were lying face down, they jumped on us and twisted our legs backwards behind us, until our feet came up to our shoulders. They then handcuffed our hands and feet to a pillar, leaving us there to suffer. Our shirts were torn off and the excruciating positions of our bodies made us immediately break out in sweat. I could hardly bear the pain, which surged through every fibre of my being. All my efforts were focused on trying to breathe. The position of my body made it very difficult to get air into my lungs. The Public Security officers knew from experience that if they left us in that position too long we would die from asphyxiation. We found out later this was the kind of torture they reserved for murderers. They repeat it until the person agrees to confess their crimes. The torturers calmly left the room, their actions having left no mark on their seared consciences. They placed a female officer outside the door, and told her to check on us every five minutes to make sure we were still alive. Their instructions to the officer were the last words I remember. Moments later, I fainted. The torturers returned to the room and released the ropes, but we were unable to move at all. We were dragged to another room and locked inside. When I had gained consciousness, I looked at my arms and shoulders and discovered the trauma had been so severe on my body that I had sweated droplets of my own blood. The handcuffs had cut so deeply into my wrists that the metal went all the way to the bone. I felt sorry for the men who had carried out these tortures. I didn’t harbour any resentment or bitterness towards them at all. In the coming days, every time the officers opened my handcuffs I politely thanked them. They had come to expect intense hatred from those they tortured, so they were somewhat taken aback by my attitude, which Jesus helped me to have.792

In the aftermath of this diabolical experience, Xu and his colleagues were sent to a labour camp. Remarkably, he again managed to escape, by stealth rather than by force. One day, the prisoners were taken to work in a factory where they were required to fill carts with the coal that was emerging on a conveyor belt from a mine. Xu recounts: The carts were on small rubber wheels, which enabled us to push them around once we had filled them up. After a short time, the belt stopped working and we were asked to take our coal carts outside the factory to the courtyard and wait until they had it working again. As soon as I went to the courtyard, I noticed a young man and two young women from my church standing outside the gate of the factory. Behind them was a bicycle they had prepared for my escape. The three of them had followed us from the prison to the coal-mine factory. The factory had a shopfront where the public could purchase bags of coal, so the brother and the two sisters acted like they were interested in making a purchase while they waited.

The armed officers who were watching us ordered us to go to the far end of the yard, where we could continue loading coal carts. The moment the order was given, however, all three conveyor belts operating at the far end of the yard stopped functioning. I knew right then that God’s time had arrived. Some of the other brothers drew near me and looked me in the eye, signalling that I should escape. There were many people around me, and I started to wonder how I could possibly escape without being noticed. Suddenly I heard the voice of one of the officers, ‘Laoshi! (Teacher!) Do you want to go to the toilet?’ I replied, ‘Yes, sergeant, I would.’ When I came out of the toilet, I ignored my cart. I calmly walked toward the front gate of the facility, and nobody tried to stop me. The moment I was outside the gate, the young brother removed his hat and coat and quickly put them over my blue prison uniform. A few moments later, I was sitting on the back of the bicycle, which one of the sisters was riding away down the street. I expected to hear some commotion behind us once the officers discovered I was missing, but as we pedalled away not a single word was said. In the days following my escape, as I quietly rested in the safe house, I heard that the chief officer who had been responsible at the coal-mine factory that day was discharged from his job. The authorities launched an investigation, but nobody could find me, and, strangely, nobody had witnessed my escape. This experience was a great miracle. When I look back on it, I think how amazing it was that all four conveyor belts stopped working at just the right time and how everything had come together for me to leave.793

When a severe crackdown on Christians was launched in the summer of 1983, the situation became so intense that Xu decided to flee south to Hubei —but then, after several narrow escapes, he returned to Henan, in some distress. The fierce persecution continued into 1984 and showed no sign of abating. The three other senior leaders of Xu’s church were arrested, and for his own safety his fellow believers made a special arrangement for him. Xu’s sister Deborah, and some other workers ‘arrested’ him and placed him under their own protective care before the government had the chance to. Considering the number of times he had escaped from custody, many Christians believed that if the authorities ever caught Xu again he would be executed. The believers lovingly arranged for their leader to go into hiding in a secret location in Fangcheng County. There, he was locked inside part of a Christian family’s home. Nobody was able to visit him unless they had a key, and he was unable to get out. Xu drily remarks: I may be one of the few Christians in history to be voluntarily locked away inside a church prison. From 1984 until 1988—a period of more than four years—I lived in this safe house. The number of people who knew where I was could be counted on one hand. I filled my time with prayer, reading the Bible and writing. Occasionally I was taken to nearby church meetings where I would worship the Lord with fellow believers and teach from the scriptures. Immediately after

the meeting ended, I was taken back to the safe house, with my protectors carefully making sure nobody was following us. Every day, the host family cooked food for me, slipping it underneath the door. Most of the daily issues of running the church were taken out of my hands. I was consulted only when an important decision had to be made that required my input. Security was so tight that even if my sister Yongling wanted to visit me she had to first get permission from the leaders of the church. Many people have wondered why the authorities were unable to put me in prison during these years. The reason was quite simple: I was already in prison. The security was so tight that even when other house-church leaders were released from prison and tried to make contact with me, they were unable to do so. I submitted to this arrangement, as the church leaders made it after much prayer and seeking the Lord. I never complained at all and am thankful for the opportunity these years afforded me to spend time in the presence of the Lord every day.794

Xu in the 1980s

The Billy Graham Incident Finally, after more than four years of solitude in his ‘church prison’, Xu emerged into the public eye again when he tried to call on Billy Graham in Beijing during the American evangelist’s first visit to the country in April 1988. Graham was scheduled to speak in a number of state-approved ThreeSelf churches and at several official functions, and Xu wanted to consult him on behalf of the millions of China’s house-church Christians who faced relentless persecution for their faith. Before he got to meet him, however, Xu was captured and put behind bars. According to the reputable South China Morning Post, he was the leader of 3,000 house churches at the time.795 Though he was unaware of it at the time, news of his arrest spread like wildfire around the world. Television networks, newspapers and magazines all gave it prominence. It even became a major political issue, with the governments of America and Britain expressing grave concern to Beijing and demanding his release.

Xu’s arrest began to overshadow Graham’s trip to China. The authorities refused even to acknowledge it for a week while the American evangelist continued his tour of the country, but every press conference was dominated by questions about the affair and Graham himself was subjected to strong criticism for his apparent failure to intervene, though he had expressed his concern for Xu’s welfare and had asked the authorities to confirm or deny that he had been incarcerated. In typically Chinese fashion, they stalled and declined to provide Graham with a concise answer before he returned to America. Alex Buchan, a long-term supporter of the persecuted church both in China and around the world, wryly notes: While the world’s most famous evangelist was moving from one luxury hotel suite to another, China’s most famous evangelist was moving from one prison cell to another. Human hands could not have choreographed a more perfect, more dramatic, more revealing contrast. At the press conference in Hong Kong following the trip, Dr Graham read a positive message about the changes in China, the relaxation in religious laws and the warm welcome that he received from his hosts. But to the visible annoyance of some of Graham’s entourage, when he invited the press to respond, virtually all the questions were about Xu Yongze. I felt that justice was done. Dr Graham had properly highlighted some positive changes in the religious situation. These changes were not cosmetic. China was relaxing. But that was by no means the whole story. And the event of Xu’s arrest contradicted the unalloyed picture of progress that Graham presented, highlighting the darker colours that also belong on the canvas. As the negative and positive stories clashed, people got a more accurate grasp of the truth.796

In the providence of God, Xu’s arrest had become the occasion for millions of people around the world to learn about the house churches of China. The international media examined the reasons why they refused to register with the government, and the fact that Christians in China were persecuted for their faith became widely known. One week after Xu’s arrest, Jonathan Chao issued a statement to the media through the Chinese Church Research Centre in Hong Kong. This concluded: Xu Yongze went to Beijing intending to share the phenomenon of church growth, revival, and persecution with fellow-evangelist Billy Graham, but unfortunately Xu was arrested before he had a chance. … With regards to the nature and impact of his work, Xu might rightly be regarded as the Billy Graham of China, and it is somewhat ironic that he should be arrested while attempting to see Billy Graham. May Christians concerned for the evangelization of China and people concerned for religious freedom in China remember Xu Yongze in their prayers.797

The affair was much commented upon around the world, but Xu himself had rarely spoken about it until 2003, when he shared with me details of the days leading up to his capture: Unbeknown to me, the government was aware of my plans to meet with Billy Graham and prepared a large-scale effort to arrest me as soon as I travelled to Beijing.

A friend had arranged for me to share a meal with the American in Beijing on 17 April. I caught the train with my sister and three others on April 13. The first day, we walked around the city with no problems. On the second day, however, we felt uncomfortable and suspected that we were being followed. We immediately stopped and gave ourselves to prayer. At around four o’clock in the afternoon of 16 April, my sister and cousin decided to visit the zoo at Yuetan Park. They went into the snake pavilion, while I decided to wait outside the enclosure. While I was sitting on a park bench, a young man came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. He said, ‘Get up and follow me!’ When I stood up, another man who had been sitting next to me on the bench also stood up, so I was flanked on each side. I decided there was no point trying to run, and I quietly went with the men. They led me to a nearby police station, where a group of officers and others questioned me. I found out that I had been arrested by the Ministry of State Security.798

He was taken to Zhenping Prison in Henan—the same place he had escaped from in 1982. The prison director met him at the entrance and said: ‘Welcome back, Xu. It’s good of you to return. We’ve been waiting for you.’ An officer read through his file and said: ‘Xu, you have been a big headache for the People’s Republic of China. Look at how thick your file is! We have been instructed to execute you.’ From that time on, Xu says, he was treated like a man on death row by the prison guards. Many rumours did their rounds among the prisoners, as they discussed when I would be killed. All kinds of predictions were made as to how I would die. Some said I would be put in an electric chair, others that I would face a firing squad. The whole prison seemed to know that my case had not only gained local awareness but was being followed even by the national government in Beijing.799

Instead of being electrocuted or shot, however, Xu was transferred to Nanyang Prison. It was only years later that he learned that many Christians around the world had been praying for him fervently. He reflects: I was told the worldwide publicity that my case attracted probably spared my life, as the government was afraid to do anything to me that would result in their gaining a bad image in the eyes of the international community. Many other house-church pastors have not enjoyed this privilege and have been treated like animals while being brutally tortured, including many who are still in prison today.800

One morning, just before Christmas 1988, Xu was summoned from his cell. Once again he was on the move, this time to a labour camp in Luoyang County. He had no time to say goodbye to a condemned prisoner named Feng, whom he had led to faith in Christ while they were sharing a cell. More than a year later, another prisoner was to give Xu a message: ‘I have just been transferred from Nanyang. Do you remember the young man Feng? He has been executed now, but before that day he gave me a message in case I should ever meet you. He said: “Tell Uncle Xu not to worry about me! I am fine. Tell him I have gone ahead and will meet him in heaven!’”801

On one occasion, a furious prison warden drew his electric baton and threatened Xu by waving it in front of his face. The man picked up a spoon and touched it with the end of the baton, and immediately sparks flew from the metal. Xu remained calm and did not show any anxiety at all. This only made the warden angrier, and he decided to electrocute Xu. He shouted: ‘Not afraid, are you? Let’s see how you feel after I give you some treatment!’ Xu recalls: I was sitting on a chair, and he reached out and placed the electric baton on the back and side of my neck. I started to pray, calling on the name of the Lord. I felt the baton roll across my neck but didn’t feel any shock. My would-be torturer was enraged. He again tested the baton and it worked. But when he placed it on me again, there was no electric charge. This time, his anger gave way to fear. He sensed a greater power was at work against him, and a look of horror came across his face. I sat still and thanked God, while smiling at the man. Finally, he nervously said: ‘OK, you can go back to your cell now.’802

In all, the founder of the Born-Again Movement spent three years in prison without ever being formally charged. He was released in 1991. His health had greatly deteriorated during his incarceration, and he was afflicted by tuberculosis and gastric problems. He had also been without adequate warm clothing during the harsh Henan winters. Many years later, in February 2003, when Xu had moved to Los Angeles, a colleague of Billy Graham was to fly to California especially to meet him. Xu recalls: At the time of my arrest in 1988, Billy Graham had personally tried to do all he could to gain my release, but the government had lied to him and said, ‘We have no such person by that name. Nobody in China is persecuted for religious beliefs.’ This representative of Billy Graham said, ‘After we learned you were sentenced to prison, we did all we could to put pressure on your government to release you.’ The brother officially apologized on behalf of Billy Graham and told me Mr Graham had been personally concerned for my well-being all these years. I was taken aback by this kind gesture and told him, ‘Please, dear brother, you have nothing to apologize for. I have not held any hard feelings towards anyone over this incident. My arrest was part of God’s plan for my life, and I am thankful that he allowed me to go through this experience.’ I gave my greetings and thanks to Billy Graham and prayed together with the brother who had come all the way just to see me. Let me state on record that I have nothing but respect and appreciation for Billy Graham and his ministry.803

Xu in 2003 Paul Hattaway

Heartbreak After his release from prison, Xu caught a bus to Nanyang and went to the home of his daughter Gen Sheng and her husband, whom he had never met. They welcomed him, and soon realized that he was emotionally unwell after the years in confinement. Over the 50 days he stayed with them, They told me my wife, Fragrance, had a government job in a factory and had been promoted to second in charge. I made my way to her apartment on Heping Street. I was very nervous and torn between wanting to see her and the reaction I feared I might receive. I had not seen her even once since August 1968, almost 23 years before. I stood in front of her apartment complex, and many thoughts ran through my mind. My daughter told me that Fragrance did not live in the apartment alone but shared it with others. I didn’t want them to meet me—the counter-revolutionary criminal husband. My time in prison had left me feeling utterly worthless and empty inside. I felt no one cared about what I had to say, and my opinion was less than useless. I blamed myself for our failed marriage and felt much shame as a Christian leader that I wasn’t able to be the kind of husband that the Bible expects me to be. I was such an empty shell of a man that I could not even muster up the courage to knock on the door. I withdrew back to my daughter’s house.804

Feeling too crushed to see his wife face-to-face, Xu bought some gifts and wrote her a heartfelt poem and asked his son, Lai En, to deliver them. What ensued was to crush him even further. When Lai En went to see his mother, she showed him a divorce certificate, stating that she wanted nothing more to do with me. Without my knowledge, my wife had divorced me in 1975, some 16 years before. Because I was a ‘criminal’, the government allowed the divorce to go through without even notifying me. In 1975, a short time after my father passed away, my mother and sister heard a rumour that

Fragrance wanted to divorce me, but I had never received any confirmation that she had gone through with it. At the time I knew that the government must have put pressure on her, so I wrote a letter asking Fragrance to forgive me for being such a poor husband. I asked her to remain single, to maintain her purity, and expressed my desire that we would be reunited as a married couple. She never wrote back, but for years I had held on to the hope that she would wait for me. It has been many years since my marriage to Fragrance failed. It has been a dagger that I have carried in my heart for many years, like a secret, internal pain. Looking back, there were some wonderful times and experiences with my wife. Certainly, things did not work out like we wanted, but we did love each other. By the grace of God our relationship produced three beautiful children. Due to the extraordinary circumstances and pressures on us at the time, we were not able to become what we had hoped to be.805

Remarriage One of the most controversial parts of Xu’s story was soon to begin. He received news that his former wife was engaged to another man, and in 1992 she married him. Even though it had been 24 years since he had seen her and 17 years since she was granted a divorce, Xu had continued until that moment to hold on to a faint hope that God might one day bring about a reconciliation between them. However, according to Xu’s understanding of the Bible, when Fragrance married another man her consequent ‘unfaithfulness’ released him from his original vows to her and freed him to remarry. Accordingly, a few weeks before Christmas 1996, he married Guan Yin Ge. His new wife’s given name, Yin Ge, means ‘Silver Dove’. Like many Chinese Christians, she also has a spiritual name, Qing Jing, which means ‘Purity and Quietness’. The doctrine on divorce and remarriage is one of the most hotly debated in the church. Believers down through the ages have interpreted the scriptures differently, and godly men and women have written treatises advocating one position or another. Some Christians will think that the testimony of Peter Xu has been tainted by the developments recorded in this section. They will say he has been guilty of a serious error of judgement. Others believe that he had every biblical right to marry again. Whatever the truth is will one day be decided by the Judge of all people. News of Xu’s union with Guan provoked strong opposition from Christians both inside and outside China, and not least within their own movement. Some repudiated Xu’s leadership, saying he no longer had the moral authority to be a shepherd of Christ’s flock. Some did not let the facts get in the way of their gossip. Sister Guan was 30 years old at the time, but

to this day many missionaries and other Christians in China claim that Xu left his first wife so that he could marry a ‘young girl’. The fact that when he remarried in 1996 he had not even seen Fragrance for almost 30 years, during which time she had divorced him and married another man, also seems to have been overlooked. In 2003, Xu spoke openly for the first time about the events that led up to his marriage, and about the opposition he and his new wife faced from their own movement: On a ministry trip to northern Henan Province in 1992, I met the various workers from our north-west China team, and as usual I asked them how they were doing and what struggles they were facing in their ministries. It was on that occasion that I first met Sister Guan, a young woman with a deep commitment for the Lord. She was active in women’s ministry and was being used by God to influence many people’s lives for good. She had been working in northwest China for six years without a break, on a team that faced great difficulty and poverty. At the time I was impressed with Sister Guan’s potential for the Lord’s work, but that was the full extent of my interest. Three years later, I again saw Sister Guan at a Bible seminary in Henan. I first had an opportunity to talk with her and to get to know her better. All of this was done with the utmost respect and purity. None of the other team members suspected for a moment that I had any feelings for her. A short time later, she was assigned to help work at a Bible school in Jiaozuo County, where she remained for 11 months. I was scheduled to visit the school three times during that time, so I got to see her on each of these occasions. One morning during breakfast I was inwardly burdened and decided it was time to express my feelings. I had become convinced that the Lord wanted Sister Guan and me to unite in marriage. When I shared my feelings, Sister Guan was taken aback and strongly rejected the idea. She was horrified at what reaction the other leaders and elders of our church would have if they found out. Sister Guan was in her late twenties, and for the sake of the Lord’s kingdom had already prepared her heart to remain single for the rest of her life. Many of the older women in our house church had taken a vow to remain single, including my own sister. This was considered the holiest sacrifice a Christian could make, so the thought of marriage had never entered Sister Guan’s thoughts. The next time I found myself back at the Jiaozuo Bible school I didn’t say a word to Sister Guan. During a break in class, she quietly slipped me a letter. Without anyone else noticing, I opened the envelope and read the letter. My heart was pounding inside my chest. She wrote a seemingly harmless romantic note to me, but somehow it got misplaced in with a pile of students’ homework. One of the female co-workers found the note and was flabbergasted. She rebuked Sister Guan, saying, ‘How could such a dirty thing take place? How could you treat a man of God like this? This is a disgrace.’ The matter was promptly reported to my sister Yongling. If a bomb had been placed in our midst I’m not sure it would have been as explosive as this situation quickly became. The atmosphere became tense. The church leaders were shocked and horrified and determined to get to the bottom of it and deal with the perpetrators of such a ‘serious crime’. I assured them there was nothing untoward going on, and I tried to explain how the whole process had taken place over a number of years. The leaders were not interested in such details. Their main desire was to

immediately separate Sister Guan and myself and try to limit the fallout from this ‘scandal’. Sister Guan was treated harshly and got most of the blame. The leaders wanted to ‘quarantine’ her by relocating her to a different Bible school. It happened to be the time of the school graduation, so church leaders from each of the seven regions across China were coming to the school to select suitable workers to take back to their home areas with them. Because of this, the whole incident soon became known throughout the church in China. On the graduation evening, all the leaders came together to discuss the situation between Sister Guan and me. Their faces showed that they considered this matter to be extremely serious. First they brought Guan into the room, and then they instructed me to enter. I was told to sit down on a chair that was separated from the rest of the room by a curtain. I was not permitted to speak unless asked a question. Sister Guan knelt down in front of all the elders of our church. After prayer, the elders vented their wrath on her. In a tone of harsh judgement, they said: ‘In the presence of the Lord and his people, how dare you write such a love letter to Brother Xu? This is not holy. You know our church constitution. According to our by-laws, please tell us which punishment you would like to receive!’ In our church, if any co-worker was found to have any romantic attraction to another person without the permission of the church, they would be suspended from ministry for a period of six months. Sister Guan was humiliated. She sat on the floor sobbing, with tears flowing down her cheeks. Every elder took turns seriously warning her. Then they dismissed her, and she left the room in an inconsolable state. I again spoke: ‘If you are suspending Sister Guan, then it is only fair that you also suspend me. I am more guilty than she.’ The church agreed, and for six months I stayed in Zhengzhou. I was suspended and not allowed to participate in any ministry for that period, so I took the opportunity to rest and pray. Sister Guan was also suspended for six months. She returned home to Shandong Province, where she took care of her sick father. During our six-month suspension, Sister Guan and I both became fully convinced that it was God’s plan for us to marry. On 4 December 1996, a small wedding ceremony was held in Zhengzhou. A few days later, we travelled back to our home church and announced that we were married. To this day some of our church leaders and elders are still upset.806

Guan experienced tremendous pain as a result of the harsh treatment she received at the hands of the church elders. She testifies: Great opposition arose after the church leaders discovered our plans. They assumed that I was trying to seduce Peter, which hurt me deeply. All kinds of accusations were made that had no basis in truth. One rumour spread that we had an immoral relationship before we were married. This was complete nonsense. The truth is, we hardly saw or spoke to each other at all before our wedding day. The strongest opposition came from the elderly women in the church who had committed themselves to remaining single for the rest of their lives. Some of them even tried to persuade me to marry a younger man. They thought that for me to have my mind set on marriage was bad enough, but they wouldn’t let their beloved pastor be ‘dragged down’ with me. Those co-workers we had laboured side-by-side with for many years spoke many nasty words against us. I could hardly stand the pain. In China we have a saying that some people can ‘kill without shedding blood’. Our accusers were like secret assassins, wounding us with their words.

I found bitterness in my heart, so I forgave everyone who had treated me unfairly. The peace of God’s Spirit enveloped me and helped me to completely overcome the storm.807

Honeymoon with Jesus After a brief break, Xu and Guan continued travelling around the country, visiting their co-workers. In 1997, a special meeting was organized in Zhengzhou so that a number of senior house-church leaders from different networks could pray together and discuss unity. The authorities had heard about the meeting and the police were waiting for the participants when they arrived. Ten were arrested, including Xu and Guan. During their first night in prison, they were all beaten continually. Xu recalls: I was punched and kicked by officers trained in the martial arts, until my whole body was bruised and battered. My face was punched at least one hundred times throughout the night as I was forced to kneel down on the ground. It was a brutal bashing. I never tried to cover up or protect myself. As each blow rained down on my body I tried to meditate on the scriptures. Finally, the guards who had been kicking and punching me grew tired. They didn’t allow me to sleep, but kept questioning me until morning. The next day, one of the guards came and said, ‘I was exhausted after beating you last night. After I went to bed, I found I had a fever.’ I looked at this poor man, loved by God, and replied: ‘Friend, can I pray for you to get well?’ I pitied these young men, and I felt I owed a great debt to them. If we had shared the gospel to all people—like Jesus commanded—their hearts would not have been so full of violence. We failed to reach the families of these young men, and this was the consequence. Whenever I looked into their eyes I saw individuals deeply loved by God. Jesus had died for them. He knew every hair on their heads and every breath they took, and he desired them to be saved.808

In the days that followed, Xu and the others came to realize that the order to arrest them had come from Beijing, which made it a most serious case in which the leaders of their nation were taking a personal interest. All they could do was entrust themselves into the hands of God. Xu was told to expect the ultimate punishment: execution by firing squad. Hosts of believers around the world prayed for the well-being of Xu and his fellow prisoners, especially after the Hong Kong newspaper Pingguo Ribao (‘Apple Daily’) reported that Xu had been sentenced to death by the authorities in Henan.809 The news shocked Christians everywhere. Confusion then reigned when the prestigious South China Morning Post contradicted Pingguo Ribao and said that Xu would be freed after just two months in prison.810 Both stories proved to be unfounded, however. Xu’s reported death sentence was commuted to 10 years in prison after worldwide Christian protest and an intervention from the American State Department. In the dock, Xu refused to defend himself or answer the

charges, claiming that the trial was little more than a piece of theatre to legitimize a verdict that was already decided. Guan was treated brutally in the women’s prison. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back for several hours at a time so that she was bent over in an agonizing position. When they undid the cuffs, the flow of blood back into her upper arms caused her to fall down unconscious. When she was transferred to a labour camp several months later, she was barely able to walk as a result of the many beatings she had endured. During the torture sessions she had not been able to bear the pain in silence, so the guards had shoved dirty rags into her mouth to stifle her cries. After 11 months in custody, Guan was charged with being a leader of an evil cult and a counterrevolutionary, and was sentenced to a total of two-and-a-half years behind bars, minus the time already served. She was finally released in May 1999, after her term was reduced by a few months for good behaviour. Xu, meanwhile, experienced both agony and elation in his maximumsecurity prison. One high point came when he told Brother Yun to escape and a miracle of God allowed Yun simply to walk past a succession of armed guards and out through the front gate. The lowest point was when Xu was most cruelly tortured, in an unusual way: The prison guards took me to a retractable iron gate that stretched across the prison corridor. It was similar to the folding gates that you sometimes see on old lifts. The guards were not happy with the answers I had been giving them during the interrogation sessions. They handcuffed my hands behind my back onto the openings on the gate, in such a way that I was facing the guards in front of me. After making sure I was securely handcuffed, they pushed open the retractable gate so that the force lifted me up off the ground. This was one of the most agonizing experiences of my life. The moment they started to slide the gate my hands swelled up from the pain, and sweat poured from every part of my body. My entire body weight was placed onto my wrists and hands. My internal organs were torturously stretched. My heart felt like it would explode inside my chest. The pain was absolutely unbearable. I wished my toes could touch the floor, so I could put some of the weight on them, but my straining was to no avail. The guards left me in that suspended position for four hours. I was certain that my time had come to die. Death is what I longed for. What a contrast between how I felt that moment compared to the sweet embrace of Jesus for all those who long for his coming! I was grateful for this opportunity to know the Lord more intimately.It was my honeymoon with Jesus. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the chief interrogating officer came and unlocked my handcuffs. I fell on the floor in a heap. All feeling in my upper body was completely gone. My arms, back and shoulders were numb. The officer gruffly pointed towards the interrogation room and gave a one-word command: ‘Walk!’ I staggered along the corridor the best I could, using the walls to prop myself up. After I slumped on the floor, he continued his interrogation. ‘Xu, this is

your last chance. Confess all your crimes! How do you feel about the treatment we have given you today?’ I looked at him with compassion in my eyes. I didn’t hate him at all. He had been a young boy in Henan Province once, just like me, only he had never once heard the gospel. I looked into his eyes and said just one brief sentence: ‘Thank you.’ The officer stormed out of the room without saying another word.811

On 25 September 1997, the Zhengzhou intermediate court sentenced Xu to four years in prison, which was reduced on appeal to three. This was good news to many Christians around the world who only a short time before had been grieving over reports of his impending execution. Some people say that his surprisingly light sentence was due to the political pressure applied by the American and British governments, but many Christians in China say simply that, whatever the reason, the reduction of the sentence was nothing short of a great miracle and a blessing from the Lord.

Peter Xu, Sister Guan and their precious daughters in Los Angeles Paul Hattaway

Xu was transferred to a public jail in Zhengzhou, where he remained for the rest of his term. During the day, the prisoners were required to make Christmas tree lights for export around the world. Each man had to assemble 7,000 lights every day, stringing them together on a thin wire. If anyone failed to fulfil this quota, he was punished by the guards. One man had the hairs of his beard pulled out because he couldn’t make enough Christmas tree lights. Besides the great pain he suffered inside the prison, however, Xu also had to endure much brutal treatment at the hands of fellow Christians on the outside. This started after the government and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement had condemned him as a heretic, and had labelled the BornAgain Movement an ‘evil cult’.812

To the Land of the Free

After Xu and Guan had both been released from prison, they found there was still a simmering resentment against them on account of their marriage. Guan was treated shamefully by some of the older women in the BornAgain Movement, who even refused to consider her as a sister in Christ. Xu relates: I was pleased to see my wife again and to pray together with her. We thanked God for preserving our lives, and started getting to know each other again. For 36 of our first 39 months as a married couple, we had been separated from each other in prison. A special surprise came to us in the weeks following our reunion: Guan became pregnant. It would be fair to say that my leadership role in our church had diminished during my three years in prison from 1997 to 2000. Because our arrest and imprisonment had taken place so soon after our wedding, I had not had the chance to speak to all of our leaders and co-workers about it. I wanted to explain how the Lord had led us together over a long period of time, but instead for three years I sat behind bars while people listened to all kinds of rumours and imaginary stories about our relationship. While Guan and I were in Beijing in 2000, we began to prayerfully consider our future. Ministry had become difficult in China for a number of reasons. One of them was I had been arrested so many times that maintaining the security of our meeting places proved difficult. If government agents followed me, they would soon discover many of the places where we have Bible schools and training centres. The United States had long taken an interest in me, for which I was appreciative. As far back as 1988, after I tried to see Billy Graham, the US government had continually brought my name up before the Chinese authorities, asking about my health and welfare. While I was in prison in the late 1990s, a delegation from President Clinton’s administration came to China and asked to visit me in prison, but Beijing did not permit them to do so. Certain Christian organizations in America had also been a blessing to me for many years, and now that I was out of prison some of these brothers came to Beijing to meet with my wife and I. An opportunity was placed before us, and we were assured if we could get to the United States we would be welcomed by the government and be permitted to stay there. We prayed earnestly about this offer, seeking the Lord’s guidance. We knew that, regardless of how we personally felt about it, if God was not behind it then we would be out of his will. We would much rather stay in China the rest of our lives and suffer mistreatment than leave China and find we had missed God’s plan for our lives.813

Xu and Guan prayed fervently for the Lord’s guidance. It was, in emotional terms, a difficult decision to make. Xu was 60 years old and had never been outside his own country. The more they prayed, the more they realized that there were great opportunities for ministry overseas that were not available in China. Besides, Xu was deeply concerned by the recent arrest of Gong Shengliang, the founder of the South China Church. Like the Born-Again Movement, this church had been labelled an ‘evil cult’ by the government, and Gong had been sentenced to death (later commuted to life in prison). Xu saw a bleak future for himself if he remained in China at his age. After

many years in prison and many more on the run from the authorities, it was time for a change of direction. He also believed that if he moved to the West he would be able to play a prominent part in the Back to Jerusalem project to train Chinese believers and send them into neighbouring countries as missionaries. In May 2001, with Guan nearly eight months pregnant, they informed their contacts that they were willing and ready to leave China. The arrangements were quickly made, and the departure date was confirmed just seven days in advance. On the last day of that month, they arrived in New York. Controversy had followed Xu around for most of his life, and quitting his country provoked a new round of criticism and accusation. Xu explains: I had left my blood and sweat on China’s soil and had been granted the rare privilege of witnessing God’s mighty revival sweep across my nation. Life in China is all I knew. It had been my heart and soul. The friends who had arranged our departure from China warned us not to tell anyone— otherwise, all the plans would be jeopardized. Unfortunately, this resulted in many people back in China being upset when they heard we had suddenly left. I can imagine it was a real shock to many. I was saddened that I had not been allowed to say proper goodbyes to my own family and church. My first impression of America was a feeling of great freedom. It took some time for us to get used to the fact that we weren’t being followed when we walked down the street, and that we could speak to people without having to worry about our message being intercepted. For the first time in more than 30 years, I didn’t have to go to sleep at night with the threat of being arrested during the night and hauled off to prison. It was also a stark contrast to be welcomed and treated warmly by the government of the United States. Everybody was extremely helpful and nice to us. All my experiences with officials in China had been the exact opposite. We came to understand that we had been in prison for a long, long time. I am not talking only about those times when we were behind bars, but in one sense we felt that for decades we had been bound by the great prison called ‘China’. I encourage American Christians to give thanks to God for their freedoms that are so easily taken for granted. They are a gift from God, not the creation of Man. These gifts of freedom should be treated with respect and humility, lest the very freedom that you enjoy should come back to enslave your spirits.814

Soon after their arrival, Xu and Guan were granted refugee status by the American government—and on 15 June 2001 their lives were enriched by the birth of a beautiful baby girl, whom they named Rong En (‘Glorious Grace’). Xu kept a relatively low profile in America, after the church leaders back in China told him: ‘You are the root of our church. Roots should be hidden below the ground. It is not right for you to become famous and popular. You should hide yourself and lead a low-key life.’815 In March 2002, the Xu

family moved to the Los Angeles area, where they reconnected with some Christian friends they had worked with in China. In January 2003, God blessed them with a second daughter, Rong Mei (‘Glorious Beauty’). A little son, Samuel, followed in 2007. In recent years, Xu and his family have continued to minister around the world from their base in southern California. Xu has regular contact with some of his old colleagues in China, and he has tried to implement various plans for the advance of the gospel. It seems, however, that his influence in his own house-church movement has waned dramatically since he left China. Born into a well-to-do family in Henan nearly seven decades ago, he has experienced more persecution, more revival and more criticism than probably any other church leader in his country’s history. Many have denounced him without knowing him. What is clear, however, is that his journey following Jesus Christ has been motivated by a deep love for the scriptures and for God.

780 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 781 Ibid. 782 Ibid. 783 Ibid. 784 Ibid. 785 Ibid. 786 Ibid. 787 Ibid. 788 Ibid. 789 Ibid. 790 Ibid. 791 Ibid. 792 Ibid. 793 Ibid. 794 Ibid. 795 South China Morning Post, 24 April 1988 796 Alex Buchan, ‘God the Vandal’ (1 March 2002), cited on the website of the Institute for Global Engagement (http://www.globalengage.org) 797 Chinese Church Research Centre (newsletter), 25 April 1988 798 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 799 Ibid. 800 Ibid. 801 Ibid. 802 Ibid. 803 Ibid. 804 Ibid. 805 Ibid. 806 Ibid. 807 Personal interview with Sister Guan in June 2004 808 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 809 Pingguo Ribao, 16 May 1997 810 South China Morning Post, 9 June 1997 811 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 812 See the previous on the Born-Again Movement for more information about why Xu was condemned as a heretic and his movement as a cult. 813 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 814 Ibid. 815 Ibid.

Chapter 30 THE LOCAL CHURCH

Witness Li

The Controversial Witness Li

T

he Local Church was founded by Li Changshou (‘Witness Li’816), who was a native of Shandong Province. Born in 1905, he was converted to Christianity at the age of 20 and came under the influence of the famous preacher Watchman Nee. He became a full-time co-worker with Nee in 1933, and the two travelled widely throughout the country until Li moved to Taiwan just before the Communists took control of mainland China in 1949. He was a gifted and influential teacher, though his radical views on the Church were identical to those developed by Nee. Li insisted that there should be only one church in each city or town. Many critics observed that he and Nee vehemently condemned denominationalism as contrary to God’s word even as they appeared to be developing and expanding their own congregations. Over time, many churches were established in Taiwan and many other parts of the world in accordance with Li’s teaching that fellowships must be local and inclusive. The new movement came to be called ‘the Local Church’. It grew from a small group of about 350 believers in Taiwan to have some 20,000 members in just five years. Li moved to California in 1962 and preached unceasingly for the next 35 years until his death in 1997. His speaking ministry was complemented by a wide-ranging publishing ministry, which put out more than 400 titles by him. Hundreds of Local Churches were established, chiefly among Chinesespeaking communities in the West. Beginning in the 1970s, however, other Christian leaders began to raise concerns about the doctrines and practices of Li and the churches under his

leadership. Some even condemned the Local Church as a cult.817 The church strongly rejected all accusations of heresy and strenuously defended itself. When in 1977 two books, The God Men and The Mindbenders, asserted that the Local Church was a cult, it sued the publishers for libel. More recently, Harvest House Publishers in America faced a long and debilitating $136million lawsuit brought by the Local Church after it was included in a book by John Ankerberg and John Weldon called Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions. However, on 5 January 2006 the court of appeals for the First District of Texas threw the case out, and it later rejected the Local Church’s appeal.

