"MAN SENT FROM GOD"

Text: John 1:6-9

"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

Before we enter into the discourse on the Asian Awakening, let me bring heartfelt greetings from the Bible-Presbyterian Church of Singapore and Malaysia to you, our English brothers and sisters. For it was from England through that great Scotsman, William Chalmers Burns (1815-68), first pioneer missionary of the English Presbyterian Mission, that the Gospel was brought to our forebears in South China - to Amoy (Xiamen) in 1851 and to Swatow (Santou) in 1856.

Though we have received a glorious heritage from the English Presbyterians, we are closer to you, our Baptist kinsmen. Dr. J. Greshem Machen once said he would cooperate rather with evangelical Arminians than with liberal Calvinists. Alas, I cannot bring greetings to the Presbyterian Church of England which has in the words of Shakespeare suffered a sea-change, but for the worse, by being now submerged under the restless waves of the Ecumenical Movement. The fact that you are separatists after Spurgeon (whose "Lectures to My Students" are for our students), and we also are separatists, has bound us even closer. Being both of the Reformed Faith, we have so many things in common which has further resulted in your pastor Dr. Masters being sent to our shores for a number of times to instruct us. How I personally must also thank him for taking time to read my book "The Law of Moses and of Jesus", and giving it a thrust into the Christian reading public with his kind commendation.

I feel constrained also to say a word for faithful missionaries who have from generation to generation carried the Cross to China after Robert Morrison, 1807. While some might have fallen into the category of collaborators with Western Im­perialism and gunboat diplomacy, as charged by the masters of Mao, I want to bear witness to the integrity and loving-kindness of the great majority of men and women from the west, not only from personal contact both in China and Southeast Asia, but also from our family history.

My maternal great-grandfather was the first convert of the English Presbyterian Mission to Swatow under the hand of Rev. George Smith (1859), successor to William Burns. He was the first pastor to he ordained (1882) insofar as Swatow was concerned, and Chinese tutor to the Swatow Theological College. My grandfather found Christ at the age of nineteen also from a missionary, and joined the English Presbyterian Mission as an evangelist in China and as a pastor in Singapore. My father received medical training from the Swatow Mission Hospital under Dr. A. Lyall, whose name was our household word, and there arc many other names well-known to us because they laid down their lives for our people.

I am of the generation that has migrated to Southeast Asia, to Malaysia and Singapore. Missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of England moved along with the migrating stream and made Singapore their headquarters. But when I became pastor to the English-speaking congregation of the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Singapore in 1950, those missionaries we associated with were by and large modernist, while their church at home was joining up with the World Council of Churches. Being a member of the ICCC (International Council of Christian Churches) and without apology a filial son of the 16th Century Reformation, I was constrained, with the support of Rev. K.C. Quek now our moderator, to lead the Church to separate. Hence our becoming Bible-Presbyterian in 1955.

  According  to  Edward  Band,  author  of  the  History  of  the  English Presbyterian Mission 1847-1947,  there were only a score of missionaries in China three decades after Robert Morrison, while the numbers baptised did not exceed one hundred. After the turn of the century, the Chinese Church was just coming of age. There were signs of awakening too from among her sons and daughters. Now, Dr. J. Edwin Orr has mentioned the names of Marie Monson and Anna Christiansen as being leaders of a "Revival of Evangelical Christianity in China between 1927 and 1939", and well might we add the name of Jonathan Goforth of Canada (1859-1936). But those of the Chinese Church that began to stir the hearts of their compatriots were Ting Li Mei and Dora Yu. These two names were on the lips of our family, for Mother was saved under Dora Yu, as was Watchman Nee, while Rev. Ting (China's first revivalist) was most forward in appealing for one thousand young volunteers (full-time workers) for Christ.

