Now we will enter into the Cultural Revolution, from the 1960s to the end of the 1970s.

Previously in Session 3:

1.  Before 1949, the liberal camp and the fundamentalist camp had formed two different ways. 

2.  The Independence movement and the Great Revival of Shandong saw the transfer of spiritual authority to indigenous churches and half the churches in China left their western mission boards and denominations. 

3. During the TSPM in the 1950s, liberal churches, represented by Y. T. Wu, turned into TSPM churches, while the fundamentalist churches, represented by Wang Mingdao, turned into house churches.

Samuel Lamb’s church sent us some pamphlets of testimonies recording what happened in 1955. Wang Mingdao was arrested in August, and as one of his younger followers, Samuel Lamb was arrested two months later with the charge of being a “follower of Wang Mingdao.” Samuel Lamb had served the churches with his writing and wrote many pamphlets, much like Wang Mingdao. At that time, he was writing a pamphlet called “Once Saved, Always Saved” and was arrested before he could finish it. He was imprisoned for twenty-four years until his release in 1979. This pamphlet was published in the 1980s and had a huge impact on house churches. Before the rise of reformed theology in China, there was a critical debate among the house churches around the doctrine of salvation—whether salvation is secure or can be lost. The core of salvation is “grace alone.” For if salvation comes through God alone, then there is nothing in which I can boast. Therefore, the secret of the gospel is that a failure is resurrected by the death of Christ and saved by unfailing grace. After the rise of reformed theology in China, many pastors of reformed churches would rephrase this sentence into “once saved, always saved,” which is also the fifth point of the Five Points of Calvinism, “the Perseverance of the Saints.”

Like Wang Mingdao, Samuel Lamb was also arrested two times. When the Anti-Rightist movement broke out in 1957, Wang Mingdao and his wife, Liu Jingwen (1909–1922), were arrested for the second time a year later. Soon after, Samuel Lamb was also arrested for the second time. Around 1980, by God’s grace they were released along with some of the other forerunners of the house church. Wang Mingdao suffered from bad eyesight and was almost blind by 1984. Someone introduced to him an expert in eye care, so he went to Guangzhou. When he met Samuel Lamb, he said, “Samuel, I am here mainly to see you, no matter whether I get my eyes treated or not.” This was the last meeting between these two. Among the house churches in the 1980s, there was a saying, “Wang in the north and Lamb in the South,” thus making them benchmarking leaders of the house churches.

Earlier, we mentioned that Wu Zongsu, son of Y. T. Wu, recently spoke out to reveal inside information from the TSPM and reflect on his father’s life. His writings in this regard provided many precious materials for us. Yang Anxi was another house church forerunner, and his father, Yang Shaotang, was listed with Wang Mingdao and Jia Yuming as the three giants of the Chinese church. This father-son pair took different life paths. Yang Anxi recorded a number of pieces of oral history, which are also important for our ability to study that era.

Remember that Yang Shaotang, like Wang Mingdao, was also a century baby born during the church massacre in 1900. In October 1948, he preached at the Victory Chapel, where Chiang Kai-shek and his wife worshipped, and openly criticized the evils that the Nationalist Party had committed. In his oral history, Yang Anxi offered a moving memory about this event. That morning, Yang Shaotang called up the whole family and told them: “I am going to preach today and may not come back afterwards, because God has moved me to point out the evils committed by the Nationalist Party. If Chiang Kai-shek repents, I will make it back home. If he does not repent, I won’t make it back home.” The whole family knelt down and prayed as he entrusted his wife and children to the Lord. Then he left to preach. It turned out that when he finished preaching, Chiang Kai-shek made it a point to go up and shake hands with him, saying, “We do need to repent.” Like Jia Yuming, Yang Shaotang was once a faithful servant who was greatly used by the Lord. It was distraught that in the 1950s he surrendered to the TSPM and became the deputy secretary-general of its national committee.

His son, Yang Anxi, was admitted to Yenching University in 1949 and became the classmate of a group of pastors’ children, including Song Tianyin and Song Tianzhen, daughters of John Sung, and Wu Zongsu, son of Y. T. Wu. Interestingly enough, Yang Anxi had a great relationship with Wang Mingdao and continued to worship at his Christian Tabernacle. After his father joined the TSPM, Yang was stilled close to Wang Mingdao and called him “Uncle Wang.” He even lived at Wang Mingdao’s church in the months before the famous pastor’s arrest. At that time, groups of young people had heated debates over whether they should join the TSPM. From these debates, we can gain a small picture regarding the limitations of the fundamentalists and the spiritual struggles of those who joined the TSPM.

Yang Anxi talked about the ideological impact of the Communist takeover in 1949 on the whole of society. It was hard to imagine that overnight, all the prostitutes on the streets and all the opium dens and brothels would be gone. There was indeed a new look of prosperity at the time, a look of the so-called “new democracy.” Almost all intellectuals, whether believing or non-believing, supported the CCP because they believed that they could finally hold their heads high and that the future path forward was bright and broad. Many preachers felt that the CCP was able to accomplish what Christianity had failed to in the previous one-hundred years regarding issues like drug control and education. The whole look of the society was changed overnight as the CCP arrested, killed, and locked up criminals. The “prostitutes, tax collectors and lepers” were all gone.

On the one hand, liberal theology and the social gospel had swept through the church and Christian colleges for years. Progressivism and nationalism had occupied the minds of the younger generation of Christians who could not see the immeasurable difference between the cross and the Communist revolution. On the other hand, as revealed in Yang Anxi’s memoir, the fundamentalists were unable and even unwilling to provide answers to critical issues such as the relationship between the gospel and culture, or the relationship between the gospel and politics. The younger generation found that the church had never taught about or discussed such issues. No preacher would teach them how to think about issues regarding the state and revolution. At the time, there were over two hundred associations and societies in Yenching University, many of which were Christian fellowships. Yet when political movements came, almost all of them fell under their spells, all except for one: The Gospel Fellowship, whose president was Yang Anxi. Because there were few brothers in that fellowship, sisters elected him as president. But since John Sung’s daughters were older than him, he preferred to follow them spiritually.

