Chen Hui Jiangsu Province
I
was born in an ordinary family. My father was a soldier. Influenced and
nurtured by my father from childhood, I thought in my heart that
soldiers should take serving their country and obeying orders as their
bounden mission and dedicate themselves selflessly to the Party and the
people, and I aimed to become a soldier in the future and walk along my
father’s path. However, things that happened later changed my viewpoint
of pursuit and way of life little by little. In 1983, I heard Jesus’
gospel. Because of the special leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit,
I, who had been poisoned by atheism and Red Education since childhood,
was deeply moved by the Lord Jesus’ love. From then on, I stepped onto
the way of believing in God. I began to attend church services, pray,
and sing hymns to praise God. Such a life made me feel very secure and
peaceful in my heart. But gradually I found that a problem always
puzzled me and made me feel troubled and perplexed. That is, although I
knew that the Lord Jesus taught people not to commit sins, I always
involuntarily lived in a condition of “committing sins in the day and
confessing them at night” and couldn’t hold on to the Lord’s teachings
anyway. In order to solve this problem, I went to other house churches
to have meetings, hoping to find a way out. But in the end, I was
disappointed. In 1999, one of my relatives preached Almighty God’s
end-time gospel to me, but as I was concentrating on making money at
that time, I simply had no mind to follow God and pursue the truth. Not
until one year later did I formally begin to attend meetings. Through
constantly reading God’s word and having meetings and fellowshipping
with the brothers and sisters, I understood many truths and knew God’s
eager intention to save man, and felt that the responsibility and
mission God gave to every one of us were great, so I joined in preaching
the gospel actively. When I saw that many people came before God and
gained God’s blessings and salvation, my faith became greater.
However,
the CCP government’s cruel persecution broke my quiet and happy life.
In August, 2002, in order to preach God’s end-time gospel to some of my
former co-workers who believed in Jesus, I went to northwestern China
with my husband. One night, I was having a meeting with a brother and a
sister who had just accepted God’s end-time work. Suddenly, the door was
kicked open with a “bang,” and six or seven ferocious-looking evil cops
with batons in their hands broke in. One of them pointed at me and said
venomously, “Handcuff her!” Another two fiercely handcuffed my hands at
once and ordered us to stand against the wall and not move. Then they,
like bandits, began to ransack boxes and chests in the room. They had a
thorough search in all the places where they thought something might be
hidden. In a short time, the whole house was turned into a mess. In the
end, one evil cop searched out some gospel materials and a book of God’s
word from my handbag. Then he stared at me with angry eyes and hurled
curses at me, “You’re fucking courting death! You dare to come here to
preach the gospel. Where did you get these things?” I kept silent. He
said in exasperation, “You don’t tell me, right? I’ll pry your mouth
open sooner or later. Go! There’s the place for you to speak!” While
saying that, he pushed and pulled me into a police car. At that time, I
saw that there were far more than these six or seven evil cops coming.
Many SWAT policemen with guns were standing on both sides of the road.
Seeing such a situation, I was very scared in my heart and kept praying
to God, asking him to keep and lead me. A moment later, a passage of
God’s words clearly occurred to my mind, “Do not be afraid,
because my hand is lifting you up and I will keep you from all the evil
ones. You should guard your heart and be in me at any moment, because
your life lives by my life. If you leave me, you will dry up at once.”
(from “The Twenty-eighth Piece of Word” in The Word Appears in the
Flesh) Right! God is my reliance. No matter what environment comes upon
me, God who created all things and rules over all things is with me. As
long as I quiet my heart before God at any moment, God will lead me to
overcome any environment, because God is faithful and he rules over and
manipulates everything. When I thought of these, my heart calmed down.
A
little past 10 p.m., I was taken to the Criminal Police Team. After the
evil cops took photos of me, they took me to an interrogation room.
Unexpectedly, there were already seven or eight sturdy guys with
ferocious eyes standing in the room. Seeing me come in, they surrounded
me like a group of ferocious wolves, as if they would devour me alive. I
was very nervous and desperately prayed to God in my heart. In my
praying, the words in a hymn of life experience came to my mind, “Head
can be cut off and blood can be shed, but the backbone of God’s people
cannot be bent; God’s charge is on my mind. I resolve to shame the old
satan.” (from “I Wish to See the Day God Gains Glory” in Follow the Lamb
and Sing New Songs) Immediately, strength welled up in my heart. I was
ready to give up my life, and I made a firm resolution, “No matter how
the evil cops torture me, I’ll never betray God and be a Judas.” At
first, that gang of evil cops didn’t beat me but just put the handcuffs
with sawteeth on me and ordered me to keep standing for three or four
hours. My legs and feet became numb and painful and I felt very tired
all over. Around 1 or 2 a.m., the captain of the Criminal Police Team
came to interrogate me. I couldn’t help feeling nervous and trembled
somewhat. The evil captain stared at me and questioned, “Tell me! Where
are you from? What area are you in charge of? Where do you have
meetings? How many people are there under you?” Seeing me say nothing,
he exasperatedly seized my hair and beat and kicked me. After I was
beaten lying prone on the floor, he kicked my head hard. Immediately, my
ears buzzed, and I couldn’t hear anything. I felt waves of
heart-piercing pain in my head as if it would burst. I couldn’t help but
yell out. After a struggle, I lay on the floor, unable to move. The
evil captain again gripped me by the hair and dragged me up, shouting
loudly, “Buddies, come on!” The seven or eight sturdy guys who had been
waiting for a long time in the room surrounded me and punched and kicked
me. I was beaten so much that I writhed on the floor with my hands
holding my head. Those devils used such savage strength that it seemed
they wished to kill me with each blow and each kick. As they beat me,
they roared, “Speak or not? How dare you not speak! Speak quickly. If
you don’t speak, we’ll beat you to death!” Seeing me still say nothing,
the evil captain kicked my ankle hard. Each kick, like a nail being
stuck into my bone, made me feel extremely painful. Then, they again
kicked and stomped me wildly. I felt that all my bones would be smashed
and the vibration of my internal organs was so strong that I could
hardly breathe from the pain. I lay face down on the floor with a faint
breath of life and shed bitter tears. I called to God in my heart, “O
God! I’m dying. Please keep me. I’m afraid that I can’t hold out through
tonight. O God! Please give me strength….” I didn’t know how long I was
tortured, and I just felt extremely dizzy and felt my whole body
unbearably painful, as if it fell apart. Strands of hair were pulled off
and fell to the floor with the scalp. (Even now, there is no hair in a
large part on the top of my head.) Blood dripped down my ears to the
floor drop by drop, and the fierce pain made my nerves numb. In agony,
God’s words inspired and guided me within, “You should suffer
for the truth, devote yourself for the truth, endure humiliations for
the truth, and endure more and more afflictions so as to gain more and
more truths. This is what you should do.” (from “Peter’s
Experience—His Knowledge of Chastisement and Judgment” in The Word
Appears in the Flesh) God’s words gave me a mighty strength. I repeated
these words in my heart again and again. Yes! Today God is incarnated
and comes to China, an atheistic country, to work and speak at the risk
of his life. He brings us the truth, the way, and the life, so that we
have light in our living and direction for our life. God spends so much
painstaking effort and price just for the purpose of saving us from
satan’s corruption and making us gain the truth as our life and become
one saved by God’s word. But today, satan the devil tortures me like
this and its sinister purpose is to make me forsake the true way and
betray God and thus make God’s plan of saving man fall through. I’ll
never yield to satan and disappoint God. I’ll suffer for the truth and
endure more afflictions so as to gain the truth. Thus, even if I die, it
is worthy, and I’m worthy of being called a man. Those devils
interrogated me until dawn, but with the encouragement of God’s words, I
pulled it through.
The next morning, the evil captain came to
interrogate me again. Seeing me still say nothing, he carried out a
scheme to seduce me. He incited one evil cop to come up to me with a
sinister smile and help me up from the floor and let me sit on the sofa.
He adjusted my clothes and patted me on the shoulder, saying with a
false care, “Why do you go through all this? Just say it. If you tell
us, we’ll let you go home. Why suffer here? Your children are waiting
for you at home. Do you know how my heart aches when I see you suffer?”
Hearing his devilish words and looking at his contemptible and shameless
face, I gnashed my teeth with hatred. I thought, “You devil. Don’t say
these nice words to deceive me. Never expect to make me betray God or
get anything about the church from me!” Seeing that I wasn’t affected,
the evil cop looked at me lewdly and touched me with his hand. I
unconsciously drew back. But this hoodlum took me in his arm with one
hand, making me unable to move, and gripped my breasts hard with the
other. It was so painful that I couldn’t help screaming. The other evil
cops sat aside watching the fun from beginning to end. They laughed in
obscenity constantly and also spoke some low and dirty words. I was
filled with hatred and shivered with anger. My tears flowed down like
beads off a broken string, and my glaring eyes looked straight at the
evil cop who gripped me. At that moment, I really wanted to die with
those beasts together! Seeing my eyes, he was so frightened that he
hurriedly loosened his grip. I knew that God sympathized with my
weakness and made the devil flinch. Through my personal experience, I
truly tasted that the CCP government is evil, ferocious, and reactionary
and saw that the “people’s police” under its system were a gang of
hoodlums and beasts. After that, the evil cops continued to interrogate
me by cruel tortures, which made me feel worse than death. As I didn’t
drink a drop of water for one day and one night, my body was in a state
of serious collapse, and I really didn’t know whether I could hold on. I
couldn’t help feeling miserable and despaired. At that moment, God
inspired me to remember a hymn of life experience, “With strong will I
face the roars of devils, and in the hard journey my heart becomes even
stronger. The true light is shining, and death is not to be feared. …
Serving God is right and proper. Satan being so base, my rage flames
high. Tricks of the king of devils exactly reveal its satanic image. I
cannot bow down to satan and become the betrayer Judas for an ignoble
existence. I will undergo all the hardships and pass through the dark
night. I will never yield before death and win glory for God to welcome
God’s appearing. I have seen that the righteousness has appeared. On the
night before the dawn, the devils are struggling desperately to serve
for God’s perfecting the people to bear testimony for God. I will care
for God’s heart more, and go all out to repay God in God’s family. With
my love for God, I will give out light and heat. I will be faithful to
God to the end and testify and glorify God. My heart will have been
satisfied.” (from “Rise Up in the Dark Oppression” in Follow the Lamb
and Sing New Songs) These sonorous words encouraged me, “Today the devil
tortures the believers in God like this, and the one it hates is God.
Its sinister purpose is to prevent us from believing in God and serving
God and thus disturb God’s work and ruin our opportunity to be saved. At
the crucial moment of the spiritual war, I can’t fall and become
satan’s laughingstock. The more satan afflicts me, the more I’ll rebel
against it and stand on God’s side. I believe that God will overcome and
satan is doomed to be defeated and destroyed. I shouldn’t lose heart.
I’m willing to rely on God and bear a strong and resounding testimony
for God.” At night, the evil captain came to interrogate me again after
being satiated with food and drink. I still said nothing. Then he came
forward to pinch my chin and said fiercely, “It seems I still need to
give you some color. I don’t believe you won’t tell!” As he said that,
he brought something like a hammer with electricity and hit my forehead
hard. Each hit, like removing my bone marrow, made me numb, weak, and
limp all over, and my body kept trembling. Seeing my miserable state,
the evil cops laughed smugly and said that they would send me to the
Pure Land…. At that moment, God’s words again resounded in my ears, “When
man gives up his life completely, nothing is difficult. No one can
daunt him. Is there anything more important than ‘life’? In that case,
satan cannot possibly do anything on man and has no way to do with man.”
(from “The Interpretation of the Thirty-sixth Piece of Word” in The
Word Appears in the Flesh) God’s words gave me endless strength and I
had the will to pledge my life to satisfy God: O God! Death is not to be
regretted! Satisfying you is first! I clenched my teeth tightly and
said nothing. The evil cops exhausted all their tricks and said with
resignation, “You are just a housewife, and you aren’t capable of
anything. How come your God has given you such great strength?” I knew
that this evil cop didn’t submit to me but submitted under God’s
authority. In the face of the facts, I personally experienced that God’s
word is the truth and the life and can be man’s powerful life force,
and that as long as one acts according to God’s word, he can transcend
the bondage of death and overcome satan. I had more faith in God.
Failing
to get any valuable information from me, the evil cops gave up
interrogating me in the end. At dusk of the next day, they sent me to
the detention house. At that time, I was already disfigured from the
tortures. My face was badly swollen, my eyes couldn’t open, and my mouth
was full of blisters. The cops of the detention house saw that I was
beaten within an inch of my life and were afraid to take the blame, so
they refused to receive me. Through negotiation, around 7 p.m. they
finally received me and carried me into the cell.
That night, I
ate the first meal since I was arrested: a black and hard steamed bun,
which was gritty and hard to swallow down when chewing, and a bowl of
rotten vegetable soup, with bugs floating on it and a layer of dirt at
the bottom of the bowl. With such a meal, I still gobbled it down. Since
I am a believer in God, in the days that followed, the officers often
instigated the prisoners to torture me. Once, the head of the cell gave
an order, and those prisoners under her seized my hair and forcefully
banged my head against the wall. I felt senseless from the banging.
Moreover, they didn’t allow me to sleep on the bed, and I could only
sleep on the cold concrete floor beside the commode. Sometimes, the head
deliberately clogged the commode with steamed buns and then asked me to
fish them out with my hand. While fishing, I shed tears. The prisoners
couldn’t bear to look at it and gave me a plastic bag to wrap my hand,
but the head didn’t allow me to use it. Furthermore, once I couldn’t
remember the prison regulations or recited them wrongly, they would lash
me with a leather belt. Suffering such inhuman tortures and
humiliations all day long, I became weak. I felt that I might as well
die as live that way like a pig or a dog. So many times when I wanted to
slam into the wall and die, God’s words guided me within, “When
water swamps men’s whole body, I save them from the stagnant water,
giving them an opportunity to receive life again; when men lose
confidence to live, I pull them up from the edge of death, giving them
the courage to live, letting them have me as the foundation for their
existence….” (from “The Fourteenth Piece of Word” of God’s
Utterance to the Entire Universe in The Word Appears in the Flesh) God’s
motherly words warmed my heart. Thinking about God’s words, I was in
tears. I thought, “When I was beaten cruelly by the evil cops, it was
God’s love that cared for me all the time. He used his words to guide me
and give me faith and strength so that I survived tenaciously in those
cruel tortures. Now, when I’m maltreated and bullied willfully by the
head of the cell and tortured by the prisoners to almost break down and
want to end my life, God’s words again save me from death and give me
the courage to live so that I can stand up again. If not for God caring
for me by my side all along, I would have long been tortured to death by
these evil demons. Facing God’s great love and mercy, I can no longer
be passive and resistant and grieve God’s heart. I’ll stand on God’s
side resolutely and repay God with love by my faithfulness.” When my
state of mind changed, I saw God’s wonderful deed. The head tormented
me, not allowing me to sleep on the bed, but God raised up a prisoner to
defend me. She fought with the head, and in the end, the head gave in.
Thank God! If not for God’s mercy, after sleeping on the damp and cold
cement floor for a long time, I, being so frail, would have become half
disabled even if I didn’t die. Just like that, I passed through two
months of suffering in the detention house. During that period, the evil
cops interrogated me twice more and adopted tough and soft means. Under
God’s keeping, I saw through satan’s schemes and didn’t let their
schemes succeed. In the end, they really exhausted their tricks. After
many futile interrogations, they sentenced me to three years and sent me
to No. 2 Women’s Prison to serve my sentence.
From the first day
after I was taken to the prison, I began to be overloaded with the
manual labor. Every day we worked for over ten hours. In one day, we had
to knit one sweater, or make thirty or forty dresses, or pack twenty
thousand pairs of chopsticks. If we couldn’t finish the task, our term
of imprisonment would be lengthened. The intensive hard labor in the day
already made us feel a serious physical exhaustion, yet at night, we
still had the political tasks. We were forced to learn the prison
regulations and laws, and learn Mao Zedong Thought, Marxism-Leninism,
and Lei Feng’s spirit, receiving their spiritual afflictions. Each time I
heard those atheistic fallacies the prison guards spoke, I felt
disgusted and felt like vomiting. I hated their baseness and
shamelessness from my heart. There, I never had a sound sleep and was
often woken up by the whistles of the prison guards at midnight. They
asked us to stand in the corridor without any reason. Or there was labor
for us to do at midnight, like carrying potatoes, corns, or feed, each
bag of them weighing over 50kg. At night, the cold winter wind was
biting. We stumbled along and moved our feet with difficulty. Sometimes,
we would be directly pushed down on the ground by the bag. I often
dragged my tired body back to the cell in tears at two or three o’clock
in the morning. I was so tired, cold, and angry that I couldn’t fall
asleep. When I thought that I had to pass through the three long years
of imprisonment there, I was more despaired and felt weak and limp all
over. God deeply knew my suffering and always encouraged me through his
words when I was most helpless, “Don’t be disheartened. Don’t be
weak. I will reveal to you. It is not so smooth on the way to the
kingdom. There is not so easy a thing to gain blessings in a breeze, is
there? Today, everyone will have painful trials. Otherwise, your hearts
of loving me will not be strengthened, and you will not have a true love
for me. …” (from “The Forty-first Piece of Word” in The Word Appears in the Flesh) “As
a man, a man who pursues God, you should think about and treat your
life seriously: how you should consecrate yourself to God, how you
should believe in God more meaningfully, and since you love God, how you
should love God more purely, more beautifully, and more perfectly.”
(from “Peter’s Experience—His Knowledge of Chastisement and Judgment”
in The Word Appears in the Flesh) God’s words greatly comforted my
painful and grieved heart and also made me understand God’s will: Today
such an environment comes upon me and it is a practical test to me, to
test whether I can keep my faithfulness to God and whether I have a true
love for God in this environment. I can’t be a coward, and I should
have the will and courage to pursue the truth and stand up for justice,
and pursue to be a man who has the truth and humanity.
In the
prison ruled by the CCP, its darkness and evil could be seen everywhere.
The prison guards asked a sister to heat the boiler. The boiler leaked
and burnt the sister’s skin. The sister asked them to have the boiler
repaired, but they said venomously, “You deserve it if you’re burnt to
death,” and refused to have it repaired. Those “people’s police” are
inhuman and are more malicious than devils. But God who loves us always
manifested his great power and authority to keep and care for us. After
that prison guard cursed the sister, her mouth became lopsided and her
eyes became skew. Later, only after an operation did she recover. From
then on, she dared not curse the sister again. We truly felt God’s
almightiness and loveliness. So many times when we were in dangerous
situations, it was God who personally made a way out for us and made us
safe. Another time, a prison guard asked me to carry the chopsticks to
the fifth floor. As all the stairs iced up, I carried a big and heavy
bag of chopsticks and walked very slowly. The prison guard aside hustled
me. I was afraid that I would be beaten up again if I couldn’t finish
the task, so I was in a hurry. As a result, I tumbled down the stairs
and cracked my heel. I lay on the ground and my leg couldn’t move. The
heart-piercing pain made me break out in a cold sweat. However, the
prison guard didn’t care about me in the slightest but ordered me to
stand up and continue working. Yet I couldn’t stand up at all. Seeing
that, a sister who served her sentence together with me hurriedly
carried me on her back to the clinic. The prison doctor bound up my foot
simply and just gave me several cheap tablets. Afraid to delay the
work, the prison guards refused to give me treatment. So I could only
work with injury. Wherever I went to work, the sister carried me there
on her back. Because of God’s love, our hearts were linked together
closely. Once having the opportunity, the sister would fellowship about
God’s words with me to encourage me. So, I got a great comfort in my
most difficult times. During that period, many times I felt so painful
and weak that I could hardly stand up, and I even had no strength to
breathe, and many nights I prayed to God in tears under the quilt. It
was two hymns God inspired me to think of that had been encouraging me, “It
was predestined by God before the ages that today you can receive the
chastisement and refining of God’s word, and even more receive God’s
commission. So when you undergo chastisement, do not be too distressed.
No one can take away the work done on you and the blessing bestowed upon
you. No one can take away anything that is given to you. … You should
understand that the most crucial commission is to be gained by God and
become his glorious testimony. This is God’s will.” (from
“Don’t Fail God’s will” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs) “On the
path to the kingdom there are so many frustrations one after another;
half dead and doubly tortured, I shed so many tears. Without God’s mercy
and keeping, who could have walked until today? Ruled and arranged by
God to be born in the end time, I’m fortunate to follow the practical
God. God has endured so many sufferings; God has suffered so many
humiliations. God has suffered too greatly. If I still care for myself,
how can I comfort God’s heart? … We will never get passive, and we will
never draw back. Since we have stepped onto the path of loving God,
however many are the sorrows, we will follow God to the end without a
change of heart!” (from “A Song of Loving God Without Regret” in Follow
the Lamb and Sing New Songs) It was God’s revelation and love that saved
me from despair and gave me the courage to live time and again so that I
experienced the care and warmth of God’s love in that cold and dark
hell on earth. I resolved that I would try my best to live and repay
God’s love, that no matter how great the sufferings, I would continue to
walk, and that as long as I had one breath left, I would be faithful to
God. In the three years of prison life, what moved me the most was that
the sister gave me several hand-written copies of God’s words. In the
impenetrable and watertight prison of demons, I could still read God’s
word, which was God’s great love and mercy for me. It was just these
words of God that encouraged and led me through those difficult days.
In
September 2005, I was released after serving my sentence, and that dark
prison life finally ended. Walking out of the gate of the prison, I
took a deep breath. I truly thanked God from my heart for loving me and
keeping me so that I could walk out of the prison alive. Through
personally experiencing the CCP government’s arrest and persecution that
time, I’ve truly known what justice is and what evil is, what beauty
and good is and what ugliness is, and what positive things are and what
negative things are. I’ve also known what I should pursue by giving up
everything and what I should hate bitterly, curse, and reject. In such
an environment, I’ve truly known that God’s word is the life of God
Godself, which is with transcendent power and indeed can be the
motivating power for man’s living, and that as long as one lives by
God’s word, he can transcend everything and overcome any difficult
environment. As Almighty God says, “My word is the never-changing truth, and I am man’s life supply and the only guide for mankind….”
(from “You Should Think About Your Conduct and Actions” in The Word
Appears in the Flesh) From now on, no matter what great difficulties and
dangers I’ll encounter, I’m willing to exert every effort to pursue the
truth in God’s word and pursue to be a man truly living by God’s word.
from The books of The Church of Almighty God The Overcomers’ Testimonies
No comments:
Post a Comment