But the Asian Awakening did not stir in earnest until the raising of the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band under Dr. Andrew Gih with whom Dr. John Sung was associated from 1931 to 1934. When a separation took place as between Paul and Barnabas, it was upon John Sung that the Spirit mightily fell, and it was through this "man sent from God" that thousands were brought into the Kingdom, like Peter's two shiploads of fish. William E. Schubert, veteran missionary to China and John Sung's confidant, with whom I had the privilege of a personal interview in Los Angeles 1979, mentioned in his book "I Remember John Sung" that "from 1933 to 1936 the Great Holy Ghost time, ... John Sung had something over 100,000 converts." If that is the case, we can safely compute that two to three hundred thousand souls were born again throughout his 12 years of relentless service, that is, from 1928 to 1940. In a sermon preached in South China on the mighty working of the Holy Spirit, John Sung testified, "During the last nine years of my travels, I have seen several hundred thousand born again" (see p. 97). It must be noticed this was a special dispensation of the Holy Spirit's outpourings so that, as in the Welsh Revival of 1905 when shoesmiths and coppersmiths  could  stand up and  preach;  men,  women  and children  who joined  John  Sung's  Preaching  Bands  were  instrumental in bringing  many   more souls to Christ.  If  you  read "9n John Sung's Steps",  the story of  Lim Puay  Hian, an outstanding  disciple of  John Sung  from Swatow  my  birth­-  place, you will be amazed that under his hand thousands were further won to the Lord in the wake of  John  Sung's  ten-thousands,  particularly in  Fukien  Province.

Not only are the numbers remarkable, considering there were only about a million Protestant Christians in China prior to the Communist takeover in 1949 (Leslie Lyall), the countries, cities and towns visited by John Sung ranged the length and breadth of China and all over Southeast Asia. John's disciple, Lim Puay Man, in his memoirs counted 230 cities and towns that he had evangelised in South China and Southeast Asia during his 30 years of itinerant ministry.

The Asian Awakening brought about by John Sung with remarkably lasting results cannot be understood unless we fathom the depths of his training, from early childhood to his education in America and return to China at the age of 27. Inasmuch as the 16th Century Reformation was first forged in the innermost being of Martin Luther before he could stand before Emperor and prelates and refute them, the Asian Awakening had stemmed from John Sung's soul-struggle against the dark powers of modernist unbelief and the ravages of the sinfulness of sin. In John Sung's own words, he did not indulge in the four Chinese proverbial sins of womanising, gambling, drinking and smoking, but rather in the deadlier sins of the spirit, viz., pride, hypocrisy, doubt and disbelief. The way John Sung portrayed the crushing burden of sin in his preaching could not be so vividly acted out but from his own experience. His message was therefore that of John the Baptist, inasmuch as he was called John on the night of his conversion, a message of unremitting rebuke of sin in both high and low places, particularly in the Church.

His mission was to plough through the fallow ground of a dead Christianity in the hearts of nominal Christians and "rice" Christians, that the living waters of the Holy Spirit might enter in and bring forth life. "Except a man be born again and be filled with the Holy Spirit" was the theme of his revival preaching.

John Sung was born in 1901 to a Chinese Methodist pastor's family of eleven children. He was the only one dedicated to the Lord, even from his mother's womb. Strong-headed like his father, with a fiery temper, he nevertheless had a soft heart. He was most fearful of death from an early age. When he was eight or nine, he experienced the blessings of a Pentecost that visited his home Church in Hinghwa wherein three thousand were gloriously saved. At the age of 13 he became his father's assistant, even in standing in for him at the pulpit, so much so he was called the Little Pastor. He loved not only to preach but also to sing. A brilliant scholar, he veered from his parent's vow to find entrance to the Naval College. Failing this, and further being turned away from entering the university in the national capital, Nanking, by the sudden death of a sister, he quickened his steps toward America, through the help of a missionary friend. Though intending to study for the ministry in fulfilment of his parents' vow, he veered again, now to take up science. He studied in Ohio from 1920 to 1926, culminating with the Ph.D. in Chemistry, with awards of gold keys and medals and cash prizes. At the height of human glory, he was cast down with melancholy as the words of Jesus, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36) spoke to his heart. At this point of time he was visited by a Methodist pastor, who suggested he join the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

