By Zhao Ming’en, China

It was after 8 o’clock one evening, during May 2003, and I’d just come home from my duty. Three police officers burst in, grabbed me by the arms and handcuffed me. My heart was pounding with fear. One of them searched me and confiscated my pager. “What law have I broken?” I asked. “Why are you arresting me?” He said with a grim look on his face, “The state does not permit your faith in Almighty God. It’s against Communist Party policy. That means you’re getting arrested!” With no further explanation they shoved me into their car. Stuffed in the back seat, I was nervous and frightened, having no idea what cruelties awaited me. I was worried, being of small stature, that I wouldn’t be able to withstand torture, and that I’d be a Judas and sell out the brothers and sisters. I silently prayed to God again and again, asking Him to watch over me and give me faith and strength. Then I remembered something from God’s words: “You know that all things in the environment that surrounds you are there by My permission, all planned by Me. See clearly and satisfy My heart in the environment I have given to you. Do not fear, the Almighty God of hosts will surely be with you; He stands behind you and He is your shield” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 26). God’s words bolstered my faith and courage. My arrest had happened with God’s permission and the police were in God’s hands. With God behind me, there was nothing to be afraid of. I didn’t feel so afraid when I thought about it that way, and I secretly resolved that no matter how the police tortured me, I would never sell out the brothers and sisters or betray God.

When we got to the police station, a female officer strip-searched me and then took me into another room, handcuffing me to a heating pipe behind my back. Sometime after 11 p.m., the police found a few books of God’s words in my house along with several pagers. Chief Li of the Criminal Police Brigade asked me, holding the pagers, “Who gave you these? Who have you been in contact with?” When I didn’t respond, he viciously smacked me a couple of times. I saw stars and my face burned with pain. Then he stomped hard on my big toes, which hurt like being stabbed with a needle. I was in such pain I broke out into a full body sweat. Incensed, I said to him, “I’m a believer on the right path in life. What law does that break? Isn’t freedom of belief permitted by law in China? What right do you have to arrest me and beat me?” One of the officers said, “You’re so naïve! Freedom of belief is a front to appease foreigners. The Communist Party is atheist, so the country wants to suppress and eradicate you believers! If you don’t tell us what you know, you’ll be dead meat tomorrow. You may have come in here on your feet, but you’ll be leaving on your back!” At that, they left the room. I was thinking that since they had found so many things at my house, there was no way they would simply let me go. I had no idea what tortures they would inflict upon me if I kept quiet. They even said I’d be dead meat—they were going to kill me. This made me really anxious, so I said a prayer, asking God for faith and strength. The next morning, four officers came in with a tiger chair. Officer Li said with a demonic look, “I’ll show you what you get for not talking! Today you get a taste of the tiger chair!” Then they pushed me down onto the chair and cuffed my hands inside the metal hoops, with my palms facing up. I was seated in the chair with my body tilted back, my feet stretched and tensed downward, and the handcuffs digging painfully into my wrists. My hands soon swelled up like balloons. They turned purple and became completely numb. The day went by. My body turned ice-cold and my hands became more and more swollen. I was getting increasingly worried, and frightened: If this went on, would it cripple my hands? And if so, how would I get by after this? The more I thought about it the more distressed I got. I had no idea when this misery would come to an end. I prayed, “Oh God, I’m really suffering. Please give me strength and guidance to stand strong.” And then, I thought of something God said: “While undergoing trials, it is normal for people to be weak, or to have negativity within them, or to lack clarity on God’s intentions or their path for practice. But in any case, you must have faith in God’s work, and not deny God, just like Job. … People are in need of faith during times of hardship and refinement, and faith is something that is followed by refinement; refinement and faith cannot be separated” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Those Who Are to Be Made Perfect Must Undergo Refinement). God’s words gave me strength—through this pain and torment, I had to have faith in God. The police were torturing me, trying to exploit the weakness of my own flesh to beat me down, to make me betray God. God was also using this situation to perfect my faith and my resolve to withstand suffering. Absolutely everything is in God’s hands and under His rule, including whether or not my hands would be left maimed. I had to have faith in God, and lean on Him to stand firm in my witness for Him. This thought left me feeling stronger, and before I knew it, the pain in my hands faded. I thanked God from the bottom of my heart!