The Gospel Fellowship held discussions over many issues and were not sure where their predecessors stood. For example, should and could believers sign the Patriotic Convention? Shouldn’t Christians be patriotic? The gospel preached by the fundamentalists in the churches at that time could not deal with these great social changes. The relationship between societal culture and faith had become so complicated and so pointed that no teaching of the antecedent generation of leaders provided a ready answer.

So, the students studied the Bible daily and inquired of their spiritual seniors. Everyone was hoping to find answers from Uncle Wang (Mingdao), Uncle Jia (Yuming), or Uncle Yang (Shaotang). But, in the end, most of those who waited for an answer from those others fell. Some followed Uncle Yang and joined the TSPM. Those who followed Uncle Wang did not initially join the TSPM but later wavered multiple times. 

Yang Anxi was initially influenced by his father and believed Christians should join the TSPM. He wrote a long defense of his conclusion backed by a dozen reasons and took it to debate with Uncle Wang. After being convinced by Wang Mingdao, he believed that Christians should not join the TSPM. So, he wrote another defense with a dozen new reasons and took it to try to persuade his father not to join the TSPM. He admitted that he underwent very painful struggles in those years. He was sincerely pursuing answers, but because the pursuit had been perplexing and disorienting, his faith almost completely collapsed. 

The Local Churches of Watchman Nee joined and left the TSPM three times. Decisions were made without resolution or a firm position as leaders did not know how to respond to the situation. Once the pressure had built, they had to join the TSPM. Once they joined, they felt they had to withdraw. Yet in the end, the government would still put them in prison.

For a faith that had been stuck in the social gospel, the whole pseudo religious passion of Communism to build utopia on earth was fascinating. Yang Anxi said he struggled a few years with it. After reading Beloved China by Fang Zhimin (1899–1935), he almost gave up his faith. For the revolutionary cause, Fang Zhimin walked unflinchingly to his execution and wrote the famous words, “My death cannot compare to the belief I am holding onto, and more comrades will follow my steps.” Such resounding words shocked Yang Anxi as Fang Zhimin died not for heaven, not for eternal life, not to reign with the Lord, but for liberating the Chinese people. In the light of this martyr’s halo, he felt that Christians were incredibly insignificant and inferior. 

In other words, the TSPM not only drew from the violence of the revolution, but it primarily drew from the aesthetics of the revolution, namely, its ideological pseudo-sublimity and idol worship. When the Communists spoke of the future of the motherland, they would say, “For the party members and Youth League members among us, we do not leave you with a tiny city of the New Jerusalem, but a poor China of nine point six million square kilometers, on which you can draw the most beautiful pictures.” Such revolutionary aesthetics captured the younger generation in the church. Therefore, before Yenching University was incorporated into Beijing University, almost all of the student fellowships were lost. Most students, including Wang Mingdao’s son, had lost their faith.

On one hand, we are grateful for the Lord’s preservation of the fundamentalist faith for the sake of the house churches, who could then hold onto the gospel under severe persecution. On the other hand, a few elderly servants of the Lord confess openly that it was the Lord’s hand that broke down the Chinese church. God disciplined the Chinese church and tore down all of the missionary work of the liberal churches from the West. During that process we can find the sins of the churches, pastors, and missionaries. The church had gradually left the old, true gospel and the foundation of the Scripture, and had been blown left and right by the trends of the world. Anything built on sand was destroyed by God. The CCP became the whip of God to test the church. House church history reveals that neither a faith that changes with times nor a faith that detaches itself from the times and hides in seclusion is able to respond to such enormous changes.

Yang Anxi said that one of his classmates was imprisoned along with many famous servants of the Lord and was a witness to most of them giving up their faith. Only sister Zheng Huiduan (1914–2003) held onto the call of the gospel. She served in Chengdu and was the subject of the first struggle session after the rise of the TSPM. Her autobiography was titled Amazing Grace. After she was arrested, the police said to her: “See, even though you believe in Jesus, you were still locked up and you may never get out of here.” In reply, Zheng Huiduan quoted Job 13:15, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” 

Yang Anxi also mentioned that before the Cultural Revolution broke out, he received letters from college classmates who had given up their faith. These letters had similar contents, “When people need us the most, we seclude ourselves to seek heavenly peace and joy. When martyrs sacrifice their lives on the battleground for the cause of people’s liberation, we are there selfishly seeking our own glory in Heaven”.

If you were in that era, how would you respond? These young people who had given up the Lord Jesus Christ continued, “Prometheus defied the gods for mankind. I am willing to be Prometheus for the sake of the people. As he betrayed Zeus, for the sake of the people, we will not believe in God and are willing to suffer in hell.”

Communism has become the craziest and most powerful pseudo-religion in history and in that era it gave a heavy beating to the whole of the Chinese church. During that time, there was a war between the true God and a pseudo god, a war between the invisible God and “the prince of the power of the air.” Yet the pseudo god came with sweeping, transforming political power. We cannot simply look down on those apostates. In the 1950s and 1960s, sixty to seventy percent of Christians gave up the gospel they believed prior to 1949. It is a great tragedy, a shameful failure. If we were in that era, we would most likely end up like them. Lessons in history help us to think more carefully and painstakingly, to know God more, and to know him deeper. This includes every relationship between our faith and the entirety of the world.

Besides Beloved China, the second “red” classic book that so greatly impacted Yang Anxi as to cause him to give up his faith was the Russian novel How the Steel Was Tempered. In that era there existed an enthusiastic red culture and a fanatic red religion. If our faith is “death and resurrection,” then this red faith could be called “earth-shaking transformation.” One might simply and directly state that anyone who gave up the faith or joined TSPM did not have a firm foundation of faith. However, from another perspective, we should be more careful and compassionate and take a look at the deficiencies of the fundamentalist faith.

