About 40 years later (after foreigners were allowed in as a result of the infamous Opium Wars), Hudson Taylor and his team of 18 missionaries arrived. He had been in China already and had returned to Britain so sick that it was thought that he would die if he went back to China. He had prayed that God would give him twenty four willing missionaries.
In 1881 the work had grown so much that he prayed that God would give them another 70 workers in three years. Two years later he prayed for another 100 – and they all came. In 1889 he prayed for another 1000 missionaries to come in the next 5 years. By the start of the First Word War the total number of missionaries with the China Inland Mission was more than a thousand.
Hudson Taylor went back to China in 1865 because he knew that there were only ninety one protestant missionaries (and only 350 church members) bringing the gospel to the 300 million people who lived there. His view was, “If I had a thousand pounds, China should have it. If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ.”
Despite the ejection of all foreign missionaries after World War 2, and the persecution of the church since then, it is estimated that at present there are about 105 million Chinese Christians in China (8% of the population).
Dale