The police started questioning me again on the morning of the third day. One of them pointed at me and said, “Don’t think we know nothing. We’ve been watching your house for over two months now. You’ve got quite a few people coming and going!” Then he reeled off what the people who had gone to my house were wearing, how tall they were and what kind of bicycles they had ridden. I was stunned. They’d had my house under surveillance for a while, and the people they’d described were all church leaders or deacons. I couldn’t sell out any of the brothers or sisters, but the police already had a good grasp of the situation, and they definitely weren’t going to let me go if I said nothing at all. I had no idea what tortures they had in store for me. Maybe I should say just a little bit? I had already been in custody for three days, so my own sisters must have learned about it and be in hiding. I figured the police wouldn’t be able to find them, so I said, “The visitors were my sisters.” Then the officer asked, “Are they believers?” Without giving it much thought, I said, “They’re not true believers.” Right after I said that, the police went out to get my sisters. I felt so guilty. How could I have admitted that they were believers? Didn’t selling out my own sisters, so that I could suffer less, make me a Judas? If they were arrested and then other brothers and sisters were implicated, wouldn’t that cause greater harm to the church’s work? And even if they weren’t arrested this time, there was no way the police would just let them off. They were bound to live a life on the run. The more I thought about it the worse I felt, and then I remembered these words from God: “Toward those who showed Me not the slightest loyalty during times of tribulation, I shall be merciful no more, for My mercy only extends so far. I have no liking, furthermore, for anyone who has once betrayed Me, much less do I like to associate with those who sell out the interests of their friends. This is My disposition, regardless of who the person may be. I must tell you this: Anyone who breaks My heart shall not receive clemency from Me a second time, and anyone who has been faithful to Me shall forever remain in My heart” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Prepare Sufficient Good Deeds for Your Destination). God’s words of judgment left me feeling worse. God’s righteous disposition tolerates no offense. God spurns those who betray Him. I’d sold out two sisters of mine, behaving like a shameful Judas and losing my testimony. I hated myself for being so selfish and vile, so lacking in humanity. I prayed and repented to God in my heart, and swore that I wouldn’t sell out any more brothers or sisters, no matter how the police interrogated and tortured me. That evening, Officer Li brought over 13 photographs to have me identify the people in them. I said I didn’t recognize any of them. Then he got out a photo of another sister and said, “You know her, right? She said she knows you.” I was thinking that even if she had said she knew me, I couldn’t say that I knew her. I’d already told them about two sisters of mine, so I couldn’t sell anyone else out and have them be tortured like me. I said firmly, “I don’t know her.” Officer Li shouted, “If you don’t talk, you’ll have a hard time tomorrow!”

