By Qiuzhen, China

At around 5 a.m. on July 2, 2009, I was leaving for a gathering when I saw a black sedan parked at the side of the road that four policemen suddenly jumped out of. One of them had a photo of me and shouted my name, and they all went straight inside. An officer was blocking my husband, keeping him in a room while the rest of them tore the place apart searching, leaving it an absolute disaster. I asked them why they were searching my home. One pushed me roughly, glared at me and said, “Someone reported you as religious.” I said, “Faith is right and natural, and I’m on the right path. What law have I broken?” Then they brought over a book of God’s words they’d found and barked, “Your faith is illegal and this is evidence for your arrest.” They dragged me by the arm and forced me into their car. On the way to the police station, I was thinking that I had no idea what kind of torture was in store for me now that I was in the police’s hands. I was scared and was praying to God nonstop. I said, “God, no matter how I’m tortured, please protect and guide me. I will not betray You and be a Judas.” I didn’t feel as scared after praying.

When we arrived, the police took me to a room, pushed me down onto the floor, and punched and kicked me. One of them said, “If you don’t tell us what you know, it’ll be the end of you. I’ll show you what I’m made of.” He grabbed a handful of my hair and punched me hard on the head and face until my head was spinning and my mouth and nose were bleeding. Then, holding onto my hair really hard, he started smacking me, one side then the other, until he wore himself out, then threw me to the floor. Before long, a man who said he was the chief of Public Security came in, sat down next to me and patted me on the shoulder, saying, “You’re being too stubborn. Think of your child’s future and your family. Do you know why we didn’t take a marked car to your house today? To protect your family, so we could get you here quietly and no one in your village would know. Just tell us all about what you know and we’ll get you back home right away. Then you can go on with your life. Just talk to us! Where is your church’s money kept? Who’s the leader? Who converted you?” I could see it was Satan’s trick and thought of God’s words: “You must be awake and waiting at all times, and you must pray before Me more. You must recognize the various plots and cunning schemes of Satan, recognize the spirits, know people, and be able to discern all kinds of people, events, and things” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 17). God’s words reminded me that he was being so nice just to get information on the church from me, that he was tempting me to betray God. I couldn’t fall for it. That afternoon, he questioned me over and over for more than two hours, but seeing I refused to talk, he stood up abruptly with a really scary look on his face and smacked me really hard a couple of times, leaving my face smarting from the pain. Another officer was holding a really shiny knife, maybe a foot, a foot and a half long, and glaring at me, walked around me in circles without saying anything. Seeing this was really frightening—my heart was in my throat. I was thinking that if he stabbed me anywhere with that thing, I wouldn’t survive it. I prayed and called out to God nonstop, and then something God said occurred to me. God says, “Those in power may seem vicious from the outside, but do not be afraid, for this is because you have little faith. As long as your faith grows, nothing will be too difficult” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 75). God’s words gave me faith and strength. No matter how brutal they are, the police are in God’s hands, and so is my life. They can’t do anything to me without God’s permission. I had to be ready to give my life to stand witness, and not betray God and be a Judas even if I died. I felt better after that. I still wouldn’t say anything, so the officer clenched his teeth in anger, rammed the knife into the tabletop, and glared at me as he walked out.

The Public Security chief kept questioning me the next day, and when I stayed quiet, he screamed at me, “If you won’t talk here, we’ve got a place that will open your mouth.” After that, they took me and three other people to the Public Security Bureau, then transferred us to a detention house. That night, another inmate said something to me. When an officer saw it on surveillance, he called me into an interrogation room and asked me if I’d been evangelizing. I said no. He punched me in the temple, knocking me down right away. It felt like the world was spinning and I was seeing stars. It hurt so much. Then a few other people started punching and kicking me for more than half an hour, until my mouth and nose were bleeding and I couldn’t move my legs or waist. I was really angry, and I thought of God’s words: “Forefathers of the ancient? Beloved leaders? They all oppose God! Their meddling has left all beneath heaven in a state of darkness and chaos! Religious freedom? The legitimate rights and interests of citizens? They are all tricks for covering up sin! … Why put up such an impenetrable obstacle to the work of God? Why employ various tricks to deceive God’s folk? Where is the true freedom and the legitimate rights and interests? Where is the fairness? Where is the comfort? Where is the warmth? Why use deceitful schemes to trick God’s people? Why use force to suppress the coming of God? Why not allow God to freely roam upon the earth that He created? Why hound God until He has nowhere to rest His head? Where is the warmth among men? Where is the welcome among people?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Work and Entry (8)). The CCP guarantees freedom of belief in black and white, but that’s all lies. I didn’t even have the right to speak because of my faith. Following God is right, it’s the most natural thing. They enjoy everything God’s created while brazenly working against God and arresting believers, imagining they can destroy God’s work. They’re a pack of anti-God demons! This really made me detest the Communist Party.

