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Three of China's Mighty MenTHREE OF CHINA'S MIGHTY MEN We are indebted to the Overseas Missionary Fellowship for republishing this important book by Leslie Lyall, which was first published in 1973. In the 1930s one of God's ways of preparing the Chinese Church for the imminent trials of the Japanese War and the Communist take-over was the raising up of four Spirit-filled preachers who were instrumental in many conversions, and who challenged the Church throughout the county to greater consecration. They were David Yang (Yang Shao-tang), Watchman Nee (Ni Duo-sheng), Wang Ming-dao and John Sung (Song Shang-jie). The last-mentioned is not included in this book, as Leslie Lyall wrote a separate biography about him. The three described in this book were all born at the turn of the 20th century, immediately after the Boxer Rising. Yang, a product of CIM work in Shanxi, and Wang were interdenominational in their ministries, while Ni was anti-denominational. Yang had received theological training, while Wang and Ni were self-taught. In spite of this Ni was very self-assured and dogmatic over the interpretation of the Scriptures. Their individual experiences under the new Communist regime after 1949 were quite different, though all three of them were opposed to it. Yang faced a painful trial at his own church in Nanjing, where he was falsely accused by a close colleague and ejected. Working in Jia Yu-ming's Bible School in Shanghai and preaching at the Free Christian Church, he was appointed against his will the Assistant General Secretary of the local Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), a task for which he could not muster any enthusiasm, and was accused of 'leaning to one side'. Ni was arrested in Shanghai in 1952, not only for being a preacher and church leader, but for 'gross immorality' and non-payment of taxes as Director of his brother's drug company. He was in prison in this city and then transferred to a reform-through-labour camp in Anhui, where he died in 1972. Wang refused resolutely to have anything to do with the TSPM and suffered hardship and criticism for this. He was in prison in Beijing and Shanxi from 1955 to 1980 and spent the remaining years of his life with Mrs. Wang (who had been in prison in Hebei) in a flat in Shanghai, where this reviewer visited them. Lyall's account of the lives of these three spirit-filled preachers is both vivid and accurate. This reviewer has travelled through 'Yang Shao-tang country' in south Shanxi, met house church Christians in Shanghai, Ni's centre of ministry, and met Christians in Beijing who knew Wang intimately. Their fruitful ministries go on in the lives of today's believers. There was much in Ni's theology to be questioned, and Lyall touches on facets of it with gentleness. This included his insistence that we must replicate the pattern of the Early Church minutely and therefore have no structures or constitutions; his teaching on soul and spirit; his advocacy of 'one church in one locality'; his sweeping criticisms of denominations and societies. As we read Ni's life Lyall shows the hurt and discouragement which missionaries experienced as whole congregations went over to the Little Flock. In this new issue of Three of China's Mighty Men there is no indication that it is a reprint of the book's first issue in 1973. As Wang Ming-dao died subsequent to this date, in 1991, four pages (pp. 144 - 147) have been added on his closing years by Arthur Reynolds. This reviewer feels that the republishing of Three of China's Mighty Men should have been an opportunity for all Chinese names of places and people to be spelt in the modern Pin yin system of transliteration. But there is a strange mix of new and old spellings. This book, however, is a must for the understanding of the difficult years for Christians in China when there were the painful accusation meetings, large scale arrests of believers and the cruel years of the Cultural Revolution. Norman Cliff© Evangelicals Now - September 2000 |