The Boxers

The Boxers

This was not a boxing match; it was a struggle of life and death.

IN THE latter half of the nineteenth century China had opened itself to foreign missions because of Western political and military pressure. The results, however, were not all positive. Disease accompanied the missionaries, and life expectancy dropped to forty. There was much violence and frequent rebellions.

By 1898 the young emperor of China, Kuang-hsu, determined that the only hope for his nation was Christian moral and social reform. He invited an influential Baptist missionary to the palace to help him draw up his plans, but the very day the missionary arrived at the palace, the emperor was overthrown by a secret Chinese society that feared he would sell out to foreigners.

The secret society called itself “Righteous and Harmonious Fists,” but Westerners nicknamed these Chinese the “Boxers.” The Boxers were desperate to retain the old pagan Chinese religions. Forming secret cells across China, they performed black-magic rituals and even human sacrifices to temple idols.

Following the coup, the Boxers installed the emperor’s mentally ill aunt as empress. They persuaded her that foreign missionaries were gouging out the eyes of Chinese children to use in the making of their medicine. At the urging of the Boxers, the new empress sent a secret decree to officials in the provinces calling on them to kill all foreigners and to exterminate Christianity. The messengers to southern China altered one Chinese character in the decree to make it read “protect” instead of “kill” foreigners. So the bloodletting was confined to the north. When the disobedience of the messengers was discovered, their bodies were cut in half.

Most local Chinese officials sought to protect the missionaries. The magistrate at Fenchow in north Shandi was particularly friendly to missionaries, and a missionary couple living there invited five missionaries from other areas to stay with them in July when the mob violence was at its peak. However, no sooner had the missionaries arrived than the vindictive provincial governor appointed a new magistrate for Fenchow. The new official ordered the missionaries out of Fenchow and gave them armed guards, supposedly for their protection.

The missionaries apparently could read the handwriting on the wall. On August 3, 1900, Lizzie Atwater, an American missionary wife and mother wrote to her family:

Dear ones, I long for a sight of your dear faces, but I fear we shall not meet on earth. They beheaded thirty-three of us last week in Taiwan. I am preparing for the end very quietly and calmly. The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will not fail me. I was being restless and excited while there seemed to be a chance of life, but God has taken away that feeling, and now I just pray for grace to meet the terrible end bravely. The pain will soon be over, and oh the sweetness of the welcome above!

My little baby will go with me. I think God will give it to me in heaven, and my dear mother will be so glad to see us. I cannot imagine the Savior’s welcome. Oh, that will compensate for all these days of suspense. Dear ones, live near to God and cling less closely to earth. There is no other way in which we can receive that peace from God that passeth understanding. . . . I must keep calm and still these hours. I do not regret coming to China but am sorry I have done so little. My married life, two precious years, has been so very full of happiness. We will die together, my dear husband and I.

Twelve days later the guards assigned to them by the magistrate murdered the seven missionaries and their children.

Reflection

How would you react if you were in a similar situation to that of Lizzie Atwater? We all know that we are going to die someday. It is just a question of when and how. Do you share Lizzie’s assurance of going to heaven?

Just as it is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ died only once as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people.

Hebrews 9:27-28