The Heavenly Man (25 page)

Finally, while I was in Germany on 5 December 2000, I received a call from China. My mother had passed into the presence of Jesus. I longed to go to her funeral, but I couldn’t enter China without being arrested for all my past “crimes”. I wept and thanked God for the mother he had given me and for the many struggles she had endured for the sake of the gospel. Like a sailing boat in a storm, she had been buffeted through years of trials and tribulations, but now she had safely reached the peaceful harbour.

I was comforted in my grief when I received a videotape
of the funeral. Hundreds of house church believers attended, including all the top leaders. Some brothers and sisters I hadn’t seen for years – including many of the leaders mentioned in this book – came to honour my mother.

Attending the funeral was a great risk to the leaders, as the authorities were hunting many of them. Some had been on the run for years and their names are listed among the most wanted criminals in all of China. Yet they couldn’t stay away. They all came back to Nanyang County in southern Henan Province to honour my mother in the place God had first touched us all those years ago.

At the funeral service Brother Xu stood up and said, “Although Brother Yun, his wife and his two children are not able to attend his mother’s funeral today, all of us gathered here are her children in the Lord.”

I thanked God for my mother. I remembered how he had reached down from heaven 26 years earlier and chosen to bless my mother, and then us, even though we were poor and despised, living in a small, insignificant corner of China.

I thought about how the Lord had moved so powerfully since that day, through our own family but also through thousands of others, so that today there are millions of believers just in Henan Province, and many tens of millions distributed throughout China.

I remembered how – when I was still just a teenager – my mother had prayerfully committed me to world mission. This was impossible in those days, when China’s borders were firmly closed, yet in faith she believed God could do the impossible and her prayer was answered.

The biggest regret I have is that I never got to say goodbye properly to my mother. The last time I saw her was after my prison escape. I knew my family and I would not be able to
return home for a long time. My mother’s last words to me in person were, “Son, when will you return?”

I wanted to comfort her so I said, “Soon, Mama. Soon.”

* * *

DELING
: When we arrived in Myanmar we didn’t have any preconceived ideas about what would happen. I knew if God wanted us to go forward then we’d go forward, and if he wanted us to stay there, we would stay. It was actually quite a good time for me. I had fellowship with brothers and sisters every day, and the children and I finally established routines in our lives after such a crazy few years on the run in China. Since 1996 we’d been asking the Lord to create a more peaceful environment, so that we might have a more normal family life.

When it looked as if we were going to be stuck in Myanmar for a while, Isaac and Yilin were enrolled in a local school. I feel our children really developed in Myanmar and I’m so proud of them. Isaac is a very smart boy. All we can say is that God has done something special in his life. When Isaac was in my womb, Yun was fasting for 74 days without food or water. For the first four years of Isaac’s life his father was in prison. In a way, I believe the Heavenly Father fathered Isaac because his earthly father was suffering for Jesus, and God himself educated Isaac because he was not allowed to attend school for extended periods while Yun was in prison.

Teachers and students have humiliated Isaac, and he has been through experiences that few boys his age have had to endure. He has been on the run with us as we fled from the police, and he then crossed into a foreign country where he couldn’t speak the language.

When we arrived in Myanmar neither Isaac nor Yilin could speak a word of Burmese, which is not similar to Chinese in any
way. God helped them to learn the language remarkably quickly, and less than 18 months after arriving in the country Isaac was one of the top students in his school! He was even awarded a special honour. His name was published in the newspaper, which worried us, because we were not even meant to be in the country and were trying to keep a low profile!

After all Isaac has been through it’s amazing that he is normal at all, yet today he can speak the Mandarin, Yunnanese, Burmese, Lisu, Jingpo and German languages! He’s so smart because God personally educated him in response to our desperate cries for help. Isaac loves the Lord with all his heart. At his graduation from Bible school he stood up and announced, “I consecrate myself to serve God for the rest of my life.”

Yilin is a special gift from God. She has a tender heart for the Lord, but also a fiery and strong personality. All she wants to do is serve Jesus. She has compassion for people and is willing to stand for the truth and never compromise.

Yun and I have been most blessed by the children God has given us.

In September 2000, I travelled to Canada to begin an intense three-week speaking schedule. Meetings in different cities were arranged for each evening. I was excited at the chance to share what God has done in China with believers throughout Canada, and to encourage the Canadian church to become partners with us in taking the gospel back to Jerusalem.

The night before I flew to Toronto I received a vivid dream from the Lord. I saw myself inside a room in a church, preparing the message I was about to preach. I opened my Bible and discovered all my notes were missing. As I was thinking about where they might be, I took my wallet out of my pocket and placed it on my open Bible. Suddenly a rat appeared from a hole in the wall behind me. In a flash it ate my wallet and returned to its hole!

I felt that the attack was from an evil spirit in the form of a rat, rather than an actual rat.

In my dream, I was angry and found a long iron bar. I thrust it into the hole, seeking to kill the rat. I felt the bar strike the back of the hole and thought I must have killed the rat. I pulled the bar out of the hole and the rat came out also. The instant the rat came out of the wall it changed into a rooster.

