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Tonight, Hudson Taylor, God's
Apostle to China. As we look at examples of excellence,
Hudson Taylor stands out as an absolutely amazing example of
excellence in missions. He was consecrated from before
his birth. Hudson Taylor's father, James
Taylor, before his birth knelt beside his 24-year-old wife,
Amelia, in the parlour at the back of their busy chemist shop
in Yorkshire, England, and prayed, Dear God, if you should give
us a son, grant that he may work for you in China." By age four,
Hudson would declare, when I am a man, I mean to be a missionary
and go to China. Also by age four, he had learned
the Hebrew alphabet. Hudson was home educated and
he grew up in a godly home. However, by age 17, he was severely
backslidden, restless and rebellious against his parents. In June
1849, when he was 17, his mother locked herself in a room 50 miles
from where Hudson-Taylor was and determined to pray for her
son that he would be converted, and she would not leave the room
until she was sure that her prayers had been answered. That same
afternoon, Hudson-Taylor picked up a gospel tract and was struck
by the phrase, the finished work of Christ. And light was flashed
into my soul by the Holy Spirit. There was nothing to be done
but to fall down on my knees and pray for salvation." As he
rushed breathlessly to tell his mother how he had been born again,
she interrupted him and told him that she already knew. Only
a mother can be like that. Hudson Taylor wrote of the intense
longing for God that gripped him. From that time, the conviction
never left me. He said that I was called to
be a missionary to China. immediately began to prepare
himself by studying the Chinese language through a copy of St.
Luke's Gospel in Mandarin. He denied himself comforts and
he imposed disciplines on himself to prepare himself for the mission
field. He undertook work amongst the poor and the sick. He read
avidly on China. He threw himself into studying
Latin and Greek, theology and medicine. Hudson immersed himself
in the Bible and prayer, including an entire night of intense prayer.
One word came to characterize Hudson Taylor, faith. He determined
to trust in God alone for all his needs. That's not to say
that he didn't struggle with doubt. He did. But he persevered
until faith won. He loved to give to God and so
tithing was soon left far behind as he gave away two-thirds of
his income. His maxim became, see if you can do without. In
this way he's very similar to David Livingstone. who was determined
to live on the least amount possible and give away as much as possible
of his income. Hudson Taylor's concern for China
grew into an overwhelming burden and he felt as though Christ's
compassion for the multitude was flooding his soul. Meeting
a missionary to China, Hudson excitedly told him of his plans.
The missionary discouraged him, telling him the Chinese would
never receive him on account of his fair hair. The Chinese
are renowned for being the most xenophobic people imaginable,
extremely close to foreigners, and very hostile to foreigners.
In fact, foreign devil is a compound noun over in China. To them,
the foreigners, and they have an absolute loathing for fair
hair, light-colored eyes, and so he was told, you know, they'll
never accept you, you're blonde. So later, trying to dye his hair
black, he was injured and almost blinded when the ammonia mixture
exploded in the glass bottle he was mixing in. Remember, he
was a chemist's son, he had access to these sort of things. He was
mixing in the bottle like a doom. I mean, he could have easily
got blinded. It was a very dangerous attempt
to change his hair colour. In 1853, as the Taiping Rebellion
broke out, Hudson Taylor, just 21 years old, said an emotional
goodbye to his mother and sailed from England. And he went to China at war,
severe war. The journey he took by sea took
six months to reach his mission field. Six months! Think what
you've done in the last six months. Imagine if all you could have
done was be on a ship trying to get to where you're going
to, including going through a severe storm. By the time Hudson Taylor
landed in Shanghai in 1854, the rebels held the city and 50,000
Imperial soldiers besieged it. Horrific sounds and sights greeted
him. China was passing through immense
upheavals. There were several major uprisings in China in the
1850s and 1860s, two of them resulting in 25 million people
dead. These are colossal conflicts.
Another 10 million died in just a one and a half year famine
from 1877 to 1879, during this famine in the north of the country. There were also wars between
China and Britain, France, Russia, Japan. This hardly seemed to
be the best time for a missionary to go to China. But Hudson Taylor
was gripped by the fact that some 380 million people in the
vast interior had never seen a Westerner. They'd never heard
the name of Christ, many of them, and he determined to change it.
The house Hudson was staying in in Shanghai was struck by
gunfire. The house next to his was destroyed. Nevertheless,
he gave himself to the study of language and to evangelism
and to helping the victims of the war. Imagine learning the
language of a country while you're areas being shelled. That's a
bit distracting. During these fearsome upheavals,
Hudson travelled to take the gospel to previously un-evangelised
areas. One of these trips was a 200
mile journey up the Yangtze River. He frequently witnessed people
being beheaded and he himself came close to being lynched on
a number of occasions. It was during this time that
he developed a brief but deep friendship with William Chambers
Burns. famous Scottish missionary, and
they determined together to adopt Chinese dress, revolutionary
for that time. Burns and Taylor were men of
one heart and mind. They stayed at Swatow, a centre
of the opium trade, in the most wicked place imaginable. Burns
was taken prisoner during their time in Swatow. Hudson Taylor's
decision to shave his head and adopt Chinese dress was rooted
in his deep respect for Chinese culture and his view of the role
of the missionary. Also, he found that easier than dying his hair.