The afternoon of the fourth day, an officer came in carrying four battens, each more than an inch thick and a foot long, then closed the gratings over the windows so I couldn’t see anything in the room. My heart leapt into my throat, my pulse was racing, and my legs went weak. I didn’t know what means they were going to use to torture me or whether I’d be able to take it. I called out to God in my heart over and over, asking Him to protect me so that I could stand strong. A little while later six officers came in, released me from the tiger chair, and handcuffed my hands behind my back. Two of them stood at a table and lifted me by the handcuffs while yelling, “Talk! Who’s your leader?” My feet were off the ground and my head was facing down; my body was suspended in the air and I was gritting my teeth in pain. Seeing I wasn’t saying anything, two of the officers started forcefully scraping the sides of my ribs with the battens while two others were using battens to beat me on the arms and legs forcefully. It felt like the flesh was being torn from my ribcage and my legs were being ripped off. I was sweating from the pain. As they did this they said, “We’ll beat you harder if you don’t talk!” I kept on gritting my teeth and didn’t say a word. A couple of officers took a hard object and jabbed it into my toenails, which was agony. At the same time they shone a powerful light on my hands which made them feel like they were on fire, burning with pain. Feeling like I couldn’t physically take any more, I called out to God over and over, asking Him to give me strength. When they yanked me upward by the handcuffs again, I heard a cracking sound from my arms and yelled out in pain, and only then did they let me down. They had kept me suspended for over an hour. After they let me down I had no feeling in my legs whatsoever. It was impossible to stay standing. My arms and legs were black and blue and burning with pain. The flesh around my ribs also felt like it was on fire, and the pain was excruciating. I slumped to the floor unable to move, feeling devoid of strength and like I’d completely fallen apart. It was agony. The thought of not knowing how the police would further torture me, or whether I could take it, left me feeling miserable and weak. I wanted to commit suicide by biting off my tongue so that at least I wouldn’t sell out the brothers and sisters. I bit down really hard, but it was so painful that I couldn’t bear to go through with it. Then I thought, maybe I could rip out my uvula so that it was impossible for me to speak. I told them I needed to go to the restroom. In the restroom the officer keeping an eye on me heard the sound of me picking at my tongue and gagging and said, “Don’t do anything stupid,” then took me back in and handcuffed me to the tiger chair again. Only then did I realize that I’d almost done something really foolish, and I thought of something God said: “During these last days you must bear testimony to God. No matter how great your suffering, you should walk until the very end, and even at your last breath, still you must be faithful to God and at the mercy of God; only this is truly loving God, and only this is the strong and resounding testimony” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Only by Experiencing Painful Trials Can You Know the Loveliness of God). “Do not be discouraged, do not be weak, and I will make things clear for you. The road to the kingdom is not so smooth; nothing is that simple! You want blessings to come to you easily, do you not? Today, everyone will have bitter trials to face. Without such trials, the loving heart you have for Me will not grow stronger and you will not have true love for Me. Even if these trials consist merely of minor circumstances, everyone must pass through them; it’s just that the difficulty of the trials will vary from one person to another” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 41). I understood from God’s words that when faced with the cruelty of demons, God’s intention is to perfect our faith and devotion, and to have us clearly see how the great red dragon works against God and brutalizes humans, so that we hate and reject it from the bottom of our hearts and stand firm in our witness for God before Satan. But my faith in God was too small, and after suffering a bit of torment I wanted to escape it through death. How was that any kind of testimony? Thinking about it that way, I didn’t feel as miserable anymore, and I had more faith. No matter how they tortured me, even to my very last breath, I wanted to lean on God, stand firm in my witness for Him, and shame Satan. I would never sell out my brothers and sisters and betray God. After I had that resolve, the police didn’t come question me again. Through this experience, I saw God’s sovereignty and almightiness, and saw that the great red dragon is just a pawn in His hands. It’s a tool God uses to perfect His chosen people. I also saw that God was by my side throughout this torment. He was always with me, guiding me and helping me with His words, giving me faith and strength. I could feel God’s love and protection, and I thanked Him from the heart.

