Jonah was freed by the White Army, was soon raised to the rank of igumen, and assigned as the senior priest of the southern volunteer troops.

Jonah withdrew to the borders of Western China with the army of Alexander Dutov, being subjected to many hardships while crossing the Pamir cliffs, often forced to grab on to the sparse shrubbery and jagged ledges of the ice covered cliffs with wounded hands.

During his short time as bishop, St. Jonah transformed the Orthodox community in Manzhuria.

He subsequently contracted chronic tonsillitis and then, due to complications, developed blood poisoning.

As he was dying, he wrote a final epistle to his flock, reminding them of the need to love one another, confessed one final time to Archbishop Methodius of Beijing, received Holy Communion, blessed those who were in his room, and then he put on the epitrachelion and cuffs which had belonged to Elder Ambrose of Optina and began, "loudly and with prostrations", to read the canon for the departure of the soul.

[4] That same evening, a ten-year-old boy named Nicholas Dergachev, who was crippled, had been suffering from an inflammation of the knee joints.

From a photograph he later identified the hierarch in his dream as Bishop Jonah, who had died that same night, October 7/20, 1925.

(From the book "Sermons," by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco)[4] There was an attempt to excavate the relics of St Jonah in July 1994 which was unsuccessful in locating the site of his grave.