Many Chinese objected to Christianity argued because it seemed to be
a foreign religion, so his goal was to remove anything that could
be a distraction from the people so they could get the gospel
itself as pure as possible. But his decision was greeted
with derision and contempt by most Westerners. Well, for his
part, Taylor thought that most of the missionaries to China
were worldly, lacking in dedication and ineffective. So there's this
kind of mutual kind of disdain for one another's strategy and
tactics. Hudson Taylor had already had his proposal for marriage
rejected by two women in England. He then met and courted a missionary
teacher, Maria Dyer, the much sought-after, very prestigious
20-year-old daughter of very prestigious missionary parents. And the missionary establishment
was horrified that this unsophisticated missionary had gone native, wearing
Chinese dress, and of course they opposed the marriage. However
Maria showed herself to be of equal dedication to Hudson-Taylor
and on 20th of January 1858 Hudson-Taylor and Maria Dyer became husband
and wife. And this was an uncommonly happy marriage, largely because
they shared the same deep passion to evangelize China at great
personal sacrifice. There are examples of very successful
missionary marriages and these are one of them. We didn't get
that from William Carey's first marriage and certainly the Wesleys and Whitfields had
catastrophic marriages. Livingston's marriage was not
a happy one, not that it was as stormy as poor William Carey's. But at least the Taylors represent
one of those successful unis. As was the Judsons. Adenauerman
and Judson were very successful marriages. In fact, all three. I've got a book called The Three
Mrs. Judsons. Each one died. It's very legitimate. And he had lots of children to
care for. But that's an extraordinary story. The Three Mrs. Judsons. From the start, Taylors
were frequently in danger and their first child, Grace, was
born with a riot raging outside. Hudson Taylor's missionary partner,
Dr Parker, who had opened a clinic at Ningpo, was forced to return
to Scotland when his wife died. Now notice here, you can see
the Taylors' house and that's the window where they had a rope
ladder. ready to let down because the only way they could escape
if they were attacked by a mob and attacked by mobs were common
this is their escape route so that window they had a rope ladder
inside ready to drop down the moment they noticed to escape
and of course xenophobic attacks burning out and murdering of
foreigners was commonplace in China With supplies dwindling
and Hudson Taylor's health deteriorating he had to make the painful decision
to close the medical clinic and return to England and there he
was to remain for six years. But this temporary retreat proved
to be the precursor to a great missionary advance. His burden
for inland China was becoming overwhelming, and the only relief
he could find was in prayer and the word of God. First, earnest
prayers to God to thrust forth laborers. Second, the deepening
of the spiritual life of the church, so that the men should
be unable to stay at home. In 1865, Hudson dictated a book,
China, its spiritual need and claims to Muriel, while he restlessly
paced up and down the floor. One paragraph declared, can all
the Christians of England sit still, with folded arms, while
these multitudes in China are perishing, perishing for lack
of knowledge? The lack of that knowledge which
England possesses so richly, which has made England what England
is, and made us what we are. What does the Master teach us?
Is it not that if one sheep out of a hundred be lost, we to leave
the ninety-nine and seek that one? But here the proportions
are almost reversed. We stay at home with the one
sheep and take no heed to the ninety-nine perishing. Hudson knew that a new missionary
organization dedicated to the evangelization of inland China
was needed. But at this point he found himself
wracked with doubt. He really slept for more than
two hours at a time. He agonized over the desperate
spiritual plight of China, and with what he called his unbelief.
He feared taking responsibility for sending young men and women
into the interior of China where they would be subjected to rejection,
no doubt they would, and illness, and severe persecution. It was
inevitable, but that was the price that had to be paid to
reach inland China. He thought he was on the verge of a nervous
breakdown. He wrote, for two or three months, intense conflict.
I thought I would lose my mind. One Sunday morning he slipped
out of church after worship unable to bear the sight of a congregation
of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing in their own
security while millions are perishing for lack of knowledge. He wrote
that as he wandered on the sands of Brighton Beach alone and in
great spiritual agony, but during this prayer walk the Lord conquered
my unbelief and I surrendered myself to God for this service.
I told him that all the responsibility must rest with him, that as a
servant it was mine to obey and to follow him, his to direct,
to care for, and to guide me, and those who might labor with
me." Immediately he wrote in the margin of his Bible, prayed
for 24 willing, skillful laborers rightly. June 25, 1865. The China Inland Mission that
Hudson now planned to launch was innovative and radical for
the time. He launched the world's first truly interdenominational
faith mission. Up till this time, missions were
all denominational and you had to have subscriptions and raising
money and offerings and all the rest of it, but he was going
to have a faith mission, interdenominational, but more than that. you'll see
how he had six distinctive features that were revolutionary for the
time. From the first, Taylor determined that the China Inland
Mission would have six distinctive features. Number one, its missionaries
would be drawn from any denomination, provided they'd sign its evangelical
Protestant doctrinal statement. Number two, CIM missionaries
would receive no salaries. but would put their trust in
the Lord to supply their needs. He had to do this because he
didn't have a denominational backing. So there was no support
base to guarantee salaries as a denomination could do. Income
would be shared. Debts? No debts would be incurred. Omen? No man anything but to
love one another. That's from Romans. Number three,
no appeals for funds would be made. Number four, the work abroad
would not be directed by the Home Committee, but by himself,
eventually other leaders in the field in China. This is quite
radical. Up till then, all missions were run from London, or New
York, or Washington, wherever, but now it's going to be run
from the field. Radical. Fifthly, the organization would
press on into the interior of China where Christ has not been
named. Up till then, all missionaries were on the coast, where it's
just easy to have supply and protections on. But here's going
to go in the hinterland, where there's no protection possible
from your own home country. Sixth, the missionaries would
wear Chinese clothing and worship in Chinese-style buildings. In
addition, this is also quite radical actually, they could
make this number seven. CRM would use lay workers rather than ordained
ministers, and it would accept single women as missionaries.
