The Heavenly Man (2 page)

My name is Liu Zhenying. My Christian friends call me Brother Yun.

One morning in autumn 1999, I awoke in the city of Bergen in western Norway. My heart was stirred and excitement bubbled up inside me. I had been speaking in churches throughout Scandinavia, testifying about the Chinese house churches and inviting Christians to join us as we evangelize all of China and the nations beyond. My hosts had asked me if I would like to visit the grave of Marie Monsen, a great Lutheran missionary to China who had been mightily used by God to revive the church in different parts of my nation from 1901 to 1932. Her ministry was especially effective in the southern part of Henan Province, where I come from.

Miss Monsen was small in stature, yet a giant in God’s kingdom. The Chinese church was not only impacted by her words, but also deeply challenged by her sacrificial lifestyle. She was a fully committed, uncompromising follower of Jesus Christ, who showed us an example of how to suffer and endure for the Lord.

God used Marie Monsen in a powerful manner, so that many miracles, signs and wonders followed her ministry. She returned to Norway in 1932 to take care of her elderly
parents, and by then her work in China was complete. She never returned to China, but her legacy of uncompromising faith, unquenchable zeal and the necessity of changed hearts fully committed to the cause of Christ lives on in the Chinese church today.

Now I had the great privilege of visiting her grave in her homeland. I wondered if any other Chinese Christian had ever enjoyed the privilege I was about to enjoy. When she came to our part of China there were few Christians and the church was weak. Today there are millions of believers. On their behalf I planned to offer thanks to God for her life.

Our car pulled up at the graveyard, situated on the side of a hill in a narrow valley, with a river flowing through it. We walked around for a few minutes, hoping to see her name on one of the several hundred tombstones. Not being able to locate Monsen’s grave immediately, we strolled to the office for help. The administrator was not familiar with her name, so he looked in a book that lists the names of the dead who are buried there. After flicking through the pages he told us some news I found hard to believe, “Marie Monsen was indeed buried here in 1962. But her grave was left untended for many years, so today it is just an empty lot with no headstone.”

In Chinese culture the memory of people who did great things is cherished for many generations to come, so I never imagined that such a thing could happen. The local believers explained that Marie Monsen was still held in high regard and that they had honoured her memory in different ways, such as by publishing her biography decades after she died. But to me her unmarked grave was an insult that had to be made right.

I was deeply grieved. With a heavy heart I sternly told the Norwegian Christians who were with me, “You must
honour this woman of God! I will give you two years to construct a new grave and headstone in memory of Marie Monsen. If you fail to do this, I will personally arrange for some Christian brothers to walk all the way from China to Norway to build one! Many brothers in China are skilled stonecutters because of their years in prison labour camps for the sake of the gospel. If you don’t care enough, they will be more than willing to do it!”

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I was born in 1958, during the Chinese leap year – the fourth of five children in our family. I came into the world in an old traditional farming village named Liu Lao Zhuang in Nanyang County, in the southern part of China’s Henan Province.

Henan contains almost 100 million souls – China’s most populated province. Despite this fact, there seemed to be many open spaces where I grew up – lots of hills to scale and trees to climb. Although life was difficult, I also remember times of fun when I was a little boy.

All of the 600 people in our village were farmers, and still are to this day. Not too much has changed. We mostly cultivated potatoes, corn, and wheat. We also grew cabbages and other kinds of root vegetables.

Our home was a simple structure of compacted dried mud. The roof was made of straw. The rain always managed to find the holes in our roof, while in winter the icy winds never failed to blow through the gaps in our walls. When the temperatures dropped to below freezing we burned leftover corn husks to keep warm. We couldn’t afford coal.

Often in the summer it was so hot and humid that we couldn’t bear to sleep inside our poorly ventilated home.
Beds were dragged outside and our whole family joined the rest of the village sleeping in the cooler air.

“Henan” means “south of the river”. The mighty Yellow River dissects the northern part of the province. Its frequent floods have brought centuries of pain to people living along its banks. We knew this as we grew up, but to us northern Henan was a million miles away.

Our village nestled in the hills of the southern part of the province, safe from devastating floods and outside influences. We were only concerned with the next harvest. Our lives completely revolved around the cycle of ploughing, planting, watering and harvesting. My dad always said it was a struggle just to get enough food to eat. All hands were required in the field, so from a young age I was called into action helping with my brothers and sisters. Consequently, I didn’t have the opportunity to attend much school.