The Local Church in Henan The distinguished Christian leader and author Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng) remained in China after the Communists came to power. He was arrested in 1956 and spent the rest of his life in prison, until his martyrdom in 1972.818 He founded the Little Flock, which was one of the largest church networks in China before 1949. When Christians began to emerge in the late 1970s after decades of persecution, it soon became apparent that thousands of Little Flock believers throughout Henan had survived the onslaught with their faith intact. They formed into small fellowships that met in homes, barns, caves and other places for worship and prayer. Some time later, the teachings of Witness Li entered mainland China and filtered through to the Christians formerly associated with Nee’s teaching. Many of the elderly believers in Henan immediately recognized that these new teachings were different from those that had been passed down to them before the Communist Revolution and they rejected them. Many younger believers, however, embraced these teachings, and the literature from the Local Church. They enthusiastically adopted the practice of shouting ‘Jesus is Lord’ or a passage of scripture in unison at the tops of their voices, sometimes for hours. The lack of available Bibles in China at the time added to the confusion. These believers subsequently came to be nicknamed ‘Shouters’, ‘Yellers’ or ‘Screamers’ by people who lived near them. Inevitably, the division between the older and younger Christians precipitated a split in the church that caused great pain to many hundreds of thousands of believers in Henan and other parts of the country. On one occasion, the leaders of each faction tried to plead their respective cases before the TSPM, but the meeting degenerated into mutual accusations and

threats. According to a book by the respected Jonathan Chao, the older group consisted mostly of orthodox, Bible-believing Christians, but the younger group who opposed them said, ‘They cannot be saved, cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, and cannot receive eternal life!’ The younger group insists on shouting out the name of the Lord, believing that one can shout one’s way into heaven. They shout very loudly early in the morning, waking up their neighbours. ‘We will shout from the top of the hills, from the top of the trees, from the top of the train, from the top of our bicycles…’ One day, as they were riding their bikes, they shouted so loudly that cyclists in front of them were frightened and fell. Each time they meet, they shout. The non-believers have protested against the shouting by beating drums even louder.819

An article published in 1982 sheds more light on the split in the Local Church: The church in Xi County820 began to develop two factions. Those under Wang are called the older elders. Those under Ching are known as the new and younger elders. The elderly group despises the younger group and wants to revive the church in Xi County according to their own pattern. They say that Ching’s group does not have enough theological training. The younger group thinks that both the local church and the province-wide church should be developed according to their system. They disdain the older group, believing that they are too weak.821

The Persecution of the Shouters Generally speaking, over the years the younger members of the church increasingly embraced Li’s teachings. Tons of Bibles produced by his ministry were smuggled into China, and these included extensive notes by Li in the margins of each page that provided commentary and interpretation for readers. The practice of shouting made the younger group stand out, and the authorities ordered a series of extensive clampdowns in an attempt to crush them totally. The Local Church was officially labelled an ‘evil cult’, and many Christian groups were quick to distance themselves from it. Sadly, the authorities failed to distinguish between the newer, extremist element in the Local Church and the older believers who rejected their heretical teachings. Both were targeted and have suffered much brutal persecution to this day. There have been hundreds of incidents of harassment and torture of Shouters. There are far too many stories to tell here, and a few typical examples will have to suffice. On 23 August 2002, a preacher named Dai Quanxing was seized by police early in the morning as he was on his way to speak in another part of

Xingcai County. At the police station, Xu Xuelong, the head of the county PSB, and Wu Kongquan, the Party director of the Xingcai Religious Affairs Bureau, shouted at him: ‘What kind of religion do you believe? Have you ever conspired with foreign countries against China? Who let you preach? Confess right away!’822 Dai was held for 15 days, during which time he was mercilessly tortured and his face and body were covered in blood and bruises. On 13 November 2002, 18 women belonging to the Shouters were meeting in Baofeng County in Henan when seven policemen broke into the house, confiscated their Bibles and books and dragged them off to the county detention centre. There they were fingerprinted, beaten and charged with ‘holding an illegal assembly’. After 12–15 days in detention, the women were released after paying a fine of 300 yuan ($36) each.823 Many house-church Christians who have nothing at all to do with either faction of the Local Church have been arrested and imprisoned after being accused of being Shouters by the police. One man, Shi Yunchao, was arrested in 1983 and falsely charged with being a Shouter. When he protested that his church was not part of the sect, an official from the Religious Affairs Bureau replied: ‘You are Shouter Sect if you shout loud; you are also Shouter Sect if you lower your voice shouting. We think you are still Shouter Sect even if you mumble words in your mouth! The Shouter Sect is counter-revolutionary.’824 Shi Yunchao was eventually martyred for his faith in 1996.

Enoch Wang, a Broken Vessel Enoch Wang has been one of the key leaders of the Local Church in Henan. As a result, he has been the target of severe persecution and has spent many years in prison, even though he is one who claims to have rejected the heretical teaching of the Shouters. He and his wife and children have suffered much for their commitment to Christ, yet God has given them a tremendous testimony of his power and love. In 1982, Wang was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He later explained that the harsh treatment he received was due not only to his faith but also to his background: I first became a Christian in 1969—during the Cultural Revolution—when I was a leader of the Communist Red Guards. My faith in God was shallow for the first year. In 1970 I actually became a member of the Communist Party, even though I was also a believer in Christ! Soon I was promoted to the leadership of the Communist Youth League, and in 1972 I was assigned to

work in a People’s Liberation Army weapons factory. It wasn’t until 1973 that I really got serious about serving the Lord Jesus. I was first sent to prison from 1982 to 1994 because of my faith in God. They hated the fact that an atheist Red Guard and a leader of the Communist Youth League was now a Christian pastor! In all those years they tried to break me and make me turn away from the Lord, but by God’s grace they could not remove the deposit of God in my heart.825

Wang was finally released from prison in 1994 and started the long process of rebuilding the church movement he had led before his arrest. Most of its members had forgotten all about him over the years he had spent behind bars. In 1995, he met Brother Yun for the first time. Yun befriended him and encouraged him to make contact with leaders from other house-church movements for the sake of unity in the Church. Wang hesitated to do so, because he believed that the Local Church was theologically correct whereas many of the other house-church groups across China were devious cults. Later, the government sought to rearrest him after it discovered he had established a meeting for student leaders. Wang fled his home and went on the run—and God used this time to give him an appreciation of the whole Body of Christ. He found that he was not the only house-church leader to be a fugitive, and it was in these difficult circumstances that he came to see that the others were also brothers and sisters in Christ, that they, too, had been purchased by the blood of Jesus and that their beliefs had much more in common with his own than he had supposed. God took Wang, with his closed mind, and through hardship showed him the beauty of other parts of his suffering Body in China. Other, similar testimonies are told of how walls of hostility have been broken down between rival Christian leaders. In some cases, pastors from different church networks and denominations have got to know and appreciate each other while literally bound together in prison, shackled with leg irons. Today, Wang has this to say about unity among the house churches: I believe with all my heart that unless God’s church in China becomes completely unified, there will be no possibility for the gospel to reach all peoples as God desires. If we continue to be hostile against one another, we allow Satan a foothold to destroy the Body of Christ and we have no chance of destroying the works of the devil. Only when God’s people are unified does God command a blessing.826

Wang’s Baby Daughter is Raised from the Dead

One of the best-known, most remarkable and most easily verified testimonies among the house-church Christians of Henan concerns Wang’s baby daughter who was raised from the dead in 1997. Her father’s own account of this miracle, which appeared in Back to Jerusalem, is worth repeating at length here: When I was arrested [in 1982,] our little daughter was just three years old. It was painful to be separated from my wife and child, but I hoped our local Christians would take care of them in my absence. The authorities knew this, so they decided to watch my family to see if they received any outside assistance. I had been sentenced as a counter-revolutionary and a traitor— the very worst crimes in China. Anyone found trying to help the family of a counterrevolutionary is accused of the same crime, and so fear of punishment resulted in my Christian brothers and sisters being unable to help my family. We lived on a farm but my wife didn’t know how to plant and harvest the crops, so my family soon began to starve and went through a time of incredible hardship. During the first summer, my wife tried to harvest the corn in our fields while my daughter stayed at home. When she was just four years old she learned how to cook so she could help her mother! She even learned how to start a fire and boil water for noodles, as well as how to cook simple meals. The pressure on our little girl was intense. No child should ever have to face the type of life she did, but the Lord helped them and today my daughter is a beautiful young woman who serves the Lord with all her heart. After I was transferred to a prison labour camp in a different part of our province, my wife and daughter also moved to that town so they could continue to visit me. For years my dear wife raised our daughter all alone, with no Christian fellowship, no husband and no money. Sometimes they scavenged through garbage cans looking for scraps of food to eat or some item they could sell at the market for a few cents. At other times they were forced to beg. On one occasion, when she was at her lowest point, God gave her a vision of paradise that encouraged her faith and helped her to carry on. Many Christians around the world pray for pastors in China when they are sent to prison, and for this we are deeply grateful. However, please remember to pray also for the families of those pastors, as often their ordeal is even worse than that of those in prison. After all, I at least got a couple of coarse meals each day. Visits from my family were bitter-sweet experiences. They never complained about their lives, but their skinny malnourished bodies revealed their desperate struggle. I longed to see them and was encouraged when they came. But the pain of knowing what they were experiencing was the worst form of persecution the authorities could give me. … When I was finally released in 1994, I thought we would have a joyous reunion but I didn’t fully understand what my wife and daughter had been through all those years. A lot of the emotions and pain that had built up over 13 years came flooding out. My wife and I had to start our relationship all over again. Only by the gracious help of our Lord Jesus did we progress. Now everything is fine and I am deeply grateful to the Lord for having given me such a wonderful helpmate. Without her I couldn’t do anything! God has always been good to us. … In 1995 my wife and I had another little girl. I was 45 years old and not expecting to be a father again. The Bible says, ‘Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him’ (Psalm 127:3). We were so happy. On New Year’s Day 1997 a unity meeting was organized by Brother Yun near my home town. Leaders of various house church networks were invited to attend so

that we could all have fellowship with one another, pray together, and break down the barriers that existed between different groups. I was eager to attend because the Lord had been showing me that unity within the house church movement was essential if we were to advance with the gospel as God intended. Until we truly forgave each other and were reconciled, I knew that God would never fully bless our work. At that time my family was being hunted by the police. We were living in a fourth-floor apartment in a building that was still under construction. We couldn’t get a normal place because doing so would have required us to register with the local authorities, which would have led to our immediate arrest. On the very morning that I was to travel to the unity meeting, I was talking on the telephone when I heard screaming. My wife burst into the bedroom shouting hysterically. My [elder] daughter, who was 18 years old, had been holding her baby sister, 15 months old at the time, on the balcony overlooking the street. Somehow our baby girl managed to slip out of her sister’s grasp. She fell four stories and landed, head first, on a pile of bricks on the street below. My wife was holding our baby daughter in her arms and crying. She said, ‘Hurry, we must take her to the hospital at once!’ I immediately saw that the baby was dead. Her head was smashed and a small piece of white brain tissue was protruding through the front of her skull. I said, ‘There’s no point going to the hospital. She is already dead. There is nothing the hospital can do to make her any better.’ An array of emotions went through me. On one hand I knew she was dead, so there was no need to go to the hospital. I also knew that if we went to the hospital the authorities would soon find out we were not registered, and I would be arrested and sent back to prison, quite probably on charges of murdering my own baby. We would be in trouble for living illegally in an unfinished building, and the family who gave us permission to live there would also be in trouble. I also felt that this incident was a direct demonic attack, intended to distract my attention and prevent my co-workers and me from attending the vital unity meeting. Satan is not happy when God’s people come together to break down barriers between them. He had spent years slyly building walls of unforgiveness, misunderstanding and prejudice. It was not surprising that he would throw all his efforts into preventing the meeting from taking place. I knelt down and prayed. I was angry, shocked and in grief, all at the same time. I said, ‘Lord, if it is your will for the church in China to be unified, then I pray you will bring my daughter back to life. I pray that today you will put the breath of life back in her body, tomorrow you will allow her to speak, and the day after tomorrow she will be able to walk. But if it is not your will for the church in China to be unified, then I will hide myself and will never preach your gospel again.’ Of course I would always continue to believe in the Lord, but I would remove myself from the front lines and would just lead a quiet, peaceful life. Some people might say I had no right to speak to God like that, but you need to understand I was in deep shock and I knew this accident had been a deliberate demonic action designed to stop me attending the unity meeting. My wife continued to hold our baby in her arms and rock the lifeless body back and forth. Our beautiful daughter had completely stopped breathing, her heart was not beating and she was pale. The meeting was due to begin that evening in a location about 20 miles [32 kilometres] away from my home. I decided to put my grief aside and attend the meeting as a sign of defiance of Satan and an act of faith in God. I also decided not to cry, even though I was deeply grieved in my heart. I wanted to show the devil that he could never intimidate or stop me.

In the late afternoon I left my home and made my way to the meeting, well wrapped up against the cool winter air. When I left home my wife was still holding the baby in her arms and weeping. The piece of brain was still exposed, sticking out of a crack in her skull. My eldest daughter was devastated, blaming herself for having dropped her sister from the balcony. When I got to the meeting, Brother Yun was already speaking. My co-workers and I took our seats and didn’t tell any of the other believers what had happened. During the evening meal we chose not to eat. Instead we fasted and prayed together in the meeting room, but I still didn’t tell anyone else what had happened. I reminded the Lord what a blessing our little girl was, and how much delight her birth had brought to me at the age of 45. I examined my heart to see if this had happened because of any sin in me. I told the Lord if it had happened because I had offended him, then I would have nothing to complain about. ‘Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? … The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised’ (Job 2:10, 1:21). After the first day’s meetings concluded, I knew my family needed me so I returned home where I found my wife and elder daughter still weeping. Their eyes were red and swollen. My wife was still holding the dead baby in her arms. I leaned forward and prayed over my baby in the name of Jesus Christ. Suddenly I heard a small kind of gasping noise come from her mouth, like a small burp. I realized that she must be breathing and I cried out, ‘Praise be to God!’ All four of us slept in the same bedroom, but that night none of us got any sleep. Emotionally drained, we just sat there praying quietly. At five o’clock I got up and went back to the unity meeting and spent the whole day in prayer and discussion with the other house church leaders, who were still ignorant of what had happened. At ten o’clock in the evening the meeting ended for the day and I again returned home. When I entered the door of our home I found a different atmosphere. Despair had turned into joy. My wife was breastfeeding my little daughter. She was breathing fine, the colour had returned to her cheeks, and she was hungry! God had miraculously healed her skull, and skin covered the part of her brain that had been exposed. No medical help had been given her, except that of the great physician, Jesus. All that remained of her fall was a small scar in the middle of her forehead. Despite these obvious improvements, she was still far from normal. She could not walk or move, her eyes were closed, and she just lay there almost motionless except for breathing and sucking. I called out her name, Sheng Ling, which means ‘Spiritual Blessing’. When she heard my voice she stopped drinking her milk and a small sound came from her mouth, as if she were greeting me. That night I was able to sleep soundly, knowing the Lord was doing a great miracle. … When I returned home on the third night, my wife was again breastfeeding my daughter. I held out my arms and said, ‘Sheng Ling, come and let your daddy hold you.’ She took one step towards me and then toppled over, but we all rejoiced that she had taken that one step. Just two days before she had been dead with her brain sticking out of her smashed skull. I started to cry with joy. It was on this third night that I told my family what I had prayed when Sheng Ling first fell out of the window. I told them, ‘When you first brought her body up from the street, I knelt down and said to God, “I pray you will bring my daughter back to life. I pray that today you will put the breath of life back in her body, tomorrow you will allow her to speak, and the day after tomorrow she will be able to walk.”’ When they heard this they rejoiced greatly, knowing God had done a great miracle.

On the fourth morning I went to the meeting with overwhelming joy in my heart. My enthusiasm was soon dampened when a number of house church leaders pointed at me and said, ‘Those attending this important meeting are expected to stay here. What kind of commitment do you have to unity if you can’t even stay with us, but have to go hurrying home as soon as the meeting ends every night?’ I still hadn’t shared any information with them, so they had no idea what had been going on in my life. In the final session of the meeting Brother Yun was scheduled to speak, then the leaders intended to pray together one last time before everyone dispersed back to their homes. While he was speaking, my [elder] daughter came into the room and started to whisper excitedly into my ear. She had hurried to the meeting place to tell me that her little sister was now walking and talking normally! It was at that stage that I felt compelled to stand up. I declared to everyone, ‘Now I know that it is God’s will for the church in China to be unified!’ Before more than one hundred leaders, I testified about what had happened to my baby daughter. Everyone praised God. Those who had criticized me for going home every night came up and apologized. Not only did the Lord heal Sheng Ling from the fall, but he has blessed her in a very special way. She is now eight years old and is so smart that her school made her skip a year ahead of her classmates! She has suffered no long-term damage as a result of her fall. The only thing that remains is the small scar on her forehead. It is as though the Lord left the scar to remind us of his great grace and power.827

Just a few months after this miracle, in March 1997, Wang was one of the house-church leaders arrested in Henan when they met for further talks on unity. He was sentenced to three years in Zhengzhou’s maximum-security prison. When they discovered that he had already spent many years behind bars for his faith, the authorities released him early for good behaviour. Just four days after gaining his freedom, however, Wang was arrested again, on 23 August 1999, during a meeting in Nanyang in southern Henan at which 30 other house-church leaders were also rounded up.

Women from the Local Church, all with their heads covered Asian Report

The Local Church in Henan Today The Local Church continues to function throughout Henan today, though it is strongest in the coastal provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The

intense persecution of the Shouters sect has had its effect, and many have given up their faith or withdrawn into even more secretive fellowships. Estimating the size of the Local Church in China today is extremely difficult, for a number of reasons—not least that in many places its churches have chosen to register with the government and are now officially ThreeSelf churches. In many other places, however, the Local Church Christians continue to meet together in unregistered house meetings. On 7 April 2003, more than 120 house-church Christians, most of them members of the Local Church, were arrested during a raid on a meeting near Pingdingshan City in northern Henan. This was a blow to the Local Church, as a number of its key leaders from different parts of the country had come together to pray and discuss their work. People from Guangdong, Jiangsu, Xinjiang, Hebei and Beijing were arrested, along with some Chinese believers from overseas. The authorities determined that about 20 of the detainees were not important leaders and released them after they had paid a fine, but the remaining 100 were subjected to abuse and torture before being released one by one. The other house-church movements in Henan tend to regard the Local Church as a group that includes many genuine believers, yet most have found it difficult to have any meaningful relationship with them because of the Local Church’s strict and intolerant beliefs. Brother Timothy, a leader of the Nanyang Church, has said: Most of the Local Church believers are real Christians, but they have their own way of doing things, so we keep a distance from them. A small portion of the Shouters really are trapped and are a cult, but most of them do not believe the extreme teachings that Li Changshou [Witness Li] introduced. Therefore, it is wrong to label all the Shouters a cult because of the minority of them who have been deceived.828

In an interview in 2001, Enoch Wang shed light on the structure of the Local Church and on some of the pain caused by the split of 20 years before. He also cautioned believers both inside and outside China who were quick to condemn either faction of the Local Church as a cult. He said: Among the Local Church in China today are approximately 20–25 million Christians who come from a root of Watchman Nee teaching. Nee founded the Little Flock, but today the Little Flock is only one of several main streams that lead into the river called the Local Church. That river in turn flows into the mighty ocean that is the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is an additional major division between those who follow the teachings and influence of Li Changshou [Witness Li] and those who do not. I would say that in China today, 40 per cent of the Local Church is associated with Li Changshou [Witness Li] and 60 per cent are not. The Chinese government, Three-Self Church and some organizations overseas have labelled those

associated with Li ‘cult members’. Some stories and rumours about their teachings and practices have been promoted as typical of a cult, but in my experience these accusations are at best confined to a small minority of Local Church members, and at worst are vicious slanders designed to cast all Local Churches under the same cloak as cults. I know many hundreds of Local Church pastors and leaders, including many who are affiliated with Li. In my experience, the great majority of these believers love God, earnestly seek to follow God’s truth according to the Bible and know little about the controversial issues that cloud Li in many parts of the world. It has therefore been my conviction not to create a barrier between those parts of the Local Church who follow Li’s teaching and those who do not. I have spent years trying, by God’s power, to teach the Bible and bring true unity between all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ and who depend on his blood to cleanse them from sin. The biggest problem we have had is in dealing with the sly way the government and the ThreeSelf Church have characterized all members of the Local Church as cult members. We have accordingly all been classified as ‘Shouters’, regardless of what we believe or practise, or even whether or not we ‘shout’ in our meetings. Over the years, thousands of pastors have been arrested, imprisoned and tortured because the Local Church is officially on the Chinese government’s list of cults. I have also spent 16 years of my life in prison for my Christian witness, my only crime being that I sought to follow Jesus Christ and refused to accept the leadership and control of an atheist government in church affairs. The government has purposely classified us with a single stroke of the brush. They have deliberately shut their ears to hearing the truth about our doctrines and practices but have eagerly taken the opportunity to crush us with the slightest excuse. God, however, has been good to us. We have suffered many setbacks and lost battles, but we know we shall win the overall war because our Commander-in-Chief has already defeated the enemy and has conquered the hosts of hell. The Local Church in China today is not a unified church group by any stretch of the imagination, but there are many millions of believers who walk with God in humility, and who zealously live for the evangelization of their fellow countrymen. May the Lord be glorified!829 816 Also spelt ‘Lee’ 817 A much more thorough investigation of the doctrines and practices of the Local Church will be included in the Fujian volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. Fujian is the province where the church is strongest in China today, and is also where many of its formative experiences took place. 818 A detailed study of Watchmen Nee’s life and ministry will also appear in the Fujian volume of the ‘Fire & Blood’ series. 819 Chao, Wise as Serpents, pp153–54 820 The church concerned is in Henan Province, but the name of the county and the names of its leaders have been made up. The Wang referred to here is not Enoch Wang, mentioned later in this chapter. 821 ‘Problems in Henan’, p5 822 ‘A Henan Minister Arrested on His Way to Preaching’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 823 ‘Eighteen Female Christians Arrested While Assembling’, CIPRC, www.china21.org 824 Christianity Today, March 11, 2002 825 Paul Hattaway, Back to Jerusalem: Called to Complete the Great Commission (Carlisle, England: Piquant, 2003), pp84–85 826 Personal interview with Enoch Wang in August 2001 827 Adapted from 7, ‘The Testimony of Enoch Wang’, in Hattaway, Back to Jerusalem 828 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001 829 Personal interview with Wang, August 2001

Chapter 31 CHINA GOSPEL FELLOWSHIP (THE TANGHE CHURCH)

Henan’s house churches are characterized by passionate worship and prayer

T

Asian Report

he China Gospel Fellowship (Zhonghua Fuyin Tuanqi, also translated as ‘the China Evangelical Fellowship’) is a house-church network based in Henan Province that has grown to embrace at least several million members throughout China. It has its roots in Tanghe County in the south of Henan, part of the powerful ‘revival triangle’ that has produced several nationwide house-church networks. The CGF grew out of the Tanghe house-church movement in the early 1980s. Its founding pastor, Feng Jianguo, explains: The Tanghe Church and the China Evangelical Fellowship are like father and son. The Fangcheng and Nanyang Churches are like brothers. Later, some small groups that had sprung up in Tanghe got into trouble for receiving Bibles from overseas. Under pressure, they joined together with us and so the CGF grew. Most of our leaders have been cast out from our homes. We have been on the run for years. If we had a comfortable home, then I am sure the Lord would not have used us to spread his gospel in so many places.830

Since its beginning, the CGF has quietly grown, establishing churches in every province of China and taking a lead in efforts to take the gospel beyond the country’s borders as part of the Back to Jerusalem movement. It has been relatively peaceful, with few splits or controversies, especially when compared with the neighbouring Fangcheng house-church movement. According to David Aikman, one reason for the harmony of its internal relationships is that, ‘while Fangcheng tended to think of itself as a church with unified principles, the Tanghe, coming from a part of Henan with a

greater variety of Christian traditions before 1949, thinks of itself as a loose-knit fellowship.’831 The Tanghe area was predominantly the preserve of the Lutherans during the missionary era, but by the end of the Cultural Revolution all Western denominational tags had become largely irrelevant. All that mattered then was whether someone belonged to Christ or not. A leader of the CGF recalled what things were like in Tanghe in the early 1980s: We didn’t have Bibles. … People with disease came to church and they were healed. You could assume that when people said, ‘I believe in Jesus!’ they suddenly got healed. Some people who were sick said they heard a voice or something, went to church, and were healed. We had dreams, visions, and revelations from God. We called this period the ‘three-shedding period’. We shed blood in persecution, we shed tears in our prayers, and we shed nasal mucus because we wept for such long periods of time.832

By the late 1980s, the CGF had saturated its home area with the gospel. Practically every person in Tanghe had heard about Christ and had been given an opportunity to accept or reject his offer of salvation. In 2001, Feng said: ‘In Tanghe County today, the proportion of Christians is similar to Fangcheng. In some areas it is as high as 80 per cent, in others 30–40 per cent. But every single village in Tanghe has a house church, and every person has heard the good news.’833 The GGF then started to look further afield, and adopted a zealous evangelistic strategy to take the gospel throughout the whole country. Its ambition was to see people worshipping God in every city, town and village and among every ethnic minority group in China. The CGF is organized at a national level, with what they call the chao hui (‘sending agency’) level underneath. To qualify as a chao hui, a region must have at least 30,000 baptized believers and a certain number of trained leaders and training centres—and by the turn of the millennium there were 22 such chao hui’s across the country. Because of its highly organized structure and its uncompromising zeal for the spread of the gospel, the CGF has been severely persecuted by the Chinese authorities. At times, it has had dozens of leaders languishing in prison. In early 1994, a large meeting was held in Tanghe at which 70 young evangelists were commissioned to go out to 22 of China’s 30 provinces. Each one was given 1,500 yuan (about $180), much of which had been provided by the local believers. Despite their poverty, farmers had sold chickens or eggs, or worked on neighbours’ farms to scrape together some money to help to spread the gospel throughout China. God accepted this

holy sacrifice and blessed the work of the evangelists. When they all returned to Tanghe six months later, most reported how God had helped them to plant house churches and had miraculously provided for their needs. One church movement was brought to birth in Inner Mongolia that later grew to include more than 100,000 believers.834 Two young single women planted three churches whose membership totalled more than 300 in the six months they ministered in Heilongjiang. By 2002, those same churches had grown to include more than 5,000 believers.835 Feng remembers: In 1994, we sent out 70 young workers to different provinces. They had to sleep in the wilderness. They wept and prayed all night. It was God himself who provided their needs. When they returned home and told us how God had provided for them, we all rejoiced greatly. After serving from 1994 to ’97, many of those young workers made commitments to the Lord that they would never marry, so that they could devote themselves fully to winning souls and spreading the gospel. We needed 100,000 yuan [approximately $12,000] to fund those 70 workers for three years. A Taiwan pastor helped raise 40 per cent and the local Tanghe churches raised 60 per cent. This is a good form of partnership, one where the local believers do not feel left out.836

In June 1997, the director of China’s Bureau of Religious Affairs, Ye Xiaowen, condemned the CGF as an ‘evil cult’ and described all unregistered house-church groups as ‘evil, illegal organizations that undermine social order’.837 The decision to put the CGF on the list of cults was based on its refusal to submit to the control of the government rather than on any heretical beliefs or practices. The CGF has been the victim of numerous clampdowns over the years. Ye continues to apply political pressure in an attempt to obliterate the church, and is adept at using lies and propaganda to achieve his anti-Christian objectives. For example, after 22 believers were imprisoned for up to five years each in July 1999, he justified their incarceration by claiming that ‘those convicted either leaked state secrets … created social chaos or committed other crimes.’838 On 2 March 2000, 16 members of the CGF were arrested in Xinyang. Some of them were sent to labour camps, including one of the movement’s main leaders, Jiang Qinggang, who had already served two sentences in labour camps. The authorities had turned their attention to Xinyang in particular after the house churches there grew by 10,000 believers in just one month during a mass evangelistic campaign in 1994. Despite being labelled an evil cult by the government, the reality is that the CGF is one of the strongest conservative, Bible-based house-church networks in China. Its members are known to have a deep knowledge of

God’s word, though they see their ability to spread the gospel as limited on account of their financial poverty (most of them come from wheat-farming backgrounds). Nonetheless—and undeterred by the new wave of persecution—the CGF redoubled its evangelistic efforts. In October 1999, it sent some 200 new missionaries to every province in the country, including Tibet. Encouraged by the success God has given them, in recent years it has begun to focus on even greater harvest fields in the Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu nations beyond China’s borders. One foreign Christian who was invited to share a Christmas message with a congregation of CGF believers had this to say of his experience: Their testimonies are laced with references to healing, visions, prophetic insight, and persecution. They also speak of being ‘filled with the Spirit’, an experience which enables them to face hardships and adversity. … The service began and a sense of joy quickly permeated the small make-shift sanctuary. … The next stage of the service was filled with a number of truly amazing and very culturally authentic forms of worship. Small groups of believers, usually two or four, sang songs based on Scripture as they performed Christian folk dances. It was incredible—a wonderful form of worship which instructed and edified the entire group. Everyone entered in and the joy was almost tangible.839

Feng Jianguo

Feng Jianguo

Feng Jianguo (whose given name can be translated ‘Establish God’s Kingdom’) has been described as ‘the most respected senior leader’840 of the China Gospel Fellowship. He was born in Tanghe in 1925. His parents were committed Presbyterians who believed in Christ after being healed of sickness, and as a young boy he, too, put his trust in Jesus. Reminiscing about the time he attended Bible school at the age of just 11, he told me:

We were extremely poor, but we learned to sing songs and pray at the Bible school every day. I put his word deep inside my heart. In those days, we didn’t go out to win souls, we were taught to just stay in school and be good people. We hadn’t experienced the life of Jesus within us. When I was about 20, the Japanese declared war on China. During the stressful bombing raids, I started to learn to trust Jesus. With bombs falling all around us, I cried out, ‘Oh God, save me!’ I was aware of the closeness of the Lord from that time on. He saved me and set me apart for his service.841

In the same interview, talking about his life and the development of his ministry, Feng provided valuable insights into how the power of the gospel began to transform the believers in Tanghe and to touch multitudes of unbelievers: After the war ended, I visited a few churches and shared the gospel with small numbers of people. During that time people came to Christ very differently from today. Back then, most Christians were elderly people who believed after being healed of sickness. When we shared the gospel, we didn’t talk about knowing God or relationship with him, we usually just shared healing miracles. Then, after being healed, the recipients would also receive Jesus. There were so many miracles. My sister had a vision when she was just eight. She saw the Christian neighbours being received up to glory in heaven. Their clothes were new, they were given a crown on their heads and their faces displayed overwhelming joy and peace. Then we heard that they had just died. This vision had such an impact on my sister that from that moment till this day she has been a dedicated Christian. She shared this vision with many people and told them, ‘I have seen the Christians in heaven. We must believe in Jesus immediately.’ In 1964, I received a very clear call from the Lord. I also saw in a vision that I was to be a captain of the Lord’s army. God gave me a weapon which had my name written on it. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, I started to travel around and preach the gospel. God gave me gifts of healing and deliverance from demons. From 1971 to ’73, God did many miracles among us. In 1975 the authorities caught up with me and branded me a ‘counter-revolutionary’, and I was imprisoned for five years. During that time I met Zhang Rongliang, the leader of the Fangcheng Church, for the first time. I was in Tanghe Prison and he was in Fangcheng Prison. Prisoners were transferred around from labour camp to labour camp in those days. We, along with 700 other prisoners, were transferred from Nanyang Prison to Xihua Farm, north-west of Zhoukou City. The 700 prisoners were separated into 40 different groups. One day, the authorities assigned each prisoner to their work unit. By the end of the day, I was one of just seven prisoners left who was unassigned. A warden asked me, ‘What have you been sentenced to prison for?’ I replied, ‘I am here because of my religious faith.’ The officer asked Zhang Rongliang to carry my bedding to his cell, and we were paired together. When we arrived in the cell, Zhang took my hand and asked me, ‘Are you a Christian?’ I excitedly replied, ‘Yes, I am.’ The next day, I found out there were other Christians in prison. We secretly fellowshipped and encouraged one another for five years. In the Xihua labour camp we were given the task of working on a massive fruit farm, which covered an area of 2,000 acres [over eight square kilometres]. Two brothers smuggled a radio in for us. Every evening, the Christian prisoners would gather together among the fruit trees and secretly listen to gospel radio being broadcast from overseas.

We gave some visiting brothers apples to take back and share with the believers. During a service, each Christian was given a tiny piece of apple. They wept and wept as they took the apple and remembered us in prison. It was a way for them to partake in our sufferings and identify with us. Therefore we felt that even though we had suffered a lot in prison, the Lord had showered us with his grace and presence. It could have been much worse. I thank God for the precious five years in prison. We had very close fellowship with the Lord. In the early 1980s, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement visited me many times and tried to entice me to join them. I always answered with the same question: ‘How can an atheistic government lead the church of God? Jesus Christ is the head of the church. I will never join. Furthermore, many things the TSPM say are not according to the teaching of the Bible. You are in serious error.’ At the same time, we know there are millions of sincere believers who attend TSPM churches today. They love the Lord and endeavour to grow in grace. One day, the leaders of the Tanghe and Nanyang Three-Self churches came to me with humble spirits. They said, ‘We have been praying for several days and the Lord urged us to come to you. We will never betray our true brothers in the house churches. We must get out of the Three-Self Church.’ They kept their promise and resigned from the TSPM and became house-church leaders in our area. We are busy helping people who have left the TSPM. On many occasions after we have preached in TSPM churches people have grabbed our feet and refused to let us go. They are so desperate and hungry for God’s truth. They know the political garbage they are fed does nothing to satisfy their souls.842

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Feng continued to lead the CGF as it expanded its operations to become a nationwide movement. He is highly respected for his godly wisdom and non-controlling style of leadership. Many of the younger leaders look up to him as a father figure and have been mentored in the faith by him. According to Feng, the powerful revival that touched many parts of China burned most brightly in the first half of the 1980s, and he recalls that in those days All the house churches were one in Christ. We didn’t say here is this group and there is that group. We were all one. So, when we were released from prison I joined Zhang Rongliang’s team, even though I was from Tanghe and he was from Fangcheng. Just six months after we were released, the PSB were looking for us again, so from 1981 to ’83 we ran together all around China, preaching the gospel and training believers. On one occasion in 1983, we had more than a hundred people in a meeting. Suddenly a demonpossessed woman started to shout and disrupt the meeting. I asked two men to carry her to the front. We laid hands on her and prayed. Immediately, she calmed down and fell asleep like a harmless kitten. The believers told us she often disturbed their meetings and sometimes climbed up the walls onto the roof of the building. After we cast the demons out, she was no longer able to climb the wall. In those days, if you didn’t have the gift of casting out demons you would have trouble every meeting. Today, we do not have so many of these kinds of disturbances. During one meeting, a man grew excessively noisy. A demon told the man, ‘You will become famous in this area and God is going to use you to do many miracles.’ I took him to my home and we sat on my bed together. The demon told him, ‘Why did you come to this house? Now I cannot do any miracles through you. I want to use you mightily, so why did you come to this pastor’s house?’ After the man stayed in my home for six days, the demon left him. After he was

delivered he returned home and led six families to Christ. The year 1983 was God’s miracle time. But at the same time many counterfeit demonic miracles also took place. In those days you could not preach the gospel with words only, you needed to preach with miracles and words.843

Feng’s ministry has been marked with deep persecution, and he has been required to pay a dear price for the ministry God called him to. Between 1996 and 1999, he was again sentenced to prison after being labelled a ‘cult leader’, though he was released early due to health problems. He recalls: I suffered terrible head pains. Blood flowed from my nose and ears and I had a tremendously high fever. The prison doctor thought I would die. As I lay on my bed, I asked the Lord: ‘Do you want me to rest a long time or do you want me to go out and continue the work of the ministry?’ The very next day, my fever subsided, the bleeding and pain stopped and I felt better than I had for many years. I believe it was the Lord’s way to release me from the prison so I could continue his work. I learned that we don’t have to cry with a loud voice for Jesus to hear us. He is closer than a brother. He is there as soon as we whisper his name. He will never leave us or forsake us.844

Feng’s freedom was brief, however. On 23 August 1999, he was one of 31 house-church leaders captured during a prayer seminar in Tanghe County. Also among those seized was Zhang Rongliang, the founder of the Fangcheng Church. Once again, the old soldiers for Christ were sent to prison together. Initially, there were fears that six of the senior leaders would be executed, but these were allayed that December when they were sentenced instead to re-education through labour. Zhang was sentenced to three years, as was Zheng Shuqian; Shen Yiping and Wang Jiasheng received two years, and Feng and Jing Rongqi one year. The others who had been arrested were released after paying fines ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 yuan ($245 to $1220) each. After his release from this latest term behind bars, Feng observed: It has been difficult for my family. During my first five years in prison they had to work in the fields in order to eat. My wife and children were later sent to public trial. They have all suffered for the Lord. My wife is now 78, but is blessed and faithful to the Lord. Those who brought false accusations against my family in the trials all fell sick the next day.845

As China has opened up more to the outside world, the CGF has had to learn how to work with foreign Christians in a healthy way. In 2001, Feng told me: We are getting ready to send 40 more workers out soon. These days, we require them to return home two times per year for fellowship and encouragement. Most of these workers are women. Their husbands get a job and earn a living while their wives minister full-time. This helps the local authorities feel comfortable about our presence in their area. If we went and lived there without finding a job, the authorities would find our presence suspicious.