Up till that time, the only women who could enter into missions
were married women. This is radical, radical, radical. Hudson Taylor
is an innovator, but what he did actually showed the way for
missions for the next century. Within the year, Hudson and Maria
Taylor and their four children set sail for China with 16 young
missionaries on board. Soon there were 24 China Inland
Missionary missionaries in China, and God's blessings on the new
enterprise was soon evident, because on the journey out, 20
of the ship's crew made commitments to Christ during the voyage. In fact, the ship's a very good
place for outreach. I might say that Bill Bathman,
when he was going to Europe and back to America, he was always
having nightly evangelistic meetings in the dining halls and so on,
on the ships. As I said, you've got this captive
audience, they can't go anywhere. But within a year, the new mission
was engulfed in opposition, dissension, controversy, fire and death.
I mean, China was a hard field. In 1867, the Taylor's daughter
Grace died. Their mission house in Yangchou
was attacked and set on fire, furious persecution engulfed
it. As Hudson Taylor wrote, if the spirit of God works mightily,
we may be sure that the spirit of evil will also be active. Undeterred, Hudson treated more
than 200 patients a day. With one of his converts sued,
preaching to those waiting for medical treatment, Hudson made
enormous demands on himself. I mean, what doctor would see
200 patients a day? Do you know anybody, any medical
person who'd see 100 in a day? Hudson Taylor expected equally
high standards from his CIM missionaries. One of his new missionaries,
Louis Nickel, grew increasingly bitter and resentful of Taylor's
style of leadership and spent his time visiting other missionaries
and grumbling. He had a gift of criticism. And Louis Nicol
soon abandoned the Chinese dress, claiming English clothes gave
him more protection and more respect. I will not be bound
neck and heel to any man, he declared. He started a sort of
mutiny within the ranks. And after nearly two years of
unpleasantness and disruption, Hudson regretfully dismissed
Nicol from the mission, mainly for unrelenting slander and lies.
With hindsight, he took too long to make a decisive move. When
a person starts doing this, you shouldn't wait a month. In fact,
As some missionaries have said, you need three things for any
ministry. You need competence, you need
spirituality, and you need loyalty. Competence, we can always improve
our competence through training, if we teach well. Spirituality,
there's always room for growth there, as long as it's a basic
core. But loyalty, it's either there or it isn't. If a person's
not loyal, as I've heard from many, there's nothing you can
do to restore loyalty. If a person's disloyal, walk
him to the door, take his keys, and send him packing. Because
he will be poison for everybody else. A disloyal worker. And
this nickel should never have been allowed to stay, in fact,
another night after it was clear that he was disloyal. But Hudson
Taylor, not experienced in leading men, put up with this junk for
two years. major amount of damage was done. Three of the original
24 CIM missionaries resigned in sympathy with Nicol. Around
the same time two other CIM missionaries complained that it was dangerous
for so many unmarried men and women to live together at New
Lane, the CIM headquarters in China. They accused Hudson of
being too familiar with the young ladies because Hudson and his
wife Maria kissed some of the girls in the foyard before they
went off to bed. Remember this is a very hostile foreign environment,
people are being cursed every day, they're being shouted at,
they're meeting hostility, a bit of encouragement and warmth amongst
the Christians was expected. But the ladies themselves denied
there was any inappropriate behaviour, but still the complaint reached
London, and for a time it led to a fall off in support for
the mission. Which of course translates to less Chinese receiving
the gospel, and this is the kind of nonsense they had to put up
with. In spite of constant controversies, the number of C.A.M. missionaries
steadily grew. In time it became the largest
mission organisation in the world. By 1900, China's mission was
the largest mission in history. Then, Timothy Richard, a Welsh
Baptist, began to cause further divisions within C.A.M., arguing
that God also walks through other religions. Confucianism, Buddhism,
Taoism. God's working through those religions
too. More likely the devil. A handful of CIM missionaries
were influenced by Richard's liberal views and they left the
mission. As Hudson began sending unmarried single women into the
interior, another storm of controversy and criticism erupted. How can
you send single women into the interior of China? And the courage
of these tenacious young pioneers cannot be exaggerated. Annie
Royal Taylor, who's no relation to Hudson Taylor, even though
she's got the same surname, was one of the many bold individualists
who joined CRM and set asides and taken the gospel to the forbidden
city of Lhasa in the heart of Tibet. That was about as inaccessible
edge of the earth as you could get to. And she adopted native
Tibetan dress, shaved her head in the fashion of a Tibetan nun,
Bandits stole her tent and her clothing and killed most of her
packhorses, some of her workmen died, others turned back, but
she persevered. One of her Chinese workmen demanded
more money and when that was refused he brought accusations
against her to the Tibetan authorities which led to her arrest. Annie
Taylor finally established her own agency, the Tibetan Pioneer
Mission, recruiting 14 missionaries to work with her, but in less
than a year all had left her. and her infant mission was in
a shambles. However, Annie Taylor continued for more than 20 years,
working mostly alone in Tibet. Now, the reason why I'm giving
these details is, all too often, missionary biographies just tell
you about the joys and the successes. But that's no good, because then,
when we meet problems, we think, Hudson Taylor and David Livingston
never had any problems. You know, everything I heard about them
was just like, they just soared on victory after victory, but
it's not true. So, to realistically prepare
people for missions, we need to recognize the fact that all
missionaries face opposition, defeats, discouragement, delays. This is part of it. It's part
of the job description. We must not get discouraged when
we find opposition, delays, failures and problems. We must meet it
with the expectancy of, right, now how's the Lord going to get
us out of this one and what can I do to solve this problem? This
is another challenge. It's like an obstacle course, okay? There's got to
be a way. How do we get over this one?
