Tuberculosis (TB, TBC) is one of the deadliest diseases in the world and has had a resurgence lately. It kills worldwide roughly 2 million people a year, compared with the 1 million killed by malaria.
TB is a communicable disease of humans and animals, primarily affecting the lungs, caused by a slow growing bacteria microorganism, of the bacillus group.
Clinical trials are now being done around the world to find effective vaccines against the world's three worst infectious disease killers: AIDS, TB, and Malaria. Research is also being done to develope a vaccine for the rampant Hepatitis C Virus. Visceral leishmaniasis (black fever, leishmaniasis involving the internal organs of the body), the world's second most common parasite killer (folowing malaria) also is the focus of new and better treatments.
Promising phase II trials were completed in Kenya and Tanzania for two malaria vaccines. They were published last month and presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in New Orleans. Multicenter phase III efficacy (effectiveness) trials should begin early this year, after approval by national regulatory agencies and ethics committees. The vaccines reduced the incidence of illness caused by the malaria parasite by 53% over 8 months and by 65% over 6 months in the two phase II studies.
The cure for TB, using medication, can cost as little as $20, since the medicines are primarily oral and generic (not expensive brand-name drugs). By comparison there is no cure yet for AIDS, and medical treatment can be relativelely expensive.
One third of the world's population is infected with the TB germ. TB germs can live in a person without making the person sick, but often the organisms eventually break away and spread, causing illness. Each year almost 9 million people in the world do become sick with the TB disease. It must be made clear that TB infection is not the same as TB disease. In the U.S. the majority of cases are now in the foreign born.
TB is also the leading killer worldwide of those who have AIDS, the two diseases being a very lethal combination.
About 5% (1 in 20) of the 9 million yearly new cases worldwide are resistant to multiple drugs that are used to treat TB, the highest percentage ever. TB resistant to the two first-line drugs, isoniazide and rifampin, is labelled MDR-TB (multidrug-resistant TB). TB resistant to both first-line and second-line drugs (XDR-TB or extensively-resistant TB) is virtually untreatable and very deadly. XDR-TB carries a 25% mortality within one year, even in the U.S. The dreaded XDR-TB has been found in over 45 countries.
A 2008 WHO report indicates an alarming slowing in the progress of detecting new cases, probably because TB budgets remain flat in most countries of the world. Another problem is that there has been only 25 labs in all of Africa capable of detecting resistant TB (MDR-TB), and 19 of these are in South Africa.
Although there are no quick fixes, there are ways to improve the TB problem:
1. The TB drug resistance problem needs a head-on assault by international partnerships, which include different sectors of society.
2. Governments, pharmaceutical companies, churches, and other NGO's (non-government organizations) can provide free or subsidized access to treatment at a local level in hard-hit areas of the world, or even on a more global scale. Otherwise gains made in resistant TB, as well as in AIDS, treatment, may be lost.
3. HIV positive patients should routinely be tested for TB.
4. Strict adherance to treatment guidelines must be followed, in order to prevent emergence of resistant strains of the TB bacteria (and the HIV virus).
5. TB patients should be separated to reduce the risk of transmission to others.
Resources:
WHO (World Health Organization)- WHO Stop TB Department
www.who.int/tb/en/
www.who.int/tb/xdr/en/ (website for XDR-TB)
CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention
www.cdc.gov/tb
www.cdc.gov/mmwr
www.cdcnpin.org/scripts/listserv/tb_update.asp
TB Education and Training Resources
http://www.findbresources.org/
questia.com/tuberculosis
travellersdiseases.com
immunodx.com
RevolutionHealth.com
Everydayhealth.com
amednews.com (American Medical News, April 14, 2008)
theglobalfund.org (Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria)
GAVIAlliance.org
savethechildren.org (Save the Children)
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is particularily timely in view of the reported 300% increase in Anti-Semitism globally in the past two weeks, and in view of the ongoing genocides in Darfur, Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We should remember and honor the over 6 million victims of the Holocaust, as well as educate ourselves about and take a stand against these 21st-century genocides.
We must take a strong stand on all sanctity of life and life-promoting issues, whether it be "against" abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, "mercy" killing, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or forced starvation, or "for" adoption, biblical marriage, a clean-water and safe-food supply for those in poverty, making life-saving antimicrobials and other medicines available for victims of epidemic diseases, etc.
Abortion has been equivalent to a huge, long-term genocide, which has killed 1.5 million yearly, a total of 52.5 million babies, in the U.S., since the Rowe vs. Wade decision of 1973. This killer has devastated the African American community in the U.S., in particular. It is the number one killer of African Americans in the U.S. African Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population but account for 36% of the abortions in the U.S.
Luke Robinson, of Frederick, Maryland, a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has, this week, challenged President Obama on this abortion issue and called for an end to this Holocaust of African American babies.
You may want to write President Obama, respectfully, about this important issue.
Scriptures on which to reflect and meditate:
Genesis 1:26-28
Job 10:8-9
Psalm 100:3
Psalm 139:13-16
Luke 1:39-45
We must take a strong stand on all sanctity of life and life-promoting issues, whether it be "against" abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, "mercy" killing, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or forced starvation, or "for" adoption, biblical marriage, a clean-water and safe-food supply for those in poverty, making life-saving antimicrobials and other medicines available for victims of epidemic diseases, etc.
Abortion has been equivalent to a huge, long-term genocide, which has killed 1.5 million yearly, a total of 52.5 million babies, in the U.S., since the Rowe vs. Wade decision of 1973. This killer has devastated the African American community in the U.S., in particular. It is the number one killer of African Americans in the U.S. African Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population but account for 36% of the abortions in the U.S.
Luke Robinson, of Frederick, Maryland, a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has, this week, challenged President Obama on this abortion issue and called for an end to this Holocaust of African American babies.
You may want to write President Obama, respectfully, about this important issue.
Scriptures on which to reflect and meditate:
Genesis 1:26-28
Job 10:8-9
Psalm 100:3
Psalm 139:13-16
Luke 1:39-45
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, Two Brutal Tyrants of Massive 20th-century Genocide. Have we learned anything yet?
Two massive, and now almost forgotten, genocides occured in the 20th century in the Ukraine, in the 1930's, and in China, from 1958 to 1961, under the brutal tyrants Josef Stalin (1879-1953) and Mao Zedong (a.k.a. Mao Tse-tung, 1893-1976). More than 7 million died in the Ukraine and 30 million in China, both under programs of forced famine and starvation.
The victims of these two genocides, unlike the Jews of the Holocaust, never received the satisfaction of judgement against the perpetrators of the genocide. Stalin, after decimating the population of the Ukraine and of Russia, continued to rule until 1953. Mao decimated China's population and continued to hold power until 1976, as the man with the "little red book of wisdom".
Both men were often idolized and lionized by the political left in the West, much like they have idolized and fictionalized the Arab radical-Muslim terrorists, and Communist killers like Ho Chi Minh, and, closer to home, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
By 1930 the Kulak farmers in the Ukraine were extinguished as a people, whole villages destroyed, as 25,000 of them died per day. Forced famine and starvation (the world's first purely man-made famine) were the means of genocide. As Ivan Stadnyuk wrote in his novel, People Are Not Angels, "The men died first, then the children, and finally the women. "Only one famine, that of China in 1877-78, was more destructive" than this one in the Ukraine. As enemies of the state, 10 million Kulaks were herded into boxcars and sent to Siberia, where they either died or were forced into slave labor. The central issue was to crush the peasant class, no matter what the human cost. When Hitler's Nazis occupied the Ukraine in 1941 they exchanged one reign of terror for another.
Nikolai Bukharin, who Lenin called the "darling of the party", stated that during the Bolshevik Revolution he had seen "things that I would not want even my enemies to see. Yet, 1919, cannot even be compared with what happened between 1930 and 1932. In 1919, we were fighting for our lives. We executed people , but we also risked our lives in the process. In the later period, however, we were conducting a mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, together with their wives and children." "A real dehumanization" had taken place among the Communist "professional bureaucrats," he felt.
Dr. Julius Margolin was an influential Lithuanian Jewish leader and a friend of the Soviet system prior to World War II. During the Soviet occupation of his country, he was, nevertheless, sent to a Siberian slave camp for seven years, along with hundreds of thousands of his country men. After his release, he wrote " Millions of men are perishing in the camps of the Soviet Union...Since they came into being, the Soviet camps have swallowed more people, have executed more victims, than all the other camps-Hitler included-together; and this lethal engine continues to operate full blast. And those who in reply only shrug their shouldres and try to dismiss the issue with vague and meaningless generalities, I consider moral abetters and accomplices of banditry."
In his definitive work on the Soviet carnage, The Great Terror, British scholar and Sovietologist, Robert Conquest, estimates the total number of people directly killed in the Soviet Union by the Communist athorities since the revolution to be conservatively about 21.5 million, and likely, about 50% higher, which would mean about 32 million directly killed. This was over a period of about 50 years, from about 1919 until 1970, when Conquest wrote. Senator Thomas J. Dodd, the member of the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary, who had requested that Conquest write The Human Cost of Soviet Communism, for the Judiciary Committee, in an introduction to the 1970 U.S government publication, comes up with a "grand total of 35 million human lives as a minimum estimate and 45 million as a more probable estimate." He states," Mr Conquest does not include in his tabulation, although it is the conviction of the undersigned Senator that they belong there, his estimate that the cost of the civil war, from military action, executions, typhus, and famine, totaled 9 million lives, and that the great famine of 1921 which followed the civil war, cost another 5 million lives." How many more people were killed between 1970 and 1991, when the Soviet Union was formally dissolved?
Mao's "Great Leap Forward" program was really a great leap backward, as a formerly agrarian economy collapsed, and the resulting famine resulted in 30 million peasant deaths in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Mao advised other Iron Curtain dictators to follow his example in starving the peasant masses. Only Albania really followed, the others holding Mao somewhat in derision. Mao had "killed off the cream of China's youth and imprisoned the country in poverty," to use Lane Montgomery's words, in her book Never Again, Again, Again..., Genocide: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Darfur. "Genocides always serve a purpose. They are are not spontaneous," writes Montgomery, "They occur because governments or tyrants perpetrate them for their own purposes."
Professor Richard L. Walker, who wrote The Human Cost of Communism in China for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1971, estimated from all the evidence, the human cost of Communism in China to be a minimum of 34 million, and up to as much as 64 million, people dead from the time of the first civil war (1927-36) until about 1970. Even Moscow claimed that "in the course of 10 years, more than 25 million people in China were exterminated... During 1960 alone, Mao Tse Tung's government exterminated more Chinese than were killed in the entire war against Japan." Walker summed up: "The Communist movement in China, despite its proclaimed high ideals, must be judged on performance, and, as regards the human equation, there is little to commend it. Those who wish to rationalize public assassinations, purges of classes and groups or slave labor as a necessary expedient for China's progress are resorting to the same logic which justified a Hitler and his methods for dealing with economic depression in the Third Reich."
Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, have written a massive, scholarly classic, Mao: The Unkown Story, in which Mao is revealed to be the biggest mass murderer in history. This classic should rightly shut the mouths of the Mao cult, unless these fans be either totally sadists, or extreme propagandists, bent on further falsifying history.
