PROFILES IN FAITH

On July 30, 1991, life in Shanghai, China, was pretty normal. Ships and water ferries moved up and down the Huangpu River; streets were crowded and it was business as usual. On that morning, a small group of men and women quietly slipped into a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in Shanghai to blend their voices and prayers in a memorial service for ninety-oneyear old Wang Ming Dao. Actually, the service had been scheduled for the following day; but fearing that far too many people would come, having learned that this godly old saint had slipped into the presence of the Lord, family and friends decided to go ahead with a private memorial service on Tuesday instead of the scheduled Wednesday.

Wang Ming Dao was one of the most influential Chinese Christians to have lived in this century. While some might think it strange that only a small private memorial service was observed in the small, one-bedroom apartment where Wang and his saintly wife lived, things aren’t done in Shanghai the same way they are done elsewhere.

In China there is a lot more to think about than flowers and special music. You see, Wang Ming Dao was also an ex-convict, having once been sentenced to death row under China’s penal code. When visitors from outside would visit the little apartment where the Wangs lived, they would discreetly close the blinds to hide their presence from prying eyes.

What was the crime that sent Wang to Prison for twenty-two years and nine months? The Communist government charged and convicted him of being a “counterrevolutionary” and sent him to forced labor in the northern part of China, where he worked in a coal mine. His real crime was that Wang was committed to Jesus Christ. You see, when the Communists closed the churches in the early 1950s, Wang, who was a leader, defiantly said, “They can close our churches but they cannot stop us from worshiping God in the confines of our homes!”

Frankly, if ever a man was a saint, Wang Ming Dao was one. Perfect? No! Committed? Definitely. I met Wang and his wife for the first time when he was eighty-nine. He was hard of hearing and almost blind, yet he was alert; and in spite of everything he had been through, he had retained his sense of humor. In 1981, following his release from prison, Wang wrote of the events in his life in an autobiography called A Stone Made Smooth. When I told the aged gentleman that I had read his book, with a twinkle in his eye, he replied, “Stone still not yet smooth!”

Today the stone has turned into a crown! Wang Ming Dao is part of the reason that the church inside China is among the fastest growing in the world in spite of the repression of a government that is committed to atheism.

One of the reasons I admire this great man is that he was so human. Convicted and thrown in prison, Wang began to question the mercy of a God who would allow such punishment on His children; and acknowledging his misgiving, he was released. Then, out of prison, he felt that he had betrayed Christ like Peter and again stood resolutely for Christ. This time, he was sent back to prison for the long haul.

Authentic saints are not made out of plaster of paris or painted with gloss enamel; they are real men and women who have tasted the fire of bitter persecution but have found in the flame the presence of Jesus Christ to sustain and strengthen them.

Shortly before his death, when asked what lesson he could share with the church elsewhere, he firmly and resolutely replied, “Tell them to walk the hard road!” Wang Ming Dao was one of the greatest of all time. And at the end of the hard road, he met his Master, Jesus Christ.