Calming, Refining, Sifting

Return­ing to Da Ma Zhan to Suf­fer with God’s Peo­ple

On April 23, 1950, I began to hold church ser­vices in my home in Guangzhou. Lat­er, I moved to Jie Fang Bei. In Octo­ber, sit­u­a­tions arose affect­ing our meet­ing place in Jie Fang Bei. Mean­while the ground floor ten­ants at 35 Da Ma Zhan moved, so we decid­ed to return to Da Ma Zhan to hold church ser­vices. We did not want our name to have any asso­ci­a­tion with a denom­i­na­tion. The name “Chris­t­ian Assem­bly” was not accept­able to us so we set­tled for the name “Da Ma Zhan Gospel Meet­ing Place” which is still being used today.

The rea­son the Da Ma Zhan ten­ants moved was they feared the build­ing was haunt­ed. How­ev­er, ever since we have been hold­ing our church ser­vices, no evil spir­its have dared to sur­face.

Our space was insuf­fi­cient. My uncle told me, “You have to pray that God will send away the ten­ants in the back of the build­ing. (That sec­tion had been giv­en to my uncle by my grand­fa­ther.) Then I will be able to offer up the entire prop­er­ty to God.” Not long after that, all those ten­ants moved out.

We used the entire ground floor as well as the new­ly remod­eled front and back sec­tions of the sec­ond floor for ser­vices. We reserved only the rooms in the back sec­tion of the first floor for our own res­i­dence. (On occa­sions, even these rooms have been used for wor­ship.)

At the end of 1950, I preached in Hong Kong for the last time. Soon after my return to Guangzhou, a sem­i­nary in Hong Kong (Assem­bly of God Sem­i­nary on Che­ung Chau) offered me a teach­ing posi­tion. How­ev­er, deeply con­vinced of God’s call for me to share the Gospel in Guangzhou, I turned down the offer with Hebrews 11:25, “He regard­ed dis­grace for the sake of Christ as of greater val­ue than the trea­sures of Egypt.” Lat­er, they extend­ed anoth­er offer. Though I real­ized that my stay in Guanzhou would land me in prison soon­er or lat­er, I was deter­mined to remain there as a preach­er, for I knew God had called me to do so!

After earnest prayers and ten signs of con­fir­ma­tion, Li Suil­ing (orig­i­nal­ly, her name was Li Shengx­i­an) and I were mar­ried on July 4, 1951 at Guang Da Tang. The fol­low­ing year, we had a son who lived only thir­ty-three hours. Our daugh­ter Han­nah was born on March 6, 1953. Our son Enoch was born on Decem­ber 26, 1954.

Becom­ing a Dan­ger­ous Ele­ment in Guangzhou for the Sake of the Truth.

While escort­ing my cousin Lin Yao­ji back to school at the begin­ning of 1953, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet Wang Ming­dao, a well known min­is­ter. I had always admired his unwa­ver­ing spir­it of hold­ing firm to the Truth dur­ing the Sino-Japan­ese War (World War II). I had already intro­duced myself through a steady cor­re­spon­dence with him.

After we met, he said to me, “I am a dan­ger­ous ele­ment in Bei­jing and you are a dan­ger­ous one in Guangzhou; now that you are here, it’s dou­ble dan­ger!” We shared two enjoy­able weeks and even took a pic­ture togeth­er. (This pic­ture was lat­er used as evi­dence of my col­lab­o­ra­tion with Wang Ming­dao.) He bought a plat­form tick­et and saw me off at the train sta­tion. He also said, “In recent years, I sel­dom see any­one off at a train sta­tion, because so many have giv­en up their faith!” As the train moved away, I could still see him wav­ing his white hand­ker­chief in the far dis­tance.

First Impris­on­ment Dur­ing the Root Out Counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies Move­ment.

The Anti-Hu Feng Cam­paign launched in the first half of 1955 devel­oped into the Root Out Counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies Move­ment. The sit­u­a­tion became volatile. News of Wang Ming-dao’s arrest came on August 8, 1955. Every­one pre­pared for the worst. We packed small bun­dles of clothes, a tow­el, tooth­brush and oth­er per­son­al items prepar­ing for pos­si­ble impris­on­ment.