Two things characterized the liberals. First, they did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, detached themselves from the authority of God’s Word, and detached themselves from a transcendent faith. Second, they had strong focus on social injustice and hardship in the lives of the people, and they passionately longed for society’s moral renewal. On one hand, they did not believe that the cross of Christ could bring, or up to that point had brought, the transformation of human hearts or of the world. On the other hand, they were full of a merciful and just passion to transform society and care for people to the point of being willing to sacrifice their own lives. Therefore, their previous hope for New Heaven and New Earth and previous focus on the forgiveness of sins gradually changed into a utopian ideology that sought to achieve justice and mercy on the earth. We call it “social justice,” or, an over-realized eschatology.

Meanwhile,the fundamentalists demonstrated two distinctly different characteristics in their fight against the liberals. First, they resolutely believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, were confident in the Word of God and the transcendent faith, and maintained that the focus of salvation is Christ on the cross. Second, they cared little about society and culture and emphasized detachment and isolation from the world. On one hand, the fundamentalists wanted to emphasize that our hope was not in this world and that no change of reality or physical benefits are more important than the salvation of the soul, which is correct. On the other hand, the little care the fundamentalists showed towards society developed more and more into an overreacting backlash toward the liberals. This trend eventually led to a fundamentalist ideology that “concern for society equals liberalism, concern for politics equals the Zealots, and helping the poor and renewing culture equals the social gospel.” Therefore, the fundamentalists became those who, “close the door and seek heavenly joy.” The CCP would be the ones responsible for the people’s hardship, while Christianity would be responsible for the peace of the soul. If this was so, then what is the purpose of all that we believe? Therefore, Yang Anxi and his classmates at Yenching University felt acutely shameful in the face of the revolutionary waves.

At that time there was another big debate among Christian students at Yenching University on whether they should join the military. Additionally, Uncle Yang and Uncle Wang held different views. Wang Zai, an important preacher, said Christians could join the military, while Wang Mingdao resolutely believed that Christians should not join the military. 

Should Christians join the military? Why should they? Why not? Maybe the answer is not so black and white, but perhaps depends on which branch of the military one might join. Is going to war disobeying the teachings of the Bible? Perhaps it is that the term military should not be so generalized. If you shoot at somebody on the battlefield, does that break the commandment “You shall not kill?” If the military has to follow the party’s instructions, what should you do? Even in today’s Chinese churches, there is a lack of consistent understanding or teaching on these issues.

Christians were under tremendous political pressure. People would say, “You Christians should also respect the Common Program, which promises the protection of religious freedom. We have given you the freedom to believe in Jesus, but you Christians cannot be so selfish and let others protect you with their blood. The imperialist countries always want to overturn our regime, and you want nonbelievers to fight against them and die for the country while you enjoy a peaceful environment, sing hallelujah, and praise your Lord. Shame on You! You’ve gone too far!”

How would you respond to that? Should those who watch over the garments have the same portion of the spoil as those who fight in the field of battle? Is it true that we can pray while you fight? Is it true that we are taxpayers who feed the army? Is it true that those who are rich should contribute money and those who are poor should contribute life? Are we pacifists? Is it true that Jesus Christ said we should not use the sword?

In fact, the Chinese fundamentalist churches held to this pacifist position until 1990s or even the beginning of the 21^st century. Wang Mingdao and Allen Yuan held to this view, the Mentuhui even more so. They believed that Christians should not join the military, should not file complaints, should not sue the government, and should not even watch movies. However, except for joining the military, I have done all of these.

The fundamentalists believed in the authority of the Bible and at the same time generally held to a literal interpretation of the Bible as well as a dispensational eschatology. At the time, the number of Christians in the country totaled around one million, comparable to a small part of the population of Chengdu city today. They were a marginalized group of people. Now, all of the sudden, they were brought into the vigorous revolutionary waves and found that their faith could not answer the questions that were raised—questions that they had never thought about and preachers had never clearly taught about—such as how to view the relationship between church and state, war, or litigation. What does it mean to submit to the authorities? What is the relationship between the church and an atheist government? What are politics? For these questions, the liberals had their answers, of which the fundamentalists resolutely disapproved. But apart from their disapproval, the fundamentalists lacked a complete answer of their own.

Of all of the student associations and societies, the Christian Gospel Fellowship was the only one that finally decided not to sign the Patriotic Convention. They stated that they could sign as individual citizens but not as a fellowship, because the fellowship represented the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Individually they were patriotic, but as a church, they could not join in signing. They hoped to openly debate with other groups on the issue, but the scheduled debate was cancelled. Their position was the correct one, which was also the position where the fundamentalists ended up. Today, the house churches’ consensus against the TSPM is based on this position. It was extraordinarily brave for the Christian Gospel Fellowship to refuse to sign at the time. This action brought them tremendous pressure.

The TSPM’s United Worship in 1958 served as its second wave of influence, because the elimination of denominations meant the removal of ninety percent of church buildings. This policy also led to the second wave of the house church movement. The first wave happened after Wang Mingdao was arrested. Prior to his arrest, a Christian who did not join the TSPM would not be considered a counterrevolutionary. After the arrest, a Christian who did not join the TSPM could be considered a counterrevolutionary. In this second wave of change, churches generally lost their buildings. Whereas before, if you did not join the TSPM you could still keep your own building, afterwards if you did not join the TSPM, you would have to retreat to your home for gathering and worship.

Therefore, while house churches had appeared sporadically all over the country since 1950, the house churches as a movement began after the government persecuted the church with charges of being counterrevolutionaries and arrested church leaders such as Wang Mingdao. After August 1955, Christians who did not stand with Y. T. Wu would be persecuted. Some would say, “Okay we will not stand with him but rather with the counterrevolutionary Wang Mingdao. We are willing to suffer, willing to be treated by our own country as the enemy of the people.” This position led to the birth of the Chinese house church.