The Communist Party sentenced me to three years of reeducation through labor for “disrupting social order.” I had to do 12 to 14 hours of hard labor every day at the labor camp, and had to work even longer if I hadn’t completed my tasks. I was assigned to work in a pesticide factory. Since I couldn’t smell the pesticides, I had headaches and was nauseous every day, and couldn’t eat or sleep well. I applied to be transferred to a different factory, but the police wouldn’t give approval. I was really miserable at the time, and when I thought of spending three years there, over one thousand days and nights, I just didn’t know how I would get through it. Whenever I was on my way to work and saw people outside, free and easy, while I was like a bird in a cage, I felt particularly miserable and wanted to cry. Another sister who was working in the same factory fellowshipped with me, and we quietly sang a hymn of God’s words “Song of the Overcomers” together: “Have you ever accepted the blessings that you were given? Have you ever sought the promises that were made for you? You will surely, under the guidance of My light, break through the stranglehold of the forces of darkness. You will surely not, in the midst of darkness, lose the guidance of My light. You will surely be the masters of all creation. You will surely be overcomers before Satan. You will surely, at the downfall of the kingdom of the great red dragon, stand up amid the myriad throngs as proof of My victory. You will surely stand firm and unwavering in the land of Sinim. Through the sufferings you endure, you will inherit My blessings, and will surely radiate My glory throughout the entire universe” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God’s Words to the Entire Universe, Chapter 19). Singing this hymn was heartening for me. This persecution gave me a chance to bear witness for God—this was an honor for me. The Communist Party wanted to destroy both my body and mind, so that I would betray God because I couldn’t endure the suffering. I couldn’t fall for its trick. No matter how miserable or difficult it was, I had to lean on God, stand firm, and shame Satan. From then on, in the evenings, that sister and I would secretly hum hymns of God’s words together and fellowship on God’s words whenever we had the chance. Gradually, I no longer felt so miserable.

Later on my husband came to visit me, and I realized he was in poor health when I saw he wasn’t able to move his legs and feet freely. After my arrest, my husband was struggling to eat and sleep, afraid I would be tortured, and ended up getting a cerebrovascular disease. When he went to the doctor, they said he’d had cerebellar atrophy, leaving him partially paralyzed. This was heartbreaking for me, and I hated the Communist Party, that pack of demons, with all my heart. If not for them arresting and persecuting believers, I never would have been arrested and my husband wouldn’t have fallen sick. Not long after that, my brother-in-law came to see me and told me that my husband’s condition had gotten worse, and he’d become incontinent. This was very distressing, and all I could think about was when I would get out of prison so I could go back home and take care of him. Then, in late 2004, I received a letter from the family saying that he had further declined and had passed away. Hearing this, I felt like the sky had come crashing down. I was in agony. The pillar of our family was gone. Our son was still at university, and I didn’t know how he was doing. Because of Communist Party persecution, our perfectly good family was ruined and my husband was dead. I was feeling really weak and before I knew it, I felt grievances rise up within me. Why was disaster always befalling me? Why wasn’t God protecting me? In my pain, I remembered these words from God: “If you pander to the weaknesses of the flesh and say that God goes too far, then you will always feel in pain, and will always be depressed, and you will be unclear about all of the work of God, and it will seem as if God is not sympathetic to man’s weakness at all and unaware of man’s difficulties. And thus you will always feel miserable and alone, as if you have suffered great injustice, and at this time you will begin to complain” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God). God’s words revealed my state. When my husband passed away, I didn’t seek God’s intention, but pandered to my flesh. I felt that without my husband, there was no one to look after our child and I blamed God. I really had no conscience! It was clearly the Communist Party’s persecution that had torn my family apart and left my husband dead, but I put it all on God. Wasn’t I distorting the facts and being so utterly unreasonable? At that point I saw that I really was of small stature and that I didn’t have true faith in or true submission to God. I said a prayer in my heart, “God, being exposed this way, I can see how rebellious I am. I only ever think about my own flesh, and I don’t understand Your heart at all. God, please guide me to submit through this situation, and to know Your intention.” Then these words of God came to mind: “You are a created being—you should of course worship God and pursue a life of meaning. If you do not worship God but live within your filthy flesh, then are you not just a beast in human attire? Since you are a human being, you should expend yourself for God and endure all suffering! You should gladly and assuredly accept the little suffering you are subjected to today and live a meaningful life, like Job and Peter. … You are people who pursue the right path, those who seek improvement. You are people who rise up in the nation of the great red dragon, those whom God calls righteous. Is that not the most meaningful life?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Practice (2)). Pondering God’s words, I understood that being arrested for my faith and suffering that way was being persecuted for the sake of righteousness, and there was meaning in that suffering. Through this hardship, I saw my own rebelliousness and corruption, and my true stature. I gained discernment over the great red dragon’s demonic essence—how it hates and resists God. That was God’s love for me. I thought of Job undergoing trials of such magnitude—hillsides of livestock and all of his family’s possessions were stolen, his children died, and boils broke out all over his body. Yet he didn’t blame God and he didn’t say anything sinful. What he said in the end was, “Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah” (Job 1:21). Job gave resounding testimony for God. I was really moved, and resolved to follow Job’s example, to stand firm in my witness for God no matter how much I suffered. At this realization, I came before God and made a prayer of submission, ready to leave everything regarding my family in His hands and submit to His sovereignty and arrangements.