After our ser­vice end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 14, 1955, at around ten o’clock, more than ten peo­ple sud­den­ly entered, ordered us to sit down and not say a word. They led Wang Guox­i­an, Zhang Yao-sheng and me into sep­a­rate rooms for ques­tion­ing. Final­ly, all the church lead­ers except Fu Rong­guang and Huang Huan­jue were hand­cuffed, arrest­ed and car­ried off, tak­ing along their packed cloth­ing.

I was tak­en to the first deten­tion cen­ter in Huanghua Road, accused of being a counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary. I was inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the night. The Guang-zhou Nan Fang Dai­ly head­line read: “Counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Group Head­ed by Lin Xian­gao, Wang Guox­i­an, and Zhang Yaosheng Unmasked in a Guang-zhou Chris­t­ian Church.”

Three-Self lead­ers called a pub­lic accu­sa­tion meet­ing against the “Da Ma Zhan Counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Group” on Sep­tem­ber 27, 1955. Those who came for­ward to accuse us were not from the church con­gre­ga­tion. When the elder­ly Sis­ter Li was forced for­ward, she calm­ly said, “In the past, I knew noth­ing of the sav­ing mer­cy of Christ. Pas­tor Lin helped me…” Of course, the guards abrupt­ly led her away.

Unable to find any counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary evi­dence against me, they played a tape record­ing to accuse me. This record­ing was a skill­ful­ly edit­ed ver­sion of a state­ment I had been manip­u­lat­ed into read­ing. At the read­ing I had been told that this was just a state­ment of the issues being con­sid­ered for their supe­ri­or’s infor­ma­tion. Despite my protest at that time that this was false, they bland­ly reas­sured me that such a state­ment was not a for­mal hear­ing or legal pro­ceed­ing. I nev­er would have believed that such a report could have been record­ed as “evi­dence!”

On Decem­ber 18, I was trans­ferred to a sec­ond deten­tion cen­ter on Cang­bian Road. I saw my parish­ioners in the yard. Since we were not per­mit­ted any con­ver­sa­tion, I ges­tured heav­en­ward to Wang Guox­i­an, and Zhang Yaosheng. They nod­ded in response.

We were trans­ferred back to the first deten­tion site on May 22. In Octo­ber, the cadre gave me an edi­tion of Tian Feng. In it was a self-crit­i­cism by Wang Ming­dao. I was very sad­dened. How­ev­er, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to copy down all the Bible vers­es quot­ed in the arti­cle. This gave my fel­low inmate Liang Shudong the chance to read some Bible vers­es. He was lat­er bap­tized at Da Ma Zhan.

On Jan­u­ary 28, 1957, we were released. The ver­dict was not guilty. We returned to our min­istries at Da Ma Zhan, preach­ing freely.

Sec­ond Impris­on­ment Dur­ing the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment.

Lat­er in the same year, con­di­tions spi­raled down­ward. I was served notice to attend a nine-day Chris­t­ian con­fer­ence in the lat­ter part of Feb­ru­ary of 1958. One hun­dred church lead­ers from twen­ty-four denom­i­na­tions were in atten­dance.

I dis­cov­ered only after I got there that it was put togeth­er by the Three-Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment. The con­fer­ence used var­i­ous twists and turns of alleged truth to per­suade us to join forces with them. Under the cir­cum­stances I was deceived into think­ing that by join­ing we would be guar­an­teed the free­dom to preach and teach the truth. I agreed to return to my con­gre­ga­tion to con­vince my staff of the ben­e­fits of such a mem­ber­ship.

Thanks be to God! I was brand­ed as the third of nine Right-wing Chris­tians in Guangzhou by Nan Fang Dai­ly on March 12, 1957. After ten o’clock on the evening of May 30 of the same year, I was arrest­ed for a sec­ond time. (Right-wing indi­vid­u­als usu­al­ly were not arrest­ed except for a vio­la­tion of the law.) I final­ly came to see through the decep­tion.

I was again tak­en to the first deten­tion cen­ter on Huanghua Road. After a brief inter­ro­ga­tion, I was trans­ferred to a sec­ond deten­tion cen­ter on Cang­bian Road. Because I antic­i­pat­ed a death sen­tence or life­time impris­on­ment, I remained unruf­fled. I even reviewed vocab­u­lary in my Greek dic­tio­nary which I had brought with me.

God Pre­served My Life Through Twen­ty Years of Incar­cer­a­tion.

