Missionary Frank England preaching on the street in Zhejiang in the 1940s.
Prepared for Burial
The new decade saw Christians in Zhejiang experience a continuation of the same kind of trials they had faced throughout the 1930s, with political and social upheavals failing to prevent the advance of the kingdom of God. Throughout Zhejiang, many spiritually hungry people pressed forward to taste of the Bread of Life.
One of the characteristics of the Church at the time was how people from all walks of life became disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. At one baptismal meeting in Fenghua near Ningbo, missionary Maybeth Gray marvelled at the myriad of different people who passed from death to life. She reported how God was
"reaching every class and type with His wondrous salvation. There was a young farmer who had been attending services here for a long time now; there was a bright earnest young nurse from the city hospital, who loved the Lord and wanted to confess Him openly.... There was a city businessman, who when he was examined for baptism said, 'I've studied all China's religions and found they didn't satisfy—and then I heard the gospel and read the Bible. These religions were as small lamps that flicker and go out—but now I've found the Sun!'
Last, but by no means the least, was an old lady of 84-years, who all her life had stored up merit in the eyes of the heathen by being a vegetarian. She heard the gospel, believed, and immediately broke her vow by eating fish. She came here for examination for baptism one Sunday afternoon. You could see she was nervous over such an ordeal, and she sat trembling on the edge of the chair.
Finally she could stand it no longer; she got up, went to my desk and, laying her arm there and her head on her arm, she called out to the Lord in prayer: 'Oh Lord, I am such an ignorant old soul, and I don't know anything. I don't know how to answer the questions they are going to ask me, but, Lord Jesus, You died for me, and I know You love me; now help me to answer right.' She was called in then, but soon came out again.... 'The Lord helped me!' she smiled." 1
As the 1940s continued, there was a growing awareness that the Communists would soon conquer the whole country and usher in a new form of government. Some Christians were unconcerned, believing things could scarcely be any worse than the decades of chaos under Nationalist rule. Other church leaders, however, saw how Mao's forces had acted in other parts of the country, and they did all they could to strengthen the flocks under their care for the anticipated onslaught.
The good news of salvation in Jesus alone continued to be proclaimed throughout the villages and towns of Zhejiang. By this time almost all Chinese evangelists were either living by faith or being supported by local churches. Few relied on foreign funding. This principle of self-support, which had been drilled into the Zhejiang Church perhaps more deeply than in any other part of China, was to greatly help the body of Christ survive the approaching storms of persecution. Whereas in other provinces many believers soon fell away when foreign funding was removed, in Zhejiang the Church continued to function in much the same way as it had been accustomed to for decades.
Two faithful Zhejiang evangelists in the 1940s.
At Quzhou, a church member named Yi owned an inn, and used the premises to witness for Christ at every opportunity. Many guests were converted, and hundreds more heard the gospel for the first time and eagerly took literature back to their home regions.
One day a Daoist priest stayed at the inn. Yi explained the gospel to him, and the man confided that even though he had been a priest for many years, he didn't have any real faith in the idols. The next morning he asked Yi for a supply of gospel tracts, and then,
"Wearing all his priestly garments but armed with Christian tracts, he went to the busy railway station for the morning to give out tracts! The folk at the station were puzzled to know the meaning of it all. The priest told them that he had been a priest for years and knew there was nothing in it—idolatry was all a farce and utterly false, but that the tracts spoke of God and His Son who are real and living, and they alone can forgive sins and save people's souls. It made quite a stir." 2
On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong ascended a podium in Beijing's Tian'anmen Square and announced the founding of the People's Republic of China. A wide spectrum of expectations existed among church leaders in Zhejiang, ranging from great hope for the future to dire predictions of doom.
The Spirit of God had been quietly at work for years, strengthening His children in Zhejiang in a marvelous way, and the Christian community had grown mightily in both grace and in size. One source later estimated there were 200,000 Evangelical Christians in the province at the start of 1950, 3 which means the Church in Zhejiang probably doubled in size throughout the 1940s. Author and China expert Leslie Lyall commented:
"Solid Bible teaching by Chinese teachers not only ensured the survival of the churches in the years of persecution to come, but also laid the foundation for the spectacular numerical growth of the churches in the coastal provinces from the late 1970s onwards.... A Sovereign God was even then, in 1949, preparing to manifest His glory to the world through this remarkable Church." 4
A Trail of Tears
The first few years of Communist rule in China proved relatively calm, as the government meticulously gathered information on the churches and all other citizens they considered a threat.
Most foreign missionaries had been expelled from China by the end of 1951. By 1953 Mao had done enough research, and persecution was suddenly ramped up against Christians throughout the nation.
In Zhejiang, the storm of persecution struck most severely in Wenzhou. Pastors were initially invited to come under the government's control, then ordered to submit. Those who refused to comply were branded 'enemies of the state' and were called to endure years of brutal torture and hardship. Wenzhou had been identified as the heart of Christianity in Zhejiang, with one account saying:
"In 1951, when the missionaries withdrew from China, there were four or five large and flourishing churches in Wenzhou and hundreds of country congregations with a total of over 5,000 believers in this one city and the surrounding areas. Many of the merchants were Christians and ten shops in one street declared themselves closed on Sundays. The Christian influence on the city's economy was considerable." 5
Wenzhou, the 'Religion-Free Zone'
Wenzhou came in for special attention from the Communists, who were enraged not only at the number of believers there, but also that many of the leading business people of the city were devoted disciples of Christ.
The authorities decided to show their strength by crushing Christianity in the city, and they labelled Wenzhou a 'religion-free experimental zone'. The aim was to completely purge the city and surrounding areas of religious belief, particularly Christianity. The government mocked Christians by requiring them to implement a 'Three Offerings and One Withdrawal' policy. They were forced to hand over church buildings, give up Bibles, and turn in all religious materials. In addition, they were required to withdraw from church life.
