Helen Bailey changed Chinese mission history forever and most of the world has never even heard her name.
I have been studying Chinese mission history for more than 25 years and have written more about the subject that almost anyone else alive and yet, I have never heard her name. Not even once. And yet, the impact that she has had on my life has been incalculable.
Since I first arrived in China in 1999, I have been fascinated by the desire of the Chinese underground house church to complete the Great Commission as commanded by Jesus in Matthew 28:18-19 and Acts 1:8. Although there are many distinctions between the different underground house church networks, it is almost a universal fact that they are focused on preaching the Gospel from China all the way back to Jerusalem in a vision they simply call “Back to Jerusalem.”
But where does the name “Back to Jerusalem” come from? I have been working with this organization called back to Jerusalem for more than two decades and I never truly knew the answer to this question until this year!
The “Back to Jerusalem” movement is not a new one. It can be traced back to a vision for evangelism that God gave several students at the NorthWest Bible Institute in Fengxiang, Shaanxi province, founded by Rev. James Hudson Taylor (grandson of the founder of the CIM).
On the evening of November 25, 1942, God gave Rev. Mark Ma, from Henan, the vice-principal of the school, the vision to preach the Gospel all the way back to Jerusalem. This vision was confirmed by one of the students Grace He.
The idea of Back to Jerusalem goes back even further back with a vision that God gave to Pastor Jing Dianying of the Jesus Family.
What is interesting though is that the vision was never coined “Back to Jerusalem.” I have always believed and taught that the Back to Jerusalem name came from the general idea that God gave to the Chinese, which is true – but it is not the whole truth.
In fact, the group that we now call the ‘Back to Jerusalem Traveling Band‘ was actually called ‘The Preach Everywhere Gospel Band.’
What I didn’t know until recently is the name “Back to Jerusalem” was actually first coined by a missionary to China named Helen Bailey.
While reading book about Grace He and Mecca Zhao that is only available in the Chinese language, I came across the amazing work of Helen Bailey. Helen was an American missionary on the east coast of China and when the Japanese invaded, she escaped to Henan Province where she lived on boats and floated along the Yellow River hiding from the Imperial troops. While on the different boats, she began preaching from village to village and became known as the ‘floating evangelist.’
One day while ministering along the Yellow River she met two interesting Chinese Christians who told her about a little-known evangelist training school that continued even during the war at the North West Bible college run by Hudson Taylor II.
Helen immediately traveled to the Shaanxi school where she met Rev. Mark Ma for the first time. When she heard about his vision for the Preach Everywhere Gospel Band she immediately asked to join.
She was shocked when Rev. Mark denied her request, informing her she couldn’t be a missionary with the Preach Everywhere Gospel Band because they didn’t accept western missionaries. Undeterred, she convinced them to let her accompany the missionaries as a partner, not as a member.
Rev. Mark Ma agreed and Helen became one of the few westerners to ever personally witness the work of the Chinese missionaries among the Muslims in western China. She traveled with Rev. Mark Ma to the city of Xining and spent months listening to the vision of taking the Gospel all the way back to Jerusalem first hand.
Eventually, Helen was forced to return home to the Carolinas after the Communists took power, but she never forgot what she saw and heard. Helen began writing a newsletter for prayer groups in America and England under the name BTJ where she shared the vision of the Chinese church for the first time in recorded history with the western world and she called it a name, not based on the Chinese named but based on the phrase that she kept hearing from Rev. Mark Ma and the entire team when they said they are taking the Gospel all the way BACK TO JERUSALEM.
Helen Bailey is the reason we use the term Back to Jerusalem today to describe the vision that God has given to the Chinese underground house church and I didn’t even know her name or the significant role she played until this year.