On Novem­ber 20, 1958, I received my sen­tence of a twen­ty year prison term and the loss of all polit­i­cal rights for five years upon my release. I was found guilty of being “counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary, pro-impe­ri­al­ist, anti-Russ­ian and a pawn of Wang Ming­dao.” My appeal three days lat­er was of no use.

I was sent to the Num­ber 2 Prison in Shao Guan Li on Jan­u­ary 25, 1959. Lat­er I was ordered to the tea plan­ta­tion to do heavy labor haul­ing dirt. My ener­gy was lim­it­ed. Often­times I could not com­plete my task. I did not know how I could sur­vive twen­ty years. How­ev­er, I knew at least it would be pleas­ing to the Lord that I suf­fer for Him and die in this prison.

Two months lat­er, I was trans­ferred to the “Old and Dis­abled” group. The work was much less ardu­ous than before. Lat­er, because of good con­duct, I was assigned to main­tain atten­dance records and even became a small group leader at one time. In Sep­tem­ber, I was per­mit­ted con­sid­er­able free­dom: as a bar­ber for Old and Dis­abled inmates. My hair-cut­ting train­ing when I was a stu­dent at Hong Kong’s Alliance Bible Sem­i­nary was final­ly put to good use.

On Jan­u­ary 1963, while I was cut­ting hair for a for­mer preach­er of the Xinghua Bap­tist Church, Wang Yong­hao, I found out that he had a small New Tes­ta­ment. I bor­rowed it in order to copy it by hand. I was caught in the act.

As a result the author­i­ties trans­ferred me to an inten­sive train­ing team con­sist­ing of the “rot­ten” ones from var­i­ous areas. Since I did not have to labor there, I could review Scrip­ture which I had mem­o­rized. I had nev­er under­stood why I had mem­o­rized all the Pauline epis­tles and a num­ber of Psalms while I had been attend­ing Alliance Bible Sem­i­nary. Now I knew the rea­son then was for my impris­on­ment now!

After that, I was trans­ferred to the Xiyu coal mines in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. Due to my lim­it­ed phys­i­cal abil­i­ties I had var­i­ous job trans­fers. Final­ly I was assigned to the less stren­u­ous but dan­ger­ous respon­si­bil­i­ty of a cou­pler. My job was to cou­ple loads of ore. This job required much fin­ger agili­ty or else I could lose my fin­gers. I remained in that assign­ment for fif­teen years cou­pling over two mil­lion cars of ore. Thanks be to God, I still have my ten fin­gers!

At the end of 1969, I was stand­ing beside a pole count­ing the emp­ty cars when an engine smashed into the emp­ty cars and over­turned them. One of the emp­ty cars crashed into the pole and hit my neck. At that moment the engine stopped. If the engine had moved for­ward anoth­er half an inch it would have end­ed my life, as my back was against a wall of coal with no way of escape. Thanks be to God, I was unharmed and unhurt. I was able to breathe nor­mal­ly. I did not under­stand why God spared my life. I dared not imag­ine ever being able to get out of prison to serve Him.

One day in 1970, I was stand­ing in front of a coal car wait­ing for the engine to approach me for cou­pling. The dri­ver was speed­ing and had to brake the engine sud­den­ly. I was pinned between the coal car and the engine. There were engines on my left side and a row of coal cars on the right. Praise God, once again I was unharmed. An eye­wit­ness said, “Lucky!” I said, “No, it was my God!”

Anoth­er time, I was stand­ing between the “emp­ty car” and the “loaded car” tracks talk­ing to a fel­low inmate. An oncom­ing engine pushed some emp­ty cars toward us. Sud­den­ly I fell down between two cars. For sure I thought that I would at least lose my legs even if I could sur­vive this. Thanks be to God, I did a som­er­sault and land­ed on the oth­er side of the tracks. The fel­low inmate thought I had died. I said, “I did not die, I am fine!” I had not known how to do som­er­saults. If you ask me to do it again, I would not dare to test God. God sent an angel to deliv­er me safe­ly to the oth­er side.

God has pro­tect­ed me all along. Though I came close to los­ing my life so many times, mirac­u­lous­ly I was unscathed. He pre­served my life again and again to let me know that my life is whol­ly in His hands for His ser­vice. I will serve Him will­ing­ly to the point of dying for Him.

God Stead­ied Me Dur­ing the Crit­i­cism Move­ment.

