1898 - Petrus Rijnhart

1898

Qinghai

Petrus Rijnhart.

In 1898, two independent Dutch missionaries, Petrus and Susie Carson Rijnhart, entered Tibet hoping to get permission to preach and begin medical work in Lhasa. For years the Rijnharts had concentrated on preaching the gospel to Tibetan Buddhist monks, frequently visiting monasteries in the region around Kumbum in the present-day Qinghai Province. This was a time of fierce conflict between the Tibetans and the Muslims, with thousands being slaughtered during a Muslim rebellion.

To safeguard the missionaries, one monastery leader invited the Rijnharts to live within the safety of the monastery walls. This afforded an excellent opportunity for personal evangelism, while Susie used her skills as a medical doctor to treat the wounded from the conflict. After a series of battles between the Tibetans and Hui Muslims in 1895, Petrus Rijnhart both amazed and angered the Chinese and Tibetans when he went to the Muslim headquarters to treat their men who had been wounded. His wife later wrote,

“It had been understood that because we had helped the Chinese and Tibetan soldiers, therefore we shared their hatred of their enemies and could not possibly have a kind thought for them. When they saw that the missionary was just as kind and tender to the Muslims as to themselves, they were utterly amazed. The law of Christian kindness impelling love and mercy even for one’s enemies was vividly brought to their attention.”[1]

In 1898 the intrepid couple, with their little son Charlie, set out on an epic months-long journey towards Lhasa. It turned out to be a disastrous trip, with two of the three Rijnharts tasting death. Their first destination en route was the monastery town of Tangar (now Huangyuan in Qinghai Province). Despite many warnings to turn back, the Rijnharts pressed on. Soon, however,

“Anything that could go wrong did go wrong! They were faced with incredibly bad weather, bad trails, the suspicions of religious leaders who did not know them and had no reason to accord them the respect they had had in Kumbum or Tangar. Their guides deserted them and then, to add misery upon misery, their one-year-old son, carried on the father’s back, died suddenly. They had the sad task of burying him under rocks along the trail.”[2]

Another account stated:

“After a harrowing journey across the deserts and mountains of northern Tibet, their little party was stunned by the death of the Rijnharts’ infant son, turned back by hostile officials, and harassed by Tibetan bandits in whose territory Petrus Rijnhart disappeared.”[3]

The Rijnharts were paralysed with grief at the loss of their beloved son. They decided to turn back along a southerly route. A gang of robbers trailed them, looking for an opportunity to strike. When the Rijnharts noticed the men, Petrus decided to walk back and talk to them, hoping such a direct approach would show them he was not afraid, and not worth robbing. No details are known about what happened next, except that he simply never returned to his waiting wife. It is presumed the gang murdered him. For days Susie patiently waited for her husband, before finally realizing he was probably dead. She clung to her faith, but later wrote:

“I must admit it was a faith amidst a darkness so thick and black that I could not enjoy the sunshine. Evening found me still alone with God, just as I had been the night before. My undefined fear had shaped itself into almost a certainty, leaving me with scarcely any hope of ever seeing my husband again, and with just as little, probably, of my getting away from the same people who had seemingly murdered him.”[4]

Dr. Susie Rijnhart put the incredible grief of her experience aside and courageously continued on towards Tangar without shelter and with little food. For two months she advanced, one step at a time, so that when she finally reached the China Inland Mission base at Kangding in Sichuan Province she was mistaken for a Tibetan beggar due to her dirty sheepskin clothes and her skin being almost black from exposure to the sun.

Susie Rijnhart in traditional Tibetan dress.

Susie returned to her native Canada, where a close friend observed that she had “changed from a bright, dark-haired girl into a quiet, white-haired woman.”[5] After arriving home she was asked if it would be a cross to return to Tibet. “No,” she replied, “It would be a cross not to return.”[6] She returned to medical mission work among the Tibetans in 1903, and married James Moyes, one of the missionaries who had met her after her exhaustive journey by foot.

Dr. Susie Rijnhart’s story was called “one of the most stirring missionary sagas of the early twentieth century.”[7] After returning to Tibet, Susie and her new husband established the first evangelical Tibetan church in history. On February 7, 1908, Susie gave birth to a son while in her home nation of Canada, but her health was poor by that time, and the stress of childbirth led to her death a few days later.

1. Susie Carson Rijnhart, With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple: A Narrative of Four Years’ Residence on the Tibetan Border and of a Journey into the Far Interior (New York: Revell, 1904), 100-101.
2. Ralph R. Covell, The Liberating Gospel in China: The Christian Faith Among China’s Minority Peoples (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 1995), 71.
3. Tsering, Sharing Christ in the Tibetan Buddhist World, 86.
4. Rijnhart, With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple, 315-316.
5. Covell, The Liberating Gospel in China, 71.
6. James & Marti Hefley, By Their Blood—Christian Martyrs of the 20th Century (Milford, Michigan: Mott Media, 1979), 145.
7. Hefley, By Their Blood, 146.