How do we get through this? How do we get around this? And
so Annie Taylor continued for more than 20 years, working mostly
alone in Tibet. She didn't go home saying, well,
everyone else abandoned me, there's nothing else for it. She stayed.
Extraordinary. Now Hudson Taylor did not make
a distinction between married and single woman. He expected
married women to focus primarily on ministry even as the single
sisters did. Again controversial, again got
him criticism, but they had very high standards in China Inland
Mission. This is a picture late in Hudson Taylor's life. Hudson
Taylor's now a really old man at this party, presumably it's
maybe his birthday, and you can see the people gathering. Now
he's still in Chinese dress. Some of the people around are
for this occasion, they're not administering, they're wearing
European dress sometimes in their own fellowships. To male recruits,
he wrote, unless you intend your wife to be a true missionary,
not merely your wife, homemaker and friend, don't join us. Maria
set the pace for the other married woman in the mission, caring
for five children, actively reaching out to Chinese women in daily
outreach. When these people are really very dedicated people,
the Victorian era was an era of duty, honour, country, reaching
out. They were very self-sacrificing,
very high work ethic in the Victorian era, which I think is just one
reason why the 19th century was such a spectacularly successful
missionary century. In 1870, the Taylor's son Samuel
died. Then their fifth son, Noel, died
two weeks after being born. A few years later, a few days
later, Maria Taylor died at a mere age 33. Four of Maria's eight
children died before they could reach age 10. This has got to
be the worst part of missions in the 19th century. Medical
advances were not such as they are today. And, for example,
of Adnan Jackson, out of his ten children, five died. Nothing could have been more
traumatic for these missionaries than burying their own children
and their wife. But that happened. And we can praise God, our life
expectancy today and our health of missionaries is far better
than it ever has been before. But at this stage, there was
no ease of transport and there was no access to even the simple
hygiene we've got today. But they still did it. And without
that sacrifice, the church in China would not be what it is
today. Hudson Taylor returned to England and he married Jenny
Foulding. He suffered an accident which left him with a damaged
spine. But even while recovering and immobile, he refused to be
idle. Pray and planning fill this time.
China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and
women. The stamp of men and women we
need is such as will put Jesus Christ, China and souls first
and foremost in everything. Even life itself must be secondary.
This is what a Chinese church looked like at that stage. As someone who had literally
given all to Christ in China, he found it impossible to expect
any lesser commitment from others. Hudson Taylor was frequently
accused of being demanding and autocratic. But in his mind he
is merely anxious to protect the integrity of the mission.
This is obviously some problem. You see, if you've got an idea
of what's a good pastor, a good pastor is compassionate, understanding,
patient, you know, like your cell group leader, your Bible
study leader and so on. And now, a person thinks, a mission
is just like my church. But now, a mission leader is
very different from a pastor. He's not patient and compassionate
about my failings. He's pushing me and demanding,
and he's concerned for stewardship of time and resources and opportunities.
He's thinking of the Lord, the sending churches, the people
who need our service of our mission. And so the mission does not exist
for the benefit of the missionaries. The church might seem to exist
for the benefit of its members, although actually it's meant
to exist for the great commission too, but most people's experience
of local church ill-prepares them for missions because they
assume that missions is going to be one long church service
like it is spread through the week now, so I'm going to have
like a cell group where everyone's affirming and building me up
and making me feel good about myself. But a mission can't be
like that. It's got to be deadlines, goals,
key result areas, productivity, work ethic, dedication, self-sacrifice,
all of these things are unpleasant. Who wants them? And so you can
understand every mission leader is accused of being a demanding,
mean, well a good mission leader is. Otherwise the money will
disappear into the pool like water into the sand. In spite
of constant poor health, regular bouts of depression and his self-confessed
irritation and impatience, he could also show tremendous flexibility
and steadfastness under trial. Very many people see irritation
and impatience as a great sin. And if you were to list your
worst sins, a Westerner would normally put lying, laziness,
high up on the list of terrible sins. But most Easterners would
put, the worst sins would be irritation, irritability, impatience. Because they are shame and honor
type of cultures. And so the worst thing you could
do is to show impatience or irritation. Now, from a Western perspective,
those are minor sins. In fact, it might not even be
a sin. Because if you irritate a person for the fact that he's
lying or he's wasting his time or he's late, this is part of
you trying to bring up a higher standard. You're trying to get
the people to adhere to a higher goal. And yet, many people could
say, well, who's he to talk? Sure, I'm late and lazy, but
I mean, he's impatient and rude. So, which of course is much worse
than my minuses. So again, it's people's ideas
of what's more important. And yes, I would think that every
mission leader I've studied, had a problem with irritability
and impatience because there's so much at stake. You're wasting
time. You're wasting resources. They want to stop this. They're
concerned to be good stewards and therefore they will be irritable,
rude, impatient, demanding, all things which the average Christian
would think is terrible. My cell group leader never spoke
to me like that. Hudson and Ginny Taylor presented
an incredible example of dedication. When they were bequeathed several
thousand pounds, they gave it all to the mission. They were frequently separate
from one another and engaged in demanding journeys and a relentless
schedule of ministry. Very serious people. Still, Hudson
Taylor could declare at the end of his life the sun had never
risen upon him in China without finding him praying. Can you imagine? Every morning
he was up before the sun praying. I don't know how many people
could say anything like that about any of us. I mean, that's just
extraordinary. In your whole life? It's hard
enough to do it in a three-week course to keep this up for a
lifetime. There was an urgency in everything
he did. He was a man of faith who stated that his life was
based upon three facts. There is a living God. He has
spoken in the Bible. He means what he says and he
will do all that he has promised. Isn't that a great three-point
program for anybody's life? In a letter to his mother, Hudson
Taylor described his own assessment of his life in these words. Envied
of some. Despised by many. Hated perhaps
by others. There's no perhaps about it,
but I think he's trying to be kind to his mother. Often blamed
for things I'd never heard of or had nothing to do with. And
innovated things which have become established rules of missionary
practice. That's true. He innovated a lot of things
which everyone criticized him for at the time, and led those
same missions that criticized him, adopted the same strategies.