In the second wave of the house church movement, if you would not join the United Worship, you would have to worship at home. The overall reason to not join at that time was not because of church-state relationships, but because of denominations. A Presbyterian would not worship at a Baptist congregation, because his conscience would not let him ignore the confessional differences. Now that the government ordered all ten denominations to worship in one church building with one Baptist leading, one Presbyterian praying, and one Anglican practicing communion, many believers and preachers could not accept such a merger. Therefore, in this wave of political movement, while many churches were forced back into homes, the reason for this was simple: to maintain denominational confessions. Therefore, one of the characteristics of the house church movement was that churches in certain areas maintained distinct denominational features. This was especially true for the Local Churches. If they had accepted the United Worship, how could they still be called the Local Church? Therefore, for many denominations, accepting the United Worship was tantamount to giving up their unique confession.

Also, from that point on, the TSPM called itself a “nondenominational church” since the power of violence had united all denominations into one. Later, K. H. Ting (1915–2012) became the successor to Y. T. Wu. Before United Worship, he was an Anglican bishop. Since the United Worship, and especially after church worship was restored after the Cultural Revolution, the TSPM has sustained Anglican practices to some extent.

In 1963, the CCP initiated a big debate on the issue of religion. Of course, Christians were not allowed to participate. Rather, it was a debate on the party’s religious policy. It was like people talking about how to kill a chicken in a cage without giving the chicken a voice. It was not a debate among believers but a debate among the party leaders on how to eliminate Christianity. In the course of the debate the party of the doves and party of the hawks arose.

Professor Yang Fenggang divides the two parties of the doves and hawks that were revealed from the debate, and continues to this day, into three groups of atheism. He calls the three types “mild atheism,” “enlightening atheism,” and “militant atheism.” “Militant atheism” characterizes the radical atheists who believe with Marx that religion is the opiate of the masses and is a politically hostile force. Their policy goals are to “eliminate religion.” Those holding to “enlightening atheism” believe religion is not scientific, but rather a superstition produced by ignorance and that its practitioners only need to be enlightened and educated. Therefore, religion will die out sooner or later, but this will be a process. It cannot be eliminated all at once, but it can be weakened and die out gradually. Therefore, their slogan was to “limit religion” or “retrogress religion.”

At the time there were only these two groups. In the eyes of those holding to “enlightening atheism,” the charge against Christianity was “ignorance.” In the eyes of those holding to “militant atheism,” the charge against Christianity was “reactionary.” “Mild atheism” would not appear within the party until the end of the 20^th century.

The result of this big debate on religion was that “militant atheism” won the day within the party and dominated its religious policy until 1979. This debate was heralded in the Cultural Revolution, which demanded an immediate endeavor to eliminate religion in China as a decadent and reactionary culture. Therefore, even before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, the cultural revolutionary goal against Christianity—to put Christianity to death in China—was set. The difference of perspective only lay only in how the ultimate solution should take place, by injection, by shooting, or by beheading?

One salient point worthy of reflection is that not only was “militant atheism” the mainstream ideology within the party, after decades of immersion, it has also greatly impacted the house churches’ self-understanding. That is to say, our self-recognition is in fact still “institutionalized.” The charge against Christianity of ignorance was designed to make the liberals restless without touching the fundamentalists. Therefore, the liberals wanted for themselves to become more “civilized and modern,” and the direction of their self-defence became, “We agree with science, we agree with socialism, and we are a part of modern civilization.” Also, the reactionary charge against Christianity was designed to make the fundamentalists restless without touching the liberals. Therefore, the main direction for the fundamentalists’ self-defense was to claim, “We have no relationship with politics, we have no connection with foreign powers, we do not care about social issues, and we submit to the authorities.”

The head of religious affairs at the time was former intelligence head Li Weihan (1896–1984). Those who led religious affairs were all intelligence agents, and the highest-ranking government branches in charge of religious affairs had never been the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) but the intelligence and United Front Work Departments. In the beginning, the CCP’s intelligence was headed by Zhou Enlai, whose work in Nationalist-controlled areas was later taken on by Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969). Li Weihan, who was second to Zhou Enlai in intelligence, was also the head of the United Front Work Department.

Now, SARA has been put under the administration of the United Front Work Department and become the unarmed “protection squadron of the party.” For example, the Sichuan Provincial Religious Affairs Bureau has been removed in the government staffing system and exists only in name, while its organization and staff have been merged under the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee. The party agency and the government agency have been united and even the office address has been changed. If SARA becomes a branch of party affairs, it becomes even less related to the church of Christ. We can submit to the police, but we cannot submit to SARA because it has become a part of the atheist party machine rather than a part of the “people’s government.” Because of this, we are completely exempt from our responsibility to submit to the government as set forth in the Bible. There is only one way left for the house churches, which is to completely refuse to submit to any command from SARA. How could the church allow an office of the CCP to guide our faith? Whoever submits to such commands are traitors and apostates. If it is a component of the government, even if it is in effect a tool of the Antichrist, we still have to submit somewhat to the external process of the authorities and show respect to it. Now that it is a direct branch under the party committee, while we still respect every SARA official as men and women created by God and also our fellow citizens, we will no longer respect them because of their identity as an “official of the State Administration for Religious Affairs.” 

After the big debate in 1963, those holding to “militant atheism,” like Li Weihan, wanted to eradicate religion and created the experimental “religion-free zone” in Wenzhou, because it had been an area where the churches prospered before the Cultural Revolution. 

In 1966, when the Cultural Revolution broke out, persecution came quickly and severely. In the beginning, the so-called “capitalist roaders within the party” were publicly criticized and humiliated, imprisoned in succession, and even persecuted to death. In step with this was the eradication of the church. Soon after the Cultural Revolution broke out, above-ground churches more-or-less all disappeared. Later in 1970, one or two churches in Beijing and Shanghai were reopened to receive foreign guests. This age of “no above-ground church” lasted until 1979 when the Centennial Church in Ningbo was restored for worship, the first in the country to be restored after the Cultural Revolution. It was successively followed by a church in Shanghai, then Chongwen Church in Beijing, and then churches all over the country. In the thirteen years from 1966 to 1979, there was no church in China. In Shanghai, Zhang Chunqiao (1917–2005) announced that “Christianity no longer exists in China.” Jiang Qing (1914–1991) announced, “It took us only a few months to sweep Christianity into history.” When Chairman Mao met Y. T. Wu for the last time in Zhongnanhai (the presidential residence in China), he challenged him, saying, “Your God has not been working recently.”