In 1974, at the height of the Anti-Con­fu­cius and Anti-Lin Biao Cam­paigns, the cadre asked me to write a crit­i­cism on Chris­tian­i­ty. Back in my room, I prayed for God to sup­ply me with the words to say. I was psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pre­pared to receive a sen­tence of life­time impris­on­ment. God indeed lis­tened to my prayer. I wrote an arti­cle that stat­ed: “Whether from Eng­land, Amer­i­ca, or any place in the world, there are some peo­ple… who use Chris­tian­i­ty to serve their own polit­i­cal ends. Not only is this form of Chris­tian­i­ty unwel­come by all, but even we true believ­ers dis­ap­prove of it.”

I did not crit­i­cize Chris­tian­i­ty nor Christ, but attacked only the false Chris­tians, false prophets and the Social Gospel. My leader was sat­is­fied with my crit­i­cism. My prison sen­tence was not length­ened nor was it reduced. God once again guard­ed my faith and kept my steps secure.

After that, I had sev­er­al mirac­u­lous escapes from death, one after anoth­er. These tes­ti­fied of God’s mighty hand of pro­tec­tion. He let me suf­fer much for Christ and learn how to praise and wor­ship Him in the midst of tri­als so that I could be of bet­ter ser­vice to Him.

End of Incar­cer­a­tion and Return to Guangzhou.

My twen­ty year prison term end­ed on May 29, 1978. I was trans­ferred to the “Immi­nent Dis­charge” group await­ing job assign­ment. One day, I saw four peo­ple mov­ing a dead body. It was the young cou­pler who had replaced me. He had only been cou­pling for two or three months and was much more agile than I. He died and I was still liv­ing. What could I say oth­er than to praise God?

Dur­ing this wait­ing peri­od, the cadre kept inform­ing me that I would not be return­ing to Guangzhou. “Against all hope, Abra­ham in hope believed” (Rom. 4:18a). On the morn­ing of June 14, I was sum­moned to the head­quar­ters where I received notice of per­mis­sion to return to Guangzhou. At that time I felt like Jacob hear­ing that Joseph was still alive (Gen. 45:26–28).

When I got home, I learned that my moth­er had had car­diac and lung dis­eases since her mid­dle age. God had sus­tained her life to give me rea­son for per­mis­sion to return to Guangzhou. Eleven months after my return, she passed on to be with the Lord at the age of 78.

Resum­ing Da Ma Zhan Min­istry as an Unashamed Work­man.

I start­ed teach­ing Eng­lish in my house when I first got home. The major­i­ty of stu­dents were believ­ers. Grad­u­al­ly I led house church ser­vices and bap­tized oth­ers. I resumed writ­ing the book­lets, Spir­i­tu­al Col­lec­tions. My first book writ­ten after my prison release was Once Saved, Always Saved. On May 8, 1979, the book was pub­lished. I wrote sev­er­al books after that as well as sev­er­al hymns with music and lyrics. These hymns, togeth­er with those I wrote pri­or to and dur­ing my incar­cer­a­tion, num­bered over thir­ty.

Da Ma Zhan resumed ser­vices in Sep­tem­ber 1979. At first, only four to five peo­ple came. Soon the atten­dance went up dras­ti­cal­ly. We had to cov­er the porch to cre­ate more space for our ser­vice. As ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary 1981, we were using the third floor as the sanc­tu­ary. We used the pub­lic address sys­tem to broad­cast the mes­sage to the sec­ond floor.

Lat­er on because I had not fin­ished my five-year pro­ba­tion, I had no free­dom to min­is­ter to a con­gre­ga­tion. We tem­porar­i­ly stopped our meet­ing for half a year. How­ev­er, dur­ing this half a year we ren­o­vat­ed our run down build­ing. It was sim­ply God’s divine engi­neer­ing.

Up to that point, already forty-three groups of believ­ers had been bap­tized. They num­bered 1364 peo­ple (July 6, 1980-Octo­ber 4, 1988). Each Sun­day ser­vice had an aver­age of over three hun­dred atten­ders. Fur­ther­more, there were quite a num­ber of over­seas Chris­tians who vis­it­ed and fel­low­shipped with us.

In addi­tion, the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan sent a del­e­gate to present me with a pen, a Bible and a pic­ture of him­self. The sup­port from over­seas believ­ers has been a tremen­dous encour­age­ment and came most cer­tain­ly from the hand of God.