I was released in late December 2005. My son was still at university and we were very hard up, so I found a job. But a little over a month later, my boss told me, “The police came and talked to me and said you’re a believer in God. They told me I have to fire you.” I was so angry to hear that. I’d been let out of prison but the Communist Party still wouldn’t leave me be—they were still depriving me of my right to survival. They truly were despicable and evil! My son should have been able to graduate in 2006, but because I’d been sentenced to labor for my faith, the school refused to issue him a diploma, on the grounds that he had failed a class, albeit by just a few points. So he had to repeat a year of school. But the following year they again refused to issue him a diploma, with the same excuse. Seeing that other classmates hadn’t passed two or three of their classes but still graduated, he asked his teacher about it, who said, “Don’t you know that your mom is a believer in God?” It wasn’t until then that we realized the school was looking for excuses not to give him a diploma because of my faith. In the end, they just gave him a certificate of attendance. Without a diploma it was hard for him to find a job, and he felt very depressed. He just wanted to stay home all the time and didn’t even want to talk. Seeing him so miserable was really upsetting for me. After all his years of studying he was implicated because I had been in prison, and ultimately was deprived of his diploma and was having a hard time finding a job. I felt some weakness inside. My son was a believer, too, so we prayed and read God’s words together, and saw this: “The utmost faith and love are required from us in this stage of work. We may stumble from the slightest carelessness, for this stage of work is different from all the previous ones: What God is perfecting is mankind’s faith, which is both invisible and intangible. What God does is convert words to faith, to love, and to life. People must reach a point where they have endured hundreds of refinements and possess faith greater than Job’s. They must endure incredible suffering and all manner of torture without ever leaving God. When they are submissive unto death, and have great faith in God, then this stage of God’s work is complete” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Path … (8)). Because I had been arrested and persecuted by the Communist Party, my husband had died and my son couldn’t find work. The Party had cut off our source of income and wanted to use this situation to get me to blame and betray God. But God was using this situation to perfect my faith. If I was still able to follow and submit to God through the course of so much pain, it would show I had true faith. The Communist Party wanted to leave us without a way to live, but by relying on God in life and going forward with His sustenance and guidance we could still get by. After that, my son and I frequently read and fellowshipped on God’s words together, and he was gradually able to emerge from his state of distress. He said he clearly saw that all these miseries were caused by the Communist Party; that it is the Party that ravages lives while God brings mercy and salvation; and that only God can bring us light, and following God is the right path in life. He said he wanted to believe in and follow God earnestly. After that, we both took to foraging for wild herbs and mushrooms to sell at market, so that we could more readily attend gatherings and do a duty. That way, without too much effort, we could have enough money to get by on.

After experiencing arrest and persecution by the Communist Party, I fully saw its demonic essence—how it hates and resists God. It claims to guarantee freedom of religion, but secretly conducts mass arrests of Christians, torturing them and sentencing them to prison, while also oppressing and persecuting their family members, destroying countless Christian families. I came to hate it and rebel against it from the heart—and knew that I was irreconcilably opposed to it. I also personally experienced God’s love and the authority of His words. When I was arrested and sentenced to prison, when my husband died, when my son couldn’t get his university diploma, and when I was living in misery with no way out, it was God’s words that gave me faith and strength, and led me to overcome the weakness of the flesh. Without God’s care and protection, I never would have made it to this day. I’m truly grateful for God’s love and salvation. No matter what sort of oppression and hardship I face in the future, I’ll follow God to the very end.