In other parts of China, Henan natives have a reputation for being as stubborn as donkeys. Perhaps it was that stubbornness that prevented the Henanese from receiving Christianity when Protestant missionaries first brought it to our province in 1884. Many missionaries laboured in Henan without much visible success. By 1922, after almost forty years of missionary effort, there were a mere 12,400 Protestant believers in the entire province.

Those who accepted the religion of the “foreign devils” were ridiculed and ostracized by their communities. Often the opposition spilled over into more violent expressions. Christians were beaten. Some were even killed for their faith. The missionaries, too, faced great persecution. Missionaries were considered by many people to be tools of imperialism and colonialism, sent by their nations to gain control over the hearts and minds of the Chinese people while their governments raped the land of its natural resources.

The outrage against foreigners reached its peak in 1900, when a secret society called “The Boxers” instigated a nationwide attack against foreigners. Most were able to flee the carnage, but many missionaries were located in remote rural areas of inland China, far from the safety of the large coastal cities. The Boxers brutally massacred more than 150 missionaries and thousands of their Chinese converts.

Those brave souls who had come to serve our nation sacrificially and bring the love of the Lord Jesus Christ to us were slaughtered. They had come to share Christ and to improve our lives by building hospitals, orphanages and schools. We repaid them with death.

In the aftermath, some people thought the events of 1900 would be enough to scare missionaries off ever coming back to China.

They were wrong.

On 1 September 1901, a large ship docked in Shanghai Port. A young single lady from Norway walked off the gangplank onto Chinese soil for the first time. Marie Monsen was one of a new wave of missionaries who, inspired by the martyrdoms of the previous year, had dedicated themselves to full-time missionary service in China.

Monsen stayed in China for more than thirty years. For a time she lived in my county, Nanyang, where she encouraged and trained a small group of Chinese believers that had sprung up.

Marie Monsen was different from most other missionaries. She didn’t seem to be too concerned with making a good impression on the Chinese church leaders. She often told them, “You are all hypocrites! You confess Jesus Christ with your lips while your hearts are not fully committed to him! Repent before it is too late to escape God’s judgment!” She brought fire from the altar of God.

Monsen told the Christians it wasn’t enough to study the lives of born-again believers, but that they must themselves be radically born again in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. With such teaching, she took the emphasis off head knowledge and showed each individual that they were personally responsible before God for their own inner spiritual life. Hearts were convicted of sin and fires of revival swept throughout the villages of central China wherever she went.

In the 1940s another Western missionary preached the gospel to my mother, who was twenty years old at the time. Although she didn’t fully understand, she was deeply impressed by what she heard. She especially liked to sing the songs and hear the Bible stories shared by the small teams of evangelists who travelled around the countryside. Soon she started attending church and committed her life to Jesus Christ.

China became a Communist nation in 1949. Within a few years all missionaries were expelled, church buildings were closed, and thousands of Chinese pastors were imprisoned. Many lost their lives. My mother saw the missionaries leave Nanyang in the early 1950s. She never forgot the tears in their eyes as they headed for the coast under armed guard, their ministries for the Lord having abruptly come to an end.

In just one city in China, Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province, 49 pastors were sent to prison labour camps near the Russian border in 1950. Many were given sentences of up to twenty years for their “crimes” of preaching the gospel. Of those 49 pastors, just one returned home. 48 died in prison.

In my home area of Nanyang, believers were crucified on the walls of their churches for not denying Christ. Others were chained to vehicles and horses and dragged to their death.

One pastor was bound and attached to a long rope. The authorities, enraged that the man of God would not deny his faith, used a makeshift crane to lift him high into the air. Before hundreds of witnesses, who had come to accuse him falsely of being a “counter revolutionary”, the pastor was asked one last time by his persecutors if he would recant. He shouted back, “No! I will never deny the Lord who saved me!” The rope was released and the pastor crashed to the ground below.

Upon inspection, the tormentors discovered the pastor was not fully dead, so they raised him up into the air for a second time, dropping the rope to finish him off for good. In this life the pastor was dead, but he lives on in heaven with the reward of one who was faithful to the end.

