7
THE K I N G ' S B US I NE S S
January, 1938
The answer is reflected in the condition of the church at home. Is she strong and true to her Lord who bought her? If she is, then we shall have no fear for her child! If we fail to meet China’s great spiritual need in this s'crucial hour, it can never be said that it is because of the peculiar psychology of the Chinese people to ward peoples and things
idols. A missionary writing from his dis trict south of Changsha states that the work of the Band in his field this year has been phenomenal. Each one of the fifty-eight graduates of the Institute at Changsha this spring has found a definite place of service, and there have been calls for many more trained Christian Chinese workers. Unquestionably we are upon a crest of the wave of opportunity. Let us work while it is day, for the night cometh. How Will War Affect the Chinese Church? While I write, the dark clouds of an inevitable struggle are thickening fast in North China. And it may be that by the time you read these words, the heavens will grow black with the holocaust that is coming. Unprecedented as the oppor tunities are before us, yet lurking in the background is the working of Satan to resist every forward attempt at proclaim ing the gospel of Christ. Christ’s church in China faces enemies from without and from within. That our Christian effort in China is at the crossroads is as certain as the fact that China and Japan are now face to face with each other in a bloody struggle for a leadership that will end eventually in the arraying of the Kings of the East against the coming Confederacy of the West. Whither then the missionary? When missionary and means from the West have gone, will the church in China be strong and virile enough to carry through the storm that is about to break?
C H ÌJ 4 A
K FOOCHOW Location of Changsha in Relation to Nanking and Shanghai which their communions officially stand, but to which they as individuals can no longer subscribe. From such a Chris tianity no vigorous foreign missionary enterprise can be expected. Unless new revivals reinvigorate it, it is doomed even in its strongholds.” foreign. Neither may we assume that it is because of the linguistic hurdles we have had to jump to convey our thoughts, but simply that an awful, poisonous virus has located itself within the church in the home lands. And that virus is the deadly teach ing that the kingdom of God may be ushered in by means of social revolution, and that society can be renovated through human effort. The situation at home and abroad has been well summed up by a keen student of missionary work. Writes this ob server : “ Today everywhere even among the clergy, men are seeking a social revolu tion for the religious convictions for EVANGELISTS IN WAR TIME Members and leaders of the Biola Evangelistic Bands, photographed at Changsha on Octo ber I, 1937, with Charles A. Roberts, Treas urer of the Hunan Bible Institute at the extreme left of the picture; Frank A. Keller. Superintendent, at the extreme right, and Andrew Gih of Bethel Mission sixth from the left on the front row. A t this point we shall do well to recall that the first missionary efforts in China— from the sixth to the ninth centuries, when flourishing churches of the Nestorians existed in such large centers as Hsianfu, recent, scene of Generalissimo Chiang’s detention, Yangchow, Hangchow and other places— faded completely out of the picture, with nothing remaining save a few ruins and a large stone monument with a lengthy in scription of the history of that early church in China. And it is not without significance that the famous inscribed monument of Hsian has no direct reference to the suffer ings of Christ and but a faint allusion to the resurrection! The church of those early centuries sank into oblivion losing itself in a syncretism of mysticism, forget- \Continued on -page 36]
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