Consequently, the Chinese church soon lost contact with overseas churches, and the universal church was unable to receive information from behind the iron curtain. They prayed for the Chinese church and suspected that it may have completely disappeared. Many missionaries and mission boards were in deep mourning. However, God always has special tests and protections for his church. While there was no church, no pastor, and no elder above-ground in those thirteen years, the house church moved into its third wave. The movement to withdraw from the TSPM also brought it to its third wave, because any believer who would persist in worship, fellowship, and prayer would inevitably become a part of the “underground church.”

The turning point of the Cultural Revolution was the September Thirteenth Coup that happened in 1971. Lin Biao (1907–1971), Mao’s successor and Vice Chairman attempted to flee the country while his son, Lin Liguo (1945–1971), plotted to murder Chairman Mao. The plane they boarded was shot down by the CCP. This incident brought more shock to that age than the Cultural Revolution itself as it exposed the party’s arrogant cult of personality and national worship. Many people were disillusioned and had their eyes opened to the problems within the party.

Lin Liguo’s coup plan, Project 571, was notable. He developed the whole outline, from military coup to reconstruction of the country. Mao’s code in the Outline was B-52, named after the American strategic bomber. Besides the coup plan, the outline revealed facts that ordinary people did not know and would not even dare to imagine, values that were distinctly different from official public appearances. It stated that the top level of the ruling group were corrupt and incompetent. The upper class had been deserted and dared not to speak out. Lin Liguo claimed that the essence of so-called socialism was social fascism and the Cultural Revolution was turning the state apparatus into a grinder of mutual destruction. The outline had an evaluation of Chairman Mao that would scare half of the Chinese population to death. He claimed that Mao was not a real follower of Marxism-Leninism, but “the biggest feudal tyrant in Chinese history in the disguise of Marxism-Leninism who reigned with the tyranny of Qin Shihuang.” 

After 1949, the tremendous impact of the revolutionary culture on the younger generation of the church led Yang Anxi to lose his faith. In his oral history, he said that after the Lin Biao incident, he slowly recovered his faith.

In 1968, at the peak of the Cultural Revolution, Yang Anxi went home to see his father, who said to him, “this will be the last time I see you.” He was shocked and said, “Dad, you still have good health. Why would you say so?” but Yang Shaotang had the feeling that this would be their last meeting on the earth. Sure enough, soon after he was publicly criticized and humiliated in the streets of Shanghai, Yang Shaotang was sent to sweep the street, fell unconscious, and died there. After that conversation, Yang Anxi asked his father, “Is there still hope for the Chinese church?” Yang Shaotang was silent for a minute and then said, “Many have asked the same question in the past two years, but I dare not answer them as I don’t trust them.” Why? Because after years of the Accusation Campaign, believers had lost mutual trust. Of course, Bian Yunbo defended this behavior in his memoir. He said, “Christians, to protect others and themselves, developed a habit of not asking and not telling others about themselves. If I know nothing about you, then even if the police threaten me, I cannot sell you out. Thus, believers had a simple relationship with each other. When they met in the street, they just nodded at each other and kept their thoughts deep inside their hearts, knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ always lives.”

Today it is easier to make an accusation against someone. All you need to do is to show a screenshot from their cellphone. But the Accusation Campaign in those years was brutal, and Yang Shaotang said: “I have never discussed this with anyone else. But you are different since you are my son and I can trust you. Let me tell you: there is still hope for the Chinese church. There must be hope for the Lord’s church.”

During the Cultural Revolution, there was a legendary man within the house churches, Ye Naiguang (d. 1972). It was said that he was a master of martial arts before he believed in the Lord. He travelled all over to share the gospel. When Feng Yuxiang’s army was stationed in Xinyang, Henan Province, the city became the center of a Christian revival. When Feng Yuxiang’s army went into the mountainous region to eradicate the bandits, Ye Naiguang went up into the mountains to share the gospel with the bandits, who took him to be a spy for Feng’s army, tied him up and beat him almost to death. When he was released by the bandits, he was taken by Feng’s army to be a spy for the bandits and once again was beaten almost to death. Finally, he went into the mountains again to share the gospel with the bandits and ended up bringing them to the Lord and leading them down from the mountains to surrender to Feng’s army.

In 1968, Yang Anxi went to see Ye Naiguang and asked him the same question, “Is there still hope for the Chinese church?” Ye Naiguang answered: “There will be no new day until a new generation arises.” He further explained that in previous decades, God “nurtured” the Chinese church, but in the recent decades God was working “destruction.” After these decades passed and a new generation rose up, the new age would then come and the Chinese church would do the work of “paying back,” meaning to share the gospel overseas.

After the 1990s, there was a popular slogan within the house churches, “The gospel came into China, stayed in China, and will go out from China,” which points to the three stages of what Ye Naiguang saw in 1968: nurturing, destruction, and paying back. His faith was extraordinary, because at that time, even holding onto one’s faith and continuing worship was miraculous, not to mention his dream that decades later the Chinese church will pay back and share the gospel to the world. It was just as the Prophet said: “We were like those who dream.” Ye Naiguang said that in the decades after 1949, God’s purpose was to remove the old leaven, tear down the existing church, and train a new generation. “There will be no new day until a new generation arises.”

In the 1960s there were many similar testimonies of believers in Shanxi province, in Xiamen city, in Shandong province, and in Shanghai. The September Thirteenth incident was a turning point as people’s thoughts were shocked and ideological control was somewhat loosened. Secret gatherings began to increase, as did itinerant preaching. Churches in Henan and Anhui began to revive during that period. The United Worship in 1958 was a major starting point for house churches and the second half of the Cultural Revolution after the September Thirteenth incident was a period of their rapid development.

