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| Regretless Youth｜Eastern Lightning |
Regretless Youth｜Eastern Lightning
Xiaowen Chongqing City
“‘Love’ means a pure and unblemished affection, to love with the heart, to feel with the heart, and to care with the heart; in ‘love’ there is no condition, no barrier, and no distance; in ‘love’ there is no suspicion; in ‘love’ there is no cheat, no deal, and no cunning; in ‘love’ there is no choice; and in ‘love’ there is not any mixture.” (from “Pure and Unblemished Love” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs) This hymn of God’s word accompanied me through the long and painful seven years and four months of prison life. The CCP government deprived me of the best years of my youth, yet from Almighty God I got the most precious and practical truths. So I have no regrets!
In 1996, uplifted by God, I accepted Almighty God’s end-time salvation. Through reading God’s word and fellowshipping at the meetings, I firmly believed that all God’s words are the truth and are something entirely different from any knowledge or theory of this evil world. The word of Almighty God is the highest maxim of life. Much more to my delight, when staying with the brothers and sisters, I could open myself and express my mind freely. I didn’t at all need to behave as I did in contacting the worldly people, taking precautions or engaging in suspicion and deception. I had never felt so happy and joyful. I liked this big family very much. But soon, I heard that believing in Almighty God was not allowed in this country. This puzzled me greatly: Almighty God’s words are all telling us to worship God and walk the right way of human life and to be honest people; if people all believe in Almighty God, everywhere under heaven will be at peace. I really couldn’t figure out why the CCP government would persecute, oppose, and even try to arrest believers in Almighty God, given that believing in God is the most just cause. I thought, “No matter how the CCP government persecutes and how much the pressure is from public opinion, since I have firmly believed that this is the right way of human life, I will walk to the end!”
Henceforth, I began to perform the duty of sending the books of God’s word in the church. I knew that in such a country that resists God, it was very dangerous to perform this duty, and that I might be arrested at any time. But I even more knew that it was the calling and the bounden duty for me, a created being, to spend for God and do my duty. Just when I was cooperating with God with full confidence, one day in September 2003, I was arrested by those from the Municipal Bureau of State Security on my way to send the books of God’s word to the brothers and sisters.
In the bureau, faced with interrogations one after another, I didn’t know how to deal with them. So I desperately cried to God, “O Almighty God, please give me wisdom and the proper words to say, and keep me so that I won’t betray you and can stand testimony for you.” In that period, I called on God every day, not daring to leave God in my heart for a moment, and only beseeching God to give me wisdom to deal with the evil cops. Thank God for his care and keeping. Every time I was interrogated, I either drooled or hiccupped unceasingly, unable to speak…. Because I saw God’s wonderful deeds, I made up my mind, thinking, “I’ll fight it out! If you want my head, I have one. If you want my life, I have one. Today, if you want me to betray God, that’s impossible!” When I firmly made up my mind that I would rather die than be a Judas and betray God, God helped me in every aspect, which made me truly grateful to him. In each interrogation, God kept me and made me go through it safely. Although I didn’t tell anything, the CCP government eventually sentenced me to nine years on the charge of “using a cult to disrupt the enforcement of the law”! When I heard the court’s judgment, because of God’s keeping, I didn’t feel sad, nor fear them, but felt contempt for them. While those people were pronouncing the sentence, I whispered quietly, “This is the evidence of you the CCP government’s resisting God!” Afterward, the public prosecutors came specially to sound me out. I told them calmly, “Nine years is nothing! When I get out of here, I’ll still be a member of the Church of Almighty God. If you don’t believe, just wait and see! But you should remember that you are the ones dealing with this case!” My attitude surprised them very much. They gave me the thumbs-up, saying, “Impressive! Impressive! You are even tougher than Sister Jiang! When you get out, we’ll meet again. Then we’ll treat you!” At that time, I felt God had gained glory, so I was gratified in my heart. When I was sentenced that year, I was just 31 years old.