We are training more workers for God’s mission. This year, we are focusing on sending workers to minority groups. We are also starting to train workers to go outside China. Everything a Christian does must be committed to prayer. Then God’s strength comes and we can serve the Lord with joy and gladness. Prayer without ceasing means we exchange our weaknesses for God’s strength. Always be obedient to the Lord’s leadings, then you will have confidence! The first time I was in prison I was still quite an immature Christian, but by the second and third times God really deepened my walk with him. In 1996, the PSB came to visit me all the way from Xinjiang. They asked: ‘How come your workers have been so successful in reaching so many people in Xinjiang, even Muslims? Please tell us your secrets, because these Muslims will not even listen to us, but they listen to you.’ This is because the co-workers have also learned the lesson that we must pray and go only in God’s strength. All else is in vain.846

The Two Shens

Shen Xianfeng The Voice of the Martyrs

Although Feng Jianguo is regarded as the founder and elder statesman of the Tanghe movement, two younger men, Shen Yiping and his nephew Shen Xianfeng (whose name literally means ‘Pioneer Shen’), came to the fore in the 1980s as men of God and leaders of the China Gospel Fellowship. Few people know of the events around their emergence, but in 2001 Feng shared the story of how God promoted them to leadership positions within the church: In the early 1980s, we trained up two young men who are uncle and nephew, Shen Yiping and Shen Xianfeng. They lived only 10 kilometres [six miles] from our home. These young men were attending the Three-Self church, but the preacher there didn’t even use a Bible. He just read a political message or an article or two from Tianfeng, the monthly magazine of the TSPM. During Easter 1982, I went to the Shens’ village to preach the gospel. During the Three-Self meeting, the leader began to share his political report. I was so angry at this false church which had forsaken the word of God. The two Shens were fed up with this nominalism, and they hungered for the truth. They finally gave their lives to Christ in 1983. When Shen Yiping came to the Lord, he had a problem with his mouth. He couldn’t open it properly to eat. After believing in the Lord, he was healed. On one occasion, Shen Xianfeng,

whose feet have been crippled since birth, came to my house and told me he was under great persecution. After listening to him, I felt I, too, would be arrested at any moment, so we decided to flee together. We left my home at 11pm. Just minutes later, the police arrived to arrest us but we were nowhere to be found. From that time to now, Shen Yiping and Shen Xianfeng became full-time co-workers in the Kingdom of God. The China Gospel Fellowship was founded.847

To begin with, Shen Yiping belonged to a tiny group of a dozen believers in his home area, but within two years there were more than 200 house churches in a loose network.848 Over the years, Shen Yiping (who became the main leader of the CGF) and Shen Xianfeng have both faced great hardship and they have been imprisoned several times. It seems they are willing to be persecuted for the sake of the gospel and have accepted that risk as part of their call to take up their cross and follow Christ. In 1998, after he was released from one term in prison, Shen Xianfeng made a public statement about his detention in order to show Christians in China and around the world that members of the CGF were normal believers and not heretics. He explained that after he and a Brother Hau had been arrested on 6 November 1997 in Xinyang County, the local authorities had deceived his family by calling them and posing as doctors. They claimed that Shen and Hau had been injured in a car accident and told their relatives to bring money to the hospital immediately. When they duly did so, they found PSB officers waiting for them with handcuffs. Shen and Hau’s relatives were taken into custody and under torture revealed the location of their house church. As a result, 13 more Christians were seized and put behind bars. Shen recalled: We were constantly interrogated and beaten, stripped and exposed to the cold wind of electric fans in the severe winter temperatures. When one of us could no longer bear the stinging heartfelt pain and cried out, his mouth would then be stuffed with a rag. Following that, all the property in my house was confiscated; even the ragged winter clothes I had were taken away.849

For weeks no charges were laid against Shen Xianfeng or his fellow believers, until finally he was accused of ‘organizing a cult’. He strongly protested his innocence, telling his interrogators: We are orthodox Christians, truly believing in Jesus. We are also against cults and heresies. … My belief is sound. I believe in the Triune God, and in Jesus who is both divine and human, being saved only through faith, and the Bible as the supreme authority. … We conduct ourselves according to the principle of loving God and loving others, not profiting ourselves at others’ expense, or demoralizing the society. Wherever the gospel is preached, social order is improved. People are turned away from wickedness, broken families restored, the lazy become diligent. Whenever there is an increase in the Christian population, there is an increase in social harmony and unity because no true Christian is really against the government.850

Faced with such a compelling argument, the PSB officers admitted that what he said was true, but insisted that in their eyes any church group that refused to submit to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement was a cult. They also expressed alarm because the CGF use the word ‘commandos’ to describe their evangelists. Shen assured them that the word was used in a strictly religious sense and should not be construed in any political or military way. Nevertheless, he was imprisoned for 40 days and then taken to a public meeting where he and 16 other fellow Christians were sentenced to two-to-three years of prison with hard labour. This judgment was reported in the local newspapers and the public were urged to rejoice because the government had smashed the ‘China Gospel Fellowship cult organization’. The convicted believers were all handcuffed and sent to the Xinyang Prison labour camp. Shen was released after 83 days on account of his disability, but was ordered to pay a large fine. The others served their full terms. Shen’s disability did not usually win him much sympathy from the authorities. On one occasion, the police seized his crutches and beat him savagely with them. Other Christians ‘told of Shen being beaten up in prison by other inmates on orders from prison guards or tortured by electric shock.’851 Soon after regaining his freedom, he went into hiding, travelling extensively around the country while training and encouraging the 22 teams of CGF evangelists that were scattered throughout China. In 1999, the movement’s leaders joined with those of other house churches in signing a joint statement of faith that demonstrated that their beliefs were consistent with mainstream evangelical Christianity. As a result, they once again attracted the attention of the government and more persecution ensued. One Chinese official contacted by the editors of the magazine Religion Today confirmed that the CGF was one of ‘several targets that need to be attacked’.852 Although the leaders of the movement know how far it extends throughout China, they tend to keep the figures to themselves so as to not seem proud. Estimates by various outsiders have ranged from three million in 2000853 to approximately double that number today. Tony Lambert noted in 2006: ‘It has been stated as a fact in America that [the CGF] has 10 million followers. However, Brother Shen is on record as claiming that in 2004 the network had 23 districts [pian], each with roughly 100,000 believers; so the real total is about 2.3 million.’854

Shen Yiping, known to fellow Christians as ‘Older Shen’ (his nephew is nicknamed ‘Younger Shen’), is today the main leader of the CGF. He, too, has suffered much persecution as he has followed Christ. He was released from prison in 2000 and immediately resumed his leadership role in the movement, but was rearrested later that year as he took a train from southern China back to his home in Henan. This time, no formal charges were laid against him.

To Hell and Back: Kidnapped by the Eastern Lightning Cult It is a tragic irony that while the Chinese government was concentrating on discrediting orthodox Christian groups such as the CGF as ‘evil cults’, a truly evil cult was able to kidnap 34 of the CGF’s leaders and hold them captive for almost two months. The news that they had gone missing first circulated on 17 April 2002, but the immediate assumption was that they had been arrested by the authorities. However, it soon became apparent that something even more sinister had occurred. On 16 April, the 34 had been abducted in six different parts of China—Shanghai, Qingdao, Harbin, Hebei, Xi’an and Zhongxiang—by members of the Eastern Lightning, a cult notorious for its violence and its belief that Jesus had already returned to earth as a woman living in Henan Province.855 Putting into effect an elaborate plot that had been taken more than a year to hatch, agents of the cult gained access to the CGF leaders by claiming that they represented a reputable Bible training institution in Singapore. It later emerged that two female ‘spies’ had circulated among CGF congregations for years, slowly winning their trust. After gathering Christians together in various locations for their spurious Bible classes, members of the cult denied them access to the outside world by insisting that everyone must hand in their mobile phone before the first lesson could begin. The CGF leaders knew at once that something was wrong, but the cult members were armed and the buildings were secured and thoughts of escape seemed futile. One sister was able to get away, however, by climbing out of a bathroom window, and she quickly alerted other members of her church to what had happened. But for her escape, it is possible that the 34 kidnapped leaders would have disappeared without trace for a long time. The cult immediately

sent men to this sister’s home, and when they did not find her there, they beat up her parents. It seems that the aim of the Eastern Lightning was to persuade the CGF leaders to join the cult, as part of a wider plan to (as the CGF put it) ‘gain control over China, and to gain control over the whole world (including each denomination) next year [2003]. Anyone who still doesn’t believe by the end of next year will be judged.’856 They used psychological torture, physical abuse, drugs and sexual enticement in an attempt to break the Christians down and destroy their resistance. The CGF leaders were aware that the Eastern Lightning had not hesitated to maim Christians in the past. They had cut off people’s limbs and disfigured their faces with acid, and had even been known to murder those who refused to cooperate with them. The CGF leaders were subjected to daily brainwashing. What the cult had not counted on, however, was the powerful counterattack from the Christians. These senior leaders, who included the two Shens, had already spent a lot of time in prison being tortured by the authorities. They were mentally and spiritually tough, experienced warriors for Christ. They countered the cult’s attempts to brainwash them by vigorously disputing everything they were told and by preaching the gospel to their captors. Aware that the food they were offered was probably laced with drugs, many of them refused to eat and began long fasts, dedicated to the Lord Jesus. One of the senior leaders, Zhang, could not help but weep. He prayed with great passion: Oh, God, please have mercy on us, and forgive us of our ignorance. Please stop it! We have suffered enough for all these years. Our co-workers have been persecuted over and over again, and have gone through all the hardships of their lives. Today we are even trapped and kidnapped due to our innocence and eagerness to learn the Word. We can’t see what’s lying ahead, or whether we are to live or die. Now we are in the hands of the Eastern Lightning who stop at no evil and have absolutely no restraint in doing anything. Shall our 34 co-workers die in the hands of these wicked people like this? What if they seize the opportunity to deceive more churches in our names? Oh, God, shall the fruits of our twenty years’ labour be destroyed so quickly? If you still remember your glory, please protect all your servants and make a way out for us.857

Shen Xianfeng, who was kidnapped in Shanghai, denounced the cult leaders with these words: ‘You gangsters! You are the thieves to the church. You are false Christs and anti-Christs. You are serpents cloaked in human skin. You are the scum and disgrace of our country. I will never ever give up my genuine faith and give in to your demonic teaching.’

He later recalled:

I knew then that it would be impossible for me to get released, but I was not sure how they were going to deal with me. I knew in my hometown there had been four Christians maimed by the Eastern Lightning members. I visited all of them while they were in hospital. From then on, they condemned me every day as a Pharisee, the man who crucified Jesus, and an opposer of God. They said that I deserved punishment; that I should be cursed and perish. … One morning I was lying in bed when a woman threw herself on me with hugs and kisses, saying many shameless words. I resisted with all my strength, ceaselessly asking God to deliver me from temptation. In the end, when I didn’t know what else to do, I managed to sit up and declare, ‘I am a Christian! I am the husband of my wife!’ She didn’t succeed and left.858

Meanwhile, millions of Christians in China and around the world had been notified of the kidnaps and countless fervent prayers went up before the throne of God, asking him to intervene on behalf of his children. It was the first time that most believers outside the country had heard of the Eastern Lightning. Information circulated widely on the internet, which drew attention to the satanic origins of the cult and briefed believers so that they would not fall prey to its deceptions. In America, many Christians were angered to discover that the founder of the Eastern Lightning, Zhao Weishan, was now living in their midst and was establishing the cult there, after he had been granted asylum as a victim of religious persecution. One Christian Congressman looked into the case, hoping to have Zhao sent back to China.859 When all the CGF’s evangelists who were dispersed around the country heard about the abductions, they returned from their far-flung fields to meet in Henan to decide what they should do. They were in a quandary over whether or not they should approach the PSB and seek its help—for two decades, the CGF had been outlawed and targeted as a cult itself. After much prayer, it was decided that they should go to the authorities. To its credit, the PSB appreciated the gravity of the situation. Even its hatred of house-church Christians did not compare with the utter loathing it felt for the Eastern Lightning. The police in the various cities where the kidnaps had occurred put pressure on known accomplices and relatives of Eastern Lightning leaders, and over the weeks that followed, the Christians were released one by one, until the last emerged into freedom on 14 June 2002. Although all 34 had survived, they were in such a dreadful condition physically, emotionally and mentally that it took more than a year of prayer and recuperation before they were back to normal. All except one brother from Shanxi Province had been able to stand firm against the temptations and indoctrinations of the

cult. Another brother fell into a coma after being poisoned, but later recovered. On 10 June, when they heard that most of their leaders had by then been set free, the CGF’s evangelists again gathered in Henan to meet with them face-to-face. It was an emotional reunion. They saw their beloved leaders weary and feeble, wan and sallow, standing on the platform heavily burdened, yet they still greeted and encouraged everybody with such loving kindness and steadfast strength. Tears burst out from the co-workers’ eyes. Here were the teachers that they had been so worried about, yet despite the fact that they did look a bit older and feebler, their burden for missions and their love and concern for all the missionaries had not been affected in the least way.860

For years the Eastern Lightning had been able to operate in China by doing so in the dark, but God used these abductions to bring its dirty deeds out into the light, so that they became widely known to the church. Many Christians prayed for the cult’s destruction, and hundreds of thousands of books were soon printed that warned believers of its tactics. As a result, Christians are less susceptible today to the diabolical tricks of the Eastern Lightning.861 Shen Xianfeng later issued a stern warning to believers around the world: On June 3, I was forced into a car by a few men and sent to the Shanghai train station. When I finally arrived home after … 50 days’ confinement, I was very pale, as skinny as a stick of wood. I hardly looked like a human after all the torment. … June 20, we had a denunciation meeting, profoundly exposing and condemning the Eastern Lightning cult. Every one of the kidnapped co-workers talked about his experience during the confinement, disclosing the vile and despicable methods of the cult such as lying, deceit, money, employment opportunities, women, mind-altering drugs, sexual stimulants, dreams, visions, pretending to be ghosts, abuse, spreading division, blackmailing, isolation, spiritual and emotional torments, disrupting families, etc. … Let our stumbling be the warning for the future of the church in the rest of the world. May brothers and sisters be alert and watchful, to guard against and resist the schemes of cults and heresies, and to walk in the truth of the Lord.862

One tragic consequence of the kidnapping was that the trust both between and within the various house-church networks was strained. Many church leaders were so shocked by the degree of deceit used by the cult that for some time they refused to meet with any foreign Christians. The knowledge that the Eastern Lightning planted agents within house churches, who sometimes waited for years while they patiently won the believers’ trust before putting their plans into action, also shook people’s confidence. Christians began to look more closely at one another, wondering if there were any spies in their midst.

Nonetheless, the CGF has continued to grow. Many new evangelists have been sent to remote, ethnic-minority areas of China, and its work in the cities has also started to flourish. Persecution by the authorities has also persisted, however. On 11 June 2004, more than 100 of the CGF’s leaders were arrested during a meeting in Wuhan in Hubei Province. The 39-yearold Xing Jinfu was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, and Shen Xianfeng was placed under house arrest.863 In 2005, a further 100 believers were arrested by the police during a Bible training course in Zhengzhou.864 Later that year, on 12 December, 29 CGF leaders were seized after a raid in Xincai County on a meeting convened to ‘discuss how the house churches can effectively help a large group of peasants who had contracted Aids’.865 On 18 November 2007, as this book was being written, Shen Yiping was again detained during the build-up to the Beijing Olympics. The Chinese government, nervous about the country’s image abroad during the Games, began an extensive clampdown on the house churches in mid 2007, and many leaders had already been arrested or were under surveillance. The CGF, like all Henan’s other house-church movements, has had a tumultuous history. Hundreds of its members have been imprisoned and tortured over the years, and yet it has maintained a steady course, proclaiming the truth without compromise and establishing thousands of churches in previously unreached areas of China.

830 Personal interview with Feng, May 2001 831 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p81 832 Ibid., p83 833 Personal interview with Feng, May 2001 834 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p84 835 Ibid., pp85–86 836 Personal interview with Feng, May 2001 837 Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’ 838 South China Morning Post, 26 August 2000 839 Wesley, The Church in China, pp42–43 840 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p80 841 Personal interview with Feng, May 2001 842 Ibid. 843 Ibid. 844 Ibid. 845 Ibid. 846 Ibid. 847 Ibid. 848 ‘House Church Networks—An Overview (Part 2)’, Global Chinese Ministries, April 2006 849 Shen Xianfeng, ‘House Churches Reply: Are We Truly a Cult?’, China Prayer Letter, no.148 (September–October 1998) 850 Ibid. 851 Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’ 852 Religion Today, 14 March 2000 853 Asian Report, no.241 (September–October 2000) 854 ‘House Church Networks—An Overview (Part 2)’ (April 2006) 855 See ‘A Hotbed of Cults’ for more information on the Eastern Lightning. 856 Testimony from the China Gospel Fellowship, www.chinaforjesus.com 857 From part 7 of a report written by the leaders of the CGF and posted on www.chinaforjesus.com 858 ‘Testimony of Younger Shen: The Kidnapping’, a report posted on www.chinaforjesus.com 859 Evidently, the investigation did not have the desired outcome. Zhao remains in North America today, and the Eastern Lightning is growing among the Chinese communities in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto and other major cities. 860 From part 16 of a report written by the leaders of the CGF and posted on www.chinaforjesus.com 861 This is not to suggest that the Eastern Lightning has been neutralized. Reports continue to surface of large numbers of Christians falling prey to its cunning deceptions, and the cult remains the greatest external threat to China’s house churches today. 862 ‘Testimony of Younger Shen: The Kidnapping’, www.chinaforjesus.com 863 ‘More than 100 More House Church Leaders Arrested’, China Aid Association, 14 June 2004 864 Email prayer alert from Revival Chinese Ministries International, 30 June 2005 865 ‘Twenty Nine Chinese House Church Leaders Arrested’, China Aid Association, 12 December 2005

Chapter 32 THE FANGCHENG CHURCH (CHINA FOR CHRIST) PROTESTANT CHRISTIANS IN FANGCHENG COUNTY, HENAN866, 867, 868, 869

Explosive Growth in the ‘Jesus Nest’ One of the largest house-church networks to emerge from the Revival Triangle in southern Henan is the Fangcheng Church, named after the county where it originated. In later years, when it expanded into every province of the country, the name ‘China for Christ’ came into use to describe the larger church-planting organization. However, most of its members still refer to ‘the Fangcheng Mother Church’ as the place where this tremendous movement began. Compared with China’s other housechurch movements, the Fangcheng Church probably has the most contact with foreign Christians and consequently has received the most publicity, which has given it a high profile in the West. The gospel gained only a tenuous foothold in Fangcheng before 1949. One report says that in 1922 the county (which was first entered by Protestant missionaries in 1886) contained a total of just 199 believers in seven churches.870 The principal mission organizations working there at the time were the China Inland Mission and the Seventh-Day Adventists, and there was much conflict due to doctrinal differences. Several more groups joined those two in the 1920s and ’30s, and by the time the People’s Republic was founded in 1949 there were 4,000 believers in the county.871 David Adeney was one missionary who laboured in Fangcheng until his expulsion from China in the 1950s. He recalled: When the time came for our family to leave Fangcheng, we knew that the Lord had indeed established His Church in that area. We did not know about the ordeal that lay ahead—these Christians suffered terribly during the Cultural Revolution—but many years later, in 1979, we began to hear of great numbers of believers in the whole district. Fangcheng itself was called a

‘Jesus nest’ by the Communists. Not only had the Church survived, it had grown and was sending out missionaries to other parts of China.872

Fangcheng experienced exponential growth, so that by 1985 300,000 people in the county had reportedly become Christians—representing 43 per cent of its total population of 700,000 at the time.873 According to its own leaders, the Fangcheng Church traces its origins to Gao Yongjiu, a captain in the Nationalist army who was converted in the 1940s. He proved to be a powerful evangelist, and many people throughout the county found Christ due to his ministry. In the 1950s, he and two other prominent leaders were imprisoned for several years, and he was again incarcerated in 1966. On one occasion, he was paraded through the streets ‘wearing a thickly padded cotton coat. The Red Guards beat him so hard with sticks that the cotton padding came flying out.’874 The Fangcheng Church movement, which today has over 10 million members, had its humble start in the village of Guan Zhuang. There were only six Christians there in the late 1960s, out of about 200 people. Today, 167 out of the 170 families living there are believers. Chen Yuroung, a middle-aged woman whose mother was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, remembers how two of her nephews, aged five and nine, were playing near a well: At prayer not far away, [she] felt an intense urge to go there, intuiting that one of her nephews might drown. As she approached, the nine-year-old cried in terror: his younger brother had fallen into the well. ‘Lord, save this boy! Let me die instead,’ Chen suddenly shouted out. Somehow, as other villagers gathered around to see what they could do, the boy spluttered to the surface. Ropes were let down and he was pulled out. ‘Did you swallow a lot of water?’ someone asked anxiously. ‘No,’ said the boy. ‘There was a man in white holding me up.’875

A number of undeniable miracles, especially healings, took place in this village in the late 1960s. A woman with breast cancer was completely cured, and people began to talk about Jesus and his power to save. The gospel reached many families, and then spread to surrounding villages. Zhang Rongliang, recognized as the main leader of the Fangcheng Church, recalls the hunger believers had for God at the time: In the 1970s we were in great revival. Every Christian was in fervent prayer for souls. If you walked through a village at night you would hear the weeping and pleading of many Christians on their knees crying out to the Lord. From 1972 to ’74, we organized three all-night prayer meetings every single week. People were so hungry and enthusiastic for the Lord. When I would arrive at each village I always found the believers had prepared their hearts for the Lord and were calling out his name.

In the early days we didn’t have any meeting places or Bibles, and we were very disorganized. We had no teaching of the scriptures because nobody had a Bible. When we met together we just sang and prayed. Our people were so simple-hearted; they would believe the Lord for anything and everything. For decades we had used lanterns to give light. The bulb of the lanterns faced upwards. Now we started to get electric light bulbs, where the bulb faced downward. Preachers gave simple messages such as ‘Now the light from heaven is facing down towards us’—and hundreds of people would be saved. Messages from the Lord were like honey dripping from heaven. The people were so hungry and desperate for spiritual truth.876

The Vital Influence of Li Tian’en The experienced Bible-teacher Li Tian’en (who is regarded as one of the patriarchs of China’s house churches) played a crucial role in giving leadership to the early vision and direction of the Fangcheng Church. He was born in Fangcheng in 1928, though he has spent most of his life living and ministering in Shanghai. His grandfather had been brought to faith by the preaching of Hudson Taylor in the 1800s. In the early 1970s, Li visited Henan and trained a new generation of church leaders there. In one meeting in 1974, ‘no fewer than an astonishing four thousand attended a clandestine training session at a village meeting place. The rapidly growing numbers of Christians made Fangcheng County a “problem” county for Henan’s party officials.’877 Li was imprisoned for 10 years, from 1960 to 1970. Five years after his release, he was again incarcerated for six years, after originally being sentenced to death. In 1980, the government placed him under house arrest for another decade,878 but he used that time to write several books that proved to be a great blessing to the believers in China. David Aikman has commented: ‘It is difficult to overestimate the part Li played in training the next generation of China’s Christian leaders. It was his dedicated training and travelling that helped raise up an entirely new generation of “uncles”, the current leaders of China’s largest house church networks.’879

The Formation of the Fangcheng Church Like most of the other major house-church networks in Henan, the Fangcheng Church came into existence as an organized fellowship in the early 1980s. There had been a body of believers in Fangcheng and surrounding areas before then, but the church’s vision and the core of its leadership were not established until 1981–82. Almost immediately, pairs of young evangelists were then trained and sent out to other parts of Henan and beyond, and the church began to grow rapidly. The accounts of the

miracles these bold missionaries witnessed would fill a book on their own. Another book would be required to record the persecution they experienced along the way. Zhang Rongliang shared with me about the humble beginnings of the movement: In 1980, we had a secret prayer meeting in the mountains outside Fangcheng. The very next day, eight young men believed in the Lord. The second day, a young man was completely healed of cancer by the power of the Holy Spirit. This news spread rapidly among the villagers and many hundreds of people came to follow Jesus. Because of the power of the Lord in answer to fervent prayer, the Kingdom of God spread rapidly. In 1980, we received our very first Bibles from outside China. We held them in our arms and kissed them delicately, with tears in our eyes. They were the fulfilment of many years of fervent prayer and longing. Some elderly brothers and sisters had not held a Bible for more than 20 years. Our church grew partly because many people denied themselves and followed Jesus. In the very beginning, we were extremely poor. The whole church had a total of just 5 yuan [less than $1] between us all. Today we have become the large and well-known Fangcheng Church, but we know this has truly been the work of the Lord, and not the efforts of men. There is a sister among us named Chen. She was so desperate to serve God’s people but had no money at all, so she went to the hospital and sold her blood, and used the money to purchase some notebooks and pencils for our Bible training class. The hospital paid just 2 yuan [25 cents] for a litre of her blood, but for her this was the least she could do to serve God’s people. She went back to the hospital frequently and sold her blood for us. Sister Chen is still serving the Lord today.880

In 1981, the 19-year-old Sister Ding Hei and her co-workers walked all day and night through the rain for a distance of 65 miles (105 kilometres) just to attend a prayer meeting, with other Christians who would later form the leadership of the Fangcheng Church. They were so poor they could not afford a bus ticket, or even a bicycle. The years of oppression in China during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s had created an acute spiritual vacuum in people’s hearts. They were like dry branches waiting for a spark from the Holy Spirit to set them alight. New believers were anxious to live zealous and holy lives for God, because they were convinced that the return of Jesus Christ was imminent. Zhang recalls the extreme devotion evident in the lives of many Christians at the time: During those early days of revival, many farmers and their families had such simple, loving hearts for their Father God. They were expecting the Lord to return at any moment, so they often slept fully clothed, so that they would be ready to go with him. One night, some army tanks passed by on the road outside our village. People awoke and heard the loud noise, felt the earth shaking and thought that Jesus was coming again. Two of our young female co-workers were so committed to serving the Lord that they went to the hospital and had an operation so that they would never be able to have children. They didn’t

want to leave any chance at all that they might marry and share their devotion for the Lord with another. I remember a faithful brother who had only one leg. When he heard I was speaking in the area, he always tried to walk across the mountains to the meeting place on his one leg. Often he would walk for hours but would reach the meeting place as everyone was leaving. That brother would get so mad. His devotion for the Lord was great, and he wanted nothing to stop him learning from the Lord. When the authorities cracked down against our leaders, we went on the run together. Sometimes when it was raining we would meet together on a roadside or on a mountain trail. We would kneel down in the mud and pray, crying out to God for his protection and strength. The police would then track us by following the imprints of our knees in the mud. In later years, it was much easier to preach the gospel in China and lead people to Christ, but it is only because of the great cost many believers paid in earlier years. One day, I saw five young men watching movies. I simply went up to them and asked, ‘Would you like to follow Jesus?’ They immediately turned their video off, said ‘Yes!’ and left with me.881

A highly significant event in the history of the Fangcheng Church took place in 1981 on China’s National Day, 1 October. Zhang organized a large prayer meeting that was attended by more than 400 house-church leaders. The date had been chosen deliberately in open defiance of the local Communist authorities. A sheep was slaughtered for the evening meal, and the believers were enjoying rich fellowship together when more than 40 officers arrived in a string of police cars. A senior official addressed the church leaders and told them that the gathering was illegal and they must all immediately return home. In reply, Zhang boldly declared that they would not disband their meeting until they had concluded it later that evening. The officers were taken aback by this brazen challenge and stood by while the Christians enjoyed their dinner together. Then they moved in and started to arrest people, but Zhang and Sister Ding Hei managed to get away. A house-church historian has said: ‘This [occasion] was a turning point in the history of the Fangcheng Church. The church moved from being underground to open meetings in front of the police. The evangelists became very bold. They travelled far and wide telling people to have nothing to do with the Three-Self.’882 One of the senior Fangcheng leaders, Zheng Shuqian, recalled the incident: The large crowd caught the attention of the Public Security Bureau and they came and surrounded our meeting place. Zhang Rongliang and I were told the PSB had come to arrest us. I went to the head officer and sat beside him. I saw he had a flashlight and a large knife attached to his belt. I grabbed his flashlight and used it to read my songbook. I then got the believers to sing a song. Then I declared, ‘Now the Lord’s servant will preach.’ The officers seemed stunned and waited before starting the arrests.

Two minutes after Zhang began to speak, the chief officer stood up and shouted, ‘Enough!’ He brandished his knife and started to threaten Brother Zhang. I stood up and proclaimed, ‘Let us protect our brother and prevent him from falling into the hands of evil men!’ Immediately, dozens of believers crowded around Zhang and carried him out of the room. In the confusion and darkness, the PSB couldn’t get near him and he escaped.883

Zhang became a fugitive from the authorities. From 1980 to 1990, he travelled throughout the country, constantly on the move, unable to go home because the authorities were waiting for him. In those 10 years, he led many young people to the faith. He also concentrated on discipling and training 80 men and women who became the core of the Fangcheng Church leadership. In the mid-to-late 1980s, the Fangcheng Church began to come under the influence of the Hong-Kong-based American missionary Dennis Balcombe, and it has been identified ever since as one of the most strongly Pentecostal house-church networks in China. The movement accepted Balcombe’s teaching on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and also appreciated his uncompromising boldness and his generous spirit. On one occasion in 1992, he was famously smuggled from one village to another inside a coffin. The believers staged a mock funeral and walked right past the local PSB officers who had been dispatched there after reports had come in of the presence of a foreign preacher. Through the years, the ministry of the Fangcheng Church has been marked by extraordinary signs and wonders that have attracted multitudes of people to Jesus Christ. In 1997, one evangelist, Brother Yang, went to a village where several hundred people came to hear the gospel. Some gangsters caused a disturbance to try to stop the meeting, but Yang said: ‘The reason they are causing trouble is because they don’t know God’s great power. Our God is the true and powerful God Who is able to perform miracles.’ I prayed and asked God to perform a miracle. God told me there were deaf people in the meeting. A sister first brought forth a deaf woman. As soon as I prayed for her, she was immediately healed. I then asked all the deaf to come forward that night and they were all healed one by one. The gangsters looked on in amazement as they beheld the miracles. Then the gangsters with several of the congregation returned to their homes and brought their sick family members to the meeting. Among them were eight paralyzed people and six were healed immediately. Because of the miracles, the whole village including the gangsters all believed in Jesus.884

A Letter from Fangcheng In 1985, a rare and insightful letter emerged from the house churches of Fangcheng, addressed ‘To the brothers and sisters in other lands who bear the same burden of the Lord’. This revealed both the bitter persecution and

the powerful revival that had occurred in the county in the previous few years. It declared: First of all, let us open our mouths wide to praise the triune God. Let us sing praises to the love of the Father and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit, for He has brought sinners to repentance and is giving blessings to His children. The Fangcheng County of Henan is now receiving special blessing in the sight of the Lord. Among the 700,000 in this county, there are at least 300,000 believers, and the number does not stop increasing. … This is also a county to which they pay special attention. They call this place a ‘Jesus nest’. The revival that is going on in Fangcheng today is a result of gradual growth arising out of more than twenty years of persecution. At this point most of the preachers are those who were released from prison in 1978–79. There is one senior preacher whose church had only several hundred people when he was first imprisoned. That church had grown to several tens of thousands by the time he went to prison the second time. [The authorities] are thoroughly surprised. They do not understand why the greater the persecution, the faster the growth. … Even non-believers have come to believe that there is a God, for the messengers of Satan are often given their immediate recompense. Through suffering God has deepened the experience of His children. They have come to know God more profoundly, and they have come to perceive the ways of the devil. They have also learned to entrust themselves completely to the hand of the God who is faithful and trustworthy. … The harvest is plenteous, but the labourers are few. During the last two to three years, God has indeed blessed their work. On the other hand, the tares of Satan have not ceased to cause splits within the Body of Christ. Even the most experienced spiritual leaders are often hindered by their relatives at home. … From the middle of March 1982 on, we sent out 13 teams to preach the gospel. The last group consisted of 14 persons. The youngest of them was a girl 16 years old. They went to Biyang County of Henan, but there were heresies in that place, and the believers would not receive them. As a result, the 14 young preachers had to go out to the streets to preach the gospel. That was 3 April, 1982. More than 5,000 people were listening to their preaching. Shops were closed, and traffic was brought to a standstill. Soon, agents of the TSPM and the local police came and arrested the 14 preachers. They forced them to kneel down on the ground for three days and three nights, with their arms and legs tightly bound. Those 14 preachers fasted for nine days. Some of the authorities in Biyang became scared and decided to send them back to their home towns. … In the course of returning to Fangcheng, one of the girls was pushed off the truck, and her head hit the ground. She is still in a coma today. … Dear brothers and sisters, please pray for the members of our body. Please ask the Lord to strengthen us, so that our lives may grow more solidly under persecution and thereby glorify our gracious Lord. The brothers and sisters say with one voice, ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul’ (Matthew 10:28). Praise the Lord, man is able to overcome suffering. Satan has been shamed and forced to retreat. Although man is weak, by relying on the Lord he is able to triumph over Satan. For we war against Satan, the spiritual force of the air.

Emmanuel!885

The Gospel Month The single most crucial factor in the explosive growth of the Fangcheng house-church movement, which turned it from a primarily regional organization into a nationwide one embracing millions of Christians, was the ‘Gospel Month’ initiative launched in the early 1990s. A house-church fellowship with about 200 members invented the idea in 1992. Between Christmas and the Chinese Lunar New Year—which is actually more than a month—each of its members was required to lead at least three people to the Lord, while its leaders were expected to lead at least five. Zhang explains: The Gospel Month commenced after it came to my mind that if each believer led just one person to the Lord we would double our membership. I was also troubled because many of our leaders, myself included, only trained believers and never got to reach the lost ourselves. In this way, the church grew very quickly.886

The timing of the Gospel Month also contributed to its success. As it is in midwinter and between two major national holidays, people are generally less busy than at other times of the year. This is especially true in rural areas, where the demands of the harvest monopolize most people’s time and strength for the rest of the year. The vision spread quickly to many other churches in the Fangcheng area, and soon thousands of Christians were mobilized to win their lost neighbours. The results were nothing short of incredible. After the Lunar New Year celebration in 1993, 13,000 new believers were baptized—and were then trained to take part in a similar outreach the following year. By this time, however, the Christians had realized that there was no point in confining their evangelistic efforts to just one month each year, and many became evangelists throughout the other 11 months as well. At the conclusion of the Gospel Month in early 1994, the house churches conducted a total of 123,000 baptisms throughout Henan Province.