From August to Decem­ber 1988, the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau sum­moned me for ques­tion­ing six times. They asked me to reg­is­ter offi­cial­ly and join the TSPM. But I stat­ed that I would act accord­ing to the Bible’s teach­ings, and we nei­ther belong to any denom­i­na­tion nor are part of any asso­ci­a­tion. I also said that we strive to please God and be work­men who do not need to be ashamed, cor­rect­ly han­dling the Word of Truth.

Do Not Be Afraid of What You Are About to Suf­fer, Be Faith­ful Even to the Point of Death.

Although I have expe­ri­enced some afflic­tion, I am still far short of God’s expec­ta­tions. I have always prayed for the Lord to keep me from back­slid­ing. Wang Ming­dao said to me in Guangzhou in 1982, “Nowa­days a lot of peo­ple are not defeat­ed by Satan but rather are over­come by fears.” That is true. I admon­ish believ­ers not to be dis­cour­aged or defeat­ed because of afflic­tions.

Do not love the world because of mate­ri­al­ism and for its plea­sures. I also hope that the over­seas believ­ers will not become luke­warm in their faith because of their afflu­ence, but that they will be ready to suf­fer. “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suf­fer. I tell you, the dev­il will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suf­fer per­se­cu­tion for ten days. Be faith­ful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). The God who has helped you since the begin­ning will sus­tain you and guard you until the day you see the Lord.

Adden­dum: An Account of the Arrest of Lin Xian­gao

1. The Search (Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 22, 1990). At 11:30 p.m., the ser­vice and fel­low­ship end­ed and every­one left. Short­ly after the final two over­seas believ­ers had left, four peo­ple came up to the third floor. (They had spo­ken to me about reg­is­ter­ing before.) After talk­ing for a few min­utes, one of them called down for the oth­er Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau Agents. Then about six­ty peo­ple stormed up to the sanc­tu­ary. The oth­er three agents then left.

The leader took out a search war­rant for me to sign. Anoth­er asked me to unlock all cab­i­net doors. When no key was avail­able, they just pried open the doors. Three peo­ple used a video cam­era to take pic­tures. They took away all Chris­t­ian books, pam­phlets, Bibles from over­seas, thou­sands of mimeo­graphed Spir­i­tu­al Col­lec­tions book­lets, and over three thou­sand mimeo­graphed hym­nals. Oth­er items tak­en were ten tape recorders, the closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion sys­tem, new and old ampli­fiers, sev­en micro­phones, sev­er­al thou­sand used and new cas­sette tapes, an elec­tric organ, an elec­tric gen­er­a­tor, a mimeo­graph machine, a copi­er, an entire set of loud speak­ers, tele­phones (lat­er returned), all our cash which includ­ed over ten thou­sand yuan, sev­er­al thou­sand Hong Kong dol­lars and sev­er­al thou­sand worth of mon­ey orders (lat­er they returned my per­son­al por­tion of the mon­ey), the pen, Bible and pic­ture from Ronald Rea­gan, and the pen and Bible from Bil­ly Gra­ham. This was a ran­sack.

2. Inter­ro­ga­tion at the Deten­tion Cen­ter (Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 23, 1990). The search last­ed until 4:00 a.m. on the Feb­ru­ary 23. Then they took out an arrest war­rant for me to sign. After sign­ing the paper they asked me to pack a tow­el, tooth­brush and some clothes. I was then dri­ven to the wait­ing room on Huang-hua Road. My inter­ro­ga­tion last­ed twen­ty-one hours with only one fif­teen minute break. I sat on the chair with my head against the wall. It was a bit chilly and I could not sleep, but I did not have a headache. I did not sleep at all dur­ing the twen­ty-five hour long search and inter­ro­ga­tion.

3. The Long Antic­i­pat­ed Day. They claimed that since we were not reg­is­tered, we were in vio­la­tion of the Guanzhou Province reg­u­la­tion (No. 40, Guanzhou 33 Rules). Thus Da Ma Zhan Gospel Meet­ing Place was to be banned.

“We have nev­er demon­strat­ed and I urge the believ­ers not to go on demon­stra­tions. You do not need to be con­cerned about us,” I argued.

“We are con­cerned about you not for the issue of demon­stra­tions but for your non-com­pli­ance with rules and reg­u­la­tions,” they said.

