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.