| (Copyright 04-25-2025) by Rebecca Wise (East Bend, North Carolina) |
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| Here are excerpts from a book written by a Christian evangelist and planter of many ‘underground’ “house churches” in China. So many miracles happened that there isn’t room enough to tell all of them. I highly recommend this book; you won’t be able to put it down. In “The Heavenly Man”, Brother Yun tells about how when he was 16 and his father was terminally ill, God encouraged his mother and healed their father after the family kneeled around his bedside and begged Jesus to heal him. The entire family (including six children) became Christians from that moment. His mother had heard of Christ from the Norwegian missionary Marie Monsen but had forgotten her faith while Christianity was suppressed. Many Christian missionaries would only tell people that all they had to do was accept Jesus, but Marie told them they were personally responsible for getting rid of sin and doing everything Jesus said. She said repentance is the starting line of the Christian race. AI Overview: It’s estimated that around 50,000 foreigners, including both Protestants and Catholics, served in China between 1809 and 1949, according to historian Kathleen Lodwick. Foreign missionaries…were expelled from China by the Communist government by 1953. This expulsion occurred after the communist revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Brother Yun wanted to hear more words of Jesus, but his mother said they were all gone, because the authorities had burned all the Bibles. However, she heard of an old pastor in another village who had buried a Bible many years before. They walked there and Yun asked to see it, but the old man, who had been severely tortured for his faith, was afraid to trust anyone, so he said that Yun should pray for his own Bible. Yun did so for an entire month but didn’t receive one. He walked back alone, begging to see the Bible, but this time the old man told him to fast as well as pray. For 100 days Yun only ate one cup of rice daily and cried to God every day for a Bible. The last morning, he received a vision that a man with a cart would bring him a loaf of bread. (An old man later said that he had a dream to send a Bible to a boy in a certain house in a certain village, but he resisted for several months). AI overview: In his dream, Brother Yun received bread from a red bag, which then transformed into a Bible. He was hungry and asked [a man and his] two servants if they had bread. They gave him bread from a red bag, and as soon as he ate it, it turned into a Bible. After waking up, he searched his house for the red bag, believing God had answered his prayer. Finding no Bible, he cried to God in despair, but just then there was a knock at the door. When he called, “Are you bringing me bread?” Just like in the dream, they replied, “I have a bread feast for you.”He opened the door and they handed him a red bag and left quickly. When he opened the bag, it was a Bible. He immediately gave thanks to God on his knees, and every day he read it, memorizing a chapter daily, and keeping it on his chest while he slept. He learned about the gift of the Holy Spirit, and prayed, “Dear God, I need You to live inside me and give me power like the people in the Bible.” Soon after that, worship songs began coming into his mind, and he wrote them down and taught them to other Christians. One morning while praying he received the thought to travel to the South and West and be Christ’s witness, so that day he said goodbye to his family and started walking west. Along the way while approaching a bridge he met an old man, Brother Yang, who asked him where he was going. When Yun explained his calling to go south and west, the man said, “The people in my town of Gao hae been praying for months for God to send someone who knows His word to teach us.” Brother Yun became an evangelist at a young age, walking miles to nearby villages to share the Gospel. People brought sick relatives for prayer, and God answered and healed them all. The word of God spread like wildfire across the province and eventually across China, as many house churches and leaders were raised up. All Christians in China consider it a mark of honor to be imprisoned for Christ, even though in the early years almost all pastors were tortured to death for refusing to deny Christ or betray fellow Christians. Prison is less severe now than it was previously, with most sentences not exceeding three years, but all imprisoned Christians share the Gospel while in prison, and upon their release immediately resume evangelizing. Many Christians have been imprisoned several times. AI Overview: “Brother Yun was imprisoned a total of three times during his 23 years of ministry in China. He spent a total of seven years in prison. His third imprisonment was a particularly harsh experience, including beatings and torture. He ultimately escaped from a maximum-security prison during his third imprisonment and later left China to seek asylum in Germany.” While in prison, Yun encouraged countless other prisoners, despite the inhumane conditions. He would offer to give massages to sick or even violent, suicidal prisoners, and used the opportunity to share the Gospel with them and pray for them. Every one of them was healed. AI