The afternoon of July 4, two officers came and put handcuffs and shackles on me, then blindfolded me and put me in a car. I asked them where they were taking me, and one said viciously, “To be buried alive.” I was really scared, so said a prayer to God in my heart, “God, please give me faith and courage so no matter what they do to me, I won’t betray You and be a Judas, even if I die.” This Bible verse came to mind after my prayer: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). This gave me some faith and strength. Everything’s in God’s hands, so they could just kill my flesh, never my soul. I didn’t feel so scared after that. When the car stopped, an officer grabbed the shackles around my ankles and roughly pulled me down onto a concrete floor. My head hit the hard surface and started buzzing, then everything went black. I don’t know how much time passed, but I heard someone talking again and found myself lying on a concrete floor, soaked with water when I opened my eyes. Then I vaguely remembered them splashing water on me to wake me up. Seeing that I’d regained consciousness, the police dragged me into an interrogation room and put me in an iron chair, then restrained me really tightly by the wrists and ankles. Five or six of them, teeth clenched, gave me another barrage of punchs and kicks while saying “This is a secret interrogation room. We can kill you believers in Almighty God and bury you alive without anyone finding out. We can just beat you to death!” I was bleeding from the nose and mouth nonstop and my whole body hurt. I could just sit there, slumped forward in the chair. One of them started the interrogation: “Where’s the church’s money? Who’s the leader? Who converted you? We’ll skin you alive if you don’t talk!” I said, “I don’t know a thing.” Enraged, he made a fist, then started pummeling me on the head and the face. I fainted in the chair. Another one grabbed a handful of my hair and splashed water on me and a mix of blood and water started flowing down from my head. I was dizzy and my head was pounding—I felt like I was about to die. I was praying and calling on God, and then I thought of this: God says, “There is nothing for you to be afraid of. Satans are under our feet” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 10). Living or dying was in God’s hands, so no matter how brutal Satan is, it can’t surpass God’s authority. This thought gave me faith. Incredibly, it didn’t hurt so much when they hit me after that. I felt like I was wrapped in a ball of cotton. I knew this was God looking out for me, and I felt so much gratitude toward Him.

After that 10 officers split into pairs, interrogating me in shifts, not letting me sleep day or night, not letting me eat. They’d hit me the moment I started to close my eyes. And some would press themselves against my face and say some filthy, vile things to humiliate me. One said, “Let me get that clothing off of you and see if you’ve got a nice figure.” Outraged that he’d said something so nauseating, I turned toward him and spit at him. I really saw what a pack of brutes they were. Another one said, “If you keep quiet, we’ll take your clothes off and parade you in the streets. You’ll die of shame!” I was both angry and afraid, and I never stopped praying to God in my heart, asking for His protection. Seeing I really refused to talk, six of them came at me, punching and kicking, till my face was swollen and my nose black and blue. A few of my front teeth were crooked and bleeding. One of them was about to fall out. They were even burning my arms with lit cigarettes. I felt a searing pain every single time. They slapped me really hard in the face with a fly swatter, and when the top of that came off, they kept hitting me with the handle. My face was a bloody pulp. And two of them grabbed me by the hair, then yanked my head back really hard, forced me to open my mouth wide, and poured water in for more than 10 minutes, leaving me gasping for air. I felt like my eyes were about to pop out of my head, and I was crying out the whole time. I was urgently calling on God in my heart, “God, I can’t take much more. Please give me faith and strength, please save me.” Then I remembered a passage of God’s words. God says, “Be not afraid; with My support, who could ever block this road? Remember this! Do not forget! All that occurs is by My good intention, and everything is under My observation. Can you follow My word in all that you say and do? When the trials of fire come upon you, will you kneel down and call out? Or will you cower, incapable of moving forward?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 10). Thinking of this restored my faith and strength. God was my pillar, my backup force. I could never get through their torture on my own, but I could with God’s help. They tormented me for several more hours. One of them said, “Other people last three days at most in this chair before they start talking. We haven’t pried your mouth open after five days and nights here. Let’s see if your mouth or my fist is tougher.” Then he started punching me in the head and the mouth until my vision went, and I was seeing stars. Since they hadn’t let me sleep or eat for five days and nights, I had a high fever, full-body chills, and my teeth were chattering. They intentionally turned on the air conditioning when they saw me like that. I lost all sensation from the cold before long, and I wondered if I was about to freeze to death. Just then, I remembered something from God’s words. God says, “Faith is like a single log bridge: Those who cling abjectly to life will have difficulty in crossing it, but those who are ready to sacrifice themselves can pass over, sure of foot and worry-free” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 6). My fate was in God’s hands, He had final say. I’d fallen into Satan’s hands and I wasn’t planning on making it out alive. I didn’t have my own choices or requirements, but I was ready to submit to God’s rule and stand witness even if it meant death. Then I gradually regained feeling in my hands and feet, and they started their brutal interrogation again. One officer in his thirties punched me three times in the head and said, “We’ll definitely beat you to death if you don’t talk, then bury you out back, no one will know. No one cares if we kill you people. No one stands up for you.” He even laughed and said, “You believe in Almighty God? Why doesn’t He come save you? Where’s your God?” I stayed silent but was thinking how easy that would be for Him. He could do that with a simple thought, but that was not how He worked. God was allowing me to go through that. It was to help me gain discernment so I could see that the police may seem upright on the outside, but they’re just demons in human form! They’d never make me betray God.