From the opening sentence of Chang and Halliday's book, "Mao Tse-Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was resposible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader," to the closing page, it carefully documents Mao's reign of terror and brutality. This book should also put to rest the mid-20th century myths perpetuted by Edgar Snow, John K Fairbank, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodore White and other western apologists of Mao and Chinese communism. Theodore White advocated that we be "sponsors of revolution" and that "our policy must offer the masses of Asia the same things that the Russian revolution promises them..." The 'Mao Myth' is centered around the 'Long March' myth, which has long been known to have been fabricated by Edgar Snow. His book of lies is still in print.
Paul Hattaway, in his 650 page 2007 sweeping documentary China's Book of Martyrs (AD 845-present)- The Church in China: Volume 1 of the "Fire and Blood" Series about Christianity in China estimates that since the Nestorians first introduced the gospel to China in the seventh century, about 250,000 Christians have died directly because of their faith, and that "since 1900, more Christians have been killed for Christ in China than in all other countries of the world combined. China's martyrs have included some well know names, such as John and Betty Stam, Eric Liddell, whose life was celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire, and Watchman Nee. But the great majority of China's martyrs have been unsung heroes of the Christian faith: simple men and women, boys and girls who when tested 'did not love so much as to shrink from death' (Revelations 12:10-11)."
Bob Davey in an ongoing scholarly series Reformation Today magazine has traced the slower growth of Christianity in China prior to the 20th century, and the more rapid growth of Christianity in China in the 20th century, the latter which has ocurred in spite of the creeping liberalism within the early-20th century China church and the rise of communism and Mao's 'Long March' to victory. Davey gives succinct accounts of 20th century western and Chinese Christian heroes, faithfully evangelizing the China field-Gladys Aylward, John and Betty Stam, Mildred Cable, Marie Monsen, John Sung, Andrew Gih, Watchman Nee, Pastor Hsi, and others. He gives a positive account of numerical and spiritual growth of the indiginous Chinese Christian church, and of its extension into Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. He has yet to write, in his ongoing series, of the decades from 1940 to the present.
Unfortunately, in the Sudan the tyrant Al-Bashir is now, in the 21st century, using forced famine, starvation, and extermination techniques to wipe out the black African farmers in Sudan, as the world stands by, mostly in silence and apathy. Currently the Muslims in Darfur (western Sudan) are taking the brunt of this policy, but previously it was the Christians and animists in southern Sudan. Haven't we, in the 21st century, learned anything from history, especially from the history of the 20th century?
Further Reading:
Adeny, David H., The Church's Long March, Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1985.
Bays, Daniel, ed., Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, 570pp., notes, bibliography, index. The definite work on Stalin's purges of the 1930's.
Conquest, Robert, The Human Cost of Soviet Communism, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971. Prepared at the request of Senator Thomas J. Dodd. 33 pp., plus appendix, 6 page index, and 4 page introduction by Senator Thomas J Dodd.
Courtois, Staphane, et al, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Edwards, Lee, The Life and Times of Walter Judd, Missionary for Freedom, NY: Paragon House, 1990, 364pp., notes, bibliography, index.
Fletcher, Jesse C., Bill Wallace of China, Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1996.
Giffiths, Valerie, Not Less Than Everything: the courageous women who carried the Christian gospel to China, Oxford, UK and Grand Rapids, MI, Monarch Books, with Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 2004.
Hefley, James and Marti, By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the 20th Century, Mott: Milford, MI, 1979.
Hefley, James and Marti, The Secret File on John Birch, Hannibal, MO: Hannibal Books, 1995.
Huizenga, Lee S., John and Betty Stam: Martyrs, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1935.
Kinnear, Angus, Against the Tide, The Story of Watchman Nee, Kingsway, ed. 1979. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1987.
Lambert, Tony, China's Christian Millions: The Costly Revival, London: Monarch Books, 1999.
Latourette, Kenneth S., A History of Christian Missions in China, New York: Macmillan, 1932.
Latourette, Kenneth S, A History of Modern China, Pelican, 1954.
Lawrence, Carl, The Church in China, Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1985.
Lyall, Leslie, A Passion for the Impossible: The China Inland Mission Story, 1865-1965, Chicago: Moody Press, 1965.
Lyall, Leslie, Red Sky at Night: Communism Confronts Christianity in China, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1956.
Lyall, Leslie, Three of China's Mighty Men, OMF, 1973
Ming-Dao, Wong, A Stone Made Smooth, Mayflower Christian Books, 1981.
Mohler, Albert, "Mao's Reign of Terror," review article of the book Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Holliday, in Reformation Today, volume 211, May-June 2006, pp. 29-32.
Monsen, Marie, The Awakening, Revival in China 1927-1937, China Inland Mission, 1961.
Monsterleet, Jean, Martyrs in China, Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Co., 1956.
Montgomery, Lane H., Never Again, Again, Again...Genocide: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Darfur, NY: Rudder Finn Press, 2007, 198pp., Bibliography.
Palmer, Gretta, God's Underground in Asia: The Full Story of the Red War of the Church in China, a Story of Organized Terror and Christian Heroism, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1953.
Pollock, John, A Foreign Devil in China: The Story of L. Nelson Bell, 1971. Reprinted by World Publications, Minneapolis, 1988.
Puebla Institute, The Martyrs of Maoism: China's Persecuted Christians, Washington, D.C.: Puebla Institute, 1992.
Reformation Today, various articles on China and Christianity, by Bob Davey, between Nov.-Dec. 2007 and Jan.-Feb. 2010 (the latter issue has the most recent article, "The Gospel in China 1930-1937".
Roberts, Dana, Understanding Wachman Nee, Plainfield, NJ: Haven, 1980.
Rummel, R. J., China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900, New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1991.
Shaw-Tong, Liu, Out of Red China, NY: Duell Sloan and Pierce, 1953, 269pp., preface by author, introduction by Dr. Hu Shih.
Shea, Nina, In the Lion's Den: A Shocking Account of Persecution and Martyrdom of Christians Today and How We Should Respond, Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1997.
Spence, Jonathon D., The Gate of Heavenly Peace: the Chinese and Their Cultural Revolution, 1895-1980, New York: Viking Press, 1981
Stewart-Smith, D. G., The Defeat of Communism, London: Ludgate Press, 1964, 482pp, introduction by author, preface by Salvador de Madariaga, bibliography, index, 43 historic photographs, maps.
Taylor, Mrs. Howard (Geraldine), The Triumph of John and Betty Stam, Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, 1960. Reprinted by OMF Books, 1978.
Thomson, D. P., Eric Liddell: Athlete and Missionary, Crieff, Scotland: Research Unit, 1971.
Tien Ju-K'ang, Peaks of Faith: Protestant Mission in Revolutionary China, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Tucker, Ruth A., From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983
Walker, Richard Lewis, The Human Cost of Communism in China, Washington, D.C.:U.S Government Printing Office, 1971. 28 pp., plus 5 p. index, 8 p. introduction by Senator James O. Eastland, forward by Walker, and tetter to Eastland by Senator Thomas J. Dodd, who report be prepared. Reprinted by ACU Education and Research Center, 1977.
White, Theodore H. and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China, New York: William Sloane Associates, 1946.
The victims of these two genocides, unlike the Jews of the Holocaust, never received the satisfaction of judgement against the perpetrators of the genocide. Stalin, after decimating the population of the Ukraine and of Russia, continued to rule until 1953. Mao decimated China's population and continued to hold power until 1976, as the man with the "little red book of wisdom".
Both men were often idolized and lionized by the political left in the West, much like they have idolized and fictionalized the Arab radical-Muslim terrorists, and Communist killers like Ho Chi Minh, and, closer to home, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
By 1930 the Kulak farmers in the Ukraine were extinguished as a people, whole villages destroyed, as 25,000 of them died per day. Forced famine and starvation (the world's first purely man-made famine) were the means of genocide. As Ivan Stadnyuk wrote in his novel, People Are Not Angels, "The men died first, then the children, and finally the women. "Only one famine, that of China in 1877-78, was more destructive" than this one in the Ukraine. As enemies of the state, 10 million Kulaks were herded into boxcars and sent to Siberia, where they either died or were forced into slave labor. The central issue was to crush the peasant class, no matter what the human cost. When Hitler's Nazis occupied the Ukraine in 1941 they exchanged one reign of terror for another.
Nikolai Bukharin, who Lenin called the "darling of the party", stated that during the Bolshevik Revolution he had seen "things that I would not want even my enemies to see. Yet, 1919, cannot even be compared with what happened between 1930 and 1932. In 1919, we were fighting for our lives. We executed people , but we also risked our lives in the process. In the later period, however, we were conducting a mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, together with their wives and children." "A real dehumanization" had taken place among the Communist "professional bureaucrats," he felt.
Dr. Julius Margolin was an influential Lithuanian Jewish leader and a friend of the Soviet system prior to World War II. During the Soviet occupation of his country, he was, nevertheless, sent to a Siberian slave camp for seven years, along with hundreds of thousands of his country men. After his release, he wrote " Millions of men are perishing in the camps of the Soviet Union...Since they came into being, the Soviet camps have swallowed more people, have executed more victims, than all the other camps-Hitler included-together; and this lethal engine continues to operate full blast. And those who in reply only shrug their shouldres and try to dismiss the issue with vague and meaningless generalities, I consider moral abetters and accomplices of banditry."
In his definitive work on the Soviet carnage, The Great Terror, British scholar and Sovietologist, Robert Conquest, estimates the total number of people directly killed in the Soviet Union by the Communist athorities since the revolution to be conservatively about 21.5 million, and likely, about 50% higher, which would mean about 32 million directly killed. This was over a period of about 50 years, from about 1919 until 1970, when Conquest wrote. Senator Thomas J. Dodd, the member of the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary, who had requested that Conquest write The Human Cost of Soviet Communism, for the Judiciary Committee, in an introduction to the 1970 U.S government publication, comes up with a "grand total of 35 million human lives as a minimum estimate and 45 million as a more probable estimate." He states," Mr Conquest does not include in his tabulation, although it is the conviction of the undersigned Senator that they belong there, his estimate that the cost of the civil war, from military action, executions, typhus, and famine, totaled 9 million lives, and that the great famine of 1921 which followed the civil war, cost another 5 million lives." How many more people were killed between 1970 and 1991, when the Soviet Union was formally dissolved?
Mao's "Great Leap Forward" program was really a great leap backward, as a formerly agrarian economy collapsed, and the resulting famine resulted in 30 million peasant deaths in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Mao advised other Iron Curtain dictators to follow his example in starving the peasant masses. Only Albania really followed, the others holding Mao somewhat in derision. Mao had "killed off the cream of China's youth and imprisoned the country in poverty," to use Lane Montgomery's words, in her book Never Again, Again, Again..., Genocide: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Darfur. "Genocides always serve a purpose. They are are not spontaneous," writes Montgomery, "They occur because governments or tyrants perpetrate them for their own purposes."
Professor Richard L. Walker, who wrote The Human Cost of Communism in China for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1971, estimated from all the evidence, the human cost of Communism in China to be a minimum of 34 million, and up to as much as 64 million, people dead from the time of the first civil war (1927-36) until about 1970. Even Moscow claimed that "in the course of 10 years, more than 25 million people in China were exterminated... During 1960 alone, Mao Tse Tung's government exterminated more Chinese than were killed in the entire war against Japan." Walker summed up: "The Communist movement in China, despite its proclaimed high ideals, must be judged on performance, and, as regards the human equation, there is little to commend it. Those who wish to rationalize public assassinations, purges of classes and groups or slave labor as a necessary expedient for China's progress are resorting to the same logic which justified a Hitler and his methods for dealing with economic depression in the Third Reich."
Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, have written a massive, scholarly classic, Mao: The Unkown Story, in which Mao is revealed to be the biggest mass murderer in history. This classic should rightly shut the mouths of the Mao cult, unless these fans be either totally sadists, or extreme propagandists, bent on further falsifying history.
From the opening sentence of Chang and Halliday's book, "Mao Tse-Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was resposible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader," to the closing page, it carefully documents Mao's reign of terror and brutality. This book should also put to rest the mid-20th century myths perpetuted by Edgar Snow, John K Fairbank, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodore White and other western apologists of Mao and Chinese communism. Theodore White advocated that we be "sponsors of revolution" and that "our policy must offer the masses of Asia the same things that the Russian revolution promises them..." The 'Mao Myth' is centered around the 'Long March' myth, which has long been known to have been fabricated by Edgar Snow. His book of lies is still in print.
Paul Hattaway, in his 650 page 2007 sweeping documentary China's Book of Martyrs (AD 845-present)- The Church in China: Volume 1 of the "Fire and Blood" Series about Christianity in China estimates that since the Nestorians first introduced the gospel to China in the seventh century, about 250,000 Christians have died directly because of their faith, and that "since 1900, more Christians have been killed for Christ in China than in all other countries of the world combined. China's martyrs have included some well know names, such as John and Betty Stam, Eric Liddell, whose life was celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire, and Watchman Nee. But the great majority of China's martyrs have been unsung heroes of the Christian faith: simple men and women, boys and girls who when tested 'did not love so much as to shrink from death' (Revelations 12:10-11)."
Bob Davey in an ongoing scholarly series Reformation Today magazine has traced the slower growth of Christianity in China prior to the 20th century, and the more rapid growth of Christianity in China in the 20th century, the latter which has ocurred in spite of the creeping liberalism within the early-20th century China church and the rise of communism and Mao's 'Long March' to victory. Davey gives succinct accounts of 20th century western and Chinese Christian heroes, faithfully evangelizing the China field-Gladys Aylward, John and Betty Stam, Mildred Cable, Marie Monsen, John Sung, Andrew Gih, Watchman Nee, Pastor Hsi, and others. He gives a positive account of numerical and spiritual growth of the indiginous Chinese Christian church, and of its extension into Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. He has yet to write, in his ongoing series, of the decades from 1940 to the present.
Unfortunately, in the Sudan the tyrant Al-Bashir is now, in the 21st century, using forced famine, starvation, and extermination techniques to wipe out the black African farmers in Sudan, as the world stands by, mostly in silence and apathy. Currently the Muslims in Darfur (western Sudan) are taking the brunt of this policy, but previously it was the Christians and animists in southern Sudan. Haven't we, in the 21st century, learned anything from history, especially from the history of the 20th century?
Further Reading:
Adeny, David H., The Church's Long March, Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1985.
Bays, Daniel, ed., Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Bosshardt, Alfred, The Restraining Hand, Hodder &Stoughton, 1973.
Broomhall, A J, Hudson Taylor and China's Open Century, London: Holder & Stoughton, 7 volumes, 1981-1989.
Burgess, Alan, The Small Woman, Evan Brothers, 1957.Chang, Eileen, Naked Earth, Hong Kong: The Union Press, 1956, 365pp. A novel about China originally published in Chinese by the Tien Feng Press, Hong Kong, 1954.
Chang, Jung and Jon Holliday, Mao: The Unknown Story, New York: Anchor Books (A division of Random House, Inc., 2005, 2006. http://www.anchorbooks.com/
Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, 570pp., notes, bibliography, index. The definite work on Stalin's purges of the 1930's.
Conquest, Robert, The Human Cost of Soviet Communism, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971. Prepared at the request of Senator Thomas J. Dodd. 33 pp., plus appendix, 6 page index, and 4 page introduction by Senator Thomas J Dodd.
Courtois, Staphane, et al, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Edwards, Lee, The Life and Times of Walter Judd, Missionary for Freedom, NY: Paragon House, 1990, 364pp., notes, bibliography, index.
Fletcher, Jesse C., Bill Wallace of China, Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1996.
Giffiths, Valerie, Not Less Than Everything: the courageous women who carried the Christian gospel to China, Oxford, UK and Grand Rapids, MI, Monarch Books, with Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 2004.
Hefley, James and Marti, By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the 20th Century, Mott: Milford, MI, 1979.
Hefley, James and Marti, The Secret File on John Birch, Hannibal, MO: Hannibal Books, 1995.
Huizenga, Lee S., John and Betty Stam: Martyrs, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1935.
Kinnear, Angus, Against the Tide, The Story of Watchman Nee, Kingsway, ed. 1979. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1987.
Lambert, Tony, China's Christian Millions: The Costly Revival, London: Monarch Books, 1999.
Latourette, Kenneth S., A History of Christian Missions in China, New York: Macmillan, 1932.
Latourette, Kenneth S, A History of Modern China, Pelican, 1954.
Lawrence, Carl, The Church in China, Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1985.
Lyall, Leslie, A Passion for the Impossible: The China Inland Mission Story, 1865-1965, Chicago: Moody Press, 1965.
Lyall, Leslie, Red Sky at Night: Communism Confronts Christianity in China, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1956.
Lyall, Leslie, Three of China's Mighty Men, OMF, 1973
Ming-Dao, Wong, A Stone Made Smooth, Mayflower Christian Books, 1981.
Mohler, Albert, "Mao's Reign of Terror," review article of the book Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Holliday, in Reformation Today, volume 211, May-June 2006, pp. 29-32.
Monsen, Marie, The Awakening, Revival in China 1927-1937, China Inland Mission, 1961.
Monsterleet, Jean, Martyrs in China, Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Co., 1956.
Montgomery, Lane H., Never Again, Again, Again...Genocide: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Darfur, NY: Rudder Finn Press, 2007, 198pp., Bibliography.
Palmer, Gretta, God's Underground in Asia: The Full Story of the Red War of the Church in China, a Story of Organized Terror and Christian Heroism, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1953.
Pollock, John, A Foreign Devil in China: The Story of L. Nelson Bell, 1971. Reprinted by World Publications, Minneapolis, 1988.
Puebla Institute, The Martyrs of Maoism: China's Persecuted Christians, Washington, D.C.: Puebla Institute, 1992.
Reformation Today, various articles on China and Christianity, by Bob Davey, between Nov.-Dec. 2007 and Jan.-Feb. 2010 (the latter issue has the most recent article, "The Gospel in China 1930-1937".
Roberts, Dana, Understanding Wachman Nee, Plainfield, NJ: Haven, 1980.
Rummel, R. J., China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900, New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1991.
Shaw-Tong, Liu, Out of Red China, NY: Duell Sloan and Pierce, 1953, 269pp., preface by author, introduction by Dr. Hu Shih.
Shea, Nina, In the Lion's Den: A Shocking Account of Persecution and Martyrdom of Christians Today and How We Should Respond, Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1997.
Spence, Jonathon D., The Gate of Heavenly Peace: the Chinese and Their Cultural Revolution, 1895-1980, New York: Viking Press, 1981
Stewart-Smith, D. G., The Defeat of Communism, London: Ludgate Press, 1964, 482pp, introduction by author, preface by Salvador de Madariaga, bibliography, index, 43 historic photographs, maps.
Taylor, Mrs. Howard (Geraldine), The Triumph of John and Betty Stam, Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, 1960. Reprinted by OMF Books, 1978.
Thomson, D. P., Eric Liddell: Athlete and Missionary, Crieff, Scotland: Research Unit, 1971.
Tien Ju-K'ang, Peaks of Faith: Protestant Mission in Revolutionary China, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Tucker, Ruth A., From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983
Walker, Richard Lewis, The Human Cost of Communism in China, Washington, D.C.:U.S Government Printing Office, 1971. 28 pp., plus 5 p. index, 8 p. introduction by Senator James O. Eastland, forward by Walker, and tetter to Eastland by Senator Thomas J. Dodd, who report be prepared. Reprinted by ACU Education and Research Center, 1977.
White, Theodore H. and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China, New York: William Sloane Associates, 1946.
Friday, January 9, 2009
The Opacity Factor-A Country's Lack of Transparency Hinders Its Economic Growth
Satyam Computer's 7% plunge in stock price Wenesday, January 7, can teach us some lessons. Satyam, one of India's leading outsourcers, and a company whose stock is easy to buy in the U.S. (as an A.D.R.), it turns out, has been falsifying its financial data for years. Just because a foreign company is a U.S.-listed ADR doesn't guarantee investment safety-U.S regulatory agencies can barely police companies in their own back yard.
We don't have to go all the way to to India -the same thing has been going on in the U.S., with companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco which also "cooked' their books. The lack-of-transparency issue has been ignored at our peril the past decade. Tamar Frankel, a law Professor at Boston University, as well as an author, writes that "The global business culture downplays honesty...People talk a lot about efficiency and innovation, but being very trustworthy and honest is not high on the list."
The Milliken Institute, a capital formation and economic growth think tank, ranks sixty countries of the world by "Opacity Risk," which it defines as a lack of transparency. That risk is guaged by 1) a nation's corruption, 2) its legal systems, 3) its enforcement policies, 4) its accounting and disclosure standards, and 5) its regulatory quality. The lack of transparency is a major impediment to capital formation, and thus economic growth.
It turns out that India is not a very safe counry in which to invest-ranking 40th out of 60 countries. Probably not just coincidentally, two other mega-sized countries, China and Brazil, by comparison, only rank 41st and 42nd respectively.
U.S. citizens can not take much comfort either. The United States, as could almost be predicted from its dramatic stock markets' drop the past year, has plunged from 4th to 13th in transparency ranking in the past decade. Only 13th of 60 countries.
Which countries are the best-at least according to this measuring stick? The five best are: Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, and Australia.
The Milliken Institute's Joel Kurtzman sums it up thus: "I see the [transparency] issue as something that has been ignored over the last decade, and the issue of Satyam is perhaps one of many to come. If you operate in a lax system, you're likely to have more wrongdoing."
Which company will make tomorrow's headlines for lack of transparency? And, the bottom line- isn't this really a matter of ethics? "Who said, "It's the economy stupid?" Ultimately it's not the economy but ethics-or, worse yet, just "old-fashion" sin.
For Further Reading:
Frankel, Tamar, Trust and Honesty: America's Business Culture at the Crossroad.
We don't have to go all the way to to India -the same thing has been going on in the U.S., with companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco which also "cooked' their books. The lack-of-transparency issue has been ignored at our peril the past decade. Tamar Frankel, a law Professor at Boston University, as well as an author, writes that "The global business culture downplays honesty...People talk a lot about efficiency and innovation, but being very trustworthy and honest is not high on the list."
The Milliken Institute, a capital formation and economic growth think tank, ranks sixty countries of the world by "Opacity Risk," which it defines as a lack of transparency. That risk is guaged by 1) a nation's corruption, 2) its legal systems, 3) its enforcement policies, 4) its accounting and disclosure standards, and 5) its regulatory quality. The lack of transparency is a major impediment to capital formation, and thus economic growth.