Courageous women evangelists with new believers in Henan RCMI

The leader of the Fangcheng Church, Zhang Rongliang, recalls: We saw God move in a mighty way. Churches everywhere experienced great revival and people were saved daily. In many places, there were new churches established in every village and believers in every family. The Lord moved on tens of thousands of his children, people with an excellent spirit who were willing to pay any price to serve him, which is a reason for this great revival. The things we saw are beyond anything we ever saw or even thought possible. During the Gospel Month in 1994, in a period of a little over 50 days, there were more than 120,000 confirmed conversions to Christ in Henan alone. Previously, during our open-air meetings few people would pay any attention. Now, everywhere we went, crowds of people stopped whatever they were doing to attend our meetings. As we preached, many cried out: ‘We have never heard such good news in all our lives. Why has nobody told us this before?’ The people put aside all their plans and activities and remained for hours to listen to the gospel. This was God’s own work, for God confirmed his word with signs and wonders. Without these miracles, man alone would never have been able to accomplish this.887

Since 1994, the number of people saved each year as a result of the Gospel Month has grown too large to keep track of. Fangcheng has one of the highest concentrations of Christians of any county in China, and they have been responsible for sending thousands of workers out to all corners of the country to witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. In this way, the small, impoverished farming area of Fangcheng has earned itself a reputation in Christian circles all over the country. When other house-church networks heard about the success the Fangcheng Church was enjoying, they, too, launched Gospel Month initiatives. Brother Yun recalls the impact it had on the Nanyang Church when it began its own: The results were extraordinary. In my home area of Nanyang alone, more than 12,000 new believers were baptized in a single day. They were then trained for the following year, resulting in 300,000 people coming to the Lord in the whole of Nanyang Prefecture! In the years since the Gospel Month was launched, it has spread to many other parts of China and whole regions have been saturated with the gospel. Many millions of people have been saved.888

Unusual Miracles Attract Many to Christ The miracles that have occurred during the Gospel Months are far too many to recount. A few examples will have to suffice here.889 In Zhoukou during the 1994 Gospel Month, a Christian with a gift of healing saw God completely heal 26 deaf people. Another man had been born with severe mental disabilities. Everyone in the area despised him and called him an ‘idiot’ After being prayed for, he was completely restored. God gave him a brilliant mind, excellent speech and many talents which

amazed all who had known him previously. As a direct result of this miracle, 83 people believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. There had been about 5,000 house-church Christians in Xinye County before the 1994 Gospel Month. At the end of it, 15,000 new believers were baptized, quadrupling the county’s population of Christians in just one month. Zhang relates a remarkable incident that occurred in Xinye at the time: So many people gathered on the road to hear the gospel that the traffic was blocked. The Public Security Bureau arrived with their sirens blazing to see what the commotion was. They were enraged to find thousands of people pressing in to hear the gospel. The chief of police got out of his car and stretched his hand out, commanding us to stop as we were under arrest. Just like King Jeroboam in the Old Testament [1 Kings 13:4–6], the police chief could not pull his arm back in once he stretched it out. The people carried him back to his car and put him inside, but he still could not manage to pull his arm back in. Everyone who was there knew that this was God’s judgement on him for wanting to persecute the Christians. Many hundreds of people opened their hearts to the gospel. Advisers told the chief that he must ask Christians to pray for him, and that he must agree to treat the believers with respect. He called some local Christian leaders to his house, prepared them a nice meal and when they prayed for his arm he was instantly healed. He repented from his sins and started to attend a Bible study.890

During the 1995 Gospel Month, five young ruffians turned up to disrupt an evangelistic meeting in Zhoukou. These men were notorious, feared by all the people in the area. They shouted obscenities and challenged everything the preacher said. When the time came for the prayer, the preacher asked Jesus to teach the five men a lesson. He prayed: ‘Lord, please bind them!’ Immediately, the men knelt down on the ground and put their hands behind their backs as though they were bound with a tight rope. People came and tried to help them up, but they could not be moved. They were as heavy as rocks. Several men could not even lift one of these thugs to his feet. Curiously, the young men were still able to talk even though they could not otherwise move. They offered the preacher bribes of money and cigarettes if he would pray for their release, but he said: ‘No way! Jesus wants your hearts. If Jesus doesn’t loosen you, then nobody in the world will be able to do anything to help you out of your condition.’ More than 100 people repented and were saved on account of this sign—including the five men. Zhang notes: ‘At times during the Gospel Month, the police have realized that the power of God is at work, and they are too afraid to do anything to us. In some places, officers turned up at meetings not to arrest us but to ensure the crowd were orderly.’891

Three generations of a family listening intently to the gospel

Great Hunger for the Gospel People were so hungry for the gospel in Biyang County that the Christians often held open-air meetings in the street. Zhang recalls: When we preached it was like a bomb dropped into the souls of the people and they repented with many tears. I remember there was one man who made his living by training a monkey to do tricks. When he heard the gospel, this man just sat on the ground, held his monkey and wept. The man cried out, ‘I am from a family of three generations of Christians. But I disobeyed God and I have become a tramp who doesn’t believe in God. Please pray for me, that God would forgive me. From today on, I will not frolic with the monkey. I will repent and return to the Lord.’892

Another man was having a haircut when he heard preaching nearby. Only half of his head had been trimmed and his partially-shaven face was covered with cream, but he could not wait. He left the barber’s shop immediately to go and listen. An 80-year-old woman in Weishi County took the challenge of the Gospel Month and shared her faith every day. Within the first week, more than 80 people had accepted Christ. A few young people mocked and slandered the new believers, however, and some of them changed their minds and decided they had been deceived. Hearing this, the old sister went home and fasted and prayed for seven days, shedding many tears as she interceded on her knees. When they saw the great love she had for their souls, one by one all the lost sheep returned to the fold. Years later, they were still following the Lord. In 2002, Zhang shared his memories of the Gospel Month programme with me. The leader of the Fangcheng Church, who has experienced so many extraordinary things in his life, seemed thrilled by the things God had done through the initiative over the years. Speaking with a childlike awe, he said: It is amazing how the Lord put such expectancy in the hearts of people during the Gospel Month campaigns. I have seen people climb onto the roof of their homes or hang onto tree branches in

order to hear the gospel. In a short space of time we saw entire communities invigorated and transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. In 1994, I went to one county where nobody knew who I was. I had to repair my shoes and, while I was waiting, the repair man shared the gospel with me and tried to lead me to the Lord. Later that day I went to a barber shop for a haircut, and while I was in the chair the barber shared the gospel with me. I was the founder of the Gospel Month, but now I had become a target for evangelism. On one occasion, a brother had a car accident on his way to a meeting. He wanted the people who hit him to pay the damages. When he arrived at the meeting place, however, he saw that the family who had hit him were also believers. They decided it was better to forgive each other and forget about trying to collect any compensation. Today there are more and more believers in China, and it is starting to show. Recently I caught a train and discovered there were three different teams of pastors on the same train with me. There were two rows of three seats each. I noticed that one man had a Bible, so I asked him if he was a Christian. He said yes, and we enjoyed rich fellowship together. I thought the man sitting between us was an unbeliever, so I asked him if he would mind changing seats so I could fellowship with the brother during the journey. The man in the middle objected, saying he was also a Christian so we should all fellowship together.893

The spectacular progress of the Gospel Month initiative has not come without a struggle for the Fangcheng Christians, however. During the 1995 ‘month’, some 140 evangelists were arrested in a crackdown.894 At the end of 1999, the house-church networks announced that, to celebrate the new millennium, an extended Gospel Month would run nationwide from 1 December 1999 to 31 January 2000. Picking up on the excitement this generated, one Western publication declared: ‘It is not unreasonable to expect 40 million people to be won for Christ over the change of the millennium.’895 Although this figure appears to have been too optimistic, there is no doubt that many millions of people have indeed been brought into the Kingdom of God through this God-given initiative. The revival that had been spreading gradually throughout China received a remarkable boost, and multitudes of people have become Christians in such far-flung provinces as Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Sichuan and Xinjiang.

A Challenging Future The Fangcheng Christians have been the target of countless mass raids and arrests over the years. On several occasions, most of the movement’s leaders have been captured—and yet the church has managed to go on, sometimes after a direct intervention by God. Zhang remembers one such

time in 1998 when the PSB surrounded a leadership meeting in Wuyang County and caught everyone: We knew it would greatly disrupt the work if we all went to prison and our church was left without leaders. We asked the Lord to do a specific miracle so that not a single one of us would be incarcerated. Naturally speaking, this was an impossibility, because the authorities had finally captured many of the people they had been hunting for years. Some of the top leaders had ‘Wanted’ posters with their names and pictures posted outside train stations and public places. When they first arrested us, the police reacted with great glee, like they had discovered a pot of gold. But we continued to pray that God would forbid even one of us from going to prison. Amazingly, for no apparent reason, all of us were released after we had been processed and questioned. This has never happened before or since. All we can say is that the power of God is far greater than the power of Man, and when he decides to act on behalf of his children, there is nothing Man can do to prevent his will from being accomplished.896

On other occasions, no such divine intervention occurred. On 23 August 1999, 31 house-church leaders were arrested at a prayer seminar in Tanghe County. Two of those captured were Zhang Rongliang and Zheng Shuqian, who were each sentenced to three years in prison. According to one report, Zhang was ‘beaten brutally and deprived of sleep for the first several days.’897 One year later to the day, an additional 130 Fangcheng Christians were arrested in Xihua County, along with three Taiwanese-American believers.898 Even the international news conglomerate CNN reported the arrest, under the title ‘China Says It Smashed Cult, Not Underground Church.’ It quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi as saying, ‘There is no such thing as the so-called Fangcheng religion in China.’899 According to Zhang, the number of Christians associated with the Fangcheng Church nationwide increased from five million in the early 1990s900 to 10 million in 1999.901 Despite this spectacular growth, however, the movement’s senior leaders are deeply concerned about the future, and aware that they must keep up with the rapid changes taking place in Chinese society. The methods employed to reach the lost and disciple new believers in the 1980s and 1990s will not work today. It is fair to say that the Fangcheng Church faces some big challenges as it moves forward. A major split in 2002–03 caused a number of leaders from the Fangcheng area in Henan to leave the movement and start a new one, which has been referred to as the ‘New Fangcheng’ local church. This new group is primarily responsible for the believers in the actual Fangcheng area, rather than the nationwide Fangcheng house-church movement. Some people claim that the split was caused by issues of unresolved sin and by

oppressive control by some of the church leaders, while others give the explanation that foreign money induced second-level leaders to usurp their elders. Tony Lambert comments that the Fangcheng Church ‘seems to have taken a definite decision to seek Western funding. This is unfortunate because vigorous, indigenous churches are now in danger of becoming controlled by overseas groups—a serious blow to the biblical principles of self-governing and self-supporting indigenous churches.’902 One of the major questions exercising the Fangcheng leaders is how to train new leaders for the future. During the times Zhang has been behind bars, the second tier of leaders has led the movement ably, but he himself has observed: Ever since the opening up of China, in the mid 1980s, our church has been confronted with nonstop onslaughts of new challenges and oppositions. And our biggest handicap is passing the batons. There is an alarming leadership fault in all the house church movements. … Now China is becoming so materialistic. Everything is becoming more and more expensive. Our co-workers are struggling to even pay the school fees for their children.903

Since the start of the new millennium, the Fangcheng Church has continued to grow, though perhaps at a slower rate than during the height of revival in the 1980s and ’90s. In 2000, I read a batch of reports that had come in to its leaders that detailed the increase of the previous 12 months. In just one area of north-west China, the movement’s workers had established 426 house churches that year, with a total of 21,520 believers. Since its foundation, the expansion of the Fangcheng Church has been truly spectacular. It has genuinely been a work of God, through the humble sacrifices of many men and women whose sole purpose in life has been to worship Jesus Christ and make him known to as many people as possible. Although there have been problems along the way, and controversies surrounding some of its leaders, God has unquestionably blessed and empowered the Fangcheng Church in a mighty way, and as a result millions of people throughout China have become sons or daughters of God.

866 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pIX 867 Adeney, China: The Church’s Long March, p141 868 Chao, Wise as Serpents, p189. This figure was also given in Pray for China, no.70 (January–February 1986) and China News and Church Report, 30 November 1988. 869 See the statistical table on Henan’s Christians at the back of this book. 870 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, Appendix A, pIX 871 Adeney, China: The Church’s Long March, p141 872 Ibid., p25 873 Chao, Wise as Serpents, p189. This figure was first reported by Huang Ya Ke, ‘A Confrontation of Religious Freedom and Political Persecution’, Pai Shing, vol.25 (1 June 1982). 874 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p75 875 Ibid., pp75–76 876 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 877 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p77 878 China News and Church Report, no.2413 (5 May 1995) 879 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p77 880 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 881 Ibid. 882 Wu Baixin (a pseudonym), cited in Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p104 883 Personal interview with Zheng, March 2001 884 Revival Chinese Ministries International, The Challenge of China, September 1997 885 Translation cited in Chao, Wise as Serpents, pp189–192 886 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 887 Ibid. To put this in perspective, the total number of Protestants in Henan at the time of the Communist Revolution in 1949, according to China Study Journal (vol.9, no.2— August 1994), was 120,000. This was the fruit of 65 years of work since the first Protestant missionary came to live in the province in 1884. 888 From Living Water by Brother Yun (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008) 889 These testimonies are from a variety of leaders associated with the Fangcheng Church. 890 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 891 Ibid. 892 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, p156 893 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 894 China News and Church Report, no.2417 (5 May 1995) 895 DAWN Friday Fax, vol.99, no.47 (3 December 1999) 896 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 897 David Aikman, ‘China’s Ongoing Revival’, Charisma News Online (website), 2000 898 ‘China Continues to Detain 130 Christians’, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 25 August 2000 899 ‘China Says It Smashed Cult, Not Underground Church’, CNN.com, 5 September 2000 900 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p78 901 O’Keefe, ‘China Widens Crackdown on Faithful’ and Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’ 902 ‘House Church Networks—An Overview (Part 2)’ (April 2006) 903 Asian Report, no.271 (September–October 2005). In December 2006, the Chinese government announced that it was abolishing all fees for students in rural areas, ‘in a bid to narrow the gap between wealthy coastal provinces and poorer regions’ (‘China Ends School Fees for 150m’, BBC News (website), 13 December 2006).

Chapter 34 ZHANG RONGLIANG

Zhang Rongliang in the 1980s

Z

Asian Report

hang Rongliang, who is recognized as the principal leader of the Fangcheng Church, was born in 1950 in the small village of Sunlu Zhuang, in the mountains of Fangcheng County. He became a Christian at the age of 12, largely due to the influence of his godly grandfather. As he grew up, he was required to help with his family’s farm work and was able to attend only a few years of elementary school. In 1969, Zhang also became a member of the Communist Party, but five years later his Communist colleagues were told that he secretly followed Christ and he was arrested. When he refused to abandon his faith, he was severely beaten with blows to his head and body. He recalls some details of those days: In 1974, I was asked to join a big religious class organized by the government. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep that night. I felt so unworthy. I didn’t realize that it was a set-up to arrest me. In those days the Three-Self Church wasn’t influential, so I was unaware of the trap. When I arrived, the police started to beat me and I was badly bruised, but not bleeding. That night, I asked the Lord why he hadn’t allowed me to shed my blood for him, since he had shed his blood for me. In those days, during the Cultural Revolution, it was a crime even to copy a song, unless it was about Mao Zedong. One of our co-workers was caught writing out a gospel song and was sentenced to four years in prison. I had written 30 songs at the time, so I was worried I could face 120 years in prison for my crimes. I told the local officer that I had written the songs for my personal use. I took full responsibility because I didn’t want to get any of the believers in trouble. They wanted to know who had helped me write the songs. I told them the name of a brother in another village who had died three years earlier. The police didn’t know he was dead

and rushed to the village to arrest him. When they came back angry, I told them, ‘Oh, I wrote these songs more than three years ago before that man died.’904

Zhang was sentenced to seven years at the Xihua Prison Labour Camp. Instead of dampening his enthusiasm for Christ, however, his incarceration only emboldened him, as he later explained: The labour camp was mental and physical torture. Often, we had to carry heavy loads on our backs for 16 hours or more per day. The believers in the camp soon realized that we had to encourage and help one another, otherwise the experience would be impossible to bear. We carried each others’ burdens, not only as the Bible commands us but also literally.905

In prison, he met Feng Jianguo, the founder of the Tanghe Church, and other believers who were later to play key roles in the development of the house churches in Henan. Zhang was put in charge of the pigs and Feng worked in the prison’s orchard. They were allowed to have some contact with the local people, ‘so they planted churches as well as apple trees.’906 Zhang recalls: One day, I was visited by Brother Zhen. I gave him one apple, which he took back to his church. When the believers saw this, they were deeply touched and fell to their knees in prayer. They divided the apple into very small pieces and everyone partook together, as a symbol of God’s love and faithfulness to us in times of suffering. He also took back with him a patch of dirt from the prison. The believers separated this into small fragments and put a piece in their water pots. To them, this act signified that they were sharing the burden of our pain and suffering. Deng Xiaoping became the leader of the country while I was in prison, and all inmates were given the chance of being released if they would renounce their ‘crimes’. I prayed about it and decided I should stay inside rather than seek an early release, as I would rather be faithful with my fellow believers than compromise for the chance of freedom.907

Through the years Zhang spent in prison, he did not fully understand the extreme hardship and pain his wife and son were experiencing. He expected a warm welcome home when he went back to his village on his release in 1980, and was taken aback by what happened instead. He recalls: I was sent to prison just after my first son was born, so I did not see him. My heart ached but the Lord poured his healing balm on me. When I returned home after seven years, my son didn’t know who I was and told me to get out of his mother’s home! That was quite difficult, and for a time it devastated me. Later he began to serve the Lord and he has been a great blessing to me and to many people.908

Only two days after regaining his freedom, Zhang decided to visit some of the house churches he had established before his confinement. As he enjoyed fellowship with some of the believers, the police arrived and rearrested him. Once again he was interrogated, which shattered the hopes of his wife, Chen Hongxian, that the family might enjoy a more settled life.

In 2002, Zhang talked about some of the struggles they have had over the years: My wife has been a great warrior for the Lord. She gradually got used to the call the Lord placed on my life. I have not been home for Chinese New Year, when families all over China traditionally gather together, for 27 years. During that time I have been in prison or on the run from the authorities, or with believers in meetings somewhere in the country. I appreciate her support and faithfulness over many difficult years.909

Loving Acts of Sacrifice Anyone who spends time with the core leaders of the Fangcheng Church will soon recognize how much Zhang means to them. Although the movement has been shaken in recent years by a number of controversies, he is greatly honoured for the sacrifices he made in his younger days. One of the movement’s founder leaders, Sister Mei, told me in 2002: Today, most of the regional and group leaders in Fangcheng are those who were part of that original group of 80. The leaders love and respect Zhang Rongliang a lot because he is always willing to give up his own rights and his own will to follow the Lord. For example, in 1984 we were extremely poor. We didn’t have any money or possessions at all. We didn’t even have bicycles, so if we had to travel, we would walk. One day, all the leaders were asked to attend a meeting in another county. There was no way we could walk that far. We didn’t have any money, not even a penny. Although Zhang owned just one cow, he sold it and gave the money to us so we could attend the meeting. This helped us to see the depth of his dedication and service. His way of life is consistent with Jesus’ example. God blessed him and his ministry because he was willing to deny himself, take up the cross and follow Jesus.910

When I asked Zhang about this, he responded: I actually owned three cows, but they were the only source of income and food we had. We lived deep in the mountains where it was very cold and impoverished. It was not a difficult decision to make, however. Surely God’s work should always take precedence over our personal comfort and financial security. His kingdom should come first at all times. My second son was born in 1981, but at the same time some foreign Christians delivered many Bibles to Guangzhou. I was faced with a hard decision. Should I witness the birth of my son, or should I receive the word of God that we had prayed many years for? I decided to go to Guangzhou and put the Kingdom of God first. Therefore, I missed the birth of my own son.911

In the early 1980s, he travelled widely throughout the country, helping the movement to implement evangelistic strategies. At times he felt burnt out by the demanding schedule he subjected himself to, which was exacerbated by the stress of being hunted by the authorities. Looking back at this time, he says: We learned to pray according to God’s will, and not from our own desires. In 1982, we had not yet trained leaders to share the work, and so my own personal load was very great. It seemed more than I could bear. At that time, I prayed a very interesting prayer: ‘Lord, please let me get sick for a while, because I need to rest in you! Please allow me to slow down!’

The very next day I awoke with a fever, which confined me to bed. I was unable to travel. The fever continued for six months. I had an opportunity to rest and be spiritually renewed. It also forced us to quickly train up new leaders to share the workload. My co-workers felt it was a terrible experience for me to go through, having a fever so long, but no prayer or medicine could heal me. God wanted me to rest and I believe this was his way of slowing me down and teaching me to rest in him.912

In 1983, the government launched a severe crackdown against criminals and most house-church leaders fled to avoid arrest. Zhang went south into Hubei Province with several other leaders, one of whom was Brother Yun, later known as ‘the Heavenly Man’. When Yun was caught the following year, Zhang remembers a touching incident that reveals the extraordinary depth of sacrifice of the Chinese believers: Brother Yun was chained and handcuffed. There was a group of other young Christians handcuffed together with him, but after a while the authorities released the other men and left just Yun chained. This made the young believers very sad. They were not sad for Brother Yun, but sad that they were not considered worthy to suffer for the gospel like Yun was. They pleaded with the authorities to put the handcuffs back on them.913

The Revival Years For the rest of the 1980s, Zhang’s life continued to be a mixture of revival and persecution. He was pursued relentlessly by the authorities, but managed to evade capture on many occasions thanks to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, the Fangcheng Church flourished, growing from a movement with tens of thousands of members to one with five million members across the country.914 The authorities finally caught up with Zhang in 1990 (when he was imprisoned for 14 months), and again in 1994, when he spent two weeks behind bars. He recalls: Every time I have been sentenced to prison, the brothers and sisters from our fellowships have run after me as I was taken away in the police car or van. Often I would see people running along the road and from the fields to wave goodbye to me, with tears in their eyes. The sheep had such a deep love for their shepherd. It was such an encouragement for me during the time I spent in confinement. One teenage woman was carrying her baby brother on a bicycle when she heard I was being transported to the prison. She could not keep up with the police car on her bicycle, so she left it leaning against a wall in the town with her baby brother in the basket. In her zeal and love for me she then chased the car on foot, forgetting all about her brother. Later, she returned to the town and realized she had left her brother all alone. She found him again and he was fine.915

His ministry has always been marked by extreme acts of boldness.916 He has simply refused to bow to intimidation, believing that China should be a country where Christians openly worship God and preach the gospel.

Rather than wait for such a day to come, it often seems as if Zhang has decided to live as if it already had come. He expects China to conform to God’s will, rather than letting the church conform to China’s will. He was one of the main proponents of the open letter from the house churches to the Chinese government that in August 1998 called on the authorities to acknowledge God and stop trying to destroy the Church.917 In November of the same year, he was one of the participants at a two-day church leaders’ meeting that issued a joint statement of faith. It was a bold move by the house churches, who published it partly to show the world a united front and partly to counter claims by the government and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement that they were heretical. Zhang explained: ‘Unless we have unity, and quality leadership, house churches in China will always be considered second-rate, or even a cult.’918 He was one of the first house-church leaders in China aggressively to pursue contact with Christian organizations in other countries. He believes that members of the worldwide Body of Christ should work together and help one another, and has rejected the more cautious stance that many other Chinese believers have adopted towards foreigners. As a result, throughout the 1980s and ’90s the Fangcheng Church had more contact with believers overseas than any other house-church movement—and probably received most of the foreign funding that was offered. Although this prompted criticism and may have caused division between the ‘haves’ and the ‘havenots’ in China, Zhang seemed unconcerned and persisted in doing what he believed God had called him to do. His boldness has included giving open interviews to foreign journalists. In 1998, a reporter from the American newspaper The Oregonian asked him at the start of an interview what concerns he had for his security. He replied: ‘If you don’t write, they’ll come to get us. If you do write, they’ll come to get us. But the difference is that the people outside will know what’s happening to the church here.’919 Streetwise and adaptable, Zhang is noted for his casual appearance as well as his complete lack of fear. Once mobile phones became available in China, he was rarely seen without one in his hand. In this way he was able to keep in constant contact with his movement. ‘Wearing sandals and khaki shorts with a frequently ringing cell phone in his pocket,’ wrote the reporter from The Oregonian, ‘Zhang Rongliang didn’t look like the founder of one

of the world’s largest underground Christian networks, much less a threat to the Chinese Communist government.’920 David Aikman explained the highly mobile ministry he developed: Zhang has combined two lives: that of a fugitive, keeping one step ahead of China’s Public Security Bureau, and that of a minister, travelling with other Christian leaders to as many as 20 provinces on leadership and training missions for the church. His only means of communicating with other Christians and family members is a cell phone, which he quickly replaces when any of his house-church contacts is arrested.921

Zhang’s freedom came to an end at noon on 23 August 1999, when he was arrested in Tanghe County with 31 other leaders from four different housechurch networks. According to witnesses, the PSB ‘violently beat and kicked at the church leaders, and stole everything from them.’ One youngster said: ‘The police pushed us children to the corner and then carried everything valuable from the house. They shouted at the leaders: “You are the same as the Falungong! You are a cult! You will be eradicated just like the stupid followers of Falungong!”’922 All but six of the arrested leaders were released after paying a fine of 10,000 yuan (about $1,200) each—a huge amount in rural China. The remaining six were charged with ‘using an evil cult to undermine the law’ and sentenced to between one year and three years in prison. On 3 February 2000, just five-and-a-half months into his prison term, Zhang was released on account of poor health. He was suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes. He immediately resumed his itinerant ministry, but was careful not to stay in the same place for more than four consecutive days, to reduce the chances of being rearrested.

Zhang’s Overseas Travels In 2002, Zhang began to travel outside China, ministering in churches throughout the West and in parts of Asia. This development surprised many people both inside and outside the country. No one could understand how a man with his criminal record was able to get a passport. The truth about how he managed it would later hurt him. During his travels to various countries—most of which were in partnership with David Wang of the Hong-Kong-based Asian Outreach International— he received offers from well-meaning Christians to help him to settle in America, where he could live in relative peace and quiet. According to The Voice of the Martyrs, Christians there had ‘even prepared a five-bedroom house for Zhang and his family. However, Zhang turned down the offer,

saying, “For my family and for my safety, I wish I could be in the United States, safe in that wonderful land. But for my church and for God’s people, I have to go back to China.”’923

Zhang Rongliang in 2003 Paul Hattaway

Controversy and Confusion By the year 2000, a number of controversies surrounding Zhang’s style of leadership was causing much discord among the Fangcheng believers, and was even affecting other house-church movements. Some church leaders, when invited to a meeting, would decide whether to go or not on the basis of whether he would be present. This situation only became worse once he had spoken in meetings overseas. Many house–church Christians in China were unhappy that Zhang was being promoted as a leader of the Chinese house-church movement when actually, in many people’s opinion, he had lost his mantle and was now little more than a troublemaker. Alarm was expressed at the message he was giving the Western church, and his emphasis on money, and some also voiced concern at the way he had given his ministry priority over his family. One critic said that he ‘gave false information when visiting the United States: “The mainstream of the church in China is the charismatic movement. The church in America must become likewise. As like Noah’s Ark, whoever does not come on board our ship will be swept away by the flood!”’924 Among China’s house churches, it is often very difficult to discern fact from fiction. What is known is that Zhang became a highly controversial figure, even within his own movement. In 2002–03, a number of regional

leaders of the Fangcheng Church rejected his authority, and gave strong reasons for their decision to do so. Among other things, there were serious accusations of moral failure. In 2004, the movement held high-level meetings to decide what to do about him. As with most things to do with this contentious leader, even the outcome of these meetings is complex, hard to understand and hotly disputed. One source who has worked with the Fangcheng Church for many years has claimed that ‘all the leaders and elders from 29 provinces came together and excommunicated Zhang Rongliang. All his moral failures were laid openly on the table.’925 Another Westerner, with equally strong connections with Fangcheng, jumped to his defence: On 28 October 2004, China for Christ [the name for the mission arm of the Fangcheng Church] convened a meeting of 500 of their top leaders. … For the sake of history, the meeting was video taped. During this meeting, Zhang was unanimously voted in by the twenty mission centres as the CFC leader for the next three years. Of the original twenty mission centres, four broke away in March 2002 but four new ones have since been added.926

A short while after this meeting, the homes of some of the Fangcheng leaders were raided by the authorities and a copy of the video of the meeting was seized. On 1 December 2004, Zhang was picked up on the street in Zhengzhou, to be imprisoned for the sixth time in his life. For six months, little was heard of his whereabouts, until he finally appeared in court on 6 June 2005. Many of his supporters hoped he would be released after the hearing, but it soon became clear that Beijing had taken control of the case and a heavy sentence was likely. Zhang’s two sons, who are both in the ministry, were also targeted by the authorities and went into hiding. In court, Zhang was charged with the crime of ‘obtaining a passport through cheating and illegal border crossing’.927 On 29 June 2006, more than 18 months after his arrest, he was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison in Zhongmou, in central Henan. Bob Fu of the China Aid Association, who is one of his friends and supporters, stated: ‘Zhang had used a fake passport to travel to the United States and Australia to attend conferences because the government would not issue a passport to him.’928 Some Western Christian organizations distanced themselves from him after hearing the reason for his sentence, but others said that the fact he had been denied the freedom to travel was itself a form of persecution. One organization that advocates for persecuted Christians stated: The case would not have arisen if it were not for the discrimination faced by religious figures in the issuing of passports, freedom of movement and freedom of association with co-religionists

abroad, all of which are in violation of international standards. The sentencing of Pastor Zhang demonstrates how the persecution of religious believers can be disguised by other seemingly unrelated charges.929

Later, when the official court documents from Zhang’s prosecution were released, it was revealed that he had obtained a total of 13 passports under false names, and had used them to make 15 trips abroad.930 When this book went to press, in 2008, he was still in prison. He is nearly 60 years old and apparently in very poor health. Five chronic diseases, including high blood pressure and severe diabetes, have caused him to be transferred to a prison hospital on several occasions. One witness reported seeing him handcuffed and chained to his hospital bed.931 Although Chinese law allows for prisoners to be paroled on medical grounds, it seems the government is determined that Zhang should serve his full term. In September 2007, The Voice of the Martyrs reported that his health had deteriorated to such an extent that he ‘must be carried from place to place by two men supporting him. He does not walk well on his own. He openly questions whether he can finish his sentence. If he is not released, there is a good chance that he will die in prison.’932 If that were to happen, it would put an end to a life that even his harshest critics must acknowledge has achieved much for the Kingdom of God in China. Without doubt, God has greatly used Zhang throughout his life. He has been a man of huge influence. Of course, influence can be both positive and negative, but on the positive side a vast network of house churches embracing millions of believers throughout China emerged under his leadership. Thousands of leaders have been trained and established in ministry, and untold numbers of souls have been delivered from darkness to light in countless villages and towns the length and breadth of the country. Those who work closely with China’s house churches tend to have mixed views about Zhang. They admire his bold achievements in establishing the Fangcheng Church, and respect him for the many years of imprisonment he has endured—and yet he has been just as strongly criticized by other housechurch leaders and foreign Christians. David Aikman, the author of Jesus in Beijing, summed up these conflicting views: Zhang Rongliang can … lose his temper a bit too easily. Some in the Fangcheng movement have criticized his lack of formal education and a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible. Zhang’s loyalty to old friends and co-workers in China’s house church movement [has] helped keep afloat organizational relationships that might otherwise have floundered. At the same time, it has rendered [him] vulnerable to charges of cronyism by rising, younger house church leaders within Fangcheng.

But it is hard to think of any house church leader in China who has been more visionary or entrepreneurial in evangelizing not only his own country but anywhere in the world. Michael Yu … says simply, ‘Zhang is the most influential Christian leader today in the church in China. Of the leaders of the five main groups, he has been the most mature, the wisest, the most tolerant. He has a strong influence on all of the people. He is the person all the leaders look up to.’933

Perhaps the final word should be given to Dennis Balcombe, who has known Zhang and worked with him closely for more than 20 years. He says: ‘I would tend to discount many of the negative reports, and I do know him as a man of God. I have been with him for years, and have seen his deep spirituality. As we learn more about Rongliang and many others in China, we find that they have these personal failures. But even so God has used them greatly.’934

904 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 905 Ibid. 906 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p79 907 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 908 Ibid. 909 Ibid. 910 Personal interview with Sister Mei in August 2002 911 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 912 Ibid. 913 Ibid. 914 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p78 915 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 916 See the earlier on the Fangcheng Church for some of these accounts. 917 This letter is printed in full in ‘The Galilee of China’. 918 Asian Report, no.238 (March–April 2000) 919 O’Keefe, ‘China Widens Crackdown’ 920 Ibid. 921 Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’ 922 Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 27 August 1999. The Falungong are a non-Christian sect condemned as a cult and viciously repressed by the Chinese government since the 1990s. 923 The Voice of the Martyrs, June 2005 924 ‘Old Women in China’s Churches: Getting the Facts Straight’, China Horizon, November 2001 925 Personal communication from an experienced missionary to China dated 26 November 2004 926 Part of a confidential report (dated 5 December 2004) from an experienced missionary to China, whose name is withheld for security reasons. 927 ‘China Sentences Underground Pastor to 7.5 Years in Prison’, China Aid Association, 8 July 2005 928 Ibid. 929 Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 10 July 2006 930 See ‘CAA Released Prosecution Paper of Zhang Rongliang’, China Aid Association, 8 July 2006. 931 Compass Direct, 6 July 2006 932 The Voice of the Martyrs, The Persecution Prayer Alert, 26 September 2007 933 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p80 934 Personal communication from Dennis Balcombe dated 17 May 2007

Chapter 35 ‘UNCLES’ AND ‘AUNTIES’ OF THE FANGCHENG CHURCH

The house churches owe much to the faithful sacrifices of elderly ‘uncles’ and ‘aunties’ who have courageously carried the torch of the gospel

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en and women honoured as senior leaders of the house churches in China are often referred to respectfully as ‘uncles’ and ‘aunties’. These are people who for many years have had both their faith and their ability tested by fire and have come out with their witness intact as loyal servants of God. There are many such people in the Fangcheng Church, and over the years I have been privileged to meet and interview many of them. In this chapter, I shall present brief profiles of one of the movement’s ‘uncles’ and three of its ‘aunties’. Each has been used by God in a unique and powerful way to further his kingdom in China.

Zheng Shuqian: China’s Most Arrested Church Leader? Zheng Shuqian is one of the senior leaders of the Fangcheng Church, and may also have the distinction of being the Chinese church’s most detained leader. When I met him in 2001, he summed up his experience as a believer in two sentences: ‘I have been a Christian 27 years and have been arrested for the gospel on 12 separate occasions. I have seen prison doors open by the hand of God and I have witnessed a dead person come back to life.’935 He first accepted Christ in 1974, when he was 37 years old. He remembers that ‘the year I was saved, there was great persecution against the church. In one village, a group of Christians were arrested and led in chains through

Fangcheng. This allowed me to realize that the gospel would cost me a lot.’936 Later, he met a believer who had just been released from prison. This man shared how God had helped him and had healed many sick prisoners when he prayed for them. This astonished Zheng, who had never seen anyone miraculously healed. His own wife had been mentally ill for many years, and he wanted to see her whole again. He and the man prayed together, and on the third day she was restored to full health and went back to her daily routine for the first time in years. A few days later, Zheng and his wife attended a meeting at which they received a clear call to the ministry. He told me: We knew nothing in those days except that God was real. We didn’t know how to pray except ‘God, help me!’ and ‘God, save me!’ After meeting the Lord, my words towards my wife became more loving and courteous. Others suspected I had become a Christian because of the changes they saw in my life. My neighbours accused me of being a believer. They wanted to see if I had really changed, so they purposely said bad words against me to see how I would react. For five days they mocked me and tried everything they could to provoke me to anger. I told my wife: ‘I cannot take any more. Tomorrow I will fight back!’ She encouraged me to remain silent. When the farmers saw that nothing could disturb my peace, they knew that I was a real Christian and that something great had happened inside of me. The next day, two people made fun of me again. I stood up and declared: ‘My wife was sick and you people showed no sympathy to us. But God healed her, and we are now Christians. There is no reason for you to hate me. Go ahead and do whatever you want to me!’ The work leader heard our argument and said, ‘OK, Zheng, calm down! They are just joking. Don’t take it so seriously!’ He told the two to shut their mouths and not to provoke me any more. He said, ‘Zheng has his own way of Christian thinking, so leave him alone from now on!’ Every day we worked in the fields and in the evenings we attended meetings throughout the area. One evening, my wife and I were arrested. They forced us to attend a brainwashing class to make us deny the truth. We were interrogated for five days, while our five children were at home with no food to eat. Some of our relatives turned against us and said, ‘Your own children are starving to death. Deny your faith and go home! Take care of your children! Surely your God will be pleased if you take care of your family?’ We felt terrible inside. My wife and I knelt down and prayed, ‘Lord, we don’t want to deny you, but our children are suffering at home and we must help them.’ For the sake of our starving children, we went home. I signed a piece of paper stating: ‘There is no God.’ Three days after returning home, my wife again became mentally ill and all five of our children were sick. We were unable to eat or sleep because of the stress. I prayed: ‘Lord, I am truly sorry for what I have done. Please have mercy on me!’ A cadre came to my house and asked me why I hadn’t returned to work in the fields since my release. I told him: ‘Before I was a Christian, I borrowed lots of money to help treat my wife’s illness. Then God healed my wife and we started to follow him. Now I have denied my Lord and we are in a worse state than before.’ I asked the officer to bring my confession so I could change it. I wrote: ‘My family and I will follow God from now on. We will also open our house to host Christian meetings. I am willing to die for the sake of the gospel.’

