As Isobel Kuhn states in the introduction, the purpose of this book is not to simply tell another story of the trials that Christians and missionaries faced under communism in China. Its true purpose is to describe God's provision for His children that allows them to 'put forth green leaves when all others around are dried up and dying from the drought.'
This book tells the tale of Arthur Mathews and his young family, who were missionaries with China Inland Mission in the 1950s. In 1951, China Inland Mission called for an evacuation of all its missionaries in China due to the oppression of the communist leaders there. Two years later, Arthur Mathews finally made it out to Hong Kong, after enduring torture and starvation. Yet his faith remained strong.
What gave Mathews such strong faith? What enabled him and his wife to endure what they went through? Isobel Kuhn tells a compelling tale, based on Mathews' own letters, about the Source of his strength: God and God alone. God continually showed Himself faithful to Arthur and Wilda Mathews. Though Arthur and Wilda were unable to do the work they felt called to do, God showed that through their hardships He was more than enough for his children.
The enduring faith of the Mathews family was a legacy of incalculable worth to the native Chinese church. As Kuhn asks, 'What more potent message could God have given these people? No wonder He deliberately sealed the lips of His servants, confined their hands and their feet, and then poured His life through them that the Chinese church might see and might desire....Was God wrong to do this? In the farthest, most inland part of that great land was God unfair to ask two corns of wheat to die in this world's comforts that others might see for two long years (not just two days: God gave them a good stretch of testing time) how He is sufficient for all these things? He sent them to serve by life and so sealed their lips. It was a much more potent message.'
God is the true source of life, and God will keep His children even to the end. He kept Arthur and Wilda Mathews, and He will keep you too. This story is an incredible reminder of the truth of God's sustenance and life.