It turns out that India is not a very safe counry in which to invest-ranking 40th out of 60 countries. Probably not just coincidentally, two other mega-sized countries, China and Brazil, by comparison, only rank 41st and 42nd respectively.
U.S. citizens can not take much comfort either. The United States, as could almost be predicted from its dramatic stock markets' drop the past year, has plunged from 4th to 13th in transparency ranking in the past decade. Only 13th of 60 countries.
Which countries are the best-at least according to this measuring stick? The five best are: Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, and Australia.
The Milliken Institute's Joel Kurtzman sums it up thus: "I see the [transparency] issue as something that has been ignored over the last decade, and the issue of Satyam is perhaps one of many to come. If you operate in a lax system, you're likely to have more wrongdoing."
Which company will make tomorrow's headlines for lack of transparency? And, the bottom line- isn't this really a matter of ethics? "Who said, "It's the economy stupid?" Ultimately it's not the economy but ethics-or, worse yet, just "old-fashion" sin.
For Further Reading:
Frankel, Tamar, Trust and Honesty: America's Business Culture at the Crossroad.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Two Hundred Years of Gospel Missions in China
Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the pioneer Protestant missionary to China, travelled by boat from England to Canton in 1807 with a passion to reach the Chinese people with the gospel. He baptized his first convert in 1814, and persevered in China for 25 years. He immersed himself in the language and culture, and became fluent in the Mandarin and Cantonese dialects. He completed a six volume Chinese-English dictionary (1815-1820) which is still in use. He also completed, from 1819-23, with colleague William Milne, a Chinese Bible translation. His ground-breaking efforts saw less than a dozen direct converts, but he prepared the way for many other missionaries to go. It can be said that Morrison, like the apostle Paul, laid the foundation upon which others built. His pleas helped recruit the first American missionary to China, Elijah Coleman Bridgman. His co-worker Liang Fa (Leang A-fa), 1789-1855, ordained by Morrison in 1823, became the first Chinese evangelist and the first pastor of the Chinese Church in Canton (Guangzhou).
A brief overview of Christian missions in China, before the modern missionary movement, should be helpful. The somewhat heretical, monastic Nestorian Christians had penetrated China as early as the seventh century. They followed the trade routes to Central Asia and reached China in A.D. 635, during the T'ang dynasy, which flourished from A.D 618-907. The T'ang dynasty, paricularily under T'ai Tsung, created the most prosperous and civilized culture in the world. The Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in China in the sixteenth century. Matthew Ricci (born 1552), the first, arrived in 1588. Of course, earlier than this, Marco Polo had reached Shangdu (Shang-tu, near modern Kalgan), Kublai Khan's summer palace, overland, with his father and uncle, in 1274. They had been warmly welcomed, so much so, in fact, that they weren't able to leave until 1292, sailing from, what is now Quanzhou, the southern China port, to, what is now, Singapore, before returning to Venice.
Medical missions have played a key role in China in the modern era. Peter Parker became the first Protestant medical missionary in 1834, and, with others, founded the Medical Missionary Soociety of China in 1835-36. Parker trained his first Chinese medical student in 1836. Fifty years later the famous Dr. Sun Yat Sen studied for a year there (in 1886). Some subsequent, famous, medical missionaries in China were Hudson Taylor, A. J. Broomhall (biographer of Hudson Taylor), and John Kenneth Mackenzie (1850-1888). Dr Mackenzie founded and ran the first government medical school in the Empire. L. Nelson Bell (1894-1973), a Southern Presbyterian, was in China from 1916 until 1941, as a missionary physician and surgeon in, what was to become, by 1930, the largest Presbyterian Hospital in the world. The Hospital was in Jiangsu Province. He became the father-in-law of Billy Graham. Dr. Walter Judd (born 1898), who became active in the Student Volunteer Movement, went to China in 1925 and later became a Minnesota congressman and central figure in post-World War II foreign affairs. Dr. Bill Wallace went to China from Knoxville, Tennesssee, in 1935 and died a martyr for Christ in a Communist prison in 1951. He saved an entire hospital by moving it down the river from Wachow.
After the Opium War of 1840-42, Hong Kong was ceded to the British. The Treaty of Nanking signed in 1843 opened five ports to the West, A flood of missionaries started entering China as a result of these events.. The first and most influential was German missionary, Karl Gutzlaff, who arrived in 1840 to minister in the coastal areas, aroused Europe to China missions, advocated missionaries wear Chinese dress, and translated much of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew to Chinese.
Mary Ann Aldersley, along with Maria Dyer (who later married Hudson Taylor) was a student of Robert Morrison's Chinese class. Aldersley was on the first committee of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE). She sailed to Djakarta, Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) in 1837 to work with Chinese immigrants, set up a school for girls in Surabaya(Indonesia), moved to Macao in 1841 when Hong Kong was leased to the British, and entered China in 1843. She was the first single western woman to do so. She established a school for girls, which grew over the years It was in in the largest of the port cities to open up to the West, Ningbo, which had a population of 300,000. She had opposed Maria Dyer's marriage to Hudson Taylor in 1858. Aldersley never once returned to England.
William Chalmers Burns (1815-1868), son of a famous Scottish minister, was himself a revivalist used of God in Scotland, England , and Canada. He became the first missionary to China of the Presbyterian Church of England, arriving in 1847. He evangelized in Canton, Amboy and Peking. He travelled and preached widely, adopting Chinese attire, as had his travelling companion of seven months (in 1855-56), Hudson Taylor. He opposed and raised awareness of the evil of the the opium and coolie trades.
James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) arrived in Shanghai in 1854 from England with the Chinese Evangelization Society, as only their second missionary, He wore Chinese clothes. He courageously opened up the interior to the gospel. He travelled extensively in China in spite of ill health. He founded China Inland Mission, now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. China Inland Mission (CIM) a "volunteer society" was the pioneer or prototype of "faith missions", which sprang up in the late 19th century" In 1866 sixteen missionaries sailed back to China with him from England. By 1891 he led 640 workers in China. He had a policy of not soliciting funds. He saw over 80 of the CIM family, adults and children, killed in the Boxer Uprising. His wife and four children died in China of disease and famine. His wife, Maria (Dyer), whom he married in 1858, was born in China of missionary parents. She died in 1870 at the age of only 33. He died in China in 1905, a month after returning to China..
Timothy Richard (1845-1919) was sent by the Baptist Missionary Society (of England) to China in 1859 developing missionary strategies that challenged many preconceived mission notions of the day. He was an inspiration to the Chinese literati, spurring education, agriculture, industrial, transportation, and trade reforms. He wrote about secular topics, and about Buddhism and the Chinese gods. He was instrumental in the founding of Shanxi University after the 1900 Boxer Uprising. He continued work in China until 1916, three years before he died.
George Leslie Mackay (1844-1902), a Canadian Presbyterian, who graduated from Princeton University, studied under Alexander Duff in Edinburgh, Scotland, went to the island of Formosa in 1872, and served as a missionary and evangelist for 29 years on the northwest part of the island. He married a Formosan. Mackay advocated a self-supporting and self-propagating indiginous church movement there, seeing six churches established. He established training schools and a hospital. He died at age 58.
Charlotte (Lottie) Diggs Moon (1840-1912) went as a single Southern Baptist missionary to China in 1873. She was almost evacuated to Japan in the Boxer Uprising of 1900. She witnessed the plague, smallpox, and famine in Tengchow during the time of a local rebellion. She organized relief efforts. She died on a ship to Japan, after a doctor found her severly malnourished. The Lottie Moon Society is now a major source of Southern Baptist mission funding, having raised millions of dollars for missions.
The famous "Cambridge Seven" sailed for China in 1885 to work with China Inland Mission (CIM), having applied for service with CIM in 1883-84. The most famous of these "student volunteers" was Charles Thomas (C. T.) Studd. He excelled in sports, especially cricket, at Eaton and Cambridge. Some considered him England's greatest cricket player. Studd came from a famous and wealthy family, and was noted for his hard-driving zeal and and, at times, brashness. His dad, and, later, he, had life-changing experiences after attending D. L. Moody's evangelistic services. American evangelist, Moody, visited Cambridge in an 1882 tour of England. Five other of Cambridge's finest athletic and academic students, and one other student, all of wealthy upbringing, travelled around England and Scotland speaking and mobilizing other students, before accompanying Studd to China. One of the seven was Dixon Hoste (1861-1946) who later, in 1902, succeeded Hudson Taylor as director of the China Inland Mission. The remainder of the Cambridge Seven were Montagu Beauchamp, William Cassels, Stanley P. Smith, and brothers Arthur and Cecil Polhill-Turner. Studd gave away his substantial inheritance for the work. After 10 years in China, he helped found the 'Student Volunteer Movement, which mobilized thousands for missions." He also did mission work in India and the Congo for many years. He founded the Worldide Evangelization Crusade (now WEC International) His later life was wracked with controversy, because of his "Gambler for God" intensity.
Jonathan Goforth (1859-1936), a Canadian Presbyterian minister, and his wife Rosalind Goforth (1864-1942), sailed to China in 1887-1888. They suffered many hardships in China, including the death of five of their eleven children, a fire that destroyed their possessions, and Jonathan's near-death in the Boxer Uprising, in which many other missionaries and converts were martyred. The Goforths were very effective evangelists and soul-winners. In the 1908-1909 North China Revivals, God used Goforth mightily. He was also used of God to prepare hearts for the 1932 Shantung Revival, as many Southern Baptist ministers involved in that revival had attended a 1929 conference in Peitailo, China in which Goforth spoke.. The Goforths returned to Canada in 1934, and wrote books which mobilized many others to missions.
In the 20th century, Eric Liddell was born in China in 1902, his parents being Presbyterian mssionaries. He won gold medals in the 1924 Olympics, and then returned to China in 1925. He died in a Japanese internment camp in 1945, with a hemorrhaging brain tumor, the harsh camp conditions probably hastening his death. He is, to this day, considered a hero in China, his former residence being protected by the Chinese government.
Gladys Aylward (1902-1970) of England arrived in China by rail in 1932, joining Jeannie Lawson in remote Yangcheng. Jeannie died, soon afterwards, but Gladys stayed until 1947. She used the Inn to reach many. She effectively opposed the foot-binding of girls. In 1940, during the Japanese invasion, she led 100 Chinese children, for one month, through mountains, to safety. The Hollywood movie, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, was based on these events. She later, in 1957, went to Taiwan and set up an orphanage, dying there in 1970.