I repented and within three days my wife and children were completely healed. I started a meeting in my home every Friday evening. Numerous people were healed of their sicknesses by the Lord, and the church grew.937

There were no Bibles available in the 1970s, so Zheng tried to memorize all the scripture verses he had heard in sermons and then repeated them to his congregation. Many sick people were brought to the meetings so that he and his wife could pray for them. As the number of Christians in the area grew, he found it impossible to shepherd them while still doing a full-time job—in those days, the work units required people to work 28 days a month without exceptions. Zhang remembers that he prayed a strange prayer: ‘Lord, if you want me to preach full-time, please give me a disease to show the officers, so they will let me stay away from the fields! Please don’t make it a contagious disease or one that brings me pain!’ Two days later, an ugly skin disease affected my arm. It looked terrible. The work-unit officers took one look at it and ordered me to visit a doctor. I was given seven days’ sick leave. The disease looked grotesque, yet I didn’t feel any pain at all. For seven days I continued to preach and teach, and many more people found the Lord’s salvation. After seven days, my infection from the Lord disappeared and I went back to work.938

Zheng was arrested for the second time in 1977 and was sent to a labour camp, where he and the other inmates were compelled to work 18 hours a day. After several weeks, he felt as if he was losing his mind and was close to collapse as a result of the heavy work. Another Christian in the prison told him: ‘God has permitted this suffering to come on you. You must be patient and wait for his blessing.’ The man’s advice changed his perspective and he decided to submit to God’s will whatever happened, trusting that the Lord was in complete control of every detail of his life. Immediately, the peace of the Holy Spirit returned to his heart. Ten days later, he was unexpectedly released. When he got home, he found that his wife and children were in dreadful straits. In those days, farming families were required to give 90 per cent of their harvest to the government; the last 10 per cent was for their own use. Because Zheng’s family had not been able to fulfil the government quota, there was no food for them to eat. Fortunately, some of the other villagers had shown compassion and shared their food with Zheng’s family, and so they had been able to survive. On his return, they experienced a tremendous miracle. He recalls: All we had to eat was sweet potatoes, because we had to sell the rice we had been given to buy simple supplies from the store. Then God miraculously helped us. The supply of sweet potatoes never ran out. We started with 60 kilos [132 pounds] of sweet potatoes in a large basket. When

we put them into a vat to make noodles, the 60 kilos miraculously became 600 kilos. Right in front of our eyes we saw the number of sweet potatoes supernaturally multiply and expand, filling up the entire huge vat to overflowing. We knelt down and wept before the Lord, thanking him for his miraculous provision. We had more sweet potatoes than we knew what to do with. For months we had potato noodles, potato soup, fried potatoes, boiled potatoes and mashed potatoes.939

After this experience, Zheng and his family were filled with faith and awe at the Lord’s providence. Another believer in their village told them that his family of six was running out of corn—they only had 30 kilos left—and faced months without any food until the next harvest. Zheng told him: ‘“Just keep trusting the Lord; He will help you!” So that believer went home. He took seven and a half kilograms of corn out every five days and ground them into powder. He kept doing that for three months and there was still 15 kilograms left!’940 Zheng was arrested again in 1979. More than a hundred believers were being held in a cell until the next morning and they worshipped and prayed together all night. Suddenly, after a teenage girl prayed that God would help them to escape, the heavy iron door opened of its own accord.941 His fifth arrest took place on 10 April 1980, while he was preaching in Lushan County. This time, the authorities tried a new approach—eventually. Zheng explains: That evening, they beat me severely and chained me to a wall. They hung me a few feet above the ground and beat the soles of my feet, my back and other parts of my body. They interrogated me and asked, ‘How many times have you come to our county?’ When I told them truthfully that it was my first-ever visit to Lushan, they didn’t believe me and savagely kicked and beat me. On the third day, as I was being hung up and beaten again, five sisters came from the church and tried to stop them beating me. They were willing to protect me at their own personal risk, but the officers angrily drove them away. The next day, I noticed that none of the guards were paying attention to me, so I simply walked away to freedom. I discovered they had let me escape, because the following day government officials came and asked me to become a leader in the Three-Self Church. This was a new tactic. Seeing that beating and torturing me was not achieving their aims, they decided to tempt me with seductive offers. They knew I had great influence over many believers and if I joined them thousands of other Christians would follow me and also join the Three-Self. They offered me a top job in the TSPM, but I absolutely refused to have anything to do with them. They commanded me to join the religious meetings in our county, but I again refused. This made them mad. The brothers and sisters came to me and pleaded with me to leave my home. They said, ‘You are much more valuable to us if you are not in prison.’ I left that night and travelled with Zhang Rongliang for three months to other parts of China, including Shandong, Hubei and Sichuan. When I returned home, I discovered that during my absence the police had taken their frustrations out on my family. They had beaten my five children, hoping I would hear about it and be enticed back home. But I had been far away and

didn’t know about it. My oldest child was 15 years old and my youngest was just seven. My wife was also interrogated, beaten and sentenced to 30 days in prison. They came and took away every possession from our home. We were very poor and didn’t have much of value, but they took even sentimental articles from us.942

The night Zheng returned home, he knew it might be too dangerous to go straight to his own house, so he walked through the village praying that one of the Christians might see him and invite him in. As he walked past one house, he heard people inside it crying out to God to protect him. He knocked on the door, and the two women who came to it exclaimed: ‘We were just praying for you, and now you appear at our door.’ The next day, a large rat bit Zheng on the finger. He became sick, and half his body became paralysed; but when the believers prayed for him he partially recovered. One day, after he had moved to the home of one of his relatives, he heard the police surrounding the house and hid himself inside a wooden box. The officers searched the building but never looked inside the box, and so he escaped once again. Realizing that the local authorities would not give up until they had caught him, Zheng again went on the run with several other Fangcheng leaders. He wasn’t able to go back to his home to see his family. The historian Danyun records: ‘They always spent the nights in the hills, in the wilderness, in the bushes and in the fields. They had to suffer the cold and the wind and were bitten by mosquitoes. They would sneak into the houses of the believers before dawn. And the Lord always delivered them from the hands of their enemies.’943 Zheng was arrested for the sixth time during a large meeting of Fangcheng leaders on 1 October 1981.944 On this occasion, he was instrumental in helping Zhang Rongliang and Sister Ding Hei to escape. When the chief of police denounced him for this, he shouted back: ‘How dare you come and arrest the children of God? When have I ever come to disrupt your PSB meetings?’945 When the police came to his house the next day to arrest him, Zheng remembers, a strange thing happened: ‘The officers started to slap me, and then the Lord made me suddenly fall into a deep sleep. They could not wake me up and they had to end their interrogation.’946 Later, the authorities raided another meeting of believers. Most of the 110 people present managed to escape, but seven house-church leaders were arrested, including Zheng for the seventh time. Once again, God used his servant’s boldness and wisdom to confound his accusers. He recalls:

I was the last of the seven to be questioned. Each of the six was asked why they allowed meetings in their homes and each of them testified how they had been healed and saved by the Lord. Then they asked me, ‘Do you feel these meetings are right or wrong?’ I replied: ‘Our meetings are both right and wrong.’ The chief officer enquired: ‘In what ways are your meetings right?’ I replied: ‘Sir, you yourself have sometimes secretly attended our meetings. You know that we always encourage the people to think right, have good conduct and pray for our country and our government. I’m sure you can confirm this is true.’ The officer knew what I had said was true, and he was embarrassed that his secret attraction to Christianity had been exposed in front of his colleagues. He then asked me: ‘In what ways are your meetings wrong, then?’ I replied: ‘Sometimes the devil influences the Public Security Bureau and you come and abuse your authority by disrupting our meetings and arresting us. When this happens, our meetings go wrong. Therefore, our meetings are both right and wrong.’ The officer dismissed the other six believers and told me to stay. I was sure he was preparing to give me another beating, but he leaned forward and said, ‘Zheng, you are mentally ill.’ I replied: ‘No, I am crazy about the Bible but that’s all.’ They didn’t know what to do with me and told me to go home.947

In 1982, Zheng attended some meetings in Wuyang, and he asked God when it would be safe for him to visit his family. A co-worker came up and gave him a message from the Lord: ‘Three days from now, you will be captured.’ Three days later, Zheng was seized by a group of officers as he left the village. He recalls: I was bound with thick ropes and I lost all feeling in my arms and hands. But when they took the rope off, I discovered that my arm that had been paralysed by the rat bite was now completely healed. They took me to the police station and intended to use an electric baton to torture me. But when they applied it to my neck, I felt nothing. The instrument didn’t work. They desperately tried to fix it but weren’t able. Next, I was taken to Fangcheng Prison, where they asked me: ‘Tell us the name of the person who shared Christianity with you!’ I told them: ‘I have received the good news as a result of Communism. If the Communists hadn’t persecuted Christians, then I would never have received an opportunity to hear about Jesus. So, I thank you for helping me know the gospel.’ I was sentenced to two years and sent to a labour camp in Xinye County in southern Henan. They finally decided to let me go, even though they couldn’t make me renounce my faith. I was arrested on three more occasions after this time: once in Guangzhou, once in Zhengzhou and the other time in Zhoukou. These were the ninth, 10th and 11th times I was arrested.948

In one of his interrogations, some inhuman guards tortured him cruelly. According to one account, When they used a hot iron to brand his body, Zheng could not bear it. He screamed, ‘Father, deliver your child!’ Then he fainted. A bucket of cold water was poured over him; Zheng regained consciousness. Then it was interrogation and torture again. That was repeated five or six times; Zheng was seriously wounded.949

In between his frequent arrests and imprisonments, he continued to provide inspirational leadership and excellent Bible-teaching to the believers in the

Fangcheng Church. During one meeting, A woman who was in her thirties came with her son in her arms. He was already dead. Zheng laid his hands on him and shouted, ‘In the Name of the Lord Jesus, I command you to rise up!’ Immediately the boy opened his eyes and rose. At another time, Zheng was conducting a baptismal service by a river in the same province. A teenage boy who was dumb since birth shouted ‘Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!’ as he came out of the water.950

Zheng’s 12th arrest took place on 23 August 1999, when he was one of 31 house-church leaders captured during a prayer seminar in Tanghe County. Another of those seized in the raid was Zhang Rongliang, Zheng’s longterm friend and co-worker. Once again, the two old soldiers for Christ were sent to prison together. Zheng and Zhang each received three years. Zheng was now in his sixties, and the thought of three more years of back-breaking toil from sunrise to sunset overwhelmed him. He told me: I was struggling at the time. In my cell, I told the Lord that I didn’t want to travel and preach the gospel any more. I just wanted to remain at home and be a father to my children, a husband to my wife and a farmer of the land. For the next three weeks, I felt terrible inside. God removed his peace and I experienced great inward turmoil. I repented and said, ‘Lord, I am sorry. I submit to your will and your calling and I promise I will preach your gospel regardless of the difficulties and dangers.’ As soon as I had finished my prayer, the presence, peace and joy of the Lord returned. I was released early in August 2000.951

When I interviewed Zheng in 2001, he was again a fugitive, together with his wife. One of the hardest and most painful aspects of his life has been the stress experienced by his wife and children. He told me: My wife has been a warrior for the gospel and has stood by my side in the suffering of the Lord all these years. It has been very difficult on my family. For 23 years in a row, I have been unable to be at home with my family during Chinese New Year celebrations. I have been in prison, on the run or somewhere else every year at this time. My children have lived their entire lives under tremendous pressure. They have been harassed and mocked by their schoolmates and teachers, and have been beaten by the police for their father’s ‘crimes’. Even my little daughter has been slapped and kicked. They have frequently gone without meals because there was no food in our house. Nothing about their lives has been normal.

Nonetheless, he had no regrets: In all my experiences, I have learned to admit my weakness to the Lord in order for him to put his hand on me and make me stronger. I have had many struggles when I have tried to do things in my own strength, but when I walk by faith, step by step, his blessings and his presence are more than enough for me. I have learned that through Christ I can do all things. So many miracles have happened in China that the most gifted researcher would never be able to record even 1 per cent of them in a lifetime. I want people to understand that everything that has

happened in China has been done by God. It is not because of any person’s goodness, skills or abilities. It is all by the gracious and undeserved hand of God. May he alone be glorified!952

Sister Mei

Sister Ding Hei

Many of the senior house-church leaders in China are women, and many of these are from Henan Province. One of the regional leaders of the Fangcheng Church is Sister Mei.953 Born into a Christian family in 1954, this courageous woman of God only received Christ for herself in 1975 after she suffered an illness. She recalls: I could not even stand upright because my legs were so twisted. I had constant severe head pains, and my lungs were weak. Some people thought it was only a matter of time before I died. At that time, the Lord graciously sent someone to share the gospel with me. The Lord healed me completely by his great power. I committed my life fully to the Lord Jesus.954

She began a career as a schoolteacher when she was 24, and was married the following year. In 1981, she realized that her nation’s need to know Jesus Christ far outweighed her own desires, so she joined the Fangcheng Church and became a travelling evangelist. Over the years, she has personally led thousands of people to faith in Christ. Her infectious joy and bold witness have been blessed by God, and when she shares the gospel even hardened sinners seem to melt under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Mei is one of the 80 main leaders of the Fangcheng Church, and she delights in sharing testimonies about what God has done. Among the more unusual miracles she has seen are these: A number of years ago in Neixiang County, God’s own hand wrote eight characters in the sky above the house of Brother Li Qinghui to encourage the believers. It was witnessed by thousands

of people. Such occurrences have shown us that God is all-powerful and worthy of all praise. On another occasion in Neixiang, as evangelists were sharing the gospel in 1994, three village leaders strongly opposed them. As a result, the judgement of God fell and two of the men suddenly dropped dead while they were scolding and beating the evangelists. On the second day, the other leader fell into a well and died. This caused the fear of God to fall on the community and many people believed. In fact, all the people in the area who saw and heard of these events repented and followed the Lord. In 1995, there was a sister who was mentally handicapped in Bowang District. She was unable to complete a sentence, and everyone felt sorry for her. She began to pray and told God that she wanted to glorify him by sharing the gospel. At first, she shared with the people in her own village. She was known as the slowest person in the village but when she preached the gospel she suddenly spoke with great power and clarity. Nobody could refute her wisdom. The village leader realized a great miracle had taken place and became a strong believer. In one week, 24 people followed Jesus Christ because of this sister’s witness. In countless other ways, God has caused the name of Jesus to become famous in southern Henan, and increasingly throughout China the gospel is being proclaimed and multitudes of lives are being transformed. It is all by the grace and power of our Lord.955

Sister Ding Hei One of the brightest women in the Chinese house church is Sister Ding Hei, who was born in Fangcheng County in 1961. The respected author David Aikman, who is not given to hyperbole, remembers the first time he met her, in 1999: Taller than most Chinese women, slim, handsome, shorthaired, and with a ready smile, she would have been striking in any professional environment. Within just a few minutes of conversation she was demonstrating … vivid narrative skills, a keen analytical mind, obvious charm, and dazzling self-confidence. She was used to being a leader and she was also used to having everyone around her know that she was good at it.956

Ding’s mother had become a secret follower of Christ in the late 1960s after being healed from an eye disease. She kept her faith private because her husband was a leading cadre in the village and was responsible for reporting any sign of religious belief. Ding Hei first placed her trust in Christ at the age of 13. She was the only Christian in her middle school, but within six months 40 of her classmates had also become believers. When an intense persecution broke out against the church in Fangcheng in 1974, Ding was still in school but remembers watching the trial of Zhang Rongliang on a television in the classroom, as her teachers taught the children what happens to Christian ‘criminals’. Little did Ding know that years later she would become one of the key leaders of the church movement led by Zhang. In the mid 1970s, her father discovered that both his wife and his daughter were secret Christians. He beat them often, and destroyed the pages of

scripture they had meticulously copied by hand from a borrowed Bible. Despite this, Ding Hei refused to be intimidated and continued to attend meetings, only to return home and face another beating. These stressful times helped to prepare the teenager to endure the many persecutions that would later mark her ministry for Christ. At the age of 20, she left home with the blessings of her mother. When her father found out, he was filled with rage and took his own daughter’s picture to the police station and asked them to arrest her. She walked more than 30 miles (48 kilometres) to the home of Zhang and his family, where she remained for the next six years. During that time, she gained recognition from other Christians as a dynamic and anointed preacher of God’s word. During the intense crackdown of 1983, she went on the run with the other Fangcheng leaders as the authorities hunted them. After years of fruitful ministry throughout China, Ding was finally caught in October 1989. She was interrogated 123 times, as the authorities sought to find out all they could about the Fangcheng Church and about her contacts with foreigners. She refused to betray any of her co-workers, and was sentenced to three years in a labour camp near Zhengzhou. Her gifts soon manifested themselves in the prison, and within weeks she was promoted to cell-block leader of 189 female prisoners. She was released in March 1992. The following year, she was arrested again, but ‘escaped in time to attend her own wedding in late May 1993 to Zhang Gangzhu, a younger factory worker and a devout Christian introduced to her by Zhang Rongliang. A year later, Ding had a daughter, their only child to date.’957 In 2001, she talked to me about her role in the movement, and expressed her concerns for the future of the Chinese church: In the Fangcheng Church we have 21 main teams of workers, which are separated into five main regional units. This structure has been in place since 1998. I am responsible for the north China team: Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning, Jilin, Beijing, Tianjin and the northern part of Henan Province, north of the Yellow River. This responsibility means I travel frequently to many different provinces. Today I am most worried that the younger generation of house-church believers are not as committed as the previous generation. They do not have to cling to the Cross as tightly as we had to. Twenty years ago, our options were to serve the Lord or face a life of struggle and hardship on the farm. We figured we may as well struggle and experience hardship while serving the Lord. There are many new distractions and temptations for young believers today. I have to face the daily pressure of being hunted by the Public Security Bureau. Zhang Rongliang is their number one target and I am number two. If they catch him, I will be upgraded to their number one target. Please pray for us!958

A few years after this interview, Sister Ding retired from her exhausting itinerant ministry, wanting to spend more time with her family and enjoy a more settled life. They moved to another part of China, where she has been involved in training believers. She recently spoke of her deep desire to mentor a new generation of house-church leaders: ‘We see our founders as heroes … always in and out of prisons. We don’t mind arrests, or imprisonments. But in all other areas our leaders do not mentor us. They are far too busy. Or they themselves don’t know how to mentor us to face the new challenges of today.’959 She continues to be a great blessing to those who come into contact with her.

Sister Lu Xiaomin

Sister Lu Xiaomin

Those who believe that God’s kingdom advances through human endeavour and education will find it difficult to explain the tremendous revival in China that has won tens of millions of people to Christ in recent decades. It is clear that often, instead of employing strong, qualified workers in his harvest, God has chosen the lowly and uneducated who have hearts willing to submit to the Holy Spirit. No greater example can be found than the remarkable testimony of Ruth Lu Xiaomin, a shy young woman from Fangcheng who has obeyed God’s call and become a great blessing to the whole church in China, as well as beyond its borders. Born in 1970, she grew up with a limited education. Her family belonged to the Hui ethnic minority group, who are descended from Muslim traders and soldiers who migrated into China many centuries ago. These people are considered extremely difficult to reach with the gospel. Xiaomin, however, first heard the good news as a teenager when her aunt shared it with her, and she responded immediately.

She joined a local house church in 1989. A short time later she attended a worship meeting. Later that night as she lay in bed, the words and melody of a song came to her mind. She had never studied music, and was surprised at what had taken place. Not wanting to appear proud, the only person she shared the song with was another young girl from her village. She, in turn, began to sing the song and her parents heard it and asked where she had learned it. When they asked Xiaomin how she had composed the song, she simply replied that it had been given to her by the Holy Spirit. Over the months that followed, more songs came to her by inspiration from the Lord. She wrote the words down, and later a Christian who came to her village taped the 23 worship songs she had by that time composed. Something about the simplicity and holiness of her songs touched all who heard them, and they were soon disseminated widely by evangelists who heard them on visits to Fangcheng and took them back to their mission fields. In 1992, Xiaomin was arrested and imprisoned for more than two months after a house-church meeting was raided by the police. While she was incarcerated, she wrote another 14 worship songs. She later recalled: We were taken to the county jail and thrown in a cell with many female criminals—murderers, gamblers, people-traffickers. … When we came in, they were all curious and asked, ‘Why have so many people come in all of a sudden? Did you steal, or commit murder or arson?’ I said, ‘We have done nothing. We believe in God.’ The criminals said, ‘It is good to believe in God.’ Suddenly, I began to sing a new song.960

By the mid 1990s, she was composing a new song every few days, and a system had been established whereby the words and melodies would be recorded and transcribed by others—Xiaomin herself never learned how to write music down—and then taught in house churches the length and breadth of the country. The ‘songs of Canaan’, as they came to be known, also made their way into Three-Self and Catholic churches, while many unbelievers who heard them were attracted to Jesus. The songs God has inspired Xiaomin to write meet the needs of the persecuted Chinese church specifically, and so are quite different from contemporary Christian songs in the West. For example, song 592, entitled ‘Lord We Ask You, Set Our Hearts on Fire’, goes: Lord we ask you, set our hearts on fire for China Set our hearts on fire for China Look at the Chinese Church Take a look at your servants They have truly endured many attacks

They have weathered baptisms of wind and rain But from the beginning they have never been afraid They have with steadfastness never wavered Nor worried on the barren threshing floor And still from inside and out the pressure comes Going south, rushing north, they stumble through hardships Not remaining long in any place Lord, if this is your will I will joyfully thank and praise you Even with fear overhead like black clouds And thorny bushes under our feet We will preach the gospel around the world.961

Married and with a son, Xiaomin has largely remained in her home area in Henan Province and seems rather reluctant to travel frequently, despite many requests. She has now composed more than 1,000 songs, and her music has featured in television documentaries and has been performed by professional orchestras. She is motivated by a deep love of God and her nation. She once declared: ‘Even if there is only one drop of blood in me, I will spill it onto China. Even if there is just one breath left in me, I will devote it to China.’962 God has used this humble farming girl, whose family belongs to China’s largest Muslim minority group, to touch the lives of millions of people and direct them to the Cross. Well over one million Songs of Canaan songbooks have been printed and distributed in her country. Lu Xiaomin remains unassuming and offers no explanation for her success except that ‘it is only by the grace of God and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.’

935 Personal interview with Zheng, March 2001 936 Ibid. 937 Ibid. 938 Ibid. 939 Ibid. 940 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, p283 941 This story was told in detail in ‘The Silent Years’. 942 Personal interview with Zheng, March 2001 943 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, pp274–75 944 See ‘The Fangcheng Church’ for a detailed description of this incident. 945 Personal interview with Zheng, March 2001 946 Ibid. 947 Ibid. 948 Ibid. 949 Danyun, Lilies amongst Thorns, pp280–81 950 Ibid., p283 951 Personal interview with Zheng, March 2001 952 Ibid. 953 Not her real name 954 Personal interview with Sister Mei, August 2002 955 Ibid. 956 Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, p99 957 Ibid., p107 958 Personal interview with Sister Ding Hei in March 2001 959 Asian Report, no.271 (September–October 2005) 960 Asian Report, no.262 (March–April 2004) 961 Lu Xiaomin, Xin Ling Zhi Sheng [Sounds of the Heart] (house-church publication, 2003), p652. Translation cited in Wesley, The Church in China, p29 962 Asian Report, no.262 (March–April 2004)

Chapter 36 THE STRUGGLE FOR UNITY

Since the early 1980s, Henan’s house churches have struggled to find biblical unity

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Asian Report

any Christians around the world, when they read or hear stories of the tremendous growth of the church in China and of miracles that have taken place there, presume that there must be great unity among the believers there. In truth, in Henan Province, where several of the largest nationwide house-church movements originated, the pursuit of biblical unity has been a long and difficult one for house-church Christians—a struggle that has been largely unsuccessful to this day. The various networks in the province today are largely divided. There are doctrinal disputes, personality clashes between leaders, unresolved issues of sin and selfish ambitions. Sadly, leaders of one group have sometimes been slandered by those of another, and character assassination is not unknown. Deep suspicion is prevalent between believers. In some cases, the controversies that beset the house churches concern genuine moral failure and ungodly behaviour, but usually they have been whipped up out of ignorance or malice. Such deep division could be taken as a sign that Satan is actively trying to destroy the church in Henan. In recent decades he has seen millions of his captives set free by the gospel, and he will do whatever is necessary to frustrate the revival. One of his favourite tactics seems to be to cause ruptures and fractures in the Body of Christ. These rifts are often exacerbated by the authorities, who are expert at playing on people’s insecurities (just as the KGB was in the old Soviet Union). Many Chinese house-church pastors who have been arrested have been told that a particular colleague, or the leader of another group of house churches, sold

them out. The other man is then told something similar. The result, not surprisingly, can be deep enmity between brothers—or at best distrust until an opportunity has arisen to establish the truth and be reconciled. We have many believers here. In my village, some believe in the Local Church, and I believe in the Three-Self Church. In our church, most of us are not baptized. Although we do believe in the importance of baptism, we think the baptism of the Spirit is more important. Is that correct? The people from the Local Church said that when the Lord comes again, they will be picked up first, numbering 144,000. Only after that will the people from the Three-Self church be picked up. In my one year or so of being a Christian, I consider that to believe Jesus Christ as our Saviour, to confess Him openly and to believe Him in my heart, and to repent truthfully are all that is needed to be saved. I want to be saved, but I don’t know which is better, the Local Church or the Three-Self Church. FEBC, August 1992 Recently, a preacher from the north came to our village. His teaching is different from our church. He preached on the book of Revelation and said that the kingdom is near. I was very unhappy when I heard him. He said many ‘amens’ when he prayed. I did not understand his message. Is he a false Christian? He doesn’t face the cross when he prays and claims that the cross is an idol! FEBC, June 1992

The reasons for the lack of unity amongst China’s Christians are many and complex. One book has summed up the problem thus: Many of the groups commonly classified in English under the misleading term ‘house churches’ spurn the religious credentials of the China Christian Council, or at least its leaders, regarding them either as Christians hopelessly compromised by the world, or as not Christians at all. … Some of them also reject each other, insisting that their own particular beliefs about certain matters of doctrine or practice are the only valid ones. Having nearly five hundred years of schism in Western Protestantism to draw upon, plus disputes wholly Chinese in origin, the potential for bitter divisions is very great, whether over forms of baptism and communion, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, the marks of true conversion, how to hold Bibles, or in what posture to pray, to list only a few.963

In 1997, after the well-known house-church pastor Samuel Lamb of Guangzhou made a scathing attack on Peter Xu Yongze, the founder of the Born-Again Movement, the respected journalist Alex Buchan saw a parallel with some earlier saints. He observed: It seemed rather harsh of Samuel Lamb … to quite happily call Xu Yongze a ‘heretic—not a brother’, and blithely wish that prison would do him good and ‘make him repent’. If he had shown the slightest smidgen of pastoral concern, or even just human sympathy for a man now facing 10 years of what Lamb faced for 20 years for his beliefs, I might not have felt so taken aback. But no. Xu was a heretic, and Samuel Lamb’s normally soft demeanor had turned steely and cold in response. He may have loved his congregation, but if Xu were to appear he would get a fierce earful … John Knox style!

Perhaps his reaction meant more to me because I had a similar feeling a few days before, reading about the Church Fathers. I stared aghast as the great Tertullian lays into Praxeous, the heretic, in the most uncharitable terms imaginable. I read with disappointment the downright ungraciousness of the so-called Doctor of Grace, St Augustine, as he calls for the Donatist sect to be punished by military force. It seems to be a fact that many of the great heroes of the faith burned with as fierce a hatred toward those they perceived to be the enemies of God, as they were inflamed with love for God. … Say what you like about Samuel Lamb. His language about Xu Yongze is positively mild compared with his biblical and patristic forebears.964

Lamb later made a similar, stinging attack on Brother Yun, another man he has never met. Clearly, just because the church in a particular location experiences revival, it does not mean that all is sweetness and light. Both scripture and history teach us that the opposite is true. Revival has often been accompanied by fierce disputes and deep divisions between different Christian factions. The church in the Book of Acts saw many similar struggles and had to cope not only with doctrinal disagreement but also with infighting and indiscipline—even as it was experiencing a tremendous outpouring of God’s mercy and power, with thousands being saved into the kingdom of Christ. I converted to Jesus Christ in 1993. I attended a church every Sunday evening. Later I was told by some Christians from Zhengzhou that my church in fact belonged to the ‘Shouters Sect’. I left and attended a Three-Self church which was quite far away from my home. Yet someone warned me that this church was not led by Christ and their congregation will not inherit eternal life. Therefore I left the Three-Self church. Recently a lady invited me to her church. She emphasized that they worship the true God who has come to the world. I am puzzled. Which church is God’s Body? I dare not go to hers or any of the other churches. I want to preach the Gospel. Please comment on my plan: My home is very near to the railway station where many people stay and wait. It may be a good idea for dispatching Bible copies and other spiritual booklets here. Would it be in accordance with God’s plan of preaching the Gospel in China? FEBC, no.7586, June 1995

The Beginning of Disunity Most house-church leaders agree that from the time when Christianity began to re-emerge in China, after the death of Mao in 1976, to around 1984 it could be said that the house churches in Henan and the rest of the country were unified. More than a hundred different Protestant denominations had been operating in China before their expulsion in the 1950s; but the decades of persecution that followed had erased

denominational distinctions, and by the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 labels such as ‘Lutheran’, ‘Baptist’ and ‘Methodist’ meant little to Chinese Christians. All that mattered was Jesus Christ, and anyone who followed him was a brother or sister in the faith. All alike had endured years of suffering for the sake of the Kingdom of God, and they were one. Brother Yun, in his best-selling book The Heavenly Man, recalls those years —and what then occurred to break the unity God had created in his Body in China: Throughout the 1970s there had been just one house church movement in China. There were no networks or organizations, just groups of simple believers who came together to worship and study God’s Word. The leaders all knew each other. God had brought them together during times of hardship. They learned to fellowship and trust one another while shackled together in prison. After being released they worked together for the advancement of the gospel. In those early days we were truly unified. Suffering had broken down all denominational walls in the Chinese Church. When China’s borders started to open up in the early 1980s, many foreign Christians wanted to know how they could help the Church in China. The first thing they did was smuggle Bibles to us from Hong Kong. These gifts were greatly appreciated and so desperately needed! … However, after a few years these same mission organizations started putting other books on the top of the bags of Bibles. These were books about one particular denomination’s theology, or teaching that focused on certain aspects of God’s Word. This, I believe, was the start of disunity among China’s house churches. … We read all these booklets and soon we were confused! The churches started to split into groups that believed one thing against groups that believed another. Instead of only speaking for Jesus, we also started speaking against other believers who didn’t conform to our views. I’m not saying it was purely the fault of our foreign brothers! Our own hearts were in error and we easily succumbed to temptation. I’m also not saying that we don’t need or want help from Christians around the world. We do! We have tremendous needs and we pray God will provide however He chooses, including through foreign Christians. But the motive in giving and receiving must be pure, and these gifts should only be given through the existing church leadership, so that younger leaders are not tempted to use these gifts to usurp the authority of the leaders above them. The leaders could no longer walk together in unity before the Lord. We felt that to do so would be to compromise our new beliefs! This situation gradually worsened for more than 15 years, until some house church networks believed they were the only ones who held the truth, and despised other groups as cults that should be avoided at all costs. The leaders no longer spoke to or loved one another. As we travelled around China we met with believers from many different groups and networks, and noticed the spirit of denominationalism was rampant. The Lord gave me a burden to seek unity among the house churches, and I started to look for like-minded leaders who shared the same vision.965

Peter Xu Yongze remembers: In the second half of 1971, I travelled throughout a wide area and was overwhelmed and delighted to discover so many groups of Christians. At that time, denominationalism had been

completely wiped away by the years of persecution. The Christians I met did not belong to any particular group. They were simply believers of Jesus, and that was enough. In the 1970s, there was just one Church, and we all loved God. We didn’t have different beliefs or practices, and there wasn’t a single hint of jealousy or competition between us. Right throughout the 1970s this remained the situation in China, and it was not until after 1983 that the first house church networks began to emerge, fracturing the simplicity and unity that God had created among us.966

He can see several reasons why the house churches separated in the 1980s: Theologically, the house churches diverged on a number of different issues. We became suspicious of each other’s motives and intentions; and, at worst, one leader would begin to accuse another of being a heretic or cult leader without any personal knowledge of what they believed or practised. Over time, the different house churches found fault with one another, and walls were erected between brothers who once walked hand-in-hand. We thought it was too difficult to stay together, so we stopped fellowshipping with each other and went our own separate ways. Despite our divisions, the churches continued to grow and receive God’s blessings, but I sometimes wonder what might have been achieved if we had remained unified and not allowed Satan to sow seeds of discontent among us. Many unbelievers saw the jealousy and criticism God’s people had for each other and lost respect for the church as a result. All of this grieved our loving Lord. The generation of believers saved since the late 1980s have not been born into one church in China, but into separate churches. Such a dilution of spiritual unity can never be healthy for God’s people. I have no doubt the government and many of the Three-Self Church leaders sat back and laughed at the gullibility of the house churches at this time. They knew exactly how to add fuel to the fire that was raging among us. A well-placed lie or even an insinuation easily resulted in more rumours and divisions within the Body of Christ. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement also skilfully manipulated the situation by publishing lies and exaggerations about different house churches and leaders, in an attempt to ‘prove’ we were ‘evil cults’ that did not deserve inclusion in the Body of Christ. Their magazine Tianfeng was especially adept in such tactics. Most house-church leaders read those articles. Because our relationships with each other had already fractured, there was no reason to doubt that our brothers had fallen into the spiritual decay reported by the magazine. These sinister articles sowed discord and reaped a harvest of disunity. The government, like Satan, have been experts at this game, and many Christians have been willing participants by passing on gossip as fact. These tactics have continued to the present day. By the mid 1980s, we all had our own ministries. We were no longer one body as God intended. Our fragmentation also opened the door for certain cults to spread their teaching throughout China. In our state of disunity, we were unable to fight this influence with a united defence. And Jesus wept.967

By the mid 1990s, the situation had deteriorated so badly that most housechurch networks wanted nothing to do with each other. Many of the disagreements were over trivial matters. For example, on one occasion believers from one group of house churches tried to work with believers from another. The first group held Bible-teaching meetings late at night,

whereas the second group—citing scripture—insisted that meetings should be held early in the morning. The inflexibility of both resulted in heated arguments that eventually became so loud that someone alerted the authorities. Some of the house-church leaders were arrested, and everyone else went home more convinced than ever that the other church was in error.

The Sinim Fellowship Most of Henan’s house-church leaders realize that it brings no glory to Jesus Christ that their churches are so hopelessly divided. They also appreciate that disunity slows the advance of the Kingdom of God. Consequently, since the mid 1990s there has been a succession of attempts to find common ground for cooperation. The most successful of these was the Sinim Fellowship, a regular gathering of senior house-church leaders from several networks in Henan Province. The person God used to begin this initiative was Brother Yun. Although during his years in China he was an evangelist and Bible teacher rather than a senior leader himself, Yun was sorely grieved by the disunity amongst the churches and believed that God had called him to help to reunite them. In 1994, he tried to bring Zhang Rongliang and Peter Xu Yongze, each the founder of a huge network of churches, together for prayer and discussion. His own account of what happened suggests the height of the wall that had grown between them: In years gone by, Zhang had greatly respected Brother Xu, the leader of the Born-Again house church network. One day Zhang heard that Xu was conducting meetings in a village about twenty kilometres [12 miles] away. Having not seen Xu for a few years, Zhang decided to ride his bicycle to talk with him. When Zhang arrived at the entrance to the village, Brother Xu’s co-workers—who had been posted outside to watch for trouble—stopped Zhang and refused to let him enter. They didn’t know who Zhang was. In their zeal they refused to go and check with Xu, and ordered Zhang to leave. The truth is that if Brother Xu had been told Zhang was outside, he would have come and hugged him dearly. Because of many sorry incidents and misunderstandings like this, distrust and bitterness [sprang] up in the hearts of many house church leaders against one another. … I left greatly discouraged and was deeply grieved. I felt like giving up. The vision for unity seemed impossible, but the Holy Spirit told me, ‘Don’t cry. You’re not my first choice to bring unity among my people. Several others were called but did not endure in the vision.’968

Yun travelled to Shanghai and the strongly-Christian city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province to ask the church leaders there whether they would consider meeting for unity talks with the house churches in Henan. They all

dismissed him out of hand, declaring that they would never be reconciled with the Henan churches, which they considered to be cults. Yun did not give up. He met with Xu and his sister Deborah and ‘shared the vision for the Chinese church to take the gospel outside China as missionaries, but told them this would never happen as long as the house churches remained divided and full of hate for one another.’969 Xu recognized the truth of this, and committed himself to the pursuit of unity amongst China’s house churches. Yun then arranged for him and Zhang, along with their key leaders, to meet for the first time in 13 years. What ensued was remarkable. The leaders of the Born-Again Movement arrived at the place set for the meeting a day before Zhang and his Fangcheng leaders were due to get there. During a time of prayer, one of Xu’s colleagues, Brother Fan, received a message from the Lord and told him that when Zhang and his party arrived, Xu should get on his knees and wash their feet in an act of love and humility. The next day, the Fangcheng leaders arrived and everyone greeted one another and sat down for a meal. They started to talk, and soon arguments broke out. The atmosphere grew worse. Many old wounds resurfaced and it became apparent the two groups were as far apart as they’d ever been. It looked like Brother Xu had missed his chance to wash their feet. Suddenly Zhang slapped his knee and announced, ‘All this talk is a waste of time. Let’s pray and then we’ll leave.’ Brother Fan pushed Brother Xu in the back and instructed him, ‘Quick! Get some water and do what the Lord told you to do!’ Zhang was praying with his eyes closed when Xu knelt down in front of him and started to gently take his socks and shoes off. Zhang opened his eyes and was amazed. He couldn’t believe the great Xu Yongze, leader of the largest house church movement in China, would ever kneel down and wash his feet! Zhang cried out and wrapped his arms around Brother Xu in a warm embrace. Deborah Xu then brought out a bucket of warm water and started to wash the feet of Zhang’s coworker Sister Ding. The two of them knelt down on the floor and hugged and wept. Thirteen years of rumours, bitterness and jealousies were washed away. Everyone in the room sought the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness. Many confessions of sin were made from one leader to another. It was a powerful time. Puddles of tears formed on the floor of that blessed place.970

It was this breakthrough that led to the establishment of the Sinim Fellowship. The name ‘Sinim’ comes from an Old Testament passage that the Chinese believe refers to China: ‘Behold, these shall come from far; and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim’ (Isaiah 49:12, KJV).

When the leaders of other house churches in Henan heard that Zhang and Xu had been reconciled they were amazed, for they knew how great the divide had been between them. Tentatively at first, others began to agree to come to the Sinim meetings—though some still refused to have anything to do with them. It took another two years before the first meeting was held, in Shanghai in November 1996. The leaders of five house-church networks were present. There was much confession of sin, and many tears flowed. Xu stood to his feet and said: ‘We don’t want to follow our own pet doctrines any more. We want to learn from one another’s strengths and change however the Lord wants us to change, in order to make us stronger and closer to Jesus.’971 It is important to note that this pursuit of unity was not an attempt to achieve complete theological harmony. While the leaders involved knew it was essential that everyone agreed on the tenets of scripture, they soon realized that they would never see eye-to-eye on all doctrinal issues this side of heaven. Rather, the basis on which they sought reconciliation was the vision God had given to his Body. Their desire was for unity rather than uniformity. They recognized one another as children of the same family, and soldiers in the same army. Yun observed: Although not all differences were ironed out, the leaders got to know their fellow leaders for the first time, and saw how they had far more in common than they had reasons to remain separate. They also found their theological differences centred upon things that weren’t essential to the faith. Each group clearly heard how God was moving in wonderful ways among the other groups represented in the meeting, and gave glory to God. We decided to speak in each other’s churches, and to share Bibles and resources between us, so that one or two groups would not end up receiving the majority of help from overseas Christians while other groups got nothing. On the second day, all the leaders took Communion together. It was probably the first time in more than 50 years that the top leaders of China’s Church had taken the Lord’s Supper in unity.972

Foreign Interference The Sinim Fellowship continued to function for several years, though the continuity of the meetings was affected by arrests and changes of personnel. In 1997, most of the Sinim leaders were rounded up and received three years in prison. The meetings continued while the senior leaders were incarcerated, but without the same sense of purpose as before. When Brother Yun escaped from Zhengzhou Prison in 1997, he left China for Germany, from where he has ministered to Christians around the world ever

since. Xu (who had been the chair of the Fellowship) re-established the Sinim meetings for a time with Enoch Wang and others after they were all released; but when he suddenly left the country for America in May 2001, the unity movement began to falter. Two of its key proponents were now living in the West, and those who remained in China were unable to maintain the momentum. What added to the confusion was the fact that many house-church networks in other parts of the country that had refused to be involved with the Sinim Fellowship had come out strongly against it. They pointed out that it did not represent them—which, of course, it had never claimed to do —and repeated allegations that some of those involved were cult leaders and heretics. Foreign interference is one of the principal dangers facing China’s house churches today. According to Brother Timothy, the young leader of the Nanyang Church, Because we live in what seems to be the most dangerous and sensitive area in China with the most arrests, we have often had to cancel or reject visits from foreign brothers and teachers. After this has happened, some of the other church networks have thought that we rejected the visitors because we are too proud and self-centred, but that is not the case at all. We welcome partnership with all Christians, but they need to understand that we are responsible for security and when we are told that holding a certain meeting will be risky we cancel it, sometimes at the last moment. We are wary of foreigners who come to us with the wrong motives. Some visit us and then boast and tell the world that they have been to the largest and strongest group, and they raise money for their own ministries, none of which we ever see. We are very wary of such people. My father owned a handwritten Bible that had taken years to produce during the Cultural Revolution. It was very precious to him. Some foreigners visited and asked if they could borrow it, so they would remember to pray for him. He never saw it or those foreigners again. It became some kind of relic to people who try to make their reputation off the Chinese church. For reasons like this, we are very wary of sharing testimonies with foreigners. We must know their hearts and motives first so that they don’t come and mess around with our things.973

In 2002–03, a new initiative towards unity was begun, called the Shenzhou Fellowship. A few meetings were held in southern China, attended by leaders of various house-church networks (including some who had been members of the Sinim Fellowship) as well as a number of foreign Christians. Some of the reports published at the time in the West used almost identical words to describe these meetings as had been used six years earlier about the first Sinim meeting, including the statement that, after a time of reconciliation and tears, the leaders of the Chinese church took their first Communion together for 50 years.