At Union Seminary he was bombarded with liberal theology left and right. His favourite teacher was Harry Emerson Fosdick, later minister of New York's famed Riverside Church. His faith crumbled to the ground. In a sermon he preached in later years he lamented the deadening effect of modernistic teachings, punning the word "seminary" with the word "cemetery". incidentally, the president of Union Seminary at this time was surnamed Coffin, to be exact, Henry Sloane Coffin. And if what he got from the "cemetery" was a "God-is-dead" theology, and if Christ be not risen, what was the purpose of his pursuing the study of Christianity any more? Therefore he turned to Taoism (China's own metaph­ysical philosophy), Buddhism, and to the Koran. The more he searched for the Truth in a school where lies were taught, the more he became confused. The more he became confused, the more he became desperate. For forty days and nights the struggle between Truth and Error, between Light and Darkness, between the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Satan, raged in his soul.

On the fortieth night which was February 10, 1927, according to his own words, "I got to the point where I no longer had any desire to live." Nevertheless, he persevered to pray on and confess his sins. When the clock struck twelve midnight, suddenly he was overwhelmed by a vision of the crucified Christ standing before him. In a compassionate voice the Lord comforted him, "My son, your sins are forgiven ! Your name is now changed to John." As the vision receded, John felt a wonderful relief in the sudden rolling away of his sin-burden. Leaping to his feet with a shout of Hallelujah, he sang loud praises to God. His songs of praise rang through the corridors of his fourth floor dormitory.

Recalling February 10, 1927, he said in an interview, "That night of nights was the birth of new life in me after forty days of wilderness struggle. I shall never forget. The same night I received the Lord's Commission to go into all the world to be His end-time witness. The Lord is coming very soon. He needs heralds before His return."

For a whole week John Sung preached the glad news of his newfound Saviour without let-up. Gentle as a lamb to those who heard him patiently, he had the boldness of a lion against every power of darkness. His spiritual eyes opened, he went straight to his favourite teacher, Fosdick: "You are of the devil. You made me lose my faith!" For denouncing sin in high places, he was sent to a lunatic asylum where he was confined for 193 days.

The mental hospital was God's appointed seminary for John. Shut out from the world, he read his Bible day and night forty times. Henceforth he would read no other book but the Book of books. He said, "The Bible is the inspired Word of God, written by the moving of the Spirit of God. Therefore the Bible reader, unless it is revealed to him by God at the instruction of the Holy Spirit, how can he understand it? I thank God that He has shown me the mysteries of the Bible. I know that every chapter, every verse, every word has something good for my spiritual life...."

In the madhouse he was confined to, in the ward where the severest cases were treated, he was bombarded by a tirade of jangling sounds throughout the day. Here the hothead of a scholar was properly tempered to become a patient servant of the Lord. Head knowledge of Bible truth without heart knowledge is dead knowledge.

Upon his release, he was invited to a pastor's home. After dinner, John Sung was asked to play a tune on the piano before a "three-unwholesome" girl, who was blind, deaf and dumb. Wonder of wonders, by putting her hand on the piano while he played, the same was able somehow to reproduce what John Sung had played. This encounter made a deep impression on him, that to be a servant of God, he must not look at the world and its riches, nor listen to man's ridicule and criticism. In the words of Isaiah, "Who is blind but my servant? or deaf as my messenger that I sent?" (Isaiah 42:19). To make sure he would no more be attracted by the glitters of this world, he threw all his degrees and gold keys and medals into the ocean on his voyage back to China.

Before John Sung left for America, he was betrothed to a young lady by the wishes of their parents. Upon his return he was married to this girl of parental choice. Though John Sung at first was not too enthusiastic about married life, there were five children, two boys and three girls, born to them. Using often the first love of a newly married couple to illustrate the relationship between Christ and His Church in his sermons, was he not speaking from his sweet experience of a happy home? In the heyday of his itinerant ministry, however, he rarely spent more than a month in the year with his family.