The prison in China was hell on earth. The lengthy prison life made me thoroughly see satan’s true colors of being inhuman as well as its demonic substance of being God’s enemy. The cops in China don’t rule people by law, but by evil. In prison, instead of fixing people personally, the prison guards incited the prisoners to rule the others by violent means. The evil cops also used various means to shackle the prisoners’ mind. For example, all of us must wear the same prison uniforms distributed by the CCP government, with special numbers on them, have the hairstyle they required, wear the shoes they permitted, walk the paths they required, and take the steps they allowed. Whether in spring, summer, autumn, or winter, and whether it was windy or rainy, hot or cold, we had to act according to their orders and we couldn’t have our own choice. Every day we were required to assemble and number off at least fifteen times, and sing the praises of the CCP government as many as five times. We also had political tasks, which were learning the Prison Law and the Constitution. We would have a big test every half a year, which was aimed at brainwashing us, and we would be given a test of the prison rules and regulations at any time. The prison guards not only afflicted us mentally, but destroyed us physically in an inhuman way: I had to do hard labor for over ten hours every day, and worse still, several hundred people were crowded into a small workshop. Due to the large number of people and the small space and the noise of the machines all around, after working there for some time, even a very healthy person would have serious health problems. Behind me was a big machine for punching holes in shoes. Every day it kept punching holes and making unbearable roaring sounds. After several years, my hearing suffered a great decline. Even now I still haven’t recovered yet. What harmed us more was that the workshop was very dusty and seriously polluted. Many of us were diagnosed with tuberculosis and pharyngitis. Moreover, because we sat at work for a long time and couldn’t move around, most of us had severe hemorrhoids. The CCP government treats the prisoners like money-making machines, not caring in the least about their life or death, and makes them work from early in the morning non-stop till late at night. I often felt very exhausted and physically tired. What’s more, we had to deal with different spot checks in prison plus the weekly political tasks, the work tasks, the open tasks in prison, and so on. So, every day I was in a state of high mental tension with my nerves tensed all the time, fearing that if I was slightly careless, failing to keep up in anything, I would be punished by the prison guards. In that environment, it really wasn’t easy if I wanted a day to go by without incident.
When I just began to serve my sentence, I couldn’t stand the savage torment in prison. Various pressures from intensive work and mental pressures loaded me down, and I had to associate with different kinds of prisoners and endure being beaten and scolded and insulted by the devilish guards and the head of the cell…. I was often driven to desperation by their torment and fell into despair several times. Especially at the thought of the nine-year long sentence, I was overtaken by waves of desolation and helplessness. I cried so many times, and I even wanted to die to free myself from the misery. Every time I became extremely sad and could hardly hold on, I would pray and cry to God urgently, and God’s words would inspire and guide me, “Now you can’t die. You should clench your fists and live on. You should live for God once. If one has the truth, he will have this resolution and will no longer think of death. When death threatens you, you will say, ‘O God, I’m not willing to die. I still haven’t known you! I still haven’t repaid your love! … I have to testify God well. I have to repay God’s love. Afterward, it is OK to die in any way. Then I will have lived a satisfactory life. Now, I won’t die regardless of who dies. I have to live tenaciously.’” (from “How to Know Man’s Nature” in Christ’s Talks with Church Leaders and Workers) God’s words consoled my lonely heart like a mother’s gentle eyes and wiped away the tears on my face like a father’s warm hands. At once, a warm feeling and a strength surged in my heart. Although my flesh had to suffer in the dark prison, courting death was not God’s heart’s desire and couldn’t testify God. Additionally, I would be satan’s laughingstock. If I could walk out of the demonic prison alive nine years later, it would be a testimony. God’s words gave me the courage to live. I made a resolution inwardly, “No matter how many difficulties there will be ahead, I will try my best to live on. I will live bravely and tenaciously. I must bear a good testimony to satisfy God.”