In the Boxer Uprising of 1900, 189 Protestant missionaries (including 53 of their children), and several thousand Chinese Christians were killed. Many were CIM and single women missionaries in the interior. It is estimated that in 1900, at the time of the uprising, 2/3 of the western missionaries in China were women. Another authority, Ruth Tucker, author of From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, estimated that in the early 20th century the missionaries in some parts of China were 1/3 men missionaries, 1/3 married women, and 1/3 single women. She writes that, for instance, in one province, Shantung, in 1910, there were 79 women and 46 men Presbyterian and Baptist missionaries. Another example is from the very small denomination, Seventh Day Baptists, to which my wife and I belong. Misssion work was started in Shanghai in 1850 and hospitals were soon built in Shanghai and Liuho. Over the next 100 years, until the doors closed in 1950, when the Communists took control, there were more women than men missionaries. The Seventh Day Baptist medical doctors there were often women: Dr Ella Swinney (medical missionary in Shanghai beginning in 1883, Dr. Rosa Palmborg (born in Sweden 1867, medical missionary in China, 1894-1940), Dr. Grace Crandall (born 1875, medical missionary in China beginning in 1911), and Dr. Besse Sinclair (began medical work there in 1917). Valerie Griffiths, of Overseas Missionary Fellowship, documents in her book, Not Less than Everything, the key role of the courageous, heroic, pioneer women, married and single, in carrying the gospel to China.
Later well known twentieth century martyrs incuded John and Betty Stam in 1934 and John Birch in 1945. In 1950 the Communists took over China, missionaries were expelled, and persecution of Christians by an atheist state became the norm.
In the 50 years (1950-2000) after the Communists came to power, under adverse circumstances and a hostile environment, the Protestant churches, many being house churches, have grown perhaps a hundred fold, from over 900,000, to over 90 million. About 15 million worship in the state approved "Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) churches, and the rest, the great majority, in the unapproved house churches. Jonathan Chao, in an article, "Success under the Cross" (reprinted as "China-Growth through Suffering") carefully documents the factors causing this stunning growth. The growing indiginous movement is well exemplified by Philip Teng, of Hong Kong, the son of Presbyterian minister, and a graduate of Edinburgh University in Scotland. He was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, educator, evangelist, missionary and missiologist. He did mission work in southern Borneo, Indonesia and helped plant a number of churches. In 1973 he served as president of the Alliance World Federation.
Although hundreds of people groups in China are still unreached with the gospel, the story of the church in China is one of stunning growth under intense hardship. Some estimate that there are more Christians in China than in any other country in the world, even counting the United States. Let us pray that this growth will continue unabated, and will extend widely and mature mightily, so that China, much like Korea, will host missionaries to the rest of the world, including the decadent and post-modern West. And may God receive all praise and glory.
Select Bibliography:
A. Books
Aldersey White, E., A Woman Pioneer in China: The Life of Mary Ann Aldersley, Livingstone Press, 1932
Allen, C., The New Lottie Moon Story
Babcock, Ruby, A Study of Seventh Day Baptist Missions in China, American Sabbath Tract Society, 1925
Benge, Janet and Geoff Benge, Lottie Moon Giving her All for China, YWAM Publishing, 2001
Broomhall, A. J., Hudson Taylor & China's Open Century, Hodder and Stroughton, 7 volumes, 1981-1989
Broomhall, Marshall, Martyred Misssionaries of the China Inland Mission, CIM, 1901
Broomhall, Marshall, Robert Morrison: A Master-Builder
Broomhall, Marshall, The Bible in China, British & Foreign Bible Society, 1934
Bryson, Mrs., John Kenneth Mackenzie: Medical Missionary to China, Chicago: Student Missionary Campaign Library (Feming H. Revell Company), N.D.
Carlberg, Gustav, China in Revival, Augustana Book Concern, 1936
Clarke, William, The Church in China: Its Vitality, Its Future, Council Press
Caughey, Ellen, Some Gave All, Barbour Publishing, 2002 (biographies of Birch and Moon)
Duewel, Wesley, Revival Fires, Zondervan Publishing House, 1995, chapter 35: "Goforth and the North China Revival," chapter 36: "The Great Chinese Harvest," chapter 38: "The Shantung Revival"
Edwards, Lee, Missionary for Freedom: The Life and Times of Walter Judd, Paragon House, 1990
Fletcher, Jesse C., Bill Wallace of China, Broadman Press, 1963
Fulton, A., Through Earthquake, Wind and Fire: Church and Mission in Manchuria 1867-1950
Glover, A. E., A Thousand Miles of Miracles in China. A Personal Record of God's Delivering Power from the Hands of the Imperial Boxers of Shan-si (Shaanxi), Holder & Stroughton, 1904
Goforth, Jonathan, By My Spirit
Goforth, Rosalind, Goforth of China, , Zondervan, 1937
Gallagher, Louis, ed., China in the 16th Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1563-1610, Random House
Griffiths, Valerie, Not Less Than Everything, Monarch Books, Overseas Missionary Fellowship
Hefley, James and Marti, By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, Mott
Hefley, James and Marti, The Secret File on John Birch, Tyndale House Publishers, 1980
Hunter, A. and K. Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China
Moffet, S., A History of Christianity in Asia
Kwok, Pui-lan, Chinese Women and Christianity 1860-1927, Scholars Press, 1992
Palmburg, Rosa, China Letters, Recorder Press, American Sabbath Tract Society, 1943
Pollock, J., A Foreign Devil in China, (life of Dr Nelson Bell)
Lambert, Tony, China's Christian Millions, Monarch Books, 2000
Latourette, Kenneth, A History of Christian Missions in China, SPCK, 1929
Latourette, Kenneth, History of Christianity, Revised edition, 2 volumes, 1975
Lawrence, Una, Lottie Moon, Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1927
Merwin, Wallace, Adventure in Unity: The Church of Christ in China, Erdmans, 1974
Miller, R. Strang, William C. Burns (in the book Five Pioneer Missionaries, Banner of Truth,
1965, reprinted 1987
Moreau, A. Scott, ed,. Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Baker Books, 2000
Morrison, E. A., Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, D. D. , 2 volumes, Longman, 1839
Mueller, J Theodore, Great Missionaries to the Orient, 1948. Chapter 14: "George Leslie Mackay"
Neill, Stephen, A History of Christian Missions, Penguin, 1964
Outerbridge, Leonard, The Lost Churches of China, Westminster Press, 1952
Swift, Catherine, Eric Liddell, Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1990
Taylor, Dr. and Mrs. Howard, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, Moody Press, 1989
Taylor, Geraldine (Mrs Howard Taylor), The Triumph of John and Betty Stam, CIM, 1935
Thomas, R. Wardlaw, Giffith John, The Story of Fifty Years in China, Religious Tract Society, 1907
Townsend, William, Robert Morrison, The Pioneer of Chinese Missions, London Missionary Society, 1892 edition
Tucker, Ruth, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biogrphical History of Christian Missions, Zondervan Publishing House, 1983
Wallis, Andrew, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Orbis Books, 1997
White, B., Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity
Winslow, Carolyn, Tomorrow, Young People's Missionary Society, 1945
B. Periodicals
Mission Frontiers, Nov.-Dec. 2008, The U. S. Center for World Mission, 30:6, Title on cover: 'The Flying Man: China Rediscovers Its Hero". Articles on Liddell, Morrison, Parker, Taylor, Gutzlaff, and Richard. http://www.missionfrontiers.org/
Reformation Today, Nov.-Dec 2000, volume 178. Article: "China- Growth Through Suffering', by Jonathan Chao, p. 3-10.
Reformation Today, Nov-Dec. 2007, volume 220. Article: "Robert Morrison (1782-1830): Pioneer of the Gospel to China," by Bob Davey, p. 23-30
A brief overview of Christian missions in China, before the modern missionary movement, should be helpful. The somewhat heretical, monastic Nestorian Christians had penetrated China as early as the seventh century. They followed the trade routes to Central Asia and reached China in A.D. 635, during the T'ang dynasy, which flourished from A.D 618-907. The T'ang dynasty, paricularily under T'ai Tsung, created the most prosperous and civilized culture in the world. The Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in China in the sixteenth century. Matthew Ricci (born 1552), the first, arrived in 1588. Of course, earlier than this, Marco Polo had reached Shangdu (Shang-tu, near modern Kalgan), Kublai Khan's summer palace, overland, with his father and uncle, in 1274. They had been warmly welcomed, so much so, in fact, that they weren't able to leave until 1292, sailing from, what is now Quanzhou, the southern China port, to, what is now, Singapore, before returning to Venice.
Medical missions have played a key role in China in the modern era. Peter Parker became the first Protestant medical missionary in 1834, and, with others, founded the Medical Missionary Soociety of China in 1835-36. Parker trained his first Chinese medical student in 1836. Fifty years later the famous Dr. Sun Yat Sen studied for a year there (in 1886). Some subsequent, famous, medical missionaries in China were Hudson Taylor, A. J. Broomhall (biographer of Hudson Taylor), and John Kenneth Mackenzie (1850-1888). Dr Mackenzie founded and ran the first government medical school in the Empire. L. Nelson Bell (1894-1973), a Southern Presbyterian, was in China from 1916 until 1941, as a missionary physician and surgeon in, what was to become, by 1930, the largest Presbyterian Hospital in the world. The Hospital was in Jiangsu Province. He became the father-in-law of Billy Graham. Dr. Walter Judd (born 1898), who became active in the Student Volunteer Movement, went to China in 1925 and later became a Minnesota congressman and central figure in post-World War II foreign affairs. Dr. Bill Wallace went to China from Knoxville, Tennesssee, in 1935 and died a martyr for Christ in a Communist prison in 1951. He saved an entire hospital by moving it down the river from Wachow.
After the Opium War of 1840-42, Hong Kong was ceded to the British. The Treaty of Nanking signed in 1843 opened five ports to the West, A flood of missionaries started entering China as a result of these events.. The first and most influential was German missionary, Karl Gutzlaff, who arrived in 1840 to minister in the coastal areas, aroused Europe to China missions, advocated missionaries wear Chinese dress, and translated much of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew to Chinese.
Mary Ann Aldersley, along with Maria Dyer (who later married Hudson Taylor) was a student of Robert Morrison's Chinese class. Aldersley was on the first committee of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE). She sailed to Djakarta, Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) in 1837 to work with Chinese immigrants, set up a school for girls in Surabaya(Indonesia), moved to Macao in 1841 when Hong Kong was leased to the British, and entered China in 1843. She was the first single western woman to do so. She established a school for girls, which grew over the years It was in in the largest of the port cities to open up to the West, Ningbo, which had a population of 300,000. She had opposed Maria Dyer's marriage to Hudson Taylor in 1858. Aldersley never once returned to England.
William Chalmers Burns (1815-1868), son of a famous Scottish minister, was himself a revivalist used of God in Scotland, England , and Canada. He became the first missionary to China of the Presbyterian Church of England, arriving in 1847. He evangelized in Canton, Amboy and Peking. He travelled and preached widely, adopting Chinese attire, as had his travelling companion of seven months (in 1855-56), Hudson Taylor. He opposed and raised awareness of the evil of the the opium and coolie trades.
James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) arrived in Shanghai in 1854 from England with the Chinese Evangelization Society, as only their second missionary, He wore Chinese clothes. He courageously opened up the interior to the gospel. He travelled extensively in China in spite of ill health. He founded China Inland Mission, now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. China Inland Mission (CIM) a "volunteer society" was the pioneer or prototype of "faith missions", which sprang up in the late 19th century" In 1866 sixteen missionaries sailed back to China with him from England. By 1891 he led 640 workers in China. He had a policy of not soliciting funds. He saw over 80 of the CIM family, adults and children, killed in the Boxer Uprising. His wife and four children died in China of disease and famine. His wife, Maria (Dyer), whom he married in 1858, was born in China of missionary parents. She died in 1870 at the age of only 33. He died in China in 1905, a month after returning to China..