Life was not just difficult for Christians. Mao launched an experiment called the “Great Leap Forward”, which led to a massive famine all over China. It was actually a great leap backwards for the nation. In my Henan Province it was estimated that 8 million people starved to death.

During these difficult times the small fledgling church in my home town of Nanyang was scattered. They were like sheep without shepherds. My mother also left the church. Over the following decades, having been completely starved of all Christian fellowship and without God’s Word, she forgot most of what she had learned as a young woman. Her relationship with the Lord grew cold.

* * *

On 1 September 2001 – exactly one hundred years to the day since Marie Monsen first arrived in China to start her missionary career – more than three hundred Norwegian Christians gathered in the Bergen graveyard for a special
prayer and dedication ceremony. A beautiful new headstone was unveiled in memory of Monsen, paid for by contributions from various churches, and individual Christians.

Monsen’s picture and her Chinese name appeared on the headstone, which also stated:

MARIE MONSEN 1878 – 1962

MISSIONARY IN CHINA 1901 – 1932

When I told the believers in China that Marie Monsen’s gravestone had been rebuilt, they were thankful and relieved.

We must always be careful to remember the sacrifice of those God has used to establish his kingdom. They are worthy of our honour and respect.

The Lord called me to follow him at the age of 16. The year was 1974, and the Cultural Revolution was still raging throughout China.

At that time my father was sick. He suffered from a severe type of asthma, which developed into lung cancer. The cancer then spread to his stomach. The doctor told him he could not be cured and would soon die. My mother was told, “There’s no hope for your husband. Go home and prepare for his death.”

Every night my dad lay in bed and could hardly breathe. Being a very superstitious man, he asked some neighbours to fetch a local Daoist priest to come and cast the demons out of him, as he believed his sickness was the result of upsetting the demons.

My dad’s sickness sapped all our money, possessions, and energy. Because of our poverty I wasn’t able to attend school until the age of nine, but then I had to drop out at sixteen because of my father’s cancer. My brothers, sisters and I were
forced to beg food from our neighbours and friends, just to survive.

My father had been a captain in the Nationalist army. Because he had fought against the Communists, he was hated by the other villagers and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. He had killed many men in battle, and had nearly died himself. He had twelve scars from bullet wounds in one of his legs.

When I was born, my father named me “Zhenying”, which means “Hero of the Garrison”.

Dad had a fearsome reputation. Neighbours avoided him because of his violent temper. When the Red Guards came to accuse him during the Cultural Revolution he endured many severe interrogations and beatings. Drawing on his courage, he refused to confess any “crimes” and would not answer when they asked him how many men he had killed. He stubbornly preferred to be beaten or even killed than to tell them what they wanted to hear.

There were two sides to my father. Most people only knew that he was extremely tough and had a bad temper. This was true. He taught his children two main things: first, we must be cruel and hard towards others, and second, we must always work hard.

But I also remember his gentler side. He always tried to protect his wife and children from outside harm. Overall, I had a very good relationship with my dad.

We hoped my father would get better, but his condition worsened. My mother was under great pressure, facing the daunting prospect of raising five children alone. She didn’t know what would happen to us if father died. Things were so hopeless that she even contemplated suicide.

One night my mother was lying on her bed, barely awake.
Suddenly she heard a very clear and tender, compassionate voice say, “Jesus loves you.” She knelt down on the floor and tearfully repented of her sins and re-dedicated herself to the Lord Jesus Christ. Like the Prodigal Son, my mother came home to God.

She immediately called our family to come and pray to Jesus. She told us, “Jesus is the only hope for Father.” All of us committed our lives to God when we heard what had happened. We then laid our hands on my father and for the rest of the night we cried out a simple prayer, “Jesus, heal Father! Jesus, heal Father!”

The very next morning my father found he was much better! For the first time in months he had an appetite for food. Within a week he had recovered completely and had no trace of cancer! It was a great miracle from God.

We experienced revival in our family and our lives took a drastic change. It was such a powerful time that today, almost 30 years after Jesus healed my father, all five of his children still follow God.

My parents were so grateful to God for what he had done that they immediately wanted to share the good news with everyone else in our village. In those days it was illegal to hold any meetings or public gatherings, but my parents came up with a plan. They sent us children to invite relatives and friends to our home.

