We are all clear today that the preaching of the gospel has to be matched by a proper environment. For the spread of the gospel we need a peaceful situation, a free flow of traffic, and a common language.
The nation of Israel was unique. Moreover, the land of Canaan, which they occupied according to God’s arrangement, was also unique. In terms of geography it was isolated, but in terms of transportation it was linked to all directions. Because of this, God raised up the Roman Empire to conquer all the civilized regions in Europe and to take over all the lands around the Mediterranean. Due to its strong political and military power, Rome was able to maintain a situation which was peaceful, stable, and safe.
The people and nations within the territories of the Roman Empire, though very complicated, were all under one rule. Therefore, no matter where the citizens went, they could travel freely throughout the empire without having to apply for passes. Not only so, history tells us that the Roman Empire, after its unification, actively engaged itself in building highways from Rome to countries all around. It also put an end to the pirating activities on the Mediterranean Sea. As a result, traffic on the land and on the sea flowed freely and conveniently.
Before the establishment of the Roman Empire, about three hundred years before Christ, Greek became the language commonly spoken in the Jewish and Egyptian regions due to the conquest by Alexander the Great. After the unification of the Roman Empire, the government also picked up the usage of Greek and promoted the Greek culture as well. Thus, Greek culture became prevailing everywhere, and all language barriers were torn down. This shows us that all the environments are arranged by God for the spread of the gospel.
If we study the book of Acts and observe world history, we can realize that the world situation always goes along with the gospel. God’s way is marvelous. Whenever the gospel was about to reach a certain place, a certain change or action, such as a migration, would occur there.
In the book of Acts, we clearly see a migration taking place. In Jerusalem at the beginning, three thousand people were saved at once, and then at another time, five thousand (2:41; 4:4). In the old days, especially with the inconvenience of transportation, who would be willing to migrate to a faraway place? Most were attached to their native land and were unwilling to leave it. However, with many people saved in Jerusalem and concentrated there, naturally there was no way for the gospel to spread. Therefore, the Lord had to raise up a persecution so that the believers living in Jerusalem were scattered to other localities. These scattered believers went throughout the land preaching the gospel (8:1, 4). When we come to chapter twenty-one of Acts, we see that there was a great number of Christians gathering again at Jerusalem (v. 20). This is a principle: whenever there is a move of the gospel, the residents of the locality involved will have to make a change; that is, a migration has to take place.
The history of China is a history of changes. However, even though there have been many dynastic changes, there have been few changes and movements among the people. It was not until the sixteenth century that the Western wind started to blow toward the East, and the Western culture and customs gradually spread to China. This opened up a way for the gospel. First, Catholic priests such as Matteo Ricci went. Then in the nineteenth century, group after group of Protestant missionaries also went. Once the gospel arrived, China began to change. Later, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was influenced by the West, began a revolution. Up until the 1900s, there were still very few believers in China, but due to the Boxer Rebellion, more Western missionaries had the burden to go to China for the gospel. After the establishment of the Chinese Republic, the country was widely opened to the gospel. Because of the changes in the environment, people began to open themselves to changes and would no longer hold on to the old things. By 1920 the gospel invaded the universities, and many young people of high achievements received the Lord.
Even though this was the case, the gospel was still not prevailing in China. Later, God raised up situations that led to increased and drastic changes. Eventually, several million people left mainland China and settled in Taiwan. We were included in that move. When I first came to Taiwan, I had already been carrying on a work for the Lord for almost twenty years, which was quite fruitful. However, it could not be compared with the work we had after we went to Taiwan. When we first began to work in 1949, people were saved in throngs. This is because the transplanting from mainland China to Taiwan caused the people to become softened in their heart and therefore more ready to receive the gospel.
At that time in Taipei, we had gospel marches every Lord’s Day afternoon. After a march, we brought people to the amphitheater at the New Park. The three thousand seats there would be filled each time. After the meeting we would bring back four or five hundred names. The next night we would ask the saints to come together and then distribute the names to them according to districts for follow-up visits one by one. This kind of action proved to be very effective. People believed in the Lord in groups and companies, and they were caught in “net after net.”
Due to the large number of people who received the Lord, I worked out a way to baptize three people in one minute. The plan included seat arrangements, changing into baptismal robes, coming down into the baptistery, being baptized, and changing back into street clothes. I supervised the entire process and especially made sure that each one was baptized in less than twenty seconds. I still remember one baptismal meeting on a Saturday that lasted from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. Because there were only three hundred eighty baptismal robes, we had to wait until the morning of the following day, which was the Lord’s Day, to finish baptizing everyone. That time we baptized more than seven hundred. The saints served by groups in shifts.
The gospel was powerful at that time because the people had experienced a great change. If they had still been in their native land, many of them probably would not have received the gospel. While I was in Chefoo, I had observed and made a study. I found out that Chefoo had a population of about 300,000, less than one-third of which were the local people, the majority being from nearby regions, especially from the Liaotung Peninsula. I myself was not a native of Chefoo; I came from the nearby county of Penglai. Ninety-nine percent of the believers in Chefoo were from other places. Out of one hundred Christians it was hard to find one who was a native of Chefoo. This is because the local people were deeply rooted in their ways. Because they had their families, relatives, neighbors, and family shrines with ancestral tablets, for them to believe in the Lord was extremely difficult.
When I came to Taiwan, after more observations I was finally clear. In the early days in Taiwan, to bring a Taiwanese to believe in the Lord was not easy. To gain a Taiwanese was to gain a treasure. The mainlanders, on the other hand, were considered less valuable because they received the gospel in groups. Sometimes out of three hundred who were baptized, only five or six were natives. Why was this the case? It was because the mainlanders had been uprooted. There is a Chinese saying: “Move a tree and it will die; move a man and he will live.” This means that a tree should not be moved, because once it is moved, it may die right away. However, if a man is uprooted and moved, it will be easy for him to live. Therefore, those who migrated to Taiwan from China all survived, and many of them believed in the Lord.
On August 1, 1949, we held a conference and thus officially began our work in Taiwan. At that time the total number of brothers and sisters from the south to the north of the island of Taiwan was no more than three to five hundred. Within five years, however, the number of saints increased to twenty to thirty thousand. At that time none of us thought of going to America. Our heart was to go back to China. We all thought that the Lord’s intention was for us to save sinners and nurture the believers in Taiwan; then after a few years, He would bring us back to mainland China as apostles. We could not forget that there were four to five hundred million people waiting for us to preach the gospel for their salvation.