The Shenzhou Fellowship, too, has now been disbanded, and I do not know of any formal gatherings for unity among China’s house churches today. Nonetheless, the earlier efforts bore fruit and the leaders of many different networks remain in informal contact, though most of them seem to be strongly resistant to the idea of resuming formal unity meetings.

Denominations, Chinese-style Many of China’s Christian leaders proudly declare that God broke down the walls of denominationalism in their country through the decades of struggle and persecution. To this day, the various house-church networks in Henan do not regard themselves as denominations and might even be angered by the suggestion that they are. Certainly, Western labels such as ‘Baptists’, ‘Assemblies of God’ and ‘Methodists’ have been discarded by the Chinese church, but the various house-church networks now function as denominations according to almost any definition of the term. Each of them has distinct doctrines and practices, each prefers particular teaching materials—and each sees its identity in terms of its preferences. In 2004, the Singapore-based Antioch Mission lamented the divisions it found in the church during a visit to China: Some of the house church networks are now vast. They claim thousands of churches planted all across China in nearly every province, and in some cases they claim millions of members. … Sadly, this massive growth has also led to disunity. House church groups have begun to criticise others for their differing non-essential beliefs and practices. Some of our recent team members experienced this first-hand when an elderly pastor began to denounce a well-known house church leader, claiming that he was merely out to make money. Whilst many top house church leaders are seeking to build bridges with different networks, it is unfortunately true that there is a lack of trust and a tendency to factionalise and to split up. … Thinking back to the early eighties, the house church movements were very fluid, and there was a great deal of love and unity. Now it seems that that is breaking up, which is rather sad.974

Nonetheless, foreign Christians who are concerned by this disunity would be wise to consider the state of the churches and denominations in their own countries before rushing to judgement. Chinese believers are following Christ wholeheartedly as they work out their salvation with fear and trembling, and outsiders should be patient and pray for them as they walk on the path towards biblical unity. We should reflect on the words of Enoch Wang of the Local Church, prompted by a meeting he attended in 1997: There was much repentance and confession by the leaders of various groups. We heard many hours of testimonies about how God was working in each house church network, and we all realized that the Lord was with those other groups just as much as he was with us. Many years of bitterness and division came tumbling down at the foot of the cross. Tears flowed as we

embraced one another and accepted each other as true brothers and sisters in Christ. Satan was furious that we were sitting together as God’s people. He wanted us to continue to work separately, weakened by dividing walls. Jesus’ desire is that his children will walk together. … Please pray that the church in China will know God’s will so that we will offer ourselves to God without reservation or hesitation. Pray for more and more believers in China to have this burden to take the gospel back to Jerusalem. Pray that we will be able to work together with believers from all around the world so that we can complete the Great Commission together. When all nations have received a gospel witness, the end shall come.975

Chinese believers continue to seek and pray for biblical unity RCMI 963 Stephen Uhalley Jr. and Xiaoxin Wu (eds.), China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future (London: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), pp196–97 964 Alex Buchan, ‘Where Revival Ends’, Compass Direct, 21 November 1997 965 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp232–35 966 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 967 Ibid. 968 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp235–36 969 Ibid., p236 970 Ibid., pp237–38 971 Ibid., p240 972 Ibid. 973 Personal interview with Brother Timothy, March 2001 974 Antioch Missions, China Prayer Update, September 2004 975 Adapted from ‘The Testimony of Enoch Wang’ in Hattaway, Back to Jerusalem, pp91–93

Chapter 37 THE THREAT OF MAMMON

Will the Chinese church’s receipt of money and resources from overseas diminish its spiritual life?

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or many years, believers around the world have prayed that China’s house-church Christians would withstand the fires of persecution with their fact intact. So they have done, and have reaped a huge harvest for the Kingdom of God. Since the mid 1980s, however, there has been another danger that has threatened to weaken the church in China: the love of money. As the country has gradually opened up to the outside world, a flood of foreigners has entered China to make contact with the house churches. They have come not only from the West but from places such as Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The South Korean church has also been prominent in this invasion. Some have come with pure motives, to serve the vision God gave the church in China, but others have intended to use the Chinese church to establish their own kingdoms and achieve their own goals. Tragically, some Chinese church leaders have been seduced by the prospect of material gain, though—thankfully—most have not. In the early 1980s, there was just one house-church movement in China, consisting of groups of simple believers who came together to worship and study God’s word. Brother Yun recalls how this blessed unity began to decay: Once I took a train with various house church leaders to the southern city of Guangzhou, to receive Bibles from our Western friends. After a day or two of fellowship we boarded the train

again and headed home with our precious gifts. We were all so happy and full of love for one another. … After a while our foreign friends started giving even more things to us. They gave money, cameras, and other things they felt were necessary to help us serve the Lord more effectively. I clearly remember how this caused division among the leaders. The fighting began even before we got off the train! In our evil hearts we asked, ‘Who got the most books?’ or, ‘Why was that brother given more money than me?’ It was a real mess. Within a year or two, the house churches in China split into ten or twelve fragments. This was how so many different house church networks came into existence.976 When I was 14, my grandmother passed away. The family felt very disturbed. My father turned to idol worship. In the most desperate moment, a lady from the village introduced us to Christ. Our whole family turned to God—we prayed, attended meetings, and worshipped God. We felt peaceful. Thanks be to Him! This is the grace of God. Afterwards, our church asked for the believers’ money in an unbiblical fashion. Consequently, the church collapsed and the believers became weak. No one takes care of the church now except me. We have no pastor. Letter from Brother Li to FEBC, February 1993 Most Chinese worship mammon today and the church is also polluted by the world. Some businessmen make a deal with God that they will go to church if God makes them earn much money. Many pastors and church workers also pursue selfgratification. They regard believers as faithful only if they offer them big banquets. Some even preach that God will stay in the house of those who practice hospitality on the pastor. To compete for leadership and power, some church buildings spend a lot of money on furnishing and decorations in order to attract people. Our pastor warns us not to visit other churches and to refuse outside evangelists who want to visit us. I think he just wants to keep us as his own possession. He also advises us not to listen to overseas Gospel radio broadcasts or read books brought in from overseas Christians because we are not wise enough to distinguish truth from heresy. FEBC, no.8562, October 1995

Remarkable Integrity It is easy to focus on the failures of Henan’s house churches, but it should be pointed out that most believers have maintained a walk of biblical holiness and have not allowed materialism to affect their pursuit of Christ. Indeed, there have been several occasions over the years when church leaders have displayed remarkable integrity in the face of great temptation. In the mid 1990s, for example, a representative of a major Protestant denomination in the West visited China and had the opportunity to meet senior house-church leaders in one part of the country. They took time out of their busy schedule so that he could speak with them briefly. He began by telling the assembled leaders that he had been authorized by his

denomination to explore ways it could ‘partner’ with the Chinese church. He explained that it had great resources and could provide millions of dollars each year for training, support and the printing of Bibles. The only condition was that their house churches would have to ‘come under the umbrella’ of his denomination. After listening to his presentation, they thanked him for coming and politely asked him to step outside while they prayed about his offer. To these church leaders, most of whom came from poor farming backgrounds, the promise of millions of dollars must have seemed overwhelming; but they only had to pray for a minute before they looked at each other and knew that God had made it clear what they should do. Without further discussion of the offer of funding, they turned to considering which of them was the meekest. Once the majority had picked one brother out, the chair of the meeting then gave him their instructions: ‘When we call our friend back into the room, please tell him in the most humble manner you can that we are not interested in his offer!’977 Some years later, a similar offer of millions of dollars was made to housechurch leaders by another Western organization, and again it was firmly rejected. The Chinese believers were able to see the strings attached to it, and they valued their freedom in Christ more than an opportunity to get funding for their work. It is a tremendous witness that many of Henan’s house churches, despite being desperately poor and unable to finance many of their own programmes, have enough integrity to seek God over every decision, rather than giving in to the lure of foreign money—and the foreign control that often goes with it. Since the start of the 21st century, several elderly house-church leaders in Henan—those who are regarded as patriarchs of the church, who have spent many years in prison for their faith—have either stepped down or been replaced as leaders of the movements they founded. The new generation of leaders appears to be generally much better suited to dealing with the challenges that a more open and prosperous China presents to the church. They better understand the need for accountability and transparency in financial matters, and many have a cluster of people around them, including treasurers, to protect them against the temptations that come with handling money. Most of this new generation also understand the dangers of dependence on foreign money. Some have simply decided that they will not accept any money at all from abroad.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I personally attended house-church meetings in China at which some of the leaders arrived with their belongings in a plastic shopping bag—their Bibles, a change of shirt and socks and a toothbrush. They were poor by the standards of the world, yet tremendously rich by God’s measure. By the late 1990s, however, things had changed in China and most house-church leaders had swapped their plastic bags for leather briefcases and their tattered clothes for smart jackets and trousers. One missionary joked to me that, whereas in the past their meetings had been in danger of being disrupted by the police coming to arrest them, nowadays most of their meetings are disrupted by the incessant ringing of their mobile phones. Today, there are some who say that all financial involvement from outside China is wrong, but most house-church leaders realize that the problem is not money itself but the love of money. Rather than rejecting all offers of assistance from abroad, they have focused on having the right motives so that the love of money does not influence their decisions and actions. Many have succeeded—but some have failed.

The Love of Money Brings Division Dependence has been a major scourge of missions work worldwide, and Henan Province is no different. At times, insensitive and foolish acts by foreign Christians have contributed to the downfall of some Chinese leaders and created deep rifts within the church. For example, according to the journalist Alex Buchan, ‘in 1995 a large house church movement in Henan divided when a Hong Kong pastor secretly gave a young church leader about $85,000. This young leader then proceeded to equip all the second level leaders with their own special mobile phones, thus buying their loyalty away from the older, established leader.’978 To put the size of this gift into perspective, Buchan explains that the sum was over 70 times the average annual salary in that part of Henan in 1995. He adds: ‘That’s just like going to someone earning $30,000 a year in California, and giving them a briefcase filled with cash to the value of Two Million, One Hundred Thousand US dollars, and then saying, “Please use this as you see fit for the benefit of the body of Christ.”’979 In another part of the province, an underground Christian printer received an order from a church that was fed up with waiting for a shipment of Bibles from the state-sanctioned Amity Press. With the help of foreign

funding, it paid him the equivalent of $70,000. He printed the required number, but the quality was terrible—the paper and the binding were the cheapest he could find. It is estimated that the printer saved some $40,000 on his costs—and he now operates a thriving taxi business in the city. In 2000, a leader in one of Henan’s house-church movements was excommunicated and placed under discipline by his colleagues after a large sum of money that had been earmarked for the work of the ministry went missing. A short while later, he bought himself a van with his new-found wealth. Despite being excommunicated, this man continued to receive money from some Western organizations that accepted his story that he had been the victim of a power struggle. Buchan, who is a frequent visitor to China, explains that this form of corruption is also rife within the ranks of the Three-Self Church. He was informed by one TSPM leader: We now have three kinds of pastors: terrified old men who just report everything to the government; strong men and women who are solid pastors; and a third group on the increase in the last five years, which is made up of sharks who see their job solely in terms of fleecing foreign donors. … You come to make disciples, but your money ends up making vultures.980

One quality needed by foreigners who venture into Christian ministry inside China is humility. They have to understand that the house churches there have had decades of experience and they don’t need a novice coming to their country and pointing out everything they do wrong. As silly as this seems, it has happened on many occasions. Buchan recounts a revealing incident that took place in the early 1990s, when four well-known Western Christian leaders were invited to visit China’s house churches. They accepted the invitation, but sent a letter setting two conditions for coming: First, the hosts must arrange for at least one of each of their books to be translated into Chinese, ‘so that adequate follow-up can occur’. Second, the hosts were to ensure that they would speak only to groups of more than 2,000 people, ‘so that we can justify to our churches that we are spending our time well.’ They had it backwards. The issuer of the invitation replied, ‘The object of taking you into China was not so that you could minister to the Chinese church, but so the Chinese church could minister to you.’981

Buchan notes succinctly: None of these men had seen revival like their Chinese counterparts. None was running cell structure churches with memberships in the tens of thousands. None had been thrown in jail for their faith. None faced the challenges of discipling 5,000 converts per week. What did they really think they could teach the Chinese Christians? The four were embarrassed and apologized. But their initial attitude is typical of many Western Christians regarding the persecuted church. We think of those who face opposition in terms of

needing our help rather than realizing they can help us! We minister to them through prayer, giving, courier work and so forth, but we rarely let them minister to us. What can they teach us? 982

Foreigners would do well to leave behind any arrogance or self-importance when visiting China, and renounce the colonial attitude that pervades much of the mission world today. A desire to serve Chinese believers, rather than be served by them, would help to advance the Kingdom of God in the world’s most populous country. Instead of presuming to know what is best for the Chinese church, mission organizations should submit their plans to that church’s leaders for evaluation. The same applies to resources of foreign origin. Many best-selling Western books have been translated into Chinese in the conviction that they will be a great blessing to believers in China. Often, these books have been rejected by house-church leaders, who found their contents unsuitable for their congregations or irrelevant to their needs. It would have been better if the books had been submitted to those leaders beforehand. Similarly, one Western organization spent years—and hundreds of thousands of dollars— producing a DVD library of messages by well-known preachers from around the world specifically aimed at Christians in China. When it was completed, Chinese church leaders were not impressed by the material and declined to use it. They had not been consulted at any stage of the process. On the other hand, some resources have been produced in close consultation with Chinese house-church leaders. They have examined the content to check that it is suitable for and relevant to their congregations, and have had the right to remove anything they didn’t approve of. Material like this is sure to be widely used in China.

Many house-church leaders are concerned at the pursuit of material possessions prevalent in China today Asian Report

Advice from the Chinese Church In January 2000, a meeting was convened of more than 20 prominent Chinese house-church leaders. A number of mission leaders from various other countries were also invited to meet with them for dialogue. I was present myself. During the meeting, a senior leader from Henan, a man who had spent many years in prison on account of his faith in Jesus Christ, stood up and made a short speech which he titled ‘Points of advice to foreigners’. He declared: 1. We appreciate and seek cooperation with the Body of Christ from outside China. We realize that the whole Body must work together for the Great Commission to be completed. 2. If you come to China we might be able to host you, but your plans must be flexible. You must respect our decision if we cancel or postpone a meeting at short notice because of security concerns. 3. Please only come to our midst in small groups. We don’t want any large tour groups. You only need to train a few leaders, who can then train their people if your message is helpful. There is no need for large meetings. 4. We are sick and tired of all the photos and videos you want to take. We have paid a great price because of these. Please keep your cameras at home. 5. Please consider in advance how you might help to cover the costs of your meetings. We are often left with large expenses. 6. Never bring any person who has any link to the Chinese government or the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. If someone has visited the TSPM earlier in their trip, they are often followed for the remainder of their time in China. This places us at risk. 7. Come and see how you can serve the vision God has given the church in China. Together we can seek God about ways to cooperate. You have gifts and resources we don’t have, and we have gifts and resources you don’t have. Together we can serve the Lord in an effective manner.

8. Please don’t bring your own vision to China and try to impose it on the church. We would not dream of going to your country and telling you how to serve the Lord there. Please respect us enough to realize that God has been speaking to us for many years and has given us goals and vision. Please come and serve with us towards those goals, and don’t think we are here to serve your vision from outside China. We find this rude, and in some instances foreign Christians with their own visions have actually slowed down the advance of the gospel in China.

In 2001, Zheng Shuqian, a veteran Christian leader and one of the founders of the Fangcheng Church movement, told me: The biggest obstacle I see for the advance of the gospel in China is temptation and corruption from overseas money. We have decided that we will only receive overseas pastors and teachers who come through the correct channels. We don’t care if someone can teach and preach like an angel. If that person isn’t already approved by the workers we know and trust, we will have nothing to do with them.983

Feng Jianguo is one of the wisest and most respected of Henan’s housechurch leaders. As China became more open to the outside world, the China Gospel Fellowship had to learn how to collaborate with foreign Christians in a healthy way. In 2001, Feng said: Often the biggest problem we have had is in working with overseas Chinese Christians from places like Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or Western countries. Just because they are Chinese, they think they know us better and can come to boss us around. Some brothers who have no experience in China at all have come in and told us all the wrong things we do on the first day. The fact is that few of these overseas believers have ever experienced God’s mighty revival power, and they lack the humility necessary to come and learn from the Lord and serve his church. All foreigners must come to us through the right channels and relationships. We will not accept everyone and every teaching. The elders have very tight restrictions on what is taught to our people. We know there are all kinds of strange doctrines circulating. We also know that some people with good doctrine have messages that have a different emphasis from the vision God has given the house churches. That doesn’t mean we don’t accept them as brothers, we just realize that what some people are trying to do does not match the vision God has given us. We want to ‘keep our blood pure’. The most worrisome thing I feel for the future of the Chinese church is the temptation of money. Most of the believers are still rural and remain extremely poor. They don’t own a television or any modern appliances. Preachers and pastors are especially poor and struggle just to feed their own children, so for now materialism is not a big temptation to the rural house churches. A few years ago, many [video] players and disks of training programmes were given out to our house churches, but nobody in the farming communities had a television to play them on. Some pastors walked many miles to find the nearest television set so they could view them. Therefore the temptation for money right now is not so much from China getting richer as from overseas gifts.984

Henan: a Sovereign Work of God

Although it is clear that the church in Henan faces many challenges as it goes forward, we have to acknowledge, as this book comes to its conclusion, that Almighty God has performed an extraordinary miracle in China’s most populous province. Could any of the early missionaries who struggled to plant the seed of the gospel in its hard and barren soil—people such as Jonathon Goforth, Whitfield Guinness and Marie Monsen—ever have imagined that in the later decades of the 20th century and at the start of the 21st Henan would be at the very centre of a mighty revival that has brought some 100 million Chinese people into the Kingdom of God? Today, it boasts more believers than any other province of China. They have been tested by many trials, yet have come out of the furnace of affliction as refined gold. Their love for God and their zeal to reach people for Christ is extraordinary. I was once asked to identify the dominant characteristic of the Christians of Henan. I thought about the horrific persecution they have endured, but realized that that was just one part of their story. Then I thought about the remarkable miracles that are such a feature of their lives, but again that was just a part of their story. As I reflected on the time I have spent in the province and the many unforgettable times of fellowship I have shared with its Christians, it suddenly dawned on me that their outstanding characteristic is love. The believers of Henan are full of love. They love Jesus Christ, they love people, they love their persecutors, they love China. And they have loved me. I thank the brothers and sisters of Henan—and I truly appreciate the help they have given me in this attempt to portray the Church in their blessed province. 976 Yun and Hattaway, The Heavenly Man, pp232–34 977 Told to me by a house-church leader who was present at the meeting 978 Alex Buchan, ‘On Making Disciples, Not Vultures!’, Pray for China, no.143 (July–August 1998), p5 979 Ibid. 980 Ibid. 981 Alex Buchan, ‘Refined by Fire: The Faith of Persecuted Christians Offers Lessons for Our Own’, Moody Magazine, 2001 982 Ibid. 983 Personal interview with Zheng, March 2001 984 Personal interview with Feng, May 2001

APPENDIX

How Many Christians Are There in China? ‘Any story sounds true until someone sets the record straight.’ Proverbs 18:17 (NLT)

Estimating the size of the Chinese church poses many unique challenges

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or centuries, people have been curious to know how many Christians there are in China. When Marco Polo made his famous journey to that country 700 years ago, he reported the existence of Nestorian churches and monasteries in various places, to the fascination of the people of Europe. As the Catholic presence in China grew during the 17th and 18th centuries, regular surveys were conducted by the missionaries to try to count how many believers there were. In later years, the Catholic Church kept careful statistics that were sent to Rome annually. In 1948, for example—the year before the Communists came to power—there were 3,258,536 Catholics in China.985 Since I started travelling in China in the 1980s, I have found that Christians all around the world are eager to know how many believers there are there. Many people are aware that God is doing a remarkable work in the world’s most populous country, but little research has been done to put a figure on this phenomenon. The religious landscape in China seems to be full of stark contradictions. Many Western believers have told me how utterly confused they are by the conflicting reports coming out of that country. For example, some mission organizations claim that there are now more than enough Bibles there, while others insist that there is a great shortage. Some Christian publications tell of the harassment, imprisonment, brutal torture and occasionally even

martyrdom of believers in China, while others maintain that there is complete religious freedom and persecution is a thing of the past. In recent decades, simply estimating the number of Christians in China has become controversial. Wildly divergent figures have been published, ranging from 20 million to 230 million.986 In this appendix, I have attempted to summarize the history of various estimates of the number of Christians in China. I examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of several of the better-known estimates of recent years, and explain the difficulties that attend this kind of research in China’s present political environment.

Only God Knows The first thing that anyone attempting to put a number on the church in China should do, I believe, is to issue a disclaimer. I would like to state at the outset, quite simply, that only God knows how many Christians there are, for ‘God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his.”’ (2 Timothy 2:19). While we can speculate about how many followers of Christ there are in China, I strongly advise the reader to disregard any figure that claims a high degree of precision. Quite simply, it is not possible to conduct an accurate nationwide survey of Christians in the present climate, and those who are looking for unquestionable, proven facts will be disappointed. I believe that the best anyone can do at the moment is offer an honest assessment based on the knowledge we do have, and give a frank account of the methodology they have used to come to their conclusions.

Challenges to Christian Research in China Today There are several major difficulties facing anyone who wishes to research the number of Christians in China today. Most of these relate to the house churches rather than the registered Protestant and Catholic churches. They include: a) The fear of persecution. House churches in China are those that refuse to register their congregations with the authorities, or are unable to do so for one of a variety of reasons—for which reason they are also known as ‘underground’ churches). Such churches are the targets of discrimination and persecution, and this means that typically they are secretive about

their membership and operations. Consequently, arriving at numbers is often little more than guesswork. b) In China it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Over the years, many Christians have travelled to this country, met a few local church leaders in one particular place and asked them how many Christians there are in China. This approach is futile, as local leaders have no idea how many believers there are in the whole country. This is especially true of the house churches. There are now hundreds of different house-church movements, many of them geographically extensive, most of them unconnected to each other. Within each movement, statistical information is usually kept by only a few individuals in the most senior leadership—it would be a security risk if a greater number knew the size of the movement. Therefore, for any researcher to be in a position to make even an educated guess at the size of the church in China, they would need to have a relationship with the most senior leaders of all the major housechurch networks. c) Being in China does not guarantee knowledge. I have been aware of some comical situations occurring there that show how difficult it is to get accurate information about the size of the church. A missionary family living in a small town in Henan Province were convinced there was no more than a handful of believers in that town. For more than a year they had been on the lookout for other Christians, but had managed to locate only a few. They had sent several passionate newsletters to their supporters back home, telling them how needy this unreached place was, and giving the impression that they were the sole light shining for Christ in an ocean of darkness. In 2000, I was invited to speak in a house-church training centre in that same town. Passers-by walked a few feet away from the entrance, and yet it had gone undetected for years while hundreds of evangelists had received instruction there. The people who ran it had many years of experience and knew how to conceal its existence from both the general public and the police. Ironically, this training centre was located just a few hundred metres down the street from where the missionary family lived. Its leaders assured me that at least 10 per cent of the people in the town were believers. d) Some Christian leaders in China simply do not know. A number of house-church leaders have told me they refuse to keep records because

they don’t want to fall under the judgement of God, as David did when he conducted an unauthorized census to see how big his army was (1 Chronicles 21:1–17). Many of them have the attitude: ‘If God knows those who belong to him, that is enough.’ They are content to know, as Peter Xu Yongze put it to me, ‘that massive numbers of people are being saved all over China, and we are sure that heaven is very happy, for Jesus said, “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent” [Luke 15:7].’987 e) General problems with counting Christians. The difficulty of conducting accurate surveys of the number of believers is not confined to China. Even finding out how many there are in a Western city such as Chicago or Manchester presents huge problems. Dozens of factors must be considered and definitions agreed on before a survey begins, or else large discrepancies will inevitably result. Even estimates of the total number of Christians globally have varied by hundreds of millions. While the New York-based National Review in 1995 gave a figure of 2.8 billion ‘biblical believers’,988 the respected researcher Dr David Barrett projected that by the middle of that year there were 1,939,419,000 ‘Christians of all kinds’ in the world989—a disparity of more than 860 million! f) Self-interest and personal motives. It has been pointed out by some who give a lower estimate of the number of Christians in China that certain organizations inflate their figures because it suits their fundraising interests. According to a spokesman for the Amity News Service, ‘The [state-sanctioned provincial Christian Councils throughout China] certainly tend to make conservative estimates. Why should they be interested in inflating their figures? On the other hand, I suspect that foreign groups smuggling Bibles into China or organizing radio broadcasts tend to give rather high figures to prove the necessity of their work.’990 There is undoubtedly a measure of truth in this assertion, but I believe that the opposite is also true: that some researchers and organizations deliberately understate the number of Christians in China because it suits their particular stance. Perhaps they have gained a reputation for providing conservative figures and, maybe subconsciously, want to protect that reputation even when contrary facts stare them in the face. The official figures released from time to time by the Three-Self Church and the China

Christian Council are extremely conservative, because they count only the believers under their control. Often they only mention in passing the existence of unregistered house churches, and they dismiss these as insignificant. If the TSPM and the CCC acknowledged tens of millions of Christians who are outside their sphere of influence, it would cause them embarrassment and call into question their right to speak for all the Christians in China. It suits them, therefore, to claim that most of the Protestants are in their congregations and that the house churches are relatively few in number. This clearly contradicts the actual facts. Now we will look at each of the major parts of the church in China and consider some of the specific difficulties in getting accurate information from them.

The Three-Self Church At first sight, the government-sanctioned Protestant church in China, known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, appears to be the simplest to get accurate figures for. After all, it regularly releases province-level statistics for the number of believers in its churches. In 2004, it reported a total of 18,017,750 Protestants nationwide991—a marked increase from a few years before. For years, the official number of Christians in China was just four million. This was gradually increased to eight, then 12, and then, in 2003, 15 million.992 After the figure of just over 18 million was released, Tony Lambert of OMF challenged the government’s statistics: I think I have shown fairly convincingly that the real TSPM/CCC figure should be raised to 21.2 million—which is significantly higher than the TSPM’s own 17 million figure or the ANS 2004 estimate of 18 million. However, it is still an extremely conservative estimate, as it also leaves out all youth and children under the age of 18 who are still, officially, discouraged from joining a church.993

The figures released by the TSPM or the CCC are routinely quoted around the world, usually without any explanation of their origin or context. Lambert points out that they are only ‘an estimate of baptized adult believers meeting in registered TSPM churches’.994 He notes that they ‘do not include children and young people under the age of eighteen, who are forbidden from being baptized and becoming church members before adulthood. These statistics are therefore conservative; also they usually do not include the large numbers of mudaozhe (inquirers or seekers), who may well be believers but for various reasons have not yet been baptized.’995

In fact, there are millions, if not tens of millions, of people who are genuine believers associated with Three-Self churches who have yet to be baptized, or have been baptized somewhere else (for example, in a house church), or are not registered members of any church. The disparity between the official TSPM figures and the true number of individuals who worship at its churches can therefore be very large. For example, in 1996 a publication associated with the TSPM reported: ‘In Henan Province the number of baptized Christians is now estimated at about 1.5 million, with an additional 2 million seekers who have yet to be baptized.’996 In the course of compiling information for this review, I became convinced that in some provinces the TSPM and CCC have been deliberately under-reporting the number of believers in their churches, perhaps because the officials in those provinces do not want to alert the government to how rapidly Christianity is spreading. In Jiangsu, for example, the official TSPM figure is just 1,572,000.997 However, as I went through years of clippings from the TSPM’s own publications such as Tianfeng and Amity News Service, a rather different picture started to emerge. These publications often include stories of Christians in a particular county or city, and sometimes give the number of Three-Self believers in each place. Now, there are 73 counties and cities in Jiangsu, and I was able to find documented sources for the number of Three-Self Christians in 59 of them—and adding these figures together I arrived at a total of almost three million: nearly double the official tally. Let me underline that most of these figures came from TSPM sources, and yet when added up they conflict with the official figure for the province, which suggests that officials in Jiangsu are deliberately understating the number of Christians in their province. The same applies to TSPM figures for other provinces. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to suspect that the true number of people who worship Jesus Christ in TSPM churches throughout China today is about double the official figure. That is, there may be some 36 million Three-Self Christians in China today. Of these, as many as one-third are people also affiliated with independent house churches in one way or another. They may go to a Three-Self church on Sundays and attend a house-church meeting during the week. To avoid double-counting such believers, I have included them in my Three-Self statistics and not in my house-church statistics.

Protestant House Churches The most controversial statistics for how many believers there are in China concern the unregistered Protestant house churches. When the People’s Republic was established in 1949, there were approximately 750,000 Protestants in the country. Since then, God has done a mighty work and the church has grown rapidly, but just how much it has grown is still hotly disputed.998 During the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, there were many observers who believed that Christianity in China had been obliterated, and if that country ever opened up again, the missionaries would need to start afresh. In the late 1970s, however, news began to trickle out that suggested that the church there had survived the extreme brutality of those years, despite having no leaders, few Bibles and no buildings to worship in. By 1980, it was becoming clearer that the house churches not only had survived but were growing in number and needed urgent support, especially with Bibles. The Chinese Church Research Center, based in Hong Kong, sent researchers into most of China’s provinces to conduct clandestine surveys of the numbers of Christians and to see what needs they had. The researchers returned with startling news after meeting with hundreds of house-church leaders. In most places, the number of believers appeared to be at least double what it had been before 1949, and in some places, such as southern Henan and parts of Anhui, the church seemed to have grown fouror fivefold during the decades of persecution. Since the 1980s, debate has raged over how many believers there are in China. Some have presented large but unsubstantiated figures, but others have urged caution and published much more conservative estimates.

Catholics, Official and Underground The Catholic Patriotic Association functions in much the same way as the TSPM does for Protestants. There is a further issue, however, in that it rejects the authority of the Pope and appoints its own bishops and priests without reference to the Vatican. In 1948, just a year before the Communists came to power, there were 3,258,536 Catholics in China,999 who through decades of persecution became divided between the CPA and the unregistered, or underground, Catholic church. By the mid 1990s most serious researchers believed there were between 10 and 12 million Catholics in the country, and yet the CPA acknowledged just four million.

Nonetheless, notwithstanding the low official figures, by 2005 almost all independent sources put the true number of Catholics in China at at least 12 million.1000 Another factor that confuses the counting of Catholics in China is the refusal of many believers to obey the government’s one-child policy. One analyst has written: The number of children born in China, especially in the countryside, far exceeds the government’s recorded figure. … For fear of reprisal parents are very reluctant to register these ‘additional’ children with the government. Some of these are born to Catholic parents. They remain without certificates of birth and their baptisms are not recorded in the parish register. Parents often hesitate to have the names of their children included in the parish registers because these records are open to the government.1001

The CPA seems unsure as to what figures it should publish. At one time in the mid 1980s, its secretary in Shanghai stated that there were 100,000 Catholics in that diocese. When the bishop, Jin Luxian, then visited Belgium, he said there were 120,000—but a short while later an official from the Religious Affairs Bureau said: ‘The real number is more like 160,000 to 180,000.’1002 The CPA, like its Protestant counterparts, does not count believers under the age of 18.

The Most Basic Question Is Often Overlooked All kinds of disparate surveys of Christians in China have been bandied about over the years, but I don’t believe I have ever seen anyone address the most basic question of all: What qualifies someone as a Christian? Any worthwhile survey must first define who have been counted as Christians and who have not. It is also crucial to specify which sectors of the church are covered in a survey and which are not. Are Catholics included, for example, or just Protestants? If Catholics are included, are both the members of officially recognized CPA churches and the millions of ‘underground’ believers being counted? Another difficulty relates to the existence of pseudo-Christian sects in China. Should these be included in surveys of believers or not? I am referring not to blatant cults such as the Eastern Lightning, who are clearly not Christian by any definition, but to other groups that some Christian leaders in China (as well as the Chinese government) denounce as cults, though others regard their members as true brothers and sisters in the faith. For political reasons, many surveys of Christians in China discount all such

groups out of hand. As their combined membership runs into millions, this is not something that can simply be brushed aside. It has to be addressed. Over the years, many terms have been used to describe and define Christians for the purposes of such surveys, including ‘evangelicals’, ‘bornagain Christians’, ‘true believers’, ‘Bible-believing Christians’, ‘Spiritfilled Christians’, ‘Great Commission Christians’ and so on. In this study, I have defined a Christian simply as anyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ and calls upon him alone for salvation, regardless of their age or their church affiliation. Any attempt to be more particular immerses one in endless confusion and debate because the Body of Christ in China is so extremely complex. I have also included the children of believing parents. In Asian societies, it is common for the whole family to practise one religion—it is practically unheard-of for Muslim parents to have a Christian child or for Christian parents to have a Buddhist child and so on. My survey includes estimates for Protestants in both the Three-Self Church and the house churches and for members of both the CPA and the underground Catholic churches.

A Summary of Past Surveys Many surveys have been conducted since 1920 in an attempt to establish how many Christians there are in China. In the following pages, I shall summarize some of the most significant ones. After the first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, arrived in the Orient in 1807, progress was painfully slow and discouraging. However, just as a huge avalanche may begin with the dislodging of a single small stone, so the church in China slowly gathered momentum. According to one source, ‘In the year 1843 there were only six communicants connected with Protestant missions. In 1853 there were 350; in 1865, 2,000; in 1876, 13,000; in 1886, 28,000; in 1889, 37,000; in 1893, 55,000; and at the present [1901] there are between 80,000 and 90,000 communicants.’1003 Despite such exponential growth, in the late 1880s some British church leaders launched an attack on the missionary enterprise in China. They called for it to be wound up on the grounds that it was an abject failure. One statistician said that, at the rate the gospel was advancing there, it would take another 27,000 years before the conversion rate caught up with the birth rate. Even if the population remained static, he worked out, it would

take 1,680,000 years to convert the whole country.1004 In 1901, a ‘traveller in China announced that he had formed a low opinion of the prospects of missions there, and presented a calculation to the effect that the harvest reaped by the missionaries might be described as “amounting to a fraction more than two Chinamen per missionary per annum”.’1005 The size of the Chinese church was indeed minuscule in the early decades of missionary work, but the soil was so thoroughly prepared that a great harvest was one day to be reaped.

1920: The China Continuation Committee’s 2.3 million Between 1918 and 1920, an exercise took place that was described as ‘a general survey of the numerical strength and geographical distribution of the Christian forces in China’.1006 This huge undertaking, assisted by more than 150 Protestant missionary organizations under the auspices of the China Continuation Committee, mapped the progress of the church in China. It culminated in the publication in 1922 of a large book titled The Christian Occupation of China. Without doubt, this remains the most comprehensive and accurate survey of Christians in China in history. In 1920, the China Continuation Committee published a figure of 366,524 Protestant believers, which represented (according to its own statistics) a 330-per-cent increase since 1900.1007 The number of believers had risen dramatically over the preceding three decades: PROTESTANTS IN CHINA, 1807–1920

Year

Protestant communicants

1807

0

1843

6

Net change

+6

1853

350

+294

1865

2,000

+1,650

1876

13,000

+11,000

1886

28,000

+15,000

1893

55,000

+27,000

1906

178,251

+123,251

1916

293,139

+114,888

1920

366,524

+73,385

In addition, the Committee reported a figure of 1,971,189 Catholics in China in 1920,1008 plus 5,587 Russian Orthodox Christians.1009 Overall, this exhaustive survey counted a grand total of 2,343,300 Christians of all descriptions in China in 1920. The chaos and civil war that ravaged the country in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s made accurate research impossible, and no further comprehensive statistics on the church in China were published before the Communists took control in 1949. There was, therefore, a huge gap of some 70 tumultuous years before the next detailed account of the size of that church emerged.