The purpose of the United Worship was to eradicate the church through eliminating its denominations. Therefore, since 1959, there was a supporting policy for this called the “Fifteen Nos.” Its content varied from place to place. Below is the version provided in The Origin and Development of House Churches in Henan Province by Zhang Yinan:

1. No evangelism outside of the church building. 
2. No prayers for healing.
3. No acts of exploitation.
4. No discrimination against or humiliation of women.
5. No illegal gatherings.
6. No hindering of production.
7. No roaming around.
8. No admission into Christianity of children under the age of eighteen.
9. No harboring for landlords, wealthy farmers, counterrevolutionaries, or bad influencers.
10. No sabotage of socialism or the collective economy.
11. No delusion by rumor or pessimistic counterrevolutionary propaganda.
12. No establishment of congregations or gathering in homes.
13. No private promotion of clergy.
14. No confusion of Christian doctrines with party policies.
15. No overseas contact.

Most of this list’s contents were consistent with what has been commanded by the SARA for the nationwide persecution since 2017. For example, the TSPM in Henan released the Christian Church Convention with the “Nine Nos:”

1. No children under the age of eighteen in the church building.
2. No entrance of party members into the church without official reasons.
3. No reception of outside speakers without permission from the CCC or the TSPM.
4. No religious activities (including evangelism and visiting) outside the place of worship.
5. No illegal dissemination or selling of religious books, publications, and other religious articles.
6. No gathering at places without preapproval.
7. No illegal online dissemination of texts and pictures with religious content.
8. No placing religious symbols along the street.
9. No training sessions without preapproval. 

A simple comparison demonstrates that in the religious field, the Cultural Revolution has never ended. The religious policy used by the CCP to persecute the church today bears the exact legacy of the Cultural Revolution.

For example, Elder Gao Yunjiu, an older preacher in the Fangcheng Fellowship, was imprisoned before the Cultural Revolution and resolutely refused to join the TSPM. During the Cultural Revolution he was publicly criticized and humiliated on the streets many times. Interestingly enough, in Henan the struggle session became the major form of evangelical rally. When the officials and militia ordered Gao to confess, he took the opportunity to share the gospel with the crowd and testified to them that the Lord could heal. While he was being criticized and humiliated, his soul went to Heaven. During the second half of the Cultural Revolution, all the young preachers from Fangcheng Fellowship were influenced by Elder Gao because they had listened to his sharing during the struggle sessions. There was a big collection of songs written by the churches in Henan, called the “Spiritual Songs” (the source of and forerunner to Xiaomin’s Hymns), including “Striking the Devil” and “Martyr for the Lord,’ which were very solemn, tragic, and moving.

Gao Yunjiu was also the brother-in-law of Li Tianen (d. 2016), another house church forerunner. Around the September Thirteenth incident in 1971, Li Tianen was hurting in Shanghai because he could not see hope for the church. He met a believer on the road and greeted him dearly, but the believer dared not to answer him and left as if he did not know him. Later he had a dream in which he was on a mountain and saw Christians all over the mountain, kneeling and praying. Among them there was a high-ranking Communist official. He was ecstatic and shocked, wandering how this could be. In the dream, he heard the Lord say: “With Him nothing is impossible.” Soon his brother-in-law Gao Yunjiu wrote a letter inviting him to return to Fangcheng and Yecheng because brothers and sisters were thirsty and wanted him to teach them. Li Tianen returned to Henan in 1972 to work with Elder Gao.

Thus began the revival of Fangcheng Fellowship in the second half of the Cultural Revolution. God worked in everyone’s heart. God also worked in the history of the country. Without this letter, Li Tianen would not have returned to Henan. Without his dream, Li Tianen dared not return. Without the September Thirteenth incident, there would not be such an atmosphere or a slightly loosened control during the second half of the Cultural Revolution. But God was there and made preparations for the revivals to come. 

Do you know what time the house churches met during the Cultural Revolution? Usually at two or three o’clock when the policemen got off work, when the neighborhood watch ladies were tired, and when the people’s militia dozed off. They would worship in the wilderness or in the caves as the early churches did. Once I visited Wenzhou and went to a “Mountain of Prayer.” Before, there was no road there and believers would spend hours in the morning climbing over the mountain for worship. The police and the militia were not willing to go that far, and the inaccessibility made it easy for the believers to run away in case of an emergency. Finally, there was the itinerant preaching movement. Under persecution, preachers would preach wherever they went.

House churches in Chengdu started during the second half of the Cultural Revolution after 1971. Until then, there had only been sporadic gatherings but no formal worship. The local house church forerunner was Pastor Liu Benyao, who came to Sichuan province around 1949. Pastor Liu was from Shaanxi and might have studied at West China seminary before he served in Chengdu. In 1958 he was charged as a Rightist and imprisoned. He was released during the second half of the Cultural Revolution and started a secret worship gathering with Grandpa Long, Grandpa Zhang, and Grandpa Gong. Grandpa Gong’s son was a senior professor of orthopedics at West China University of Medical Sciences. When I was three, I was diagnosed with a congenital dislocation of my hip and Professor Gong travelled from his school to Santai County and treated me so that I would not be lame. I did not know until after my conversion that he was a Christian and his father was Grandpa Gong, a house church forerunner. Brother Tan Defu’s father was a senior preacher who was baptized by Grandpa Zhang.

According to Pastor Liu Tongsu, in their early stages, house churches gave great import to the idea of “apostolic succession.” In the post-apostolic age, churches under persecution received the teaching of their church elders as the means of physical succession. For example, Bishop Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John, Bishop Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, and Bishop Ignatius was a good friend of Polycarp. Such was the succession in the early stage of the orthodox faith, since the authority of the New Testament had not yet been established. At that time, in the words of the house church, the personal succession of “life on life” was most critical.

