Child Healed Of A Fever

I later met a retired professor who recounted his testimony of God working a miracle in his life, and also shed some insight into the dark times of China's Cultural Revolution.  During the time he studied English as a youth, he took an interest in improving his oral English.  A friend told him that a good way to improve English was to attend English Bible classes.  So, he began attending the meetings, at which he heard the fundamental teachings of the Bible.  One evening he was asked if he wanted to accept Jesus as his personal saviour.  He felt moved to live a new life (the Holy Spirit was at work), so he decided to accept Jesus as his personal saviour when he was 14 years old.  He continued to study at the Bible classes.  After 2 years he was baptized.  Then he went on to participate in Young People's Christian Endeavor which met on Sunday evenings once a week.  They ran the meetings by themselves and chose their own speakers.  Participants were mostly university students and a great majority were already Christians.  He told me that he really enjoyed attending the meetings very much. He liked listening to the different people tell how they came to know Christ.  That lasted almost until Liberation (until about 1946), when he was around 27 years old.

"I knew nothing about divine healing."  When he was 15 years old, he had a high fever that lasted for 2 weeks.  He was on the verge of dying and the doctors couldn't do anything.  "Western and Chinese doctors couldn't do anything for me.  I was left at home helpless.  Since I believed in the Lord, I had never asked him for anything special.  So, that evening I was in a hopeless state.  I just closed my eyes and prayed a very sincere prayer, very simple.  I said Lord you know I'm very ill.  Doctor's medicines couldn't do me any good.  Would you please have mercy on me, heal my illness, I hope that my faith could be strengthened.  I don't remember the exact words but it was something like that.  That evening I had a sweet sleep.  Next morning when I woke up, the fever left.  Family members came over and thought it was weird that the fever went away.  They said, "How could you get healed?  Chinese and Western medicine couldn't do you any good."  I told them Jesus did it and they laughed at me.  From that time I put greater trust in the Lord.  That was my first personal experience since I accepted Jesus as my saviour.  Ever since then I have stayed trusting in the Lord, and when I have a difficulty I ask the Lord for help (it's been this way for over 60 years).  He has saved my life many times since then.  He never failed me."  He shared with me the first thing people need, is to believe that there is a God who created everything.  Then they need to believe that Jesus is His Son.

Next, he began to discuss the Cultural Revolution. The first paragraph provides a background and the second mentions some of what the church went through.

"The Cultural Revolution started in 1966 and lasted 10 years.  For most people, it was a bad dream.  For all the Chinese people, it was a great disaster.  During the years of revolution, all the schools shut down; all the organizations came to a close.  What for? To make revolution.  It's not easy for a foreigner to understand what "to make revolution" means.  It means that everyone has to take part in the revolution.  There was a struggle among Chinese people all over China.  Who was loyal to the revolutionary movement of Mao?  They had arguments, "I am, you are not."  People divided into factions and you would find groups of people in heated arguments in the street corners.  One couldn't convince another and they began to give blows.  Later they used sticks, and as time went on, they made spears.  The factions gained people and sometimes thousands.  They used guns that they got from army units.  At nighttime we could hear people shoot eachother with machine guns.  At evening, nobody dared to walk.  Even in the daytime, nobody dared to walk.  Young people from peasant and working class families organized themselves as the Red Guards.  During the ten years, nobody knows how many people were persecuted to death."

"In those days all the meeting places, churches were forced to close down.  A large portion of Chinese pastors were labeled as rightists, or counter revolutionaries, and were forced to leave home to do hard labor in mines.  People weren't allowed to have family worship.  Meetings at home, impossible.  The Red Guards kept an eye on the people nearby, you see.  They had the power to break into your house, to take away people.  Nobody dared to say anything against the Red Guards.  It seemed that it was the end of the church, but after the Revolution all the churches opened and new ones were built.  Isn't that the great miracle."