1992: Jonathan Chao’s 75 million In September 1992, the Hong-Kong-based Chinese Church Research Center, under the leadership of the late missionary statesman Jonathan Chao, caused a stir around the world when it announced that an informant had seen a document produced by China’s State Statistical Bureau that said there were 63 million Protestants and 12 million Catholics in the country as of June of that year.1010 Earlier in 1992, the TSPM had published a figure of just five million Christians under its supervision, while the official figure for Catholics at the time was four million. Reactions to the CCRC’s statement varied widely. Those who had promoted a high estimate of the number of Christians in China felt vindicated. Others expressed scepticism or outright disbelief and demanded more evidence. One publication commented: The informant was not able to give any further details, such as the definition of Protestant and Catholic Christian used by the survey, the Christian population of each province, or the gender proportion and average educational level of the Christian community.1011

The Amity News Service noted that the CCRC had ‘never published a copy of this document, and there has been no independent confirmation of its

existence.’1012 The Chinese authorities never did release the figures the CCRC claimed to have seen, and so they remain unsubstantiated.

1997: Amity News Service’s 13.5 million The strongest opposition to the CCRC’s claim came from organizations and individuals aligned with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council. If there were indeed 63 million Protestant Christians in China, it would mean that the official authorities controlled only about 20 per cent of them. In 1997, the Amity News Service released an estimate of 9.8–13.5 million Protestant Christians (still at least almost double the figure the TSPM had published five years earlier). Incredibly, it insisted that its total included ‘all [Protestant] Christians in China, whether they worship in churches or homes, whether their congregations are part of a Christian Council or not’.1013 Many house-church leaders ridiculed these figures, asserting that the true number of Christians in China was between 50 and 80 million.

2001: Operation World’s 91 million The British mission strategist Patrick Johnstone wrote Operation World originally in 1974. New editions were published every few years, and by the end of the century it had become one of the best-selling and most influential mission books in history. Operation World presents a profile of every country in the world, with accurate analysis of various demographics including the state of the church, and describes the current spiritual climate and prayer needs of each region. In the 2001 edition, Johnstone teamed up with Jason Mandryk. Using numerous sources and researchers, the two authors arrived at a total of 91,575,000 Christians in China.1014 This figure included 23 million ThreeSelf believers and 11.7 million Catholics, with the rest made up of various Protestant groups, including the house-church networks. Although I believe that some of the statistics cited in their provincial summaries are adrift, overall I regard their research into the size of the Chinese church as among the most reliable of recent decades. In their own words, they ‘sought to painstakingly piece together the biggest picture from every scrap of evidence available.’1015 Their readiness to listen and learn from many different sources has given their findings a ring of authenticity.

2006: Tony Lambert’s 60 million Tony Lambert is a British researcher and author. A former diplomat to China, his work has been a great blessing to many who love that country. From the time he began to publish articles on the Chinese church in the 1980s, Lambert has been an advocate for caution. He has stressed that the bigger claims for the number of Christians in China are unsubstantiated and has suggested that it would be wise to propagate only figures for which there is proof. Some of his criticisms have been strongly worded—for example: ‘These statistics are impressive, but they simply cannot stand up under closer analysis, for they are backed by no reliable, documented evidence. … It is high time such castles in the air were brought down to earth!’1016 On the other hand, he has admitted: ‘Quantifying Christian belief in China is fraught with difficulty. The avowedly atheist authorities try to prevent surveys by foreign or Chinese researchers that might challenge the official view that Christianity is still a marginal phenomenon.’1017 At first sight, his insistence on documented evidence appears sound, but it is something of a nonsense in China’s current political and religious environment. At present, it is impossible for anyone to establish accurate figures for the Protestant house churches and underground Catholic churches, whose very existence is illegal. Furthermore, what ‘documentation’ would be needed to satisfy such a requirement? Inevitably, most of the house churches conceal their operations from outside eyes, which means that the kind of evidence academics demand is simply impossible to obtain. As Lambert himself has said, ‘counting Christians in China is notoriously difficult.’1018 He himself has written two excellent books, as well as numerous articles, on the church in China. His own estimate of its size has grown. In 2000, for example, he wrote: ‘It seems safe to conclude that the total number of Protestants in China [both Three-Self and house-church] may be around 50 million.’1019 Six years later, his revised and updated book China’s Christian Millions went further: ‘The real figure which includes the house-church believers may well be over 60 million.’1020 His caution in this matter has many merits, but in the opinion of some he takes it too far. Attempts by some researchers to share with him information on church growth in various parts of China have proved frustrating.

For some provinces, his statistics are substantially lower than other, reliable estimates. Whereas he has published a figure of just 50,000 Protestants on Hainan Island,1021 house-church leaders maintain that there are 360,000. He is also adrift even when it comes to the Beijing Municipality (which includes 14 counties in addition to the official city area). In 2006, he lamented: ‘It is a sobering thought that only some 130,000 people (40,000 TSPM + c. 90,000 house-church) meet as Protestant Christians in China’s capital—or just under 1 percent.’1022 However, the leaders of several local house-church networks all agree on an approximate figure of 500,000—around four times higher than Lambert’s estimate. (It should be pointed out that this still represents only about 4 per cent of the Municipality’s population.) In summary, Lambert has provided a tremendous service to the Body of Christ worldwide over many years. He is a meticulous researcher, but in trying to avoid any hint of sensationalism I think he is too cautious. His reliance on published evidence alone means he discounts many more lowprofile house-church networks, and as a result, I believe, his totals for some provinces are much too low.

2006: Ye Xiaowen’s 130 million Many observers were shocked when, at the end of 2006, the most senior religious official in China told the Xinhua News Agency that the number of Christians in his country had reached 130 million. Ye Xiaowen,1023 the director of the Religious Affairs Bureau, an arm of the Chinese government, made this statement at two closed meetings held at Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His figure included approximately 20 million Catholics. Ye is the same man who, in June 1997, described all unregistered house-church groups as ‘evil, illegal organizations that undermine social order’.1024 Ironically, such a high figure as 130 million must include a very large component of members of the very groups he so strongly condemned. This was the first time that any Chinese official had come out with such a high figure, but it seems to be quite consistent—allowing for growth in the interim—with the CCRC’s claim 14 years earlier that a government report indicated that there were then 75 million Christians in the country. Ye’s announcement likewise got a mixed reaction. Some people welcomed it as a

vindication of what they had been saying for years, others made light of it and demanded evidence, while others chose simply to ignore it.

2007: Werner Bürklin’s 39 million Werner Bürklin was born in China to German missionary parents. They were obliged to leave the country in 1950, but he returned to the land of his birth in 1981 and has worked with Christians in China since. He leads China Partner, an organization that does much good work among the registered churches in many parts of the country. In 2007, Bürklin announced the results of a survey he and his colleagues had conducted into how many Christians lived in China. According to one report, To get the facts, China Partner sent teams to every province, municipality and autonomous region in China—31 in all. The only region they did not survey was Tibet. Over a 13-month period, his team interviewed 5,430 people ranging in age from 16–92 from a wide variety of occupations. The surveys took place in parks, markets, subways, buses, on the streets, and in numerous other locales. Based on their polling, Bürklin believes there are 39 million Protestant Christians in China, with a three percent margin of error. He estimates roughly half are in the underground church, and the other half are in government-approved churches. … ‘I’m very disappointed with evangelical leaders who readily accept numbers they want to be true without going into depth,’ Bürklin says.1025

The same article said dismissively that Bürklin ‘disputes’ the much higher figure of 130 million announced by Ye the previous year. His survey impressed some people because the methodology he employed seemed professional. However, in his 2005 book Jesus Never Left China, he wrote: ‘I regret that I cannot speak for the many house churches that did not register with the local authorities.’1026 This honest admission points up a fundamental flaw in his survey. Given his close relationship with the government’s religious institutions, it is difficult to see how Bürklin could have gained any accurate insight into the size and extent of China’s house churches. Other statements in his book reveal an extraordinary naivety regarding the situation of many of their members. For example, he confidently declared: ‘For most well-informed believers in China, it is not persecution but prosecution that Christians may experience. The state prosecutes people, including Christians, for breaking the laws of the land. They do not prosecute them for being followers of Jesus Christ.’1027 He even stated: ‘In my many years of ministry in China I have yet to find a Christian who has been incarcerated because of his or her beliefs. I do not

say that this has never happened in China. Others insist that this has happened many times. If it is done, however, believers do have legal rights to defend themselves.’1028 These observations are astonishing. On many occasions I have been in meetings at which every house-church leader present has experienced imprisonment, beating, torture and deprivation, all because of their faith in Jesus Christ. In 2002, the Fangcheng Church leader Zhang Rongliang— who was again behind bars when this book went to press—told me: ‘In one leaders’ meeting a few years ago, I joked before lunch that only those who had been in prison were allowed to eat. But then everyone sat down to eat. Every single person in the room—approximately 120 brothers and sisters— had spent time in prison.’1029 Chinese house-church Christians regard Bürklin’s assertion that they are not persecuted for their faith with incredulity. Persecution is not something from a bygone era but the contemporary experiences of many believers. As for Bürklin’s survey, I believe his findings are sincerely derived from the information his colleagues were able to gather from their sources. Those sources, however, appear to have been, almost exclusively, Three-Self church leaders and others associated with the registered church. Moreover, house-church leaders are notoriously reluctant to share information with outsiders, especially those who work closely with the governmentsanctioned churches. Ironically, just two years before his survey was completed, Bürklin had warned the readers of his book: ‘Do not make unsubstantiated claims as to how many Christians live in China today. No one knows!’1030 It is remarkable, then, that his survey claimed to have a margin of error of just 3 per cent. When he released the results of his survey, Bürklin also noted: ‘Many say there are more Christians in the rural areas than in the urban centres. We were surprised our research didn’t prove that to be true, but more research is needed.’1031 This reveals another fundamental flaw in the survey. Every other researcher I am aware of agrees that the overwhelming majority of Christians in China live in the countryside—and this is still the case, even if the large-scale migration to the cities of recent years has evened the balance a little. Finally, if there are indeed only 39 million Protestants in China today, one has to wonder why there should be more Bibles in that country than there

are Christians. According to its latest figures, the Amity Press in Nanjing has printed and distributed 46 million Bibles since its launch in 1987.1032 In addition to these, at least 10 million have been smuggled into the country by various foreign Christian groups, and millions more have been printed illicitly inside the country. And yet it is clear that multitudes of Chinese Christians living in rural areas are still without Bibles today. It does not make sense if there are only 39 million Protestants in the country. Bürklin’s intentions appear to have been sincere, but the methods he used to reach his conclusions were seriously inadequate.

2,370 Cities and Counties In the opposite table and the tables on pages 320–323, I give my own estimates of the number of Christians in China. My interest in this subject started over 20 years ago, and I have been collecting data ever since. My survey provides figures for Christians of every description, in four main categories: the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the Protestant house churches, the Catholic Patriotic Association and the Catholic house churches. I supply statistics for all 2,370 cities and counties in every province, municipality and autonomous region of China. I have gathered this information from a wide variety of sources. First, more than 2,000 published sources have been noted in the tables, including a multitude of books, journals, magazine articles and internet reports that I have been collating for years. Second, my co-workers and I have also conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with house-church leaders from many different groups, responsible for work in practically every part of China. We have found that, while some house-church networks do not gather statistics on their congregations, other large networks do keep remarkably detailed records about numbers of fellowships and believers, which we have had the great privilege to access.

Ground Zero Before I started entering data into my tables, I decided to begin with this assumption: that in any given place in the country there are no Christians at all unless I have a figure from a documented source or can make an intelligent estimate of their number based on information gathered from Christian leaders in China. In other words, I wanted to put aside all

preconceptions and expectations, input the information I had and see what the totals came to at the end. I hope that readers will acknowledge that my findings, though imperfect, have been reached with the sincere intention to draw as accurate a picture as possible of the Chinese church. You may not agree with my conclusions, but I hope you will sense that this survey has been conducted without any ulterior motive or hidden agenda. Ironically, some people who previewed my figures were exasperated to find that they were so high, while others were upset because they were ‘too low’. These tables will be updated regularly as new information comes to hand. You can follow their progress in each successive volume in this ‘Fire & Blood’ series, which will contain exhaustive figures for the particular province it profiles. The most up-to-date tables for the whole country can also always be viewed on our Asia Harvest website, www.asiaharvest.org. Although I have gone to every length to make this survey as complete as it can be, I acknowledge nonetheless that, owing to the difficulties of conducting such a survey in China today—not the least of which is the sheer size of the country—there is a margin of error of 20 per cent. If errors are indeed found, I suspect that generally it will prove to be the case that my estimates were too low. I am glad to receive feedback and input from anyone with knowledge about Christians in any part of China. I can be contacted by letter or email via the Asia Harvest website. All communications will be kept in strict confidence.

A Note about Security Some people may ask whether it is appropriate to publish any estimates at all of the true number of Christians in China, if such information might lead to more persecution from the authorities. It is important to note the following points: (a) None of the information I provide in these tables will be new to the Chinese government. It has clearly researched very thoroughly the spread of Christianity in every part of the country, as is shown by Ye Xiaowen’s announcement in 2006 that there were then 130 million Christians there. (b) The tables contain more than 2,000 references from numerous published sources, including various books and articles by Tony Lambert, Tianfeng,

Amity News Service and several Catholic publications. On the whole, I am merely collating information that is already in the public domain. (c) I have consulted various house-church leaders in China, and all of them were content that this information should be published, as long as my survey focused on statistics and avoided specific information such as the names and locations of local Christian leaders, as it has done. In fact, many were very glad of it—albeit disappointed that my total figure came out lower than they expected.

Putting the Chinese Church into a Proper Perspective We have seen that estimates of the number of Christians in China vary widely and that the issue is sometimes clouded by the personal prejudices and preferences of those conducting the survey. It is important to note, however, that even the lowest estimates confirm a tremendous growth rate for the church in China. It is generally agreed that there were 750,000 Protestant believers in that country in 1949, and so even if there are just 30 million now it would represent a 40-fold increase in the nearly six decades of Communist rule. This is extraordinary and should be the cause of much rejoicing and thanks to God. There are very few countries on earth that could claim a similar explosion of faith over a similar length of time. The top map on the next page was published in the magazine China’s Millions in 1903. It shows a map of China at the time, divided into squares. Each black square represents ‘souls living in spiritual darkness, while the small white square represents the total number of Church members, all the scholars in Mission Schools and all other adherents of the Christian Church in China.’1033 Christians at the time constituted a fraction of 1 per cent of the country’s population. The bottom map on the next page, which we have created, represents the approximate number of Christians in China today compared with the total population. Today, Christians make up more than 7 per cent of the population. As the picture shows, there is much to thank God for, but also much more to be done. All discussion of how many Christians there are in China should be tempered by the realization that more than 90 per cent of its present population face a Christless eternity. Hundreds of millions of individuals have yet to hear the gospel. House-church leaders in China often tell me

how ashamed and burdened they feel that so many of their countrymen and women have yet to know Jesus Christ. This awareness motivates them to do whatever it takes to preach the gospel to every ethnic group and in every city, town and village— to every individual—in China and to see Christ exalted throughout the land. May we, too, have such a heart for the lost whenever we are tempted to bicker about how many believers there are in China! God has done, and continues to do, an incredible thing in that country. May we humbly give thanks to him, and recognize that we are living in the days prophesied by the prophet Habakkuk: Look at the nations and watch— and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. (Habakkuk 1:5)

985 ‘How Many Catholics Are There in China?’, Sunday Examiner, September 1997 986 The lowest figure generally comes from sources associated with the government-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement or China Christian Council, neither of which acknowledge the unregistered house churches. The unsubstantiated figure of 230 million was published in August 2005 by the Chinese news website http://www.boxun.com. 987 Personal interview with Peter Xu, October 2003 988 National Review, 23 October 1995 989 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January 1994 990 ‘How to Count the Number of Christians in China: Questions and Answers’, Amity News Service, September 1997 991 In 32,000 registered churches and an additional 16,000 ‘preaching points’. See ‘How Many Sheep Are There in the Chinese Flock?’, Amity News Service, November–December 2004. 992 Tony Lambert, ‘Counting Christians in China: A Cautionary Report’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol.27, no.1 (January 2003), p7 993 China Insight, August–September 2005 994 Tony Lambert, ‘China—Statistics’, China Insight, November–December 2000 995 Lambert, ‘Counting Christians in China’, p7 996 Amity News Service, March 1996 997 Amity News Service, November–December 2004

998 Many contemporary mission-researchers divide Christians into ‘Catholics’ and ‘Independents’, but I have decided to use the more traditional breakdown into ‘Catholics’ and ‘Protestants’ as this is still the most appropriate for the current situation in China. I have then analysed these two major groupings further by providing statistics for Catholic Patriotic Association and underground Catholics and for Three-Self Church and house-church Protestants. 999 ‘How Many Catholics Are There in China?’, September 1997 1000 Tripod, Winter 2005 1001 ‘How Many Catholics Are There in China?’ 1002 Anthony Lam, ‘How Many Chinese Christians Are There?’, Tripod, September–October 1992 1003 J. Campbell Gibson, Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1901), p233 1004 North China Herald, 1 June 1888, p513 1005 Gibson, Mission Problems, p233 1006 This is in fact the subtitle of Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China. 1007 Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China, p38 1008 Ibid., p461 1009 Ibid., p464 1010 See China News and Church Report, 25 September 1992. 1011 ‘Report of Mainland Survey of Religion’, China Study Journal, vol.17, no.3 (December 1992), p40 1012 ‘How to Count the Number of Christians’ (September 1997) 1013 Ibid. 1014 Johnstone and Mandryk, Operation World, p160 1015 Ibid. 1016 Lambert, ‘Counting Christians in China’, pp6–7 1017 Global Chinese Ministries, September 2005 1018 Lambert, ‘Counting Christians in China’, p6 1019 Lambert, ‘China—Statistics’ 1020 Lambert, China’s Christian Millions (2006), p19 1021 OMF, ‘Survey of the Chinese Church: Part II’, April 2003 1022 Lambert, China’s Christian Millions (2006), p237 1023 China—Persecution of Protestant Christians in the Approach to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, China Aid Association report, June 2008, p3. The name of this official is not Yie Xiaowen, as was commonly reported in English accounts at the time. Ye is a native of Guizhou Province, born in 1950. He excelled as an academic in sociology and philosophy, before going to work for the Bureau of Religious Affairs, where he rose through the ranks to become director. 1024 Aikman, ‘A Church Grows in China’ 1025 Mark Ellis, ‘China Survey Reveals Fewer Christians than Some Evangelicals Want to Believe’, Assist News Service, 1 October 2007 1026 Bürklin, Jesus Never Left China, p126 1027 Ibid., p77 1028 Ibid., p114 1029 Personal interview with Zhang, August 2002 1030 Bürklin, Jesus Never Left China, p155 1031 Ellis, ‘China Survey Reveals Fewer Christians’ 1032 World Report, April 2007. The 40-million milestone was celebrated by the Amity Press on 17 January 2006 (Amity News Service, March–April 2006). 1033 ‘Diagrammatic Map of China’, China’s Millions, September 1903