Overview: “Brother Yun reportedly fasted for 74 days without food or water while imprisoned in Nanyang. He believed he was instructed by the Lord to do so until he could see his family. While in prison, he meditated on the Scriptures he had memorized. This fast is recounted in his autobiography, “The Heavenly Man”. Brother Yun’s escape from prison was just as miraculous as when Peter and Silas escaped from prison, and in much the same way, with doors opened at exactly the right time and guards not noticing him. The guards had broken both his legs, but at the right moment God healed him so he was able to walk. The first time he was arrested and interrogated, he received the nickname “The Heavenly Man” because he would not reveal where he was from, except from “Gospel Village.” Speaking loudly to warn other Christians away, he said he would not become a Judas. Despite extreme torture and pressure from others, he never denied Christ or betrayed any fellow believers. Instead, he preached the Gospel during his entire time in prison and formed strong bonds with other believers. AI Overview: “When Brother Yun was asked where he was from, he would often say he was from the Heavenly Man. He also stated that his home was with his Father in Heaven, as he was constantly longing to be in the presence of God. He would further clarify that his “home” was not a physical place on Earth, but rather a spiritual state of being, referring to his relationship with God.” Brother Yun’s wife Deling was a devoted Christian. When Yun was imprisoned and the authorities demanded that she divorce him, she refused. Later their son Isaac Liu was miraculously saved from a state-imposed abortion by being two months early, the night before the scheduled ‘procedure’. He was four years old when he met his father for the first time. Sorry I can’t remember which book this is from [not sure if this happened to Isaac Liu and his sister] but there was a story about two children who had nothing to eat because their Christian parents were both in prison, but God miraculously provided just enough rice in the pot each day for them to eat, and neighbors, although poor, also gave them a few vegetables now and then. The daily miracle of rice occurred until the day their mother was released from prison and returned home. This was like I Kings 17:14-16, when God provided just enough in the bin of flour and the jar of oil for the widow of Zarephath until He sent rain on the earth. From logos.com – excerpts from “Son of the Underground”: “Isaac met his father for the first time at the age of four. With Brother Yun constantly on the run, and his mother working to feed the family, Isaac’s grandmother cared for him. One day his mother was also arrested. Isaac and his sister were swiftly taken by local Christians to another town, where they registered at a school under false names. The family finally managed to flee to Burma, then to Thailand, and ultimately to Germany. [Note: Isaac was 12 years old and his sister age six when Deling was imprisoned. Isaac was expelled from school because his father was a Christian pastor (an ‘enemy of the state’) but God miraculously gave him the gift of languages and wisdom.] Isaac’s mother had prayed that God would not call her son to be an evangelist–but his father had dedicated him to God. Isaac, now in his twenties, has embraced the call to be a pastor.” Brother Yun’s final imprisonment happened when he tried to leave Burma for Germany. He was sentenced to seven years in a crowded cell. A parasitic infection made him ill, so he was kept in the hospital (his symptoms always worsened just before the doctor’s weekly examination). He shared the gospel with three other Chinese prisoners and encouraged the Burmese prisoners greatly, despite the language barrier. If not for the illness, he would have been sent to hard labor and likely not survived. As it was, he was released after exactly seven months and seven days. Before the flight he had had a dream warning him of the danger, but he did not take the precautions he should have, because he thought his German passport would protect him. With God’s help, the German embassy in Yangon, Burma managed to keep the Chinese delegation away (they wanted to extradite him back to China for execution). Since his escape from China, Brother Yun has spoken to many Christian churches (Protestant and Catholic). His son Isaac has traveled with him and translated his messages into German and later English when he became proficient enough. Many thousands of other Chinese pastors, house church leaders and missionaries to other countries have also walked in faith to share the Gospel despite persecution and torture. Although most Christians are deceived and don’t understand all of the truth, God holds people accountable for what they do with what they do know. The main point is to be salt and light and share the good news of salvation with as many as will listen. When they do hear the true and complete Gospel message of salvation, very likely they will embrace the truth they didn’t know before. Editor’s Note: We do not listen to video links or read print material that is linked to items we print, so we may or may not agree with those links. We only look at print material that is sent to us for print. Laura Lee |
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