“This is ‘sav­ing face’ by pick­ing on the pet­ty stuff when you miss the more impor­tant things.” I said, “The rules do not say that there are to be no house church­es. Arti­cles in the Jan­u­ary 27, 1983, Peo­ple’s Dai­ly and Doc­u­ment #19 both said that house church­es are legal. In the Sep­tem­ber 14, 1989, Peo­ple’s Dai­ly, Wang Zhen stat­ed that ‘The pol­i­cy guar­an­tee­ing reli­gious free­dom remains unchanged.’ ”

“The Jan­u­ary 21, 1990, Peo­ple’s Dai­ly assert­ed, ‘In cer­tain places reli­gion was attacked under the guise of a crack­down on sex­u­al immor­tal­i­ty and the six evils. We have to rec­ti­fy and con­demn this.’ The Jan­u­ary 25, 1990, Peo­ple’s Dai­ly said, ’ Do not search and arrest wrong­ly. Do not force peo­ple either to believe or recant any posi­tion.’ ”

“We do not demon­strate. Ding Guangx­un sup­port­ed the stu­dent move­ment. Yet, when Xiong Zhen­pei died recent­ly (the Nation­al Vice Chair­man of TSPM and the Chair­man of Guangzhou TSPM), Ding Guangx­un appeared as the Chi­nese Peo­ple’s Polit­i­cal Con­sul­ta­tive Con­fer­ence Vice Chair­man.”

“Ding re-exam­ined his pre­vi­ous ide­ol­o­gy well,” they said.

I replied, “We do not need to re-exam­ine our beliefs. We do not demon­strate. Even Nan­jing Sem­i­nary par­tic­i­pat­ed in a demon­stra­tion and they did not get into trou­ble. We on the oth­er hand have been banned from hold­ing meet­ings. We are not anti-gov­ern­ment and do not protest. For a long time, the gov­ern­ment nev­er gave us any trou­ble. Who would have thought that things would turn out this way? How­ev­er, I have long antic­i­pat­ed this day.”

“Why won’t you coop­er­ate with TSPM? You should not say that you are true and they are false,” they demand­ed.

“Not all of them are false, but there are some true ones and some false ones. We just do not want to be mixed up with the true and false,” I respond­ed. Then I added, “To reg­is­ter is to be under two orga­ni­za­tions: TSPM and the Chi­na Chris­t­ian Coun­cil (CCC). This is in actu­al­i­ty ask­ing us to join the TSPM. The Con­sti­tu­tion does not include such a rule. Guangzhou was the only province begin­ning in 1988 to both­er with the issue of ‘Reg­is­tra­tion.’ Why don’t you focus on improv­ing pub­lic secu­ri­ty instead of tar­get­ing reli­gion?”

“Every­thing has already been well tak­en care of,” they retort­ed.

“This is real­ly a ‘fatigue ses­sion,’ ” I remarked. They did not say any­thing. Some­times they kept ques­tion­ing me but I would not answer. The record keep­er wrote, “silence.”

“When the TSPM was first estab­lished, peo­ple were asked to join of their own free will,” I said. “Nowhere in his­to­ry has there been a “Three-Self” Orga­ni­za­tion,” I remarked.

4. Out­sider’s Non­in­ter­fer­ence with Our Auton­o­my. They felt that we were depen­dent finan­cial­ly on the for­eign church­es and so had vio­lat­ed the Three-Self prin­ci­ple. They assumed that with­out any out­side sup­port, Da Ma Zhan could not main­tain its oper­a­tion.

I explained, “We have nev­er received any con­sis­tent sup­port from for­eign or Hong Kong church­es. When a vis­i­tor attends our ser­vice, he may give an offer­ing. This is the same with the TSPM church­es. TSPM even requests funds from for­eign­ers.”

“We have about one thou­sand peo­ple in our ser­vices every Sun­day and thus are able to sup­port our­selves. We do not even charge for labor when we are asked by out­siders to tape mes­sages for dis­tri­b­u­tion to oth­ers. This is because we engage in any­thing that will ben­e­fit the Gospel min­istry. This does not mean that out­siders are involved or inter­fer­ing in our affairs. We sim­ply are offer­ing help.”

“You have for­eign­ers preach­ing,” they com­ment­ed.

“I preach in our ser­vices. When an out­sider shares words of greet­ing, encour­age­ment and tes­ti­mo­ny, that is called fel­low­ship,” I explained.

“Why are they bring­ing Bibles and books?” they asked.