The heavy work all year around made me weak gradually. After sitting in the workshop for a long time I would sweat a lot abnormally. When my hemorrhoids got worse, they would bleed at any time. Due to severe anemia, I often felt dizzy. But it wasn’t an easy thing to see a doctor in prison. When the guards were happy, they would bring me some cheap medicines. When they were unhappy, they would claim that I was pretending to be ill to avoid working. I could only endure the torment of the illness and swallow my tears. After a hard day’s work, I dragged my tired body back to the cell and wanted to have a rest. But I even didn’t have the right to have a sound sleep. I would be asked by the prison guards to do things at midnight, or woken up by the noise the prison guards made…. They toyed with me so much that I was often in a confused state of mind and in unspeakable misery…. Moreover, I had to suffer the prison guards’ inhumane treatments. I, like a refugee, had slept on the floor and in hallways, and even beside the toilet. My clothes didn’t air dry after being washed. They dried as we prisoners crowded together. Especially in winter, it was a most tiresome thing to wash clothes. Many of us had arthritis because of wearing wet clothes for a long time. In prison, no matter how healthy one was, he would become muddleheaded, obtuse and weakened and have illnesses after a short time. We often ate withered and yellow vegetable leaves, which were out-of-season or expired. If we wanted to eat a little better, we had to buy their pricey dishes. In prison, the guards asked us to learn the law, but there was no law there, and those guards were the law. As long as anyone was disagreeable in their eyes, they would find any excuse to punish them, and they even inflicted corporal punishment on them without any reason. The more detestable thing was that they classified the believers in Almighty God as political prisoners. They said that we were the ones overthrowing the government, even worse than murderers and arsonists. So, they were especially hostile to me, guarded me most strictly, and tortured me most harshly. All those evil deeds are the irrefutable evidence of the facts of those dictators’ perverse acts, going against Heaven, and being the enemy of God! Experiencing the brutal torture of the guards, my heart was often filled with righteous anger: We believe in God and worship God; which law does it violate? We follow God and walk the right way of human life; what crime have we committed? Man is a created being in God’s hands. It is right and proper to believe in God and worship God. On what authority does the CCP government willfully obstruct and persecute us in every possible way? It is clearly that it is doing things in a perverse way and going against Heaven, and resisting God in everything. But it labels believers in Almighty God as reactionary and severely persecutes and afflicts them, attempting to catch and exterminate all the followers of Almighty God. Isn’t this calling black white and downright reactionary? It is so wildly against Heaven and hostile to God that ultimately it will surely be subject to God’s righteous punishment! This is because where there is corruption, there will be judgment, and where there is sin, there will be chastisement. This is a heavenly principle ordained by God, which nobody can escape. The CCP government is guilty of the most heinous crimes, and it is doomed to be destroyed by God. As God says, “God has long since harbored a bitter hatred for this dark society and gnashed his teeth in anger. He only wishes to tread his feet on this old ancient serpent guilty of heinous crimes, making it never rise again, not allowing it to harm people any more, not tolerating its past, and not allowing it to deceive people any more. Its crimes throughout the generations will be dealt with one by one. God will never let off this arch-criminal and will exterminate it thoroughly.” (from “Work and Entering in (8)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh)
In that demonic prison, I was not as good as a stray dog in the evil cops’ eyes. Not only did they beat or curse me, but my bedclothes and private things were often turned upside down by the evil cops who suddenly rushed in. Moreover, every time such things as riots happened in the outside world, the ones responsible for politics in prison would come to me and question my views on them. They also kept condemning my taking the way of believing in God. Every time I faced this kind of interrogation, my heart was in my mouth. I didn’t know what hostilities they had prepared for me, so in my heart I always urgently prayed to God to help me and lead me through the difficulties. Day after day and year after year, all those abuses, exploitations, and suppressions tortured me miserably: The daily heavy workload, the tedious political tasks, the torture of illnesses, the long-time mental depression, and so on drove me almost to the verge of collapse. Especially when I saw that a middle-aged prisoner hanged herself from a window in the middle of the night because she couldn’t endure the inhuman tortures from the evil cops, and that one old woman died from disease in prison because of the delay for treatment, I again fell into a hopelessly suffocating situation. Once more the idea of suicide came to my mind. I felt that death was the best kind of deliverance. But I knew that it was betraying God, I couldn’t do that, and I could only endure all the sufferings and obey God’s manipulation