an opponent of mighty systems of heathen error and superstitious,
working without precedent in many respects, and with few experienced
helpers, often sick in body as well as perplexed in mind and
embarrassed by circumstances. Had not the Lord been specifically
gracious to me, had not my mind been sustained by the conviction
that this work is His, and that He is with me in the thick of
the conflict, I must have fainted and broken down. But the battle
is the Lord's, and He must conquer. We may fail. We do fail continually. But he never fails. Indeed, by the end of his life,
the very mission organizations that had belittled and ridiculed
his methods had begun adopting many of them. By the time Hudson
Taylor died, there were 205 China Inland Mission stations, as indicated
on this map, 849 full-time missionaries and 125,000 Chinese Christians
organized in China Inland Mission congregations. That's absolutely
phenomenal achievement considering what they were up against and
the resistance they faced. Some of their missionaries, and
here's this 24, the famous 24 that he prayed for at Brighton
Beach. And here you can see some of
the famous missionaries who came out dressed in the Chinese dress.
Houston Dixter is one of the Cambridge Seven, one of the friends
of C.T. Stubb, who took over as the second
director of China Indian Mission after Hudson Taylor. Many different
missionary volunteers. Here you can see them all in
their Chinese dresses, the kind of way they'd normally have ministered.
Hudson Taylor and his wife, Jenny, second wife. These are different Mishni couples
who went out to China and ministered under Hudson Taylor. This man, just look at the change. As a youngster he joined. Now,
same person. That's with his wife and children.
Can you see the similarity? And here's the same man in the
end of his life. Okay, I'll go back. See the features? And this is the same man, in
fact, where's his name? JJ Meadows. That's right, the
Meadows family. James Joseph Meadows. Just one
of the families who gave a lifetime to China. And extraordinary families. You can see here, he's shaved
his head in the Chinese way, growing the moustache in the
Chinese way. Literature, Ministry, Bible. In fact this is the Bible
Translation Committee. Consisting of Chinese and missionaries
working together on the translation of Bible in Chinese. Hudson Taylor
and his wife Jenny with some of the Chinese believers. These
are evangelists that they had trained. So, because he went
to the end of the 19th century, we have got photographs of Hudson
Taylor's ministry more than we have of many others. Tibetan
mission. and Hudson Taylor's funeral. You can see some of
the Chinese believers gathered. One of the greatest attacks on
Christianity ever in the history of China was the Boxer Rebellion,
1900. In 1900 they murdered hundreds of missionaries and Christians
in China. It was the big xenophobic reaction
of all xenophobics. This was the worst. You might
have heard of 50 days in Peking. There's a major film with Charlton
Heston in it. Just 52 days in Peking. Well, this was particularly targeting
every foreigner, but the Christians suffered the worst, and not just
the missionaries. I think China Inland Mission lost 182 missionaries
killed in the Boxer uprising. But not only them, but thousands
of Chinese Christians were killed by the Boxers. It was absolutely
hideous. And you had the first and only
time in history that the German army and the Austrian army and
the Russian army and the British army and the Japanese and the
French all worked together to go in and rescue the foreigners
and bring them out of China from that hideous Boxer Rebellion.
So the greatest century of missions ended with the devil's counterattack. But that's not the end of the
story. China International Mission has changed its name since to
Overseas Missionary Fellowship. Here's a 1931, 1931, 60 women
volunteers to CIM. CIM being the first mission to
accept single women became mostly women missionaries after a while.
