Did the Church Fail Them?

“Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the Church” (Acts 12:1).… “Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him” (Acts 12:5).… “And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord has sent his angel, and delivered me out of the hand of Herod” (Acts 12:11).… “But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of prison” (Acts 12:17).

The above verses form a beautiful framework for one of the most inspiring stories of the early Christian Church. These Scriptures describe the persecution of the faithful in the Church during the early half of the First Century, yet by way of triumph over the subtle enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church’s only weapon to bring victory nineteen hundred years ago was the simple procedure of persistent prayer.

Among The Chief Tasks

How effective is the Christian Church today in its battle with godless and satanic forces? Whereas in the time of Peter a few tens of Christians worshipped and prayed in the home of a widowed mother in Jerusalem, Christ’s followers today encircle the globe. Instead of worship in the homes, or in secluded caves or fields, beautiful edifices dot our lands with spires and crosses to remind us of spiritual values in the midst of materialistic blessings. But is the Church today meeting one of its chief tasks: “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Eph. 6:18)?

Were we conscientiously to answer that question, we must make a sad admission that we have fallen far short of our duties. Thinking of the persecuted Church in China in the light of the above question, we will have to admit almost total failure. Had our American and European congregations been cognizant of the battle that faced the faithful persecuted Christians of China and prayed constantly for them, there might have been a different record for the Church of China. The Chinese Christian Church was young. Much of it was permeated with Modernism. It was unprepared for the spiritual battles which had faced the Church of the first century. When the “evil day” struck, it was unable to stand. The “sending missions” of other lands failed them in the mission of prayer.

The experiences of three Christian leaders in China and their positions today stand as an accusation against us for our failure in intercessory prayer.

Story Of Pastor Wu

Pastor Wu, a native Chinese Christian, is a sincere and able servant of the Lord. Respected among the congregations, he was made President of his Lutheran Synod. On invitation of a Lutheran Synod, he visited in the United States. When the Communist Party took over China in 1949 and established their government, new and unexpected problems arose for the Church. Though avowedly anti-God, the new government feigned concern and respect for the Church. Many Chinese church leaders and even missionaries were deceived. Through subtle and clever manipulations many became ensnared in the net so skillfully laid by the Communists. In April, 1951, the Communist Government brought together 158 Protestant leaders from all parts of China for a six day conference in Peking at Government expense. Pastor Wu as head of his Synod was forced to participate. On his return to his county parish he refused to carry on services in the manner prescribed by the Communist Party. He was unwilling to make the Church an enslaved servant of the State. For his stand he was discriminated against. Like many others, he learned that he could not live freely, and support himself and his family, unless he was willing to accept the “mark of the beast.”

Finally, in the summer of 1956, the Communist-sponsored and controlled section of Pastor Wu’s parish sent a seminary graduate by the name of Chang to Hankow for ordination into the ministry by officials of the New Church. They gave Mr. Chang a suit of clothes, travel expenses, and money. Pastor Wu, who as President of the Synod should have been the ordinator, was reduced to a clerk’s job in a Government-operated Co-operative to gain a living for himself and family. Last summer, Mr. Chang’s Sunday morning services consisted of reading to the assembled congregation the Communist dailies and magazines and commenting on them.

Does neglect of intercession in the Lutheran Church have any responsibility for what has happened to Pastor Wu and other church leaders on their Mission Field in Central China during the last eight years?

Pastor Wang Ming Tao

Another of China’s faithful church leaders is Pastor Wang Ming Tao. Denominationally, Mr. Wang is a Baptist. During his 30 year ministry he has probably preached to more people in China than any other living Chinese. He defended the Word against Modernists, the Christian-Shinto Japanese Church, Communists, and then against the Communist-sponsored and controlled Church. On the other hand, President Dr. Y. T. Wu of the Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Church has stated in one of his books that the Incarnation, Virgin Birth, Resurrection and Second Advent of the Lord are but myths of no value to the Church.

Since the inauguration of the Accusations Movement in the Peking Church Conference in April, 1951, Pastor Wang Ming Tao has been singled out frequently for accusation. Under the sponsorship of The Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement, National Accusation Meetings were organized throughout China in the spring of 1955. Records of the procedures of those meetings are found in the official church papers.

The July 1955 issue of The New Church was given almost wholly to an attack on Wang Ming Tao. The editor, the Rev. Ch’en Chien-Hsun, now an ordained pastor of the Government sponsored church, was once a student in the U.S.A., and for many years the editor of The Lutheran Weekly in China. Chief accusations against Wang Ming Tao were that he had refused to support the Government-sponsored Church—The Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement. He rejected the assumption that “all men are brothers” under “the Fatherhood of God” regardless of spiritual viewpoints. Most frequently used against him was his literal acceptance of 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers …”

In December, 1951, Mr. Wang ran an editorial in his publication, The Spiritual Food Quarterly, from which we quote the closing sentence: “Under these conditions the one who faithfully preaches the Word of God cannot but expect to meet opposition from some leaders in the Church and from ‘Christians’ who are spiritually dead, in the form of malicious slander and cursing. I know that this will come to pass. I am prepared to meet it. I covet the faithfulness and courage of Martin Luther.” Then follows the prayer Luther uttered at Worms in April, 1521, before he entered the presence of Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was requiring Luther to recant.