Summary Figures Maps and Tables

CHINA 中国

Province

POPULATION

Cities & Counties

Census 2000

Current Year 2009

Anhui

78

58,999,948

64,356,671

Beijing

15

13,569,194

14,801,168

Chongqing

31

30,512,763

33,283,078

Fujian

69

34,154,222

37,255,152

Gansu

81

25,124,282

27,405,366

Guangdong

98

85,225,007

92,962,756

Guangxi

90

43,854,538

47,836,179

Guizhou

82

35,247,695

38,447,904

Hainan Island

19

7,558,518

8,244,771

149

66,684,419

72,738,831

78

35,966,050

39,231,480

Hebei Heilongjiang

127

91,236,854

99,520,430

1

6,773,200

7,388,152

Hubei

78

59,508,870

64,911,799

Hunan

101

63,274,173

69,018,962

Inner Mongolia

89

23,323,347

25,440,920

Jiangsu

73

70,188,617

76,561,182

Jiangxi

91

40,397,598

44,065,377

Jilin

49

26,702,191

29,126,536

Liaoning

58

41,824,412

45,621,734

Macau

1

435,235

474,751

Ningxia

20

5,486,393

5,984,514

Qinghai

40

4,822,963

5,260,849

Shaanxi

96

35,365,072

38,575,938

Shandong

110

89,971,789

98,140,508

Shanghai

11

16,407,734

17,897,425

Shanxi

107

32,471,242

35,419,371

Sichuan

158

82,348,296

89,824,862

Tianjin

13

9,848,731

10,742,917

Tibet

73

2,616,329

2,853,871

Xinjiang

87

18,459,511

20,135,487

Yunnan

124

42,360,089

46,206,046

Zhejiang

73

45,454,851

49,581,788

2370

1,246,174,133

1,359,316,775

Henan Hong Kong

Totals

CHINA 中国 Province Anhui

Protestants TSPM

House church TOTAL PROTESTANTS

2,818,298

5,699,490

8,517,788

94,573

414,433

509,006

400,532

1,487,134

1,887,666

Fujian

1,694,003

1,449,225

3,143,228

Gansu

348,810

512,644

861,454

Guangdong

739,753

1,925,739

2,665,492

Guangxi

182,871

232,024

414,895

Guizhou

631,338

1,094,298

1,725,636

Hainan Island

103,950

377,340

481,290

Hebei

855,564

884,653

1,740,217

1,094,791

2,601,495

3,696,286

Beijing Chongqing

Heilongjiang

5,226,714

8,856,228

14,082,942

n/a

n/a

484,663

Hubei

658,319

1,658,965

2,317,284

Hunan

720,514

1,386,269

2,106,783

Inner Mongolia

255,103

697,197

952,300

3,027,123

2,585,163

5,612,286

Jiangxi

669,029

1,137,350

1,806,379

Jilin

404,423

808,846

1,213,269

Liaoning

559,765

951,601

1,511,366

n/a

n/a

8,640

Ningxia

70,684

106,026

176,710

Qinghai

44,928

83,565

128,493

Shaanxi

858,795

1,717,589

2,576,384

1,364,012

2,281,581

3,645,593

Shanghai

436,028

910,979

1,347,007

Shanxi

498,733

1,177,011

1,675,744

Sichuan

378,886

822,536

1,201,422

61,830

86,898

148,728

0

1,229

1,229

Xinjiang

142,865

410,114

552,979

Yunnan

1,246,201

1,590,745

2,836,946

Zhejiang

2,739,454

4,118,642

6,858,096

Totals

28,327,889

48,067,009

76,888,201

Henan Hong Kong

Jiangsu

Macau

Shandong

Tianjin Tibet

CHINA 中国 Province

Catholics CPA

House church TOTAL CATHOLICS

Anhui

254,547

413,813

668,360

Beijing

92,113

67,197

159,310

Chongqing

249,865

455,313

705,178

Fujian

902,579

994,713

1,897,292

Gansu

52,170

104,340

156,510

259,830

413,315

673,145

Guangxi

66,507

133,014

199,521

Guizhou

99,188

198,376

297,564

3,628

7,255

10,883

998,403

2,030,936

3,029,339

43,547

87,094

130,641

Guangdong

Hainan Island Hebei Heilongjiang

199,701

399,401

599,102

n/a

n/a

400,438

Hubei

96,935

193,935

290,870

Hunan

77,470

154,939

232,409

Inner Mongolia 254,632

509,264

763,896

Jiangsu

413,515

620,273

1,033,788

Jiangxi

163,042

326,084

489,126

91,988

183,975

275,963

140,303

280,606

420,909

n/a

n/a

32,188

Ningxia

17,671

35,342

53,013

Qinghai

6,173

12,345

18,518

Shaanxi

271,229

558,100

829,329

Shandong

284,951

569,903

854,854

Shanghai

242,684

417,906

660,590

Shanxi

239,004

478,008

717,012

Sichuan

334,935

669,870

1,004,805

Tianjin

112,801

135,361

248,162

7,182

702

7,884

Xinjiang

10,808

21,616

32,424

Yunnan

226,828

453,656

680,484

Zhejiang

772,952

1,562,843

2,335,795

6,987,181

12,489,495

19,909,302

Henan Hong Kong

Jilin Liaoning Macau

Tibet

Totals

CHINA 中国 Province Anhui Beijing Chongqing

All Christians TOTAL

% of current Population

9,186,148

14.27%

668,316

4.52%

2,592,844

7.79% 13.53%

Fujian Gansu

1,017,964

3.71%

Guangdong

3,338,637

3.59%

Guangxi

614,416

1.28%

Guizhou

2,023,200

5.26%

492,173

5.97%

Hebei

4,769,556

6.56%

Heilongjiang

3,826,927

9.75%

Hainan Island

Henan

14,682,044

14.75%

885,101

11.98%

Hubei

2,608,154

4.02%

Hunan

2,339,192

3.39%

Inner Mongolia

1,716,196

6.75%

Jiangsu

6,646,074

8.68%

Jiangxi

2,295,505

5.21%

Jilin

1,489,232

5.11%

Liaoning

1,932,275

4.24%

Macau

40,829

8.60%

Ningxia

229,723

3.84%

Qinghai

147,011

2.79%

Shaanxi

3,405,713

8.83%

Shandong

4,500,447

4.59%

Shanghai

2,007,597

11.22%

Shanxi

2,392,756

6.76%

Sichuan

2,206,227

2.46%

396,890

3.69%

9,113

0.32%

Xinjiang

585,403

2.91%

Yunnan

3,517,430

7.61%

Zhejiang

9,193,891

18.54%

Totals

96,797,503

7.12%

Hong Kong

Tianjin Tibet

HENAN 河南

POPULATION

#

County or City

Prefecture

Census 2000

1

Anyang City

Anyang

768,992

838,810

2

Anyang County

Anyang

1,116,162

1,217,501

3

Baofeng

Pingdingshan

473,287

516,258

4

Bo’ai

Jiaozuo

419,228

457,291

5

Changge City

Xuchang

646,306

704,985

6

Changyuan

Xinxiang

765,740

835,263

7

Dancheng

Zhoukou

1,151,994

1,256,586

8

Dengfeng City

Zhengzhou

609,085

664,385

9

Dengzhou City

Nanyang

1,290,656

1,407,837

10

Fangcheng

Nanyang

886,230

966,693

11

Fan Xian

Puyang

479,818

523,382

12

Fengqiu

Xinxiang

719,510

784,836

13

Fugou

Zhoukou

666,779

727,317

14

Gongyi City

Zhengzhou

777,202

847,766

Current Year 2009

HENAN 河南

POPULATION

#

County or City

Prefecture

Census 2000

15

Guangshan

Xinyang

649,578

708,554

16

Gushi

Xinyang

1,188,599

1,296,514

17

Hebi City

Hebi

495,336

540,309

18

Huaibin

Xinyang

569,829

621,565

19

Huaiyang

Zhoukou

1,229,357

1,340,973

20

Huangchuan

Xinyang

679,278

740,951

21

Hua Xian

Anyang

1,182,162

1,289,493

22

Huixian City

Xinxiang

776,326

846,810

23

Huojia

Xinxiang

381,227

415,839

24

Jiaozuo City

Jiaozuo

747,299

815,148

25

Jia Xian

Pingdingshan

533,168

581,575

26

Jiyuan City

Jiyuan

626,478

683,357

27

Kaifeng City

Kaifeng

796,171

868,457

28

Kaifeng County

Kaifeng

705,080

769,096

29

Lankao

Kaifeng

718,177

783,382

30

Lingbao City

Sanmenxia

722,890

788,523

31

Linying

Luohe

632,427

689,846

32

Linzhou City

Anyang

982,254

1,071,435

33

Luanchuan

Luoyang

312,838

341,241

34

Luohe City

Luohe

304,105

331,715

35

Luoning

Luoyang

422,972

461,374

36

Luoshan

Xinyang

574,100

626,224

37

Luoyang City

Luoyang

1,491,680

1,627,113

38

Lushan

Pingdingshan

822,541

897,221

39

Lushi

Sanmenxia

356,439

388,801

40

Luyi

Zhoukou

1,068,984

1,166,039

41

Mengjin

Luoyang

418,065

456,022

42

Mengzhou City

Jiaozuo

354,302

386,470

43

Mianchi

Sanmenxia

328,947

358,813

44

Minquan

Shangqiu

805,063

878,156

45

Miyang

Zhumadian

813,273

887,112

46

Nanle

Puyang

468,360

510,883

47

Nanyang City

Nanyang

1,584,715

1,728,594

48

Nanzhao

Nanyang

561,784

612,789

49

Neihuang

Anyang

678,730

740,353

Current Year 2009

HENAN 河南

POPULATION

#

County or City

Prefecture

Census 2000

50

Neixiang

Nanyang

583,233

636,186

51

Ningling

Shangqiu

562,794

613,891

52

Pingdingshan City Pingdingshan

900,903

982,698

53

Pingyu

Zhumadian

842,250

918,720

54

Puyang City

Puyang

448,290

488,991

55

Puyang County

Puyang

1,081,832

1,180,054

56

Qingfeng

Puyang

654,160

713,552

57

Qinyang City

Jiaozuo

446,404

486,934

58

Qi Xian

Hebi

249,986

272,683

59

Qi Xian

Kaifeng

1,002,592

1,093,619

60

Queshan

Zhumadian

553,157

603,379

61

Ru’nan

Zhumadian

784,005

855,186

62

Ruyang

Luoyang

397,833

433,953

63

Ruzhou City

Pingdingshan

923,245

1,007,068

64

Sanmenxia City

Sanmenxia

288,746

314,962

65

Shangcai

Zhumadian

1,198,534

1,307,351

66

Shangcheng

Xinyang

570,181

621,949

67

Shangqiu City

Shangqiu

1,428,983

1,558,723

68

Shangshui

Zhoukou

1,093,686

1,192,984

69

Shan Xian

Sanmenxia

343,863

375,083

70

Shenqiu

Zhoukou

1,079,278

1,177,268

71

Sheqi

Nanyang

580,280

632,965

72

Song Xian

Luoyang

527,768

575,685

73

Suiping

Zhumadian

547,541

597,253

74

Sui Xian

Shangqiu

757,080

825,817

75

Taikang

Zhoukou

1,254,680

1,368,595

76

Taiqian

Puyang

325,872

355,459

77

Tanghe

Nanyang

1,151,733

1,256,301

78

Tangyin

Anyang

432,806

472,101

79

Tongbai

Nanyang

403,359

439,981

80

Tongxu

Kaifeng

552,363

602,513

81

Weihui City

Xinxiang

464,371

506,532

82

Weishi

Kaifeng

812,150

885,887

83

Wen Xian

Jiaozuo

404,621

441,357

84

Wugang City

Pingdingshan

313,089

341,515

Current Year 2009

HENAN 河南

POPULATION

#

County or City

Prefecture

Census 2000

85

Wuyang

Luohe

498,970

544,272

86

Wuzhi

Jiaozuo

642,544

700,882

87

Xiangcheng

Xuchang

679,863

741,589

88

Xiangcheng

Zhoukou

1,052,468

1,148,024

89

Xiayi

Shangqiu

1,033,519

1,127,354

90

Xichuan

Nanyang

641,327

699,554

91

Xihua

Zhoukou

820,319

894,797

92

Xin’an

Luoyang

481,740

525,478

93

Xincai

Zhumadian

918,237

1,001,606

94

Xingyang City

Zhengzhou

619,840

676,117

95

Xinmi City

Zhengzhou

779,014

849,742

96

Xin Xian

Xinyang

269,773

294,266

97

Xinxiang City

Xinxiang

775,941

846,390

98

Xinxiang County

Xinxiang

424,138

462,646

99

Xinyang City

Xinyang

1,255,750

1,369,762

Current Year 2009

100 Xinye

Nanyang

629,106

686,224

101 Xinzheng City

Zhengzhou

609,173

664,481

102 Xiping

Zhumadian

767,214

836,871

103 Xiuwu

Jiaozuo

274,418

299,333

104 Xixia

Nanyang

412,988

450,484

105 Xi Xian

Xinyang

770,280

840,215

106 Xuchang City

Xuchang

373,387

407,288

107 Xuchang County

Xuchang

737,384

804,333

108 Xun Xian

Hebi

656,550

716,159

109 Yancheng

Luohe

826,902

901,978

110 Yanjin

Xinxiang

457,771

499,333

111 Yanling

Xuchang

564,477

615,727

112 Yanshi City

Luoyang

816,026

890,115

113 Ye Xian

Pingdingshan

838,691

914,837

114 Yichuan

Luoyang

708,387

772,703

115 Yima City

Sanmenxia

136,543

148,940

116 Yiyang

Luoyang

650,356

709,403

117 Yongcheng City

Shangqiu

1,264,607

1,379,423

118 Yuanyang

Xinxiang

642,409

700,735

119 Yucheng

Shangqiu

1,025,261

1,118,346

HENAN 河南

POPULATION

Prefecture

Census 2000

120 Yuzhou City

Xuchang

1,122,669

1,224,598

121 Zhecheng

Shangqiu

876,537

956,120

122 Zhengyang

Zhumadian

690,505

753,197

123 Zhengzhou City

Zhengzhou

2,589,387

2,824,483

124 Zhenping

Nanyang

852,360

929,747

125 Zhongmou

Zhengzhou

673,058

734,166

126 Zhoukou City

Zhoukou

323,738

353,131

127 Zhumadian City

Zhumadian

338,036

368,727

91,236,854

99,520,430

#

County or City

Totals

HENAN 河南

Current Year 2009

Protestants

#

County or City

TSPM

House church TOTAL PROTESTANTS

1

Anyang City

21,306

35,858

57,163

2

Anyang County

60,875

102,453

163,328

3

Baofeng

25,813

43,443

69,256

4

Bo’ai

23,322

39,251

62,572

5

Changge City

30,103

50,663

80,766

6

Changyuan

34,246

57,636

91,881

7

Dancheng

71,625

55,164

126,790

8

Dengfeng City

38,601

64,965

103,566

9

Dengzhou City

52,231

87,904

140,135

10 Fangcheng

99,569

376,333

475,903

11 Fan Xian

29,309

49,328

78,637

12 Fengqiu

32,178

54,156

86,334

13 Fugou

41,457

69,772

111,229

14 Gongyi City

35,352

59,497

94,849

15 Guangshan

46,198

77,751

123,949

16 Gushi

56,917

95,791

152,708

17 Hebi City

15,831

26,644

42,475

18 Huaibin

18,025

30,337

48,362

19 Huaiyang

76,435

128,641

205,076

20 Huangchuan

48,310

81,306

129,616

21 Hua Xian

64,475

108,511

172,985

22 Huixian City

35,566

59,858

95,424

23 Huojia

17,049

28,694

45,744

HENAN 河南 #

County or City

Protestants TSPM

House church TOTAL PROTESTANTS

24 Jiaozuo City

21,846

36,767

58,613

25 Jia Xian

29,079

48,940

78,018

26 Jiyuan City

26,788

45,084

71,871

27 Kaifeng City

21,538

36,248

57,786

28 Kaifeng County

30,764

74,602

105,366

29 Lankao

31,335

52,737

84,073

30 Lingbao City

32,093

44,078

76,171

31 Linying

26,214

44,118

70,333

32 Linzhou City

44,786

75,375

120,161

33 Luanchuan

19,553

32,908

52,461

34 Luohe City

7,663

12,896

20,559

35 Luoning

26,437

44,493

70,930

36 Luoshan

40,830

68,717

109,546

37 Luoyang City

52,556

88,515

141,071

38 Lushan

44,861

127,226

172,087

39 Lushi

15,047

25,323

40,370

40 Luyi

66,464

38,129

104,594

41 Mengjin

26,130

43,977

70,107

42 Mengzhou City

16,425

27,643

44,068

43 Mianchi

13,886

61,967

75,853

44 Minquan

50,845

85,573

136,418

45 Miyang

73,808

124,218

198,026

46 Nanle

28,609

48,150

76,759

146,585

246,702

393,287

48 Nanzhao

63,117

106,226

169,344

49 Neihuang

37,018

62,301

99,318

50 Neixiang

65,527

110,282

175,809

51 Ningling

35,544

59,821

95,365

52 Pingdingshan City

25,059

42,174

67,233

53 Pingyu

11,117

18,709

29,826

54 Puyang City

15,501

26,088

41,589

55 Puyang County

66,083

22,067

88,150

56 Qingfeng

39,959

67,251

107,210

57 Qinyang City

20,305

34,174

54,479

58 Qi Xian

11,998

20,193

32,191

47 Nanyang City

HENAN 河南 #

County or City

Protestants TSPM

House church TOTAL PROTESTANTS

59 Qi Xian

43,745

73,622

117,367

60 Queshan

50,201

84,489

134,690

61 Ru’nan

71,152

119,748

190,899

62 Ruyang

24,866

41,849

66,714

63 Ruzhou City

44,110

74,236

118,346

7,465

12,563

20,028

108,772

183,063

291,834

66 Shangcheng

40,551

68,247

108,799

67 Shangqiu City

51,750

87,095

138,844

68 Shangshui

68,000

114,444

182,444

69 Shan Xian

14,516

24,430

38,946

70 Shenqiu

67,104

112,936

180,041

64 Sanmenxia City 65 Shangcai

71

Sheqi

65,195

109,724

174,919

72

Song Xian

32,987

55,517

88,503

73

Suiping

49,691

83,631

133,322

74

Sui Xian

47,815

80,472

128,287

75

Taikang

78,010

131,291

209,301

76

Taiqian

19,906

33,501

53,407

77

Tanghe

129,399

247,868

377,267

78

Tangyin

23,605

39,727

63,332

79

Tongbai

45,318

76,270

121,588

80

Tongxu

24,101

40,561

64,662

81

Weihui City

20,920

35,208

56,128

82

Weishi

35,435

59,638

95,073

83

Wen Xian

22,509

37,883

60,392

84

Wugang City

13,080

22,014

35,094

85

Wuyang

18,832

31,694

50,526

86

Wuzhi

35,745

60,159

95,904

87

Xiangcheng

53,765

90,487

144,252

88

Xiangcheng

65,437

110,131

175,568

89

Xiayi

65,274

109,856

175,130

90

Xichuan

72,054

121,267

193,321

91

Xihua

51,003

85,839

136,842

92

Xin’an

30,110

50,675

80,785

93

Xincai

83,334

140,250

223,584

94

Xingyang City

29,073

48,930

78,003

95

Xinmi City

34,330

57,777

92,106

96

Xin Xian

19,186

32,290

51,476

97

Xinxiang City

19,721

33,190

52,911

98

Xinxiang County

18,968

31,924

50,892

99

Xinyang City

55,475

93,365

148,840

100 Xinye

70,681

118,956

189,637

101 Xinzheng City

26,712

44,957

71,669

102 Xiping

69,628

117,183

186,811

103 Xiuwu

15,266

25,693

40,959

104 Xixia

46,400

78,091

124,491

105 Xi Xian

54,782

108,556

163,338

9,775

16,451

26,226

31,369

52,794

84,163

106 Xuchang City 107 Xuchang County

108 Xun Xian

31,511

53,033

84,544

109 Yancheng

34,275

57,685

91,960

110 Yanjin

20,473

34,455

54,928

111 Yanling

13,238

22,280

35,518

112 Yanshi City

38,364

64,567

102,930

113 Ye Xian

45,742

60,654

106,396

114 Yichuan

44,276

23,645

67,921

4,185

7,044

11,229

116 Yiyang

17,664

29,729

47,393

117 Yongcheng City

62,764

105,631

168,395

118 Yuanyang

28,730

48,353

77,083

119 Yucheng

11,072

18,634

29,705

120 Yuzhou City

54,127

91,096

145,223

121 Zhecheng

55,359

93,170

148,529

122 Zhengyang

62,666

105,467

168,133

123 Zhengzhou City

99,422

167,327

266,749

124 Zhenping

95,764

161,171

256,935

125 Zhongmou

36,855

62,027

98,882

126 Zhoukou City

11,300

19,018

30,318

127 Zhumadian City

21,644

33,075

54,719

5,226,714

8,856,228

14,082,942

115 Yima City

Totals

HENAN 河南

Catholics

#

County or City

CPA

House church TOTAL CATHOLICS

1

Anyang City

1,468

2,936

4,404

2

Anyang County

2,131

4,261

6,392

3

Baofeng

903

1,807

2,710

4

Bo’ai

800

1,601

2,401

5

Changge City

1,234

2,467

3,701

6

Changyuan

1,462

2,923

4,385

7

Dancheng

2,199

4,398

6,597

8

Dengfeng City

1,163

2,325

3,488

9

Dengzhou City

4,927

9,855

14,782

10

Fangcheng

3,383

6,767

10,150

11

Fan Xian

916

1,832

2,748

12

Fengqiu

1,373

2,747

4,120

13

Fugou

1,273

2,546

3,818

HENAN 河南

Catholics

#

County or City

CPA

House church TOTAL CATHOLICS

14

Gongyi City

1,484

2,967

4,451

15

Guangshan

1,240

2,480

3,720

16

Gushi

2,269

4,538

6,807

17

Hebi City

946

1,891

2,837

18

Huaibin

1,088

2,175

3,263

19

Huaiyang

2,347

4,693

7,040

20

Huangchuan

1,297

2,593

3,890

21

Hua Xian

2,257

4,513

6,770

22

Huixian City

1,482

2,964

4,446

23

Huojia

728

1,455

2,183

24

Jiaozuo City

1,427

2,853

4,280

25

Jia Xian

1,018

2,036

3,053

26

Jiyuan City

1,196

2,392

3,588

27

Kaifeng City

1,520

3,040

4,559

28

Kaifeng County

1,346

2,692

4,038

29

Lankao

1,371

2,742

4,113

30

Lingbao City

1,380

2,760

4,140

31

Linying

1,207

2,414

3,622

32

Linzhou City

1,875

3,750

5,625

33

Luanchuan

597

1,194

1,792

34

Luohe City

581

1,161

1,742

35

Luoning

807

1,615

2,422

36

Luoshan

1,096

2,192

3,288

37

Luoyang City

2,847

5,695

8,542

38

Lushan

1,570

3,140

4,710

39

Lushi

680

1,361

2,041

40

Luyi

6,705

13,409

20,114

41

Mengjin

798

1,596

2,394

42

Mengzhou City

676

1,353

2,029

43

Mianchi

628

1,256

1,884

44

Minquan

1,537

3,074

4,610

45

Miyang

1,552

3,105

4,657

46

Nanle

894

1,788

2,682

47

Nanyang City

8,643

17,286

25,929

48

Nanzhao

2,145

4,290

6,434

HENAN 河南

Catholics

#

County or City

CPA

House church TOTAL CATHOLICS

49

Neihuang

1,296

2,591

3,887

50

Neixiang

2,227

4,453

6,680

51

Ningling

1,074

2,149

3,223

52

Pingdingshan City

1,720

3,439

5,159

53

Pingyu

1,608

3,216

4,823

54

Puyang City

856

1,711

2,567

55

Puyang County

2,065

4,130

6,195

56

Qingfeng

1,249

2,497

3,746

57

Qinyang City

852

1,704

2,556

58

Qi Xian

477

954

1,432

59

Qi Xian

1,914

3,828

5,742

60

Queshan

1,056

2,112

3,168

61

Ru’nan

1,497

2,993

4,490

62

Ruyang

759

1,519

2,278

63

Ruzhou City

1,762

3,525

5,287

64

Sanmenxia City

551

1,102

1,654

65

Shangcai

2,288

4,576

6,864

66

Shangcheng

1,088

2,177

3,265

67

Shangqiu City

2,728

5,456

8,183

68

Shangshui

2,088

4,175

6,263

69

Shan Xian

656

1,313

1,969

70

Shenqiu

2,060

4,120

6,181

71

Sheqi

2,215

4,431

6,646

72

Song Xian

1,007

2,015

3,022

73

Suiping

1,045

2,090

3,136

74

Sui Xian

1,445

2,890

4,336

75

Taikang

2,395

4,790

7,185

76

Taiqian

622

1,244

1,866

77

Tanghe

4,397

8,794

13,191

78

Tangyin

826

1,652

2,479

79

Tongbai

1,540

3,080

4,620

80

Tongxu

1,054

2,109

3,163

81

Weihui City

886

1,773

2,659

82

Weishi

1,550

3,101

4,651

83

Wen Xian

772

1,545

2,317

HENAN 河南

Catholics

#

County or City

84

Wugang City

598

1,195

1,793

85

Wuyang

952

1,905

2,857

86

Wuzhi

1,227

2,453

3,680

87

Xiangcheng

1,298

2,596

3,893

88

Xiangcheng

2,009

4,018

6,027

89

Xiayi

1,973

3,946

5,919

90

Xichuan

2,448

4,897

7,345

91

Xihua

1,566

3,132

4,698

92

Xin’an

920

1,839

2,759

93

Xincai

1,753

3,506

5,258

94

Xingyang City

1,183

2,366

3,550

95

Xinmi City

1,487

2,974

4,461

96

Xin Xian

515

1,030

1,545

97

Xinxiang City

1,481

2,962

4,444

98

Xinxiang County

810

1,619

2,429

99

Xinyang City

2,397

4,794

7,191

100 Xinye

2,402

4,804

7,205

101 Xinzheng City

1,163

2,326

3,489

102 Xiping

1,465

2,929

4,394

103 Xiuwu

524

1,048

1,571

104 Xixia

1,577

3,153

4,730

105 Xi Xian

1,470

2,941

4,411

713

1,426

2,138

107 Xuchang County

1,408

2,815

4,223

108 Xun Xian

1,253

2,507

3,760

109 Yancheng

1,578

3,157

4,735

874

1,748

2,621

111 Yanling

1,078

2,155

3,233

112 Yanshi City

1,558

3,115

4,673

113 Ye Xian

1,601

3,202

4,803

114 Yichuan

1,352

2,704

4,057

261

521

782

116 Yiyang

1,241

2,483

3,724

117 Yongcheng City

2,414

4,828

7,242

118 Yuanyang

1,226

2,453

3,679

106 Xuchang City

110 Yanjin

115 Yima City

CPA

House church TOTAL CATHOLICS

HENAN 河南 #

County or City

Catholics CPA

House church TOTAL CATHOLICS

119 Yucheng

1,957

3,914

5,871

120 Yuzhou City

2,143

4,286

6,429

121 Zhecheng

1,673

3,346

5,020

122 Zhengyang

1,318

2,636

3,954

123 Zhengzhou City

4,943

9,886

14,829

124 Zhenping

3,254

6,508

9,762

125 Zhongmou

1,285

2,570

3,854

126 Zhoukou City

618

1,236

1,854

127 Zhumadian City

645

1,291

1,936

199,701

399,401

599,102

Totals

HENAN 河南 #

County or City

1

Anyang City

2

Anyang County

3

All Christians TOTAL

Population

61,567

7.34%

169,720

13.94%

Baofeng

71,966

13.94%

4

Bo’ai

64,973

14.21%

5

Changge City

84,467

11.98%

6

Changyuan

96,267

11.53%

7

Dancheng

133,387

10.62%

8

Dengfeng City

107,054

16.11%

9

Dengzhou City

154,917

11.00%

10

Fangcheng

486,053

50.28%

11

Fan Xian

81,385

15.55%

12

Fengqiu

90,455

11.53%

13

Fugou

115,048

15.82%

14

Gongyi City

99,300

11.71%

15

Guangshan

127,668

18.02%

16

Gushi

159,515

12.30%

17

Hebi City

45,311

8.39%

18

Huaibin

51,625

8.31%

19

Huaiyang

212,116

15.82%

20

Huangchuan

133,506

18.02%

21

Hua Xian

179,755

13.94%

22

Huixian City

99,869

11.79%

HENAN 河南

All Christians

#

County or City

TOTAL

Population

23

Huojia

47,927

11.53%

24

Jiaozuo City

62,892

7.72%

25

Jia Xian

81,072

13.94%

26

Jiyuan City

75,459

11.04%

27

Kaifeng City

62,345

7.18%

28

Kaifeng County

109,404

14.23%

29

Lankao

88,185

11.26%

30

Lingbao City

80,311

10.19%

31

Linying

73,954

10.72%

32

Linzhou City

125,786

11.74%

33

Luanchuan

54,253

15.90%

34

Luohe City

22,300

6.72%

35

Luoning

73,352

15.90%

36

Luoshan

112,834

18.02%

37

Luoyang City

149,613

9.20%

38

Lushan

176,797

19.71%

39

Lushi

42,411

10.91%

40

Luyi

124,708

10.70%

41

Mengjin

72,501

15.90%

42

Mengzhou City

46,097

11.93%

43

Mianchi

77,737

21.67%

44

Minquan

141,028

16.06%

45

Miyang

202,683

22.85%

46

Nanle

79,441

15.55%

47

Nanyang City

419,216

24.25%

48

Nanzhao

175,778

28.68%

49

Neihuang

103,205

13.94%

50

Neixiang

182,489

28.68%

51

Ningling

98,588

16.06%

52

Pingdingshan City

72,392

7.37%

53

Pingyu

34,649

3.77%

54

Puyang City

44,156

9.03%

55

Puyang County

94,345

8.00%

56

Qingfeng

110,956

15.55%

57

Qinyang City

57,035

11.71%

HENAN 河南

All Christians

#

County or City

TOTAL

Population

58

Qi Xian

33,622

12.33%

59

Qi Xian

123,109

11.26%

60

Queshan

137,857

22.85%

61

Ru’nan

195,389

22.85%

62

Ruyang

68,992

15.90%

63

Ruzhou City

123,633

12.28%

64

Sanmenxia City

21,681

6.88%

65

Shangcai

298,698

22.85%

66

Shangcheng

112,064

18.02%

67

Shangqiu City

147,028

9.43%

68

Shangshui

188,707

15.82%

69

Shan Xian

40,915

10.91%

70

Shenqiu

186,221

15.82%

71

Sheqi

181,565

28.68%

72

Song Xian

91,526

15.90%

73

Suiping

136,458

22.85%

74

Sui Xian

132,623

16.06%

75

Taikang

216,486

15.82%

76

Taiqian

55,273

15.55%

77

Tanghe

390,458

31.08%

78

Tangyin

65,811

13.94%

79

Tongbai

126,208

28.68%

80

Tongxu

67,825

11.26%

81

Weihui City

58,787

11.61%

82

Weishi

99,724

11.26%

83

Wen Xian

62,709

14.21%

84

Wugang City

36,887

10.80%

85

Wuyang

53,383

9.81%

86

Wuzhi

99,583

14.21%

87

Xiangcheng

148,145

19.98%

88

Xiangcheng

181,596

15.82%

89

Xiayi

181,048

16.06%

90

Xichuan

200,666

28.68%

91

Xihua

141,540

15.82%

92

Xin’an

83,544

15.90%

HENAN 河南 #

County or City

93

Xincai

94

All Christians TOTAL

Population

228,842

22.85%

Xingyang City

81,552

12.06%

95

Xinmi City

96,567

11.36%

96

Xin Xian

53,021

18.02%

97

Xinxiang City

57,355

6.78%

98

Xinxiang County

53,321

11.53%

99

Xinyang City

156,032

11.39%

196,843

28.68%

75,157

11.31%

102 Xiping

191,205

22.85%

103 Xiuwu

42,530

14.21%

104 Xixia

129,221

28.68%

105 Xi Xian

167,749

19.97%

106 Xuchang City

28,364

6.96%

107 Xuchang County

88,386

10.99%

108 Xun Xian

88,304

12.33%

109 Yancheng

96,696

10.72%

110 Yanjin

57,550

11.53%

111 Yanling

38,750

6.29%

112 Yanshi City

107,604

12.09%

113 Ye Xian

111,198

12.16%

114 Yichuan

71,977

9.32%

115 Yima City

12,011

8.06%

116 Yiyang

51,117

7.21%

175,637

12.73%

118 Yuanyang

80,762

11.53%

119 Yucheng

35,577

3.18%

120 Yuzhou City

151,653

12.38%

121 Zhecheng

153,549

16.06%

122 Zhengyang

172,087

22.85%

123 Zhengzhou City

281,577

9.97%

124 Zhenping

266,697

28.68%

125 Zhongmou

102,737

13.99%

126 Zhoukou City

32,172

9.11%

127 Zhumadian City

56,655

15.37%

100 Xinye 101 Xinzheng City

117 Yongcheng City

HENAN 河南 #

County or City Totals

All Christians TOTAL 14,682,044

Population 14.75%

*Sources, as provided in the notes, can be found on page 343.

Notes to the Tables Page 337 1 Estimate based on Johnstone and Mandryk, Operation World (2001), p181 2. Ibid., p184. 3. Estimate, based on statistics published on www.catholic-hierarchy.org as follows: 38,500 (1950); 241,813 (1970); 266,843 (1980); 258,209 (1990); 347,086 (1999), 371,327 (2001) 4. Estimate, from statistics published on www.catholic-hierarchy.org as follows: 23,000 (1950); 26,000 (1970); 39,010 (1978); 21,539 (1990); 28,015 (1999); 29,139 (2000); 29,850 (2001)

Page 339 1. 20,400 in 68 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 2. 28,800 in 96 churches: Ibid. 3. 30,000: Bridge (September–October 1986). A TSPM prayer calender in 2002 listed 27,400 TSPM believers in 91 churches in the city. 4. 50,000 in 226 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002). According to Global Chinese Ministries (April 2003), Dengzhou City (also known as Dengxian) had 2,000 believers in 1949; that number grew to 30,000 in 1984 and 50,000 in 1999. 5. 33,800 in 113 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 6. 50,000 believers, with just one pastor: Amity News Service (March 1996) 7. 15,100 in 50 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 8. 15,600, meeting in 41 churches and meeting points according to an official source in 1995: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions (1999), p219 9. 34,000 in 113 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 10. 20,900 in 70 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar. The estimate is by the International Mission Board research team, 2004. There were 87,500 TSPM Christians in the whole prefecture in 1996: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. Bridge (July–August 1993) listed 50,000 Christians in Jiaozuo Prefecture, in which Jiaozou County is one of seven counties, and of those more than 5,000 people attended the Jiaozuo City TSPM Church. 11. 25,800 in 86 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 12. 20,600 in 69 churches: Ibid. 13. “30,000 Christians meeting in about 100 churches and meeting points”: World Report No.387 (August–September 2004) 14. 30,700 in 102 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 15. 42,800 in 143 churches: Ibid. 16. 7,300 in 24 churches: Ibid. 17. 50,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. 18. China News and Church Report (30 November 1988) states, “there are between 160,000 and 300,000 Christians out of a population of 700,000.” Almost three years before this report, Pray for China No.70 (January–February 1986) stated there were 300,000 Christians in Fangcheng out of a population of 700,000. This figure of 300,000 was also given by Jonathan Chao, Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves (1988), p189. 19. Pray for China No.70 states, “In Kaifeng, 10% of the population (or 58,000 out of 580,000) were reported to be Christians by a reliable source.” 20. 40,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. Jonathan Chao earlier listed 10,000, of which 2,700 Christians lived in one single commune in Wise as Serpents, p117. 21. In 1954 there were 18,487 Catholics in the Kaifeng Diocese, in 41 churches: Charbonnier, Guide to the Catholic Church in China (1989), p100.

Page 340

1. “Ten percent of Luoning’s population are Christian”: Amity News Service (July–September 2005). 2. 10,000 Christians in Luoyang: Amity News Service (April 1993) reports 140,000 Christians “in the Luoyang area.” This probably refers to the whole of Luoyang Prefecture, of which the city is just one part. The Guanlin District, just outside Luoyang, was reported to have 20,000 Christians in 1993, Bridge (September–October 1993). The TSPM Prayer Calendar (2002) estimates 40,200 believers in 134 TSPM churches in Luoyang City. 3. 15,700 in 52 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 4. 130,000: TSPM (1997) figure, cited in Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. China News and Church Report (30 November 1988) lists 100,000 TSPM Christians in Nanyang County and stated, “House church estimates of the number of Christians in Nanyang would indicate that the figure of 100,000 is very low.” There are 215 TSPM churches in Nanyang, according to the 2002 TSPM prayer calendar. 5. 23,900 in 80 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 6. 10,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219 7. 14,800 in 49 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 8. 19,400 in 65 churches: Ibid. 9. 42,200 in 141 churches: Ibid. 10. 7,200 in 24 churches: Ibid. 11. 49,500 in 165 churches: Ibid. The TSPM gave a 1983 estimate of 100,000 Christians in the whole of Shangqiu Prefecture, of which Shangqiu City is just one part: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. Amity News Service (March 1996) notes, “One county in Shangqiu Prefecture has a policy of allowing only one meeting point for each township, even though there are now almost 5,000 believers in one township alone.” 12. 47,000: Amity News Service, May 1998. The article and title incorrectly states Luoyang is in Jiangsu Province. There were an estimated 500,000 house church Christians in the whole of Luoyang Prefecture in 1999 according to Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. 13. Pray for China No.70 (January–February 1986) states, “In October 1981, one house church preacher preached in Lushan County in Henan, visiting each of the 22 communes. At each commune the elders gave their estimates of the total number of Christians in that commune. The statistics ranged from 400 to 20,000 believers. The total number of believers in Lushan County out of a population of 650,000 was given as 92,500, or 14%.” A 2002 source reports tens of thousands of “Shouters” (Local Church) house church Christians in Lushan County: China Study Journal 17, No.3 (December 2002). 14. 30,000: 1987 house church estimate cited in Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. 15. 50,000: 1989 estimate, Ibid. 16. 20,000: Ibid. 17 10,122 Catholics in Luoyang Diocese in 1950 in 11 parishes: www.catholic-hierarchy.org 18. Luyi has long been one of the strongest Catholic areas in Henan. In 1902 there were 1,500 catechumens in the county, with 100 families asking for baptism according to Angelo S. Lazzarotto, “A Strategist of Missionary Development in Henan: Bishop J. Noé Tacconi (1873-1942),” in Koen De Ridder (ed.), Footsteps in Deserted Valleys: Missionary Cases, Strategies and Practice in Qing China. Louvain Chinese Studies VIII (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2000), p67. 19. 22,807 Catholics in Nanyang Diocese in 1950: www.catholic-hierarchy.org 20. 9,973 Catholics in Shangqiu Diocese in 1950: Ibid.

Page 341 1. 20,000 in 67 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 2. 12,500 in 42 churches: Ibid. 3. 15,000: Bridge (April–May 1988) 4. 51,400 in 171 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 5. 27,800 in 93 churches: Ibid. 6. 32,800 in 109 churches: Ibid. 7. 19,000 in 63 churches: Ibid. 8. 53,100 in 177 churches: Ibid. Earlier Amity News Service (March 1996) reported 150,000 Christians in Xinyang Prefecture, of which Xinyang City is just one part. The 150,000 Christians were described as having five ordained pastors, four elders and 199 evangelists. 9. 25,500 in 85 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 10. 200,000: 1989 house church estimate in Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219 11. 8,000 both registered and unregistered Catholics: Fides, 10 August 2001. In 1950 there were 16,040 Catholics in the whole of Xinxiang Diocese in 13 parishes: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

12. In 1950 there were 13,654 Catholics in Xinyang Diocese in 17 parishes: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

Page 342 1. 9,400 in 31 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 2. 10,000: China Daily (4 September 1984), “more than three times the number in 1948”. However, a report in Ming Bao of the same date quoted a Beijing official church spokesman as saying at least half of the people in that county were Christians, according to Pray for China No.70 (January–February 1986). 3. 36,700 in 122 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 4. 4,000 in 13 churches: Ibid. 5. 16,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. 6. 60,000 in 200 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 7. 10,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219. 8. 51,800 in 173 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002) 9. There were only about 4,000 Christians in the Zhengzhou area in 1949; 6,000 in 1966, and “about 46,000 baptized Christians and another 50,000 seekers” in 1993: Bridge (July–August 1993). The 2002 TSPM Prayer Calendar listed 208 churches in the city. 10. 10,900 in 36 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002). Earlier Bridge (March 1998) listed 160,000 TSPM Christians in Zhoukou Prefecture, of which Zhoukou City is just one part. It adds, “Unregistered Christians must amount to the same number if not even more.” 11. 20,700 in 69 churches: TSPM China Prayer Calendar (2002). Earlier Amity News Service (March 1996) listed 200,000 Christians in Zhumadian Prefecture, of which Zhumadian City is just one part with just two ordained pastors and nine elders. The government had proudly declared Zhumadian “an area without religion” in the early 1980s. 12. 5,000,000: Lambert, Resurrection of the Chinese Church (1999), p310. The same number was given by TSPM leaders to a visiting British ecumenical delegation in October 1998. The official TSPM figure for Henan is reported as 4,585,000 by Amity News Service (November–December 2004). Amity News Service (March 1996) states, “The number of baptized Christians is now estimated at about 1.5 million, with an additional 2 million seekers who have yet to be baptized.” Earlier TSPM figures for the province list 700,000 in 1986—Bridge (September-October 1986): “Now, there are nearly 600,000, and close to 700,000 if enquirers are included in the count”—and 830,000 in 1988 in China Study Journal 9, No.2 (August 1994). 13. 80,000 in 1982 in Xi Xian: “40,000 north of the river and 40,000 south of the river. Before 1949 there were only 4,000 believers”, China and the Church Today 4, No.2 (1982). 14. 55,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219 15. 20,000: 1993 house church estimate, Ibid. 16. Bridge (March 1998) lists 160,000 TSPM Christians in Zhoukou Prefecture, of which Zhoukou City is just one part and adds, “Unregistered Christians must amount to the same number if not even more.” DAWN Friday Fax No.31 (1995) says there are 33,000 known house churches in Zhoukou Prefecture. Asia Harvest, “Henan Province, Ripe for Harvest (Part 3),” newsletter No.67 (July 2002), reports “House church sources say there are probably in excess of a million believers in Zhoukou Prefecture.” 17. 30,000: Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p219 18. Johnstone & Mandryk, Operation World (2001), p172, lists a percentage that amounts to 4,960,800 house church Protestants in Henan Province. 19. The total number of Protestants in Henan Province was just 12,418 in 1922: Stauffer, Christian Occupation of China. By 1949 this number had grown to about 120,000 in 2,140 churches according to China Study Journal 9, No.2 (August 1994). In 1965, after years of excessive persecution, the Protestants in Henan are estimated to have fallen to 100,000 in Lambert, China’s Christian Millions, p198. 20. China Study Journal 9, No.2 (August 1994) lists 70,000 Catholics in 62 churches. 21. In 1954 there were 20,514 Catholics in the Zhengzhou Diocese in 35 churches: Charbonnier, Guide to the Catholic Church in China, p101. 22. In 1950 there were 14,100 Catholics in Zhumadian Diocese, in 5 parishes: www.catholic-hierarchy.org 23. The Catholic Church in Henan Province grew from 3,500 to 172,000 in a 70-year period between 1880 and 1950: Koen De Ridder, Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p55. Other figures for Catholics in Henan include 3,000 in 1703 according to Antoine Thomas, cited in Nicolas Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One: 635-1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p385; just 580 in 1765 according to Nikolaus Kowalsky, cited in Nicolas Standaert, Ibid.; 5,000 in 1866 in China’s Millions No.4 (October 1875), p43; 4,588 in 1879 according to Angelo S. Lazzarotto, “A Strategist of Missionary Development in Henan: Bishop J. Noé Tacconi (1873–1942),” in Koen De Ridder (ed.), Footsteps in Deserted Valleys, p58. The number of Catholics in Henan had fallen slightly from the 1866 estimate after a typhus epidemic in 1877–78, killing over 500 Catholics; 18,487 in 1907 according in Bertram Wolferstan, The Catholic Church in China (St. Louis: Sands & Co., 1909), p450; 51,592 in 1922 in Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China,

84; and 170,000 in 1949 in China Study Journal 9, No.2 (August 1994).

Bibliography Archives Archives des Missions Etrangères de Paris Archives of the Propaganda, Rome Beijing National Library, China Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois Hong Kong Baptist University Archives Hong Kong University Library and Archives Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Library of the School for African & Oriental Studies, University of London, England Mennonite Library and Archibes, North Newton, Kansas Methodist Missionary Society Archives Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio Oberlin College Library, Special Collections Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), Singapore Royal Ontario Museum, Canada The Salvation Army Archives and Research Center, Alexandria, Virginia U.C.C. Victoria University Archives, Canada Yale Divinity School Library, New Haven, Connecticut Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming, China

Books and Articles Note: Books and published articles are listed below. Sources from untitled newsletters, press releases and websites are given in the footnotes but are not listed in this bibliography. Adeney, David H. ‘An Earnest Spirit’. China’s Millions, March–April 1941, p27. Adeney, David H. China: The Church’s Long March. Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1985. Aikman, David. ‘A Church Grows in China’. The Weekly Standard, 28 September 1998. Aikman, David. Jesus in Beijing: How Christinaity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power. Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003. Aikman, David (ed.). Love China Today. Harderwijk, The Netherlands: Open Doors International, 1977. American Presbyterian Mission. Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867. American Presbyterian Mission. The China Mission Handbook. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1896. Anderson, Gerald H. (ed.). Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999. Anderson, Miss. ‘Account of the Journey of Three Swedish Missionaries from Ho-nan to the Coast’. China’s Millions, October 1900, pp161–63. Anderson, Palmer A. In the Crucible: Being Incidents Showing the Power of the Gospel in China. Canada: The Canada District Young Peoples’ Luther League, n.d.

Argento, Alphonso. ‘Spared to Serve’. China’s Millions, July 1902, p100. Asia Harvest. ‘Henan Province: The Galilee of China, Part 1’. Asia Harvest 65, March 2002. Asia Harvest. ‘Henan Province, Part 2: Special Issue on the Present Crisis in China’. Asia Harvest 66, May 2002. Asia Harvest. ‘Henan Province: Ripe for the Harvest’. Asia Harvest 67, July 2002. Augustana Synod. Our First Decade in China, 1905–1915: The Augustana Mission in the Province of Honan. Rock Island, Ill.: Augusta Synod, The Board of Foreign Missions, 1915. Augustana Synod. Our Second Decade in China, 1915–1925: Sketches and Reminiscences by Missionaries of the Augustana Mission in the Province of Honan. Rock Island, Ill.: Augusta Synod, The Board of Foreign Missions, 1925. Austin, Alvyn et al. China’s Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832–1905 (Studies in the History of Christian Missions). Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2007. Austin, Alvyn J. Saving China: Canadian Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Bainbridge, Oliver. ‘The Chinese Jews’. National Geographic, October 1907. Baller, F. W. ‘Contrasts: Then and Now—II’. China’s Millions, April 1897, pp44–45. Bartel, H. C. A Short Review of the First Mennonite Mission in China. Tsaohsien, China: Truth Publishing House, 1913. Bashford, James W. China and Methodism. Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, c.1906. Bauer, Thomas J. The Systematic Destruction of the Catholic Church in China. New York: World Horizons, 1954. Bays, Daniel H. (ed.). Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. Beach, Harlan P. and Charles H. Fahs (eds.). World Missionary Atlas, Containing a Directory of Missionary Societies, Classified Summaries of Statistics, Maps Showing the Location of Mission Stations Throughout the World, a Descriptive Account of the Principal Mission Lands, and Comprehensive Indices. New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1925. Beals, Z. Charles. China and the Boxers. New York: M. E. Munson, 1901. Beaver, R. Pierce. American Protestant Women in World Mission. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969. Bevere, John. Drawing Near: A Life of Intimacy with God. London: Thomas Nelson, 2004. Bevis, E. G. ‘From Darkness into Light: Tidings of Blessings at Chenchowfu, Honan’. China’s Millions, November 1916, pp132–33. Bird, C. Howard. ‘My Escape from Siang-ch’eng to Tai-bo’. China’s Millions, November 1900, pp179–81. Bird, C. Howard. ‘Blessings and Baptisms at Kaifeng’. China’s Millions, November 1909, p165. Bird, C. Howard. ‘A Great Offensive in Taikang District’. China’s Millions, September 1917, pp104– 05. Bird, Mrs. C. H. ‘Kept by the Power of God’. China’s Millions, September 1922, p141. Bitton, Nelson. Griffith John: The Apostle of Central China. London: The National Sunday School Union, 1920. British and Foreign Bible Society. A Brief Account of the Work of the British and Foreign Bible Society for and in China. London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1891. Brook, J. P. ‘Blessing in Hiangcheng, Honan’. China’s Millions, July 1912, pp107–09. Brook, J. P. ‘Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy’. China’s Millions, July 1919, p79. Broomhall, A. J. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century: Book Six—Assault on the Nine. London: Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1988.

Broomhall, A. J. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century: Book Seven—It Is Not Death to Die! London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989. Broomhall, A. J. The Shaping of Modern China: Hudson Taylor’s Life and Legacy 1—Early to 1867. Carlisle, England: Piquant Editions, 2005. Broomhall, Marshall. ‘A Visit to Kwangchow, Honan’. China’s Millions, April 1922, p59. Broomhall, Marshall. Marshal Feng: A Good Soldier of Christ Jesus. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, 1924. Broomhall, Marshall. The Bible in China. London: China Inland Mission, 1934. Broomhall, Marshall (ed.). The Chinese Empire: A General and Missionary Survey. London: Morgan & Scott, 1907. Broomhall, Marshall. The Jubilee Story of the China Inland Mission. London: China Inland Mission, 1915. Broomhall, Marshall (ed.). Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission: With a Record of the Perils and Sufferings of Some Who Escaped. London: Morgan & Scott, 1901. Brother David with Paul Hattaway. Project Pearl: The 1 Million Smuggled Bibles that Changed China. Oxford: Monarch Books, 2007. Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway. The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun. London: Monarch, 2002. Bryson, Mary I. John Kenneth Mackenzie, Medical Missionary to China. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1887. Buchan, Alex. ‘God’s Nutcases’. Compass Direct, 1 January 1998. Bürklin, Werner. Jesus Never Left China: The Rest of the Story. Enumclaw, Wash.: Pleasant Word, 2005. Byler, Myrrul. ‘A Letter to Henry Brown, Mennonite Missionary to Puyang (1911–1947)’. Amity News Service, June 1995. Cairns, Eddie and Dan Wooding. To Catch the Wind. Orange, Calif.: D/W Publishing Co., 1992. Carlberg, Gustav. China in Revival. Rock Island, Ill.: Augustana Book Concern, 1936. Carlberg, Gustav (ed.). Thirty Years in China 1905–1935. Minnesota: Augusta Synod, The Board of Foreign Missions, 1937. Carnes, Tony. ‘China’s Smack Down’. Christianity Today, 11 September, 2000. Cary-Elwes, Columba. China and the Cross: A Survey of Missionary History. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1957. Central China Presbyterian Mission. Jubilee Papers of the Central China Presbyterian Mission, 1844–1894. Shanghai, 1895. Chamberlain, Mrs W. I. Fifty Years in Foreign Fields, China, Japan, India, Arabia: A History of Five Decades of the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America, 1875– 1925. New York: Reformed Church in America, 1925. Chan, Kim-Kwong. Towards a Contextual Ecclesiology: The Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China (1979–1983). Hong Kong: Phototech System, 1987. Chang, Silas. Huannanzhong Di Dalu Jiating Jiaohui [The Suffering Mainland House-Churches]. Oxnard, Calif.: self-published, 1984. Chang, Silas. Sanzihui Di Benzhi [The True Nature of the Three-Self]. Oxnard, Calif.: self-published, 1984. Chang, Silas. Zai Tan Sanzihui Di Benzhi [More Talks on the True Nature of the Three-Self]. Oxnard, Calif.: self-published, 1985. Chao T’ien-en, Jonathan. A Bibliography of the History of Christianity in China. Waltham, Mass.: China Graduate School of Theology, 1970.

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Paul Hattaway is a New Zealand-born missionary who has authored more than ten books about the Church in Asia, including the best-selling The Heavenly Man, Back to Jerusalem, and Operation China. He is married to Joy, and they have two sons, Dalen and Taine. Hattaway is also director of Asia Harvest, an inter-denominational ministry which serves the church in China and around Asia through various strategic initiatives, such as Bible printing in China and the support of families of persecuted believers. To receive the free Asia Harvest newsletter or support the ministry of Asia Harvest, go to www.asiaharvest.org or write to the address nearest you from the list below: Asia Harvest 1903 60th Place, Suite M1204 Bradenton, FL 34203 UNITED STATES

Asia Harvest PO Box 181 Te Anau 9640 NEW ZEALAND

Asia Harvest 36 Nelson Street Stepney, SA 5069 AUSTRALIA

c/o AsiaLink Mill Farm Fleetwood Road Wesham PR4 3HD ENGLAND

Asia Harvest c/o SALZ Postfach 1144 D-72206 Altensteig GERMANY

Asia Harvest c/o STAMP Bhd. PO Box 8036 Pejabat Pos Kelana Jaya 46780 Petaling Jaya Selangor MALAYSIA

Asia Harvest Clementi Central PO Box 119 SINGAPORE 911204

Other Titles by Paul Hattaway Paul Hattaway is the author of the bestselling The Heavenly Man, which is also available in simplified Chinese from Piquant Editions— www.piquanteditions.com

Paul Hattaway has also written the following:

The Fire & Blood Series Vol 1: China’s Book of Martyrs (2007) Available as book or CD-ROM “I believe this book is not only a gift to the people of China, but will inspire Christians of this generation everywhere to obey God’s call, to serve with a willing heart and to lay down our lives so that the Great Commission might be completed and the gospel may reach everyone who has yet to know Jesus, the risen Saviour.” Brother Yun, the ‘Heavenly Man’

Operation China: Introducing all the Peoples of China (2000) Introducing all the Peoples of China The book editions of this groundbreaking resource is now out of print with the publishers, but copies are still available from www.asiaharvest.org. The CD-Rom edition of Operation China is available from Piquant Editions—www.piquanteditions.com—and from GMI in the USA—www.gmi.org

Peoples of the Buddhist World A Christian Prayer Guide

Available as book or CD-ROM “Full of facts and figures, this is a history and geography textbook rolled into one, except that on each page are photographs of individual people, bringing home to us that a collective term will not do. We need to pray imagining Buddhists as individuals, husbands, wives, children, just like ours.” Mary Bartholomew, theGoodbookstall.org.uk

From Head-hunters to Church Planters An Amazing Spiritual Awakening in Nagaland “Paul Hattaway here records how God’s Spirit led a warrior race, whose tradition it had been to decapitate their enemies and bring their heads back as trophies, to become people with an extreme reverence for the holy God of the Bible.” Archie Macmillan, in Mission Catalyst

Back to Jerusalem Called to Complete the Great Commission Also available in simplified Chinese “Perhaps the greatest missionary story at the beginning of the twenty-first century is brilliantly and succinctly captured by Paul Hattaway in this remarkable little book.” Monroe Brewer, in Evangelical Mission Quarterly

www.piquanteditions.com