People came to our home without knowing the reason why they’d been summoned. Many presumed Father must have died and so they came dressed for the funeral! They were amazed to see my dad greet them at the door, apparently in good health! When all our relatives and friends had arrived, my parents asked them all to come inside the house. They locked the door and covered the windows, and explained how Father had been completely healed by
praying to Jesus. All our relatives and friends knelt down on the floor and gladly accepted Jesus as Lord and Master.

These were exciting times. Not only did I receive Jesus as my personal Saviour, but I also became a person who really wanted to serve the Lord with all my heart.

My mother had never learned to read or write, but she became the first preacher in our village. She led a small church in our house. Although my mum couldn’t remember much of God’s Word, she always exhorted us to focus on Jesus. As we cried out to him, Jesus helped us in his great mercy. As I look back on those early days, I’m amazed at how God used my mother despite her illiteracy and ignorance. The direction of her heart was totally surrendered to Jesus. Some of today’s great house church leaders in China first met the Lord through my mother’s ministry.

At first, I didn’t really know who Jesus was, but I’d seen him heal my father and liberate our family. I confidently committed myself to the God who had healed my father and saved us. During that time I frequently asked my mother who Jesus truly was. She told me, “Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for us, taking all our sins and sicknesses. He recorded all his teachings in the Bible.”

I asked if there were any words of Jesus left that I could read for myself. She replied, “No. All his words are gone. There is nothing left of his teaching.” This was during the Cultural Revolution when Bibles could not be found.

From that day on I earnestly wanted to have a copy of my own Bible. I asked my mother and fellow Christians what a Bible looked like, but no one knew. One person had seen some hand copied Scripture portions and song sheets, but never a whole Bible. Only a few old believers could recall seeing Bibles many years before. The Word of God was scarce in the land.

I was so hungry for a Bible. Seeing my desperation, my mother remembered an old man who lived in another village. This man had been a pastor before the Cultural Revolution.

Together we started out on the long walk to his home. When we found him we told him our desire, “We long to see a Bible. Do you have one?”

He immediately looked fearful. This man had already spent nearly 20 years in prison for his faith. He looked at me and saw that I was so young and poor, with tattered clothes and bare feet. He felt compassion, but still didn’t want to show me his Bible.

I don’t blame him because in those days there were very few Bibles in the whole of China. Nobody was allowed to read any book other than Mao’s little Red Book. If caught with a Bible, it would be burned and the owner’s whole family would be severely beaten in the middle of the village.

The old pastor simply told me, “The Bible is a heavenly book. If you want one, you’ll need to pray to the God of heaven. Only he can provide you a heavenly book. God is faithful. He always answers those who seek him with all of their heart.”

I fully trusted the pastor’s words.

When I returned home I brought a stone into my room and knelt down on it every evening for prayer. I had just one simple prayer: “Lord, please give me a Bible. Amen.” At that time I didn’t know how to pray, but I continued for more than one month.

Nothing happened. A Bible didn’t appear.

I went back to that pastor’s house again. This time I went alone. I told him, “I’ve prayed to God according to your instructions, but I still haven’t received the Bible I want so much. Please, please show me your Bible. Just a glance and I will be satisfied! I don’t need to touch it. You hold it and I will
be content just to look at it. If I could copy down some of the words I will return home happy.”

The pastor saw the anxiety of my heart. He spoke to me again, “If you’re serious, then you should not only kneel down and pray to the Lord, you should also fast and weep. The more you weep the sooner you’ll get a Bible.”

I went home, and every morning and afternoon I ate and drank nothing. Every evening I ate just one small bowl of steamed rice. I cried like a hungry child to his heavenly Father, wanting to be filled with his Word. For the next one hundred days I prayed for a Bible, until I could bear it no more. My parents were sure I was losing my mind.

Looking back years later, I would say this whole experience was the most difficult thing I’ve ever endured.

Then, suddenly one morning at 4 a.m., after months of begging God to answer my prayers, I received a vision from the Lord while kneeling beside my bed.

In the vision I was walking up a steep hill, trying to push a heavy cart in front of me. I was heading towards a village where I intended to beg for food for my family. I was struggling greatly, because in my vision I was hungry and weakened by constant fasting. The old cart was about to roll back and fall on me.