It became an extraordinarily successful mission and the first
destination for many women. By the time the Communist Chinese
took over in 1949, there were 8,000 missionaries in China. And that's after the Second World
War, which had, you know, of course many would have left,
but of course you might remember the most famous missionary to
China after Hudson Taylor would be? Sorry? Gladys L. Gladys L. would be another one,
but I was thinking of the Olympic athlete who made chariots of
fire, Eric Little. He went to China after winning
the Olympic gold in 1924, and he lived the rest of his life
in China. He was born in China, his parents were Scottish missionaries
in China, and Eric Liddell died in the Japanese concentration
camp during the Second World War. Extraordinary story. We've
got the full documentary on his life, which is absolutely extraordinary,
far more than what this film, Chariots of Fire, which just
gives a glimpse at a few months in his life. But he was a great
hero of the church in China. Hudson Taylor said, the Great
Commission is not an option to be considered, it is a command
to be obeyed. So when you meet somebody who
says, I said to the Lord when I was young,
I'll go anywhere, I'll do anything, but the Lord's never called me. I have trouble believing that
one. Here this person was with motives
as pure as the driven snow. willing, ready, available, but
God just dropped the ball. I mean, he would have done anything
the Lord told him, but the Lord just, and he's so spiritual,
he wouldn't do anything until, yes, the Lord personally came and
gave him a gold ticket invitation. Hudson Taylor would say to such
a person, what do you need a call for? You've got a command. God's
man and God's place, doing God's will to God's glory will never
lack for God's support. This is one of the faith commission's
first battle cries. God's work and God's way will
not lack God's supplies, a simple way of putting it. Hudson Taylor
also said God's servant is God's responsibility. You worry about
God's work, he'll worry about your support. Well, we've got
quite a bit on Hudson Taylor and the Great Ascension Missions
and in the Victorious Christians. This mission has been going since
1865. By the way, I met Hudson Taylor III. He was the... I think
he was the great-grandson of Hudson Taylor. He was the director
of the Chinatown Mission when I met him, which was in the 80s.
I'm not sure who the head would be right now. What's now called
Overseas Missionary Fellowship. There's a lot of great books
on this. I'm just pointing my history magazine here. There's
a whole lot of very interesting things you can get. Christian
history did something on Hudson Taylor a while back and amongst
the different things that they pointed out which is quite interesting
is the first missionaries to China were of course the Nestorians
back in the 600s really. Nestorians were very effective
there but they got almost annihilated by the Mongol invasions and absolutely
massacred. There were millions of Chinese
Christians back in the first millennium. but they got annihilated. Well, along came a Franciscan
monk in 1292, 1294. So this is the first Catholic
attempt at missionaries. And his way of getting missionaries
done in China, I mean, just to show the contrast between Catholic
ways of doing missionaries and Protestant ways. This Catholic
missionary, John of Monte Corvino, He got his converts by buying
young children from the non-Christian parents. He'd come in, how much
for your child? And he'd buy them, like, you know, you could
buy a product. People would sell their kids into slavery. And
he got 12, sorry, he got 6,000 children that he bought. And then he bought them up as
Christians, Roman Catholics. Yeah, of course. He did this
in 11 years. For 11 years, he worked in China.
And during that time, he baptized 6,000 children, most of which
he had just purchased. How's that for a design of missions? The first Protestant missionary
to China was Robert Morrison. He is from Scotland. He came in in 1807. And it was
illegal to be a missionary. It was illegal to learn Chinese.
It was illegal to teach Chinese. It was forbidden to do just about
everything. It was forbidden for any foreign
woman to be in China. And so the men... He was separated
from his wife for years at the time. And interesting also, how
the Protestants, when the Protestants went to China, they aimed at
the lowest of the low. They went for the labourers and
they went for the opium addicts. And they brought them to the
wall. When the Catholics went to China, later we're talking
about now the missions in the 1600s of Ricci and others, they
went to the intelligentsia, the most educated elite, and they
trained them and the Catholics basically had high class churches
and the Protestants basically had low class churches. Just
interesting the different styles of ministry. Today it is believed
that there is well over 100 million Christians in China. Well over
100 million. When Hudson Taylor died he had
125,000 Christians organized in his mission churches. By the time
the communists took over, there was less than a million Protestants
and 3 million Catholics. Catholics had done better through
their strategy. Not that that equals born again, but they had
more numbers. Today, they believe the Bible-believing, evangelical,
born-again Christians in China exceed 100 million. We're less
than a million Protestants in China in 1949. There's a hundred
million today. Why would the church in China
have exploded a hundredfold in the last 60 years? Persecution.
Yes, persecution, but not only persecution. I believe that,
yeah, the sacrifice of the missionaries and the sacrifice of the believers.
I think that's it. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground
and dies. It remains alone. But if it does
die, it produces a great harvest. We had hundreds of missionaries
die in the Boxer Rebellion, martyred for Christ, not counting the
others who died, also by xenophobic attacks. Hundreds of missionaries
laid down their life for Christ in China, including right into
the Second World War, and you think of people like Eric Liddell,
martyred for Christ. The ground in China was so ploughed
and sewn, and with the blood of the martyrs. The sacrifice
that missionaries had poured into China for generations. That
although all missionaries were kicked out in 1949, the church
has increased a hundredfold since then. But that couldn't have
been possible without all that work beforehand. But consider
this. Removing the missionaries at
that point was good, because they'd done their job, they'd
laid the foundations, the roots went down deep, they'd ploughed,
they'd sown, they'd sacrificed. Now they weren't there to do
the work for the Chinese Christians. The Chinese couldn't be bottle-fed
and hand-fed and everything else. They couldn't have their nappies
changed and have everything done for them by their missionaries. Now they
had to do everything for themselves. And that's a good way to learn.
At this point, the Chinese Christians just grew and multiplied a hundredfold. in the last 60 years? There's
a missionary in China now, his name is Wu. He comes from Brazil
and he gave himself three months to learn the Mandarin language.
And in three months he mastered the language to speak it. When our group was there last
year, he was still learning how to write and read it properly.