From the beginning of his ministry, the Lord had revealed to John Sung he was granted fifteen years to serve Him, at intervals of three years each. These three-year intervals were made up of Water, Door, Dove, Blood and Tomb. The Water Period was the Probation Period wherein he had to learn the lesson of much work and little result. After he graduated from this probation, God began to open a door that no man could shut. His Peak Period was Dove, when the Holy Spirit poured out power and more power upon his preaching. The Blood period coincided with his fistula and bleeding bowels, and the bloody Sino-Japanese War. The Tomb Period saw John Sung totally exhausted and undergoing surgery a number of times, leading to his home-call in 1944, one year before the end of World War II. Mr. Wang Ming Tao, who is still living today with his wife in Shanghai, preached the funeral sermon honouring John Sung as China's Jeremiah.

Impressions of  John Sung My Teacher

How shall I best describe this man of God further? Let me recount what has indelibly been imprinted in my soul when I went to hear him in Singapore at the age of fifteen.

He was a most unusual man. Attired in a white Chinese gown with a shock of uncombed hair flapping his big fore­head, his demeanour was earnest and serene before and after the sermon. Owing to much speaking, at three sermons a day lasting two hours each, his voice was hoarse, but rich with earnestness and appeal. Like Billy Sunday, he would move freely on the pulpit, sometimes springing surprises on his hearers. For example, in a sermon on the Feeding of the Five Thousand, he produced out of nowhere a French loaf. As he spoke on the Bread of Life he would peel it off piece by piece and throw the pieces into a sea of open mouths. This was one way he drew the attention of the hearers.

The breakthrough in his ministry came at Nanchang, China where he spoke in William E. Schubert's Church. As he realised what the Chinese Church needed was a thorough repentance and new birth, he fearlessly lashed out on the sins of the people, naming them one by one. From a miniature Chinese coffin he pulled out slips of paper naming every sin from A to Z. His remedy was none other than the precious blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit to cause them to be born anew. On our part we must humble ourselves before Him and confess to Him our sins. In the process of confession, led by the doctor himself without any counsellor's crutch, many, including myself, wept bitterly for our sins. His favourite theme song was, "In the Cross, in the Cross, Be my glory ever. All my sins are washed away In the blood of Yesu." By singing that chorus in repentance, we were truly cleansed by the Precious Blood. We knew, and felt sure our sins were forgiven. When we were thus gloriously saved, a wave of praises and prayer went up spontaneously from our hearts and lips aloud, and with one accord, as in the days of the Acts of the Apostles. The deep joy in our conversion experience is reflected in Spurgeon's Autobiography: "When my burden rolled down from off my back it was a very real pardon .... and when that day I said 'Jesus is mine,' it was a real possession of Christ to me. And when I went up to the sanctuary in that early dawn of youthful piety, every song was really a psalm...."

Hitherto, the Church was so dead that very few owned Bibles. Once born again, there was the desire for the sincere milk of the Word. I, who owned no Bible before, bought three Bibles for myself - an English Bible, a Chinese Bible and a bilingual New Testament. The Bible Society's stock of Chinese and English Bibles was sold out in a week. New stocks had to be rushed from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.

Revival-time was not only prayer-time and Bible-reading time, but also sing-time. John Sung most effectively used short choruses, not a few of his own composition, with the most catchy tunes, both western and oriental. The theme of every message was reflected in the selected chorus which was sung time and again in the course of the sermon, with the doctor waving a white handkerchief. John Sung needed no soloist, for he was his own supply, nor did he need a thousand-voice choir - his congregation was it! "Hearken all what holy singing!" The song of earthly ones, redeemed from every depth of sin and sorrow, must sound richer than the voices of angels singing in heavenly soprano.

