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    CHINA’S EPAPHRAS

    by Esther Wang
    2019年8月31日
    0
    Post Views: 115,482

    CHINA’S EPAPHRAS:

    Life Tes­ti­mo­ny of Wu Weizun, Ser­vant of the Lord

     

     

     Note: “Zun” was orig­i­nal­ly the Chi­nese char­ac­ter for respect with a “man” char­ac­ter as the rad­i­cal.  The orig­i­nal char­ac­ter is pro­nounced in the third tone.  僔

    How­ev­er, because the actu­al char­ac­ter can­not be dis­played on com­put­er, this essay will use the Chi­nese char­ac­ter for respect in its place.)

     

     

     

    Intro­duc­tion

     

    It was Bei­jing in 1900.  The Box­er Rebel­lion had just begun.  The Empress Dowa­ger Cixi,  Prince Duan Zheng, and Zai Yi insti­gat­ed the Box­ers to attack var­i­ous for­eign mis­sions.  They also called the Gan­su Gov­er­nor Dong Fux­i­ang to assist. Yuan Chang from Tonglu in Zhe­jiang province appealed on two con­sec­u­tive occa­sions.  He strong­ly advo­cat­ed against attacks on the for­eign mis­sions out of fear that they would pro­voke retal­i­a­tion.  At the Impe­r­i­al Coun­cil, Yuan   once again strong­ly advo­cat­ed, “Gang pow­er can­not be relied upon; for­eign inter­fer­ence can­not be risked.” “Killing for­eign envoys will vio­late pub­lic laws.”  He argued that the harm would be irrepara­ble if such actions were tak­en.

     

    He spoke with assur­ance and fer­vor; his voice thun­der­ing through­out the palace.  Both Min­is­ter of War Xu Yongyi and Min­is­ter of Pun­ish­ment Xu Jingcheng sup­port­ed Yuan’s posi­tion.  The Empress Dow­nag­er was dis­pleased and left the coun­cil.  Soon the Allied forces of the eight for­eign coun­tries occu­pied the artillery for­ti­fi­ca­tions at Tian­jin and moved toward Bei­jing.  Yuan and Xu Jingcheng knelt in front of the palace with their appeals, tear­ful­ly plead­ing for the exe­cu­tion of the indi­vid­u­als who caused the con­flicts, so as to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion. Zai Yi was infu­ri­at­ed.  He arrest­ed indi­vid­u­als includ­ingYuan Chang, Xu Jingcheng, and Xu Yongyi.  On the Fourth of July, Yuan Chang and Xu Jingcheng were exe­cut­ed at the gate of the open-air mar­ket.

     

    The sit­u­a­tion devel­oped accord­ing to pre­dic­tions made by Yuan Chang and his allies.  On the 20th of July, the Allied Forces of the eight for­eign coun­tries com­menced an attack on Bei­jing.  On the 22nd of July, Cixi and Guangxu, the Manchu Emper­or,  left west­ward for Xian.  In Decem­ber of that year, the Allied Forces of the eight for­eign coun­tries left Bei­jing and the throne issued an edict order­ing the restora­tion of Yuan Chang to his offi­cial posi­tion.  In 1909. the first year of the Emper­or Xuan­tong, the throne bestowed upon Yuan Chang the post-mortem hon­or of the “Lord of Loy­al­ty” and estab­lished the “Shrine of the Three Loyalists”on the South Side of Mount  Gusan by West Lake, to pay respect to the mar­tyred Yuan Chang, Xu Jingcheng, and Xu Yongyi.

     

    On the 21st of Decem­ber 2002, over 100 years lat­er, in Ningx­ia, a saint by the name of  Epaphras left this world in peace in a dilap­i­dat­ed room out­side the walls of the Yinchuan Prison.  This Chi­nese Epa­phras was the grand­son of the “loy­al Yuan Chang” (in the words of Wang Ming­dao).

     

     

    Grace and Call­ing

     

    After Yuan Chang met his end, his fam­i­ly quick­ly moved south­ward from Bei­jing and set­tled in Songjiang, which is with­in Shanghai’s prox­im­i­ty.  At the time, sev­er­al female Amer­i­can Wes­leyan mis­sion­ar­ies had already begun to spread the Lord’s gospel in Songjiang by the estab­lish­ment of a school.  When she was 12 years old, Yuan Chang’s daugh­ter, Yuan Jilan, (1889 – 1967), enrolled in this small girls’ school (the pre­de­ces­sor to the Muwei Girls’ School).  God’s sav­ing grace was thus bestowed upon Yuan Chang’s descen­dants.

     

    Accord­ing to reports, before his death, Yuan Chang had on sev­er­al occa­sions secret­ly advised for­eign res­i­dents (pri­mar­i­ly mis­sion­ar­ies) who lived in Bei­jing to leave the city, there­by reduc­ing many casu­al­ties and loss­es.  Many mis­sion­ar­ies were very grate­ful to Yuan Chang.  They also knew that Yuan Jilan was Yuan Chang’s daugh­ter.  These mis­sion­ar­ies expend­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gy on the girls of the school.  The mis­sion­ar­ies taught them to under­stand bib­li­cal truths, know the true God, and rely on Jesus Christ as the Sav­ior.  They also nur­tured them to pos­sess an excel­lent knowl­edge and moral­i­ty base.  In this kind of envi­ron­ment in her teenage years,  Jilan received Jesus Christ as her Lord and Sav­ior.

     

    When she was 19 years old, Jilan mar­ried into the Wu fam­i­ly in Dongyang, Zhe­jiang province. She raised six chil­dren (aside from three who died as infants).  Jilan gave her youngest son, Wu Weizun, born in April 1926, a bib­li­cal name “Epa­phras.” 

     

    Weizun grew up in a church envi­ron­ment.  It was there­fore nat­ur­al that he under­stood many bib­li­cal truths, was famil­iar with bib­li­cal sto­ries, and was well able to sing many hymns.  When the teach­ers would ask in class, “Who believes in Jesus?” lit­tle Weizun would raise his right hand and say, “I believe in Jesus!”

     

    How­ev­er, he was not reborn as a child.  After enter­ing the fifth grade, lit­tle Weizun became rebel­lious.  He began to doubt God, accu­mu­lat­ing sev­er­al hun­dred ques­tions in his mind.  At the time of the anti-Japan­ese war Lit­tle Weizun tast­ed for the first time the suf­fer­ings of this world wan­der­ing about with his fam­i­ly.  He com­plained to God, “Why cre­ate man?  You cre­at­ed him and allowed him to sin.  Then you pun­ish us.”  Lat­er, his moth­er pur­chased the new­ly pub­lished Streams in the Desert for him, let­ting him read a bib­li­cal pas­sage and a chap­ter each morn­ing.

     

    One day in May 1941, the Holy Spir­it opened Weizun’s heart through the Streams in the Desert.  He knelt in front of his bed and prayed, “O God, for­give my pride and fool­ish­ness; I was wrong.   I will no longer ask sev­er­al hun­dred ques­tions; I com­mit them all into your hands.  It is not that I don’t want to under­stand, but I want to see what you want me to under­stand at this time.  May your light shine upon me, one step at a time so that I might under­stand.  First, I now believe and depend on you.  You will not be wrong.  Your word – the Bible – will not be wrong.  O God, from this day for­ward, you are my father; I am your child.  I accept Jesus as my Sav­ior.  I admit that I am a sin­ner.  I ask the Lord to cleanse all my sins with his pre­cious blood.”  He was no longer so filled with pride.  Since that day, Wu Weizun received a new life in the Lord.

     

     

     

    After Weizun expe­ri­enced a rebirth, God cul­ti­vat­ed him in all areas of life.  When he grad­u­at­ed from the mid­dle school and was about to enter senior high school, God allowed him to learn the val­ue of not telling lies and the les­son of hold­ing stead­fast­ly to bib­li­cal truths.  These exer­cis­es paved the foun­da­tion for his lat­er min­istries.

     

    In Jan­u­ary 1945, Weizun attend­ed senior high school in the Xis­han region of Zhe­jiang province.  Dur­ing the win­ter break, he read books, con­duct­ed spir­i­tu­al devo­tions, and med­i­tat­ed in the small hill in the back of the school.  He thought about how the Lord Jesus Christ, despite the fact that he pos­sessed the image of God, “made him­self noth­ing, tak­ing the very nature of a ser­vant, being made in human like­ness, in order to save him,.  Being found in appear­ance as a man, he hum­bled him­self and became obe­di­ent to death – even death on a cross!” (Philip­pi­ans 2:7–8). 

     

    He thought about how, ever since he was in the fifth or sixth grade, he had loved the nat­ur­al sci­ences and had deter­mined to study sci­ence and engi­neer­ing in col­lege to one day become an engi­neer or a sci­en­tist.  Yet, on that day, he asked him­self, “The Lord has already become hum­bled for me, what have I done for him?  The Lord has shed blood and giv­en his life for me, what have I sur­ren­dered for him?” 

     

    He once again med­i­tat­ed upon the Lord’s great love on the cross.  His heart was moved by grace.  He knelt down and said to the Lord, “O Lord, I give myself to you.  I no longer want to become an engi­neer or a sci­en­tist.  I am will­ing to forego the col­lege entrance exam­i­na­tion.  I will do what­ev­er you want me to do.  If you want me to become the preach­er I most dread­ed becom­ing, I will be will­ing.”  After his prayer, he knew that the Lord had already glad­ly accept­ed him.

     

    Before the senior high school’s grad­u­a­tion exam­i­na­tion, Weizun decid­ed that since he had already giv­en his life to the Lord, he would not par­tic­i­pate in the col­lege entrance exam­i­na­tion.  At that time, his love for the Lord has become more and more pas­sion­ate.  His night­ly prayers have also become longer in dura­tion.  It was as if the Lord was right there next to him, with a strong sense of inti­ma­cy, and he had so many things to say to the Lord.  In the begin­ning, he prayed until 10 p.m.  Lat­er, he would pray until mid­night or even ear­ly in the morn­ing, lay­ing down for a brief rest only after the roost­er had crowed.  Yet, he was in good spir­its and was not fatigued.  He con­tin­ued to attend class­es and stud­ied dur­ing the day­time.  Even­tu­al­ly, he would pray through­out the night until day­break (the sun ris­es ear­ly in June).  His class­mates were still deep in sleep, but his mind was very awake.  He would then qui­et­ly rise from his bed, take a small Bible to the win­dow, sit on a stool, open the Bible.  The Lord spoke to him through the scrip­ture:

     

    “Any­one who loves his father or moth­er more than me is not wor­thy of me; any­one who loves his son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me; and any­one who does not take his cross and fol­low me is not wor­thy of me.” (Matthew 10:37–38)

     

    “If any­one would come after me, he must deny him­self and take up his cross dai­ly and fol­low me.” (Luke 9:23)

     

     

     

    He under­stood clear­ly that the Lord was call­ing him to sur­ren­der him­self and car­ry the cross to fol­low the Lord each day for the rest of his life.  Oth­er­wise, he would not be wor­thy of being called the Lord’s dis­ci­ple.  This was the Lord’s life­time call­ing to him.  He said to the Lord, “O Lord, I am will­ing.”

     

    In the next few days, he thought even more calm­ly: “What if the Lord wants me to preach at the bor­der regions?  What if the Lord lets me preach, but no one is will­ing to lis­ten and no one cares?  What if I become so impov­er­ished as to have no food to eat and no clothes to wear?  What if the Lord allows many peo­ple to view me with con­tempt, to mis­un­der­stand me, to false­ly accuse me, or to be slan­dered?  What if the Lord per­mits me to become seri­ous­ly ill, to suf­fer from chron­ic pain, or to face death?…”   What­ev­er he could think of and what­ev­er he could pos­si­bly face, he con­sid­ered seri­ous­ly.  He weighed the mat­ter and repeat­ed to the Lord, “O Lord, I am will­ing to pay all costs to fol­low you until the end.”

     

    At the same time, he also noticed there would be much oppo­si­tion from oth­ers.  There would be a spir­i­tu­al war, if he fol­lowed the word of the Lord.  As it turned out, a few days lat­er, there was a com­mo­tion in the entire school.  “Wu Weizun has gone crazy!”  Wu Weizun is now a fanat­i­cal believ­er of Jesus!  He is nei­ther tak­ing the uni­ver­si­ty entrance exam­i­na­tion nor is he eat­ing!”  There were even those who said, “He is heart­bro­ken over a love affair!”  Many of his fel­low stu­dents and teach­ers tried to per­suade him to pre­pared for the uni­ver­si­ty entrance exam­i­na­tion; yet he turned around and shared the gospel with them, urg­ing them to believe in Jesus.

     

    The direc­tor of Gen­er­al Admin­is­tra­tive Affairs of the school cared a great deal for him.  He made spe­cial efforts to urge him to change his mind.  Because the direc­tor was unsuc­cess­ful, he became des­per­ate: “You were once a very good stu­dent; now, you are worth­less!  You are even urg­ing me to believe in Jesus?  I will not believe in Jesus even if I go down to hell!”  At the time, he had noth­ing to respond to this beloved teacher.  How­ev­er, thanks to the Lord, five years lat­er, Weizun bumped into this teacher in Shang­hai.  The Lord had saved him.

     

    The Post of the Lay Believ­er

     

    Between fall 1946 and ear­ly 1949, Weizun stud­ied at the Shang­hai Chi­nese The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.  In ear­ly 1949, he began serv­ing as an intern preach­er at Shanghai’s [Shouzhen] Keep­er of Truth Church.

     

    This was an era of tur­bu­lence and abrupt changes.  The Nation­al­ist Par­ty was retreat­ing in defeat while the Com­mu­nist Lib­er­a­tion Army crossed the riv­er en mass.  Shang­hai “lib­er­at­ed” in May,   was filled with noise and excite­ment,  con­stant­ly all kinds of ral­lies and pro­ces­sions.  Peo­ple per­formed folk dances, beat drums, and chant­ed slo­gans.  Sounds of lyrics like “the sky in the lib­er­at­ed area is bright and clear” were trans­mit­ted from the pro­ces­sions into the church that stood next to the street….

     

    In the emp­ty church, Weizun was alone as he knelt before God in prayer.  The house­holds in Shang­hai were already pre­pared, with the pur­chas­es of food­stuff and salt­ed fish, for the peri­od dur­ing which one era will be replaced by anoth­er.  For this rea­son, the Keep­er of Truth Church sus­pend­ed its meet­ings for two weeks.  Weizun used this time to pray whole­heart­ed­ly for the Lord’s will.  He said, “O Lord, please watch over me that I will be a preach­er even unto death, that I will nev­er leave the post of the preach­er, that I will nev­er do any­thing else.”  Yet, the Lord’s response was con­trary to his prayer.  The Lord did not send him out to be a preach­er at that time.  He want­ed him to do some­thing else and wait for the Lord.  The response that he had heard from the Lord was, “Wait.  When I need you, I will entrust the work to you and let you do it.”

     

    Weizun was clear.  In this time of abrupt changes, the Lord want­ed him to be a lay believ­er an ordi­nary Chris­t­ian, not a preach­er.  He said, “The Lord did not tell me to be greedy for this world; rather, he gave me a dif­fer­ent post from which to con­tin­ue the fight.  He wants me to please the Lord and serve as His wit­ness from the post of an ordi­nary teacher.”

     

    Begin­ning in Octo­ber 1949 and end­ing in 1957, Weizun served as a mid­dle school teacher in Shang­hai for eight years.  Dur­ing these eight years, Weizun adhered to the “prin­ci­ples of bat­tle” that God gave him: “Give unto Cae­sar what belongs to Cae­sar; give unto God what belongs to God.”  He also kept his twin iden­ti­ties firm­ly in mind.  One was his iden­ti­ty as a teacher and the oth­er was his Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty.  As a teacher, he did his best to be a good one.  How­ev­er, he was also clear­ly aware that his iden­ti­ty as a teacher was only tem­po­rary and sec­ondary.  Yet, his iden­ti­ty as a Chris­t­ian would be for eter­ni­ty and was thus his pri­ma­ry iden­ti­ty.  When the two iden­ti­ties came into con­flict, his iden­ti­ty as teacher had to yield to his Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty.

     

    “His­to­ry of Social­ist Devel­op­ment” was a Big Lie!

     

    After the Lib­er­a­tion, the first bat­tle he fought for God took place when the Hongko dis­trict gov­ern­ment orga­nized the ele­men­tary and sec­ondary school teach­ers to study the Marx­ist-Lenin­ist “his­to­ry of social­ist devel­op­ment.”  At the com­ple­tion of the study, each per­son was required to write a sum­ma­ry report about how he/she came to under­stand the “His­to­ry of Social­ist Devel­op­ment” and describe his or her view of the sub­ject.  After prayers, Weizun wrote one sen­tence on this point:

     

    “Through the study of the ‘His­to­ry of Social­ist Devel­op­ment,’ I under­stand that this devel­op­men­tal his­to­ry begin­ning with the evo­lu­tion of “ape to man” and con­tin­u­ing to the emer­gence of the “com­mu­nist soci­ety,” is a great lie.

     

    As a con­se­quence, the polit­i­cal instruc­tor orga­nized oth­ers to “help” him.  Thanks to the Lord, because Weizun was teach­ing in a church school, most of his col­leagues were Chris­tians.  In their hearts, they sup­port­ed Weizun’s view­point.  There­fore, no one spoke a word.  The polit­i­cal instruc­tor was com­pelled to crit­i­cize Weizun, which actu­al­ly pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Weizun.  The polit­i­cal instruc­tor said, “The God in whom you all believe oppos­es sci­ence!” 

     

     

    Weizun replied, “Teacher Chi, where did sci­ence and sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples come from?  Were they estab­lished by man?  No, no one can estab­lish sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples; sci­en­tists can­not do so. They can only dis­cov­er and con­firm a por­tion of sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples.  The real sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples were estab­lished by God before He cre­at­ed the heav­en, the earth, and all the oth­er cre­ations.  The heav­en, the earth, and the cre­ations also adhere to those prin­ci­ples estab­lished by God.  Since sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples were estab­lished by God, why would God oppose those prin­ci­ples that he had estab­lished?”  Some teach­ers smiled in response to these com­ments, some nod­ded their heads, and some had no expres­sions at all.  Weizun also said, “Teacher Chi, the ques­tion today is not that God oppos­es sci­ence; but that mankind wants to use sci­ence to oppose God.”

     

    Many teach­ers were con­cerned for Weizun’s wel­fare as they lis­tened to his argu­ments.  Weizun him­self could only entrust the con­se­quences to the Lord.  Per­haps it was the ear­ly part of the post-Lib­er­a­tion peri­od, the school did not fol­low up on this mat­ter.  The first bat­tle of the “lay believ­er” end­ed with the Lord’s mer­cy.

     

    A Con­tro­ver­sial Mat­ter

     

    Begin­ning in June 1949, Weizun attend­ed the meet­ings of the Nanyang Road Church (the Meet­ing Place of Broth­er Nee Tuosheng (Watch­man Nee).  How­ev­er, soon he painful­ly dis­cov­ered that in order to obtain legal sta­tus, the church had to take the Three-Self[1] path.  By the ear­ly 1950s, the Meet­ing Place made a series of deci­sions: par­tic­i­pate in the hol­i­day pro­ces­sions led by the Com­mu­nist Par­ty; invite the leader of the “Three Self” Wu Yao­zong to preach at the Meet­ing Place; and con­duct a “denun­ci­a­tion cam­paign” in the church. 

     

    On April 21, 1951, the People’s Dai­ly pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled “Launch the Chris­tians’ Denun­ci­a­tion Cam­paign Against Amer­i­can Impe­ri­al­ism.” This demand­ed that all the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions through­out the coun­try “launch denun­ci­a­tions against impe­ri­al­ists and their run­ning dogs on a wide scale.”  The Meet­ing Place decid­ed to join this call for “denun­ci­a­tion.”  Watch­man Nee him­self per­son­al­ly mobi­lized every­one.   He empha­sized one “view­point.” “You have to stand on the ‘people’s’ side and denounce the ‘impe­ri­al­ists.’  There were many things one could denounce.  The entire church body par­tic­i­pat­ed when the cam­paign was fur­ther mobi­lized on Long Jiang Road. 

     

    At the time Weizun was just a young man of 25 years.  He couldn’t sup­press the anger in his spir­it and opposed the con­duct of the “denun­ci­a­tion” cam­paign in the church.  Yet, no one paid atten­tion to his opin­ion.  Weizun could only cry and pray on his own.  Accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny that he lat­er wrote, the Lord spoke to him in his prayers: “Since Broth­er Nee wants you to denounce from the view­point of the ‘peo­ple,’ you should denounce from the view­point of the ‘peo­ple.’” 

     

    On June 10, 1951, dur­ing the denun­ci­a­tion meet­ing held at Shanghai’s Nanyang Road Church, Wu Weizun spoke up and used sharp words that were inten­tion­al­ly exag­ger­at­ed to engage in “denun­ci­a­tion.” “When we tell peo­ple the Gospel, we say every­one is a sin­ner.  If you do not accept Jesus as your own Sav­ior, and ask Jesus to cov­er your sins with his blood.  You will not escape God’s Judg­ment.  Today I want to ask you, is Chair­man Mao a sin­ner? He does not believe in Jesus.  Is he going to per­ish and go to hell? The peo­ple tried to hush him up.   Shh.  Where is this man com­ing from?  The result was mass chaos. 

     

    A tall broth­er with glass­es who was in charge of a house divi­sion of the church spoke up.  Nanyang Road Church was a very large church.  The con­gre­ga­tion was divid­ed into over 10 “hous­es” accord­ing to dif­fer­ent dis­tricts.  Each “house” had about 100 peo­ple and was led by a “house broth­er or sis­ter in charge.”  Lat­er, the num­ber of hous­es was expand­ed to over 20.  Groups made up each “house.” 

     

    Anoth­er broth­er asked Liu Liang­mo (the offi­cial  rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Three Self Move­ment), who presided over the meet­ing: Does the gov­ern­ment allow us to prop­a­gate the Gospel or not?   Can we prop­a­gate the Lord’s Gospel?  Will the gov­ern­ment per­mit such activ­i­ty?  As a result, the entire denun­ci­a­tion meet­ing was unable to con­tin­ue.  Liu Liang­mo could only calm every­one and said a few words about the government’s pol­i­cy being one that sup­ports the free­dom of reli­gion and belief.  The meet­ing was then abrupt­ly con­clud­ed.

     

    The tall fel­low who asked the ques­tion was lat­er per­se­cut­ed. 

     

     

    Two months lat­er, an elder of the Meet­ing Place noti­fied Weizun to “stop par­tak­ing in the bread” because every­one believed that Weizun had already “giv­en up the faith.”

     

    It was not until 1964 that Weizun had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restore com­mu­ni­ca­tion with two mem­bers of the Nanyang Road Meet­ing Place.  At the time Weizun went to Bei­jing to con­duct the bap­tismal ser­vice for a young man.  He dis­cov­ered that the father of the young man was one of the broth­ers in charge of the hous­es at the Nanyang Road Church.  This elder­ly broth­er had always thought that Weizun had “giv­en up the faith.”  Weizun wrote to him: “My denun­ci­a­tion at the time did not dis­obey the Lord and it did not sig­nal that I had giv­en up the faith.  Instead, I was fol­low­ing the Lord’s com­mand to play a neg­a­tive role.”  This elder­ly broth­er was very pleased when he received Weizun’s let­ter and shared this mat­ter with anoth­er elder Broth­er Du Zhongchen.  They were very pleased about this rev­e­la­tion.

     

    This is a rather con­tro­ver­sial mat­ter in Weizun’s tes­ti­mo­ny.  Fifty years lat­er, when Weizun recalled this mat­ter, he still felt that he was play­ing the neg­a­tive role that inter­fered with the denun­ci­a­tion meet­ing.  His heart was at peace.

     

    Prepa­ra­tion to be “Wor­thy”

     

    In 1955, the wife of Weizun’s third old­er broth­er intro­duced a sis­ter who was work­ing in Tian­jing to him.  After they start­ed cor­re­spon­dence, Weizun asked the sis­ter: Are you will­ing to be my part­ner on the nar­row road of the cross that I walk?  Only after the sis­ter had agreed that they decid­ed on a mar­riage rela­tion­ship.  In the sum­mer of 1957, Wu Weizun, because of mar­riage, was assigned to Tian­jin.  God had tak­en him to a new bat­tle­ground.

     

    In the Chi­na of 1957, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary atmos­phere was becom­ing stronger.  Cam­pus­es were engaged in the heart­less “anti-right­ist” cam­paign.  In the new envi­ron­ment, Weizun con­tin­ued his past prat­ice of giv­ing thanks before each meal.  Dur­ing the noon rest peri­od, he even took out the Bible to read qui­et­ly.  On Sun­days, the entire fac­ul­ty of the school would go the near­by vil­lages to engage in labor activ­i­ties, but he would request a half-day off to “con­gre­gate and wor­ship God.”  His col­leagues at the school thought he was strange: “This teacher from Shang­hai is so reli­gious­ly super­sti­tious!  How can he be a teacher?”  Soon after, he was sent down to the vil­lages in the coun­try­side to engage in labor activ­i­ties.

     

    The orig­i­nal objec­tive of the school for send­ing him down to the coun­try­side was to reform his think­ing.  How­ev­er, in the two years that he was in the coun­try­side, he used the labor venues as the fields of har­vest for the gospel.  That era was the dark age when Christ’s gospel was not heard any­where with­in Chi­na and when there was no spir­i­tu­al light shin­ing on Chi­na.  Weizun once again pon­dered upon the grace of God and the tasks with which God had entrust­ed him.  He thought: God did not make me a preach­er or an evan­ge­list.  He allowed me to be an ordi­nary Chris­t­ian.  Am I unable to ful­fill even this small respon­si­bil­i­ty?  He was deter­mined to be faith­ful in this small­est thing and to be faith­ful until the end.  There­fore, regard­less of the per­son, as long as some­one asked about the truths of the Lord, he would share the gospel with­out any reser­va­tion.

     

    When he was sent down to the small group for study­ing, he saw that the objec­tive of the labor activ­i­ties was to “facil­i­tate the reform of cadres to adopt a mate­ri­al­ist world­view and a com­mu­nist per­spec­tive on life.”  He then pro­ceed­ed to speak up in the small group: “I am a Chris­t­ian and will always be a Chris­t­ian.  I can­not and does not plan to reform and trans­form my self to become a Marx­ist.  I am unable to heed the call of the party’s cen­tral com­mit­tee.”  The head of the small group regret­ted his deci­sion and said open­ly in the group: “If based sole­ly on the fact that you have been liv­ing a harsh lifestyle and the proac­tive nature of your labor activ­i­ties, you are qual­i­fied to become a good com­mu­nist par­ty mem­ber.  How­ev­er, in terms of ide­o­log­i­cal reform, you will not be able to pass the bar.  Nonethe­less, even if you can­not pass the bar on account of ide­o­log­i­cal reform, I can let you get by under the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of “reli­gious belief.”  But the fact that you have been spread­ing reli­gious super­sti­tions has made things much more seri­ous.  You will there­fore be unable to pass the bar.”

     

    In those days, Wu Weizun bore tremen­dous pres­sures.  One day at noon, he went to a well about one kilo­me­ter away to obtain water.  The sky was com­plete­ly over­cast with thun­der and light­en­ing.  It looked as if a heavy down­pour would take place at any time.  In the event of a rain­storm, the dirt road would become mud and he would be unable to walk on it.  He looked at the clouds, thun­der, and light­en­ing that filled the sky.  Sud­den­ly, it was as if God had moved him; he extend­ed his right hand and screamed at the rain that was already com­ing down: “Stop!”  As a result, just like God had rebuked the wind and the rain in the past, the thun­der and the light­en­ing quick­ly stopped, the rain end­ed, and the clouds grad­u­al­ly dis­si­pat­ed!  This was the first time that Weizun had wit­nessed a mir­a­cle.  He knew that even though he was liv­ing under threats and pres­sures, God was using this mir­a­cle to com­fort him, solid­i­fy his faith.  He clear­ly under­stood: My God is alive and he is in charge of the heav­en, the earth, and all the cre­ations!

     

    After two years of labor in the vil­lages, he was assigned to a cot­ton pro­cess­ing plant in a dis­trict in the north­east­ern sub­urb of Tian­jin to con­tin­ue labor reform.  Two years lat­er, he was reas­signed to the orig­i­nal school.  How­ev­er, because his ide­o­log­i­cal reform was unsuc­cess­ful, he could not be a teacher of the peo­ple.  He could only be a researcher of physics in the lab­o­ra­to­ry.

     

    In the sev­en years between 1957 and 1964, the over­all sit­u­a­tion in Chi­na was becom­ing ever more tense.  The spir­i­tu­al bat­tles were also becom­ing more and more intense.  God was pru­in­ing Weizun with even greater sever­i­ty to pre­pare his heart and mind for the work that would even­tu­al­ly be entrust­ed to him.

     

    Since the lat­ter half of the 1950s, Wu Weizun began to write “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of the Lord” on car­bon papers to be sent to dif­fer­ent parts of Chi­na so as to strength­en the spir­i­tu­al exchanges between the dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the body of Christ in dif­fer­ent areas.  In the ear­ly part of 1960s, he began to engage in reg­u­lar fast­ing.  In spring 1964, God allowed him to be pre­pared to be “wor­thy.”  At that time, he found out through his cor­re­spon­dence with a broth­er in the orig­i­nal [Shouzhen] Church that a broth­er with whom he was close had been impris­oned for ful­fill­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty to spread the gospel, which was entrust­ed to him.  This young broth­er was betrayed by the head of the [Shouzhen] Church Jiang Mong­guang.  The young man was a faith­ful ser­vant of the Lord and one who was cho­sen by the Lord, received his train­ing in Jia Yuming’s sem­i­nary, and was a fel­low dea­con at the [Shouzhen] Church.  Weizun’s heart was deeply moved after read­ing this let­ter.  He was filled with thanks­giv­ing for this young broth­er.  He also envied this young broth­er because the broth­er had lis­tened to the Lord’s com­mand and was wor­thy to be humil­i­at­ed and tor­tured for the name of the Lord.  He prayed fer­vent­ly for the impris­oned young broth­er.  In his prayers, Weizun heard the Lord ask­ing him: “He is wor­thy, are you wor­thy?”  He imme­di­ate­ly said to the Lord in tears: “O Lord, I want to be wor­thy, I want to be wor­thy!”  From that day on, he was even more alert and pre­pared to be “wor­thy” at a moment’s notice.

     

    The Road of the Cross

     

    Two months lat­er, on 30 July in 1964, Wu Weizun was arrest­ed.  When the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cers appeared before him with a “sum­mon” and a “search war­rant,” he was not a bit anx­ious as a result of the Lord’s grace.  He held his wife’s hands and said the two most impor­tant words: “Rely [on the] Lord.”  He then got into the jeep.  At approx­i­mate­ly 10 o’clock in the morn­ing, the car pro­ceed­ed to the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau.  The things out­side the car win­dow moved behind him.  Wu Weizun raised his head to look at the sky and his heart was filled with peace.  He knew that God had assigned him to a new bat­tle­field, one that was even more dan­ger­ous and threat­en­ing but also more impor­tant.  The fact that he was wor­thy to tes­ti­fy for the Lord in that bat­tle­field was tru­ly his hon­or!  Since he had made the deci­sion in 1945 to car­ry the cross and fol­low the Lord for the rest of his life, now was not the time to look back but rather to walk coura­geous­ly ahead on the road of the cross.                 

     

    Nat­u­ral­ly, the sim­ple rea­son for Weizun’s arrest was his faith.  1964 was the time when the entire nation was involved in the “Four Clean-Ups Cam­paign.”  His school’s prin­ci­pal had already pub­licly crit­i­cized him: “In our school, reli­gious super­sti­tious activ­i­ties have been very appar­ent.”  In addi­tion, Weizun had also bap­tized oth­ers and wrote “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of the Lord” to be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to dif­fer­ent places.  He once wrote a let­ter to a young man to encour­age him: “Since you have already believed the Lord and become a Chris­t­ian, you should open­ly acknowl­edge the Lord’s name, with­draw your mem­ber­ship from the Com­mu­nist Youth League, and walk the path of the Lord.”  This young man’s with­draw­al from the youth league increased the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau’s atten­tion on Weizun: He was “fight­ing the Com­mu­nist Par­ty for the next gen­er­a­tion.” 