and arrangement. However, thinking that the prison term was so long and that gaining freedom was so distant, I felt unspeakable misery and despair, feeling that I really couldn’t stand it any longer. I really didn’t know how long I could hold on. Many times I could only wrap myself in the quilt weeping secretly in the stillness of night, praying to Almighty God and pouring out the difficulties in my heart. When I felt most painful and helpless, I thought of how the Lord Jesus endured the suffering of being nailed onto the cross for redeeming mankind. And I also thought how today the holy and innocent God has been incarnated again and come among men and endured the sufferings of rejection, slander, blasphemy, and persecution. God is innocent and should not have undergone these sufferings, but he has silently endured all those in order to save us corrupted people. However, today I suffer for myself to cast off corruptions and be saved by God. Such suffering is what I should undergo, and is also what I have to undergo. Thinking of those, I didn’t feel that bad. But instead, I felt that it was the most valuable and meaningful thing that I was persecuted and put into prison because of believing in God and suffered for pursuing to be saved today. It was so worthy to suffer this! Unconsciously, my heart turned from sorrow to joy. I couldn’t help but sing in my heart the hymn of life experience “We Are Not Living in Vain,” “We are not living in vain, for it’s meaningful though we are suffering. We are not living in vain, and however hard we will never draw back. We are not living in vain, for we have received a golden opportunity to know God. We are not living in vain, for we are spending ourselves for God the Most High. Who can be more blessed than us? Who can be more fortunate than us? God has given more to us than to the past generations. Let us live for God once to repay God’s great love for us.” I repeatedly hummed it in my heart. The more I sang, the more my heart was encouraged. The more I sang, the more strength and enjoyment I had. I couldn’t help but take an oath before God, “O Almighty God, thank you for comforting and encouraging me, which makes me have the confidence and courage to live. You make me feel that you are indeed the Lord of my life and are the power of my life. Although I’m caught in the devil’s den, I’m not alone, because you have been accompanying me through these dark days, once and again giving me faith, and giving me the power to live. O God, if one day I can get out and live freely, I still want to perform my duty. I won’t grieve your heart any more. I won’t plan for myself any more. O God, no matter how hard and difficult the following days will be, I’m willing to live tenaciously by relying on you!”
In prison, I often thought back to the days I spent together with the brothers and sisters. What a wonderful time! We had joy, laughter, and also disputes, but all those became my beautiful memories. However, every time I recalled my being perfunctory in performing the duty, I felt very guilty and indebted. Remembering the scenes when I had disputes with the brothers and sisters due to my arrogant disposition, I felt particularly sad and remorseful…. At such times, I would always burst into tears and silently sing in my heart a hymn of life experience, “I am so remorseful. I have wasted so much precious time. Time has fled, and it will never return. Only regret is left! … Today I will atone for my past fault and make a new start with full confidence. God has given me another opportunity and tolerated me again, so I will make a choice again. I will cherish today and offer up everything to satisfy God for the last time. God’s heart is worried, and he is expecting. I cannot disappoint his heart again.” (from “I Am So Remorseful” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs) Painfully remorseful, I often prayed to God in my heart, “O God! I’m much indebted to you. If you permit, I’m willing to pursue to love you. After I get out of the prison, I still want to perform my duty and make a new start! I’ll make up for my past indebtedness!” During those days in prison, I especially missed those brothers and sisters who had ever been with me every day and I really wanted to see them. But now I was put in this demon’s prison, and this desire had become an extravagant hope. However, in my dreams, I often dreamed of them, dreaming that we were reading God’s word together and fellowshipping about the truth together. How happy we were! How joyful we were! …
In 2008, when the Wenchuan earthquake occurred, our prison also shook. I was the last one to leave there. In those days, the aftershocks continued happening. Everyone, whether they were the prisoners or the guards, was terrified and lived in constant fear. But I felt very calm and assured, because I knew God’s words were being fulfilled, and this was the descending of God’s fiery wrath. In that rare big earthquake, God’s word had been keeping my heart. I believed man’s life and death are all in God’s hand, and no matter what God would do, I was willing to obey God’s manipulation and arrangement. But the only thing that would make me feel sad was that if I died, I would have no opportunity to perform my duty for the Creator, I would have no opportunity to repay God’s love, and I could no longer see the brothers and sisters. However, my worry was superfluous. God was always with me and gave me a great keeping, enabling me to escape death in the great earthquake and survive safely!
