Author-Stephen Wang
Publisher-Sovereign World International
ISBN-1-85240-314-4
This is the story of Wang Mingdao the Chinese Christian leader who was born in 1900 and passed away peacefully in Shanghai in 1991. The book is based upon records of personal conversations held between Wang Mingdao and a fellow worker which took place in the late 1980’s. Wang Mingdao is known as ‘the dean of the house church movement in China’. Certainly his influence and example is powerful to this day in that land and elsewhere in the churches. The book records( it is a translation of a book written in Chinese), the ministry in Beijing which took place through the years of Japanese occupation. During those cruel and harsh years the churches were encouraged constantly by the spiritual example of Wang Mingdao as he fought a fierce spiritual battle of life and death and won a glorious victory, the Name of Christ was lifted high. However, as communism came to power and the Three Self Patriotic Movement became the religious wing of that government, Wang’s unwillingness to come under the authority of that organization led to his imprisonment in 1955 for about eighteen months during which he made confession not of Christ but of crimes against the state thus securing his release and that of his wife and so he passed another six years of personal misery and guilt unable to be clear testimony to the Lord Jesus. However, in 1963 he was incarcerated again, this time it was a life sentence and immediately he found fresh grace from God and repented of his former defections. The peace of heart which was the result of his repentance issued in the bearing of clear and consistent testimony to the truth of God until his release in 1979 and for the years following when he lived in Shanghai. This book is relevant reading for today for several reasons. Firstly it shows the subtle ways the churches, can be inveigled into compromise with the ruling governments of the day. Secondly, as Wang Mingdao said of himself, ‘let him that thinks he stands, take care lest he fall’. A further lesson revealed in this book is the inevitable splintering that takes place when established churches become entangled with the government of their day; members of those churches who decide to live for the Lord in an uncompromising way have to secede and form as congregations outside the official milieux, resulting in a divided church as is evident to this day in China. This book is sobering reading although the triumph of the Lord in the latter years evidenced in this servant of God encourages us all.