“The Bibles from over­seas are the same as ours. The Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion wiped ours out. Preach­ers and believ­ers need spir­i­tu­al books. These read­ings are the inher­i­tance of thou­sands of years. With these read­ing mate­ri­als we can guard against cults.”

“Why use the term ‘infil­trate?’ It is called an ‘exchange’ when we use for­eign books about tech­nol­o­gy, lit­er­a­ture, and Eng­lish.” I explained.

I also added, “These gifts of tape recorders, speak­ers, etc. were all for the pur­pose of our Gospel min­istry. They nev­er intend to inter­fere with our autonomous gov­ern­ment.”

5. Tes­ti­fy­ing for the Faith. They ques­tioned, “Is there real­ly a God? Did Jesus real­ly rise from the dead?”

“Tru­ly there is a God. Christ did rise from the dead. That is our Gospel,” I affirmed and I pro­ceed­ed to tell them the Gospel. I shared with them the tes­ti­monies of my diph­the­ria and my father.

They said, “Maybe you don’t real­ly believe Jesus was raised from the dead. Some pas­tors say, ‘Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion is not nec­es­sar­i­ly lit­er­al­ly true.’ ”

I explained, “Before when I said that the TSPM had both truths and false­hoods, you told me not to claim that I was true and they were false. Now you tes­ti­fy that there are false teach­ings in the TSPM.”

“If I had not believed in Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion, I would have for­sak­en this ‘un-res­ur­rect­ed’ Christ when I was arrest­ed or even before my first arrest. Yet I was arrest­ed again and again and I nev­er wavered in my belief; but I con­tin­ued to preach about the res­ur­rect­ed Christ. That was because this is true. We believe and are saved and we will go to heav­en in the future.”

“Death is like snuff­ing out one’s light. You might as well have a good last few years of life. You believe in God. Last night when we took you, what hap­pened to God?” they sneered.

“God per­mit­ted it,” I said.

“What do you mean by, ‘He per­mit­ted it’? If I had not tak­en you, would you have come?” they scoffed.

I replied, “God did not will it that way.”

They gave me about three Chi­nese ounces of rice to eat. I said, “Two ounces is enough.” Then I prayed. They urged me to eat but I insist­ed, ” I pray first.”

One of them said, “Fine.”

6. Sign­ing Doc­u­ments. Final­ly, they asked me to sign an agree­ment to: (1) com­ply with the local gov­ern­ment in ban­ning Da Ma Zhan for wor­ship ser­vices; (2) not to con­tin­ue engag­ing in activ­i­ties harm­ful to the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple. (I wrote “not to” instead of “not to con­tin­ue”); and (3) come to the head­quar­ters when­ev­er sum­moned.

Although it appeared that my activ­i­ties would not be restrict­ed, it was no dif­fer­ent from putting me under “house arrest.” “You want to ban the wor­ship ser­vices. I per­son­al­ly will nev­er stop hold­ing ser­vices. I can only give lip ser­vice to the agree­ment,” I said.

They asked me to write a self-crit­i­cism. I refused and said, “I did not com­mit any crime, only non-com­pli­ance with some reg­u­la­tions.”

7. Upon Return­ing Home (Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 24, 1990). At 1:40 a.m., they drove me home. They warned me to be care­ful with what I would say to the reporters. I said I would not add or delete any­thing. I was detained for a total of twen­ty-one hours. When I returned home, I found it a total mess with cig­a­rette butts all over the place. I stayed up until past two o’clock. The next day, quite a few peo­ple came to vis­it. The first vis­i­tor was Zhu Quan. By noon, we final­ly had cleaned up the place.

Thanks be to God, “The Lord gave and the Lord has tak­en away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21).

We do not blame any­one. God ordained today before cre­ation. We should praise and wor­ship!

A num­ber of peo­ple came but we did not hold a ser­vice. Some peo­ple prayed out­side and some wept.

This tri­al is one of “calm­ing, refin­ing and sift­ing.” Satan intend­ed to sift us like wheat, but God sift­ed out the weeds.

“Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heav­en. For that is how their fathers treat­ed the prophets” (Luke 6:22–23).

-Lin Xian­gao is a house church leader in Chi­na. He is present­ly shep­herd­ing in Guangzhou. This arti­cle is from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, Sep­tem­ber, 1998, Vol. 2 No. 3, pp. 28–32.