In January 2011, I was released early, and my slave-like prison term finally ended. Being freed, I felt very thrilled: I can go back to the church again and can be with the brothers and sisters again! There were no words to express my excitement. However, what I never expected was that after returning home, my daughter denied me. My relatives and friends all looked at me differently, stayed far from me, and refused to associate with me. No one around me understood or accepted me. At that time, though there was no abuse or torture like that in prison, those cold eyes, mockeries, and rejections were more difficult for me to bear. I became weak and passive. I spontaneously recalled the scenes before: The year I was arrested, I was just 31; when I came out of the prison, I was already 39; in prison, I spent eight winters and seven summers; so many times when I was desolate and helpless, God arranged people, matters, and things to help me; so many times when I was in distress and despair, God consoled me with his word; so many times when I thought of death, God gave me strength, so I had the courage to live…. In those long and painful years, it was God who led me step by step out of the valley of the shadow of death so that I survived tenaciously. But today faced with such a little suffering, I become passive and weak and grieve God. I’m really a weak and incompetent person, and an ungrateful base person! Thinking about that, I felt greatly rebuked in my heart. I couldn’t help but remember the oath I took before God in prison: If one day I can get out and live freely, I still want to perform my duty. I don’t want to grieve your heart any more. I won’t plan for myself any more! When I thought about that oath and recalled the scene of swearing to God at that time, tears blurred my vision. Slowly I sang a hymn of God’s word, “I pursue God and follow God out of my own willingness. Now even if God deserts me, I will still follow him. No matter whether God wants me, I will still pursue to love God. I am resolute to gain God in the end, dedicating my lifetime energies to God. May God’s will be accomplished. May my heart be offered up to God. No matter what God does, I will follow him all my life and never give up until I gain him. If you want to be able to stand, better satisfy God, and follow God to the end in the future, you must lay a good foundation now, practicing the truth in everything to satisfy God and care for God’s heart. If you always practice this way, you will have a foundation within, and God will stir up your love for him. One day when trials come, you may undergo some sufferings, be sorrowful to a degree, and experience extreme grief. You will lay down your life willingly for loving God. No matter how God tries you, you will be able to give no thought to your life and willingly give up everything for God and endure everything for God.” (from “I Will Never Give up Until I Gain God!” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs)
After a period of spiritual devotions and adjustment, under God’s revelation and guiding, I walked out of the passive state very quickly and began to perform my duty again….
Although I spent the best years of my youth in prison, I have no regrets in suffering for believing in God during those seven years and four months, because I have understood some truths and tasted God’s love. I feel it meaningful and worthy to undergo such suffering. This is God’s exceptional uplifting and grace for me and is a special favor to me! Even if none of my relatives and friends understand me and my daughter denies me, no person, matter, or thing can cut off my relationship with God. Even if I die, I can’t leave God.
“Pure and Unblemished Love” was the song I liked to sing most in prison. Today, I will offer up my purest love to God with my actual actions!
Source:The Overcomers’ Testimonies
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