But three months to speak Mandarin language fluently. And they spoke about, they also
went into the interior of China, and they spoke about the rural
places of China. What happens is, as the kids
grow up, they go to the cities, because they want the lifestyle,
they want the life, and they leave their parents, and they
leave the elders in the interior of China. And they can't sort... They can't provide for themselves
because they have their fields, but they're too old to sow it. And they met a man there that
was sitting next to his coffin. He's just waiting to die. An
old man. He's just sitting next to his
coffin and he's just waiting to die. In the interior of China.
Well, you can see there's a lot of great books written on Hudson
Taylor and by Hudson Taylor and classics and reprinting. But
what is going on right now in China today is extraordinary.
Some of the worst persecution of Christians, but some of the
strongest church growth. But why is there such a strong
church in China? There were a lot of very dedicated,
sacrificial people who sowed their lives into China. and we
sing the fruit today. The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the church. Nothing to compare, nothing to
compare with what's gone to China. China was the premier missionary
destination of the greater century of missionaries. In the greater
century of missionaries, more missionaries went to China than anywhere else.
the largest group of people, the biggest unreached group in
the world, and also the superstars of the age went to China, you
know, C.T. Studd, the whole Cambridge Seven,
Hudson Taylor, so that's why when David Livingstone was training
for missions, he was thinking China, China, China, that's all
he was thinking the whole way along, and it's only the Opium
War that forced him to redirect to Africa, which as far as I
can see, is a God incidence. I really believe David Livingstone
would have been wasted in China. Africa was made for him and he
was made for Africa. But that's another matter. I read an article recently by
a Chinese sociologist, not a Christian, and he said that they've been
studying sociology in China for the last 20 years, trying to
understand why the West leapt from over China during the 18th
and 19th century as, because they considered themselves a
more superior civilization. Yes. All right. And he says this
has been a great concern to them. Why? What happened in the West
that just catapulted them forward? And they came up with many different
theories. But the final theory was the faith of the West, the
Christian faith. And he ends his article by saying,
isn't it interesting that that which the Chinese believe progress
the West, the West are forsaking, while China is embracing. That
is very ironic. It is indeed. That's the point. And the West thinks that somehow
it's innately Europe and America that makes them so successful,
free, powerful, productive, prosperous. But it's not so. It's the Gospel
roots. And they cut themselves off from the Gospel roots like
cutting the flower out of a flower bed. Putting it in a vase, it
looks very nice, but it's not going to last. The flower will
fade. And we are in a cut flower generation,
where our generation in our society has cut themselves off from the
root of all of their power and energy, and they cannot last.
And we're starting to see the fading already. Yes. That is really amazing. Now, if I want to print a Bible,
say I want to print 10,000 Bibles for Sudan, which I have wanted
to do, like with the Mora Bible, It would cost me five to six
times more to print it in Kenya, which is the closest country
with decent printing presses to Sudan. The cheapest place
was actually China, but I would not do that. But South Korea,
Indonesia, Singapore, or where we've got our barbels printed,
they will do it cheaper. even with the shipping costs
to Africa than we can do it in Africa, which is because they've
got a higher work ethic over there and they don't have the
same labour union nonsense that we've got, which is terrible.
I've said to Kenny, I would prefer to give you the business. And
it's closer, it's more convenient for me. But your taxes are so
high, and your prices are so high, and your unit price. I
can buy five to six Bibles for every one that I can do if I
print it in Kenya by getting it printed in Singapore or South
Korea. I'm not even going to talk about China. I will not
get something printed in China out of principle, because I think
it's immoral to put money in the hands of slave traders. And
that's affecting you. China can undercut everybody
because They got slave labour. You don't have to pay your labourers.
Of course they can undercut everyone's prices. Just like William Carey
would not use sugar, because sugar was made with slave labour
at that time. So I believe we can't support
products from China if we can avoid it. And that's one of my
concerns, because many times it's like Christian brethren
being forced to work for nothing but food and accommodation the
slave can't. China Inland Mission, when it
was kicked out of China, had to change its name because they
now couldn't work in China. Of course they moved to Formosa
or Taiwan, which is where the Republic of China fled to, and
then they started working in other parts of Asia, so they
called themselves Overseas Missionary Fellowship. So OMF today is CIM
renamed. Yeah. I don't know about this, please
tell me. There are quite a few articles about
how people have to sleep under their desks. And once they're
in there, they have to use a bed. I'm talking about people who
are making the computers, who are assembling them. Is this in China? I did not know
that. There's a lot of things we need
to know about this because China has got one of the most oppressive
governments in the world and To think that most products we
get, for example, any toys from McDonald's or Disney seem to
be made in China, just for starters. I didn't know Apple Mac did that.
That is shocking. Please, if you get an interesting
piece of information like this, do just forward us electronically. We really appreciate all the
research we can get. Some people send us absolute
gems which we are not aware of. There's so much going on in the
world that when you find an important piece of information like this,
please pass it on. Even if I've got it from somewhere else, it'll
do no harm. But often, I've never heard of it before. This is how
we develop that information. Yes, John. I think it's interesting
to see how different David Williamson, William Carey, and Constance
Taylor are. While I'm sure all of those men
are overcomers and people who would persevere, they would do
exceptionally well wherever they're placed, but they seem to have
just been placed exactly in the right place. And it sort of makes
up that part of Truman's philosophy I do believe that if Hudson Taylor
had come to Africa, he would have been a failure. And I don't think David Livingston
would have been much of a success, not on the same level as he was
in Africa if he was in China. I think they were made for those
countries uniquely. And it's just inconceivable to
think of William Carey going to any other place in India.