Wang Ming Tao continued for nearly five years to minister fearlessly and to witness in Peking. Unforseen by Mr. Wang was the fact that Sunday night, August 7, 1955, was to be his last free service. That night he closed the service with Communion, and passed out his forty page Chinese booklet entitled: We, Because of Our Faith Alone. It was his defense, his position on the Word, over against the compromising Communist-sponsored Church.

About one o’clock the following morning, police came to the church premises with warrants for the arrest of Pastor and Mrs. Wang Ming Tao and 18 Christian students who had attended the service. These warrants were legal in every respect, and they were the efforts of the Communist-sponsored Church, to which a number of Lutherans had contributed.

Pastor and Mrs. Wang were subsequently brought to trial and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Mr. Wang was 55 years old at the time. The couple were incarcerated in separate cells. Early in 1956 there was a report that Mrs. Wang had been released from prison and had died. That is not true. She was released and is still alive. Later in 1956 reports began coming out of China that through the “graciousness” of the Communist Government, Wang Ming Tao had been released after serving less than a year of his sentence.

The report from reliable sources inside China verifies the fact that Wang Ming Tao has been released from prison, that he is “a changed man,” and that he appears to be under an ominous dark cloud, worrying that he has done something which he should not have done. With Mr. Wang in his prison cell there had been two other “prisoners.” They were agents placed there by the Communist Party, a common procedure in Chinese prisons. These agents worked on Mr. Wang day and night, arguing that he was wrong in opposing the Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement. He finally succumbed, signed the prepared confession, and was released from prison.

What a contrast with Peter’s experience in prison! But did the Christian Church in America support Wang Ming Tao during his years of persecutions? How much prayer was there in our Churches for this “prisoner of the Lord” during his brain-washing in that Communist cell?

The Case Of Paul Mackensen

Finally, look at an American missionary imprisoned in China. Paul Mackensen is the son of a pastor of the American Lutheran Church serving in Baltimore. Now in his early thirties, Paul Mackensen graduated from St. Olaf College in 1945, and then spent three years in a theological seminary. He was interested in China, but since his own Church had no mission there, he was loaned to the United Lutheran Church. He went in 1948 in the Tsingtao Area on the east coast of China. He had one year of language study, with a minimum of contacts with the Chinese people, before the Communist occupation of that Port city in 1949.

Sometime the night of March 7, 1952, police came to Mackensen’s home and took him away. The night following his arrest, a giant spectacle of aerial warfare was staged over the Tsingtao Area by Communist military forces. They claimed that their anti-aircraft guns were fighting off American Air Force planes dropping insects impregnated with plague-carrying germs. During the three hour demonstration, the city was in total darkness.

Later, German Lutheran missionaries testified that they never heard the sound of planes. Yet the Communist Daily came out saying, “Two U.S. Planes Drop Germ-Infested Insects On Tsingtao Area.” Students were mobilized, each wearing a mask and carrying a bottle in one hand and chop-sticks in the other. They were going to hunt insects which the American planes were said to have dropped. The military forces were engaged in the same search. Doctors and nurses were organized and paraded the streets in white uniforms, holding high their syringes. People were urged to have inoculations against epidemics and plague. In the month following the Government carried on a constant propaganda campaign against the United States, then engaged in the war in Korea. All groups, particularly religious and educational, were required to participate. The Organized Christian Church became a vehicle for such Communist propaganda.

No one knew exactly where Paul Mackensen was, though it was supposed that he was in a Tsingtao Prison. Fifteen months after his arrest, Catholic missionaries came out of the prison, bringing the word that Mr. Mackensen was there. He was charged with “threatening the security of Communist China” through his complicity in germ warfare. It was intimated that if Mackensen would confess this, he would be released. In 1956 Mr. Mackensen was transferred to a prison in Shanghai. There the New Testament taken from him upon entry into the Tsingtao prison was restored. Together with some Catholic missionaries he was taken on a 2000 mile tour in China, evidently to condition him for favorable reporting on the New China.

In January, 1957, Mr. Mackensen was interviewed by an American newsman—William Worthy—of the Afro-American in Baltimore. Mr. Mackensen told Mr. Worthy that he expected to remain in China and work after he had completed his five year prison term. In Worthy’s opinion Mackensen appeared to be brainwashed. On March 7, 1957, following the completion of his five year sentence Paul Mackensen was released from the prison, and that day telephoned Hongkong that he was remaining to work in Shanghai.

Exactly what this may mean we do not know. One could surmise that a missionary would like to remain in China and work among the people he has learned to love. But, despite numerous reports to the contrary, it appears that the organized church in China—Catholic and Protestant—is under the direct control of the Communist Government. I am convinced the Communist Party would never permit any American to move about in China freely unless they were very sure of that American’s political attitude. It is likely that he has been won over to the position of the Communist-controlled Church.