Brother Tan’s father studied the Bible with Grandpa Zhang, Grandpa Zhang with Pastor Liu Benyao, Pastor Liu with Wang Mingdao, and such was the “orthodox succession” of the house church. Even into the 1990s, house churches still maintained this feature from the apostolic age. “Who established your church?” “Our preacher used to worship at Uncle Samuel Lamb’s church in Guangzhou.” In order to keep the orthodox faith, churches usually traced the lineage to forerunners of the 1950s and 1960s. If, after all the tracing, someone was found to have no relationship with any of the forerunners, he would become suspect. The cost to know one another was high. It took time to know someone well enough to judge whether he held to the fundamentalist faith. 

This was the case until the Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008. Churches and preachers came from all over the country with no one caring about denominations, church polity, offices of the church, or confessions of faith. People would ask, “What’s your faith?” “We believe in Jesus.” “Those things were written by men, but we believe in the Scriptures alone.” Then how would I know what you believed? People would then ask, “Can you sing Xiaomin’s Hymns?” The person might say yes and start to sing “Five in the Morning in China,” which suggested that he or she was from a house church. Therefore, house churches came above ground and identified each other by singing Xiaomin’s hymns. Those who could sing Canaan Hymns were from fellow house churches and would go together to the disaster area. Those who could not sing Xiaomin’s hymns probably were from the TSPM.

Therefore, since the Cultural Revolution, house churches developed a tradition of physical succession since the churches came out of a lineage traced to a generation of “forefathers” of the house church movement. Until the beginning of the 21^st century, a believer’s confession of faith would be directly related to the “forefathers” of his church tradition. The term “emerging urban church” suggests that it is a church without “forefathers.” There is a broken link between my generation of preachers and the forefathers, because we have grown through reading, broadened horizons, and studying several perspectives. Many pastors, domestic and overseas, have nurtured me and impacted me. I have only met Dr. Stephen Tong a few times and we have never had an in-depth conversation, but spiritually, I consider him my father. Yet, in terms of spiritual life and the reality of pastoring, I learned by practice and lacked discipleship from the forefathers. And this is true not only for me, but for a whole generation of preachers. There are only a few house church forefathers and they are spread over a few regions where house churches are deeply rooted, such as Fujian province, Shanghai, Shanxi province, and Beijing.

Therefore, eight years ago a group of middle-aged pastors within the evangelical churches wanted to find these forefathers. At that time most of the forefathers who had been imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution had passed away and gone to Heaven. In the past decade, Uncle (Allen) Yuan, Uncle Samuel Lamb, Aunt Yang Xinfei, Xie Moshan, and Li Tianen were all taken by the Lord. So, these middle-aged pastors went to Northwest China and looked for the descendants of the Northwest Spiritual Movement. They found the widow of Zhao Ximen (1918–2001). Thus, they found a group of forefathers who had been tested in the Cultural Revolution. They worshiped with them and recognized them as their spiritual “forefathers”—as the forefathers of their house churches. This recognition was meaningful because it expressed the self-recognition of the new generation of house churches. It allowed us to know who we are.

Scholar Zhu Xueqin told me a story about himself. He was not yet a believer when he was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. He was sent to the family of an old lady who raised her family in the revolutionary spirit, was a lower middle-class peasant, and had been reported by the newspaper to be a model. He got up at midnight to go to the restroom and found the old lady kneeling beside the stove, mumbling words which he could not catch. He tried not to disturb her, but he suddenly realized that she was praying. This supposedly revolutionary family was actually counterrevolutionary and Christian. He was shocked and his thought was incredibly impacted. While during the Cultural Revolution, the whole country was revolutionary and all the counterrevolutionaries were imprisoned, there was this sort of underground existence, a spiritual world existing at night, a secret society existing that had not been eradicated by the CCP, that being the church.

After the September Thirteenth incident, the number of underground churches began to increase. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, the three years from 1976 to 1979 witnessed the best church-state relationships of the previous fifty years. Great revivals broke out in the churches and there was an increase in the scale of itinerant preaching. At the same time, the house churches were also experiencing numerous miracles.

Today, it may seem that there are no miracles in your spiritual life. However, first off, miracles do exist. Wherever God is, there are miracles. Second, we do not seek after miracles, because miracles demonstrate that God rules and God is in control. There is no miracle if you are in control. In the history of Israel as recorded in the Bible and in two thousand years of church history, most eras hold no record of miracles. Third, if you do want to experience miracles, I would suggest you go to Tibet or Pakistan to share that Gospel.  

In the Old Testament era, the miracles are clustered around two time periods. The first is from the Exodus until the Israelites entered Canaan, when we see God doing many miraculous things. Afterwards, there were no miracles. Did David do any miracles? No. Nor did Solomon. The next period where we see miracles occurring is during the age of the prophets like Elijah and Elisha. During the Babylonian exile there were no miracles. Miracles usually accompany the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, when a higher density of miracles does occur,  this higher density demonstrates that redemptive history is entering into a new stage through a new turning point. God’s miraculous works are not spread evenly throughout redemptive history or world history, but at the critical moment of the redemptive history, God uses miracles both to push forward and to testify to His kingdom. 

Do you understand? Miracles are not totally personally related to you. You might pray for your own sake, saying, “God, I am sick now. Do a miracle and heal me”. It is not impossible for that miracle to happen, but the miracle could have serious consequences. Have you thought about evangelizing in Africa after you are healed? Have you thought about going through tests in your life that would be unbearable for most brothers and sisters, to be broken and dashed into pieces to the extent that most brothers and sisters could not imagine? If you have not thought about all these possibilities, you should not ask for miracles, because miracles are related to the Kingdom of God. They are related to redemptive history. Li Tianen once had a vision and saw what seemed an impossible revival of the church. Later it was proved that God used the vision and this person to push forward the revival of the house churches in Henan and then in the whole of China. Suppose twenty years ago someone else said that he had a vision, a big miracle. Fast forward twenty years, and his spiritual life is a mess and most of his ministries have been broken down by the Lord. So, the miracle he claimed to experience was obviously a work of the devil. To whom God entrusts much, from him God will demand more. Miracles that happen in your life suggest that you will play an extraordinary role in redemptive history. Both the way of the cross and the power of the cross may come upon you. This is not something that you can request, but rather, whoever it may fall upon is chosen by God.