Timothy Richard (1845-1919) was sent by the Baptist Missionary Society (of England) to China in 1859 developing missionary strategies that challenged many preconceived mission notions of the day. He was an inspiration to the Chinese literati, spurring education, agriculture, industrial, transportation, and trade reforms. He wrote about secular topics, and about Buddhism and the Chinese gods. He was instrumental in the founding of Shanxi University after the 1900 Boxer Uprising. He continued work in China until 1916, three years before he died.
George Leslie Mackay (1844-1902), a Canadian Presbyterian, who graduated from Princeton University, studied under Alexander Duff in Edinburgh, Scotland, went to the island of Formosa in 1872, and served as a missionary and evangelist for 29 years on the northwest part of the island. He married a Formosan. Mackay advocated a self-supporting and self-propagating indiginous church movement there, seeing six churches established. He established training schools and a hospital. He died at age 58.
Charlotte (Lottie) Diggs Moon (1840-1912) went as a single Southern Baptist missionary to China in 1873. She was almost evacuated to Japan in the Boxer Uprising of 1900. She witnessed the plague, smallpox, and famine in Tengchow during the time of a local rebellion. She organized relief efforts. She died on a ship to Japan, after a doctor found her severly malnourished. The Lottie Moon Society is now a major source of Southern Baptist mission funding, having raised millions of dollars for missions.
The famous "Cambridge Seven" sailed for China in 1885 to work with China Inland Mission (CIM), having applied for service with CIM in 1883-84. The most famous of these "student volunteers" was Charles Thomas (C. T.) Studd. He excelled in sports, especially cricket, at Eaton and Cambridge. Some considered him England's greatest cricket player. Studd came from a famous and wealthy family, and was noted for his hard-driving zeal and and, at times, brashness. His dad, and, later, he, had life-changing experiences after attending D. L. Moody's evangelistic services. American evangelist, Moody, visited Cambridge in an 1882 tour of England. Five other of Cambridge's finest athletic and academic students, and one other student, all of wealthy upbringing, travelled around England and Scotland speaking and mobilizing other students, before accompanying Studd to China. One of the seven was Dixon Hoste (1861-1946) who later, in 1902, succeeded Hudson Taylor as director of the China Inland Mission. The remainder of the Cambridge Seven were Montagu Beauchamp, William Cassels, Stanley P. Smith, and brothers Arthur and Cecil Polhill-Turner. Studd gave away his substantial inheritance for the work. After 10 years in China, he helped found the 'Student Volunteer Movement, which mobilized thousands for missions." He also did mission work in India and the Congo for many years. He founded the Worldide Evangelization Crusade (now WEC International) His later life was wracked with controversy, because of his "Gambler for God" intensity.
Jonathan Goforth (1859-1936), a Canadian Presbyterian minister, and his wife Rosalind Goforth (1864-1942), sailed to China in 1887-1888. They suffered many hardships in China, including the death of five of their eleven children, a fire that destroyed their possessions, and Jonathan's near-death in the Boxer Uprising, in which many other missionaries and converts were martyred. The Goforths were very effective evangelists and soul-winners. In the 1908-1909 North China Revivals, God used Goforth mightily. He was also used of God to prepare hearts for the 1932 Shantung Revival, as many Southern Baptist ministers involved in that revival had attended a 1929 conference in Peitailo, China in which Goforth spoke.. The Goforths returned to Canada in 1934, and wrote books which mobilized many others to missions.
In the 20th century, Eric Liddell was born in China in 1902, his parents being Presbyterian mssionaries. He won gold medals in the 1924 Olympics, and then returned to China in 1925. He died in a Japanese internment camp in 1945, with a hemorrhaging brain tumor, the harsh camp conditions probably hastening his death. He is, to this day, considered a hero in China, his former residence being protected by the Chinese government.
Gladys Aylward (1902-1970) of England arrived in China by rail in 1932, joining Jeannie Lawson in remote Yangcheng. Jeannie died, soon afterwards, but Gladys stayed until 1947. She used the Inn to reach many. She effectively opposed the foot-binding of girls. In 1940, during the Japanese invasion, she led 100 Chinese children, for one month, through mountains, to safety. The Hollywood movie, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, was based on these events. She later, in 1957, went to Taiwan and set up an orphanage, dying there in 1970.
In the Boxer Uprising of 1900, 189 Protestant missionaries (including 53 of their children), and several thousand Chinese Christians were killed. Many were CIM and single women missionaries in the interior. It is estimated that in 1900, at the time of the uprising, 2/3 of the western missionaries in China were women. Another authority, Ruth Tucker, author of From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, estimated that in the early 20th century the missionaries in some parts of China were 1/3 men missionaries, 1/3 married women, and 1/3 single women. She writes that, for instance, in one province, Shantung, in 1910, there were 79 women and 46 men Presbyterian and Baptist missionaries. Another example is from the very small denomination, Seventh Day Baptists, to which my wife and I belong. Misssion work was started in Shanghai in 1850 and hospitals were soon built in Shanghai and Liuho. Over the next 100 years, until the doors closed in 1950, when the Communists took control, there were more women than men missionaries. The Seventh Day Baptist medical doctors there were often women: Dr Ella Swinney (medical missionary in Shanghai beginning in 1883, Dr. Rosa Palmborg (born in Sweden 1867, medical missionary in China, 1894-1940), Dr. Grace Crandall (born 1875, medical missionary in China beginning in 1911), and Dr. Besse Sinclair (began medical work there in 1917). Valerie Griffiths, of Overseas Missionary Fellowship, documents in her book, Not Less than Everything, the key role of the courageous, heroic, pioneer women, married and single, in carrying the gospel to China.
Later well known twentieth century martyrs incuded John and Betty Stam in 1934 and John Birch in 1945. In 1950 the Communists took over China, missionaries were expelled, and persecution of Christians by an atheist state became the norm.
In the 50 years (1950-2000) after the Communists came to power, under adverse circumstances and a hostile environment, the Protestant churches, many being house churches, have grown perhaps a hundred fold, from over 900,000, to over 90 million. About 15 million worship in the state approved "Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) churches, and the rest, the great majority, in the unapproved house churches. Jonathan Chao, in an article, "Success under the Cross" (reprinted as "China-Growth through Suffering") carefully documents the factors causing this stunning growth. The growing indiginous movement is well exemplified by Philip Teng, of Hong Kong, the son of Presbyterian minister, and a graduate of Edinburgh University in Scotland. He was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, educator, evangelist, missionary and missiologist. He did mission work in southern Borneo, Indonesia and helped plant a number of churches. In 1973 he served as president of the Alliance World Federation.
Although hundreds of people groups in China are still unreached with the gospel, the story of the church in China is one of stunning growth under intense hardship. Some estimate that there are more Christians in China than in any other country in the world, even counting the United States. Let us pray that this growth will continue unabated, and will extend widely and mature mightily, so that China, much like Korea, will host missionaries to the rest of the world, including the decadent and post-modern West. And may God receive all praise and glory.
Select Bibliography:
A. Books
Aldersey White, E., A Woman Pioneer in China: The Life of Mary Ann Aldersley, Livingstone Press, 1932
Allen, C., The New Lottie Moon Story
Babcock, Ruby, A Study of Seventh Day Baptist Missions in China, American Sabbath Tract Society, 1925
Benge, Janet and Geoff Benge, Lottie Moon Giving her All for China, YWAM Publishing, 2001
Broomhall, A. J., Hudson Taylor & China's Open Century, Hodder and Stroughton, 7 volumes, 1981-1989
Broomhall, Marshall, Martyred Misssionaries of the China Inland Mission, CIM, 1901
Broomhall, Marshall, Robert Morrison: A Master-Builder
Broomhall, Marshall, The Bible in China, British & Foreign Bible Society, 1934
Bryson, Mrs., John Kenneth Mackenzie: Medical Missionary to China, Chicago: Student Missionary Campaign Library (Feming H. Revell Company), N.D.
Carlberg, Gustav, China in Revival, Augustana Book Concern, 1936
Clarke, William, The Church in China: Its Vitality, Its Future, Council Press
Caughey, Ellen, Some Gave All, Barbour Publishing, 2002 (biographies of Birch and Moon)
Duewel, Wesley, Revival Fires, Zondervan Publishing House, 1995, chapter 35: "Goforth and the North China Revival," chapter 36: "The Great Chinese Harvest," chapter 38: "The Shantung Revival"
Edwards, Lee, Missionary for Freedom: The Life and Times of Walter Judd, Paragon House, 1990
Fletcher, Jesse C., Bill Wallace of China, Broadman Press, 1963
Fulton, A., Through Earthquake, Wind and Fire: Church and Mission in Manchuria 1867-1950
Glover, A. E., A Thousand Miles of Miracles in China. A Personal Record of God's Delivering Power from the Hands of the Imperial Boxers of Shan-si (Shaanxi), Holder & Stroughton, 1904
Goforth, Jonathan, By My Spirit
Goforth, Rosalind, Goforth of China, , Zondervan, 1937
Gallagher, Louis, ed., China in the 16th Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1563-1610, Random House
Griffiths, Valerie, Not Less Than Everything, Monarch Books, Overseas Missionary Fellowship
Hefley, James and Marti, By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, Mott
Hefley, James and Marti, The Secret File on John Birch, Tyndale House Publishers, 1980
Hunter, A. and K. Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China
Moffet, S., A History of Christianity in Asia
Kwok, Pui-lan, Chinese Women and Christianity 1860-1927, Scholars Press, 1992
Palmburg, Rosa, China Letters, Recorder Press, American Sabbath Tract Society, 1943
Pollock, J., A Foreign Devil in China, (life of Dr Nelson Bell)
Lambert, Tony, China's Christian Millions, Monarch Books, 2000
Latourette, Kenneth, A History of Christian Missions in China, SPCK, 1929
Latourette, Kenneth, History of Christianity, Revised edition, 2 volumes, 1975
Lawrence, Una, Lottie Moon, Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1927
Merwin, Wallace, Adventure in Unity: The Church of Christ in China, Erdmans, 1974
Miller, R. Strang, William C. Burns (in the book Five Pioneer Missionaries, Banner of Truth,
1965, reprinted 1987
Moreau, A. Scott, ed,. Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Baker Books, 2000
Morrison, E. A., Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, D. D. , 2 volumes, Longman, 1839
Mueller, J Theodore, Great Missionaries to the Orient, 1948. Chapter 14: "George Leslie Mackay"
Neill, Stephen, A History of Christian Missions, Penguin, 1964
Outerbridge, Leonard, The Lost Churches of China, Westminster Press, 1952
Swift, Catherine, Eric Liddell, Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1990
Taylor, Dr. and Mrs. Howard, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, Moody Press, 1989
Taylor, Geraldine (Mrs Howard Taylor), The Triumph of John and Betty Stam, CIM, 1935
Thomas, R. Wardlaw, Giffith John, The Story of Fifty Years in China, Religious Tract Society, 1907
Townsend, William, Robert Morrison, The Pioneer of Chinese Missions, London Missionary Society, 1892 edition
Tucker, Ruth, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biogrphical History of Christian Missions, Zondervan Publishing House, 1983
Wallis, Andrew, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Orbis Books, 1997
White, B., Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity
Winslow, Carolyn, Tomorrow, Young People's Missionary Society, 1945
B. Periodicals
Mission Frontiers, Nov.-Dec. 2008, The U. S. Center for World Mission, 30:6, Title on cover: 'The Flying Man: China Rediscovers Its Hero". Articles on Liddell, Morrison, Parker, Taylor, Gutzlaff, and Richard. http://www.missionfrontiers.org/
Reformation Today, Nov.-Dec 2000, volume 178. Article: "China- Growth Through Suffering', by Jonathan Chao, p. 3-10.
