Yuan Xiangchen (known as Allen Yuan) was a Chinese pastor who was born in the 1914 and died in 2005.
When in the 1950 the communist government set up the "Three Self Patriotic Movement" to organize churches under party control. He and many other pastors refused to join. Allen Yuan was being persuaded for many years to change his mind but he never did. There were 3 main reasons why: he thought that Jesus was supposed to be in the first place not a communist party, his church has always been independent and he did not like the modern theology that was a feature of the "Three Self Patriotic Movement".
Eventually, in the 1958 he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for "counter-revolutionary crimes" leaving behind his wife and 6 children. The prison was in fact a working camp near the border with Russia where the temperature during winter time goes down to -30 degrees.
He was released 21 years later... The video below is an interview with him and his wife. Although their life was full of suffer, they never gave up their faith in Christ. They even saw many positive aspects of the story. I strongly recommend to watch it. God bless you all.