     

    In real­i­ty, Weizun was ini­tial­ly not “arrest­ed,” only “sum­moned.”  From man’s per­spec­tive, his arrest was entire­ly the result of his “lack of prag­ma­tism.”  In his heart, Weizun believed: Going to prison was some­thing that he had wished upon him­self; it also wasn’t the deci­sion of the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau for him to go to prison; rather, it was the Lord who led him to the prison.  God want­ed him to become a good Chris­t­ian as a pris­on­er; to obey the Lord’s com­mand as a pris­on­er and fol­low God’s will.  There­fore, once he entered prison, he estab­lished for him­self a fight­ing prin­ci­ple in the spir­i­tu­al con­flict: When inter­ro­gat­ed, he would “refuse to respond, refuse to explain, refuse to admit his crimes, and refuse to repent.”

     

    Over a month after he entered prison, he main­tained these four-noes prin­ci­ples dur­ing the eight times that he was inter­ro­gat­ed.  Dur­ing the sev­enth inter­ro­ga­tion, he was forced to write respons­es to five ques­tions.  He prayed as he wrote his respons­es.  The fourth ques­tion was: “How has the government’s pol­i­cy of reli­gious free­dom been cor­rect­ly imple­ment­ed and exe­cut­ed?”  He respond­ed direct­ly and truth­ful­ly: It was pre­cise­ly this type of so-called pol­i­cy of the “free­dom of belief and reli­gion” that has led to actions that include the ban­ning of and attacks on many church­es in the coun­try and the arrest, impris­on­ment, and con­vic­tion of many Chris­tians and ser­vants of God for their refusal to accept the party’s lead­er­ship of God’s church and God’s ser­vants.  My own arrest and impris­on­ment is a piece of new proof in this regard.

     

    The fifth and last ques­tion read: “How do you assess the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment that was ini­ti­at­ed by the country’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty?”  Ini­tial­ly, he want­ed to respond to this ques­tion from an affir­ma­tive per­spec­tive.  Yet, sud­den­ly he did not feel at peace.  The Holy Spir­it shined upon him, so he wrote the fol­low­ing words:

     

    Just when I was pre­pared to write down my response based on bib­li­cal truths regard­ing the assess­ment of the “Three Self” move­ment, the Holy Spir­it sud­den­ly stopped me and refused to allow me to write.  The Spir­it also showed me a bib­li­cal verse.  This verse was: “Do not give to the dog things that are holy and do not throw pearls before the pig, out of con­cern that it would defile the pearls and turn around and bite you.”  There­fore, I will not respond to this ques­tion from the affir­ma­tive per­spec­tive.  Note: The “dog” and “pig” to which the Lord Jesus referred were not actu­al dog and pig.  Rather, he was refer­ring to peo­ple who “did not treat things that are holy as holy” and those who “do not treat pearls as trea­sures.”

     

    His response caused a great uproar.  Dur­ing the eighth inter­ro­ga­tion, the inter­roga­tor angri­ly said: “There have been count­less great pas­tors and great evan­ge­lists who have gone through my hands, and yet I have not seen any­one as reck­less as you!”  After the eighth inter­ro­ga­tion, the inter­roga­tor gave him an arrest war­rant and said that he “was eat­ing the fruit of his own labor.”  He calm­ly signed the war­rant.  The light of the Lord shined upon him once again.  He said to him­self: “Although I am not a great pas­tor, a great evan­ge­list, but as long as depend close­ly on the Lord, rely on the Lord’s mer­cy, fol­low the Lord faith­ful­ly, and do not avoid the cross that I should bear, then I can also achieve vic­to­ry and be a good wit­ness in front of man.”

     

    After the Con­vic­tion, Fol­low the Lord until the End

     

    In Feb­ru­ary 1967, the court issued his sen­tence: life impris­on­ment.  When he received the sen­tence, his heart was very peace­ful and filled with thanks­giv­ing.  He imme­di­ate­ly thought: “The ser­vant can­not be greater than the mas­ter.  My Lord Jesus whose cup from the Father was death, not life impris­on­ment.  More­over, it was nail­ing on the cross, which was the most humil­i­at­ing, cru­el, and painful (even God the Father left Him) death sen­tence.  The cup that God the Father gave me is com­pa­ra­bly much lighter by sev­er­al times.  He event kept my life and that my body still remains healthy….  When the Lord received his death sen­tence on the cross, he accept­ed with a glad heart and in obe­di­ence.  I have only been giv­en life impris­on­ment, why can’t I be like the Lord and accept it with a glad heart and in obe­di­ence?  The Lord once said: You will drink the cup I drink and be bap­tized with the bap­tism I am bap­tized with….(Mark 10:39)  Since God the Father has shown me mer­cy today and gave me this cup, I should drink the cup that the Father gave me, until the end.”

     

    In gen­er­al, con­vict­ed pris­on­ers were allowed to meet with their fam­i­lies.  He also wrote to his wife to tell her that he had accept­ed the con­vic­tion, ask­ing her to meet him.  He also asked her to bring to him anoth­er wash­basin because the orig­i­nal one already had a hole.  He hoped to see his wife to speak a few more words to her.  After the let­ter was sent and on the date that they were to meet, the cap­tain (the dis­ci­pli­nary cadre in the reform-through-labor team) gave him a wash­basin from his home, but his wife did not show up.  Weizun wrote again, includ­ing some encour­ag­ing words in the Lord.  The cap­tain scold­ed him for writ­ing “mud­dled” things and refused to send the let­ter for him.

     

    After some time, the court sent a cadre to tell Weizun that his wife want­ed to divorce him.  This was a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed piece of news to Weiun.  He imme­di­ate­ly prayed about it.  It was dur­ing the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  At a time and in an envi­ron­ment of unprece­dent­ed dan­ger, his wife was alone in the world and undoubt­ed­ly bore con­sid­er­able pres­sure.  He under­stood her weak­ness and agreed to the divorce.  They did not have chil­dren and Weizun did not ask for shares in any prop­er­ty.  There­fore, the whole mat­ter was fin­ished with his sig­na­ture.

     

    Weizun nev­er regret­ted mar­ry­ing the sis­ter because at the time of the mar­riage he was cer­tain that the two of them would walk togeth­er on the nar­row path of the cross.  Now that the sis­ter has weak­ened and retreat­ed from the path of the cross, Weizun only felt sor­ry for her and prayed for her.

     

    Accord­ing to some reports, she lat­er mar­ried an old labor­er.  How­ev­er, this did not release her from the pres­sur­ized envi­ron­ment of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  After the divorce, Weizun was even more care­free.  He thought, although I am alone, I will bear the cross from the rest of my life and fol­low the Lord until the end.

     

    Defend­ing the Field of Lentils

     

    “Next to him was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines band­ed togeth­er at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel’s troops fled from them. 12 But Shammah took his stand in the mid­dle of the field. He defend­ed it and struck the Philistines down, and the LORD brought about a great vic­to­ry.”

    – II Samuel 23:11–12 

     

    After Weizun was impris­oned, he could not remem­ber clear­ly the verse and chap­ter ref­er­ences of this pas­sage.  How­ev­er, he remem­bered the con­tent of these two vers­es.  David’s war­rior Shammah stood in a field full of lentils.  Con­fronting a mul­ti­tude of Philistines, he defend­ed that field of lentils and did not retreat even one step.  As a result, he changed the entire bat­tle, ensur­ing that the Israelites would emerge vic­to­ri­ous in the face of defeat.  Defend­ing that field of lentils thus became the key to secur­ing the vic­to­ry.  The Lord shined upon Weizun, allow­ing him to know clear­ly that insist­ing on say­ing grace before meals is the “field of lentils” in the spir­i­tu­al war­fare that was being waged inside the prison.  He had to defend this field.

     

    Once he entered prison, he would say grace before meals.  He did not hide his action and he was unafraid that oth­ers would see him because this was a tes­ti­mo­ni­al.  The instruc­tor in the prison declared to him: “If you want to eat, then you can­not read (say grace).  If you read (say grace), then you can­not eat.”  Weizun then gave his bowl and chop­sticks to the admin­is­tra­tor and refused to eat.  Four or five days lat­er, the judge at the hear­ing scold­ed him: “Not eat­ing and con­duct­ing a hunger strike are acts of refus­ing the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at.”  Yet, Weizun insist­ed: “I cer­tain­ly do not have any inten­tion of con­duct­ing a hunger strike and seek­ing death.  I only want to say grace before my meals.”  In the light of this sit­u­a­tion, the prison author­i­ties could only change the hear­ing judge and made some minor com­pro­mis­es.  They allowed Weizun to eat at times while deny­ing him food at oth­ers because they would not allow him to say grace.

     

    Half a year lat­er, Weizun’s suf­fer­ings increased.  He was forced to wear a set of heavy hand­cuffs.  This set of hand­cuffs was heavy and cold, impos­ing much pain and suf­fer­ing on him.  He could not sleep at night.  How­ev­er, the Lord was with him and per­son­al­ly led him in the bat­tle.  He declared once again: He would not eat if he’s not allowed to say grace.  From this day for­ward, he would no longer eat the food pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment if he was not per­mit­ted to say grace.  Two days lat­er, the deten­tion cen­ter removed his hand­cuffs.  In the mean­time, the deten­tion cen­ter orga­nized sev­en or eight pris­on­ers to “help” him.  The staff of the deten­tion cen­ter would stand out­side his cell door to observe.  One pris­on­er would strike Weizun’s chin with his fist.  In that one moment, his mouth was filled with blood, which dripped on his body and the floor.  This pris­on­er would yell at him: Stand up!  Stand at atten­tion!  At the same time, he would shout out com­mands: “Walk two steps for­ward!  Turn around!….”  Mean­while, he demand­ed Weizun to answer his provoca­tive ques­tions.  If he did not respond, the pris­on­er would use his two hands to “slap! slap!…”, hit Weizun’s cheeks from the left and the right.   

     

    Dur­ing this inhu­man tor­ture, the Lord’s words con­stant­ly echoed in Weizun’s ears and lin­gered in his mind.  “But I tell you, Do not resist an evil per­son. If some­one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the oth­er also. And if some­one wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If some­one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (Matthew 5:39–41).  “He was oppressed and afflict­ed, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaugh­ter, and as a sheep before her shear­ers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (Isa­iah 53:7)  Thanks to the Lord, the Lord’s words became the sharp weapons in his hands dur­ing his bat­tles.  Fac­ing the com­mands of that evil one, Weizun obeyed and did as he was told.  As for those provoca­tive ques­tions, he fol­lowed the Lord’s way and was silent.  Lis­ten to the Lord’s words and act accord­ing the Lord’s will place one on sol­id grounds and achieve vic­to­ry in bat­tle.

     

    After two hours of repeat­ed phys­i­cal abus­es and tor­ture, that prison became tired and declared that the “crit­i­cism ses­sion” was over.  The head of the deten­tion cen­ter asked him: “How do you feel about every­one help­ing you?  Are you will­ing to accept the help?”  He answered: “Direc­tor, I have no com­plaints about any­thing that the gov­ern­ment or the pris­on­ers do to me.  I glad­ly accept what­ev­er you do to me.”  The direc­tor thought that he had sur­ren­dered and was very hap­py.  He said: “You did the right thing.  You should have changed your ways ear­li­er.  Why suf­fer so much?….”

     

    Weizun heard the response from the direc­tor and thought that the direc­tor might have mis­tak­en his words.  He imme­di­ate­ly added: “Direc­tor, you are mis­tak­en.  The fact that I glad­ly accept your actions toward me with­out com­plaints does not mean that I will not lis­ten to the Lord Jesus from this day on.  As a Chris­t­ian, lis­ten­ing to the words of the Lord Jesus will also be the pri­or­i­ty.  I must lis­ten to the Lord Jesus and will con­tin­ue to do so.”  The direc­tor of the deten­tion cen­ter was incred­u­lous and was enraged: “Fine, fine.  You insist on your reac­tionary posi­tion and remain stub­born until the end.  This makes things easy for me!  We shall see in the days to come!”

     

    Weizun once again returned to the large cell.  After insist­ing on fast­ing for sev­en days, he was tak­en to an emp­ty room.  Sev­er­al prison admin­is­tra­tors twist­ed his arms with one per­son press­ing on his head from the back.  They stuffed a met­al instru­ment into his mouth and forcibly insert­ed a feed­ing tube to pour food into his stom­ach.  The whole process was extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to endure.  How­ev­er, Weizun did not resist.  After the forced feed­ing, once the tube was removed and the met­al instru­ment was removed, he stood up and loud­ly gave thanks: “I thank the Heav­en­ly Father for using this method to keep me alive!”  He gave a tes­ti­mo­ny of thanks­giv­ing in the pres­ence of the direc­tor and all oth­ers.  There­after, every time the prison admin­is­tra­tors forced buns into his mouth, he would look up at the sky and say loud­ly: “I thank the Heav­en­ly Father for using this method to keep me alive!”

     

    In July 1966, the procuratorate’s state­ment of charges against him was thus record­ed: “The pris­on­er has been impris­oned for a long time and has used the excuse of “say­ing grace before meals” to engage in ille­gal activ­i­ties and dam­age prison dis­ci­pline.  On numer­ous occa­sions, he has even employed fast­ing as a means to resist the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at….”

     

    After Weizun was offi­cial­ly sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, he was trans­ferred from the Tian­jin deten­tion cen­ter to the Tian­jin reform-through-labor bureau.  One month lat­er, he was assigned to the reform-through-labor team in a steel fac­to­ry in the city of Pingluo in Ningx­ia province.  It was the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  He still main­tained his faith and insist­ed on his “refusal to be reformed.”  He was will­ing to pay the price for his refusal.  Weizun insist­ed on not read­ing Chair­man Mao’s “Lit­tle Red Book,” not answer­ing any ques­tions, not singing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary songs, and not hail­ing long life to Chair­man Mao.  The group leader and oth­er mem­bers of the group ordered him to kow­tow to the pic­tures of Chair­man Mao, and he refused.  For this rea­son, over 10 per­sons kicked and hit him.  He was resigned to lying in the dirt and let them kick and him him.  This was the first time that he was beat­en in the reform-through-labor team.  After this inci­dent, he was beat­en numer­ous times.  Some peo­ple whipped him with leather belts, some hit his cheeks with the shoe bot­toms, and oth­ers used wood­en clubs to strike the top of his head.  There was even one team leader who used a light­ed smoke pipe to burn his nos­trils.  Weizun believed that all of these inhu­man tor­tures were “per­mit­ted by the Lord and there­fore are of ben­e­fits to me.”

     

    Just as the case when he was at the deten­tion cen­ter, the reform-throug-labor team leader announced to him: “If you want to eat, then you can­not pray; if you pray then you can­not eat.”  Weizun knew that the cam­paign to “defend the field of lentils” has entered an even more dif­fi­cult phase because it was the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion and the entire labor team would cease pro­duc­tion for six months to engage in Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion stud­ies.  How­ev­er, he firm­ly believed that the Lord who sent him would ensure that his “strength [would] equal his days.” 

     

    The war began.  He would no longer eat for which he could say grace.  One day, two days…when he had not eat­en for four and five days and was extreme­ly weak, he was forced to run as a pun­ish­ment.  When he did not eat for the sev­enth day, after night fell, he was tak­en to an emp­ty room where he suf­fered scold­ing and where four peo­ple start­ed to him until he became uncon­scious.  He lat­er recalled: Thank the Lord; it was so good to be uncon­scious.  There was no pain once you became uncon­scious.  He was repeat­ed­ly tor­tured and beat­en and forced fed.  How­ev­er, because his body had under­gone too much tor­ture, he would vom­it the food.  The leader of the labor team would then force him to clean the things he vom­it­ed by lick­ing them with his tongues.  He would pros­trate on the ground to lick the things he had vom­it­ed.  He was beat­en until the lat­ter half of the nigh when the team leader instruct­ed oth­er pris­on­ers to spray water on him.  This type of tor­ture would con­tin­ue for sev­er­al days.  The wounds that he incurred would only be healed after one to two years. 

     

    The Chi­nese his­tor­i­cal texts always record dif­fer­ent types of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments that are in the pris­ons.  They also record numer­ous and gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of tough indi­vid­u­als who have been thor­ough­ly tor­tured yet refused to sur­ren­der.  The dif­fer­ence is that although Weizun had borne all the tor­tures and refused to sur­ren­der, he was not a tough guy.  He was meek and weak.  Those who beat him would ask him after they became tired of beat­ing him: Do you hate us?  Weizun said: Not one bit and I have no com­plaint against any­one.  This was because his Lord had even prayed for those who nailed Him to the cross.

     

    Final­ly, although he was still not per­mit­ted to say grace while in prison, there would be one meal in three days that was an excep­tion.  When it was time for the meal, he was tak­en to an iso­lat­ed emp­ty room.  One group leader would watch him eat.  He would then be able to eat a meal for which he tech­ni­cal­ly could not say grace but in actu­al­ly could.  Lat­er, the prison’s par­ty sec­re­tary (the most senior leader of the prison) said to him: If you want to say grace before meals, we will allow you to do so in your heart.  If you express it open­ly and affect oth­er pris­on­ers, we will not per­mit it.  When Weizun heard this, he became alarmed.  The Lord’s light had shined upon him: You can­not even make this one com­pro­mise!  He replied: “Par­ty Sec­re­tary, our Chris­t­ian faith is a func­tion of a close con­nec­tion between faith and expressed deeds.  Faith with­out deeds is not true faith, but dead faith, pho­ny faith.  It is nat­ur­al that true faith must have its cor­re­spond­ing expres­sion through deeds.  I can­not sat­is­fy the con­di­tions that were out­lined by the par­ty sec­re­tary.”  The nego­ti­a­tion had failed and no agree­ment was reached.  The war of eat­ing one meal every three days could only con­tin­ue, until the six-month of con­cen­trat­ed Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion stud­ies and move­ment end­ed.

     

    The Pris­on­er among Pris­on­ers

     

    Two years lat­er, on Sep­tem­ber 10, 1970, he was assigned to Group One in Squad One.  It was the tough­est group where the most recal­ci­trant pris­on­ers have been reformed after join­ing the group.  After he went there, the group leader offi­cial­ly made the ini­tial demands, which were very sim­ple.  There were only two demands.  First, he would not say grace before each meal.  Sec­ond, he would read the Lit­tle Red Book.  He did not need to do both at the same time.  He would only have to do one of the two and the choice was his.  He imme­di­ate­ly and clear­ly said to the group leader: He would not be able to sat­is­fy any of the two demands.  The con­tra­dic­tion has inten­si­fied.  Sud­den­ly, he became the tar­get of strug­gle and the heart of attack by all the pris­on­ers in the group.  All the con­tra­dic­tions and crit­i­cisms tar­get­ed toward oth­ers were tem­porar­i­ly put aside.  The group leader and all the oth­er pris­on­ers in the group con­cen­trat­ed their fire­pow­er and used every con­ceiv­able method to make things dif­fi­cult for him and to tor­ture him.

     

    Once, they said: As long as Weizun was will­ing to read (read aloud or recite) one sen­tence in the Lit­tle Red Book or say “long life [lit­er­al­ly, tens of thou­sands of years]” or “bound­less life” to Chair­man Mao, then they would per­mit him to say grace before meals.  He would then thought about this pro­pos­al before the Lord: He remem­bered that the Bible’s teach­ings include the words “fear God, hon­or the king” (1 Peter 2:17) and “I tell you that you must first sup­pli­cate, pray, beseech, and give thanks for the tens of thou­sands; and do the same for the kings (polit­i­cal lead­ers) and all who are in pow­er.”  There­fore, he said before every­one in the group: “I wish Chair­man Mao and Vice-Chair­man Lin good heath.”  They all shout­ed with joy: “It’s pos­si­ble!  It’s pos­si­ble!”  Although there were two or three peo­ple who remained unsat­is­fied because he did not say “long live” or “bound­less life,” but some­one said: “Don’t be impa­tient, we’ll take it slow.  There is hope!”

     

    That day, they were very good to Weizun.  They filled his stom­ach with three meals.  On the next day, the group leader and every­one in the group said to him: “Today, you have made progress.  Don’t say what you said yes­ter­day; just say: “Long life to Chair­man Mao,” “Bound­less life to Chair­man Mao.”  How­ev­er, after try­ing to per­suade him for a long time and after wait­ing for a long time, Weizun was still unwill­ing to change his words, regard­less of whether they allowed him to eat.  They were extreme­ly furi­ous and did not give Weizun any­thing to eat.

     

    Some one said to him pri­vate­ly: Why were you will­ing to wish Chair­man Mao good health but were unwill­ing to call out “Long life to Chair­man Mao” or “bound­less life”?

     

    Weizun replied: The for­mer was a prayer to the supreme God on behalf of the polit­i­cal lead­ers.  Such a prayer would please God because it places the supreme God in the first place.  The lat­ter treats Chair­man Mao as a god and in essence places the leader in the high­est posi­tion.  God despise and is dis­pleased by such a prayer.  More­over, it is impos­si­ble to live “tens of thou­sands of years.”  Even live to 100 years old is dif­fi­cult to do.  Fur­ther­more, Chair­man Mao will nev­er have “bound­less life.”  Rather, his life will be “bound­ed.”  There­fore, why should I say non­sense that does not adhere to God’s will?

     

    The time spent in Squad One was the last and most dif­fi­cult part of the bat­tle to defend the field of lentils.  How­ev­er, he said: “I thank the Lord that I am a free man!”  He said this because he insist­ed on the prin­ci­ple of “no.”  He insist­ed on being “unre­formed.”  There­fore, those “reformed” reg­u­la­tions could not bind him, could not con­strain him.

     

    The Third Moment of Weak­ness

     

    Yet, he under­stood that his strength and free­dom were entire­ly depen­dent on God’s grace.  If he had depart­ed from the Lord, he would have fall­en long ago.  He record­ed the three moments of weak­ness that he expe­ri­enced.  The first time was dur­ing the ini­tial peri­od after lib­er­a­tion when he was a mid­dle school teacher.  Dur­ing the move­ment of ide­o­log­i­cal reform, there was a time when he was reward­ed by his supe­ri­ors.  After­wards, he uncon­scious­ly want­ed to work hard­er to run on the world­ly path.  He began to grow dis­tant from God and he did not love the Lord like he used to.  How­ev­er, thank God, two weeks lat­er, the Holy Spir­it shined upon him, allow­ing him to see the cri­sis that he was expe­ri­enc­ing on the spir­i­tu­al path.  By depend­ing on the Lord’s strength, he was able to restore the inti­mate rela­tion­ship that he had with God.

     

    The sec­ond time was in 1956 when he was teach­ing at the Tongji Mid­dle School in Shang­hai.  There was some­one at anoth­er unit who want­ed to trans­fer him.  The per­son took a pic­ture of a young man and asked whether he knew the man in the pic­ture.  He rec­og­nized that the young man was the broth­er in Christ who in 1951 had tak­en away his speech dur­ing the “denun­ci­a­tion move­ment,” and said so.  After­wards, Weizun was extreme­ly dis­turbed.  He pre­dict­ed that this broth­er was at the time already under inves­ti­ga­tion.  He did not know whether his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (although it was the truth) would bring about even worse con­se­quences for the broth­er.  Weizun did not know at the time where he had gone wrong.  He lat­er under­stood that he should not have said any­thing because in so doing, he was “con­fess­ing.”  As a result of his “con­fes­sion,” the broth­er could suf­fer.  There­fore, lat­er, he estab­lished for him­self the prin­ci­ple of “no talk­ing and no con­fes­sion,” so as to avoid offend­ing God.

     

    The third time was after he was arrest­ed in 1966.  Once, the hear­ing offi­cial showed him a piece of paper with a pic­ture of a map of Chi­na.  The cen­ter of the map was Tian­jin.  Quite a few lines radi­at­ed from the cen­ter to every part of the coun­try to illus­trate his rela­tion­ships with the mem­bers of the body of Christ in oth­er parts of the coun­try.  The hear­ing offi­cial said: If you find this map to be cor­rect, then sign your name at the bot­tom.  At this time, Weizun was not very alert and actu­al­ly signed his name.  Once he returned to the prison cell, the Holy Spir­it shined upon him: Why did he sign?  Wasn’t sign­ing tan­ta­mount to con­fes­sion?  As a result, that day when the group leader threat­ened to take away his food, he became afraid and began to eat very quick­ly.  He was afraid that the food would be tak­en away.  As a con­se­quence, that night he suf­fered from diar­rhea.  It was already after the restroom breaks, he couldn’t go to the restroom so he had to use a large urine can.  He was scold­ed by his cell­mates.  On the next day, he declared that he was wrong in sign­ing the doc­u­ment on the pre­vi­ous day and asked that the doc­u­ment be void­ed.  He also asked God to for­give him for his weak­ness and fail­ure, and to cor­rect and restore him, as well as to lead him to fight the bat­tle that lie ahead.  Since that moment he rec­og­nized: He was nei­ther bet­ter nor stronger than oth­ers.  With­out the Lord’s mer­cy, he would sin and fail as usu­al, and pos­si­bly fail even worse than oth­ers.  From this fail­ure, he knew that there was noth­ing about him that deserved boast­ing.  He could only rely on the Lord ever more.

     

    The Life Pris­on­er out­side the Wall

     

    At the end of the 1970s, the wind of reform and open­ing blew across the great land of Chi­na.  It was also blown into Yinchuan’s “Ningx­ia Region­al Prison,” oth­er­wise known as the Yinchuan Fan Fac­to­ry.

     

    Many among the over 200 pris­on­ers in the Tian­jin sys­tem who were serv­ing life sen­tences in Ningx­ia had already received reduc­tions in sen­tenc­ing or release.  Dur­ing the mid-1970s, there were still six “unre­formed” per­sons.  In 1978, there were only two such per­sons.  In 1979, one of these two pris­on­ers re-appealed his sen­tence and was released in that year.  Until then, there was only one among the 200-plus pris­on­ers who remained and he was Weizun.

     

    At the time, the wind to write appeals and seek reha­bil­i­ta­tion was blow­ing hard.  Many peo­ple told him to appeal and seek reha­bil­i­ta­tion.  How­ev­er, he clear­ly said: I will not appeal.  In Spring 1981, dur­ing the annu­al reward and pun­ish­ment assem­bly held for the entire prison, the prison author­i­ty announced that he was also on the list of those who would receive sen­tence reduc­tions.  The sen­tence-reduc­tion ver­dict of Ningxia’s Supe­ri­or Court wrote that his life sen­tence had been reduced to six years impris­on­ment.  In oth­er words, he would be released after six years.  The ver­dict of the Ningx­ia Supe­ri­or Court argued that he pos­i­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in labor reform, was earnest in teach­ing, and adhered to the reg­u­la­tions and dis­ci­plines of the prison.  This ver­dict indi­cat­ed that he had expressed repen­tance, con­firm­ing that he had “indeed repent­ed.”  For this rea­son, his sen­tence was reduced.  Yet, he believes: This sen­tence reduc­tion and the free­dom in six years were not giv­en to him with­out a price; they had to be paid by the notion that he had “indeed repent­ed.”  “Repen­tance” sug­gests that he would treat the things that the Lord had entrust­ed to him in the past as “sins.”  How­ev­er, that would be to humil­i­ate the Lord and to resist God.  He though, if he agreed to this “repen­tance,” wouldn’t the war that he had fought all these years essen­tial­ly be fought in vain?  Wouldn’t the suf­fer­ings he had borne be borne in vain?  Is this filthy “free­dom” so wor­thy of his envy?  Could he dis­card the cross that the Lord had giv­en him on this mat­ter?  There­fore, he rather chose the path of “oth­ers were tor­tured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a bet­ter res­ur­rec­tion” (Hebrews 11:35) and refused to be released.

     

    On May 28, 1987, the day when he was forced to leave the prison, he wrote the “sub­mis­sion on the day of release” to the region’s high­est People’s Court.  In the sub­mis­sion, he once again made clear the fact that he had not “repent­ed.”  He said:

     

    Here, I have no choice but to risk the sus­pi­cion that I am protest­ing against the gov­ern­ment and the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at (I think that the court may be able to under­stand) and con­crete­ly and briefly describe my absolute­ly and com­plete­ly unre­pen­tant actions dur­ing the twen­ty-some years in prison since July 1964:

     

    On July 30, 1964, I was sum­moned by the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau in Tian­jian.  Since the first hear­ing, oth­er than my name, I have stopped pro­vid­ing answers to all ques­tions posed by the hear­ing offi­cial.  In actu­al­i­ty, I con­tin­ue to refuse to explain any crime.  (Nat­u­ral­ly, when I was hon­est they were lenient and when I was resis­tant they were severe.  From this point the sit­u­a­tion was grad­u­al­ly esca­lat­ed: from sum­mon to deten­tion, to arrest, to indict­ment, and to the sen­tence of life impris­on­ment.)  After I was held for one and half year under this con­di­tion of refus­ing to explain any crime, the head hear­ing offi­cial had tried one more time to per­suade me to change my ways.  He select­ed a few items among my crimes and ini­ti­at­ed the effort to open up, clar­i­fy, and even point out the errors among these cas­es.  He urged me to con­sid­er after return­ing to the prison.  The next day, my answer to him was: “I have no regrets over the things that you have men­tioned yes­ter­day.”  Anoth­er half year lat­er, in the inter­me­di­ate court’s court­room, oth­er than my name and a response to one ques­tion (Ques­tion: Are you a Chris­t­ian?  Answer: Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian), I still did not respond to all the ques­tions posed to me.

     

    In the twen­ty-plus years that I have been serv­ing my sen­tence, I have refused to remark, write, and par­tic­i­pate in any mat­ter that is relat­ed, even indi­rect­ly, with “con­fes­sion” or the “reform of the crim­i­nal nature.”  In the twen­ty-plus years in prison, I have not made one remark, expressed my atti­tude, dis­cussed my under­stand­ing, or respond to relat­ed ques­tions from the cadres and oth­er pris­on­ers in numer­ous large meet­ings, small meet­ings, study ses­sions, dis­cus­sions, and sem­i­nars.  In fact, I was so cau­tious as to have failed to read aloud one piece of doc­u­ment, news­pa­per, or the Lit­tle Red Book; I didn’t even sing one rev­o­lu­tion­ary song.  All of these things were done to avoid becom­ing entan­gled with the “reform of the crim­i­nal nature.”  I have nev­er writ­ten one time or one word dur­ing the numer­ous occa­sions when each pris­on­er was required to write guar­an­tees, reform plans, ide­o­log­i­cal reports, reform sum­maries or brief­in­gs, and even the required “reform diary.”  In the numer­ous exam­i­na­tions on pol­i­tics, cur­rent affairs, ethics, laws, and oth­er top­ics, oth­er than my name, my exam papers were always blank.  The count­less afore­men­tioned facts and actions demon­strate (if the court will con­duct a lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion, it will not be dif­fi­cult to see that all these actions were con­sis­tent and irrefutable facts) that I have not the least accept­ed the “reform of crim­i­nal thoughts and crim­i­nal nature” that I was forced to be engaged in while I was serv­ing my sen­tence.  I have refused them all.

     

    As for the point men­tioned in the ver­dict that I had “com­plied with the dis­ci­plin­ing,” I did not com­ply every time.  In fact, I had made clear dis­tinc­tions between the two kinds of sit­u­a­tions that were of dif­fer­ent nature and I treat­ed each one accord­ing­ly.  On the first kind of dis­ci­plin­ing, as men­tioned ear­li­er, I have nev­er com­plied in the least with the count­less mea­sures of reform and dis­ci­pline that the prison author­i­ty had con­duct­ed on me.  I have refused all of them and stub­born­ly main­tained such resis­tance for over 20 years, until today.

     

    On the sec­ond kind, with respect to the oth­er reg­u­la­tions, orders, and arrange­ments that were unre­lat­ed to my “reform of the crim­i­nal thoughts and crim­i­nal nature,” to which, sub­jec­tive­ly speak­ing, I had adhered and with which I had com­plied.  How­ev­er, was the lat­ter part of the sec­ond kind of dis­ci­plin­ing – the action of “com­ply­ing with the dis­ci­plin­ing” – a “demon­stra­tion of my repen­tance”?  On the con­trary, it was not a demon­stra­tion of my “com­pli­ance with the dis­ci­plin­ing.”  None of it was the con­se­quence of repen­tance.  In fact, it was my “demon­stra­tion of non-repen­tance.”  The rea­son is that before I entered prison, I had always tak­en the same posi­tion with respect to sim­i­lar cas­es.  Can any­one point out which point was a func­tion of my repen­tance?

     

    The ver­dict also not­ed that I had “worked proac­tive­ly.”  It was prob­a­bly refer­ring to the fact that I was more atten­tive and dili­gent when engaged in the pro­duc­tion labor and the sub­se­quent teach­ing.  Even if one does not list cer­tain unavoid­able weak­ness­es and mis­takes on my part, even if there were indeed a few things that were wor­thy of praise, none of it was a demon­stra­tion of my repen­tance.  On the con­trary, all of them were demon­stra­tions of my unre­pen­tance for things that I had done con­sis­tent­ly before becom­ing impris­oned.

     

    If one put togeth­er all my deeds while I was serv­ing my sen­tence, was there any major item or minor items such as the utter­ance of one sen­tence or the dis­play of one ges­ture that was gen­uine­ly said, writ­ten, or done which reflect­ed my repen­tance?  If there was, I am will­ing to admit that I did “indeed have demon­stra­tions of repen­tance.”  If so, there would per­haps be no shame in receiv­ing a sen­tence reduc­tion.  Yet, if you’re unable to fine one lit­tle cas­es, then why must you vio­late the prin­ci­ple of “seek­ing truth from facts” and insist on impos­ing the disin­gen­u­ous label of “repen­tance” on a pris­on­er who has been com­plete­ly unre­pen­tant just so that he would receive a sen­tence reduc­tion that would allow him to be released?  Even more impor­tant­ly, as a Chris­t­ian, I should not com­mit the evil of assum­ing a “label” that was not mine to assume.  Not only am I not shown “demon­stra­tions of repen­tance,” I actu­al­ly “indeed have no demon­stra­tion of repen­tance.”  All of my actions were dis­plays of unre­pen­tance and do not meet the fun­da­men­tal con­di­tions that would lead to a reduc­tion in sen­tence.  I can only remain a pris­on­er for life.

     

    Since dur­ing these six years, the court nev­er retract­ed this erro­neous ver­dict that does not seek truth from the facts and has not ver­i­ty, and since, as a pris­on­er of the dic­ta­tor­ship, I was unqual­i­fied to force the court to do any­thing, I am “forced” to have no nor­mal course of action except to take one of the two fol­low­ing steps start­ing this day of release.  First, I will not use the cer­tifi­cate of release to process any post-release pro­ce­dures.  I will not return to Tian­jin or be reunit­ed with my rel­a­tives in the south.  I will not enjoy any free­doms and rights obtained from this erro­neous ver­dict.  I will not depart from the prison and go any­where and to any unit to receive any employ­ment (includ­ing the work of a per­ma­nent­ly sta­tioned fac­to­ry labor­er).  The rea­son is that even though I have reluc­tant­ly (in order not to resist the prison’s law enforce­ment duties) gone to the oth­er side of these prison walls, I would remain a pris­on­er who was giv­en a life sen­tence.  (Even though I will not admit to the crime and will absolute­ly refuse to repent, I nonethe­less main­tain an atti­tude of “sin­cere and joy­ful com­pli­ance” with the life sen­tence.  From now on, I will main­tain this atti­tude and accept the sit­u­a­tion imposed upon me with no com­plaint.)  Sec­ond, start­ing with this day of release, I will engage in lim­it­ed fast­ing.  (As long as there is no exter­nal inter­fer­ence or impo­si­tion, I will stay with­in the scope of this lim­it­ed fast­ing.  In oth­er words, I will main­tain the con­tin­u­a­tion of life.  How­ev­er, if oth­ers inter­fere or impose force against me, this vow will no longer apply.)  This act of fast­ing is intend­ed to demon­strate the fol­low­ing two points.  First, I have not the least repen­tance for all my “crimes.”  Sec­ond, and there­fore, the ver­dict that was hand­ed to me in 1981 was wrong and did not fit with the facts.  I refuse to accept this erro­neous ver­dict.  In so doing, I want to allow the court to have suf­fi­cient time to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion for the pur­pose of under­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion and even­tu­al­ly recon­sid­er its deci­sion.  If that day arrives, when the erro­neous ver­dict is retract­ed and can­celed, which also means that the label of “repen­tance” that has been assigned to me has also been can­celed, it nat­u­ral­ly implies that the orig­i­nal posi­tion of a pris­on­er serv­ing a life sen­tence has been restored to me.  Then I shall be hap­py to end this act of fast­ing and do what I am required to do.

     

    More­over, I here­by attach a dec­la­ra­tion.  Since the Gang of Four was crushed, espe­cial­ly since the Third Plenum of the 11th Par­ty Con­gress, the over­all sit­u­a­tion of the nation has great­ly improved.  In terms of pol­i­cy, there has been great increase in lat­i­tude.  The treat­ment and pun­ish­ment of the pris­on­ers have increas­ing­ly improved.  These are devel­op­ments for all to see and can­not be denied.  I have expe­ri­enced and am pro­found­ly grate­ful for the con­cerns, care, and the pref­er­en­tial treat­ments extend­ed to me by the lead­ers and the man­age­ment cadres of the prison.  I here­with express my thanks to the prison’s lead­er­ship, sec­tion chiefs, and oth­er cadres.  (Of course, what is said here has no rela­tion to the afore­men­tioned great mat­ter.)  I here­by sub­mit this spe­cial report and give my salute.

     

     

    Wu Weizun

     The Pris­on­er for Life Who is Out­side the Prison Walls

    May 28, 1987 (Esther: The Chi­nese way: the date is at the end of let­ter)

     

     

    In the last six years that he was in prison, he clear­ly under­stood the last stage of the task of wit­ness­ing with which God has entrust­ed him, which was to exe­cute the two lim­i­ta­tions that God had giv­en him.  First, to fast at des­ig­nat­ed times.  This action serves to tes­ti­fy his unchang­ing Chris­t­ian heart.  Since he left the prison, he would eat on Mon­days and Thurs­days, and fast on the oth­er days.  Sec­ond, he would not take one step out­side the city of Yinchuan or away from the prison.  He kept his posi­tion and sta­tus as the “pris­on­er for life out­side the prison walls.”  After he left the prison, he stayed in a dilap­i­dat­ed room that was 14.6 square meters in size that God had pro­vid­ed to him through the prison.  He nev­er took one step out­side Yinchuan.

     

    When Wu Weizun was exe­cut­ing these two lim­i­ta­tions, he would often receive many “per­sua­sive obstruc­tions.”  The leader of the prison did what he was sup­posed to do, to per­suade Wu Weizun to give up his fast­ing and eat meals on a nor­mal basis.  He even took some peo­ple from the “Three-Self Church” to per­suade him.  In addi­tion, his rel­a­tives and many broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ tried to per­suade him to leave Yinchuan and go else­where to serve God.  How­ev­er, he gra­cious­ly refused their efforts and was fear­ful of can­cel­ing the reg­u­lar fast­ing on his own.  He was also not will­ing to leave Yinchuan to go else­where.  The rea­son was that he clear­ly under­stood that God had already used the illus­tra­tion of the man of God in Chap­ter 13 of First Kings to admon­ish him.  God had already told the man of God that he “must not eat bread or drink water [at Bethel] or return by the way you came.”  How­ev­er, the man of God lis­tened to the old prophet and vio­lat­ed God’s com­mand, and died as a result.

     

    China’s Epa­phras

     

    Dur­ing the 1900 Box­er reli­gious per­se­cu­tion, tens of thou­sands of West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies and Chi­nese Chris­tians were mar­tyred.  At the same time, a group of impor­tant ser­vants who would be used great­ly by God dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry, includ­ing Wang Ming­dao, Nee Tuosheng (Watch­man Nee), and Song Shangjie, were born around this time.  About a quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, a gen­er­a­tion of indi­vid­u­als who were espe­cial­ly called by God, includ­ing Wu Weizun, Lin Xian­gao (Samuel Lamb), and Li Musheng, were born.  The Lord who over­sees the uni­verse, time, and his­to­ry cre­at­ed gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of Chi­nese to fol­low him.  Gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, He also called, chose, mold­ed, and used those Chi­nese who pleased Him.  Undoubt­ed­ly, those who were born in the 1920s and were of the same gen­er­a­tion as Wu Weizun were mem­bers of a spe­cial gen­er­a­tion who were built up by God through a spe­cial his­tor­i­cal set­ting.

     

    These indi­vid­u­als were born in the uncer­tain 1920s.  Since child­hood, they have tast­ed the bit­ter­ness of pover­ty, wars, and chaos.  Yet, God’s grace descend­ed upon them.  The bumpy wan­der­ing road actu­al­ly led them to the gate of eter­nal sal­va­tion.  In the nation­al ter­ri­to­ry that had suc­cumbed to for­eign forces, they became the cit­i­zens of the king­dom of heav­en.  God also used the group of mis­sion­ar­ies who were born in the 1900s, such as Wang Ming­dao, to spir­i­tu­al­ly nur­ture them and built them up.  More­over, He gave them a major revival in the 1940s, because at that time “the night is com­ing when no one can work.”  That was the eve of the great dark­ness and the great war.  God pre­pared, built up, and strength­ened for him­self a group of peo­ple who would shine in the dark­ness.

     

    After 1949, Wu Weizun and those in his gen­er­a­tion all expe­ri­enced suf­fer­ings and tri­als dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.  They all expe­ri­enced dai­ly and endur­ing per­se­cu­tion, strug­gle, inspec­tion, accu­sa­tion, humil­i­a­tion, beat­ing, and impris­on­ment.  This long and seem­ing­ly end­less suf­fer­ing mer­ci­less­ly inspect­ed everyone’s faith.  There were many who mar­tyred and there were many who fell, weak­ened, and retreat­ed.  Yet, God has won­drous­ly “reserve[d] sev­en thou­sand – all whose knees have bowed down to Baal.”  Today, although these “sev­en thou­sand” peo­ple who per­sist­ed to the end are already old, they still hold the ambi­tion of “an old horse­man who still ride thou­sands of miles.’  They con­tin­ue to give all their effort and with loy­al­ty stand their guard until the last shift.  They are undoubt­ed­ly the trea­sure and wealth of the Chi­nese church.

     

    Yet, God has led each of them in dif­fer­ent ways and used each of them dif­fer­ent­ly from the oth­ers.  There were some who mar­tyred dur­ing the great suf­fer­ings and have rest­ed in the Lord.  There were oth­ers who after serv­ing over 20 years in prison have imme­di­ate­ly restored their orig­i­nal min­istries.  After their release, these indi­vid­u­als re-opened their house church­es (such as Yuan Xiangzheng (Allen Yuan) and Samuel Lamb).  Still, there were oth­ers who roamed every­where to build and teach church­es in dif­fer­ent places (such as Li Musheng).  Yet, God gave Wu Weizun a spe­cial mis­sion.

     

    In 1926, when Wu Weizun was born, his moth­er gave him the name of a Bib­li­cal fig­ure: Epa­phras.  If one exam­ines the Bible, there are three places that con­tain records relat­ed to Epa­phras. 

     

    “You learned it from Epa­phras, our dear fel­low ser­vant, who is a faith­ful min­is­ter of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spir­it.” (Colos­sians 1:7–8)

     

    “Epa­phras, who is one of you and a ser­vant of Christ Jesus, sends greet­ings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and ful­ly assured. I vouch for him that he is work­ing hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hier­apo­lis.” (Colos­sians 4:12–13)

     

    “Epa­phras, my fel­low pris­on­er in Christ Jesus, sends you greet­ings.” (Phile­mon 1:23)

     

    As we have seen, the Epa­phras of the Bible was (1) a loy­al min­is­ter of Christ; (2) he often prayed for the church­es, with great efforts; and (3) he was impris­oned along with Paul.

     

    In the sum­mer of 1949, when the head of the Chi­nese The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Bi Lude [sic] (an Amer­i­can) left Shang­hai for the Unit­ed States, Wu Weizun wrote a card in Eng­lish to bid farewell: “Dear Moth­er, please don’t wor­ry.  I will always fol­low my Lord.”  The note was signed “Epa­phras.”  In 1964, after he entered prison, he loved to use the name “Epa­phras” even more because it reflect­ed his sta­tus as a pris­on­er.  He hoped that he would be a good “Chi­nese Epa­phras.”

     

    In 1955, after writ­ing that famous com­bat­ive essay “We are for Our Faith,” Wang Ming­dao was arrest­ed on August 10.  As a con­se­quence, the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly that he found­ed, which con­tained essays he per­son­al­ly wrote, was closed.  In 1927, the first issue of the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly was offi­cial­ly pub­lished.  For 28 years, it bore the respon­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing up believ­ers through the Bib­li­cal truths and teach­ing the Chi­nese church­es through the Bib­li­cal truths.  Until 1955, after the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly was closed, and the voice of the truth dis­ap­peared, the Chi­nese church entered the dark ages.

     

    Yet, in the lat­ter half of the 1950s, after the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly ceased cir­cu­la­tion, Wu Weizun began to write the let­ters and short essays in his “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.”  He sent the pub­li­ca­tion to the mem­bers of the body through­out the coun­try and encour­age the broth­ers and sis­ters who were dis­bursed every­where to uphold their faith.  In the begin­ning, he hand­wrote the let­ters and the essays.  Lat­er, through the sug­ges­tion of the wife of his third old­est broth­er, he would use car­bon papers to repro­duce mul­ti­ple copies.  One of the charges against him that led to his arrest was his let­ter to a young man who was reborn, encour­ag­ing him to with­draw from the Com­mu­nist Youth League.

     

    After he entered prison in 1964, he began the bat­tle to “defend the field of lentils.”  He con­tin­ued this task until spring 1980, when his third old­est broth­er and his wife (who were not only his blood rela­tions, but also his broth­er and sis­ter in Christ) were able to find his address and began to com­mu­ni­cate with him.  In addi­tion, they trav­eled thou­sands of miles to vis­it him.  There­after, he grad­u­al­ly obtained con­tact with many mem­bers of the body of Christ. 

     

    In the ear­ly 1980s, as a result of the major sit­u­a­tion­al changes that were tak­ing place through­out the coun­try, the sit­u­a­tion in the prison was also cor­re­spond­ing­ly more relaxed.  When Weizun sent let­ters, the prison author­i­ties did not inspect his mail as strin­gent­ly as before.  There­fore, begin­ning in 1982, Weizun sent out let­ter after let­ter of prison briefs, which were writ­ten in the name of “Epa­phras.”  The title of all the prison briefs was “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.”  From 1982 to 1987, because he was in prison, he could only hand copy the essays in the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” for dis­tri­b­u­tion or use car­bon papers to repro­duce the writ­ings.  After he left the prison in 1987, the copies of the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” were mailed after they were copied in the copy stores.

     

    When a ker­nel of wheat fell to the earth, it will pro­duce many oth­er seeds when it dies.  In the ear­ly 1980s, after expe­ri­enc­ing years of great per­se­cu­tion, numer­ous Chi­nese house church­es appeared like bam­boos after the spring rain.  The broth­ers and the sis­ters thirst for God’s words and the house church­es need­ed spir­i­tu­al guid­ance.  Just around this time, Epa­phras sent out the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” that was writ­ten in beau­ti­ful char­ac­ters from the prison, and the writ­ings imme­di­ate­ly cir­cu­lat­ed among the broth­ers and the sis­ters.  The essays in the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ,” one after the oth­er and through repeat­ed copy­ing, were re-trans­mit­ted count­less times through­out the coun­try, from the prison in the north­west­ern plateau to the great prairie in the mid­dle of the coun­try and then to the scenic south­east­ern vil­lages.  They were cir­cu­lat­ed to the house church­es through­out the coun­try and were even sent abroad.

     

    After the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly, God pre­pared the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” to serve the broth­ers and sis­ters in the Chi­nese house church­es.  He pre­pared China’s Epa­phras to write the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” in this spe­cial envi­ron­ment.  When he was in his mother’s womb, Wu Weizun was already cho­sen by God to be China’s Epa­phras.  After he was called by God, he stud­ied the­ol­o­gy but did not become a preach­er.  God had even high­er pur­pos­es for him.  He began a unique writ­ing min­istry.  This min­istry led him to prison.  Yet, he was able to return to that min­istry while in prison.  God used these words to encour­age many con­tem­po­rary believ­ers.  God’s deeds are great and won­der­ful!

     

    The num­ber of pages in the dif­fer­ent edi­tions of the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” var­ied.  Each time, Epa­phras the author wrote as the Holy Spir­it led him.  The con­tents of the cor­re­spon­dence were the dilem­mas faced by the con­tem­po­rary house church­es.  Many were ques­tions raised by the broth­ers and sis­ters in the house church­es and his replies to them.  These ques­tions includ­ed: “What hap­pens if every­one is weak and cool?”  “Why hasn’t God hear our prayers?”  “What hap­pens if the church faces per­se­cu­tion?”  “Can Chris­tians become mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty?”  “Where did the faults of the Three-Self lie?”  Faced with these sharp ques­tions, Epa­phras nev­er com­pro­mised in his replies.  He always clear­ly wrote replies that were based on the bib­li­cal truths.  He encour­aged those weak and cool mem­bers of the body and point­ed out the way for them: “Con­fess and repent before God.  Always be alert, prayer­ful, and seek His will.”  He rebuked the “false mas­ters” and admon­ished the church to “avoid fer­men­ta­tion” [bi xiao].  He point­ed out the best and the only road for those broth­ers and sis­ters fac­ing per­se­cu­tion: Walk the way of the cross; only the cross!  He him­self car­ried the cross and relied on the pow­er of the cross to gain vic­to­ry in the bat­tle to “defend the field of the lentils.”  He relied on the pow­er of the cross to gain vic­to­ry over the long years of per­se­cu­tion and suf­fer­ing.  He also encour­aged the broth­ers and the sis­ters to car­ry the cross and walk the way of the cross.  He cit­ed Matthew 5:10–11 to encour­age the broth­ers and sis­ters to be “joy­ful” when per­se­cut­ed because that is the Lord’s teach­ing.

     

    Epa­phras’ half cen­tu­ry of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences, his sol­id the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion – espe­cial­ly impor­tant were his life expe­ri­ences in which God placed him in the pit of fire to be mold­ed, and the sharp spir­i­tu­al vision that was the result of this abun­dant life allowed him to be like Wang Ming­dao – to have the abil­i­ty to respond to the ques­tions in the Chi­nese house church­es.

     

    The Glo­ri­ous Return of the Lord’s Ser­vant

     

    On Decem­ber 12, 1999, after he served in the unique writ­ing min­istry for 17 years, he record­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny, which was enti­tled: “Epa­phras – an Ordi­nary Chris­t­ian on Main­land Chi­na – Wu Weizun’s Tes­ti­mo­ny of a Life Filled with the Lord’s Grace in His Own Words.”  At the end of the tes­ti­mo­ny, he wrote:

     

    Now, although I am old, I have still not reached the sign­post.  I have yet to com­plete walk­ing the road and the wit­ness is still not com­plet­ed.  The bat­tle has yet to achieve the ulti­mate vic­to­ry.  It is still not the time for me to sing the hymn of vic­to­ry.  The pos­si­bil­i­ty for me to back­slide again, to depart from the Lord’s path, to be deceived, to quit, to fall short of the goal because of lazi­ness, and to aban­don all pre­vi­ous efforts, all con­tin­ue to exist.  There is absolute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for me to relax my alert­ness, and rest in the Lord’s grace.  I have seen many trag­ic pro­hi­bi­tions and painful lessons.  May the Lord have mer­cy and pro­tect me, save me until the very end, so that I can wait in alert­ness and walk every step that has not yet been com­plet­ed, and so that the tremen­dous grace that the Lord has shown me by shed­ding his blood will not be in vain.  Ulti­mate­ly, I hope to final­ly see the Lord’s glo­ry with­out shame.

     

    In Feb­ru­ary 2002, he wrote the last “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.”  The title was: “The poi­so­nous sore in the Chi­nese church is fes­ter­ing and becom­ing larg­er!”  In his writ­ings, he rebuked the so-called “the­o­log­i­cal thought con­struc­tion move­ment,” which was rep­re­sent­ed by the Writ­ings of Ding Guangx­un, as essen­tial­ly the “move­ment to change and re-cre­ate the faith (bib­li­cal truths and God’s words).”  After­wards, he became silent.  He said to the broth­ers: “Recent­ly, the Lord has not moved me to write any­thing.  With­out the Lord’s inspi­ra­tion, I can­not write any­thing.  The Lord moved me to com­pile all the cor­re­spon­dence essays that I wrote in the past for sys­tem­at­ic copy­ing.”

     

    In August 2002, he com­piled 166 pieces of the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” that he had writ­ten over the last 20 years.  The total num­ber of char­ac­ters was over one mil­lion.  He clas­si­fied them and pro­vid­ed the ser­i­al num­bers and placed them in five large mail­bags.  He made a spe­cial request with a broth­er to trans­mit an entire vol­ume to the U.S.-based Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly. 

     

    Between Novem­ber 27 and Novem­ber 30 of 2002, he wrote the last let­ter to his rel­a­tives.  In his let­ter, he clear­ly expressed the affairs after his return to his home in Heav­en:

     

    Since the last six years of impris­on­ment (the life sen­tence was reduced to six years), I have become increas­ing­ly clear about the last, incom­plete stage of the tes­ti­mo­ni­al assign­ment that God the Father and the Lord Jesus had giv­en me.  This was the two lim­i­ta­tions to which I must adhere from the day I left the prison in 1987 until the day when I depart from this world or the day when the Lord Jesus glo­ri­ous­ly descend to earth – when all of us believ­ers would be res­ur­rect­ed to see the Lord and wear the spir­i­tu­al bod­ies that are like the Lord, which will nev­er rot, and entered his glo­ri­ous realm.  (1) Exe­cute the reg­u­lar fast­ing that per­mits meals only on Mon­days and Thurs­days.  This action is a free protest based on my rights as a cit­i­zen that is tar­get­ed against the Ningx­ia Court, which cre­at­ed lies and said that I had indeed repent­ed, there­by reduc­ing my sen­tence and releas­ing me.  It demon­strates that since I entered prison in Tian­jin in July 1964, I have remained unre­pen­tant and I am there­fore unqual­i­fied to accept a legal reduc­tion of sen­tence and release.  I should have remained a pris­on­er for life until the end.  (2) Exe­cute the prin­ci­ple of not leav­ing the city of Yinchuan and the prison, and con­tin­ue to be a good “pris­on­er for life out­side the great wall.”  In essence, I am to be, in the government’s par­lance, “some­one who is being kept alive.”  The pur­pose of and the mean­ing behind God’s giv­ing of these two lim­i­ta­tions are, on the one hand, that I should com­ply with and accept the pow­er of the prison (the gov­ern­ment organ) to enforce the law (which has noth­ing to do with whether I’ve repent­ed); on the oth­er hand, once I arrive at the oth­er side of the wall, He want­ed me to firm­ly refuse and resist the court’s false­hood and pre­ten­tious­ness (which refers to its insis­tence that I had “indeed repent­ed”).  I have nev­er for­got­ten or ignored in the slight­est degree these two lim­i­ta­tions, or tes­ti­mo­ni­al assign­ments, that were giv­en to me by God in the 15 to 16 years after I left the prison.  There­fore, I had no choice but to heart­less­ly refused the love and care of the third old­er broth­er and his wife as well as those of Zaimi­an and Wang Zhen.  For this pre­cise rea­son, regard­less of how old and decrepit I become, I ask you to please not come to vis­it me in Yinchuan (even if it was con­ve­nient and pos­si­ble for you to come, don’t; I thank you, but by all means do not come).  I will remain a part of the prison (or the gen­er­a­tor fac­to­ry).  It is a nor­mal thing if I die, and my body’s cre­mat­ed and interred and buried in the South Pit.  There is noth­ing that I can obstruct me from res­ur­rect­ing with all the believ­ers at the end of the days.  The prison is mere­ly a home in which I have dwelled for a long time, but only tem­porar­i­ly, while in this world, until that day when I’m res­ur­rect­ed and wear the same unde­filed spir­i­tu­al body as the Lord, and enter the eter­nal home with the Lord.  The rea­son is that the phys­i­cal body that will sure­ly be worn away will ulti­mate­ly return to the dirt, but only the unde­filed spir­i­tu­al body can enter, along with the Lord, the eter­nal king­dom of the God that will nev­er be worn away.  In past dozen years, the prison has treat­ed me well and has tak­en care of me.  On this point, I have always been grate­ful to the gov­ern­ment before God, with spe­cial thanks to the prison.

     

    I will stop for now.  If the Lord per­mits, I will write a short let­ter to you each year.  When I die, I have asked Broth­er Liu Fangx­ing, who I have known for many years, to phone the third old­er broth­er and ask him to tell all of you.

     

    May the grace of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.

     

    Epa­phras

     

    Novem­ber 27 – 30, 2002

     

    Twen­ty days lat­er, in the morn­ing of Decem­ber 21, 2002, a young cou­ple went to Wu Weizun’s res­i­dence with­in the vicin­i­ty of the Yinchuan prison to vis­it Jesus Christ’s faith­ful wit­ness Epa­phras.  When they knocked on the door, no one respond­ed.  They felt that some­thing was wrong so they jumped over the low wall to enter the res­i­dence.  They saw Epa­phras on the ground neat­ly groomed with his glass­es.  His coun­te­nance was peace­ful.  He has already been tak­en away by the Lord who loved him.

     

    For it seems to me that God has put us apos­tles on dis­play at the end of the pro­ces­sion, like men con­demned to die in the are­na. We have been made a spec­ta­cle to the whole uni­verse, to angels as well as to men. (1 Corinthi­ans 4:9) 

     

    On the great stage of the 20th cen­tu­ry Chi­nese church, many believ­ers per­formed the dra­ma with their blood and lives for men and angels to see.  The life and wit­ness of Epa­phras undoubt­ed­ly can be called a won­drous scene on this stage.

     

    Since he was called by God, he upheld the resolve to car­ry the cross for the rest of his life.  He was test­ed and thrown into the pit of fire like Daniel’s three friends.  Though he was mold­ed he did not have the bit­ter taste of burns.  His thin and kind face was always filled with a joy­ful smile.  The broth­ers and sis­ters who vis­it­ed him could hard­ly believe that the hum­ble and easy-going old man who stood before them was the brave man who used a sharp pen to angri­ly rebuke the false mas­ter, the war­rior who bat­tled for the Lord and defend­ed the field of lentils.

     

    There were also weak moments in his life and he also had a his­to­ry that aroused con­tro­ver­sies.  Many peo­ple do not under­stand why he would strange­ly “fast”?  Why did he insist on becom­ing the life pris­on­er out­side the great walls?

     

    Yet, the Lord knew.  He had kept the things that he had received from the Lord, and kept them until the end.  Now, the Lord who loves him has tak­en him away and allowed him to rest from the earth­ly labors and suf­fer­ings.  He can speak with­out shame like Paul:

     

    “I have fought the good fight, I have fin­ished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of right­eous­ness, which the Lord, the right­eous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appear­ing.” (II Tim­o­thy 4:7–8)

     

    In the 20th cen­tu­ry, God had giv­en us “China’s Daniel” (Wang Ming­dao) and “China’s Epa­phras” (Wu Weizun).  God’s deeds are indeed great and won­drous!

     

    Let us pray and let us wait to see God’s won­drous deeds….

     

    Ref­er­ences for this essay:

     

    1. “Epa­phras – An Ordi­nary Chris­t­ian on Main­land Chi­na”, Wu Weizun’s nar­ra­tion of his life wit­ness­ing by the Lord’s grace.  Two vol­umes, copies, unpub­lished man­u­scripts.

     

    2. “Epa­phras’ 166 Cor­re­spon­dences in the Body of the Lord” [Yibafo Zhunei Jiao­tong 166 Pian], copies, unpub­lished man­u­scripts.

     

    3. Wu Weizun’s let­ters to his broth­er Wu Weikan and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, Novem­ber 27 – 30, 2002.

     

    4. Web­site of Tonglu, Zhe­jiang province, “Tonglu Per­son­al­i­ties” col­umn.

     

     

     

    This is a True Israelite

     

    Pan Yiyuan

     

    In the morn­ing of Decem­ber 21, 2002, Jesus Christ’s faith­ful wit­ness Epa­phras (this is the faith name that Wu Weizun’s moth­er gave him) has already been tak­en away by the Lord who loves him.

     

    Approx­i­mate­ly one week before the spring fes­ti­val in 1994, I was arrest­ed by the Zhangzhou City Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau with the charge of “engag­ing in under­ground church activ­i­ties” (the offi­cial term of arrest was detained for inves­ti­ga­tion [shourong shengcha]).  After Epa­phras heard about the sit­u­a­tion, he imme­di­ate­ly asked some­one to deliv­er a note to my elder­ly moth­er and told her: This is a suf­fer­ing that is per­mit­ted by God, which is also a grace and bless­ing grant­ed by Him.  Not only must we not escape it, we should also not refuse it and not com­plain about it.  In addi­tion, we must not fran­ti­cal­ly seek lib­er­a­tion.  Even more so, we can­not seek the back­door to find con­nec­tions.  Instead, we should give thanks and give praise and wait for the Lord’s mer­cy.  There were many Chris­tians who, in order to reduce the unavoid­able pain and tor­ture, fell into some­one else’s trap and become oth­ers’ pris­on­ers, and per­formed deeds that offend­ed God, hurt peo­ple, and humil­i­at­ed them­selves.

     

    At the time when I went to prison, my elder­ly moth­er had already con­tact­ed a group of broth­ers and sis­ters who loved the Lord to form a prayer net­work that would pray days and nights for my release.  After she received Epa­phras’ let­ter, she imme­di­ate­ly changed the prayer focus on ask­ing the Lord to give me strength and to stand firm as a Chris­t­ian, and to not do any­thing that would harm broth­ers and sis­ters and cause the Lord to grieve.

     

    Although my moth­er did not know much about Epa­phras’ expe­ri­ences, she knew from my lips that Epa­phras was an obe­di­ent, absolute, and sim­ple man who feared God and was absolute­ly faith­ful to Him.  He lis­tened com­plete­ly to any­thing that the Lord has said and car­ried them out com­plete­ly.

     

    On Decem­ber 21, 1994, I was released on bail.  After I left prison, I imme­di­ate­ly sent a note to Epa­phras about the joy­ful event.  Yet, Epa­phras’ reply was extreme­ly harsh: Broth­er Pan, for many years, peo­ple who were arrest­ed for the name of the Lord have been impris­oned for many years and endured all kinds of humil­i­a­tion before they were released.  Yet, you left prison after a brief 10 and half months in jail.  Did you make any com­pro­mis­es that dam­aged the Lord’s name while in prison?  Or did you agree to some con­di­tions set by the pub­lic secu­ri­ty organs?  Or did you sub­tly admit your so-called “crimes”?  Or did you change your posi­tion and became “Judah”?  Please tell me the truth.  These words, while ten­der, did not leave me any face.  Put plain­ly, the ques­tion was: “If you have com­mit­ted any sins, tell them truth­ful­ly.”

     

    Epa­phras’ let­ter caused me to think of the Lord’s assess­ment of Nathanael: “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is noth­ing false.” (John 1:47)  At that time, the Lord not only did not become angry with the rude Nathanael, He actu­al­ly praised him because “there is noth­ing false” in him.

     

    What else could I say when con­front­ed with Epa­phras’ hon­est, upright, good, and direct ques­tions?  I said to him direct­ly: Lord Jesus’ praise for Nathanael was His praise for you.  The church lacks some­one like you.  If there were more peo­ple like you, many hid­den things in the church would be dif­fi­cult to con­ceal.

     

    There­fore, I report­ed to him with­out reser­va­tion the gen­er­al process dur­ing the time between my impris­on­ment and release.  I began with the account of how my elder­ly great uncle was agi­tat­ed about my impris­on­ment.  One of his for­mer stu­dents, Mr. Li Shang­da who is now a bil­lion­aire in Indone­sia, had vis­it­ed him and saw his sad coun­te­nance.  Mr. Li asked my great uncle why he was so griev­ed?  The great uncle told him about the impris­on­ment of his great nephew (which was me).  After Mr. Li Shang­da heard the sto­ry, he vol­un­teered to write Mr. Jia Qin­gling, who was then the provin­cial par­ty sec­re­tary of Fujian.  (After the 16th Par­ty Con­gress, Mr. Jia was ele­vat­ed to the posi­tion of mem­ber­ship in the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Polit­buro Stand­ing Com­mit­tee.)  Mr. Li asked Mr. Jia to refrain from con­duct­ing the will­ful arrests of Chris­tians dur­ing the era of reform and open­ing, so as to avoid frus­trat­ing the great hope that the over­seas Chi­nese have for the con­struc­tion of the moth­er­land….

     

    After this let­ter was sent, it appeared to have been lost in the sea of doc­u­ments.  Jia Qin­gling did not respond and the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau did not release me.  Mr. Li Shang­da, as a leader of the over­seas Chi­nese in Indone­sia, then invit­ed Mr. Jia Qin­gling to vis­it Indone­sia.  He even spoke at the wel­com­ing din­ner in Jakar­ta that fea­tured dozens of over­seas Chi­nese lead­ers.  In front of numer­ous peo­ple, Mr. Li once again appealed to Jia Qin­gling that the government’s will­ful arrest of Chris­tians could cre­ate neg­a­tive impact among the over­seas Chi­nese.  Dur­ing the din­ner, one self-pro­claimed “Chris­t­ian,” in order to seek Mr. Jia Qingling’s favor, spoke: “The Com­mu­nist Par­ty would nev­er ran­dom­ly arrest Chris­tians.  There must be oth­er rea­sons that account­ed for the impris­on­ment of Pan Yiyuan.”  Mr. Li imme­di­ate­ly pro­duced a pho­to­copy of the “deten­tion cer­tifi­cate” of the Zhangzhou city pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau for all to see.  He sub­se­quent­ly scold­ed the “Chris­t­ian”: The Com­mu­nist Par­ty said that Pan Yiyuan “engaged in under­ground church activ­i­ties,” and yet you said no.  Are you even more left­ist than the Com­mu­nist Par­ty or have even more knowl­edge about the inside sto­ry?  Then I would ask you to “reveal” the oth­er fac­tors behind the Pan Yiyuan case!”

     

    Mr. Jia Qin­gling saw that the atmos­phere had changed and said: “You do not need to argu­ment among your­selves.  I will take care of this case as soon as I return to Chi­na.”

     

    After I was released, I saw the let­ter that Mr. Li Shang­da wrote to the great uncle.  The let­ter said: “Jia Qin­gling car­ried out his promise.  On the 19th (mean­ing the 19th of Decem­ber in 1994), he returned to Fuzhou and the release was made on the 20th (the pre­cise date was the 21st).”  Mr. Li also said, he had already noti­fied his daugh­ter to wire 2,000 ren­min­bi to help in my recov­ery.

     

    Mr. Li Shang­da was not a Chris­t­ian and had nev­er met me.  Yet God won­drous­ly used him to accom­plish His will dur­ing my suf­fer­ing.

     

    I also hon­est­ly con­fessed times when I did not act at all like a Chris­t­ian while in prison, which occurred on three occa­sions.

     

    Dur­ing the first occa­sion, the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry that had no basis in order to sup­port their expla­na­tion that there was “evi­dence” for my crime.  They intend­ed to force me to con­fess.  I then fol­lowed their log­ic and fab­ri­cat­ed an even more ridicu­lous sto­ry.  As the fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry involved a broth­er who had went to the Unit­ed States, the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials used the occa­sion that the broth­er went to vis­it fam­i­ly to try to cre­ate divi­sions between us.  This good broth­er who had spent 15 years in prison for the Lord right away saw through their scheme.  Not only did he not fall into their trap, he even dis­closed their lies. 

     

    Dur­ing the sec­ond occa­sion, they obtained my diary when they raid­ed my home.  They demand­ed to know what the Ara­bic numer­als in the diary meant.  I hon­est­ly told them.  The offi­cer who record­ed the state­ments cried: “lies.”  When he saw his atti­tude, I smiled and changed my state­ments: “Oh, those are the secret codes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between me and Taiwan’s Jiang Jing­guo.”  The sec­tion chief named Lu who inter­ro­gat­ed me knew that I was mere­ly mak­ing fun of that stu­pid col­league who only knew how scare the com­mon civil­ians.  He angri­ly said: “Don’t say any­more, don’t say any­more.”

     

    Dur­ing the third occa­sion, which was also the last inter­ro­ga­tion, the sec­tion chief named Lu said to me: “Pan Yiyuan, we treat you well and yet you think we’re eas­i­ly abused.  You refused to tell us any­thing.  In real­i­ty, all I have to do is to deprive you of sleep for three days and three nights, and then you will tell me every­thing.”  (He referred to the tor­ture method known as “fatigue bom­bard­ment.”)

     

    I said: “This is a great method.  After this method, there would be no one who could with­stand the pres­sure.  Every polit­i­cal move­ment has used this good method, forc­ing the pris­on­er to say what­ev­er you want him to say.  I don’t need three days and three nights.  One day and one night will be suf­fi­cient.  How­ev­er, what I say will not be up to you.”

     

    Sec­tion Chief Lu’s face didn’t look too well.  There were even sounds that resem­ble the grind­ing of teeth.  After a long while, he sud­den­ly said: Call your fam­i­ly tomor­row to take you home.  One of his entourage (prob­a­bly a dri­ver) said with a smil­ing face: “You’re going to be allowed to go home for Christ­mas.”  I replied: “I don’t have the habit of cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas, but it will do.”

     

    That day was the 20th of Decem­ber, 1994, dur­ing the after­noon of the day pri­or to my release.

     

    After I had sent the let­ter with the above con­tents to Epa­phras, I wait­ed dai­ly for his lec­tur­ing.  How­ev­er, he did not lec­ture, nor did he crit­i­cize.  He only pro­vid­ed the love and com­fort that were in Christ. 

     

    When I entered the prison, I was resolved to be like Epa­phras: no response, no reply, and no defense.  In actu­al­i­ty, I only upheld the prin­ci­ple for three months, and then I changed.  The rea­son is that I had learned his appear­ance but I did not learn his obe­di­ence and faith­ful­ness to the Lord as well as his kind­ness.  The result was that I did not even tru­ly learned his out­ward appear­ance. 

     

    In order to fur­ther my edu­ca­tion (?), the pub­lic secu­ri­ty organ con­tin­u­ous­ly with­held my retire­ment pen­sion for two years and one month.  The with­hold­ing con­tin­ued until my unit’s leader inter­vened on my behalf.  How­ev­er, the pen­sion that had been with­held was nev­er com­pen­sat­ed.  The “bail peri­od” also con­tin­ued for many years.  Chi­nese law clear­ly stip­u­lat­ed that if there was no indict­ment, there could be no with­hold­ing of income.  In addi­tion, the “bail peri­od” could not exceed a peri­od of one year.  This is what the Chi­nese often say: “If I say it’s all right, even if it’s not all right, it will still be all right; how­ev­er, if I say it’s not all right, even if it’s all right, it will still not be all right.”

     

    In Sep­tem­ber 2001, I final­ly, for the first time and also for the last time, met Epa­phras, whom I have thought about for a long time.  Epa­phras was not artic­u­late.  He stut­tered when spoke.  He was even less artic­u­late than me, who had expe­ri­enced stroke on four occa­sions.  How­ev­er, he unhesi­tat­ing­ly and brave­ly moved for­ward for the glo­ry of the Lord.  “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high call­ing of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philip­pi­ans 3:14)

     

    Today, Epa­phras is now in the Lord’s embrace.  The Lord has wiped away all of his tears.  I am also rais­ing my head to watch my Lord, that on the day that will not be long in com­ing, he will receive me to his side and wipe away all of my tears.

     

    Feb­ru­ary 2, 2003

     

    Pan Yiyuan     Main­land Chi­nese Chris­t­ian

     

     

    The Days Spent with the Elder­ly Broth­er Wu Weizun

     

    Liu Wanx­ing

     

    I lived very close to the Elder­ly Broth­er Wu Weizun.  The dis­tance between our res­i­dences could be cov­ered in 10 min­utes on a bicy­cle.  Although I had helped him with some things, because he left us sud­den­ly, what remain in my heart are loss­es and guilt.  I regret that there were too many things that I should have done for him but have in fact done too lit­tle.  If he was res­ur­rect­ed and lived in the same place, I would go see him once each day to chat with him so as to alle­vi­ate his lone­li­ness.  It would have been just as well if I just went to help him pre­pare some coal and repair his bicy­cle.

     

    Most of what I have said to the broth­ers and sis­ters who live far away were things that I have seen with my own eyes and what I have heard from him.  I will not speak on things that he had already writ­ten in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy.  I main­tain the atti­tude of one who is count­ing the trea­sures in his home, not want­i­ng to miss one item.  I am will­ing to present all of these things before the entire body of Christ.

     

    Before 1987 the broth­ers and sis­ters in China’s Yinchuan City did not even know that there was a war­rior who had been fight­ing for the Lord in our midst.  How did we come to know him?  It was because the prison cadre (Yinchu Prison was also called the Wind Gen­er­a­tor Fac­to­ry because it pro­duced elec­tri­cal gen­er­a­tors) who was in charge of Broth­er Wu Weizun (here­by referred to as Broth­er Wu) came to our church (the present-day Yinchuan TSPM Church) to intro­duce him.  “Our fac­to­ry has recent­ly released a pris­on­er who has com­plet­ed his sen­tence.  He is also advanced in age.  He does not want to return to his for­mer home.  He also shares your faith.  You should go try to con­vince him to return to his home.”  This was how we came to know Broth­er Wu.

     

    Through the com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in the body and the essays that Broth­er Wu had writ­ten in the Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ, he became known by more and more mem­bers of the body.  There is a faith­ful ser­vant of the Lord in China’s Yinchuan city.  His expe­ri­ence on the path to the cross was extra­or­di­nary.

     

    Broth­er Wu did not write again for a long time after he com­plet­ed his last essay for the Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.  After he wrote his last let­ter home on Novem­ber 30, 2002 (he gave a copy and a copy to my old­est son, who had often vis­it­ed his Uncle Wu dur­ing this past year), in a brief 20 days, the Lord took him home.  Dur­ing the time that he stopped writ­ing the essays, he said to me on numer­ous occa­sions: “The Lord has not moved me to write any­thing in recent days.  With­out his inspi­ra­tion, I can write noth­ing.  The Lord has moved me to find all the essays I wrote in the past and arrange them in prepa­ra­tion for sys­tem­at­ic copy­ing.”

     

    This “sys­tem­at­ic and com­plete” copy­ing effort, which is also the last copy­ing work, gave him tremen­dous pres­sure.  He divid­ed the 166 essays into three cat­e­gories: (A) before and after his prison release; (B) Bib­li­cal truths (two vol­umes); and © the church and the polit­i­cal author­i­ty (two vol­umes), and made five found­ed books.  No more than 20 copies were made at any time (each copy weighed 2.4 kilo­gram).  His house did not have enough space for more copies.  He said: “The house is filled with them.  May the Lord ensure that the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials would not come.  If they did, the loss will be great.  Each set of 20 copies val­ues at 7,000 RMB.” 

     

    Dur­ing the time that he was engaged in the work, one evening after rain­fall, when there was no pedes­tri­an on the road, he used his bicy­cle to car­ry the copied essays home.  When he was not too far from home, his two legs slid into the mud in the ditch on the side of the road and he became stuck.  With no assis­tance, he would have to wait until the next morn­ing.  The Lord sent his neigh­bors to pull him out.  For­tu­nate­ly the bicy­cle did not slide into the ditch.  Broth­er Wu had planned to leave the house ear­ly to make copies so that he could return home ear­ly.  How­ev­er, because the road was dif­fi­cult to tra­verse after the rain and because the print­ing press had made some errors, he was delayed in his return home.  How­ev­er, pro­tec­tion came with dan­ger.

     

    The envelopes that Broth­er Wu used were all self-made.  His envelopes were tru­ly cen­tered.  Even the cor­ners were sym­met­ri­cal.  I told him not to waste his time on this work.  One could still send let­ters in slight­ly off-cen­tered envelopes.  He said: “Indeed, I do things slow­ly.”  I work fast, but with­out the cen­tered­ness that Broth­er Wu has demon­strat­ed.  Broth­er Wu was just this type of per­son.  Whether as a per­son or as a work­er, every­thing for him had to be done cor­rect­ly and neat­ly.  He would nev­er take any­thing light­ly.  He always tried to be thrifty.  I now remem­ber that when I first knew him, he would sharp­en his already worn pen­cil head over and over again to write the essays.  Lat­er, he became increas­ing­ly occu­pied with reply­ing to oth­ers’ cor­re­spon­dence to him, which took a lot of time.  How­ev­er, the pro­vi­sions made by the body also became increas­ing­ly abun­dant, so that he ceased pro­duc­ing his own envelopes.

     

    Broth­er Wu was as inno­cent and hon­est as a child – there was no decep­tion in him.  After his cor­re­spon­dence list was first tak­en by those peo­ple, he could not con­tin­ue the cor­re­spon­dence, so he just start­ed to accu­mu­late the list again.  Some­one told him to put such a piece of page in a place that oth­er peo­ple would not be will­ing to exam­ine.  He respond­ed by plac­ing it in a stack of old news­pa­pers, which was tru­ly secure.  There was one time when he was writ­ing let­ters.  The cor­re­spon­dence list was on the table.  Some­one yelled out­side the door.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the per­sons who walked in were not fel­low Chris­tians but those peo­ple (editor’s note: pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials).  They forced their way into the house and once again took away the cor­re­spon­dence list.  Some peo­ple lat­er told him that when encoun­ter­ing sim­i­lar inci­dents in the future, you ought to secure the cor­re­spon­dence list and the let­ters before open­ing the door.  On anoth­er day, those peo­ple came again.  They placed the con­fis­cat­ed books on Broth­er Wu’s desk.  Sud­den­ly, those peo­ple went into the court­yard.  Tak­ing advan­tage of this oppor­tu­ni­ty, Broth­er Wu placed a Bible he was read­ing in the draw­er.  This time, it worked.  He was able to use crafti­ness to keep a Bible.  Lat­er, Broth­er Wu was able to learn some skills from his loss­es, includ­ing hid­ing those eas­i­ly con­fis­cat­ed mate­ri­als behind the stacks of dis­or­ga­nized heaps.  It turns out that pri­or to these inci­dents Broth­er Wu nev­er hid any­thing, and those peo­ple under­stood his ways.

     

    If you have read his essays in the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of the Lord,” par­tic­u­lar­ly those crit­i­cisms of the false prophets, you will notice the sharp­ness of his pen and the com­pre­hen­sive­ness of his cri­tique, such that there was no place for the false prophet to hide.  Yet, if you then go vis­it the author of those essays, you would not believe that these harsh essays were writ­ten by this per­son, who car­ried a thin and sal­low coun­te­nance, wore a pair of glass­es and a set of cloth­ing that was not prop­er­ly fit­ted.  The cloth­ing even had patch­es.  No one would believe that these essays came from his pens.

     

    There is a phe­nom­e­non that we observed in the print­ed ver­sions of Broth­er Wu’s essays, which was that his essays were always writ­ten on one full page.  Why the coin­ci­dence?  This was not a coin­ci­dence; rather, it was the result of his care­ful effort to reduce expen­di­tures.  After he com­plet­ed the arti­cles, he would count the num­ber of words, then cal­cu­late the num­ber of lines need­ed, how many words were on each line, and how large should the font for each word be.  Then he would place these arti­cles onto the pages.  He shared with me one coin­ci­dence.  One time, as he was about to copy his com­plet­ed essays using the Fang­songti font (Note: A Chi­nese print font), he felt that there was one para­graph that was unsat­is­fac­to­ry and decid­ed to rewrite the sec­tion.  After he com­plet­ed the rewrite, he count­ed the num­ber of words.  What a coin­ci­dence!  The num­ber of words after the rewrite was the same as the pre­vi­ous count.  There was no need to make the cal­cu­la­tions about the num­ber of lines and the num­ber of pages.  He could imme­di­ate­ly begin the print work.  Why did Broth­er Wu want to count?  The rea­son is that the unit of cal­cu­la­tion in the print­ing indus­try is the sur­face of the page.  Regard­less of the num­ber of lines or the num­ber of words, even if the page con­tains only one-half line of words, the cost will still be cal­cu­lat­ed by page.  Broth­er Wu’s effort was intend­ed to reduce expen­di­tures.

     

    Broth­er Wu was very afraid of the cold.  Dur­ing the autumn days, when oth­er Chris­tians vis­it­ed him, they would see that he had already put on the cot­ton hat and that the ear cov­er­ings attached to the hat would also have been pulled down.  His face was also wrapped up by the hat.  He looked like some­one who had just returned from the snowy moun­tains.  How­ev­er, his stove for keep­ing warm was always turned over sev­en to eight days after oth­ers have already turned on theirs.  This was anoth­er one of his acts of thrifti­ness.  I believe that the rea­sons that Broth­er Wu was so fear­ful of the cold were his fast­ing and the fact that he had caught cold while in prison (in Tian­jin). 

     

    We saw that the sin­gle bed used by Broth­er Wu was very nar­row.  When a per­son sleeps on it, he could not turn around.  If he tried, he would have fall­en onto the floor.  Broth­er Wu said: “This was the size that I had espe­cial­ly request­ed.  When I sleep, my body and my head do not turn.  This abil­i­ty was trained dur­ing the time that I was in prison.”  When a num­ber peo­ple are on top of a pit, it would be impos­si­ble for any­one to turn or move.  You have to remain sta­tion­ary like a pup­pet.

     

    Broth­er Wu’s per­spec­tive on home secu­ri­ty was the antithe­sis of the per­spec­tive held by mankind.  No one has seen locks on his doors.  When he was inside the house, he would lock the doors from the inside.  When he left the house on errands, he would nev­er lock the door to the yard.  He only closed the door to the house.  A door hangar would be on the bed­room door with the note “please leave a mes­sage.”  Vis­i­tors could also wait for him in the house.  Broth­er Wu adopt­ed his habit out of fear that broth­ers and sis­ters who were vis­it­ing from afar would not be able to rest in the house if they saw the locked door.  He did this out of con­sid­er­a­tion for the broth­ers and sis­ters.  He nev­er lost any­thing.  At times, when a neigh­bor­hood child saw vis­i­tors to his house, the child would enter the house and tell the guests: “Grand­pa Wu went out.”  He would leave after giv­ing the expla­na­tion.

     

    Broth­er Wu often said: “The work that the Lord gave me was to wit­ness like an ordi­nary Chris­t­ian.”  It seemed sim­ple and ordi­nary when first hear­ing these words.  How­ev­er, at that time, his work actu­al­ly led him to prison and was tor­tured, near­ly to the point of death.  The Brother’s courage to insist on his refusal to wor­ship the idol (the stat­ue of Mao) has result­ed in him suf­fer­ing unknown num­ber of acts of tor­ture.  In order to uphold the tes­ti­mo­ny of say­ing grace before meals, we can hard­ly know how many times Broth­er Wu had to endure the lack of meals.  In addi­tion to deny­ing him food, the prison author­i­ties even forced him to con­duct the same amount of labor as the oth­er pris­on­ers, such that the com­bi­na­tion of hunger and fatigue had led him to fall into comas.  At times, they would refuse to give him food so that he was on the edge of starv­ing to death (human beings can die at any time if denied food and drinks for sev­en days).  They then force fed him, lead­ing him to vom­it after the forced feed­ing.  The prison police then ordered Broth­er Wu to eat the things he had vom­it­ed, and he com­plied.  Broth­er Wu was this kind of per­son.  In order to obey the Lord’s com­mands, he was unafraid of pay­ing any price.  He would not con­cede the slight­est to sin.

     

    Once, I asked Broth­er Wu: “What was the one tor­ture you were least will­ing to face before you were impris­oned?”  He said: “I least want­ed to face hunger.  Yet, the result was just that.  After I was impris­oned, they used hunger to tor­ture my will and tried to cause me to sur­ren­der.”  I remem­ber Broth­er Wu had told me that for three years he had used sub­stan­dard mel­ons and veg­eta­bles instead of reg­u­lar food to sat­is­fy his hunger.  He used his own rice and flour to exchange for coarse foods so that he could get more foods so as to allow his stom­ach to get a sense of full­ness.  He was a guy who could eat a lot.  He was also not finicky (he didn’t care too much for the taste, as long as the food filled him).  The food that he ate after he was released remained food that ordi­nary peo­ple could not take in.  He would cook the cere­al, veg­etable, eggs, and meat sep­a­rate­ly.  Then he would mix them togeth­er in a large basin.  After the food cooled, he would divide them into por­tions.  Each por­tion would be con­sumed at each meal.  Since he fast­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, it was not appro­pri­ate for him to be too full.  There­fore, he would stop eat­ing after his stom­ach had a sense of full­ness.  When he want­ed to eat again, he would then eat anoth­er por­tion.  He took his food by days and not by meals.  He would stop eat­ing and drink­ing after 24 hours.  He nev­er ate hot food.  Even dur­ing win­ter he ate cold food.  This habit was also devel­oped dur­ing his time in prison.

     

    Broth­er Wu had told us about the sto­ry of the large tiger and the small tiger.  An expe­ri­enced pub­lic secu­ri­ty cadre once said to this uncom­pro­mis­ing man: “You are indeed like a new­ly-born calf that is not afraid of the tiger.  Do you know how many pas­tors and preach­ers had sur­ren­dered dur­ing my watch?  Why don’t you think about it.”  (The pub­lic secu­ri­ty cadre meant that he had means to make peo­ple fall on their knees.)  Broth­er Wu said: “After that pub­lic secu­ri­ty cadre fin­ished his words, God told me the sto­ry of the large tiger and the small tiger.”  God said: “I am the large tiger and the regime is the small tiger.  When the require­ments of the small tiger do not dis­obey the large tiger, you can com­ply with both the large tiger and the small tiger.  When the small tiger’s require­ments con­tra­dict the require­ments of the large tiger, you must adhere to the large tiger and not the small tiger.”  The Bible was said that it is right to obey God and not man.  Through­out the Chi­nese and non-Chi­nese his­to­ries, on the many occa­sions when Chris­tians were per­se­cut­ed, shed blood, and sac­ri­ficed their lives, the events were exact­ly caused by the Chris­tians’ deci­sion to obey God and not man.

     

    In his deal­ings with the broth­ers and the sis­ters, Broth­er Wu had also erect­ed great stan­dards of right and wrong.  He did not always get along with peo­ple.  He had heard that a cer­tain “sis­ter” had become a mem­ber of the East­ern Light­en­ing.  He imme­di­ate­ly looked for that “sis­ter” to inquire about the rumor.  That “sis­ter” lied that oth­ers had false­ly accused her.  Broth­er Wu believed her.  Lat­er, that woman who had joined the East­ern Light­en­ing got anoth­er sis­ter to fall into the trap of the East­ern Light­en­ing.  The oth­er sis­ter suf­fered as a result.  For­tu­nate­ly, she escaped.  This sis­ter told Broth­er Wu the truths.  The woman who joined the East­ern Light­en­ing took the ini­tia­tive to vis­it Broth­er Wu.  How­ev­er, when Broth­er Wu saw her, he said: “Go.  From now on, I will no longer receive you.”  There was anoth­er Broth­er Pan from the south.  He was entrust­ed by the Lord to print Bibles dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  He was some­one who had already giv­en lit­tle thought to life and death (dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, death was cer­tain for any­one who was caught print­ing the Bible).  Although he had nev­er met Broth­er Wu, they were broth­ers in Christ who were kin­dred spir­its.  The day that Broth­er Pan was impris­oned final­ly came.  His stay in prison was a few days shy of a year.  Broth­er Wu heard that Broth­er Pan was released after only a year of impris­on­ment.  He thought some­thing was fishy, so he direct­ly wrote to Broth­er Pan: “Why is it that your time in prison was so short?  Did you coop­er­ate with the author­i­ties?”  Because of Broth­er Wu’s frank­ness and lack of pre­ten­tious­ness, Broth­er Pan knew that he was a good broth­er.

     

    Broth­er Wu’s replies to cor­re­spon­dences from oth­er broth­ers and sis­ters were a great deal of work.  Many broth­ers and sis­ters from afar want­ed to cor­re­spond with him and they could only use let­ters to do so.  No mat­ter how busy he was, as long as broth­ers and sis­ters vis­it­ed him, he would imme­di­ate­ly set aside the tasks in his hands, tell you to sit on his bed, move a square stool to sit oppo­site you, and qui­et­ly lis­tened to you speak.  He would nev­er dis­rupt some­one else’s talks.  After the oth­er per­son had fin­ished what they want­ed to say, then he would say what he should say, so that the oth­ers might derive some ben­e­fits from the exchanges.  On sep­a­rate occa­sions, there were times when guests invit­ed Broth­er Wu to pray for them.  You can tell that Broth­er Wu was not an elo­quent man.  He was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp.  He was unable to speak his words with­out paus­es.  Once you read his essays, then lis­ten to his prayers, you may be mis­tak­en that they were not from the same Broth­er Wu.  After the guests depart­ed, and he would see them out, smiled and waved at them.  He didn’t imme­di­ate­ly turn around to shut the door.  He would return to the door only after the guests had gone a dis­tance from his home.  The broth­ers and the sis­ters were his guests.  There were times when one set of guests had yet to leave that anoth­er set of guests arrived.

     

    Dur­ing the 15 years between his release from prison and the day he was raised to Heav­en, Broth­er Wu only rode two bicy­cles.  The first one was a large mod­el 28 bicy­cle.  When I first met him, he was rid­ing this old bike.  He rode it until the bike could no longer be repaired.  Then he sold it to the man who was col­lect­ing junks.  Broth­er Wu looked at his bro­ken bike and said to me: “Ah, it has accom­pa­nied me for many years.  I will miss it.  We’ve devel­oped feel­ings for each oth­er.”  I replied: “I also have this strange feel­ing.”  The sec­ond bicy­cle he rode was a fake Ever­last­ing brand mod­el 26 bicy­cle.  Since he did not ride it for very long, the metal­lic parts were all rust­ed.  When he was tak­en to Heav­en, his bicy­cle remained in the cus­tom­ary place, as if it was still wait­ing for its mas­ter to ride it to the post office for mail deliv­er­ies, to the print­ing plant, to the train sta­tion, to the bank, and to the gen­er­a­tor plant, or the homes of broth­ers and sis­ters.  Ah!  This will no longer be.  “Bike, your mas­ter was too busy.  He had no time to wash your body.  There­fore, you are filled with mud and your appear­ance has com­plete­ly changed.  You had accom­pa­nied your mas­ter to crash into the elec­tri­cal wire poles on the side of the street dur­ing the nights.  You were also crashed by oth­er bikes, with you falling along with your mas­ter.  Your master’s leg was bruised and his fin­gers also bled.  Although the sit­u­a­tion was so seri­ous, you would nev­er have seen your mas­ter becom­ing angry with the oth­er par­ty.  The God of your mas­ter pro­tect­ed him; He also pro­tect­ed you.”

     

    As I think back, dur­ing the last year, Broth­er Wu was tru­ly unlike his old self.  When he rode the bicy­cle, he would uncon­trol­lably lean to the car path.  Dur­ing the last phase of his life, the speed with which he rode the bike also decreased.  Three years ago, he rode even faster than I did.

     

    By God’s grace, Broth­er Wu’s impor­tant belong­ings were recov­ered although they were lost on two occa­sions.  He had a strange habit.  He loved to wrap his house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cer­tifi­cate, food rationing coupons, and var­i­ous doc­u­ments and coupons in one pack­age.  He would car­ry the pack­age wher­ev­er he went.  I said to him: “It’s prob­a­bly not nec­es­sary to car­ry these things around all the time.”  He said: “You can nev­er be sure when they may become use­ful.”  He nev­er changed this habit.  In fact, it is pre­cise­ly because the house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let was in his pack­age that those who found the pack­age were able to return it to him.  The first time he lost the pack­age was when he went out to pur­chase a smok­ing pipe.  He left the pack­age at the door to the shop.  Since his pack­age did not have an attrac­tive appear­ance, it did not raise many people’s eye­brows.  In fact, some peo­ple might have mis­tak­en the pack­age to be some­thing left by the beg­gars.  For this rea­son, after a day and a night, no one picked it up.  The next day, a female labor­er who was clean­ing the streets were pre­pared to dump this pack­age into the trash can along with the oth­er pieces of trash.  How­ev­er, she felt its weight­i­ness on her hands.  When she opened the pack­age, she dis­cov­ered doc­u­men­ta­tions such as the house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let.  There­fore, she found him through the house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let.  When he lost these doc­u­men­ta­tions and coupons, he was very anx­ious, so he prayed to the Lord and felt peace in his heart.  There­fore, the female labor­er was able to find her on the next day.  The sec­ond time he lost the pack­age occurred when he was vis­it­ing me.  He had expect­ed to say a few words and leave.  How­ev­er, it took a lit­tle longer time that he had expect­ed.  When he went down­stairs, he did not see the pack­age.  This time, the pack­age was not lost; it was stolen.  Chris­tians should not be sus­pi­cious of oth­ers.  How­ev­er, based on my cal­cu­la­tion, I still went down to the trash sta­tion ear­ly every morn­ing to check whether the pack­age was there.  I con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the thief would throw the pack­age into the trash heap from the top floors down to the bot­tom floor.  How­ev­er, noth­ing was found for three con­sec­u­tive days.  On the fourth day, I woke up late and the trash had been tak­en away.  I thought to myself, this is bad.  I became anx­ious.  Thanks the Lord, He again pro­vid­ed.  The thiefs made up a lie to con­ceal their action.  They found Broth­er Wu through the gen­er­a­tor plant.  Broth­er Wu still thanked him by giv­ing them gifts.

     

    Before his release from prison, Broth­er Wu had served as an instruc­tor in the prison school.  Among his belong­ings that were left behind was a leather-bound­ed note­book.  When you open it, it con­tained the rewards that Broth­er Wu had received.  On the top it was writ­ten: Wu Weizun in 1985 was rat­ed a good instruc­tor in the cul­tur­al and tech­no­log­i­cal school.  On the bot­tom of the page was print­ed the Edu­ca­tion Sec­tion of the Ningx­ia Hui Autonomous Region Prison.  The stamp was round.  The prison cadres knew that he was sec­ondary school instruc­tor.  Once, a cadre went to him to ask that he tutor his daugh­ter on third-year high school math­e­mat­ics and physics because she had failed in her uni­ver­si­ty exam­i­na­tion.  Broth­er Wu expressed hes­i­tan­cy (because he was busy).  The cadre said: “Elder Wu, I came today to beg you, not to order you.”  When Broth­er Wu heard that the cadre had come to beg him, he read­i­ly agreed.  Broth­er Wu first reviewed the mate­ri­als.  Lat­er, he taught her.  The next year, Broth­er Wu said to me: “That girl is very bright.  She has suc­cess­ful­ly passed the uni­ver­si­ty exam­i­na­tion.”

     

    It is impos­si­ble, even with thou­sands of words and expres­sions, to ful­ly describe any aspect of our rev­er­ent Broth­er Wu’s spir­i­tu­al life.  We invite the broth­ers and sis­ters out­side Chi­na to read the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of this spir­i­tu­al giant and the 166 top­i­cal essays that he wrote.  Then, we will know a lit­tle more about what it means to wit­ness for the Lord, what is spir­i­tu­al war­fare, what is the watch­er, what is a good instruc­tor and good friend, what it means to car­ry the Cross to fol­low the Lord, what is obe­di­ence, what is to love one’s broth­ers, and what it means to defend the truth.

     

    He is a mod­el wor­thy of our emu­la­tion.  He was a war­rior in the spir­i­tu­al war.  He was a good teacher and a fine friend.  He was an alert watch­er.  When­ev­er con­fu­sion and traps appeared, he always wrote to sound the bell for alert­ing the flock of sheep so that they would not enter into con­fu­sion.  He even point­ed out the keys to mys­ter­ies for Taiwan’s Ko Shiyuan and America’s Bil­ly Gra­ham.  Even more impor­tant­ly, he vehe­ment­ly hat­ed the false prophets in today’s Chi­na because they dare to speak false­ly about the bib­li­cal truth in order to adapt to the polit­i­cal require­ments.  He is a con­tem­po­rary spir­i­tu­al giant (I don’t think that we have gone over­board in giv­ing him this title).  The effects of his cor­re­spon­dences may become even more man­i­fest­ed in the future. 

     

    Our beloved Broth­er Wu Weizun has gone to the Lord’s place.  We are not sad­dened by this fact because we hope that we will be reunit­ed before the Lord.  We respect him and we miss him.

     

    Last­ly, let us con­clude with the two sen­tences that Broth­er Wu often said to the broth­ers and sis­ters.

     

    First sen­tence: “It is the Lord’s grace that has sus­tained me.  Only by His grace am I able to wit­ness in the way that He has instruct­ed me.”

     

    Sec­ond sen­tence: “With­out the Lord’ touch, I can write noth­ing.”

     

    Jan­u­ary 2, 2003

     

     

    [1] Translator’s note: Soon after its vic­to­ry over the Nation­al­ist gov­ern­ment, the com­mu­nist regime estab­lished “mass orga­ni­za­tions” to over­see the activ­i­ties of the reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties.  The Protes­tant mass orga­ni­za­tion was the Three-Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment (TSPM), head­ed by Wu Yao­zong.  The “three self” stands for self sup­port­ing, self per­pet­u­at­ing, and self gov­ern­ing.  The uni­fy­ing theme is that the Church in Chi­na should have no polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships with their coun­ter­parts out­side Chi­na.

    CHINA’S EPAPHRAS

    Wu Weizun, Ser­vant of the Lord

     

    1. “Zun” was orig­i­nal­ly the Chi­nese char­ac­ter for respect with a “man” char­ac­ter as the rad­i­cal.  The orig­i­nal char­ac­ter is pro­nounced in the third tone.  僔

    How­ev­er, because the actu­al char­ac­ter can­not be dis­played on com­put­er, this essay will use the Chi­nese char­ac­ter for respect in its place.)

     

    By Xiao Ruozhi

     

    Intro­duc­tion

     

    It was Bei­jing in 1900.  The Box­er Rebel­lion had just begun.  The Empress Dowa­ger Cixi,  Prince Duan Zheng, and Zai Yi insti­gat­ed the Box­ers to attack var­i­ous for­eign mis­sions.  They also called the Gan­su Gov­er­nor Dong Fux­i­ang to assist. Yuan Chang from Tonglu in Zhe­jiang province appealed on two con­sec­u­tive occa­sions.  He strong­ly advo­cat­ed against attacks on the for­eign mis­sions out of fear that they would pro­voke retal­i­a­tion.  At the Impe­r­i­al Coun­cil, Yuan   once again strong­ly advo­cat­ed, “Gang pow­er can­not be relied upon; for­eign inter­fer­ence can­not be risked.” “Killing for­eign envoys will vio­late pub­lic laws.”  He argued that the harm would be irrepara­ble if such actions were tak­en.

     

    He spoke with assur­ance and fer­vor; his voice thun­der­ing through­out the palace.  Both Min­is­ter of War Xu Yongyi and Min­is­ter of Pun­ish­ment Xu Jingcheng sup­port­ed Yuan’s posi­tion.  The Empress Dow­nag­er was dis­pleased and left the coun­cil.  Soon the Allied forces of the eight for­eign coun­tries occu­pied the artillery for­ti­fi­ca­tions at Tian­jin and moved toward Bei­jing.  Yuan and Xu Jingcheng knelt in front of the palace with their appeals, tear­ful­ly plead­ing for the exe­cu­tion of the indi­vid­u­als who caused the con­flicts, so as to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion. Zai Yi was infu­ri­at­ed.  He arrest­ed indi­vid­u­als includ­ingYuan Chang, Xu Jingcheng, and Xu Yongyi.  On the Fourth of July, Yuan Chang and Xu Jingcheng were exe­cut­ed at the gate of the open-air mar­ket.

     

    The sit­u­a­tion devel­oped accord­ing to pre­dic­tions made by Yuan Chang and his allies.  On the 20th of July, the Allied Forces of the eight for­eign coun­tries com­menced an attack on Bei­jing.  On the 22nd of July, Cixi and Guangxu, the Manchu Emper­or,  left west­ward for Xian.  In Decem­ber of that year, the Allied Forces of the eight for­eign coun­tries left Bei­jing and the throne issued an edict order­ing the restora­tion of Yuan Chang to his offi­cial posi­tion.  In 1909. the first year of the Emper­or Xuan­tong, the throne bestowed upon Yuan Chang the post-mortem hon­or of the “Lord of Loy­al­ty” and estab­lished the “Shrine of the Three Loyalists”on the South Side of Mount  Gusan by West Lake, to pay respect to the mar­tyred Yuan Chang, Xu Jingcheng, and Xu Yongyi.

     

    On the 21st of Decem­ber 2002, over 100 years lat­er, in Ningx­ia, a saint by the name of  Epaphras left this world in peace in a dilap­i­dat­ed room out­side the walls of the Yinchuan Prison.  This Chi­nese Epa­phras was the grand­son of the “loy­al Yuan Chang” (in the words of Wang Ming­dao).

     

     

    Grace and Call­ing

     

    After Yuan Chang met his end, his fam­i­ly quick­ly moved south­ward from Bei­jing and set­tled in Songjiang, which is with­in Shanghai’s prox­im­i­ty.  At the time, sev­er­al female Amer­i­can Wes­leyan mis­sion­ar­ies had already begun to spread the Lord’s gospel in Songjiang by the estab­lish­ment of a school.  When she was 12 years old, Yuan Chang’s daugh­ter, Yuan Jilan, (1889 – 1967), enrolled in this small girls’ school (the pre­de­ces­sor to the Muwei Girls’ School).  God’s sav­ing grace was thus bestowed upon Yuan Chang’s descen­dants.

     

    Accord­ing to reports, before his death, Yuan Chang had on sev­er­al occa­sions secret­ly advised for­eign res­i­dents (pri­mar­i­ly mis­sion­ar­ies) who lived in Bei­jing to leave the city, there­by reduc­ing many casu­al­ties and loss­es.  Many mis­sion­ar­ies were very grate­ful to Yuan Chang.  They also knew that Yuan Jilan was Yuan Chang’s daugh­ter.  These mis­sion­ar­ies expend­ed con­sid­er­able ener­gy on the girls of the school.  The mis­sion­ar­ies taught them to under­stand bib­li­cal truths, know the true God, and rely on Jesus Christ as the Sav­ior.  They also nur­tured them to pos­sess an excel­lent knowl­edge and moral­i­ty base.  In this kind of envi­ron­ment in her teenage years,  Jilan received Jesus Christ as her Lord and Sav­ior.

     

    When she was 19 years old, Jilan mar­ried into the Wu fam­i­ly in Dongyang, Zhe­jiang province. She raised six chil­dren (aside from three who died as infants).  Jilan gave her youngest son, Wu Weizun, born in April 1926, a bib­li­cal name “Epa­phras.” 

     

    Weizun grew up in a church envi­ron­ment.  It was there­fore nat­ur­al that he under­stood many bib­li­cal truths, was famil­iar with bib­li­cal sto­ries, and was well able to sing many hymns.  When the teach­ers would ask in class, “Who believes in Jesus?” lit­tle Weizun would raise his right hand and say, “I believe in Jesus!”

     

    How­ev­er, he was not reborn as a child.  After enter­ing the fifth grade, lit­tle Weizun became rebel­lious.  He began to doubt God, accu­mu­lat­ing sev­er­al hun­dred ques­tions in his mind.  At the time of the anti-Japan­ese war Lit­tle Weizun tast­ed for the first time the suf­fer­ings of this world wan­der­ing about with his fam­i­ly.  He com­plained to God, “Why cre­ate man?  You cre­at­ed him and allowed him to sin.  Then you pun­ish us.”  Lat­er, his moth­er pur­chased the new­ly pub­lished Streams in the Desert for him, let­ting him read a bib­li­cal pas­sage and a chap­ter each morn­ing.

     

    One day in May 1941, the Holy Spir­it opened Weizun’s heart through the Streams in the Desert.  He knelt in front of his bed and prayed, “O God, for­give my pride and fool­ish­ness; I was wrong.   I will no longer ask sev­er­al hun­dred ques­tions; I com­mit them all into your hands.  It is not that I don’t want to under­stand, but I want to see what you want me to under­stand at this time.  May your light shine upon me, one step at a time so that I might under­stand.  First, I now believe and depend on you.  You will not be wrong.  Your word – the Bible – will not be wrong.  O God, from this day for­ward, you are my father; I am your child.  I accept Jesus as my Sav­ior.  I admit that I am a sin­ner.  I ask the Lord to cleanse all my sins with his pre­cious blood.”  He was no longer so filled with pride.  Since that day, Wu Weizun received a new life in the Lord.

     

     

     

    After Weizun expe­ri­enced a rebirth, God cul­ti­vat­ed him in all areas of life.  When he grad­u­at­ed from the mid­dle school and was about to enter senior high school, God allowed him to learn the val­ue of not telling lies and the les­son of hold­ing stead­fast­ly to bib­li­cal truths.  These exer­cis­es paved the foun­da­tion for his lat­er min­istries.

     

    In Jan­u­ary 1945, Weizun attend­ed senior high school in the Xis­han region of Zhe­jiang province.  Dur­ing the win­ter break, he read books, con­duct­ed spir­i­tu­al devo­tions, and med­i­tat­ed in the small hill in the back of the school.  He thought about how the Lord Jesus Christ, despite the fact that he pos­sessed the image of God, “made him­self noth­ing, tak­ing the very nature of a ser­vant, being made in human like­ness, in order to save him,.  Being found in appear­ance as a man, he hum­bled him­self and became obe­di­ent to death – even death on a cross!” (Philip­pi­ans 2:7–8). 

     

    He thought about how, ever since he was in the fifth or sixth grade, he had loved the nat­ur­al sci­ences and had deter­mined to study sci­ence and engi­neer­ing in col­lege to one day become an engi­neer or a sci­en­tist.  Yet, on that day, he asked him­self, “The Lord has already become hum­bled for me, what have I done for him?  The Lord has shed blood and giv­en his life for me, what have I sur­ren­dered for him?” 

     

    He once again med­i­tat­ed upon the Lord’s great love on the cross.  His heart was moved by grace.  He knelt down and said to the Lord, “O Lord, I give myself to you.  I no longer want to become an engi­neer or a sci­en­tist.  I am will­ing to forego the col­lege entrance exam­i­na­tion.  I will do what­ev­er you want me to do.  If you want me to become the preach­er I most dread­ed becom­ing, I will be will­ing.”  After his prayer, he knew that the Lord had already glad­ly accept­ed him.

     

    Before the senior high school’s grad­u­a­tion exam­i­na­tion, Weizun decid­ed that since he had already giv­en his life to the Lord, he would not par­tic­i­pate in the col­lege entrance exam­i­na­tion.  At that time, his love for the Lord has become more and more pas­sion­ate.  His night­ly prayers have also become longer in dura­tion.  It was as if the Lord was right there next to him, with a strong sense of inti­ma­cy, and he had so many things to say to the Lord.  In the begin­ning, he prayed until 10 p.m.  Lat­er, he would pray until mid­night or even ear­ly in the morn­ing, lay­ing down for a brief rest only after the roost­er had crowed.  Yet, he was in good spir­its and was not fatigued.  He con­tin­ued to attend class­es and stud­ied dur­ing the day­time.  Even­tu­al­ly, he would pray through­out the night until day­break (the sun ris­es ear­ly in June).  His class­mates were still deep in sleep, but his mind was very awake.  He would then qui­et­ly rise from his bed, take a small Bible to the win­dow, sit on a stool, open the Bible.  The Lord spoke to him through the scrip­ture:

     

    “Any­one who loves his father or moth­er more than me is not wor­thy of me; any­one who loves his son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me; and any­one who does not take his cross and fol­low me is not wor­thy of me.” (Matthew 10:37–38)

     

    “If any­one would come after me, he must deny him­self and take up his cross dai­ly and fol­low me.” (Luke 9:23)

     

     

     

    He under­stood clear­ly that the Lord was call­ing him to sur­ren­der him­self and car­ry the cross to fol­low the Lord each day for the rest of his life.  Oth­er­wise, he would not be wor­thy of being called the Lord’s dis­ci­ple.  This was the Lord’s life­time call­ing to him.  He said to the Lord, “O Lord, I am will­ing.”

     

    In the next few days, he thought even more calm­ly: “What if the Lord wants me to preach at the bor­der regions?  What if the Lord lets me preach, but no one is will­ing to lis­ten and no one cares?  What if I become so impov­er­ished as to have no food to eat and no clothes to wear?  What if the Lord allows many peo­ple to view me with con­tempt, to mis­un­der­stand me, to false­ly accuse me, or to be slan­dered?  What if the Lord per­mits me to become seri­ous­ly ill, to suf­fer from chron­ic pain, or to face death?…”   What­ev­er he could think of and what­ev­er he could pos­si­bly face, he con­sid­ered seri­ous­ly.  He weighed the mat­ter and repeat­ed to the Lord, “O Lord, I am will­ing to pay all costs to fol­low you until the end.”

     

    At the same time, he also noticed there would be much oppo­si­tion from oth­ers.  There would be a spir­i­tu­al war, if he fol­lowed the word of the Lord.  As it turned out, a few days lat­er, there was a com­mo­tion in the entire school.  “Wu Weizun has gone crazy!”  Wu Weizun is now a fanat­i­cal believ­er of Jesus!  He is nei­ther tak­ing the uni­ver­si­ty entrance exam­i­na­tion nor is he eat­ing!”  There were even those who said, “He is heart­bro­ken over a love affair!”  Many of his fel­low stu­dents and teach­ers tried to per­suade him to pre­pared for the uni­ver­si­ty entrance exam­i­na­tion; yet he turned around and shared the gospel with them, urg­ing them to believe in Jesus.

     

    The direc­tor of Gen­er­al Admin­is­tra­tive Affairs of the school cared a great deal for him.  He made spe­cial efforts to urge him to change his mind.  Because the direc­tor was unsuc­cess­ful, he became des­per­ate: “You were once a very good stu­dent; now, you are worth­less!  You are even urg­ing me to believe in Jesus?  I will not believe in Jesus even if I go down to hell!”  At the time, he had noth­ing to respond to this beloved teacher.  How­ev­er, thanks to the Lord, five years lat­er, Weizun bumped into this teacher in Shang­hai.  The Lord had saved him.

     

    The Post of the Lay Believ­er

     

    Between fall 1946 and ear­ly 1949, Weizun stud­ied at the Shang­hai Chi­nese The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.  In ear­ly 1949, he began serv­ing as an intern preach­er at Shanghai’s [Shouzhen] Keep­er of Truth Church.

     

    This was an era of tur­bu­lence and abrupt changes.  The Nation­al­ist Par­ty was retreat­ing in defeat while the Com­mu­nist Lib­er­a­tion Army crossed the riv­er en mass.  Shang­hai “lib­er­at­ed” in May,   was filled with noise and excite­ment,  con­stant­ly all kinds of ral­lies and pro­ces­sions.  Peo­ple per­formed folk dances, beat drums, and chant­ed slo­gans.  Sounds of lyrics like “the sky in the lib­er­at­ed area is bright and clear” were trans­mit­ted from the pro­ces­sions into the church that stood next to the street….

     

    In the emp­ty church, Weizun was alone as he knelt before God in prayer.  The house­holds in Shang­hai were already pre­pared, with the pur­chas­es of food­stuff and salt­ed fish, for the peri­od dur­ing which one era will be replaced by anoth­er.  For this rea­son, the Keep­er of Truth Church sus­pend­ed its meet­ings for two weeks.  Weizun used this time to pray whole­heart­ed­ly for the Lord’s will.  He said, “O Lord, please watch over me that I will be a preach­er even unto death, that I will nev­er leave the post of the preach­er, that I will nev­er do any­thing else.”  Yet, the Lord’s response was con­trary to his prayer.  The Lord did not send him out to be a preach­er at that time.  He want­ed him to do some­thing else and wait for the Lord.  The response that he had heard from the Lord was, “Wait.  When I need you, I will entrust the work to you and let you do it.”

     

    Weizun was clear.  In this time of abrupt changes, the Lord want­ed him to be a lay believ­er an ordi­nary Chris­t­ian, not a preach­er.  He said, “The Lord did not tell me to be greedy for this world; rather, he gave me a dif­fer­ent post from which to con­tin­ue the fight.  He wants me to please the Lord and serve as His wit­ness from the post of an ordi­nary teacher.”

     

    Begin­ning in Octo­ber 1949 and end­ing in 1957, Weizun served as a mid­dle school teacher in Shang­hai for eight years.  Dur­ing these eight years, Weizun adhered to the “prin­ci­ples of bat­tle” that God gave him: “Give unto Cae­sar what belongs to Cae­sar; give unto God what belongs to God.”  He also kept his twin iden­ti­ties firm­ly in mind.  One was his iden­ti­ty as a teacher and the oth­er was his Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty.  As a teacher, he did his best to be a good one.  How­ev­er, he was also clear­ly aware that his iden­ti­ty as a teacher was only tem­po­rary and sec­ondary.  Yet, his iden­ti­ty as a Chris­t­ian would be for eter­ni­ty and was thus his pri­ma­ry iden­ti­ty.  When the two iden­ti­ties came into con­flict, his iden­ti­ty as teacher had to yield to his Chris­t­ian iden­ti­ty.

     

    “His­to­ry of Social­ist Devel­op­ment” was a Big Lie!

     

    After the Lib­er­a­tion, the first bat­tle he fought for God took place when the Hongko dis­trict gov­ern­ment orga­nized the ele­men­tary and sec­ondary school teach­ers to study the Marx­ist-Lenin­ist “his­to­ry of social­ist devel­op­ment.”  At the com­ple­tion of the study, each per­son was required to write a sum­ma­ry report about how he/she came to under­stand the “His­to­ry of Social­ist Devel­op­ment” and describe his or her view of the sub­ject.  After prayers, Weizun wrote one sen­tence on this point:

     

    “Through the study of the ‘His­to­ry of Social­ist Devel­op­ment,’ I under­stand that this devel­op­men­tal his­to­ry begin­ning with the evo­lu­tion of “ape to man” and con­tin­u­ing to the emer­gence of the “com­mu­nist soci­ety,” is a great lie.

     

    As a con­se­quence, the polit­i­cal instruc­tor orga­nized oth­ers to “help” him.  Thanks to the Lord, because Weizun was teach­ing in a church school, most of his col­leagues were Chris­tians.  In their hearts, they sup­port­ed Weizun’s view­point.  There­fore, no one spoke a word.  The polit­i­cal instruc­tor was com­pelled to crit­i­cize Weizun, which actu­al­ly pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Weizun.  The polit­i­cal instruc­tor said, “The God in whom you all believe oppos­es sci­ence!” 

     

     

    Weizun replied, “Teacher Chi, where did sci­ence and sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples come from?  Were they estab­lished by man?  No, no one can estab­lish sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples; sci­en­tists can­not do so. They can only dis­cov­er and con­firm a por­tion of sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples.  The real sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples were estab­lished by God before He cre­at­ed the heav­en, the earth, and all the oth­er cre­ations.  The heav­en, the earth, and the cre­ations also adhere to those prin­ci­ples estab­lished by God.  Since sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples were estab­lished by God, why would God oppose those prin­ci­ples that he had estab­lished?”  Some teach­ers smiled in response to these com­ments, some nod­ded their heads, and some had no expres­sions at all.  Weizun also said, “Teacher Chi, the ques­tion today is not that God oppos­es sci­ence; but that mankind wants to use sci­ence to oppose God.”

     

    Many teach­ers were con­cerned for Weizun’s wel­fare as they lis­tened to his argu­ments.  Weizun him­self could only entrust the con­se­quences to the Lord.  Per­haps it was the ear­ly part of the post-Lib­er­a­tion peri­od, the school did not fol­low up on this mat­ter.  The first bat­tle of the “lay believ­er” end­ed with the Lord’s mer­cy.

     

    A Con­tro­ver­sial Mat­ter

     

    Begin­ning in June 1949, Weizun attend­ed the meet­ings of the Nanyang Road Church (the Meet­ing Place of Broth­er Nee Tuosheng (Watch­man Nee).  How­ev­er, soon he painful­ly dis­cov­ered that in order to obtain legal sta­tus, the church had to take the Three-Self[1] path.  By the ear­ly 1950s, the Meet­ing Place made a series of deci­sions: par­tic­i­pate in the hol­i­day pro­ces­sions led by the Com­mu­nist Par­ty; invite the leader of the “Three Self” Wu Yao­zong to preach at the Meet­ing Place; and con­duct a “denun­ci­a­tion cam­paign” in the church. 

     

    On April 21, 1951, the People’s Dai­ly pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled “Launch the Chris­tians’ Denun­ci­a­tion Cam­paign Against Amer­i­can Impe­ri­al­ism.” This demand­ed that all the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions through­out the coun­try “launch denun­ci­a­tions against impe­ri­al­ists and their run­ning dogs on a wide scale.”  The Meet­ing Place decid­ed to join this call for “denun­ci­a­tion.”  Watch­man Nee him­self per­son­al­ly mobi­lized every­one.   He empha­sized one “view­point.” “You have to stand on the ‘people’s’ side and denounce the ‘impe­ri­al­ists.’  There were many things one could denounce.  The entire church body par­tic­i­pat­ed when the cam­paign was fur­ther mobi­lized on Long Jiang Road. 

     

    At the time Weizun was just a young man of 25 years.  He couldn’t sup­press the anger in his spir­it and opposed the con­duct of the “denun­ci­a­tion” cam­paign in the church.  Yet, no one paid atten­tion to his opin­ion.  Weizun could only cry and pray on his own.  Accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny that he lat­er wrote, the Lord spoke to him in his prayers: “Since Broth­er Nee wants you to denounce from the view­point of the ‘peo­ple,’ you should denounce from the view­point of the ‘peo­ple.’” 

     

    On June 10, 1951, dur­ing the denun­ci­a­tion meet­ing held at Shanghai’s Nanyang Road Church, Wu Weizun spoke up and used sharp words that were inten­tion­al­ly exag­ger­at­ed to engage in “denun­ci­a­tion.” “When we tell peo­ple the Gospel, we say every­one is a sin­ner.  If you do not accept Jesus as your own Sav­ior, and ask Jesus to cov­er your sins with his blood.  You will not escape God’s Judg­ment.  Today I want to ask you, is Chair­man Mao a sin­ner? He does not believe in Jesus.  Is he going to per­ish and go to hell? The peo­ple tried to hush him up.   Shh.  Where is this man com­ing from?  The result was mass chaos. 

     

    A tall broth­er with glass­es who was in charge of a house divi­sion of the church spoke up.  Nanyang Road Church was a very large church.  The con­gre­ga­tion was divid­ed into over 10 “hous­es” accord­ing to dif­fer­ent dis­tricts.  Each “house” had about 100 peo­ple and was led by a “house broth­er or sis­ter in charge.”  Lat­er, the num­ber of hous­es was expand­ed to over 20.  Groups made up each “house.” 

     

    Anoth­er broth­er asked Liu Liang­mo (the offi­cial  rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Three Self Move­ment), who presided over the meet­ing: Does the gov­ern­ment allow us to prop­a­gate the Gospel or not?   Can we prop­a­gate the Lord’s Gospel?  Will the gov­ern­ment per­mit such activ­i­ty?  As a result, the entire denun­ci­a­tion meet­ing was unable to con­tin­ue.  Liu Liang­mo could only calm every­one and said a few words about the government’s pol­i­cy being one that sup­ports the free­dom of reli­gion and belief.  The meet­ing was then abrupt­ly con­clud­ed.

     

    The tall fel­low who asked the ques­tion was lat­er per­se­cut­ed. 

     

     

    Two months lat­er, an elder of the Meet­ing Place noti­fied Weizun to “stop par­tak­ing in the bread” because every­one believed that Weizun had already “giv­en up the faith.”

     

    It was not until 1964 that Weizun had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restore com­mu­ni­ca­tion with two mem­bers of the Nanyang Road Meet­ing Place.  At the time Weizun went to Bei­jing to con­duct the bap­tismal ser­vice for a young man.  He dis­cov­ered that the father of the young man was one of the broth­ers in charge of the hous­es at the Nanyang Road Church.  This elder­ly broth­er had always thought that Weizun had “giv­en up the faith.”  Weizun wrote to him: “My denun­ci­a­tion at the time did not dis­obey the Lord and it did not sig­nal that I had giv­en up the faith.  Instead, I was fol­low­ing the Lord’s com­mand to play a neg­a­tive role.”  This elder­ly broth­er was very pleased when he received Weizun’s let­ter and shared this mat­ter with anoth­er elder Broth­er Du Zhongchen.  They were very pleased about this rev­e­la­tion.

     

    This is a rather con­tro­ver­sial mat­ter in Weizun’s tes­ti­mo­ny.  Fifty years lat­er, when Weizun recalled this mat­ter, he still felt that he was play­ing the neg­a­tive role that inter­fered with the denun­ci­a­tion meet­ing.  His heart was at peace.

     

    Prepa­ra­tion to be “Wor­thy”

     

    In 1955, the wife of Weizun’s third old­er broth­er intro­duced a sis­ter who was work­ing in Tian­jing to him.  After they start­ed cor­re­spon­dence, Weizun asked the sis­ter: Are you will­ing to be my part­ner on the nar­row road of the cross that I walk?  Only after the sis­ter had agreed that they decid­ed on a mar­riage rela­tion­ship.  In the sum­mer of 1957, Wu Weizun, because of mar­riage, was assigned to Tian­jin.  God had tak­en him to a new bat­tle­ground.

     

    In the Chi­na of 1957, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary atmos­phere was becom­ing stronger.  Cam­pus­es were engaged in the heart­less “anti-right­ist” cam­paign.  In the new envi­ron­ment, Weizun con­tin­ued his past prat­ice of giv­ing thanks before each meal.  Dur­ing the noon rest peri­od, he even took out the Bible to read qui­et­ly.  On Sun­days, the entire fac­ul­ty of the school would go the near­by vil­lages to engage in labor activ­i­ties, but he would request a half-day off to “con­gre­gate and wor­ship God.”  His col­leagues at the school thought he was strange: “This teacher from Shang­hai is so reli­gious­ly super­sti­tious!  How can he be a teacher?”  Soon after, he was sent down to the vil­lages in the coun­try­side to engage in labor activ­i­ties.

     

    The orig­i­nal objec­tive of the school for send­ing him down to the coun­try­side was to reform his think­ing.  How­ev­er, in the two years that he was in the coun­try­side, he used the labor venues as the fields of har­vest for the gospel.  That era was the dark age when Christ’s gospel was not heard any­where with­in Chi­na and when there was no spir­i­tu­al light shin­ing on Chi­na.  Weizun once again pon­dered upon the grace of God and the tasks with which God had entrust­ed him.  He thought: God did not make me a preach­er or an evan­ge­list.  He allowed me to be an ordi­nary Chris­t­ian.  Am I unable to ful­fill even this small respon­si­bil­i­ty?  He was deter­mined to be faith­ful in this small­est thing and to be faith­ful until the end.  There­fore, regard­less of the per­son, as long as some­one asked about the truths of the Lord, he would share the gospel with­out any reser­va­tion.

     

    When he was sent down to the small group for study­ing, he saw that the objec­tive of the labor activ­i­ties was to “facil­i­tate the reform of cadres to adopt a mate­ri­al­ist world­view and a com­mu­nist per­spec­tive on life.”  He then pro­ceed­ed to speak up in the small group: “I am a Chris­t­ian and will always be a Chris­t­ian.  I can­not and does not plan to reform and trans­form my self to become a Marx­ist.  I am unable to heed the call of the party’s cen­tral com­mit­tee.”  The head of the small group regret­ted his deci­sion and said open­ly in the group: “If based sole­ly on the fact that you have been liv­ing a harsh lifestyle and the proac­tive nature of your labor activ­i­ties, you are qual­i­fied to become a good com­mu­nist par­ty mem­ber.  How­ev­er, in terms of ide­o­log­i­cal reform, you will not be able to pass the bar.  Nonethe­less, even if you can­not pass the bar on account of ide­o­log­i­cal reform, I can let you get by under the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of “reli­gious belief.”  But the fact that you have been spread­ing reli­gious super­sti­tions has made things much more seri­ous.  You will there­fore be unable to pass the bar.”

     

    In those days, Wu Weizun bore tremen­dous pres­sures.  One day at noon, he went to a well about one kilo­me­ter away to obtain water.  The sky was com­plete­ly over­cast with thun­der and light­en­ing.  It looked as if a heavy down­pour would take place at any time.  In the event of a rain­storm, the dirt road would become mud and he would be unable to walk on it.  He looked at the clouds, thun­der, and light­en­ing that filled the sky.  Sud­den­ly, it was as if God had moved him; he extend­ed his right hand and screamed at the rain that was already com­ing down: “Stop!”  As a result, just like God had rebuked the wind and the rain in the past, the thun­der and the light­en­ing quick­ly stopped, the rain end­ed, and the clouds grad­u­al­ly dis­si­pat­ed!  This was the first time that Weizun had wit­nessed a mir­a­cle.  He knew that even though he was liv­ing under threats and pres­sures, God was using this mir­a­cle to com­fort him, solid­i­fy his faith.  He clear­ly under­stood: My God is alive and he is in charge of the heav­en, the earth, and all the cre­ations!

     

    After two years of labor in the vil­lages, he was assigned to a cot­ton pro­cess­ing plant in a dis­trict in the north­east­ern sub­urb of Tian­jin to con­tin­ue labor reform.  Two years lat­er, he was reas­signed to the orig­i­nal school.  How­ev­er, because his ide­o­log­i­cal reform was unsuc­cess­ful, he could not be a teacher of the peo­ple.  He could only be a researcher of physics in the lab­o­ra­to­ry.

     

    In the sev­en years between 1957 and 1964, the over­all sit­u­a­tion in Chi­na was becom­ing ever more tense.  The spir­i­tu­al bat­tles were also becom­ing more and more intense.  God was pru­in­ing Weizun with even greater sever­i­ty to pre­pare his heart and mind for the work that would even­tu­al­ly be entrust­ed to him.

     

    Since the lat­ter half of the 1950s, Wu Weizun began to write “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of the Lord” on car­bon papers to be sent to dif­fer­ent parts of Chi­na so as to strength­en the spir­i­tu­al exchanges between the dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the body of Christ in dif­fer­ent areas.  In the ear­ly part of 1960s, he began to engage in reg­u­lar fast­ing.  In spring 1964, God allowed him to be pre­pared to be “wor­thy.”  At that time, he found out through his cor­re­spon­dence with a broth­er in the orig­i­nal [Shouzhen] Church that a broth­er with whom he was close had been impris­oned for ful­fill­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty to spread the gospel, which was entrust­ed to him.  This young broth­er was betrayed by the head of the [Shouzhen] Church Jiang Mong­guang.  The young man was a faith­ful ser­vant of the Lord and one who was cho­sen by the Lord, received his train­ing in Jia Yuming’s sem­i­nary, and was a fel­low dea­con at the [Shouzhen] Church.  Weizun’s heart was deeply moved after read­ing this let­ter.  He was filled with thanks­giv­ing for this young broth­er.  He also envied this young broth­er because the broth­er had lis­tened to the Lord’s com­mand and was wor­thy to be humil­i­at­ed and tor­tured for the name of the Lord.  He prayed fer­vent­ly for the impris­oned young broth­er.  In his prayers, Weizun heard the Lord ask­ing him: “He is wor­thy, are you wor­thy?”  He imme­di­ate­ly said to the Lord in tears: “O Lord, I want to be wor­thy, I want to be wor­thy!”  From that day on, he was even more alert and pre­pared to be “wor­thy” at a moment’s notice.

     

    The Road of the Cross

     

    Two months lat­er, on 30 July in 1964, Wu Weizun was arrest­ed.  When the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cers appeared before him with a “sum­mon” and a “search war­rant,” he was not a bit anx­ious as a result of the Lord’s grace.  He held his wife’s hands and said the two most impor­tant words: “Rely [on the] Lord.”  He then got into the jeep.  At approx­i­mate­ly 10 o’clock in the morn­ing, the car pro­ceed­ed to the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau.  The things out­side the car win­dow moved behind him.  Wu Weizun raised his head to look at the sky and his heart was filled with peace.  He knew that God had assigned him to a new bat­tle­field, one that was even more dan­ger­ous and threat­en­ing but also more impor­tant.  The fact that he was wor­thy to tes­ti­fy for the Lord in that bat­tle­field was tru­ly his hon­or!  Since he had made the deci­sion in 1945 to car­ry the cross and fol­low the Lord for the rest of his life, now was not the time to look back but rather to walk coura­geous­ly ahead on the road of the cross.                 

     

    Nat­u­ral­ly, the sim­ple rea­son for Weizun’s arrest was his faith.  1964 was the time when the entire nation was involved in the “Four Clean-Ups Cam­paign.”  His school’s prin­ci­pal had already pub­licly crit­i­cized him: “In our school, reli­gious super­sti­tious activ­i­ties have been very appar­ent.”  In addi­tion, Weizun had also bap­tized oth­ers and wrote “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of the Lord” to be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to dif­fer­ent places.  He once wrote a let­ter to a young man to encour­age him: “Since you have already believed the Lord and become a Chris­t­ian, you should open­ly acknowl­edge the Lord’s name, with­draw your mem­ber­ship from the Com­mu­nist Youth League, and walk the path of the Lord.”  This young man’s with­draw­al from the youth league increased the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau’s atten­tion on Weizun: He was “fight­ing the Com­mu­nist Par­ty for the next gen­er­a­tion.” 

     

    In real­i­ty, Weizun was ini­tial­ly not “arrest­ed,” only “sum­moned.”  From man’s per­spec­tive, his arrest was entire­ly the result of his “lack of prag­ma­tism.”  In his heart, Weizun believed: Going to prison was some­thing that he had wished upon him­self; it also wasn’t the deci­sion of the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau for him to go to prison; rather, it was the Lord who led him to the prison.  God want­ed him to become a good Chris­t­ian as a pris­on­er; to obey the Lord’s com­mand as a pris­on­er and fol­low God’s will.  There­fore, once he entered prison, he estab­lished for him­self a fight­ing prin­ci­ple in the spir­i­tu­al con­flict: When inter­ro­gat­ed, he would “refuse to respond, refuse to explain, refuse to admit his crimes, and refuse to repent.”

     

    Over a month after he entered prison, he main­tained these four-noes prin­ci­ples dur­ing the eight times that he was inter­ro­gat­ed.  Dur­ing the sev­enth inter­ro­ga­tion, he was forced to write respons­es to five ques­tions.  He prayed as he wrote his respons­es.  The fourth ques­tion was: “How has the government’s pol­i­cy of reli­gious free­dom been cor­rect­ly imple­ment­ed and exe­cut­ed?”  He respond­ed direct­ly and truth­ful­ly: It was pre­cise­ly this type of so-called pol­i­cy of the “free­dom of belief and reli­gion” that has led to actions that include the ban­ning of and attacks on many church­es in the coun­try and the arrest, impris­on­ment, and con­vic­tion of many Chris­tians and ser­vants of God for their refusal to accept the party’s lead­er­ship of God’s church and God’s ser­vants.  My own arrest and impris­on­ment is a piece of new proof in this regard.

     

    The fifth and last ques­tion read: “How do you assess the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment that was ini­ti­at­ed by the country’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty?”  Ini­tial­ly, he want­ed to respond to this ques­tion from an affir­ma­tive per­spec­tive.  Yet, sud­den­ly he did not feel at peace.  The Holy Spir­it shined upon him, so he wrote the fol­low­ing words:

     

    Just when I was pre­pared to write down my response based on bib­li­cal truths regard­ing the assess­ment of the “Three Self” move­ment, the Holy Spir­it sud­den­ly stopped me and refused to allow me to write.  The Spir­it also showed me a bib­li­cal verse.  This verse was: “Do not give to the dog things that are holy and do not throw pearls before the pig, out of con­cern that it would defile the pearls and turn around and bite you.”  There­fore, I will not respond to this ques­tion from the affir­ma­tive per­spec­tive.  Note: The “dog” and “pig” to which the Lord Jesus referred were not actu­al dog and pig.  Rather, he was refer­ring to peo­ple who “did not treat things that are holy as holy” and those who “do not treat pearls as trea­sures.”

     

    His response caused a great uproar.  Dur­ing the eighth inter­ro­ga­tion, the inter­roga­tor angri­ly said: “There have been count­less great pas­tors and great evan­ge­lists who have gone through my hands, and yet I have not seen any­one as reck­less as you!”  After the eighth inter­ro­ga­tion, the inter­roga­tor gave him an arrest war­rant and said that he “was eat­ing the fruit of his own labor.”  He calm­ly signed the war­rant.  The light of the Lord shined upon him once again.  He said to him­self: “Although I am not a great pas­tor, a great evan­ge­list, but as long as depend close­ly on the Lord, rely on the Lord’s mer­cy, fol­low the Lord faith­ful­ly, and do not avoid the cross that I should bear, then I can also achieve vic­to­ry and be a good wit­ness in front of man.”

     

    After the Con­vic­tion, Fol­low the Lord until the End

     

    In Feb­ru­ary 1967, the court issued his sen­tence: life impris­on­ment.  When he received the sen­tence, his heart was very peace­ful and filled with thanks­giv­ing.  He imme­di­ate­ly thought: “The ser­vant can­not be greater than the mas­ter.  My Lord Jesus whose cup from the Father was death, not life impris­on­ment.  More­over, it was nail­ing on the cross, which was the most humil­i­at­ing, cru­el, and painful (even God the Father left Him) death sen­tence.  The cup that God the Father gave me is com­pa­ra­bly much lighter by sev­er­al times.  He event kept my life and that my body still remains healthy….  When the Lord received his death sen­tence on the cross, he accept­ed with a glad heart and in obe­di­ence.  I have only been giv­en life impris­on­ment, why can’t I be like the Lord and accept it with a glad heart and in obe­di­ence?  The Lord once said: You will drink the cup I drink and be bap­tized with the bap­tism I am bap­tized with….(Mark 10:39)  Since God the Father has shown me mer­cy today and gave me this cup, I should drink the cup that the Father gave me, until the end.”

     

    In gen­er­al, con­vict­ed pris­on­ers were allowed to meet with their fam­i­lies.  He also wrote to his wife to tell her that he had accept­ed the con­vic­tion, ask­ing her to meet him.  He also asked her to bring to him anoth­er wash­basin because the orig­i­nal one already had a hole.  He hoped to see his wife to speak a few more words to her.  After the let­ter was sent and on the date that they were to meet, the cap­tain (the dis­ci­pli­nary cadre in the reform-through-labor team) gave him a wash­basin from his home, but his wife did not show up.  Weizun wrote again, includ­ing some encour­ag­ing words in the Lord.  The cap­tain scold­ed him for writ­ing “mud­dled” things and refused to send the let­ter for him.

     

    After some time, the court sent a cadre to tell Weizun that his wife want­ed to divorce him.  This was a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed piece of news to Weiun.  He imme­di­ate­ly prayed about it.  It was dur­ing the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  At a time and in an envi­ron­ment of unprece­dent­ed dan­ger, his wife was alone in the world and undoubt­ed­ly bore con­sid­er­able pres­sure.  He under­stood her weak­ness and agreed to the divorce.  They did not have chil­dren and Weizun did not ask for shares in any prop­er­ty.  There­fore, the whole mat­ter was fin­ished with his sig­na­ture.

     

    Weizun nev­er regret­ted mar­ry­ing the sis­ter because at the time of the mar­riage he was cer­tain that the two of them would walk togeth­er on the nar­row path of the cross.  Now that the sis­ter has weak­ened and retreat­ed from the path of the cross, Weizun only felt sor­ry for her and prayed for her.

     

    Accord­ing to some reports, she lat­er mar­ried an old labor­er.  How­ev­er, this did not release her from the pres­sur­ized envi­ron­ment of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  After the divorce, Weizun was even more care­free.  He thought, although I am alone, I will bear the cross from the rest of my life and fol­low the Lord until the end.

     

    Defend­ing the Field of Lentils

     

    “Next to him was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines band­ed togeth­er at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel’s troops fled from them. 12 But Shammah took his stand in the mid­dle of the field. He defend­ed it and struck the Philistines down, and the LORD brought about a great vic­to­ry.”

    – II Samuel 23:11–12 

     

    After Weizun was impris­oned, he could not remem­ber clear­ly the verse and chap­ter ref­er­ences of this pas­sage.  How­ev­er, he remem­bered the con­tent of these two vers­es.  David’s war­rior Shammah stood in a field full of lentils.  Con­fronting a mul­ti­tude of Philistines, he defend­ed that field of lentils and did not retreat even one step.  As a result, he changed the entire bat­tle, ensur­ing that the Israelites would emerge vic­to­ri­ous in the face of defeat.  Defend­ing that field of lentils thus became the key to secur­ing the vic­to­ry.  The Lord shined upon Weizun, allow­ing him to know clear­ly that insist­ing on say­ing grace before meals is the “field of lentils” in the spir­i­tu­al war­fare that was being waged inside the prison.  He had to defend this field.

     

    Once he entered prison, he would say grace before meals.  He did not hide his action and he was unafraid that oth­ers would see him because this was a tes­ti­mo­ni­al.  The instruc­tor in the prison declared to him: “If you want to eat, then you can­not read (say grace).  If you read (say grace), then you can­not eat.”  Weizun then gave his bowl and chop­sticks to the admin­is­tra­tor and refused to eat.  Four or five days lat­er, the judge at the hear­ing scold­ed him: “Not eat­ing and con­duct­ing a hunger strike are acts of refus­ing the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at.”  Yet, Weizun insist­ed: “I cer­tain­ly do not have any inten­tion of con­duct­ing a hunger strike and seek­ing death.  I only want to say grace before my meals.”  In the light of this sit­u­a­tion, the prison author­i­ties could only change the hear­ing judge and made some minor com­pro­mis­es.  They allowed Weizun to eat at times while deny­ing him food at oth­ers because they would not allow him to say grace.

     

    Half a year lat­er, Weizun’s suf­fer­ings increased.  He was forced to wear a set of heavy hand­cuffs.  This set of hand­cuffs was heavy and cold, impos­ing much pain and suf­fer­ing on him.  He could not sleep at night.  How­ev­er, the Lord was with him and per­son­al­ly led him in the bat­tle.  He declared once again: He would not eat if he’s not allowed to say grace.  From this day for­ward, he would no longer eat the food pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment if he was not per­mit­ted to say grace.  Two days lat­er, the deten­tion cen­ter removed his hand­cuffs.  In the mean­time, the deten­tion cen­ter orga­nized sev­en or eight pris­on­ers to “help” him.  The staff of the deten­tion cen­ter would stand out­side his cell door to observe.  One pris­on­er would strike Weizun’s chin with his fist.  In that one moment, his mouth was filled with blood, which dripped on his body and the floor.  This pris­on­er would yell at him: Stand up!  Stand at atten­tion!  At the same time, he would shout out com­mands: “Walk two steps for­ward!  Turn around!….”  Mean­while, he demand­ed Weizun to answer his provoca­tive ques­tions.  If he did not respond, the pris­on­er would use his two hands to “slap! slap!…”, hit Weizun’s cheeks from the left and the right.   

     

    Dur­ing this inhu­man tor­ture, the Lord’s words con­stant­ly echoed in Weizun’s ears and lin­gered in his mind.  “But I tell you, Do not resist an evil per­son. If some­one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the oth­er also. And if some­one wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If some­one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (Matthew 5:39–41).  “He was oppressed and afflict­ed, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaugh­ter, and as a sheep before her shear­ers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (Isa­iah 53:7)  Thanks to the Lord, the Lord’s words became the sharp weapons in his hands dur­ing his bat­tles.  Fac­ing the com­mands of that evil one, Weizun obeyed and did as he was told.  As for those provoca­tive ques­tions, he fol­lowed the Lord’s way and was silent.  Lis­ten to the Lord’s words and act accord­ing the Lord’s will place one on sol­id grounds and achieve vic­to­ry in bat­tle.

     

    After two hours of repeat­ed phys­i­cal abus­es and tor­ture, that prison became tired and declared that the “crit­i­cism ses­sion” was over.  The head of the deten­tion cen­ter asked him: “How do you feel about every­one help­ing you?  Are you will­ing to accept the help?”  He answered: “Direc­tor, I have no com­plaints about any­thing that the gov­ern­ment or the pris­on­ers do to me.  I glad­ly accept what­ev­er you do to me.”  The direc­tor thought that he had sur­ren­dered and was very hap­py.  He said: “You did the right thing.  You should have changed your ways ear­li­er.  Why suf­fer so much?….”

     

    Weizun heard the response from the direc­tor and thought that the direc­tor might have mis­tak­en his words.  He imme­di­ate­ly added: “Direc­tor, you are mis­tak­en.  The fact that I glad­ly accept your actions toward me with­out com­plaints does not mean that I will not lis­ten to the Lord Jesus from this day on.  As a Chris­t­ian, lis­ten­ing to the words of the Lord Jesus will also be the pri­or­i­ty.  I must lis­ten to the Lord Jesus and will con­tin­ue to do so.”  The direc­tor of the deten­tion cen­ter was incred­u­lous and was enraged: “Fine, fine.  You insist on your reac­tionary posi­tion and remain stub­born until the end.  This makes things easy for me!  We shall see in the days to come!”

     

    Weizun once again returned to the large cell.  After insist­ing on fast­ing for sev­en days, he was tak­en to an emp­ty room.  Sev­er­al prison admin­is­tra­tors twist­ed his arms with one per­son press­ing on his head from the back.  They stuffed a met­al instru­ment into his mouth and forcibly insert­ed a feed­ing tube to pour food into his stom­ach.  The whole process was extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to endure.  How­ev­er, Weizun did not resist.  After the forced feed­ing, once the tube was removed and the met­al instru­ment was removed, he stood up and loud­ly gave thanks: “I thank the Heav­en­ly Father for using this method to keep me alive!”  He gave a tes­ti­mo­ny of thanks­giv­ing in the pres­ence of the direc­tor and all oth­ers.  There­after, every time the prison admin­is­tra­tors forced buns into his mouth, he would look up at the sky and say loud­ly: “I thank the Heav­en­ly Father for using this method to keep me alive!”

     

    In July 1966, the procuratorate’s state­ment of charges against him was thus record­ed: “The pris­on­er has been impris­oned for a long time and has used the excuse of “say­ing grace before meals” to engage in ille­gal activ­i­ties and dam­age prison dis­ci­pline.  On numer­ous occa­sions, he has even employed fast­ing as a means to resist the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at….”

     

    After Weizun was offi­cial­ly sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, he was trans­ferred from the Tian­jin deten­tion cen­ter to the Tian­jin reform-through-labor bureau.  One month lat­er, he was assigned to the reform-through-labor team in a steel fac­to­ry in the city of Pingluo in Ningx­ia province.  It was the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  He still main­tained his faith and insist­ed on his “refusal to be reformed.”  He was will­ing to pay the price for his refusal.  Weizun insist­ed on not read­ing Chair­man Mao’s “Lit­tle Red Book,” not answer­ing any ques­tions, not singing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary songs, and not hail­ing long life to Chair­man Mao.  The group leader and oth­er mem­bers of the group ordered him to kow­tow to the pic­tures of Chair­man Mao, and he refused.  For this rea­son, over 10 per­sons kicked and hit him.  He was resigned to lying in the dirt and let them kick and him him.  This was the first time that he was beat­en in the reform-through-labor team.  After this inci­dent, he was beat­en numer­ous times.  Some peo­ple whipped him with leather belts, some hit his cheeks with the shoe bot­toms, and oth­ers used wood­en clubs to strike the top of his head.  There was even one team leader who used a light­ed smoke pipe to burn his nos­trils.  Weizun believed that all of these inhu­man tor­tures were “per­mit­ted by the Lord and there­fore are of ben­e­fits to me.”

     

    Just as the case when he was at the deten­tion cen­ter, the reform-throug-labor team leader announced to him: “If you want to eat, then you can­not pray; if you pray then you can­not eat.”  Weizun knew that the cam­paign to “defend the field of lentils” has entered an even more dif­fi­cult phase because it was the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion and the entire labor team would cease pro­duc­tion for six months to engage in Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion stud­ies.  How­ev­er, he firm­ly believed that the Lord who sent him would ensure that his “strength [would] equal his days.” 

     

    The war began.  He would no longer eat for which he could say grace.  One day, two days…when he had not eat­en for four and five days and was extreme­ly weak, he was forced to run as a pun­ish­ment.  When he did not eat for the sev­enth day, after night fell, he was tak­en to an emp­ty room where he suf­fered scold­ing and where four peo­ple start­ed to him until he became uncon­scious.  He lat­er recalled: Thank the Lord; it was so good to be uncon­scious.  There was no pain once you became uncon­scious.  He was repeat­ed­ly tor­tured and beat­en and forced fed.  How­ev­er, because his body had under­gone too much tor­ture, he would vom­it the food.  The leader of the labor team would then force him to clean the things he vom­it­ed by lick­ing them with his tongues.  He would pros­trate on the ground to lick the things he had vom­it­ed.  He was beat­en until the lat­ter half of the nigh when the team leader instruct­ed oth­er pris­on­ers to spray water on him.  This type of tor­ture would con­tin­ue for sev­er­al days.  The wounds that he incurred would only be healed after one to two years. 

     

    The Chi­nese his­tor­i­cal texts always record dif­fer­ent types of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments that are in the pris­ons.  They also record numer­ous and gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of tough indi­vid­u­als who have been thor­ough­ly tor­tured yet refused to sur­ren­der.  The dif­fer­ence is that although Weizun had borne all the tor­tures and refused to sur­ren­der, he was not a tough guy.  He was meek and weak.  Those who beat him would ask him after they became tired of beat­ing him: Do you hate us?  Weizun said: Not one bit and I have no com­plaint against any­one.  This was because his Lord had even prayed for those who nailed Him to the cross.

     

    Final­ly, although he was still not per­mit­ted to say grace while in prison, there would be one meal in three days that was an excep­tion.  When it was time for the meal, he was tak­en to an iso­lat­ed emp­ty room.  One group leader would watch him eat.  He would then be able to eat a meal for which he tech­ni­cal­ly could not say grace but in actu­al­ly could.  Lat­er, the prison’s par­ty sec­re­tary (the most senior leader of the prison) said to him: If you want to say grace before meals, we will allow you to do so in your heart.  If you express it open­ly and affect oth­er pris­on­ers, we will not per­mit it.  When Weizun heard this, he became alarmed.  The Lord’s light had shined upon him: You can­not even make this one com­pro­mise!  He replied: “Par­ty Sec­re­tary, our Chris­t­ian faith is a func­tion of a close con­nec­tion between faith and expressed deeds.  Faith with­out deeds is not true faith, but dead faith, pho­ny faith.  It is nat­ur­al that true faith must have its cor­re­spond­ing expres­sion through deeds.  I can­not sat­is­fy the con­di­tions that were out­lined by the par­ty sec­re­tary.”  The nego­ti­a­tion had failed and no agree­ment was reached.  The war of eat­ing one meal every three days could only con­tin­ue, until the six-month of con­cen­trat­ed Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion stud­ies and move­ment end­ed.

     

    The Pris­on­er among Pris­on­ers

     

    Two years lat­er, on Sep­tem­ber 10, 1970, he was assigned to Group One in Squad One.  It was the tough­est group where the most recal­ci­trant pris­on­ers have been reformed after join­ing the group.  After he went there, the group leader offi­cial­ly made the ini­tial demands, which were very sim­ple.  There were only two demands.  First, he would not say grace before each meal.  Sec­ond, he would read the Lit­tle Red Book.  He did not need to do both at the same time.  He would only have to do one of the two and the choice was his.  He imme­di­ate­ly and clear­ly said to the group leader: He would not be able to sat­is­fy any of the two demands.  The con­tra­dic­tion has inten­si­fied.  Sud­den­ly, he became the tar­get of strug­gle and the heart of attack by all the pris­on­ers in the group.  All the con­tra­dic­tions and crit­i­cisms tar­get­ed toward oth­ers were tem­porar­i­ly put aside.  The group leader and all the oth­er pris­on­ers in the group con­cen­trat­ed their fire­pow­er and used every con­ceiv­able method to make things dif­fi­cult for him and to tor­ture him.

     

    Once, they said: As long as Weizun was will­ing to read (read aloud or recite) one sen­tence in the Lit­tle Red Book or say “long life [lit­er­al­ly, tens of thou­sands of years]” or “bound­less life” to Chair­man Mao, then they would per­mit him to say grace before meals.  He would then thought about this pro­pos­al before the Lord: He remem­bered that the Bible’s teach­ings include the words “fear God, hon­or the king” (1 Peter 2:17) and “I tell you that you must first sup­pli­cate, pray, beseech, and give thanks for the tens of thou­sands; and do the same for the kings (polit­i­cal lead­ers) and all who are in pow­er.”  There­fore, he said before every­one in the group: “I wish Chair­man Mao and Vice-Chair­man Lin good heath.”  They all shout­ed with joy: “It’s pos­si­ble!  It’s pos­si­ble!”  Although there were two or three peo­ple who remained unsat­is­fied because he did not say “long live” or “bound­less life,” but some­one said: “Don’t be impa­tient, we’ll take it slow.  There is hope!”

     

    That day, they were very good to Weizun.  They filled his stom­ach with three meals.  On the next day, the group leader and every­one in the group said to him: “Today, you have made progress.  Don’t say what you said yes­ter­day; just say: “Long life to Chair­man Mao,” “Bound­less life to Chair­man Mao.”  How­ev­er, after try­ing to per­suade him for a long time and after wait­ing for a long time, Weizun was still unwill­ing to change his words, regard­less of whether they allowed him to eat.  They were extreme­ly furi­ous and did not give Weizun any­thing to eat.

     

    Some one said to him pri­vate­ly: Why were you will­ing to wish Chair­man Mao good health but were unwill­ing to call out “Long life to Chair­man Mao” or “bound­less life”?

     

    Weizun replied: The for­mer was a prayer to the supreme God on behalf of the polit­i­cal lead­ers.  Such a prayer would please God because it places the supreme God in the first place.  The lat­ter treats Chair­man Mao as a god and in essence places the leader in the high­est posi­tion.  God despise and is dis­pleased by such a prayer.  More­over, it is impos­si­ble to live “tens of thou­sands of years.”  Even live to 100 years old is dif­fi­cult to do.  Fur­ther­more, Chair­man Mao will nev­er have “bound­less life.”  Rather, his life will be “bound­ed.”  There­fore, why should I say non­sense that does not adhere to God’s will?

     

    The time spent in Squad One was the last and most dif­fi­cult part of the bat­tle to defend the field of lentils.  How­ev­er, he said: “I thank the Lord that I am a free man!”  He said this because he insist­ed on the prin­ci­ple of “no.”  He insist­ed on being “unre­formed.”  There­fore, those “reformed” reg­u­la­tions could not bind him, could not con­strain him.

     

    The Third Moment of Weak­ness

     

    Yet, he under­stood that his strength and free­dom were entire­ly depen­dent on God’s grace.  If he had depart­ed from the Lord, he would have fall­en long ago.  He record­ed the three moments of weak­ness that he expe­ri­enced.  The first time was dur­ing the ini­tial peri­od after lib­er­a­tion when he was a mid­dle school teacher.  Dur­ing the move­ment of ide­o­log­i­cal reform, there was a time when he was reward­ed by his supe­ri­ors.  After­wards, he uncon­scious­ly want­ed to work hard­er to run on the world­ly path.  He began to grow dis­tant from God and he did not love the Lord like he used to.  How­ev­er, thank God, two weeks lat­er, the Holy Spir­it shined upon him, allow­ing him to see the cri­sis that he was expe­ri­enc­ing on the spir­i­tu­al path.  By depend­ing on the Lord’s strength, he was able to restore the inti­mate rela­tion­ship that he had with God.

     

    The sec­ond time was in 1956 when he was teach­ing at the Tongji Mid­dle School in Shang­hai.  There was some­one at anoth­er unit who want­ed to trans­fer him.  The per­son took a pic­ture of a young man and asked whether he knew the man in the pic­ture.  He rec­og­nized that the young man was the broth­er in Christ who in 1951 had tak­en away his speech dur­ing the “denun­ci­a­tion move­ment,” and said so.  After­wards, Weizun was extreme­ly dis­turbed.  He pre­dict­ed that this broth­er was at the time already under inves­ti­ga­tion.  He did not know whether his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (although it was the truth) would bring about even worse con­se­quences for the broth­er.  Weizun did not know at the time where he had gone wrong.  He lat­er under­stood that he should not have said any­thing because in so doing, he was “con­fess­ing.”  As a result of his “con­fes­sion,” the broth­er could suf­fer.  There­fore, lat­er, he estab­lished for him­self the prin­ci­ple of “no talk­ing and no con­fes­sion,” so as to avoid offend­ing God.

     

    The third time was after he was arrest­ed in 1966.  Once, the hear­ing offi­cial showed him a piece of paper with a pic­ture of a map of Chi­na.  The cen­ter of the map was Tian­jin.  Quite a few lines radi­at­ed from the cen­ter to every part of the coun­try to illus­trate his rela­tion­ships with the mem­bers of the body of Christ in oth­er parts of the coun­try.  The hear­ing offi­cial said: If you find this map to be cor­rect, then sign your name at the bot­tom.  At this time, Weizun was not very alert and actu­al­ly signed his name.  Once he returned to the prison cell, the Holy Spir­it shined upon him: Why did he sign?  Wasn’t sign­ing tan­ta­mount to con­fes­sion?  As a result, that day when the group leader threat­ened to take away his food, he became afraid and began to eat very quick­ly.  He was afraid that the food would be tak­en away.  As a con­se­quence, that night he suf­fered from diar­rhea.  It was already after the restroom breaks, he couldn’t go to the restroom so he had to use a large urine can.  He was scold­ed by his cell­mates.  On the next day, he declared that he was wrong in sign­ing the doc­u­ment on the pre­vi­ous day and asked that the doc­u­ment be void­ed.  He also asked God to for­give him for his weak­ness and fail­ure, and to cor­rect and restore him, as well as to lead him to fight the bat­tle that lie ahead.  Since that moment he rec­og­nized: He was nei­ther bet­ter nor stronger than oth­ers.  With­out the Lord’s mer­cy, he would sin and fail as usu­al, and pos­si­bly fail even worse than oth­ers.  From this fail­ure, he knew that there was noth­ing about him that deserved boast­ing.  He could only rely on the Lord ever more.

     

    The Life Pris­on­er out­side the Wall

     

    At the end of the 1970s, the wind of reform and open­ing blew across the great land of Chi­na.  It was also blown into Yinchuan’s “Ningx­ia Region­al Prison,” oth­er­wise known as the Yinchuan Fan Fac­to­ry.

     

    Many among the over 200 pris­on­ers in the Tian­jin sys­tem who were serv­ing life sen­tences in Ningx­ia had already received reduc­tions in sen­tenc­ing or release.  Dur­ing the mid-1970s, there were still six “unre­formed” per­sons.  In 1978, there were only two such per­sons.  In 1979, one of these two pris­on­ers re-appealed his sen­tence and was released in that year.  Until then, there was only one among the 200-plus pris­on­ers who remained and he was Weizun.

     

    At the time, the wind to write appeals and seek reha­bil­i­ta­tion was blow­ing hard.  Many peo­ple told him to appeal and seek reha­bil­i­ta­tion.  How­ev­er, he clear­ly said: I will not appeal.  In Spring 1981, dur­ing the annu­al reward and pun­ish­ment assem­bly held for the entire prison, the prison author­i­ty announced that he was also on the list of those who would receive sen­tence reduc­tions.  The sen­tence-reduc­tion ver­dict of Ningxia’s Supe­ri­or Court wrote that his life sen­tence had been reduced to six years impris­on­ment.  In oth­er words, he would be released after six years.  The ver­dict of the Ningx­ia Supe­ri­or Court argued that he pos­i­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in labor reform, was earnest in teach­ing, and adhered to the reg­u­la­tions and dis­ci­plines of the prison.  This ver­dict indi­cat­ed that he had expressed repen­tance, con­firm­ing that he had “indeed repent­ed.”  For this rea­son, his sen­tence was reduced.  Yet, he believes: This sen­tence reduc­tion and the free­dom in six years were not giv­en to him with­out a price; they had to be paid by the notion that he had “indeed repent­ed.”  “Repen­tance” sug­gests that he would treat the things that the Lord had entrust­ed to him in the past as “sins.”  How­ev­er, that would be to humil­i­ate the Lord and to resist God.  He though, if he agreed to this “repen­tance,” wouldn’t the war that he had fought all these years essen­tial­ly be fought in vain?  Wouldn’t the suf­fer­ings he had borne be borne in vain?  Is this filthy “free­dom” so wor­thy of his envy?  Could he dis­card the cross that the Lord had giv­en him on this mat­ter?  There­fore, he rather chose the path of “oth­ers were tor­tured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a bet­ter res­ur­rec­tion” (Hebrews 11:35) and refused to be released.

     

    On May 28, 1987, the day when he was forced to leave the prison, he wrote the “sub­mis­sion on the day of release” to the region’s high­est People’s Court.  In the sub­mis­sion, he once again made clear the fact that he had not “repent­ed.”  He said:

     

    Here, I have no choice but to risk the sus­pi­cion that I am protest­ing against the gov­ern­ment and the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at (I think that the court may be able to under­stand) and con­crete­ly and briefly describe my absolute­ly and com­plete­ly unre­pen­tant actions dur­ing the twen­ty-some years in prison since July 1964:

     

    On July 30, 1964, I was sum­moned by the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau in Tian­jian.  Since the first hear­ing, oth­er than my name, I have stopped pro­vid­ing answers to all ques­tions posed by the hear­ing offi­cial.  In actu­al­i­ty, I con­tin­ue to refuse to explain any crime.  (Nat­u­ral­ly, when I was hon­est they were lenient and when I was resis­tant they were severe.  From this point the sit­u­a­tion was grad­u­al­ly esca­lat­ed: from sum­mon to deten­tion, to arrest, to indict­ment, and to the sen­tence of life impris­on­ment.)  After I was held for one and half year under this con­di­tion of refus­ing to explain any crime, the head hear­ing offi­cial had tried one more time to per­suade me to change my ways.  He select­ed a few items among my crimes and ini­ti­at­ed the effort to open up, clar­i­fy, and even point out the errors among these cas­es.  He urged me to con­sid­er after return­ing to the prison.  The next day, my answer to him was: “I have no regrets over the things that you have men­tioned yes­ter­day.”  Anoth­er half year lat­er, in the inter­me­di­ate court’s court­room, oth­er than my name and a response to one ques­tion (Ques­tion: Are you a Chris­t­ian?  Answer: Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian), I still did not respond to all the ques­tions posed to me.

     

    In the twen­ty-plus years that I have been serv­ing my sen­tence, I have refused to remark, write, and par­tic­i­pate in any mat­ter that is relat­ed, even indi­rect­ly, with “con­fes­sion” or the “reform of the crim­i­nal nature.”  In the twen­ty-plus years in prison, I have not made one remark, expressed my atti­tude, dis­cussed my under­stand­ing, or respond to relat­ed ques­tions from the cadres and oth­er pris­on­ers in numer­ous large meet­ings, small meet­ings, study ses­sions, dis­cus­sions, and sem­i­nars.  In fact, I was so cau­tious as to have failed to read aloud one piece of doc­u­ment, news­pa­per, or the Lit­tle Red Book; I didn’t even sing one rev­o­lu­tion­ary song.  All of these things were done to avoid becom­ing entan­gled with the “reform of the crim­i­nal nature.”  I have nev­er writ­ten one time or one word dur­ing the numer­ous occa­sions when each pris­on­er was required to write guar­an­tees, reform plans, ide­o­log­i­cal reports, reform sum­maries or brief­in­gs, and even the required “reform diary.”  In the numer­ous exam­i­na­tions on pol­i­tics, cur­rent affairs, ethics, laws, and oth­er top­ics, oth­er than my name, my exam papers were always blank.  The count­less afore­men­tioned facts and actions demon­strate (if the court will con­duct a lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion, it will not be dif­fi­cult to see that all these actions were con­sis­tent and irrefutable facts) that I have not the least accept­ed the “reform of crim­i­nal thoughts and crim­i­nal nature” that I was forced to be engaged in while I was serv­ing my sen­tence.  I have refused them all.

     

    As for the point men­tioned in the ver­dict that I had “com­plied with the dis­ci­plin­ing,” I did not com­ply every time.  In fact, I had made clear dis­tinc­tions between the two kinds of sit­u­a­tions that were of dif­fer­ent nature and I treat­ed each one accord­ing­ly.  On the first kind of dis­ci­plin­ing, as men­tioned ear­li­er, I have nev­er com­plied in the least with the count­less mea­sures of reform and dis­ci­pline that the prison author­i­ty had con­duct­ed on me.  I have refused all of them and stub­born­ly main­tained such resis­tance for over 20 years, until today.

     

    On the sec­ond kind, with respect to the oth­er reg­u­la­tions, orders, and arrange­ments that were unre­lat­ed to my “reform of the crim­i­nal thoughts and crim­i­nal nature,” to which, sub­jec­tive­ly speak­ing, I had adhered and with which I had com­plied.  How­ev­er, was the lat­ter part of the sec­ond kind of dis­ci­plin­ing – the action of “com­ply­ing with the dis­ci­plin­ing” – a “demon­stra­tion of my repen­tance”?  On the con­trary, it was not a demon­stra­tion of my “com­pli­ance with the dis­ci­plin­ing.”  None of it was the con­se­quence of repen­tance.  In fact, it was my “demon­stra­tion of non-repen­tance.”  The rea­son is that before I entered prison, I had always tak­en the same posi­tion with respect to sim­i­lar cas­es.  Can any­one point out which point was a func­tion of my repen­tance?

     

    The ver­dict also not­ed that I had “worked proac­tive­ly.”  It was prob­a­bly refer­ring to the fact that I was more atten­tive and dili­gent when engaged in the pro­duc­tion labor and the sub­se­quent teach­ing.  Even if one does not list cer­tain unavoid­able weak­ness­es and mis­takes on my part, even if there were indeed a few things that were wor­thy of praise, none of it was a demon­stra­tion of my repen­tance.  On the con­trary, all of them were demon­stra­tions of my unre­pen­tance for things that I had done con­sis­tent­ly before becom­ing impris­oned.

     

    If one put togeth­er all my deeds while I was serv­ing my sen­tence, was there any major item or minor items such as the utter­ance of one sen­tence or the dis­play of one ges­ture that was gen­uine­ly said, writ­ten, or done which reflect­ed my repen­tance?  If there was, I am will­ing to admit that I did “indeed have demon­stra­tions of repen­tance.”  If so, there would per­haps be no shame in receiv­ing a sen­tence reduc­tion.  Yet, if you’re unable to fine one lit­tle cas­es, then why must you vio­late the prin­ci­ple of “seek­ing truth from facts” and insist on impos­ing the disin­gen­u­ous label of “repen­tance” on a pris­on­er who has been com­plete­ly unre­pen­tant just so that he would receive a sen­tence reduc­tion that would allow him to be released?  Even more impor­tant­ly, as a Chris­t­ian, I should not com­mit the evil of assum­ing a “label” that was not mine to assume.  Not only am I not shown “demon­stra­tions of repen­tance,” I actu­al­ly “indeed have no demon­stra­tion of repen­tance.”  All of my actions were dis­plays of unre­pen­tance and do not meet the fun­da­men­tal con­di­tions that would lead to a reduc­tion in sen­tence.  I can only remain a pris­on­er for life.

     

    Since dur­ing these six years, the court nev­er retract­ed this erro­neous ver­dict that does not seek truth from the facts and has not ver­i­ty, and since, as a pris­on­er of the dic­ta­tor­ship, I was unqual­i­fied to force the court to do any­thing, I am “forced” to have no nor­mal course of action except to take one of the two fol­low­ing steps start­ing this day of release.  First, I will not use the cer­tifi­cate of release to process any post-release pro­ce­dures.  I will not return to Tian­jin or be reunit­ed with my rel­a­tives in the south.  I will not enjoy any free­doms and rights obtained from this erro­neous ver­dict.  I will not depart from the prison and go any­where and to any unit to receive any employ­ment (includ­ing the work of a per­ma­nent­ly sta­tioned fac­to­ry labor­er).  The rea­son is that even though I have reluc­tant­ly (in order not to resist the prison’s law enforce­ment duties) gone to the oth­er side of these prison walls, I would remain a pris­on­er who was giv­en a life sen­tence.  (Even though I will not admit to the crime and will absolute­ly refuse to repent, I nonethe­less main­tain an atti­tude of “sin­cere and joy­ful com­pli­ance” with the life sen­tence.  From now on, I will main­tain this atti­tude and accept the sit­u­a­tion imposed upon me with no com­plaint.)  Sec­ond, start­ing with this day of release, I will engage in lim­it­ed fast­ing.  (As long as there is no exter­nal inter­fer­ence or impo­si­tion, I will stay with­in the scope of this lim­it­ed fast­ing.  In oth­er words, I will main­tain the con­tin­u­a­tion of life.  How­ev­er, if oth­ers inter­fere or impose force against me, this vow will no longer apply.)  This act of fast­ing is intend­ed to demon­strate the fol­low­ing two points.  First, I have not the least repen­tance for all my “crimes.”  Sec­ond, and there­fore, the ver­dict that was hand­ed to me in 1981 was wrong and did not fit with the facts.  I refuse to accept this erro­neous ver­dict.  In so doing, I want to allow the court to have suf­fi­cient time to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion for the pur­pose of under­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion and even­tu­al­ly recon­sid­er its deci­sion.  If that day arrives, when the erro­neous ver­dict is retract­ed and can­celed, which also means that the label of “repen­tance” that has been assigned to me has also been can­celed, it nat­u­ral­ly implies that the orig­i­nal posi­tion of a pris­on­er serv­ing a life sen­tence has been restored to me.  Then I shall be hap­py to end this act of fast­ing and do what I am required to do.

     

    More­over, I here­by attach a dec­la­ra­tion.  Since the Gang of Four was crushed, espe­cial­ly since the Third Plenum of the 11th Par­ty Con­gress, the over­all sit­u­a­tion of the nation has great­ly improved.  In terms of pol­i­cy, there has been great increase in lat­i­tude.  The treat­ment and pun­ish­ment of the pris­on­ers have increas­ing­ly improved.  These are devel­op­ments for all to see and can­not be denied.  I have expe­ri­enced and am pro­found­ly grate­ful for the con­cerns, care, and the pref­er­en­tial treat­ments extend­ed to me by the lead­ers and the man­age­ment cadres of the prison.  I here­with express my thanks to the prison’s lead­er­ship, sec­tion chiefs, and oth­er cadres.  (Of course, what is said here has no rela­tion to the afore­men­tioned great mat­ter.)  I here­by sub­mit this spe­cial report and give my salute.

     

     

    Wu Weizun

     The Pris­on­er for Life Who is Out­side the Prison Walls

    May 28, 1987 (Esther: The Chi­nese way: the date is at the end of let­ter)

     

     

    In the last six years that he was in prison, he clear­ly under­stood the last stage of the task of wit­ness­ing with which God has entrust­ed him, which was to exe­cute the two lim­i­ta­tions that God had giv­en him.  First, to fast at des­ig­nat­ed times.  This action serves to tes­ti­fy his unchang­ing Chris­t­ian heart.  Since he left the prison, he would eat on Mon­days and Thurs­days, and fast on the oth­er days.  Sec­ond, he would not take one step out­side the city of Yinchuan or away from the prison.  He kept his posi­tion and sta­tus as the “pris­on­er for life out­side the prison walls.”  After he left the prison, he stayed in a dilap­i­dat­ed room that was 14.6 square meters in size that God had pro­vid­ed to him through the prison.  He nev­er took one step out­side Yinchuan.

     

    When Wu Weizun was exe­cut­ing these two lim­i­ta­tions, he would often receive many “per­sua­sive obstruc­tions.”  The leader of the prison did what he was sup­posed to do, to per­suade Wu Weizun to give up his fast­ing and eat meals on a nor­mal basis.  He even took some peo­ple from the “Three-Self Church” to per­suade him.  In addi­tion, his rel­a­tives and many broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ tried to per­suade him to leave Yinchuan and go else­where to serve God.  How­ev­er, he gra­cious­ly refused their efforts and was fear­ful of can­cel­ing the reg­u­lar fast­ing on his own.  He was also not will­ing to leave Yinchuan to go else­where.  The rea­son was that he clear­ly under­stood that God had already used the illus­tra­tion of the man of God in Chap­ter 13 of First Kings to admon­ish him.  God had already told the man of God that he “must not eat bread or drink water [at Bethel] or return by the way you came.”  How­ev­er, the man of God lis­tened to the old prophet and vio­lat­ed God’s com­mand, and died as a result.

     

    China’s Epa­phras

     

    Dur­ing the 1900 Box­er reli­gious per­se­cu­tion, tens of thou­sands of West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies and Chi­nese Chris­tians were mar­tyred.  At the same time, a group of impor­tant ser­vants who would be used great­ly by God dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry, includ­ing Wang Ming­dao, Nee Tuosheng (Watch­man Nee), and Song Shangjie, were born around this time.  About a quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, a gen­er­a­tion of indi­vid­u­als who were espe­cial­ly called by God, includ­ing Wu Weizun, Lin Xian­gao (Samuel Lamb), and Li Musheng, were born.  The Lord who over­sees the uni­verse, time, and his­to­ry cre­at­ed gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of Chi­nese to fol­low him.  Gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, He also called, chose, mold­ed, and used those Chi­nese who pleased Him.  Undoubt­ed­ly, those who were born in the 1920s and were of the same gen­er­a­tion as Wu Weizun were mem­bers of a spe­cial gen­er­a­tion who were built up by God through a spe­cial his­tor­i­cal set­ting.

     

    These indi­vid­u­als were born in the uncer­tain 1920s.  Since child­hood, they have tast­ed the bit­ter­ness of pover­ty, wars, and chaos.  Yet, God’s grace descend­ed upon them.  The bumpy wan­der­ing road actu­al­ly led them to the gate of eter­nal sal­va­tion.  In the nation­al ter­ri­to­ry that had suc­cumbed to for­eign forces, they became the cit­i­zens of the king­dom of heav­en.  God also used the group of mis­sion­ar­ies who were born in the 1900s, such as Wang Ming­dao, to spir­i­tu­al­ly nur­ture them and built them up.  More­over, He gave them a major revival in the 1940s, because at that time “the night is com­ing when no one can work.”  That was the eve of the great dark­ness and the great war.  God pre­pared, built up, and strength­ened for him­self a group of peo­ple who would shine in the dark­ness.

     

    After 1949, Wu Weizun and those in his gen­er­a­tion all expe­ri­enced suf­fer­ings and tri­als dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.  They all expe­ri­enced dai­ly and endur­ing per­se­cu­tion, strug­gle, inspec­tion, accu­sa­tion, humil­i­a­tion, beat­ing, and impris­on­ment.  This long and seem­ing­ly end­less suf­fer­ing mer­ci­less­ly inspect­ed everyone’s faith.  There were many who mar­tyred and there were many who fell, weak­ened, and retreat­ed.  Yet, God has won­drous­ly “reserve[d] sev­en thou­sand – all whose knees have bowed down to Baal.”  Today, although these “sev­en thou­sand” peo­ple who per­sist­ed to the end are already old, they still hold the ambi­tion of “an old horse­man who still ride thou­sands of miles.’  They con­tin­ue to give all their effort and with loy­al­ty stand their guard until the last shift.  They are undoubt­ed­ly the trea­sure and wealth of the Chi­nese church.

     

    Yet, God has led each of them in dif­fer­ent ways and used each of them dif­fer­ent­ly from the oth­ers.  There were some who mar­tyred dur­ing the great suf­fer­ings and have rest­ed in the Lord.  There were oth­ers who after serv­ing over 20 years in prison have imme­di­ate­ly restored their orig­i­nal min­istries.  After their release, these indi­vid­u­als re-opened their house church­es (such as Yuan Xiangzheng (Allen Yuan) and Samuel Lamb).  Still, there were oth­ers who roamed every­where to build and teach church­es in dif­fer­ent places (such as Li Musheng).  Yet, God gave Wu Weizun a spe­cial mis­sion.

     

    In 1926, when Wu Weizun was born, his moth­er gave him the name of a Bib­li­cal fig­ure: Epa­phras.  If one exam­ines the Bible, there are three places that con­tain records relat­ed to Epa­phras. 

     

    “You learned it from Epa­phras, our dear fel­low ser­vant, who is a faith­ful min­is­ter of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spir­it.” (Colos­sians 1:7–8)

     

    “Epa­phras, who is one of you and a ser­vant of Christ Jesus, sends greet­ings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and ful­ly assured. I vouch for him that he is work­ing hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hier­apo­lis.” (Colos­sians 4:12–13)

     

    “Epa­phras, my fel­low pris­on­er in Christ Jesus, sends you greet­ings.” (Phile­mon 1:23)

     

    As we have seen, the Epa­phras of the Bible was (1) a loy­al min­is­ter of Christ; (2) he often prayed for the church­es, with great efforts; and (3) he was impris­oned along with Paul.

     

    In the sum­mer of 1949, when the head of the Chi­nese The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Bi Lude [sic] (an Amer­i­can) left Shang­hai for the Unit­ed States, Wu Weizun wrote a card in Eng­lish to bid farewell: “Dear Moth­er, please don’t wor­ry.  I will always fol­low my Lord.”  The note was signed “Epa­phras.”  In 1964, after he entered prison, he loved to use the name “Epa­phras” even more because it reflect­ed his sta­tus as a pris­on­er.  He hoped that he would be a good “Chi­nese Epa­phras.”

     

    In 1955, after writ­ing that famous com­bat­ive essay “We are for Our Faith,” Wang Ming­dao was arrest­ed on August 10.  As a con­se­quence, the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly that he found­ed, which con­tained essays he per­son­al­ly wrote, was closed.  In 1927, the first issue of the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly was offi­cial­ly pub­lished.  For 28 years, it bore the respon­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing up believ­ers through the Bib­li­cal truths and teach­ing the Chi­nese church­es through the Bib­li­cal truths.  Until 1955, after the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly was closed, and the voice of the truth dis­ap­peared, the Chi­nese church entered the dark ages.

     

    Yet, in the lat­ter half of the 1950s, after the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly ceased cir­cu­la­tion, Wu Weizun began to write the let­ters and short essays in his “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.”  He sent the pub­li­ca­tion to the mem­bers of the body through­out the coun­try and encour­age the broth­ers and sis­ters who were dis­bursed every­where to uphold their faith.  In the begin­ning, he hand­wrote the let­ters and the essays.  Lat­er, through the sug­ges­tion of the wife of his third old­est broth­er, he would use car­bon papers to repro­duce mul­ti­ple copies.  One of the charges against him that led to his arrest was his let­ter to a young man who was reborn, encour­ag­ing him to with­draw from the Com­mu­nist Youth League.

     

    After he entered prison in 1964, he began the bat­tle to “defend the field of lentils.”  He con­tin­ued this task until spring 1980, when his third old­est broth­er and his wife (who were not only his blood rela­tions, but also his broth­er and sis­ter in Christ) were able to find his address and began to com­mu­ni­cate with him.  In addi­tion, they trav­eled thou­sands of miles to vis­it him.  There­after, he grad­u­al­ly obtained con­tact with many mem­bers of the body of Christ. 

     

    In the ear­ly 1980s, as a result of the major sit­u­a­tion­al changes that were tak­ing place through­out the coun­try, the sit­u­a­tion in the prison was also cor­re­spond­ing­ly more relaxed.  When Weizun sent let­ters, the prison author­i­ties did not inspect his mail as strin­gent­ly as before.  There­fore, begin­ning in 1982, Weizun sent out let­ter after let­ter of prison briefs, which were writ­ten in the name of “Epa­phras.”  The title of all the prison briefs was “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.”  From 1982 to 1987, because he was in prison, he could only hand copy the essays in the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” for dis­tri­b­u­tion or use car­bon papers to repro­duce the writ­ings.  After he left the prison in 1987, the copies of the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” were mailed after they were copied in the copy stores.

     

    When a ker­nel of wheat fell to the earth, it will pro­duce many oth­er seeds when it dies.  In the ear­ly 1980s, after expe­ri­enc­ing years of great per­se­cu­tion, numer­ous Chi­nese house church­es appeared like bam­boos after the spring rain.  The broth­ers and the sis­ters thirst for God’s words and the house church­es need­ed spir­i­tu­al guid­ance.  Just around this time, Epa­phras sent out the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” that was writ­ten in beau­ti­ful char­ac­ters from the prison, and the writ­ings imme­di­ate­ly cir­cu­lat­ed among the broth­ers and the sis­ters.  The essays in the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ,” one after the oth­er and through repeat­ed copy­ing, were re-trans­mit­ted count­less times through­out the coun­try, from the prison in the north­west­ern plateau to the great prairie in the mid­dle of the coun­try and then to the scenic south­east­ern vil­lages.  They were cir­cu­lat­ed to the house church­es through­out the coun­try and were even sent abroad.

     

    After the Spir­i­tu­al Food Quar­ter­ly, God pre­pared the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” to serve the broth­ers and sis­ters in the Chi­nese house church­es.  He pre­pared China’s Epa­phras to write the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” in this spe­cial envi­ron­ment.  When he was in his mother’s womb, Wu Weizun was already cho­sen by God to be China’s Epa­phras.  After he was called by God, he stud­ied the­ol­o­gy but did not become a preach­er.  God had even high­er pur­pos­es for him.  He began a unique writ­ing min­istry.  This min­istry led him to prison.  Yet, he was able to return to that min­istry while in prison.  God used these words to encour­age many con­tem­po­rary believ­ers.  God’s deeds are great and won­der­ful!

     

    The num­ber of pages in the dif­fer­ent edi­tions of the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” var­ied.  Each time, Epa­phras the author wrote as the Holy Spir­it led him.  The con­tents of the cor­re­spon­dence were the dilem­mas faced by the con­tem­po­rary house church­es.  Many were ques­tions raised by the broth­ers and sis­ters in the house church­es and his replies to them.  These ques­tions includ­ed: “What hap­pens if every­one is weak and cool?”  “Why hasn’t God hear our prayers?”  “What hap­pens if the church faces per­se­cu­tion?”  “Can Chris­tians become mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty?”  “Where did the faults of the Three-Self lie?”  Faced with these sharp ques­tions, Epa­phras nev­er com­pro­mised in his replies.  He always clear­ly wrote replies that were based on the bib­li­cal truths.  He encour­aged those weak and cool mem­bers of the body and point­ed out the way for them: “Con­fess and repent before God.  Always be alert, prayer­ful, and seek His will.”  He rebuked the “false mas­ters” and admon­ished the church to “avoid fer­men­ta­tion” [bi xiao].  He point­ed out the best and the only road for those broth­ers and sis­ters fac­ing per­se­cu­tion: Walk the way of the cross; only the cross!  He him­self car­ried the cross and relied on the pow­er of the cross to gain vic­to­ry in the bat­tle to “defend the field of the lentils.”  He relied on the pow­er of the cross to gain vic­to­ry over the long years of per­se­cu­tion and suf­fer­ing.  He also encour­aged the broth­ers and the sis­ters to car­ry the cross and walk the way of the cross.  He cit­ed Matthew 5:10–11 to encour­age the broth­ers and sis­ters to be “joy­ful” when per­se­cut­ed because that is the Lord’s teach­ing.

     

    Epa­phras’ half cen­tu­ry of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences, his sol­id the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion – espe­cial­ly impor­tant were his life expe­ri­ences in which God placed him in the pit of fire to be mold­ed, and the sharp spir­i­tu­al vision that was the result of this abun­dant life allowed him to be like Wang Ming­dao – to have the abil­i­ty to respond to the ques­tions in the Chi­nese house church­es.

     

    The Glo­ri­ous Return of the Lord’s Ser­vant

     

    On Decem­ber 12, 1999, after he served in the unique writ­ing min­istry for 17 years, he record­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny, which was enti­tled: “Epa­phras – an Ordi­nary Chris­t­ian on Main­land Chi­na – Wu Weizun’s Tes­ti­mo­ny of a Life Filled with the Lord’s Grace in His Own Words.”  At the end of the tes­ti­mo­ny, he wrote:

     

    Now, although I am old, I have still not reached the sign­post.  I have yet to com­plete walk­ing the road and the wit­ness is still not com­plet­ed.  The bat­tle has yet to achieve the ulti­mate vic­to­ry.  It is still not the time for me to sing the hymn of vic­to­ry.  The pos­si­bil­i­ty for me to back­slide again, to depart from the Lord’s path, to be deceived, to quit, to fall short of the goal because of lazi­ness, and to aban­don all pre­vi­ous efforts, all con­tin­ue to exist.  There is absolute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for me to relax my alert­ness, and rest in the Lord’s grace.  I have seen many trag­ic pro­hi­bi­tions and painful lessons.  May the Lord have mer­cy and pro­tect me, save me until the very end, so that I can wait in alert­ness and walk every step that has not yet been com­plet­ed, and so that the tremen­dous grace that the Lord has shown me by shed­ding his blood will not be in vain.  Ulti­mate­ly, I hope to final­ly see the Lord’s glo­ry with­out shame.

     

    In Feb­ru­ary 2002, he wrote the last “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.”  The title was: “The poi­so­nous sore in the Chi­nese church is fes­ter­ing and becom­ing larg­er!”  In his writ­ings, he rebuked the so-called “the­o­log­i­cal thought con­struc­tion move­ment,” which was rep­re­sent­ed by the Writ­ings of Ding Guangx­un, as essen­tial­ly the “move­ment to change and re-cre­ate the faith (bib­li­cal truths and God’s words).”  After­wards, he became silent.  He said to the broth­ers: “Recent­ly, the Lord has not moved me to write any­thing.  With­out the Lord’s inspi­ra­tion, I can­not write any­thing.  The Lord moved me to com­pile all the cor­re­spon­dence essays that I wrote in the past for sys­tem­at­ic copy­ing.”

     

    In August 2002, he com­piled 166 pieces of the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ” that he had writ­ten over the last 20 years.  The total num­ber of char­ac­ters was over one mil­lion.  He clas­si­fied them and pro­vid­ed the ser­i­al num­bers and placed them in five large mail­bags.  He made a spe­cial request with a broth­er to trans­mit an entire vol­ume to the U.S.-based Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly. 

     

    Between Novem­ber 27 and Novem­ber 30 of 2002, he wrote the last let­ter to his rel­a­tives.  In his let­ter, he clear­ly expressed the affairs after his return to his home in Heav­en:

     

    Since the last six years of impris­on­ment (the life sen­tence was reduced to six years), I have become increas­ing­ly clear about the last, incom­plete stage of the tes­ti­mo­ni­al assign­ment that God the Father and the Lord Jesus had giv­en me.  This was the two lim­i­ta­tions to which I must adhere from the day I left the prison in 1987 until the day when I depart from this world or the day when the Lord Jesus glo­ri­ous­ly descend to earth – when all of us believ­ers would be res­ur­rect­ed to see the Lord and wear the spir­i­tu­al bod­ies that are like the Lord, which will nev­er rot, and entered his glo­ri­ous realm.  (1) Exe­cute the reg­u­lar fast­ing that per­mits meals only on Mon­days and Thurs­days.  This action is a free protest based on my rights as a cit­i­zen that is tar­get­ed against the Ningx­ia Court, which cre­at­ed lies and said that I had indeed repent­ed, there­by reduc­ing my sen­tence and releas­ing me.  It demon­strates that since I entered prison in Tian­jin in July 1964, I have remained unre­pen­tant and I am there­fore unqual­i­fied to accept a legal reduc­tion of sen­tence and release.  I should have remained a pris­on­er for life until the end.  (2) Exe­cute the prin­ci­ple of not leav­ing the city of Yinchuan and the prison, and con­tin­ue to be a good “pris­on­er for life out­side the great wall.”  In essence, I am to be, in the government’s par­lance, “some­one who is being kept alive.”  The pur­pose of and the mean­ing behind God’s giv­ing of these two lim­i­ta­tions are, on the one hand, that I should com­ply with and accept the pow­er of the prison (the gov­ern­ment organ) to enforce the law (which has noth­ing to do with whether I’ve repent­ed); on the oth­er hand, once I arrive at the oth­er side of the wall, He want­ed me to firm­ly refuse and resist the court’s false­hood and pre­ten­tious­ness (which refers to its insis­tence that I had “indeed repent­ed”).  I have nev­er for­got­ten or ignored in the slight­est degree these two lim­i­ta­tions, or tes­ti­mo­ni­al assign­ments, that were giv­en to me by God in the 15 to 16 years after I left the prison.  There­fore, I had no choice but to heart­less­ly refused the love and care of the third old­er broth­er and his wife as well as those of Zaimi­an and Wang Zhen.  For this pre­cise rea­son, regard­less of how old and decrepit I become, I ask you to please not come to vis­it me in Yinchuan (even if it was con­ve­nient and pos­si­ble for you to come, don’t; I thank you, but by all means do not come).  I will remain a part of the prison (or the gen­er­a­tor fac­to­ry).  It is a nor­mal thing if I die, and my body’s cre­mat­ed and interred and buried in the South Pit.  There is noth­ing that I can obstruct me from res­ur­rect­ing with all the believ­ers at the end of the days.  The prison is mere­ly a home in which I have dwelled for a long time, but only tem­porar­i­ly, while in this world, until that day when I’m res­ur­rect­ed and wear the same unde­filed spir­i­tu­al body as the Lord, and enter the eter­nal home with the Lord.  The rea­son is that the phys­i­cal body that will sure­ly be worn away will ulti­mate­ly return to the dirt, but only the unde­filed spir­i­tu­al body can enter, along with the Lord, the eter­nal king­dom of the God that will nev­er be worn away.  In past dozen years, the prison has treat­ed me well and has tak­en care of me.  On this point, I have always been grate­ful to the gov­ern­ment before God, with spe­cial thanks to the prison.

     

    I will stop for now.  If the Lord per­mits, I will write a short let­ter to you each year.  When I die, I have asked Broth­er Liu Fangx­ing, who I have known for many years, to phone the third old­er broth­er and ask him to tell all of you.

     

    May the grace of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.

     

    Epa­phras

     

    Novem­ber 27 – 30, 2002

     

    Twen­ty days lat­er, in the morn­ing of Decem­ber 21, 2002, a young cou­ple went to Wu Weizun’s res­i­dence with­in the vicin­i­ty of the Yinchuan prison to vis­it Jesus Christ’s faith­ful wit­ness Epa­phras.  When they knocked on the door, no one respond­ed.  They felt that some­thing was wrong so they jumped over the low wall to enter the res­i­dence.  They saw Epa­phras on the ground neat­ly groomed with his glass­es.  His coun­te­nance was peace­ful.  He has already been tak­en away by the Lord who loved him.

     

    For it seems to me that God has put us apos­tles on dis­play at the end of the pro­ces­sion, like men con­demned to die in the are­na. We have been made a spec­ta­cle to the whole uni­verse, to angels as well as to men. (1 Corinthi­ans 4:9) 

     

    On the great stage of the 20th cen­tu­ry Chi­nese church, many believ­ers per­formed the dra­ma with their blood and lives for men and angels to see.  The life and wit­ness of Epa­phras undoubt­ed­ly can be called a won­drous scene on this stage.

     

    Since he was called by God, he upheld the resolve to car­ry the cross for the rest of his life.  He was test­ed and thrown into the pit of fire like Daniel’s three friends.  Though he was mold­ed he did not have the bit­ter taste of burns.  His thin and kind face was always filled with a joy­ful smile.  The broth­ers and sis­ters who vis­it­ed him could hard­ly believe that the hum­ble and easy-going old man who stood before them was the brave man who used a sharp pen to angri­ly rebuke the false mas­ter, the war­rior who bat­tled for the Lord and defend­ed the field of lentils.

     

    There were also weak moments in his life and he also had a his­to­ry that aroused con­tro­ver­sies.  Many peo­ple do not under­stand why he would strange­ly “fast”?  Why did he insist on becom­ing the life pris­on­er out­side the great walls?

     

    Yet, the Lord knew.  He had kept the things that he had received from the Lord, and kept them until the end.  Now, the Lord who loves him has tak­en him away and allowed him to rest from the earth­ly labors and suf­fer­ings.  He can speak with­out shame like Paul:

     

    “I have fought the good fight, I have fin­ished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of right­eous­ness, which the Lord, the right­eous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appear­ing.” (II Tim­o­thy 4:7–8)

     

    In the 20th cen­tu­ry, God had giv­en us “China’s Daniel” (Wang Ming­dao) and “China’s Epa­phras” (Wu Weizun).  God’s deeds are indeed great and won­drous!

     

    Let us pray and let us wait to see God’s won­drous deeds….

     

    Ref­er­ences for this essay:

     

    1. “Epa­phras – An Ordi­nary Chris­t­ian on Main­land Chi­na”, Wu Weizun’s nar­ra­tion of his life wit­ness­ing by the Lord’s grace.  Two vol­umes, copies, unpub­lished man­u­scripts.

     

    2. “Epa­phras’ 166 Cor­re­spon­dences in the Body of the Lord” [Yibafo Zhunei Jiao­tong 166 Pian], copies, unpub­lished man­u­scripts.

     

    3. Wu Weizun’s let­ters to his broth­er Wu Weikan and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, Novem­ber 27 – 30, 2002.

     

    4. Web­site of Tonglu, Zhe­jiang province, “Tonglu Per­son­al­i­ties” col­umn.

     

     

     

    This is a True Israelite

     

    Pan Yiyuan

     

    In the morn­ing of Decem­ber 21, 2002, Jesus Christ’s faith­ful wit­ness Epa­phras (this is the faith name that Wu Weizun’s moth­er gave him) has already been tak­en away by the Lord who loves him.

     

    Approx­i­mate­ly one week before the spring fes­ti­val in 1994, I was arrest­ed by the Zhangzhou City Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau with the charge of “engag­ing in under­ground church activ­i­ties” (the offi­cial term of arrest was detained for inves­ti­ga­tion [shourong shengcha]).  After Epa­phras heard about the sit­u­a­tion, he imme­di­ate­ly asked some­one to deliv­er a note to my elder­ly moth­er and told her: This is a suf­fer­ing that is per­mit­ted by God, which is also a grace and bless­ing grant­ed by Him.  Not only must we not escape it, we should also not refuse it and not com­plain about it.  In addi­tion, we must not fran­ti­cal­ly seek lib­er­a­tion.  Even more so, we can­not seek the back­door to find con­nec­tions.  Instead, we should give thanks and give praise and wait for the Lord’s mer­cy.  There were many Chris­tians who, in order to reduce the unavoid­able pain and tor­ture, fell into some­one else’s trap and become oth­ers’ pris­on­ers, and per­formed deeds that offend­ed God, hurt peo­ple, and humil­i­at­ed them­selves.

     

    At the time when I went to prison, my elder­ly moth­er had already con­tact­ed a group of broth­ers and sis­ters who loved the Lord to form a prayer net­work that would pray days and nights for my release.  After she received Epa­phras’ let­ter, she imme­di­ate­ly changed the prayer focus on ask­ing the Lord to give me strength and to stand firm as a Chris­t­ian, and to not do any­thing that would harm broth­ers and sis­ters and cause the Lord to grieve.

     

    Although my moth­er did not know much about Epa­phras’ expe­ri­ences, she knew from my lips that Epa­phras was an obe­di­ent, absolute, and sim­ple man who feared God and was absolute­ly faith­ful to Him.  He lis­tened com­plete­ly to any­thing that the Lord has said and car­ried them out com­plete­ly.

     

    On Decem­ber 21, 1994, I was released on bail.  After I left prison, I imme­di­ate­ly sent a note to Epa­phras about the joy­ful event.  Yet, Epa­phras’ reply was extreme­ly harsh: Broth­er Pan, for many years, peo­ple who were arrest­ed for the name of the Lord have been impris­oned for many years and endured all kinds of humil­i­a­tion before they were released.  Yet, you left prison after a brief 10 and half months in jail.  Did you make any com­pro­mis­es that dam­aged the Lord’s name while in prison?  Or did you agree to some con­di­tions set by the pub­lic secu­ri­ty organs?  Or did you sub­tly admit your so-called “crimes”?  Or did you change your posi­tion and became “Judah”?  Please tell me the truth.  These words, while ten­der, did not leave me any face.  Put plain­ly, the ques­tion was: “If you have com­mit­ted any sins, tell them truth­ful­ly.”

     

    Epa­phras’ let­ter caused me to think of the Lord’s assess­ment of Nathanael: “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is noth­ing false.” (John 1:47)  At that time, the Lord not only did not become angry with the rude Nathanael, He actu­al­ly praised him because “there is noth­ing false” in him.

     

    What else could I say when con­front­ed with Epa­phras’ hon­est, upright, good, and direct ques­tions?  I said to him direct­ly: Lord Jesus’ praise for Nathanael was His praise for you.  The church lacks some­one like you.  If there were more peo­ple like you, many hid­den things in the church would be dif­fi­cult to con­ceal.

     

    There­fore, I report­ed to him with­out reser­va­tion the gen­er­al process dur­ing the time between my impris­on­ment and release.  I began with the account of how my elder­ly great uncle was agi­tat­ed about my impris­on­ment.  One of his for­mer stu­dents, Mr. Li Shang­da who is now a bil­lion­aire in Indone­sia, had vis­it­ed him and saw his sad coun­te­nance.  Mr. Li asked my great uncle why he was so griev­ed?  The great uncle told him about the impris­on­ment of his great nephew (which was me).  After Mr. Li Shang­da heard the sto­ry, he vol­un­teered to write Mr. Jia Qin­gling, who was then the provin­cial par­ty sec­re­tary of Fujian.  (After the 16th Par­ty Con­gress, Mr. Jia was ele­vat­ed to the posi­tion of mem­ber­ship in the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Polit­buro Stand­ing Com­mit­tee.)  Mr. Li asked Mr. Jia to refrain from con­duct­ing the will­ful arrests of Chris­tians dur­ing the era of reform and open­ing, so as to avoid frus­trat­ing the great hope that the over­seas Chi­nese have for the con­struc­tion of the moth­er­land….

     

    After this let­ter was sent, it appeared to have been lost in the sea of doc­u­ments.  Jia Qin­gling did not respond and the pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau did not release me.  Mr. Li Shang­da, as a leader of the over­seas Chi­nese in Indone­sia, then invit­ed Mr. Jia Qin­gling to vis­it Indone­sia.  He even spoke at the wel­com­ing din­ner in Jakar­ta that fea­tured dozens of over­seas Chi­nese lead­ers.  In front of numer­ous peo­ple, Mr. Li once again appealed to Jia Qin­gling that the government’s will­ful arrest of Chris­tians could cre­ate neg­a­tive impact among the over­seas Chi­nese.  Dur­ing the din­ner, one self-pro­claimed “Chris­t­ian,” in order to seek Mr. Jia Qingling’s favor, spoke: “The Com­mu­nist Par­ty would nev­er ran­dom­ly arrest Chris­tians.  There must be oth­er rea­sons that account­ed for the impris­on­ment of Pan Yiyuan.”  Mr. Li imme­di­ate­ly pro­duced a pho­to­copy of the “deten­tion cer­tifi­cate” of the Zhangzhou city pub­lic secu­ri­ty bureau for all to see.  He sub­se­quent­ly scold­ed the “Chris­t­ian”: The Com­mu­nist Par­ty said that Pan Yiyuan “engaged in under­ground church activ­i­ties,” and yet you said no.  Are you even more left­ist than the Com­mu­nist Par­ty or have even more knowl­edge about the inside sto­ry?  Then I would ask you to “reveal” the oth­er fac­tors behind the Pan Yiyuan case!”

     

    Mr. Jia Qin­gling saw that the atmos­phere had changed and said: “You do not need to argu­ment among your­selves.  I will take care of this case as soon as I return to Chi­na.”

     

    After I was released, I saw the let­ter that Mr. Li Shang­da wrote to the great uncle.  The let­ter said: “Jia Qin­gling car­ried out his promise.  On the 19th (mean­ing the 19th of Decem­ber in 1994), he returned to Fuzhou and the release was made on the 20th (the pre­cise date was the 21st).”  Mr. Li also said, he had already noti­fied his daugh­ter to wire 2,000 ren­min­bi to help in my recov­ery.

     

    Mr. Li Shang­da was not a Chris­t­ian and had nev­er met me.  Yet God won­drous­ly used him to accom­plish His will dur­ing my suf­fer­ing.

     

    I also hon­est­ly con­fessed times when I did not act at all like a Chris­t­ian while in prison, which occurred on three occa­sions.

     

    Dur­ing the first occa­sion, the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry that had no basis in order to sup­port their expla­na­tion that there was “evi­dence” for my crime.  They intend­ed to force me to con­fess.  I then fol­lowed their log­ic and fab­ri­cat­ed an even more ridicu­lous sto­ry.  As the fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry involved a broth­er who had went to the Unit­ed States, the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials used the occa­sion that the broth­er went to vis­it fam­i­ly to try to cre­ate divi­sions between us.  This good broth­er who had spent 15 years in prison for the Lord right away saw through their scheme.  Not only did he not fall into their trap, he even dis­closed their lies. 

     

    Dur­ing the sec­ond occa­sion, they obtained my diary when they raid­ed my home.  They demand­ed to know what the Ara­bic numer­als in the diary meant.  I hon­est­ly told them.  The offi­cer who record­ed the state­ments cried: “lies.”  When he saw his atti­tude, I smiled and changed my state­ments: “Oh, those are the secret codes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between me and Taiwan’s Jiang Jing­guo.”  The sec­tion chief named Lu who inter­ro­gat­ed me knew that I was mere­ly mak­ing fun of that stu­pid col­league who only knew how scare the com­mon civil­ians.  He angri­ly said: “Don’t say any­more, don’t say any­more.”

     

    Dur­ing the third occa­sion, which was also the last inter­ro­ga­tion, the sec­tion chief named Lu said to me: “Pan Yiyuan, we treat you well and yet you think we’re eas­i­ly abused.  You refused to tell us any­thing.  In real­i­ty, all I have to do is to deprive you of sleep for three days and three nights, and then you will tell me every­thing.”  (He referred to the tor­ture method known as “fatigue bom­bard­ment.”)

     

    I said: “This is a great method.  After this method, there would be no one who could with­stand the pres­sure.  Every polit­i­cal move­ment has used this good method, forc­ing the pris­on­er to say what­ev­er you want him to say.  I don’t need three days and three nights.  One day and one night will be suf­fi­cient.  How­ev­er, what I say will not be up to you.”

     

    Sec­tion Chief Lu’s face didn’t look too well.  There were even sounds that resem­ble the grind­ing of teeth.  After a long while, he sud­den­ly said: Call your fam­i­ly tomor­row to take you home.  One of his entourage (prob­a­bly a dri­ver) said with a smil­ing face: “You’re going to be allowed to go home for Christ­mas.”  I replied: “I don’t have the habit of cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas, but it will do.”

     

    That day was the 20th of Decem­ber, 1994, dur­ing the after­noon of the day pri­or to my release.

     

    After I had sent the let­ter with the above con­tents to Epa­phras, I wait­ed dai­ly for his lec­tur­ing.  How­ev­er, he did not lec­ture, nor did he crit­i­cize.  He only pro­vid­ed the love and com­fort that were in Christ. 

     

    When I entered the prison, I was resolved to be like Epa­phras: no response, no reply, and no defense.  In actu­al­i­ty, I only upheld the prin­ci­ple for three months, and then I changed.  The rea­son is that I had learned his appear­ance but I did not learn his obe­di­ence and faith­ful­ness to the Lord as well as his kind­ness.  The result was that I did not even tru­ly learned his out­ward appear­ance. 

     

    In order to fur­ther my edu­ca­tion (?), the pub­lic secu­ri­ty organ con­tin­u­ous­ly with­held my retire­ment pen­sion for two years and one month.  The with­hold­ing con­tin­ued until my unit’s leader inter­vened on my behalf.  How­ev­er, the pen­sion that had been with­held was nev­er com­pen­sat­ed.  The “bail peri­od” also con­tin­ued for many years.  Chi­nese law clear­ly stip­u­lat­ed that if there was no indict­ment, there could be no with­hold­ing of income.  In addi­tion, the “bail peri­od” could not exceed a peri­od of one year.  This is what the Chi­nese often say: “If I say it’s all right, even if it’s not all right, it will still be all right; how­ev­er, if I say it’s not all right, even if it’s all right, it will still not be all right.”

     

    In Sep­tem­ber 2001, I final­ly, for the first time and also for the last time, met Epa­phras, whom I have thought about for a long time.  Epa­phras was not artic­u­late.  He stut­tered when spoke.  He was even less artic­u­late than me, who had expe­ri­enced stroke on four occa­sions.  How­ev­er, he unhesi­tat­ing­ly and brave­ly moved for­ward for the glo­ry of the Lord.  “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high call­ing of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philip­pi­ans 3:14)

     

    Today, Epa­phras is now in the Lord’s embrace.  The Lord has wiped away all of his tears.  I am also rais­ing my head to watch my Lord, that on the day that will not be long in com­ing, he will receive me to his side and wipe away all of my tears.

     

    Feb­ru­ary 2, 2003

     

    Pan Yiyuan     Main­land Chi­nese Chris­t­ian

     

     

    The Days Spent with the Elder­ly Broth­er Wu Weizun

     

    Liu Wanx­ing

     

    I lived very close to the Elder­ly Broth­er Wu Weizun.  The dis­tance between our res­i­dences could be cov­ered in 10 min­utes on a bicy­cle.  Although I had helped him with some things, because he left us sud­den­ly, what remain in my heart are loss­es and guilt.  I regret that there were too many things that I should have done for him but have in fact done too lit­tle.  If he was res­ur­rect­ed and lived in the same place, I would go see him once each day to chat with him so as to alle­vi­ate his lone­li­ness.  It would have been just as well if I just went to help him pre­pare some coal and repair his bicy­cle.

     

    Most of what I have said to the broth­ers and sis­ters who live far away were things that I have seen with my own eyes and what I have heard from him.  I will not speak on things that he had already writ­ten in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy.  I main­tain the atti­tude of one who is count­ing the trea­sures in his home, not want­i­ng to miss one item.  I am will­ing to present all of these things before the entire body of Christ.

     

    Before 1987 the broth­ers and sis­ters in China’s Yinchuan City did not even know that there was a war­rior who had been fight­ing for the Lord in our midst.  How did we come to know him?  It was because the prison cadre (Yinchu Prison was also called the Wind Gen­er­a­tor Fac­to­ry because it pro­duced elec­tri­cal gen­er­a­tors) who was in charge of Broth­er Wu Weizun (here­by referred to as Broth­er Wu) came to our church (the present-day Yinchuan TSPM Church) to intro­duce him.  “Our fac­to­ry has recent­ly released a pris­on­er who has com­plet­ed his sen­tence.  He is also advanced in age.  He does not want to return to his for­mer home.  He also shares your faith.  You should go try to con­vince him to return to his home.”  This was how we came to know Broth­er Wu.

     

    Through the com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in the body and the essays that Broth­er Wu had writ­ten in the Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ, he became known by more and more mem­bers of the body.  There is a faith­ful ser­vant of the Lord in China’s Yinchuan city.  His expe­ri­ence on the path to the cross was extra­or­di­nary.

     

    Broth­er Wu did not write again for a long time after he com­plet­ed his last essay for the Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of Christ.  After he wrote his last let­ter home on Novem­ber 30, 2002 (he gave a copy and a copy to my old­est son, who had often vis­it­ed his Uncle Wu dur­ing this past year), in a brief 20 days, the Lord took him home.  Dur­ing the time that he stopped writ­ing the essays, he said to me on numer­ous occa­sions: “The Lord has not moved me to write any­thing in recent days.  With­out his inspi­ra­tion, I can write noth­ing.  The Lord has moved me to find all the essays I wrote in the past and arrange them in prepa­ra­tion for sys­tem­at­ic copy­ing.”

     

    This “sys­tem­at­ic and com­plete” copy­ing effort, which is also the last copy­ing work, gave him tremen­dous pres­sure.  He divid­ed the 166 essays into three cat­e­gories: (A) before and after his prison release; (B) Bib­li­cal truths (two vol­umes); and © the church and the polit­i­cal author­i­ty (two vol­umes), and made five found­ed books.  No more than 20 copies were made at any time (each copy weighed 2.4 kilo­gram).  His house did not have enough space for more copies.  He said: “The house is filled with them.  May the Lord ensure that the pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials would not come.  If they did, the loss will be great.  Each set of 20 copies val­ues at 7,000 RMB.” 

     

    Dur­ing the time that he was engaged in the work, one evening after rain­fall, when there was no pedes­tri­an on the road, he used his bicy­cle to car­ry the copied essays home.  When he was not too far from home, his two legs slid into the mud in the ditch on the side of the road and he became stuck.  With no assis­tance, he would have to wait until the next morn­ing.  The Lord sent his neigh­bors to pull him out.  For­tu­nate­ly the bicy­cle did not slide into the ditch.  Broth­er Wu had planned to leave the house ear­ly to make copies so that he could return home ear­ly.  How­ev­er, because the road was dif­fi­cult to tra­verse after the rain and because the print­ing press had made some errors, he was delayed in his return home.  How­ev­er, pro­tec­tion came with dan­ger.

     

    The envelopes that Broth­er Wu used were all self-made.  His envelopes were tru­ly cen­tered.  Even the cor­ners were sym­met­ri­cal.  I told him not to waste his time on this work.  One could still send let­ters in slight­ly off-cen­tered envelopes.  He said: “Indeed, I do things slow­ly.”  I work fast, but with­out the cen­tered­ness that Broth­er Wu has demon­strat­ed.  Broth­er Wu was just this type of per­son.  Whether as a per­son or as a work­er, every­thing for him had to be done cor­rect­ly and neat­ly.  He would nev­er take any­thing light­ly.  He always tried to be thrifty.  I now remem­ber that when I first knew him, he would sharp­en his already worn pen­cil head over and over again to write the essays.  Lat­er, he became increas­ing­ly occu­pied with reply­ing to oth­ers’ cor­re­spon­dence to him, which took a lot of time.  How­ev­er, the pro­vi­sions made by the body also became increas­ing­ly abun­dant, so that he ceased pro­duc­ing his own envelopes.

     

    Broth­er Wu was as inno­cent and hon­est as a child – there was no decep­tion in him.  After his cor­re­spon­dence list was first tak­en by those peo­ple, he could not con­tin­ue the cor­re­spon­dence, so he just start­ed to accu­mu­late the list again.  Some­one told him to put such a piece of page in a place that oth­er peo­ple would not be will­ing to exam­ine.  He respond­ed by plac­ing it in a stack of old news­pa­pers, which was tru­ly secure.  There was one time when he was writ­ing let­ters.  The cor­re­spon­dence list was on the table.  Some­one yelled out­side the door.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the per­sons who walked in were not fel­low Chris­tians but those peo­ple (editor’s note: pub­lic secu­ri­ty offi­cials).  They forced their way into the house and once again took away the cor­re­spon­dence list.  Some peo­ple lat­er told him that when encoun­ter­ing sim­i­lar inci­dents in the future, you ought to secure the cor­re­spon­dence list and the let­ters before open­ing the door.  On anoth­er day, those peo­ple came again.  They placed the con­fis­cat­ed books on Broth­er Wu’s desk.  Sud­den­ly, those peo­ple went into the court­yard.  Tak­ing advan­tage of this oppor­tu­ni­ty, Broth­er Wu placed a Bible he was read­ing in the draw­er.  This time, it worked.  He was able to use crafti­ness to keep a Bible.  Lat­er, Broth­er Wu was able to learn some skills from his loss­es, includ­ing hid­ing those eas­i­ly con­fis­cat­ed mate­ri­als behind the stacks of dis­or­ga­nized heaps.  It turns out that pri­or to these inci­dents Broth­er Wu nev­er hid any­thing, and those peo­ple under­stood his ways.

     

    If you have read his essays in the “Cor­re­spon­dence in the Body of the Lord,” par­tic­u­lar­ly those crit­i­cisms of the false prophets, you will notice the sharp­ness of his pen and the com­pre­hen­sive­ness of his cri­tique, such that there was no place for the false prophet to hide.  Yet, if you then go vis­it the author of those essays, you would not believe that these harsh essays were writ­ten by this per­son, who car­ried a thin and sal­low coun­te­nance, wore a pair of glass­es and a set of cloth­ing that was not prop­er­ly fit­ted.  The cloth­ing even had patch­es.  No one would believe that these essays came from his pens.

     

    There is a phe­nom­e­non that we observed in the print­ed ver­sions of Broth­er Wu’s essays, which was that his essays were always writ­ten on one full page.  Why the coin­ci­dence?  This was not a coin­ci­dence; rather, it was the result of his care­ful effort to reduce expen­di­tures.  After he com­plet­ed the arti­cles, he would count the num­ber of words, then cal­cu­late the num­ber of lines need­ed, how many words were on each line, and how large should the font for each word be.  Then he would place these arti­cles onto the pages.  He shared with me one coin­ci­dence.  One time, as he was about to copy his com­plet­ed essays using the Fang­songti font (Note: A Chi­nese print font), he felt that there was one para­graph that was unsat­is­fac­to­ry and decid­ed to rewrite the sec­tion.  After he com­plet­ed the rewrite, he count­ed the num­ber of words.  What a coin­ci­dence!  The num­ber of words after the rewrite was the same as the pre­vi­ous count.  There was no need to make the cal­cu­la­tions about the num­ber of lines and the num­ber of pages.  He could imme­di­ate­ly begin the print work.  Why did Broth­er Wu want to count?  The rea­son is that the unit of cal­cu­la­tion in the print­ing indus­try is the sur­face of the page.  Regard­less of the num­ber of lines or the num­ber of words, even if the page con­tains only one-half line of words, the cost will still be cal­cu­lat­ed by page.  Broth­er Wu’s effort was intend­ed to reduce expen­di­tures.

     

    Broth­er Wu was very afraid of the cold.  Dur­ing the autumn days, when oth­er Chris­tians vis­it­ed him, they would see that he had already put on the cot­ton hat and that the ear cov­er­ings attached to the hat would also have been pulled down.  His face was also wrapped up by the hat.  He looked like some­one who had just returned from the snowy moun­tains.  How­ev­er, his stove for keep­ing warm was always turned over sev­en to eight days after oth­ers have already turned on theirs.  This was anoth­er one of his acts of thrifti­ness.  I believe that the rea­sons that Broth­er Wu was so fear­ful of the cold were his fast­ing and the fact that he had caught cold while in prison (in Tian­jin). 

     

    We saw that the sin­gle bed used by Broth­er Wu was very nar­row.  When a per­son sleeps on it, he could not turn around.  If he tried, he would have fall­en onto the floor.  Broth­er Wu said: “This was the size that I had espe­cial­ly request­ed.  When I sleep, my body and my head do not turn.  This abil­i­ty was trained dur­ing the time that I was in prison.”  When a num­ber peo­ple are on top of a pit, it would be impos­si­ble for any­one to turn or move.  You have to remain sta­tion­ary like a pup­pet.

     

    Broth­er Wu’s per­spec­tive on home secu­ri­ty was the antithe­sis of the per­spec­tive held by mankind.  No one has seen locks on his doors.  When he was inside the house, he would lock the doors from the inside.  When he left the house on errands, he would nev­er lock the door to the yard.  He only closed the door to the house.  A door hangar would be on the bed­room door with the note “please leave a mes­sage.”  Vis­i­tors could also wait for him in the house.  Broth­er Wu adopt­ed his habit out of fear that broth­ers and sis­ters who were vis­it­ing from afar would not be able to rest in the house if they saw the locked door.  He did this out of con­sid­er­a­tion for the broth­ers and sis­ters.  He nev­er lost any­thing.  At times, when a neigh­bor­hood child saw vis­i­tors to his house, the child would enter the house and tell the guests: “Grand­pa Wu went out.”  He would leave after giv­ing the expla­na­tion.

     

    Broth­er Wu often said: “The work that the Lord gave me was to wit­ness like an ordi­nary Chris­t­ian.”  It seemed sim­ple and ordi­nary when first hear­ing these words.  How­ev­er, at that time, his work actu­al­ly led him to prison and was tor­tured, near­ly to the point of death.  The Brother’s courage to insist on his refusal to wor­ship the idol (the stat­ue of Mao) has result­ed in him suf­fer­ing unknown num­ber of acts of tor­ture.  In order to uphold the tes­ti­mo­ny of say­ing grace before meals, we can hard­ly know how many times Broth­er Wu had to endure the lack of meals.  In addi­tion to deny­ing him food, the prison author­i­ties even forced him to con­duct the same amount of labor as the oth­er pris­on­ers, such that the com­bi­na­tion of hunger and fatigue had led him to fall into comas.  At times, they would refuse to give him food so that he was on the edge of starv­ing to death (human beings can die at any time if denied food and drinks for sev­en days).  They then force fed him, lead­ing him to vom­it after the forced feed­ing.  The prison police then ordered Broth­er Wu to eat the things he had vom­it­ed, and he com­plied.  Broth­er Wu was this kind of per­son.  In order to obey the Lord’s com­mands, he was unafraid of pay­ing any price.  He would not con­cede the slight­est to sin.

     

    Once, I asked Broth­er Wu: “What was the one tor­ture you were least will­ing to face before you were impris­oned?”  He said: “I least want­ed to face hunger.  Yet, the result was just that.  After I was impris­oned, they used hunger to tor­ture my will and tried to cause me to sur­ren­der.”  I remem­ber Broth­er Wu had told me that for three years he had used sub­stan­dard mel­ons and veg­eta­bles instead of reg­u­lar food to sat­is­fy his hunger.  He used his own rice and flour to exchange for coarse foods so that he could get more foods so as to allow his stom­ach to get a sense of full­ness.  He was a guy who could eat a lot.  He was also not finicky (he didn’t care too much for the taste, as long as the food filled him).  The food that he ate after he was released remained food that ordi­nary peo­ple could not take in.  He would cook the cere­al, veg­etable, eggs, and meat sep­a­rate­ly.  Then he would mix them togeth­er in a large basin.  After the food cooled, he would divide them into por­tions.  Each por­tion would be con­sumed at each meal.  Since he fast­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, it was not appro­pri­ate for him to be too full.  There­fore, he would stop eat­ing after his stom­ach had a sense of full­ness.  When he want­ed to eat again, he would then eat anoth­er por­tion.  He took his food by days and not by meals.  He would stop eat­ing and drink­ing after 24 hours.  He nev­er ate hot food.  Even dur­ing win­ter he ate cold food.  This habit was also devel­oped dur­ing his time in prison.

     

    Broth­er Wu had told us about the sto­ry of the large tiger and the small tiger.  An expe­ri­enced pub­lic secu­ri­ty cadre once said to this uncom­pro­mis­ing man: “You are indeed like a new­ly-born calf that is not afraid of the tiger.  Do you know how many pas­tors and preach­ers had sur­ren­dered dur­ing my watch?  Why don’t you think about it.”  (The pub­lic secu­ri­ty cadre meant that he had means to make peo­ple fall on their knees.)  Broth­er Wu said: “After that pub­lic secu­ri­ty cadre fin­ished his words, God told me the sto­ry of the large tiger and the small tiger.”  God said: “I am the large tiger and the regime is the small tiger.  When the require­ments of the small tiger do not dis­obey the large tiger, you can com­ply with both the large tiger and the small tiger.  When the small tiger’s require­ments con­tra­dict the require­ments of the large tiger, you must adhere to the large tiger and not the small tiger.”  The Bible was said that it is right to obey God and not man.  Through­out the Chi­nese and non-Chi­nese his­to­ries, on the many occa­sions when Chris­tians were per­se­cut­ed, shed blood, and sac­ri­ficed their lives, the events were exact­ly caused by the Chris­tians’ deci­sion to obey God and not man.

     

    In his deal­ings with the broth­ers and the sis­ters, Broth­er Wu had also erect­ed great stan­dards of right and wrong.  He did not always get along with peo­ple.  He had heard that a cer­tain “sis­ter” had become a mem­ber of the East­ern Light­en­ing.  He imme­di­ate­ly looked for that “sis­ter” to inquire about the rumor.  That “sis­ter” lied that oth­ers had false­ly accused her.  Broth­er Wu believed her.  Lat­er, that woman who had joined the East­ern Light­en­ing got anoth­er sis­ter to fall into the trap of the East­ern Light­en­ing.  The oth­er sis­ter suf­fered as a result.  For­tu­nate­ly, she escaped.  This sis­ter told Broth­er Wu the truths.  The woman who joined the East­ern Light­en­ing took the ini­tia­tive to vis­it Broth­er Wu.  How­ev­er, when Broth­er Wu saw her, he said: “Go.  From now on, I will no longer receive you.”  There was anoth­er Broth­er Pan from the south.  He was entrust­ed by the Lord to print Bibles dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion.  He was some­one who had already giv­en lit­tle thought to life and death (dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, death was cer­tain for any­one who was caught print­ing the Bible).  Although he had nev­er met Broth­er Wu, they were broth­ers in Christ who were kin­dred spir­its.  The day that Broth­er Pan was impris­oned final­ly came.  His stay in prison was a few days shy of a year.  Broth­er Wu heard that Broth­er Pan was released after only a year of impris­on­ment.  He thought some­thing was fishy, so he direct­ly wrote to Broth­er Pan: “Why is it that your time in prison was so short?  Did you coop­er­ate with the author­i­ties?”  Because of Broth­er Wu’s frank­ness and lack of pre­ten­tious­ness, Broth­er Pan knew that he was a good broth­er.

     

    Broth­er Wu’s replies to cor­re­spon­dences from oth­er broth­ers and sis­ters were a great deal of work.  Many broth­ers and sis­ters from afar want­ed to cor­re­spond with him and they could only use let­ters to do so.  No mat­ter how busy he was, as long as broth­ers and sis­ters vis­it­ed him, he would imme­di­ate­ly set aside the tasks in his hands, tell you to sit on his bed, move a square stool to sit oppo­site you, and qui­et­ly lis­tened to you speak.  He would nev­er dis­rupt some­one else’s talks.  After the oth­er per­son had fin­ished what they want­ed to say, then he would say what he should say, so that the oth­ers might derive some ben­e­fits from the exchanges.  On sep­a­rate occa­sions, there were times when guests invit­ed Broth­er Wu to pray for them.  You can tell that Broth­er Wu was not an elo­quent man.  He was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp.  He was unable to speak his words with­out paus­es.  Once you read his essays, then lis­ten to his prayers, you may be mis­tak­en that they were not from the same Broth­er Wu.  After the guests depart­ed, and he would see them out, smiled and waved at them.  He didn’t imme­di­ate­ly turn around to shut the door.  He would return to the door only after the guests had gone a dis­tance from his home.  The broth­ers and the sis­ters were his guests.  There were times when one set of guests had yet to leave that anoth­er set of guests arrived.

     

    Dur­ing the 15 years between his release from prison and the day he was raised to Heav­en, Broth­er Wu only rode two bicy­cles.  The first one was a large mod­el 28 bicy­cle.  When I first met him, he was rid­ing this old bike.  He rode it until the bike could no longer be repaired.  Then he sold it to the man who was col­lect­ing junks.  Broth­er Wu looked at his bro­ken bike and said to me: “Ah, it has accom­pa­nied me for many years.  I will miss it.  We’ve devel­oped feel­ings for each oth­er.”  I replied: “I also have this strange feel­ing.”  The sec­ond bicy­cle he rode was a fake Ever­last­ing brand mod­el 26 bicy­cle.  Since he did not ride it for very long, the metal­lic parts were all rust­ed.  When he was tak­en to Heav­en, his bicy­cle remained in the cus­tom­ary place, as if it was still wait­ing for its mas­ter to ride it to the post office for mail deliv­er­ies, to the print­ing plant, to the train sta­tion, to the bank, and to the gen­er­a­tor plant, or the homes of broth­ers and sis­ters.  Ah!  This will no longer be.  “Bike, your mas­ter was too busy.  He had no time to wash your body.  There­fore, you are filled with mud and your appear­ance has com­plete­ly changed.  You had accom­pa­nied your mas­ter to crash into the elec­tri­cal wire poles on the side of the street dur­ing the nights.  You were also crashed by oth­er bikes, with you falling along with your mas­ter.  Your master’s leg was bruised and his fin­gers also bled.  Although the sit­u­a­tion was so seri­ous, you would nev­er have seen your mas­ter becom­ing angry with the oth­er par­ty.  The God of your mas­ter pro­tect­ed him; He also pro­tect­ed you.”

     

    As I think back, dur­ing the last year, Broth­er Wu was tru­ly unlike his old self.  When he rode the bicy­cle, he would uncon­trol­lably lean to the car path.  Dur­ing the last phase of his life, the speed with which he rode the bike also decreased.  Three years ago, he rode even faster than I did.

     

    By God’s grace, Broth­er Wu’s impor­tant belong­ings were recov­ered although they were lost on two occa­sions.  He had a strange habit.  He loved to wrap his house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cer­tifi­cate, food rationing coupons, and var­i­ous doc­u­ments and coupons in one pack­age.  He would car­ry the pack­age wher­ev­er he went.  I said to him: “It’s prob­a­bly not nec­es­sary to car­ry these things around all the time.”  He said: “You can nev­er be sure when they may become use­ful.”  He nev­er changed this habit.  In fact, it is pre­cise­ly because the house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let was in his pack­age that those who found the pack­age were able to return it to him.  The first time he lost the pack­age was when he went out to pur­chase a smok­ing pipe.  He left the pack­age at the door to the shop.  Since his pack­age did not have an attrac­tive appear­ance, it did not raise many people’s eye­brows.  In fact, some peo­ple might have mis­tak­en the pack­age to be some­thing left by the beg­gars.  For this rea­son, after a day and a night, no one picked it up.  The next day, a female labor­er who was clean­ing the streets were pre­pared to dump this pack­age into the trash can along with the oth­er pieces of trash.  How­ev­er, she felt its weight­i­ness on her hands.  When she opened the pack­age, she dis­cov­ered doc­u­men­ta­tions such as the house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let.  There­fore, she found him through the house­hold reg­is­tra­tion book­let.  When he lost these doc­u­men­ta­tions and coupons, he was very anx­ious, so he prayed to the Lord and felt peace in his heart.  There­fore, the female labor­er was able to find her on the next day.  The sec­ond time he lost the pack­age occurred when he was vis­it­ing me.  He had expect­ed to say a few words and leave.  How­ev­er, it took a lit­tle longer time that he had expect­ed.  When he went down­stairs, he did not see the pack­age.  This time, the pack­age was not lost; it was stolen.  Chris­tians should not be sus­pi­cious of oth­ers.  How­ev­er, based on my cal­cu­la­tion, I still went down to the trash sta­tion ear­ly every morn­ing to check whether the pack­age was there.  I con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the thief would throw the pack­age into the trash heap from the top floors down to the bot­tom floor.  How­ev­er, noth­ing was found for three con­sec­u­tive days.  On the fourth day, I woke up late and the trash had been tak­en away.  I thought to myself, this is bad.  I became anx­ious.  Thanks the Lord, He again pro­vid­ed.  The thiefs made up a lie to con­ceal their action.  They found Broth­er Wu through the gen­er­a­tor plant.  Broth­er Wu still thanked him by giv­ing them gifts.

     

    Before his release from prison, Broth­er Wu had served as an instruc­tor in the prison school.  Among his belong­ings that were left behind was a leather-bound­ed note­book.  When you open it, it con­tained the rewards that Broth­er Wu had received.  On the top it was writ­ten: Wu Weizun in 1985 was rat­ed a good instruc­tor in the cul­tur­al and tech­no­log­i­cal school.  On the bot­tom of the page was print­ed the Edu­ca­tion Sec­tion of the Ningx­ia Hui Autonomous Region Prison.  The stamp was round.  The prison cadres knew that he was sec­ondary school instruc­tor.  Once, a cadre went to him to ask that he tutor his daugh­ter on third-year high school math­e­mat­ics and physics because she had failed in her uni­ver­si­ty exam­i­na­tion.  Broth­er Wu expressed hes­i­tan­cy (because he was busy).  The cadre said: “Elder Wu, I came today to beg you, not to order you.”  When Broth­er Wu heard that the cadre had come to beg him, he read­i­ly agreed.  Broth­er Wu first reviewed the mate­ri­als.  Lat­er, he taught her.  The next year, Broth­er Wu said to me: “That girl is very bright.  She has suc­cess­ful­ly passed the uni­ver­si­ty exam­i­na­tion.”

     

    It is impos­si­ble, even with thou­sands of words and expres­sions, to ful­ly describe any aspect of our rev­er­ent Broth­er Wu’s spir­i­tu­al life.  We invite the broth­ers and sis­ters out­side Chi­na to read the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of this spir­i­tu­al giant and the 166 top­i­cal essays that he wrote.  Then, we will know a lit­tle more about what it means to wit­ness for the Lord, what is spir­i­tu­al war­fare, what is the watch­er, what is a good instruc­tor and good friend, what it means to car­ry the Cross to fol­low the Lord, what is obe­di­ence, what is to love one’s broth­ers, and what it means to defend the truth.

     

    He is a mod­el wor­thy of our emu­la­tion.  He was a war­rior in the spir­i­tu­al war.  He was a good teacher and a fine friend.  He was an alert watch­er.  When­ev­er con­fu­sion and traps appeared, he always wrote to sound the bell for alert­ing the flock of sheep so that they would not enter into con­fu­sion.  He even point­ed out the keys to mys­ter­ies for Taiwan’s Ko Shiyuan and America’s Bil­ly Gra­ham.  Even more impor­tant­ly, he vehe­ment­ly hat­ed the false prophets in today’s Chi­na because they dare to speak false­ly about the bib­li­cal truth in order to adapt to the polit­i­cal require­ments.  He is a con­tem­po­rary spir­i­tu­al giant (I don’t think that we have gone over­board in giv­ing him this title).  The effects of his cor­re­spon­dences may become even more man­i­fest­ed in the future. 

     

    Our beloved Broth­er Wu Weizun has gone to the Lord’s place.  We are not sad­dened by this fact because we hope that we will be reunit­ed before the Lord.  We respect him and we miss him.

     

    Last­ly, let us con­clude with the two sen­tences that Broth­er Wu often said to the broth­ers and sis­ters.

     

    First sen­tence: “It is the Lord’s grace that has sus­tained me.  Only by His grace am I able to wit­ness in the way that He has instruct­ed me.”

     

    Sec­ond sen­tence: “With­out the Lord’ touch, I can write noth­ing.”

     

    Jan­u­ary 2, 2003

     

     

    [1] Translator’s note: Soon after its vic­to­ry over the Nation­al­ist gov­ern­ment, the com­mu­nist regime estab­lished “ Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na ” to over­see the activ­i­ties of the reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties.  Nation­al Com­mit­tee of Three-Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment of the Protes­tant Church­es in Chi­na was the Three-Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment (TSPM), head­ed by Wu Yao­zong.  The “three self” stands for self sup­port­ing, self per­pet­u­at­ing, and self gov­ern­ing.  The uni­fy­ing theme is that the Church in Chi­na should have no polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships with their coun­ter­parts out­side Chi­na.

    Esther Wang

    Esther Wang

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