3 h 41 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 3 h 41 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What lies behind a life spent preaching: private struggle, daily discipline, or a faith that demands to be lived?
The Collected Light of Spiritual Experience brings together John Sung's diaries, personal testimonies, and accounts of his evangelistic life. A Chinese Christian preacher known for revival work in China and Southeast Asia, Sung writes about faith as something lived and tested. These writings turn attention from public preaching toward the personal experience behind it.
Diaries record prayers, failings, plans, and small events. Testimonies describe personal conversion and the changes Sung attributes to faith. Accounts of his ministry trace a life of travel, repeated meetings, and demands on strength. Together, these parts explore the passage from private struggle to public calling, speaking from within deep Christian belief rather than offering a neutral academic study.
What you’ll discover
- Faith before public work Explore how personal conversion becomes, in Sung's account, the root of a preaching ministry.
- The daily private record Meet the preacher through diary entries concerned with prayers, failings, plans, and small events.
- Change becomes testimony Discover how accounts of personal faith serve as a means of public Christian witness.
- A demanding travelling life Follow accounts of preaching journeys through China and among Chinese communities abroad.
- Belief tested in living Consider the relationship between inward struggle, daily discipline, and a life devoted to preaching.
Who will love it
Readers drawn to diaries, missionary journeys and spiritual biography will love this book, especially those curious about Chinese Christianity or revival meetings in 1930s Southeast Asia.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A pastor's son watches a town repent
- Poverty and brilliance carry him through three degrees
- Learning at seminary drains his faith
- A night of new birth leads to an asylum
- He gives up teaching for village preaching
- Nanchang shows him how a church revives
- The Bethel team carries him across the Northeast
- Independent, he preaches from Taiwan to Java
- War and a bleeding body shape his work
- Xiangshan: prayer, stories and a quiet death
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La lumière réunie de l’expérience spirituelle
by John Sung
A chemistry doctor gives up a laboratory career to preach across Asia and writes a diary every day.
Challenging2–5 hours to readfrançais
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In short
Imagine a man who earns a doctorate in chemistry, turns down a professor's post, and chooses to preach for a few dozen yuan a month. He ties a Bible and his diaries to his back and jumps into a lifeboat, because he would rather lose everything else.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A pastor's son watches a town repent
Song Shangjie is born on September 27, 1901, in Fengji Village, Fujian. His father grew up poor and later studied theology. His mother comes from a Buddhist family, until she lies sick for six months, hears a voice, sits up, and asks for rice and meat.
At nine he sees the revival of 1909 in Xinghua. A seminary student weeps and returns two dollars he had embezzled. Men hand over opium pipes and morphine, and children bring back stolen pens and rubber balls. Sung says it is one of the memories he loves most.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- français
- Reading time
- 2 h 20 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Sung, John. The Collected Light of Spiritual Experience. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-collected-light-of-spiritual-experience.
Sung, J. (2026). The collected light of spiritual experience. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-collected-light-of-spiritual-experience
Sung, John. The Collected Light of Spiritual Experience. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-collected-light-of-spiritual-experience.
@book{sung2026collected,
author = {Sung, John},
title = {The Collected Light of Spiritual Experience},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-collected-light-of-spiritual-experience}
}
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What is The Collected Light of Spiritual Experience about?
It follows John Sung's life from 1901 to 1944 through his diaries, letters and dictated testimonies, covering his studies in America, his new birth, his revival tours across China and Southeast Asia, his illness, and his final years.
Who was John Sung?
John Sung, or Song Shangjie, was a Chinese evangelist who earned a chemistry doctorate in Ohio and then gave up science to preach. He led revival meetings across China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia before spending his final years ill in Xiangshan near Beijing.
Why is the book called The Collected Light of Spiritual Experience?
Sung wrote in his diary in 1932 that someone might one day collect his entries under that title. The compiler adopted it because the book gathers the lessons and experiences recorded in his diaries.
The author
John Sung
1901–1944 · Chinese evangelist
John Sung (1901–1944) was a Chinese Christian evangelist. He was born in Fujian, China, and studied in the United States before returning to China in 1927. He preached in China and Southeast Asia during the 1930s. He kept diaries recording his religious life. He died in Beijing.
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