John Sung was ever confident of a big catch of souls every time he preached. He preached for decision, which was helped by his moving appeal to receive Christ openly. After we were delivered, we were challenged to join the Preaching Bands, covenanting with God to go out at least once a week, most appropriately on the Lord's Day afternoon, to witness for Christ. The Preaching Bands truly became the hands and feet of the Church. Many souls were brought into the kingdom through a new wave of witnessing. Soon after my Mother's death, not a few old ladies in the Church would testify how they were brought to Christ in the days of the John Sung Revival by her witnessing. After the Singapore Pentecost, every church registered a signal increase in baptisms.

Edward Band, in his History of  the English Presbyterian Mission, reports on John Sung as follows: "In 1935 the Chinese evangelist, John Sung, paid visits to Singapore. The result was a real revival of spiritual life and a new desire for Bible study. Many of the ordinary Church members engaged actively in voluntary evangelistic work, organising themselves in small groups which went out to preach the Gospel. Attendance at Church service increased to such an extent that several congregations were faced with the necessity of erecting larger Church buildings. This evangelistic work brought new additions to the Church's membership. The number of adult baptisms in 1936 were 160, as compared with 38, 72 and 58 for the preceding years ...." (These figures refer to the Chinese Presbyterian Church of 19 congregations whose total baptised adult membership in 1936 was 1,362).

Apart from the lay preachers, John Sung appealed for fulltime consecrators. There were eighty-five old and young who gave their lives to the Lord, and I was one of them. These were urged to enter some Bible College for training. While the Preaching Bands were nurtured by monthly meetings, we fulltime consecrators were strengthened by meeting a second time in the mouth.

Many who had problems and restitutions to make met with the doctor once a day after the morning sermon. At such counselling sessions conducted by the doctor himself, feuding elders and deacons made up with each other. Sums of money stolen before were returned to the Lord. Mr. Gan, a man with three wives, repented together with them. He settled with his second and third wives to live apart, providing for their needs.

John Sung practised faith healing also. In Singapore, in a two-week campaign preaching 40 sermons, John Sung re­served the 41st session, an afternoon, to healing. He was led into this, a work of mercy, by the earnest appeal of an English missionary while in North China. There, medical facilities, as in other parts of China, were sorely limited. John Sung saw to it that all glory went to God. He also warned the healed persons to sin no more.

When John Sung returned to Singapore for a second campaign after a circuit to Malaysia and Indonesia, he took his converts into a Bible study session, also three times a day. His sermons, though topical, were graduated. Hence the pro­gression into Bible study, into deeper truths for the new converts. He was "an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasures things new and old" (Man 13:52). There was something new and refreshing whenever he spoke. Nor was he lacking in humour, though he looked stern and serene off the pulpit. One John Sung anecdote I shall never forget is the hair-restorer seller who wore a cap. "Hair-restorer, hair-­restorer," he trumpeted as he hawked from house to house, until a naughty boy pulled off what was hiding a bald head. Do we preachers get caught sometimes when off our guard?

And so he would keep up the tempo of his preaching. No sooner was he finished with one campaign than he would launch out into the next, and the next, lasting several months at a stretch, before he would return home for a little rest.

These were my impressions when I attended the first two campaigns that he conducted in Singapore in the heyday of his ministry in 1935, in what is known as the Singapore Pentecost. Over 2,000 souls were vibrantly saved, over 100 preaching bands organized, and over 100 fulltime consecrators reg­istered. It is of the Lord's special grace that I am one of the John Sung old-timers remaining in His service to this day.

To get a fuller picture of the Asian Awakening through the whirlwind preaching ministry of John Sung, there is Leslie Lyall's "John Sung - Flame for God in the Far East", published by OMF. William E. Schubert's "I Remember John Sung", "John Sung My Teacher" and "In John Sung's Steps", all three are printed in Singapore and available from Christian Life Book Centre, our Church Bookshop, 9A, Gilstead Road, Singapore 1130, Tel : 2541223. O that God will send us another Revival as He blessed us in the thir­ties!             Amen.