This book has had my head spinning. It has kept me up late at night, enthralled with the story, enthralled with the perspective of this brother. I had two months to finish the book for school and I finished it in three weeks. It is a perfect storm of challenging, encouraging, motivating, and rebuking.
I don’t understand this brother. I have no framework within which to process his experiences and his stories. I cannot grasp the depth of pain that he went through. He was beaten with electric batons. He was beaten with rods. He was kicked. His legs were broken, and his body was bruised. He picked up terrible diseases in prison. He went without food and water. He endured all this for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of his Lord Jesus Christ. “God has used China’s government for his own purposes, moulding (sic) and shaping his children as he sees fit” (page 288). He embodied Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Because I cannot fully grasp what this brother went through, I appreciated all the more the honesty he displayed about his feelings while going through this intense persecution. “In my sorry state, I had great confidence in my own ‘strength’ and ‘abilities’… I had placed too much trust in my German passport…If you disobey his principles then you will surely fall into trouble” (page 317). I appreciated the times that he admitted his weakness, doubt, and complaining about God. Those moments gave me hope that maybe, possibly, if God called me to a life like his, I could stand firm too.
And yet still my jaw drops when I read what he learned through the persecution, and how he was able, looking back, to see the good that came out of his time in prison, both in his own life and in the lives of those who were in prison with him. “I knew that God was using the wrath of evil men to accomplish his purposes in me, to break down my self-centeredness and my stubbornness” (page 114). What faith! “For days the men [in the prison] walked around with tears in their eyes, amazed at how the Lord had poured out his mercy on them” (page 134). What a witness!
Although I cannot comprehend this part of Brother Yun’s story, I have heard and read many stories from persecuted and martyred Christians around the world. So, in a sense, this part of his story is not entirely strange. The part of this brother’s story that was the hardest to grasp, and the most convicting, was his recounting of supernatural encounters.
This brother speaks of hearing the voice of God as if it is a normal, expected thing. “After one week of fasting and prayer, I suddenly heard the Holy Spirit tell me these words,” he says at one point (page 220). I have never audibly heard the voice of God, and few, if any, of the people I normally interact with would say that they had actually heard God speak. Perhaps a prompting that we realize later was from God, but rarely, if ever, an audible voice. Yet this is an experience that this brother speaks of having on a regular basis.
In my church upbringing, dreams and visions are never spoken of. They are not assigned any significance, and one rarely seriously wonders what a dream might mean. For this brother, dreams and visions happened regularly. Reading the book, it felt like every other page he was saying, “that same night the Lord gave me a vivid dream” (page 179). Dreams were not only expected by him, however. Rather, the entire Christian community in the house churches in China expected and experienced dreams…and interpreted one another’s dreams. If someone came to me asking what their dream meant, I would laugh them off and tell them to go get a cup of coffee and forget about the dream. These brothers and sisters in China treat every dream as if is a vivid message from the Lord.
Miracles, another thing my church upbringing has glossed over and inadvertently trained me to look upon with skepticism, were also a regular part of the life and ministry of Brother Yun. He prayed for healing for others, and they were healed…immediately! He cast out demons. He called on Jesus to act, and Jesus acted in miraculous ways. “Great miracles took place. The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the lame walked” (page 193).
Speaking of demons, his wife says at one point that she saw a “dark demonic figure standing at the foot of my bed” (page 164). I have never seen a demonic figure (nor do I wish to!), but I long to be so deeply involved in the ministry of God that I am actually seen as a threat to Satan and his minions.
Another thing I was totally unprepared for in this book were the frequent references to being filled with the Holy Spirit and sensing the presence of the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit filled me,” Brother Yun says at one point (page 173). He goes on to say, “I saw that the Holy Spirit was touching him [a man he was ministering to]” (page 174). I have been trained to think that this is malarkey, but as I read his story, I couldn’t help but think I wish I was as in-tune with the Lord as this man is.
This next point was one where I really had to stop and consider. I’ve always been taught that we preach the word, but the Holy Spirit is the one who does the changing in another person’s life. We can’t actually save others. Brother Yun took this to a different level, and I’m still trying to decide if I am comfortable with this. “Now in the holy name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I command you to kneel down and accept Jesus as you Savior” (page 196). Wait…did he just command a man to become a Christian? As the story goes on, the man does immediately fall to his knees, weeping, and turn to Christ. Amazing! Incredible! But…is that Biblical? I’m really having to wrestle this one out.
The faith of this brother is certainly convicting and thought provoking. But the later portion of his book was devastating as he gently critiqued and sometimes not-so-gently rebuked the Western Church. Honestly, just the example of the Chinese House Church network is enough to rebuke me for my lukewarm, stagnant faith. But when openly laid out words of rebuke and correction, it was truly devastating.
“Before I travelled to the West I had absolutely no idea that so many churches were spiritually asleep. I presumed the Western church was strong and vibrant because it had brought the gospel to my country with such incredible faith and tenacity…I pray that God might use the Chinese church to help the Western church rise up and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s almost impossible for the church in China to go to sleep in its present situation. There’s always something to keep us on the run, and it’s very difficult to sleep while you’re running. If persecution stops, I fear we’ll become complacent and fall asleep” (page 297). In his descriptions of a sleepy, lazy, cold, complacent church, I saw a little too clearly the state of my own spiritual life right now. And that scared me.
“You can never really know the Scriptures until you’re willing to be changed by them” (page 298).
“Multitudes of church members in the West are satisfied with giving their minimum to God, not their maximum…Jesus gave his whole life for us, and we give back as little of our lives, time, and money as we can back to God. What a disgrace! Repent” (299)! I wanted to cry when I read this section. Oh how clearly I see this in my own life…striving to give God the minimum. Lord, forgive me! I repent of my pride and selfishness that keep me from giving back to you everything that you have given me! Give me a hunger and a desire to give back all that I can, not just a tiny portion!
“Many Christians have also asked me why miracles and signs and wonders are so prevalent in China, but not so evident in the West. In the West you have so much. You have insurance for everything. In a way, you don’t need God” (page 301). This was perhaps the most devastating sentence in the entire book. In a way, you don’t need God. We all would say that we need God. But do our lifestyles, our worries and concerns, and the things we trust in show that this is true? I think I need to do some more repenting!
“…I want to challenge not only the Western church, but believers all around the world, to join hands with us in partnership to train and equip workers for this mighty harvest…all the way back to Jerusalem. A new church era has begun. I believe the West’s role is to be partners with us so that together we can get the job done. We’re not looking for handouts, but partnership” (page 348). This particularly struck a chord with me as I think toward the future and what kind of ministry God has called me to. How might I partner with those from China and around the world who are taking the gospel to other nations? How might I learn from them in such a partnership?
I cannot list everything that impacted me here, nor would I want to. You simply need to go and read this book for yourself. I don’t normally do this, but here is a link directly to where you can purchase the kindle version. I promise that reading this book will not be a waste of time. I promise that you will be challenged, uncomfortable, convicted, rebuked, and encouraged by the story of what God has done and is doing through Brother Yun, the Chinese House Churches, and the Back to Jerusalem movement.
Brother Yun, Hattaway, Paul. The Heavenly Man. Oxford: Monarch Books, 2002. Kindle ed.
I had similar thoughts when reading this book!! His experience is so completely different than our western experience of Christianity, hard to relate to yet so refreshing and encouraging and challenging at the same time. It’s a book I won’t soon forget! Thanks for sharing your thoughts:)