The same thing happened in the New Testament era when miracles happened primarily with Lord Jesus and during the Apostolic Age as the apostles directly represented the Lord. In the book of Acts, all the mentions of “illness” or “disease” occur when the apostles were doing miracles and healing others, or even raising the dead. There is not one occurrence of the word in reference to when an apostle was sick. And yet, later, in the epistles, whenever illness or disease is mentioned, it is in reference to the apostle’s own situation. Paul says that this co-worker was sick or that co-worker was ill. He advised Timothy to use a little wine (1 Timothy 5:23) and asked others to take good care of other co-workers who are sick. None of this was about the apostles healing others by some miracle. This is because once the foundation of the church was established and the gospel was shared to the end of the world as far as that end was known to the people of that age, the period of many miracles passed. 

In church history, when the gospel enters into an ethnic group and culture that have never heard it and which has suffered from the prince of the power of the air and from evil spirit, miracles that testify to the conquest of God’s Kingdom over that prince and evil spirit will occur. Then, once the foundation of the church has been established, there will be fewer occurrences of miracles. The foundation of the churches in Chengdu has been established and hence you are less likely to witness miracles here. Africa has also experienced great revivals in the past one hundred years and witnessed many miracles. But there are still small islands where cannibals live, there is Tibet where idols flourish, and there are Islamic nations where churches are brutally persecuted. If you are chosen by God to go to these places, you will witness miracles and God doing the impossible as because nothing is impossible for Him.

This was why house churches witnessed widespread miracles during the Cultural Revolution when God was rebuilding the whole church in China. God recovered lost ground. After a thirty-year separation from the universal church, the Chinese church left Egypt again, a miracle declaring that spiritually, China belonged to Christ again. The miracles that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, the same as during the 1927 Shandong Revival, proved that the Spirit entrusted spiritual authority to the Chinese church. Miracles are legitimate proof, that there is only one church in China, the church that died and was raised through great persecution.

We will end with a story from Yang Anxi’s testimony. In 1957, his faith collapsed. So, he prayed to God and asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that he could restore his faith. He prayed for seventeen years and God gave him nothing. Finally, during the Cultural Revolution, he was locked up in “the cowshed.” He was tied up by a jailer who whipped him for three and a half hours until he was almost dead. Then, he suddenly felt that he was filled with the Holy Spirit. He used to be a master athlete and was proud of his strong body. When he was almost beaten to death, he realized that whipping was the most excruciating pain. Why was he beaten? Because someone reported him. For what? People who are old enough know a term called “Three Loyalties and Four Boundlesses.” The “Four Boundlesses” are “boundless loyalty, boundless faith, boundless love, and boundless adoration for Chairman Mao”.

The person who reported Yang Anxi said that Christians could never achieve the “Four Boundlesses,” because if they believed in God, it would be impossible for them to have boundless faith in Chairman Mao. In his own defense, Yang Anxi said that he could not have boundless faith in Chairman Mao because he believed in Jesus, but he could have boundless love for Chairman Mao because God asked him to love others. After several rounds of debate, the accuser came to the conclusion that as long as Christians did not give up their theist belief, they could never accomplish the “Four Boundlesses,” and thus they were counterrevolutionary. So, he reported Yang Anxi.

Yang Anxi was beaten so hard that the one who reported him had a mental collapse and came to him to apologize, going so far as to fall to the ground crying, thinking that Yang was going to be beaten to death. Right at that time, Yang Anxi experienced the filling of the Holy Spirit, containing an uncontainable power, and he was very joyful. He prayed to God, “Lord, could it happen here in the cowshed while I am being whipped? I cannot praise you. I cannot sing hymns. I have prayed for so many years and how could you give it to me here?” So, he forgave the one who reported him and the jailer who whipped him because he was joyful and had experienced a restored intimate relationship with the Lord. He experienced great confirmation of his faith and the Holy Spirit stirred him up to have the courage to tell the leaders, “Indeed, I cannot achieve the ‘Four Boundlesses.’ It is impossible for me to have boundless faith in Chairman Mao or to have boundless love for him. Do not waste your effort on an unrepentant Christian like me. I absolutely will not repent. If you want to kill me, do it now. Do not waste time. I will not change.”

Dear brothers and sisters, this is what happens when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit. He will face the one who is supposed to kill him and say, “If I perish, I perish. I will believe in Jesus.” In the 1980s, Wang Mingdao often wrote eight characters to those who asked him for advice: “Trust in the Lord. Never ask for the future.” Also, Samuel Lamb always summarized for visitors the “sacred principle” of house churches in this way, “Where there is persecution, there is revival.” The filling of the Holy Spirit leads to the way of the cross. Today, persecution is coming upon the house churches again. Who among us is not afraid or not weak? From now on, let us pray that we will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray:

Lord, we thank you! Without the work of your Spirit, we would have been swept away by Beloved China, the trends of the time, and the dream of human society. Or, when facing all of these, we would have been unable to hold on and respond about the relationship between the church and this world. Lord, you tested the fundamentalist churches in China. Many gave up their faith and betrayed you, but many others were still protected by you in extreme circumstances. Even in your destruction, you provided abundant grace. None of those forerunners and saints were able to stay strong from beginning to end. They all were weak and stumbled, and even denied you as Peter did. But you tested them so that you could bless the Chinese church after the Cultural Revolution. As we are the spiritual descendants of these forefathers, we ask you, Lord, to stir us up, even though today in our struggle against sin, we have not yet resisted  to the point of shedding our blood, and in this round of persecution, we have not reached the point of losing our lives. Lord, if you would destroy your church, would you please also protect and revive your church. Stir some of us up to offer themselves completely to you. Let us identify with the spiritual forefathers of the house churches and know who we are so that we can follow their steps and pass on to our descendants, to the Chinese church thirty or fifty years afterwards, the spiritual way, the way of the cross, and the glory of the cross. Thank you, Lord, for listening to our prayer. We pray in the precious and holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen!