Wave After Wave - John Sung

The Doctorate and the Call

John Sung had already earned a doctorate in chemistry when he began throwing away the things that could have secured a respectable academic life. He had studied in America, moved through university at extraordinary speed and entered Union Theological Seminary in New York, yet by 1927 he was spiritually collapsing. The man who could handle chemistry could not quiet his conscience. An encounter with Christ during that crisis changed the direction of his life so completely that when he returned to China, the scientist became an itinerant evangelist who would spend the next seventeen years moving through China and Southeast Asia with almost frightening intensity.

Fujian and Early Faith

He was born in 1901 in Fujian, the son of a Methodist pastor. As a boy he was already called the little pastor because he followed his father and sometimes spoke in church settings. Faith was familiar, but familiarity thinned during his years of education. Sung was brilliant in science. He went to the United States in 1920 and studied at Ohio Wesleyan University and then Ohio State University, completing advanced degrees in chemistry in remarkably little time.

Academic success did not settle him. He entered Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1926, where the liberal theology he encountered deepened his spiritual confusion. Sung later described losing what remained of his earlier faith and entering severe mental distress. In early 1927, after attending evangelistic meetings, he experienced a dramatic return to Christ. His behaviour during that period concerned people around him enough that he was briefly placed in a psychiatric institution. He used the confinement to read the Bible intensely.

Leaving the American Future

When he left America he carried credentials that could have opened academic doors in China. According to the well-known account, he threw many of his academic honours into the sea on the voyage home, keeping the doctorate for his parents. The gesture matched the rest of the life. Sung was turning away from a future built around his intellect toward a ministry that would consume his body.

He married Yu Jin Hua, usually known in English as Jean, in a marriage that had been arranged earlier by their families. For a short time he taught chemistry and Bible, but evangelistic work soon took over. The Methodist church appointed him to wider preaching ministry, and by the early 1930s he was travelling constantly through China.

The Itinerant Evangelist

Sung's preaching was unlike the quiet academic world he had left. He used objects, demonstrations, humour, sharp rebuke and repeated calls to repentance. He spoke rapidly and could preach for long periods. He organised converts into evangelistic bands and expected new believers to begin witnessing rather than remain spectators. Revival meetings produced large numbers of confessions and renewed churches across several denominations.

Prayer for the sick was part of his ministry and many healing testimonies were reported. As with other revivalists, later admirers sometimes repeated the stories without enough distinction between testimony and independent verification. Sung himself believed healing should serve evangelism rather than turn the preacher into a wonder-worker. The main mark he looked for was repentance and people taking the gospel to others.

His ministry moved beyond China into Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and other parts of Southeast Asia. Chinese churches in the region were often divided by dialect, denomination and social background. Sung's campaigns could bring large numbers together around repentance, prayer and evangelism. Bible teaching meetings sometimes lasted for days and worked through whole sections of Scripture.

Suffering and Exhaustion

The pace was punishing. Sung travelled while suffering from serious illness, including a painful condition that eventually required repeated surgery. His health deteriorated badly through the late 1930s. He continued preaching far beyond what his body could comfortably carry. There was zeal in that, but also the familiar danger of assuming a servant's body has no limits.

The Japanese invasion and war disrupted travel and brought further suffering to China. Sung's own ministry narrowed as his illness worsened. He spent long periods bedridden in his final years, still praying, writing and receiving people when possible. The man who had crossed cities like a storm was forced into stillness before he reached middle age.

He died in Beijing in 1944 at forty-two. His active evangelistic ministry had lasted less than two decades. Yet churches across China and Southeast Asia remembered him for much longer because he had not simply gathered audiences. He had organised Bible classes, evangelistic teams and habits of prayer that continued after he left.

The Witness and Its Difficulties

John Sung could be severe. His preaching sometimes exposed people publicly and his physical self-denial was extreme. His personality should not become a template. He was also a man shaped by a mental and spiritual crisis whose experiences require careful historical language. But the burden underneath his ministry was remarkably clear. He wanted Christians to repent deeply, know Scripture and carry the gospel themselves.

The title Wave After Wave fits the way his ministry moved, one place after another, until his body could go no farther. The more important wave was not the crowd. It was the believers who left the meetings and went into homes, villages and neighbouring towns with the gospel. Sung died young. The witness kept travelling.