I then saw three men walking down the hill in the opposite direction. A kind old man, who had a very long beard, was pulling a large cart full of fresh bread. Two other men were walking on each side of the cart. When the old man saw me he felt great pity and showed me compassion. He asked, “Are you hungry?” I replied, “Yes. I have nothing to eat. I’m on my way to get food for my family.”

I wept because my family was extremely poor. Because of my father’s sickness we’d sold everything valuable to buy medicine. We had little to eat, and for years we’d been forced
to beg for food from friends and neighbours. When the old man asked me if I was hungry I couldn’t help but cry. I’d never felt such genuine love and compassion from anyone before.

In the vision the old man took a red bag of bread from his trolley and asked his two servants to give it to me. He said, “You must eat it immediately.”

I opened the wrapping and saw there was a bun of fresh bread inside. When I put the bun in my mouth, it instantly turned into a Bible! Immediately, in my vision, I knelt down with my Bible and cried out to the Lord in thanksgiving, “Lord, your name is worthy to be praised! You didn’t despise my prayer. You allowed me to receive this Bible. I want to serve you for the rest of my life.”

I woke up and started searching the house for the Bible. The rest of my family was asleep. The vision had been so real to me that when I realized it had only been a dream I was deeply anguished and I wept loudly. My parents rushed to my room to see what had happened. They thought I had gone crazy because of all my fasting and praying. I told them about my vision, but, the more I shared, the crazier they thought I was! Mother said, “The day hasn’t dawned yet and no one has come to our house. The door is firmly locked.”

My father held me tightly. With tears in his eyes he cried to God, “Dear Lord, have mercy on my son. Please don’t let him lose his mind. I’m willing to be sick again if it will prevent my son from losing his mind. Please give my son a Bible!”

My mother, father and I knelt down and wept together, arm in arm.

Suddenly I heard a faint knock at the door. A very gentle voice called my name. I rushed over and asked through the locked door, “Are you bringing the bread to me?” The gentle voice replied, “Yes, we have a bread feast to give you.”
I immediately recognized the voice as the same one I had heard in the vision.

I quickly opened the door and there standing before me were the same two servants I had seen in the vision. One man held a red bag in his hand. My heart raced as I opened the bag and held in my hands my very own Bible!

The two men quickly departed into the still darkness.

I clutched my new Bible to my heart and fell down on my knees outside the door. I thanked God again and again! I promised Jesus that from that moment on I would devour his Word like a hungry child.

Later I found out the names of those two men. One was Brother Wang and the other Brother Sung. They came from a village far away. They told me about an evangelist whom I’d never met. He had suffered terribly for the Lord during the Cultural Revolution, and had nearly died while being tortured.

About three months before I received my Bible this evangelist had received a vision from the Lord. God showed him a young man to whom he was to give his hidden Bible. In the vision he saw our house and the location of our village.

Like many Christians at the time, the old man had placed his Bible inside a can and buried it deep in the ground, hoping a day would come when he could dig it up and read it again. Despite this vision, it took the evangelist a few months before he decided to obey what the Lord had told him to do. He asked two other Christian men to deliver it to me. They then walked throughout the night to reach my home.

From that moment on I prayed to Jesus with faith-filled prayer. I fully trusted that the words in the Bible were God’s words to me. I always held the Bible. Even when I slept I laid it on my chest. I devoured its teachings like a hungry child.

This was the first gift I ever received from God in prayer.

* * *

DELING
: Around the same time God was preparing my husband for a life of gospel service, he was also calling me to himself and preparing me to be Yun’s partner. I was born in 1962 in Nanyang County, Henan Province, in a village called Yenzhang. Yun’s village was located a few miles away.

My family was extremely poor. With seven children, we hardly had any clothes to wear or food to eat.

When I think back to my childhood I remember times of happiness mixed with times of struggle for survival. Our field was more than a mile from our house, so we had to walk there and back every day, carrying heavy tools and farm implements. We also had to lead our animals there and back each day. We children were given the chore of carrying the harvested cotton back to our house in two heavy baskets, suspended by a pole. We slipped and slid in the mud. Sometimes it took more than an hour just to make it home with our loads. It was heavy and backbreaking work.