Reformation Today, Nov-Dec. 2007, volume 220. Article: "Robert Morrison (1782-1830): Pioneer of the Gospel to China," by Bob Davey, p. 23-30
Sunday, January 4, 2009
20/20 VISION: 20 MISSION BOOKS THAT CHALLENGED ME MOST THE PAST 20 YEARS
I thank God for giving me another year to praise and serve Him, and also to reflect on His past mercies. The New Year is a good time to look back, as well as to look forward.
About 20 years ago God lead my wife and I to take, over the course of several years, about a half-dozen courses (some were one week inter-term courses offered in Januay and August) at Westminster Seminary-West in Escondido, California.
Subsequently, He lead us to take the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement Course in Redlands, California, where we were mentored by Frank and Nancy Tichy, and where we had the privilege of hearing Ralph and Roberta Winter, Don Richardson, Lloyd Kwast, Arthur Glasser, Don McCurdy, Stan Yoder, Thomas and Elizabeth Brewster, and others. We later moved to Indiana and, as Perspectives class alumni and helpers, were able to learn from Ruth Tucker, David Hesselgrave, Marti Smith, Amy Law, Carol Davis, Jennifer Collins, David Giles, Jim Lo, Randy Spracht and others. Our oldest daughter also had been able to take the Perspectives course in Hemet, California.
My two excellent mission classes at Westminster-West were with Timothy Monsma, co-author with Roger Greenaway, of Cities: Missions' New Frontiers, and with Derk Bergsma.
We were really challenged to be involved in missions.
This involvement soon included short term projects in Africa, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Guyana, and two years in Indonesia. For our oldest daughter it meant a summer project in the Philippines with New Tribes Mission and 2 years teaching in Dominican Republic. Elizabeth Elliot became one of her favorite authors.
The past several years have entailed recruiting and leading medical mission teams mainly to Guyana, South America, to do outreach clinics, and to help children there get needed surgeries. We have also done short-term projects in Jamaica and Indonesia.
I have been thinking about the mission-oriented books that most influenced and challenged me in these past 20 years and have come up with a list of 20. Since I have an avid interest in missions history, my choices are skewed somewhat in that direction. I would enjoy getting feedback from you-especially about some mission books that might be on your list. My list includes some large reference-type books. I've listed them first.
My "20/20" List:
1. Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, A. Scott Moreau, editor, Baker Books, 2000. 1068 p. A gift from my daughter and a book I'll occasionally spend most of an evening absorbing.
2. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne, editors, William Carey Library, 1981, 1992. 846p. Our Perspectives class textbook. A new edition, I haven't seen, was just released. My old hardcover copy is well marked and still referred to frequently.
3. Operation World: When We Pray God Works, Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandrryk, editors, U.S Center for World Mission and WEC International, 21st Century edition, 2001, 797p. Still an indispensible reference and prayer guide to every country in the world.
4. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Ruth Tucker, Zondervan, 1983, 511p. Winner of the Gold Medallion Award. A book I've read in full, marked up, and reread in parts.
5. A History of Christian Missions, Stephen Neal, Pelican Books, 624p. My little paperback version makes for nice travel reading. A good overview of the momentum of Christian missions through history.
6. Eternity in their Hearts, Don Richardson, Regal Books, 1981. My favorite of Don's books because of its sweeping view of 27 ancient cultures God prepared for the gospel with astonishing redemptive analogies. The book title is from Eccles. 3:11. His "4000-Year Connection" is one of the chapter titles, and also the title of his one-day seminar we attended in the 1990's. The mission mandate is emphasized. I did a book report on this one for the Perspectives class. Peace Child, the story of the Sawi headhunters and redemptive analogy was his best-seller, translated in 18 languages, and a Readers Digest book-of-the-month selection. Lords of the Earth, about missionary Stan Dale and the stone-age Yali of Irian Jawa was also a good read.
7. Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, John Piper, 1993, revised and expanded 2003. A passionate plea for God-centered missions. " Missions exist because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man." A classic.
8. The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, Moody Press, 1949. A missionary to Native Americans in NJ , NY, and PA, who counted about 150 converts in NJ BY 1746, just before his death. A classic since it was made widely available by Moody Press. My compact pocket-sized, 1850's abridgement (The Life of the Rev. David Brainerd, by the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, Riligious Tract Society, 1799ff) of the original 1740's diary, has been overseas with me several times, and is one of the few books I've read (and cried) through more than once. The great theologian and missionary in his own right, Jonathan Edwards, Brainerd's mentor, put the diary into publishable form, after Brainerd's death from tuberculosis at age 29.
9. My Love Must Wait: The Story of Henry Martyn, D. Bentley-Taylor. I no longer have a copy, but shed some tears over this one too. English missionary to India and Iran, who followed in the tradition of Brainerd and Carey. He died in Turkey at age 21. He had earlier written in India, "Now, let me burn out for God." I would also like to see a 21st century biography written on the life of William Borden, another missionary, who like Brainerd and Martyn burnt out for God in his youth.
10. Five Pioneer Missionaries: David Brainerd, William C. Burns, John Eliot, Henry Martyn, John G. Paton, Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, 1987. 345p. The best biography of some of the greatest calvinistic-oriented missionaries of the 18th and 19th century, although it doesn't include missionary greats like Moffat, Carey, and Judson.
11. The St. Andrews Seven: The Finest Flowering of Missionary Zeal in Scottish History, Stuart Piggin and John Roxborough, Banner of Truth Trust, 1985, 130p. The story of the legendary Thomas Chalmers and six of his students at the University of Saint Andrews in the 1820's. The six students were: Alexander Duff, John Urquhart, John Adam, Robert Nesbit, William Sinclair Mackay, and John Ewart. Their teenage enthusiasm to serve Christ to the ends of the earth, led to great missionary work later, primarily in India. The early death of John Urquhart spurred the other five to "discover God's will and do it."
12. The Missionary Heroes of Africa, J. H. Morrison, George Doran Co., 1922, Reprinted by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969. 267 pages. Has a chapter on each of these notable 19th and early 20th century "missionary heroes" of Africa: Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, John Mackenzie, James Stewart (of Lovedale), Robert Laws (of Livingstonia), Alexander Mackay (of Uganda), George Grenfell (of the Congo), Francois Coillard (of the Zambezi), and Mary Slessor (of Calabar). Another book I've enjoyed rereading recently.
13. Company of Heaven: Early Missionaries in the South Seas, Graeme Kent, Thomas Nelson, 1972, 230p. Many, nice historical illustrations. Written by an English author, who also served in the British Army, as a school teacher, and as a BBC producer, and lived with his family in the Soloman Islands. Fascinating, well writen account.
14. Some Gave All: Four Stories of Missionary Martyrs, Ellen Caughey, Barbour Publishing, 2002, 208p. The four martyrs are John Birch (China), Betty Olsen (Vietnam), Lottie Moon (China), and Nate Saint (Ecuador). From Barbour's "Heroes of the Faith" series- in paperback.
15. Cities: Missions New Frontier, Roger S. Greenaway and Timothy M. Monsma, Baker Book House, 1989, 2nd ed. 1990. Textbook for my class with Monsma at Westminster-West. An excellent, scholarly global overview of urban missions.
15. Let the Whole World Know: Resources for Preaching on Missions, Richard R. DeRidder and Roger S. Greenaway, Baker Book House, 1988. An great resource for preaching or teaching. I have used it, including, my favorites, these summaries of Christ's commission:
GO - authority enough
YE - messengers enough
INTO ALL THE WORLD -territory enough
AND PREACH -work enough
THE GOSPEL -message enough
TO EVERY CREATURE -audience enough
I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS -assurance enough
YOU SHALL BE MY WITNESSES,
IN JERUSALEM -where I was rejected and condemned
IN JUDEA -where I was crucified
IN SAMARIA -where I was not wanted
IN THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH -where I am not known
16. Revolution in World Missions, K. P. Yohannan, gfa books a division of Gospel for Asia, many printings 1986 to the present, 212p. Yohannan challenges us to "examine our lifestyles in view of millions who have never heard the gospel." I read it in 1992 and passed it on to a Guyanese pastor who quickly read it with exitement. Advocates supporting indiginous missionaries in the vast unreached 10/40 window, as Gospel For Asia does. Nearly a million copies are in print. Older used copies are still easy to find, under title, The Coming Revolution in Word Missions: Final Thrust to Reach The 10/40 Window.
17. Catch the Vision 2000, Bill and Amy Stearns, Bethany House Publishers, 1991. I found this a practical book, in the 1990's, to better understand God's global purpose and to reach every unreached people group. Their newer Run with the Vision should be as helpful also.
18. How to be a World Class Christian: Special 50-Day Adventure Abridged Edition, Paul Borthwick, Victor Books, 1993. Have given away several copies-it's compact, useful, and inexpensive ( and easy to find used copies). Borthwick's A Mind for Missions is similarily useful but not as compact.
19. In the Gap:What it Means to be a World Christian, David Bryant, Inter-Varsity Press, 1979, 1981. Empasizes prayer, partnering, and teamwork. In the back it has a verse from every book of the Bible showing God's missionary heart and purpose. Bryant's newer book is Stand in the Gap.
20. A Vision for Missions, Tom Wells, Banner of Truth, 1985, 157p. A little book I discovered and read recently. The missionary endeavour is very basic to Christianity. He delves into the inspiration behind the 18th and 19th century missionary movement, with special emphasis on the examples of David Brainerd, William Carey, and Henry Martyn.
My reading list for the New Year includes:
1. David Bosch, Transforming Mission, Orbis, 2003.
2. Philip Jenkins, The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
3. Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi, The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for Transformation of a Culture, Crossway Books, 1999. Summarized in a recent issue of Mission Frontiers magazine
4. Daniel Weber, William Carey and the Missionary Vision, Banner of Truth Trust, 2005. Part 2 of the book, over half the book, has Carey's complete An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, written in 1792, a book God used mightily at the beginning of the modern missionary era.
5. Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, Orbis Books, 1197. A winner of "Christianity Today Book Award."
6. David Hesselgrave, Paradigms in Conflict: 10 Key Questions in Christian Missions Today, Kregel Books, 2005. Hesselgrave signed my copy at the Perspectives class.
