The Heavenly Man

I finished reading this book I was talking about in the last post. It's really incredible. It made me think about a lot of things. This guy is in his 50's maybe, which makes all of what he writes about so real, because it didn't happen that long ago and he would still be subject to it if he ever goes back to China. He's now living with his family outside of China - they escaped in the late 90's, I think, and were reunited as a family after September 11, 2001. He endured amazingly horrible torture in prison, and tells of so many miracles, including escaping prison by just obeying God and walking out the gates after his legs were beat so badly he couldn't walk.

The Western idea of christianity many times is based on the idea that we get to receive all these blessings for being Christians, and if we are undergoing persecution, maybe we're doing something wrong. Yun, the author of this book, knows that when he was imprisoned for his faith, it wasn't usually because he did something wrong, but because he was doing what God called him to do. He knows that God sent him to prison at times because of the people he was supposed to reach there and because of the things God wanted to teach him. He even warns about using human efforts to free people from prison: " 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."

He also talks about the vision he and many Chinese house churches have to go to the most unreached Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu countries in the world. "We have also come to understand that the past thirty years of suffering, persecution, and torture for the house churches in China were all part of God's training for us. The Lord has perfectly fitted us to go as missionaries to the Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu worlds." Wow. Trained through persecution to be ready for more persecution. That's commitment to God's calling!

"You can never really know the scriptures until you're willing to be changed by them."