There might not be a single significant moment of time in the last several thousand years when God’s people did not experience persecution in China, but there was a year, in the summer of 1900, when bloody oppression against believers reached a deadly pinnacle and demons clamored out from the gates of hell to gain complete control over the world’s most populated nation.
If you have ever wondered why the revivals in China have grown to such unimaginable numbers, this book can help reveal to you the answer. The stories in this book recount the most savage massacres in the history of world missions. It is this single event that changed the trajectory of the Chinese church forever and to understand it is to understand why the underground Christians in China are the way they are and why they have grown to be such an indomitable body of believers.
Throughout history, millions of Christians have been killed for their faith, but never were so many Christian missionaries hunted, gathered, and systematically killed as they were during the notorious Boxer Rebellion.
The Boxer Rebellion was a secret society of Chinese fighters who launched a truly demonic slaughter of Christian missionaries. The Boxers were more than skilled fighters, but they were spiritual shamans who believed they were called to be intermediaries between the visible world and the spirit world. They practiced a form of spiritual possession where they prayed to demons and asked them to come and live inside of them. Boxers also wrote their prayers on paper, burned them and drank them with water so that the demons would be welcomed in their body. The demons commanded the men to kill the Christians. After killing the Christians, the demons commanded them to cut the hearts of the Christians out of their chests and offer them on Buddhist altars!
The following stories are the forgotten events of what really happened during the Boxer Rebellion and how it not only laid the foundation for the largest Christian revival in world history, but also launched the largest mission movement to complete the Great Commission.
The original author of this book is Mary Isabella Bryson. Mary was a British missionary to China, serving at the London Mission, Wuchang, China. She writes this note for the reader:
Note by the Author
When I was at home on furlough, and met many of the young people who will, I hope, read these pages, many ministers and Christian workers in Bristol told me they thought the heroic deaths and sufferings, for Jesus’ sake ought to be put on record. The story, they said, was a legacy to the church, which should not be lost, but should be treasured right down the ages, like the record of the persecutions of pagan Rome.
No costly memorials have been erected above their graves. Many of the martyrs never even received burial, their ashes being thrown upon the winds, but their memory will never die so long as the Christian Church grows and thrives in Chinese soil. And surely the next generations who read these pages will be coming soon to help to gather in the great harvests which now, more than ever before, wait for reapers on the soil consecrated by the blood of the martyrs.
Mary I. Bryson.
London Mission, Tientsin, North China.
May, 1904
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