7. Mrs Howard Taylor, Borden of Yale '09, C.I.M., 1913. Moody Press reprint 1923.
8. Charles Soutter Campbell, William Borden: A Short Life Complete in Christ, 1909. If I can find it.
I recently read summaries of, or acquired and perused, most of these books, stimulating my interest in reading them in full. I would like to read more about the lives of early 20th century missionaries William Borden (No book has been written about Borden since 1913, it seems) and Eric Liddell (Liddell's 1924 Olympic feats are well know through the movie, Chariots of Fire). John Keddie's Running the Race, a biography of Eric Liddell was recently published in Mandarin and is being distributed in China, where Liddell is a hero, mainly because of his internment by the Japanese at Weihsien in China until his death in 1945, with a brain tumor. The film project about Eric Liddell, The Flying Man, and his missionary years in China is exciting. Mission Frontiers, Nov-Dec 2008 issue, has a 4 page article, "Eric Liddell, The Flying Man: China Rediscovers Its Hero," by Mark Harris. You may also wish to inquire about the future film by emailing to: loveinchinacommunications@gmail.com
About 20 years ago God lead my wife and I to take, over the course of several years, about a half-dozen courses (some were one week inter-term courses offered in Januay and August) at Westminster Seminary-West in Escondido, California.
Subsequently, He lead us to take the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement Course in Redlands, California, where we were mentored by Frank and Nancy Tichy, and where we had the privilege of hearing Ralph and Roberta Winter, Don Richardson, Lloyd Kwast, Arthur Glasser, Don McCurdy, Stan Yoder, Thomas and Elizabeth Brewster, and others. We later moved to Indiana and, as Perspectives class alumni and helpers, were able to learn from Ruth Tucker, David Hesselgrave, Marti Smith, Amy Law, Carol Davis, Jennifer Collins, David Giles, Jim Lo, Randy Spracht and others. Our oldest daughter also had been able to take the Perspectives course in Hemet, California.
My two excellent mission classes at Westminster-West were with Timothy Monsma, co-author with Roger Greenaway, of Cities: Missions' New Frontiers, and with Derk Bergsma.
We were really challenged to be involved in missions.
This involvement soon included short term projects in Africa, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Guyana, and two years in Indonesia. For our oldest daughter it meant a summer project in the Philippines with New Tribes Mission and 2 years teaching in Dominican Republic. Elizabeth Elliot became one of her favorite authors.
The past several years have entailed recruiting and leading medical mission teams mainly to Guyana, South America, to do outreach clinics, and to help children there get needed surgeries. We have also done short-term projects in Jamaica and Indonesia.
I have been thinking about the mission-oriented books that most influenced and challenged me in these past 20 years and have come up with a list of 20. Since I have an avid interest in missions history, my choices are skewed somewhat in that direction. I would enjoy getting feedback from you-especially about some mission books that might be on your list. My list includes some large reference-type books. I've listed them first.
My "20/20" List:
1. Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, A. Scott Moreau, editor, Baker Books, 2000. 1068 p. A gift from my daughter and a book I'll occasionally spend most of an evening absorbing.
2. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne, editors, William Carey Library, 1981, 1992. 846p. Our Perspectives class textbook. A new edition, I haven't seen, was just released. My old hardcover copy is well marked and still referred to frequently.
3. Operation World: When We Pray God Works, Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandrryk, editors, U.S Center for World Mission and WEC International, 21st Century edition, 2001, 797p. Still an indispensible reference and prayer guide to every country in the world.
4. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Ruth Tucker, Zondervan, 1983, 511p. Winner of the Gold Medallion Award. A book I've read in full, marked up, and reread in parts.
5. A History of Christian Missions, Stephen Neal, Pelican Books, 624p. My little paperback version makes for nice travel reading. A good overview of the momentum of Christian missions through history.
6. Eternity in their Hearts, Don Richardson, Regal Books, 1981. My favorite of Don's books because of its sweeping view of 27 ancient cultures God prepared for the gospel with astonishing redemptive analogies. The book title is from Eccles. 3:11. His "4000-Year Connection" is one of the chapter titles, and also the title of his one-day seminar we attended in the 1990's. The mission mandate is emphasized. I did a book report on this one for the Perspectives class. Peace Child, the story of the Sawi headhunters and redemptive analogy was his best-seller, translated in 18 languages, and a Readers Digest book-of-the-month selection. Lords of the Earth, about missionary Stan Dale and the stone-age Yali of Irian Jawa was also a good read.
7. Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, John Piper, 1993, revised and expanded 2003. A passionate plea for God-centered missions. " Missions exist because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man." A classic.
8. The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, Moody Press, 1949. A missionary to Native Americans in NJ , NY, and PA, who counted about 150 converts in NJ BY 1746, just before his death. A classic since it was made widely available by Moody Press. My compact pocket-sized, 1850's abridgement (The Life of the Rev. David Brainerd, by the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, Riligious Tract Society, 1799ff) of the original 1740's diary, has been overseas with me several times, and is one of the few books I've read (and cried) through more than once. The great theologian and missionary in his own right, Jonathan Edwards, Brainerd's mentor, put the diary into publishable form, after Brainerd's death from tuberculosis at age 29.
9. My Love Must Wait: The Story of Henry Martyn, D. Bentley-Taylor. I no longer have a copy, but shed some tears over this one too. English missionary to India and Iran, who followed in the tradition of Brainerd and Carey. He died in Turkey at age 21. He had earlier written in India, "Now, let me burn out for God." I would also like to see a 21st century biography written on the life of William Borden, another missionary, who like Brainerd and Martyn burnt out for God in his youth.
10. Five Pioneer Missionaries: David Brainerd, William C. Burns, John Eliot, Henry Martyn, John G. Paton, Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, 1987. 345p. The best biography of some of the greatest calvinistic-oriented missionaries of the 18th and 19th century, although it doesn't include missionary greats like Moffat, Carey, and Judson.
11. The St. Andrews Seven: The Finest Flowering of Missionary Zeal in Scottish History, Stuart Piggin and John Roxborough, Banner of Truth Trust, 1985, 130p. The story of the legendary Thomas Chalmers and six of his students at the University of Saint Andrews in the 1820's. The six students were: Alexander Duff, John Urquhart, John Adam, Robert Nesbit, William Sinclair Mackay, and John Ewart. Their teenage enthusiasm to serve Christ to the ends of the earth, led to great missionary work later, primarily in India. The early death of John Urquhart spurred the other five to "discover God's will and do it."
12. The Missionary Heroes of Africa, J. H. Morrison, George Doran Co., 1922, Reprinted by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969. 267 pages. Has a chapter on each of these notable 19th and early 20th century "missionary heroes" of Africa: Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, John Mackenzie, James Stewart (of Lovedale), Robert Laws (of Livingstonia), Alexander Mackay (of Uganda), George Grenfell (of the Congo), Francois Coillard (of the Zambezi), and Mary Slessor (of Calabar). Another book I've enjoyed rereading recently.
13. Company of Heaven: Early Missionaries in the South Seas, Graeme Kent, Thomas Nelson, 1972, 230p. Many, nice historical illustrations. Written by an English author, who also served in the British Army, as a school teacher, and as a BBC producer, and lived with his family in the Soloman Islands. Fascinating, well writen account.
14. Some Gave All: Four Stories of Missionary Martyrs, Ellen Caughey, Barbour Publishing, 2002, 208p. The four martyrs are John Birch (China), Betty Olsen (Vietnam), Lottie Moon (China), and Nate Saint (Ecuador). From Barbour's "Heroes of the Faith" series- in paperback.
15. Cities: Missions New Frontier, Roger S. Greenaway and Timothy M. Monsma, Baker Book House, 1989, 2nd ed. 1990. Textbook for my class with Monsma at Westminster-West. An excellent, scholarly global overview of urban missions.
15. Let the Whole World Know: Resources for Preaching on Missions, Richard R. DeRidder and Roger S. Greenaway, Baker Book House, 1988. An great resource for preaching or teaching. I have used it, including, my favorites, these summaries of Christ's commission:
GO - authority enough
YE - messengers enough
INTO ALL THE WORLD -territory enough
AND PREACH -work enough
THE GOSPEL -message enough
TO EVERY CREATURE -audience enough
I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS -assurance enough
YOU SHALL BE MY WITNESSES,
IN JERUSALEM -where I was rejected and condemned
IN JUDEA -where I was crucified
IN SAMARIA -where I was not wanted
IN THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH -where I am not known
16. Revolution in World Missions, K. P. Yohannan, gfa books a division of Gospel for Asia, many printings 1986 to the present, 212p. Yohannan challenges us to "examine our lifestyles in view of millions who have never heard the gospel." I read it in 1992 and passed it on to a Guyanese pastor who quickly read it with exitement. Advocates supporting indiginous missionaries in the vast unreached 10/40 window, as Gospel For Asia does. Nearly a million copies are in print. Older used copies are still easy to find, under title, The Coming Revolution in Word Missions: Final Thrust to Reach The 10/40 Window.
17. Catch the Vision 2000, Bill and Amy Stearns, Bethany House Publishers, 1991. I found this a practical book, in the 1990's, to better understand God's global purpose and to reach every unreached people group. Their newer Run with the Vision should be as helpful also.
18. How to be a World Class Christian: Special 50-Day Adventure Abridged Edition, Paul Borthwick, Victor Books, 1993. Have given away several copies-it's compact, useful, and inexpensive ( and easy to find used copies). Borthwick's A Mind for Missions is similarily useful but not as compact.
19. In the Gap:What it Means to be a World Christian, David Bryant, Inter-Varsity Press, 1979, 1981. Empasizes prayer, partnering, and teamwork. In the back it has a verse from every book of the Bible showing God's missionary heart and purpose. Bryant's newer book is Stand in the Gap.
20. A Vision for Missions, Tom Wells, Banner of Truth, 1985, 157p. A little book I discovered and read recently. The missionary endeavour is very basic to Christianity. He delves into the inspiration behind the 18th and 19th century missionary movement, with special emphasis on the examples of David Brainerd, William Carey, and Henry Martyn.
My reading list for the New Year includes:
1. David Bosch, Transforming Mission, Orbis, 2003.
2. Philip Jenkins, The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
3. Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi, The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for Transformation of a Culture, Crossway Books, 1999. Summarized in a recent issue of Mission Frontiers magazine
4. Daniel Weber, William Carey and the Missionary Vision, Banner of Truth Trust, 2005. Part 2 of the book, over half the book, has Carey's complete An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, written in 1792, a book God used mightily at the beginning of the modern missionary era.
5. Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, Orbis Books, 1197. A winner of "Christianity Today Book Award."
6. David Hesselgrave, Paradigms in Conflict: 10 Key Questions in Christian Missions Today, Kregel Books, 2005. Hesselgrave signed my copy at the Perspectives class.
7. Mrs Howard Taylor, Borden of Yale '09, C.I.M., 1913. Moody Press reprint 1923.
8. Charles Soutter Campbell, William Borden: A Short Life Complete in Christ, 1909. If I can find it.
I recently read summaries of, or acquired and perused, most of these books, stimulating my interest in reading them in full. I would like to read more about the lives of early 20th century missionaries William Borden (No book has been written about Borden since 1913, it seems) and Eric Liddell (Liddell's 1924 Olympic feats are well know through the movie, Chariots of Fire). John Keddie's Running the Race, a biography of Eric Liddell was recently published in Mandarin and is being distributed in China, where Liddell is a hero, mainly because of his internment by the Japanese at Weihsien in China until his death in 1945, with a brain tumor. The film project about Eric Liddell, The Flying Man, and his missionary years in China is exciting. Mission Frontiers, Nov-Dec 2008 issue, has a 4 page article, "Eric Liddell, The Flying Man: China Rediscovers Its Hero," by Mark Harris. You may also wish to inquire about the future film by emailing to: loveinchinacommunications@gmail.com
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