To this day no missionary casts a bigger shadow than this man, a Brit who surrendered his life to Christ and His Gospel and sank them both in the evangelization of the people of China, whose missions knew white Europeans by the term: "foreign devils." Undeterred by such tags and outright hostility, Hudson Taylor sailed to China and started a mission that would stop at nothing to bring the light of the Gospel to all untold millions of Chinese living bound in darkness of Confucianism, nativistic spirits, Buddhism, and other religions. He learned the language of the Han majority and dressed like the Chinese, which appalled the traditional missionaries for its radical departure from accepted 19th century norms in missionary circles. But he would not relent, and gradually his preaching and witness took root in the heart of the people. His mission succeeded and spread, many missionaries joined him, young and older, to form the China Inland Mission. In the aftermath of WWII, communism rushed to fill the gap, as Mao and his forces battled the Nationalist rulers of China under General Chiang Kai-shek for the country. The communists drove out the Nationalists who under leadership of the former President of China, General Chiang Kai-shek, retreated to Taiwan to form a free but temporary Republic of China there until such time as they could muster enough military might to return and take back China.

Was the China Inland Mission of Hudson Taylor a failure? The mission was shut down, the missionaries who were not imprisoned and killed, evacuated China and left their missions to go to wrack and ruin. The Chinese congregations of the churches they had established continued until they too were shut down. Some were not, but they continued under heavy government surveillance and control. Now of course the regime and police state of President Xi is not just heavy-handed, it is engaged in an all-out war of exterminating the Christian church in China, which the government claims is a foreign contamination or invasion of enemies of China. Hardly is that the case! The hot persecution has only increased the number of Chinese Christians by tens of millions. Now it is a larger Christian church than anything in all of Europe or even America. In the Back to Jerusalem movement that got started early in the 20th century by the Chinese believers, who were not deterred by the Cultural Revolution Mao organized to return China to primitive culture and expunge all foreign influences of contaminating Western culture supposedly, the Gospel continued to be spread by these believers, until now there is a vast army able to send missionaries out to the whole 10-40 window of closed or hostile nations who oppose Christ. They are all trained and willing to die for Christ, and many will, by the thousands no doubt. But they have millions already to take their places at the front lines. China will turn Christian in a matter of a couple decades at the rate the people are evangelized and are chucking communism and materialism. Hudson Taylor's work was not in vain! Millions are in heaven already, thanks to his early missionizing in China!