1900 - Teacher Wang

June 1900

Teacher Wang

Tongzhou, Beijing

The Wang family was one of the wealthiest and most respected in Tongzhou. Teacher Wang was especially looked up to, having been a Confucian scholar for 25 years. Because of his great learning, he had acted as a translator and teacher to the missionaries, and had been befriended by them. For many years he had heard the gospel preached in the Tongzhou chapel, and hundreds of fervent prayers had gone heaven-bound, pleading for Wang’s salvation. Christianity

“…appealed both to his intellect and to his heart. But upon him would devolve the rites of ancestral worship when his aged mother died; it would break her heart if he became a Christian. The filial piety which is the very root of Confucianism prompted him to resolve that, while his beloved mother lived, he would not take upon him the name of Christ. To a servant in missionary employ he said with deep emotion, ‘I envy you; you can become a Christian; I can not.’ He sat sometimes in religious gatherings, his head drooping lower and lower, a pathetic look of distress on his face, as the truth was borne in upon his soul. To a missionary who presented to him the claims of Christ, he said appealingly, ‘Do not speak to me on this subject; I can not bear it.’”[I]

And so, when the awful summer of 1900 came around, Teacher Wang was still unable to confess Christ as his Lord and Saviour. As his pure-hearted Christian friends were slaughtered one by one, Wang’s heart sank into deep grief. He could not understand why the best people in the land should suffer such an ignominious fate.

One day Teacher Wang and a friend were walking past a Boxer temple in the northern suburbs of Tongzhou. The friend said, “Let’s go in and see the fun.” Wang recoiled with a look of horror on his face. The Boxers, who suspected that he was a Christian, noticed this reaction. The Boxers “dragged Teacher Wang to their shrine, and commanded him to bow down. He replied, ‘For many years I have worshiped only the one true God; I will not worship your idols.’”[II] Immediately the furious Boxers severed his head from his body.

After years of not being able to publicly confess his faith in God, Teacher Wang had finally done so in the most dramatic way. He went to heaven with his confession still on his lips, to meet the King of Kings who said, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.”[III]