The rooster crowed and jumped around, making a loud noise and thrashing its wings. I swung my iron bar at it. The moment I struck it on the head it changed into a seductive evil spirit in the appearance of a long-haired woman. She cowered and protested, “Why are you hitting me? I’m just a person like you. I don’t understand why you’re persecuting me. Please let me go!”

I replied, “I don’t care who you are. You’ve stolen my notes and the wallet from my Bible.” I tried to block the woman’s access to the door so she couldn’t get away. Knowing I was dealing with a demon and not an actual woman, in my dream I struck the woman and she fell to the floor unconscious.

Then I awoke.

I was puzzled at the dream so I asked the Lord to reveal its meaning.

After arriving in Canada I shared this dream with my co-workers and pondered what it meant. At breakfast I told my translator, “The Lord showed me that someone is trying to take the Word of God out of my hands, and is trying to steal financial support for the work of the house churches. I’m about to be attacked spiritually. When we stand up against it there will be two different demonic responses.

“First, like the rooster in my dream, we’ll meet with a loud and aggressive reaction. Later, a seductive spirit will try to reason with us, pleading its innocence and trying to stop our ministry for the Lord through lies and deceit.”

On the second day in Toronto I was scheduled to speak on a Christian television programme. After the interview a brother approached us with a printed article that had been sent to him by email. His face was pale and his demeanour serious. “Brother Yun,” he said, “we need to sit down. I have some bad news to share with you.”

Through our translator, the contents of the article – written by a Christian journalist in California – were read to me. The story had been sent around the world that very morning to thousands of readers. I’d never met the writer or even heard of him, yet, quoting an unnamed “Chinese informant”, he proceeded to tear into me with a vicious attack.

He said my miraculous escape from prison in 1997 was a lie, that my claims of fasting 74 days without food or water in prison were fabricated, that my legs had never been smashed, and that I was not a representative or elder of the Sinim Fellowship.

There were two parts of the article that hurt most. It revealed my family was hiding in Myanmar, which placed them at great risk. I feared for their safety. Not only was I concerned that the Myanmar authorities would read the article and start searching for them, but the Chinese government would also love to have them sent back to China and punished.

I had been looking forward to spending Christmas with my family in Myanmar. The previous year (1999) was the first Christmas in thirteen years I’d been able to spend with my wife and children. I had been in prison for seven of those Christmases, and on the run from the authorities or otherwise indisposed at Christmas for five additional years.

Now, because the article publicly revealed my family’s whereabouts, it looked as if I wouldn’t be able to travel to Myanmar for Christmas. I was deeply upset.

The second part of the article that hurt was the accusation, “He is the most likely Judas who sold out the top-level leaders in the crackdown of 1999…He has caused division and damage to the house church activities inside China.”

When I heard these words my heart was pierced with grief. Ever since the Lord revealed himself to me in 1974 I
had, by the grace of God, never betrayed any other believer in China. I’d spent many years being tortured in prison for the very reason that I refused to be a Judas to the body of Christ.

I thanked the Lord for preparing me in advance through my previous night’s dream of the rat, rooster and woman.

Over the next few days our whole Canadian trip was thrown into jeopardy, as Christian leaders read the article and considered cancelling our meetings.

Within 24 hours, various Chinese house church leaders, including all the elders of the Sinim Fellowship, were notified of the situation. Signed statements from well-known leaders such as Xu Yongze and Zhang Rongliang were faxed out of China, stating that these accusations were completely groundless, and confirming that I was an elder and authorized representative of the Sinim Fellowship.

In the days after this attack, which appears to have been carefully timed to coincide with the start of our Canadian preaching trip, I struggled with this new form of persecution.

In China I had been used to beatings, torture with electric batons, and all kinds of humiliation. I guess that deep in my heart I had presumed that now I was in the West my days of persecution had ended.

I couldn’t understand how someone who had never met me could write such a nasty article. I complained to my Christian friends, “Why don’t these people call us and read the documents? I don’t understand! Why don’t they find the truth out for themselves? It’s right here for them to see!”

My translator told me, “Brother Yun, these people don’t want to know the truth. That’s why they’re not calling you or wanting to meet you. In China, Christians are persecuted
with beatings and imprisonment. In the West, Christians are persecuted by the words of other Christians.”

This new kind of spiritual persecution was no easier than physical persecution in China, just different.

I cried out in prayer, asking the Lord for his strength. I forgave the people behind this attack from the bottom of my heart and we continued our trip.

As we travelled to Winnipeg, Edmonton, and other Canadian cities the Lord moved powerfully and many churches and believers joined the Chinese house churches in prayer and partnership.

* * *

BROTHER XU
: We were concerned when we heard that Brother Yun had been slandered and attacked while ministering in the West, so the elders of the Sinim Fellowship of house church leaders in China wrote this letter in support of him:

Brother Yun is a servant of God and is one of the five elders of the Sinim Fellowship of the house churches of China. The Bible clearly states, “Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.” 1 Timothy 5:19. We hereby testify as a whole, how Brother Yun has served us as a witness to Christ’s sufferings and is a faithful servant of the Lord. He is a soldier of Christ anointed by the Holy Spirit, a warrior for truth, a pioneer of the gospel in this age. His service has strongly witnessed the presence of the Holy Spirit.

