In late 1900, in today’s province of Hubei in south central China, Pastor Wang Ming handed his congregation a letter of resignation, humiliated by his faithlessness under pressure. In the letter, he assumed full blame for his actions and those of his fellow pastors.

Then ensued a most extraordinary scene. No one who has had any intimate dealing with the Chinese people will accuse them of sentimentalism, or any evidence of emotionalism; but on this occasion strong men sobbed like children, and could scarcely speak for tears. They with one consent declined to receive any of the resignations, and said that, although the pastors had done wrong, yet it was intended for good, and they themselves many of them had been equally guilty before God. They besought their pastors not to leave them in their then weak and helpless state, and finally prevailed upon them to withdraw their resignations.1

The Boxer Rebellion was working its awful carnage in 1900 when the call to recant went out to Chinese Christians. The alternative was a brutal death, which many, indeed, suffered. “By the time the Boxers2 had been dispersed, about 188 Protestant missionaries had been killed as well as 52 or 53 of their children. At least 1,900 Chinese Protestants were martyred and perhaps over 30,000 Chinese Catholics.”3

Reports like the following spread throughout the land:

Liu Ming-chin, a chapel-keeper, was bound to a pillar in the temple of Yu Huang. He kept preaching to his persecutors, as he was bound, realizing that the Word of God was not bound. One of the Boxers in a rage cried, ‘You still preach, do you?’ and slit his mouth from ear to ear. A Bible-woman, named Wu, was taken to the same temple and bound to a pillar. She was beaten across the breasts, but never uttered a cry. Then a bunch of lighted incense was held to her face till all the flesh was burned off. Then her feet and hands were cut off. Finally she was carried out of the temple, hacked to pieces, and burned.4

Pastor Wang Ming’s flock of 1,600 met in 90 small groups within a 20-mile radius of Ching-chou Fu. The Boxers said it would be sufficient that one leader recant for all the Christians in the district, and, tormented, he did so. He reasoned that he would thus protect his people, and besides, he merely had to sign a document pledging to “no longer practice the foreign religion.” Since, Christianity was universal and not a “foreign religion,” he saw a loophole in the wording.5

Once the conflict was over, he realized that he had dishonored the Lord and that, through the ages, God had used suffering and even martyrdom to strengthen the Church. By implying a want of faith in Christ and denying his people the spiritual blessing that only comes from trials, he had sinned. But by confessing this to his people, he regained his joy, and the missionaries observed that his public repentance and the congregation’s tears of forgiveness marked “a breaking up of the hard crust of the Chinese phlegmatic temperament.”6 So though he was once broken by the threat of terrorists, Wang Ming’s brokenness before God and his people brought revival.
 
 
Footnotes:
 
1  Robert Coventry Forsyth, The China Martyrs of 1900: A Complete Roll of the Christian Heroes Martyred in China in 1900 with Narratives of Survivors (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1904 ), 410.
 
2  A secret society known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, called “Boxers” by the foreigners, because they practiced marshal arts.
 
3  “In Memoriam 1900-2000 – The Boxer Rebellion” OMF Website, http://www.us.omf.org/content.asp?id=9322 (accessed March 23, 2006).
 
4  Forsyth, 365.
 
5  Ibid., 400-403.
 
6  Ibid., 411.
 
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