Breakdown Of Prayer

How could such a thing come to pass? I feel definitely that it reflects a failure of the Church in its mission of intercession. True, Pastor Mackensen’s family and many of his closer friends constantly remembered him in prayer. But few of the American Church people were aware of Mr. Mackensen. Some who did know, did not want to be reminded of his unpleasant situation. It was much more pleasant and convenient to continue in complacency.

We wish to share excerpts of a letter written in January, 1954, by one of the Catholic missionaries who came out of this Tsingtao prison, in reply to inquiries about Paul Mackensen. That information was shared with some Lutheran Groups in 1954. Yet, today, few people know the story of Paul Mackensen and the terrible things he suffered, or of the hundreds of native church leaders who are now suffering because they refuse to “Bow the knee to Baal”:

“I knew Mr. Mackensen well … I was in the same prison … but did not see him or have any contact with him; as a matter of fact I did not know he was arrested until after I was released … A German Priest … told me that he had been in the same cell with Mackensen for some time, and that Mr. Mackensen was having a very hard time of it … In prison many prisoners had to wear handcuffs for a long time and some had a chain clamped from one ankle to the other. This priest told me that Mackensen had both. This can happen for very minor things, or some times for reasons unknown to the victim.

I would like not only to suggest to you but to tell you to pray very much for Mr. Mackensen and also ask others to do so as you cannot imagine what he might be going through, not only physically, but he has to study propaganda continually and propaganda is very tricky, and conditions he has to study under are very severe. Let us pray together then for Mr. Mackensen and for all those in China who are suffering for the cause of Christ.”

Hundreds Of Others

Hundreds of other pastors, evangelists, Bible-women, teachers, doctors and nurses have already made the supreme sacrifice for their faith, or are languishing in prison. Two and one half years ago the Communist-sponsored church claimed that it had the approval and support of 417,000 Protestant Christians—40% of the Church. Time is no doubt gradually weakening the resistance of others as they become isolated and discouraged and finally decide that compromise is their only way out. The Communist-sponsored church in China was represented in England last summer and later in Budapest for the executive committee of The World Council of Churches by a bogus Bishop. And there is to be an exchange of visiting church delegations. We are told that delegates will come from behind the Bamboo Curtain of China to the Lutheran World Federation Assembly meeting in Minneapolis in August. Will there be delegates from the Persecuted Church in China?

One can wonder at the compromise Wang Ming Tao is said to have made. It is not strange—for like a scattered flock the imprisoned one is separated from friends. One becomes lonely and alone when the bonds of prayer are broken.

We are cautioned to be charitable in our judgments of those who have compromised and cast their lot with the Communist-sponsored church. We want to be charitable. But we also want to protect ourselves from the spiritual apathy which produces compromise.

Major William A. Mayer, psychiatrist of the U.S. Army, has stated that “one third of all American soldiers captured in Korea yielded to brain-washing” and that without torture. The primary reasons were that most of those men lacked a strong religious faith. Through propaganda they eventually were convinced that their country—the United States—was not a good land after all. This is a serious charge, but it is true that we are being educated and conditioned for a passive non-resistance. In the schools, colleges, universities, and even seminaries the youth are taught and asked to believe that co-existence with Communism is the solution to the problems of our age.

It appears that there are few principles of faith that the church holds dear. We are in an age of compromise. Does the church believe that it can co-exist with communism? It might as well believe that it can live and worship together with the followers of Buddha or Mohammed.

Where is the spirit of the early church today with the zeal and faith found in Peter, and John, and Stephen, and again in Paul and others?

Preacher In The Red

DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE FOR DESSERT?

Early in my career as a student-minister I preached in a small town in the mountains of Kentucky. In time I came to know and accept what seemed to be an unwritten law in that community: the lady in whose home the minister was entertained must not attend church that Sunday but instead should stay at home in order to have the noon meal ready to serve as soon as the minister arrived from the morning service.

However, on the first Sunday of my ministry there I did not understand this situation and was loathe to accept it. My hostess, Mrs. Jones, told me that morning that she would not go to church but that I was to come promptly to her home for dinner upon the conclusion of the service. In my youthful zeal I tried to persuade her to attend the worship service and to prepare and serve the meal later, but she was adamant in the face of all my arguments. Finally, in my mind, I reasoned that it is Satan who keeps people away from church, and that if my being a guest in a home kept the lady of the house away from church then I was like him. But what I actually said was, “But Sister Jones, I’ll feel like the devil if you stay away from church this morning!”

As soon as I realized what this sounded like I hastened to explain my reasoning, but even so I didn’t alter Mrs. Jones’ adherence to that custom.—the Rev. Harold F. Hanlin, Oklahoma City, Okla.

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A missionary to China whose service was twice interrupted by Communists, Thomas I. Lee is a graduate of St. Olaf College and Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Paul. In 1924 he was ordained by the Evangelical Lutheran Church and began missionary effort in China. The Communist uprising in 1927 necessitated his return to America. But in 1929 he renewed missionary work in China, and except for two furloughs remained until he fled to Hongkong in 1949 as superintendent of the Lutheran United Mission there until 1953. In 1954, in a difficult decision, he declined reassignment to the Hongkong work, in order to stir Americans from slumber touching the Christian situation in China.

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