In 1996 the Lord used him to start the Sinim Fellowship of the house churches of China. Not only is he one of the five elders, he is also a faithful, honest, truth-loving, reliable, pure and God-fearing servant of God. He has a good reputation outside the church, and is a good son, good husband and a good father.

We hereby witness how he often tries to have an attitude the same as that of Christ Jesus. This is why we are claiming that he is blameless before God. Praying with one accord, the house churches support the servant of God in his service around the world, and may he be a blessing to the house of the Lord from East to West. We can summarize his testimony in one word: “genuine”.

The elders of the Sinim Fellowship and many co-workers earnestly pray and testify for him in the Lord, supporting all of his services in full and backing him up. As we have proclaimed, he has the authorization to fully represent the Sinim Fellowship throughout five continents (Europe, America, Africa, Australasia, and Asia).

May the Chinese and overseas churches who are members of the body of Christ work together as one and build up one another, so that the gospel of Jesus Christ will be spread all over the world quickly, even back to Jerusalem.

Amen!

* * *

YUN
: There are many ways the Lord may lead a Christian during his or her life, but I’m convinced that the path of every believer will sooner or later include suffering. The Lord gives us these trials to keep us humble and dependent on him for our sustenance.

The Bible says in 1 Peter 4:1,
“Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.”
I believe when suffering and pain increases, sinning decreases. I’ve certainly not yet reached the point of being “done with sin”. I still complain to the Lord when I suffer.

How we mature as a Christian largely depends on the attitude we have when we’re faced with suffering. Some try to avoid it or imagine it doesn’t exist, but that will only make
the situation worse. Others try to endure it grimly, hoping for relief. This is better, but falls short of the full victory God wants to give each of his children.

The Lord wants us to embrace suffering as a friend. We need a deep realization that when we’re persecuted for Jesus’ sake it is an act of God’s blessing to us. This might sound impossible, but it is attainable with God’s help. That is why Jesus said,
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.” Matthew 5:11–12.

We can grow to such a place in Christ where we laugh and rejoice when people slander us, because we know we are not of this world, but our security is in heaven. The more we are persecuted for his sake, the more reward we will receive in heaven.

When people malign you, rejoice and be glad. When they curse you, bless them in return. When you walk through a painful experience, embrace it and you will be free!

When you learn these lessons, there is nothing left that the world can do to you.

God is my witness that through all the tortures and beatings I’ve received I have never hated my persecutors. Never. I saw them as God’s instruments of blessing and his chosen vessels to purify me and make me more like Jesus.

Sometimes Western visitors come to China and ask the house church leaders what seminary they attended. We reply, jokingly yet with underlying seriousness, that we have been trained in the Holy Spirit Personal Devotion Bible School (prison) for many years.

Sometimes our Western friends don’t understand what we mean because they then ask, “What materials do you use in this Bible school?” We reply, “Our only materials are the
foot chains that bind us, and the leather whips that bruise us.”

In this prison seminary we have learned many valuable lessons about the Lord that we could never have learned from a book. We’ve come to know God in a deeper way. We know his goodness and his loving faithfulness to us.

Christians who are in prison for the sake of the Lord are not the ones who are suffering. When people hear my testimony they often say, “You must have had a terrible time when you were in prison.” I respond, “What are you talking about? I was with Jesus and had overwhelming joy and peace in his intimate presence.”

The people who really suffer are those who never experience God’s presence. The way to have God’s presence is by walking through hardship and suffering – the way of the cross. You may not be beaten or imprisoned for your faith, but I am convinced each Christian will still have a cross to bear in his or her life. In the West it may be ridicule, slander, or rejection. When you’re faced with such trials, the key is not to run from them or fight them, but to embrace them as friends. When you do this you’ll not fail to experience God’s presence and help.

When a child of God suffers you need to understand the Lord has allowed it. He has not forgotten you! The devil cannot snatch you away! Jesus made this beautiful promise to his children,
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” John 10:27–29.

The first time I went to prison I struggled, wondering why God had allowed it. Slowly I began to understand he had a deeper purpose for me than just working for him. He
wanted to know me, and I to know him, deeply and intimately. He knew the best way to get my attention for a while was to give me rest behind bars.

Whenever I hear a house church Christian has been imprisoned for Christ in China I don’t advise people to pray for his or her release unless the Lord clearly reveals we should pray this way.

Before a chicken is hatched it is vital it is kept in the warm protection of the shell for 21 days. If you take the chick out of that environment one day too early, it will die. Similarly, ducks need to remain confined in their shell for 28 days before they are hatched. If you take a duck out on the 27th day, it will die.

There is always a purpose behind why God allows his children to go to prison. Perhaps it’s so they can witness to the other prisoners, or perhaps God wants to develop more character in their lives. But if we use our own efforts to get them out of prison earlier than God intended, we can thwart his plans, and the believers may come out not as fully formed as God wanted them to be.