The police took me out of the chair on the morning of the eighth day. I feebly stood up, everything went black, and I fell down with my head ringing. I don’t know how long it was before I woke up, then two officers took me to a detention center. Getting out of the car, I noticed that my left leg was really swollen, and that foot was, too. I still had those ten pound shackles on my feet. The slightest movement hurt, and I didn’t dare to move quickly. Complaining about me walking slowly, an officer kicked me down onto the ground. I hauled myself back up, then started shifting forward, step by step, supporting myself on the wall. I got to the cell with a great deal of effort. Some inmates even cried when they saw how badly I’d been beaten, and said, “How can they be so cruel?” My nose was bruised, my face was swollen, and I couldn’t open my eyes all the way. My mouth was so swollen that I could see it myself, and my front teeth were crooked. My left leg was too swollen for me to undress myself to use the restroom. I had to pee in my pants. My left foot was too swollen to put on a shoe and I had a herniated lumbar disc. I couldn’t move. A few days later, the police took me to the hospital because my injuries were so severe, they were afraid they’d be held responsible. The doctor examined me and said that an artery in my left leg had burst, and it would quickly reach my lungs. If I didn’t get surgery right away, it would be too late. But the officers just had the doctor give me a prescription to take at the detention center, then put me in the car and took me back. Back at the detention center, I lay there on the cement floor, totally unable to move. Not only did my condition not improve after a few days of medication, but it got worse. The swelling was even worse in my leg and foot, and my belly had gotten really swollen, too. The other inmates couldn’t bear to look at it, but just said angrily, “Those people are brutal, they’re heartless. They charged you with the crime of being ‘antisocial,’ but it’s obvious they’re the real antisocial element.” My condition was getting worse and worse and the pain in my leg was tremendous. I thought about the doctor saying that if I didn’t get treatment, it would progress quickly and I could die at any moment. I felt some weakness and thought, “Am I really going to be tortured to death by them?” Then I remembered this: God says, “Almighty God is an all-powerful physician! To dwell in sickness is to be sick, but to dwell in the spirit is to be well. So long as you still have one breath, God will not let you die” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 6). Whether I lived or died was in God’s hands, and I couldn’t die without God allowing it. If God allowed me to die, then I was willing to accept that and submit, and give Him testimony.

A couple weeks later, the police released me, afraid I’d die in the detention center and they’d be responsible. Two of them took me to the entrance on a stretcher, then said, “Your case isn’t closed, you’re being released temporarily so you can get medical treatment.” My family came to pick me up, and when they saw how awful I looked, they held me and cried, and said to the cops, “You did this to her just because she believes in God? And you hooligans even extorted 20,000 yuan to get her released. How are you the People’s Police? You’re the mafia.” Then my family took me to the hospital and the exam showed the same thing as before. There was a ruptured artery in my left leg, and the doctor said I should have come sooner, that I’d be in danger without immediate surgery. But the surgery was too expensive for us, so my only choice was to try conservative therapy. We went to lots of different hospitals, but they said my condition was too serious for them to accept me. My family ended up pulling some strings and found a hospital that reluctantly admitted me. It took about two phases of treatment, and surprisingly, the swelling in my leg and my belly went down a lot, and I could stand and slowly walk. The doctor gave me a thumbs up and said, “It’s simply a miracle that you’ve improved so quickly without surgery.” I got better after a month of treatment in the hospital, but I was left with some symptoms. I still get numbness and chills in my left leg all the time, and I get a lot of dizzy spells, and buzzing sounds in my head. Quite a few of my teeth were loose, and I had to get dental implants. I got a lot of fractures in my lower back, so I can’t do any physical work. I look okay from the outside, but in fact, I’m practically disabled.

Being arrested and persecuted gave me some discernment over the Party’s nature as evil and anti-God, and I saw that they’re all demons that fight justice, worship evil, and devour people’s souls. But no matter how evil the great red dragon is, it’s just a pawn in God’s hands, being used to serve God. All this helped me gain insight and discernment. It also allowed me to experience and understand God’s almighty deeds. When they were beating me so brutally, it was God’s words giving me faith and strength, guiding me to overcome Satan, and allowing my miraculous survival. God has given me this second chance at life, and I’m so grateful for His love. I suffered physically through the great red dragon’s horrendous torture, but I don’t feel negative or weak—I’m even more resolved to follow God. I took on another duty a couple months after getting out of the hospital and resolved to fully forsake the great red dragon and do my duty to repay God’s love.