In the summer of 1865, Hudson Taylor became tremendously burdened for the land of China. His biographer reports that he also became greatly troubled about the church he was attending in Brighton, England. As he looked around the congregation he saw
pew upon pew of prosperous bearded merchants, shopkeepers, visitors; demure wives in bonnets and crinolines, scrubbed children trained to hide their impatience; the atmosphere of smug piety sickened him. He seized his hat and left.[1]
“Unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing
in their own security, while millions were perishing for lack of knowledge, I wandered out on the sands alone, in great spiritual agony.” And there on the beach he prayed for “twenty-four willing skilful labourers.”[2]
Out of that prayer eventually came the China Inland Mission. Due to that ministry and others like it, there are reportedly twenty-five million to perhaps fifty million believers in China today, despite its officially atheistic government.[3]
[1] MacArthur New Testament Commentary, The – MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 1-8.
[2] John Stott, “Our Guilty Silence,” Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969, pg.24
[3] MacArthur