By the mid-1950s, 49 pastors from Wenzhou City had been arrested and sent to prison labor camps in Heilongjiang—China's coldest province which borders Siberia. Most of the pastors received sentences of 20 years or more. They were forced to work 16 hours per day, seven days a week, rendering backbreaking labor in coal mines.
Just one of the 49 pastors completed his sentence and came back alive to Zhejiang. 6 Forty-eight others died from torture or exhaustion.
More than 1,000 miles (1,620 km) from home and unable to see any loved ones or hear news about the fellowships God had called them to lead, the Wenzhou pastors were cruelly isolated and few facts are known about their experiences. What is certain is that the Lord Jesus recorded each cry of pain, their hunger and their aching loneliness, and He has wiped every tear from their eyes.
Many years later, the son of one of the martyred Wenzhou pastors shared his family's struggles during that dark time:
"As the Communists imposed their regime on the Chinese people after 1949, the suffering of Christians began in a subtle but real way....
First, guards ransacked our home, carrying away Bibles and other religious books, together with valuable items. Then they took my grandmother into custody, and later humiliated her by parading her through the streets with her two hands tied together behind her.... Her elderly husband, a leader of a local congregation, was left sick and bedridden at home.... Not long after this he passed away. God spared him from public humiliation and abuse.
Because of our family connections, we grandchildren were abused, ridiculed and treated as sub-human. We dared not enter or leave school by the main entrance or play with the other students during recess, for fear of militant schoolmates. We had become outcasts of society.
My elder brother was arrested for involvement in evangelism. He was a true man of God and also a respected and learned member of society. He subsequently died as a martyr in a Communist prison cell, leaving behind four children aged from 10-years-old to a few months.... They all grew up to be mature Christians.
The next blow fell when my sister, the mother of young children, was arrested and publicly abused. She, too, was paraded through the streets, attracting big crowds of spectators. Her young children felt pain and shame at seeing their mother led through the streets with her head shaven and a board with a cross on it hanging around her neck....
The children used to hide from other children so as to avoid their contempt. When they took food to their mother in prison, they did so stealthily to avoid being seen. Not surprisingly, the children became rather introvert." 7
The merciless treatment meted out to this one Christian family in Wenzhou was repeated countless times throughout the province. The persecution was designed to permanently obliterate Christianity, but many believers stood firm and refused to compromise their faith, even when hundreds of church leaders and key Christians were imprisoned throughout Zhejiang. Those who were not immediately executed were sent away for multiple-year prison sentences, never to be seen again.
Other pastors, however, were spared by secret Christians working in the police stations who risked their lives by giving advance warning of raids. Many families abandoned their homes and went on the run, some relocating to far-flung parts of China.
The Church in Zhejiang was left without leaders in the 1950s, but learned to trust in Christ alone.
Even during the darkest hour, the body of Christ in Wenzhou and throughout Zhejiang maintained fellowship. Organized church meetings were no longer an option, but small groups of four or five believers discreetly gathered together in homes, barns, or outdoors for Bible study and prayer. The one Wenzhou pastor who survived the horror of the labor camps was a man named Zhou. When he was arrested and condemned to prison, he left behind his pregnant wife and several children. Instead of falling into despair, however,
"Zhou was able to minister comfort to others in similar circumstances. In spite of hostile threats and against friendly advice, he continued to preach Christ, running the risk of being even more severely punished. The Christians in Wenzhou took good care of his family and, when he returned after more than 15 years in exile, he found his children grown into adulthood and the family in excellent condition." 8
The Lord Has Done it
Faithful Chinese Christians continued to share the gospel throughout Zhejiang.
After Mao Zedong closed the curtain on China for a generation, little news emerged about the state of Christianity in Zhejiang Province. A survey of Evangelical churches in Zhejiang found there were 200,000 members in 1950, just before the brutal persecution began. 9
Remarkably, it appears the number of Christians in Zhejiang may not only have held firm, but even increased during the 1950s and beyond. Although thousands of church members did fall away from the faith due to persecution, it appears they were replaced by new converts who were compelled to believe the gospel because of the purity and selflessness of the godly Christians around them.
The disciples of Jesus Christ in Zhejiang no longer counted their lives on this earth as precious, but had become a people who daily died to themselves and lived for eternity. This proved to be an unconquerable equation, and explains how the Church in Zhejiang later emerged as the province with the highest percentage of Christians in China.
In recent decades, historians have tried to understand the factors behind the size and influence of the Church in Zhejiang. Many, however, use mere human explanations to try to make sense of the phenomenon. They often assume that social factors were the cause, but they fail to understand the intervention and influence of Almighty God, as He preserved, cleansed, and empowered His children.
Truly, "the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad" (Psalm 118:23-24).
Footnotes:
1. K. T. Gray, "God Reaches Every Class," China's Millions (May-June 1941), p. 44.
2. Maybeth Gray, "Where God is Working," China's Millions (May-June 1949), p. 32.
3. China Study Journal (December 1992).
4. Lyall, God Reigns in China, pp. 112-14.
5. Leslie T. Lyall, The Phoenix Rises: The Phenomenal Growth of Eight Chinese Churches (Singapore: Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1992), p. 66.
6. See the chapter 'Miao Zizhong: The Cedar of Lebanon' in this book.
7. Lyall, The Phoenix Rises, pp. 66-8.
8. Lyall, The Phoenix Rises, p. 69.
9. China Study Journal (December 1992).
© This article is an extract from Paul Hattaway's book 'Zhejiang: The Jerusalem of China'. You can order this or any of The China Chronicles books and e-books from our online bookstore.