It's like they were made for that field, and that field was
made for them, and this is the fit. So while when we think of
God's will, we're not normally just thinking geography, but
we're thinking my attitudes must be right to God. But once that's
settled, God has his place, his best place, where we can flourish.
Do you prefer Trevor Brandon? He was the guy that framed me
up in the arm. I was a, what do you call that,
a cyborg on the hemisphere for two years. And this guy jumped Good. Well, praise God for everything
that's been done in China and that still has to be done now.
These days, the Chinese church is so strong that the best thing
we can do is to provide them with support, prayer, resources,
materials, you know, whether it's electronically, these digital
Bibles, I mean there's so many things like the whole Bible in
Chinese that they can download onto their phones. There's all
sorts of incredible techniques and I know of some phenomenal
technology that MAF is using, making available, literally that
they can put into the software everything they need, the Bible,
Bible studies, commentaries and all that, it's all there, and
they've even got ways that they can delete it when found. by Communist officials before
the Conception. They've worked out some very
clever technology to get in to these places. We need to support
the church in China, but we no longer need to be going there
to do church planting. But we can go there to enrich them and
strengthen them and back them up. That's a very mature church. There's a huge amount of Chinese
coming into our country. Well, mission field in many cases. I think that, now, I should say,
when I was at the Lausanne Congress 3, which is Cape Town 2010 missions
conference, the largest missions conference in history, most represented
missions conference ever, but as with all other Lausanne Congresses
1, 2 and 3, not a single Chinese delegate was there. The Chinese
government mobilized their entire security police to just stop
them all. They were stopped upwards. There
were over 380 Chinese delegates who should have been there. They
blocked them all. They caught them all. And they
were going in so many different ways. The only people we had
representing Chinese people were Chinese people who lived outside
of China. But nobody from inside China got out. And that's not
all. As we started the Lausanne Congress, which was not just
the biggest conference in terms of we had 197 countries represented
here in Cape Town, but there were going to be 100,000 other
delegates at different locations around the world having live
feeds. And the first day it collapsed.
And everyone was complaining that South Africa's infrastructure
wasn't adequate to accommodate. And soon just found, no, we were
facing the first cyber war in history. And we know about cyber
war in theory. They bombarded, there were millions
of hostile hits that came into the computer system at the Cape
Town Conference Centre and basically overloaded and wiped out the
circuits. So that everything that was meant to be broadcast
live around the world at the same time failed. their entire computer
system crashed in the whole Cape Town conference center, which
is so advanced. There was nothing wrong with
the system. Later, I was getting the daily
feed for this, us also having media card and able to go to
all the media and found out the whole story behind the scenes.
But when we knew about this, I said to the people in charge,
so who's doing this? And they said, well, we can't
say. And I said, is it China? Yes, but you can't print that.
Well, I did print it. The fact is China absolutely,
they didn't just stop the people going there, they attacked it.
Now, to think that the Chinese government sees the church as
a threat. Praise God that there is a church in the world that
is perceived as a threat by evil governments. And how disgraceful
if evil rulers don't see the church as a threat and think,
you know, they're irrelevant, they're a dead dog or a puppy,
what are they to us? But the Chinese government sees
the Christian church as the biggest threat. To think they would have
unleashed the first cyber war in history. It just shows the
importance of the incident as well. And a missions conference.
I was glad that a missions conference wasn't considered irrelevant
by the Chinese government. They showed their hand. And there
were American military heading there to look at. I mean we saw
it there in the whole sense. It's phenomenal. There was a
huge hall just filled with all the technical gadgets that was
handling all this. And people coming from all over
the place, you know, military attachés and so on from the US
Embassy. You know, how was this done? They were fascinated because
they're all preparing for this to happen one day. But here's
an example. China showed their hand and showed
their techniques, showed their capabilities, and they used a
missions conference to do it. It's quite a story, and I just
say praise God for the Church of China. China is so impressive,
just this simple fact like They've blocked Facebook out of the country. You cannot even go on Facebook
if you are in China. It's completely blocked out.
On another related point, we had some good friends from South
Africa who went to work in the Arab Emirates. Quite a lot, you
know, affirmative action, very hard to get jobs here. So quite
a lot of guys headed out. And he said he was trying to
go on the Frontline web and he couldn't access it. Trying to
go on Frontline Facebook couldn't. And he'd go off, when he went
out, he thought to me, when he went to another country nearby,
I think India or whatever, it worked. He goes back to Arab
Emirates, didn't work, back and forth. And so he said, there
must be a liberty blocking frontline fellowship out of the United
Arab Emirates. I thought, well, praise God. Another interesting
thing, we just launched Join Magazine electronically recently,
and on the first day, the first 200 subscriptions electronically
came from China. Which was bizarre. Our websites,
we get different breakdowns, and I've seen that China is always
in the top 10 of top ten countries that access
front line websites. But it's of course a huge country,
so in one sense you'd expect it. But China is one of our always
top ten. Interesting. Venezuela? What's that? Of course that's
a communist country, isn't it? Chavez. Well, you're not just known by
France. It's a number, yeah, it is.
Hudson Taylor - Apostle to China
Series Reformation Society
| Sermon ID | 6252098344383 |
| Duration | 59:56 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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