By Li Xin, China

From a young age, I’ve always had a weak constitution and been prone to illness. From as early as I can remember, I’ve suffered from daily headaches and at the age of twelve, I developed heart disease. After that, I also suffered from gastrointestinal illness and bronchitis. Due to being plagued by multiple illnesses, I found life to be terribly miserable. At the age of 24, I began believing in the Lord Jesus and would often read the Bible and pray to the Lord. I began to feel a sense of serenity and joy from my faith, and my illnesses improved greatly without me even noticing. To repay the Lord’s love, I began spreading the Lord’s gospel and looked forward to the day when the Lord would return. In 1999, I finally heard God’s voice and welcomed the Lord Jesus’ return. Seeing how Almighty God had appeared to do work and express many truths to save mankind from the fetters of sin, allowing them to escape the disasters and guiding man into God’s kingdom, I felt incredibly excited and joined the gospel-spreading ranks, hoping to spread the gospel of the kingdom of heaven to even more people.

One day in March of 2003, I was arrested by the police while spreading the gospel. After they searched me and found a pager and a notebook, one asked me, “Where did this pager come from?” When I told him it was my personal pager, he then picked up a plastic pipe and viciously beat me with it several times before picking me up and throwing me in the back of a car. The police then took turns savagely slapping me across the face while yelling, “This is what you get for going around spreading the gospel! We’ve got you now!” I was extremely frightened and hurriedly prayed to God, asking Him to protect me and give me faith and strength. When we arrived at the county public security bureau, the police dragged me to an empty room and threw me on a metal sheet. It was still very cold in northeast China in March and I was so cold that I shivered continuously. I told the police, “I have heart disease and I am getting injections and taking medication for it. I can’t be exposed to cold.” The police just ignored me. All I could do was curl myself up in a ball, hugging my chest tightly with my arms, but not long after that, I became so cold that I continually convulsed and my teeth kept chattering. Only after the police poked me with a needle in my hands and nose did I finally recover and stop convulsing. Later on, they carried me to another room, threw me on a chair and went out to eat. I was a little afraid and worried how the police would torture me when they returned. I continually prayed to God, asking for His protection. In the midst of my prayer, I recalled this passage of God’s words: “You must suffer hardship for the truth, you must give yourself to the truth, you must endure humiliation for the truth, and to gain more of the truth you must undergo more suffering. This is what you should do” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Experiences of Peter: His Knowledge of Chastisement and Judgment). I thought, “Yes, I should suffer hardship and bear witness to God before Satan, as God approves of this.” I also thought of how Satan had tempted Job. When Job lost all his property and his children in a single night and his body broke out in boils, he was still able to praise God’s name despite such great suffering, which ultimately led to Satan’s humiliation and failure. God allowed me to encounter this environment to test me and perfect my faith. No matter what the police did to me, I knew I had to stand firm in my witness for God.

The police quickly returned and without saying a single word, they began slapping me in the face. They were not satisfied with just slapping me with their hands, they also picked up their shoes and began beating my face, head and body with the soles of their shoes. At first, it was very painful and I felt some discomfort in my heart. I gritted my teeth and tried to withstand the pain while tears came streaming down my face. After some time, my face went numb from being hit repeatedly and I no longer felt pain. One of them took a plastic tube over a meter long and began beating my body while grilling me with questions, “How many members does your church have? Who is your church’s leader? Speak now!” I didn’t say a word and he got even more angry and brought a hard blow down on my head, which immediately left my ears ringing. After that, they took me to another room where I saw two sisters from my gathering curled up on a bench in the corner. The captain of the National Security Brigade pointed at the two sisters and said to me, “Do you know these two?” I said, “No.” This made him so angry that he picked up a plastic tube and hit me hard over the head with it before raining down punches and kicks on me, leaving no part of my body unscathed. I became dazed and confused. Another policeman then asked me, “Where did this pager and notebook come from? What are they for?” While saying this, he picked up the plastic tube and prepared to hit me again. I was very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to take such torture and would rat out my brothers and sisters, so I continually prayed to God in my heart. I recalled God’s words which say: “You must give everything you have to protect My testimony. This shall be the goal of your actions—do not forget this” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 41). I had to put my life on the line to stand firm in my witness for God. No matter what cruelty the police inflicted on me, I could not betray God. Just then, a policeman punched me, knocking me down to the floor before hitting me over the head with the plastic tube, which left my head ringing. He then savagely beat me on the head and body, leaving streaks of blood all over my body. My heart palpitated in violent convulsions and it felt like my heart was beating in my throat. I thought that I would die at any moment. I felt a bit weak and wondered: If they kept beating me like this, would I actually be beaten to death? Just then, I once more recalled God’s words: “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 life was in God’s hands. No matter how savage the police were, they couldn’t do anything to me without God’s permission. Even if they did beat me to death, I wouldn’t have betrayed God, would have stood firm in my witness and my soul would not have yet died. If I sold out my brothers and sisters like Judas just to avoid the temporary suffering of my flesh and offended God’s disposition, not only would I feel guilty later, I would also go to hell after death and my soul would be condemned to eternal damnation. Realizing all this, I felt a bit more at peace and wasn’t as afraid. Just then, the police concluded their beating. I said I had to go to the bathroom, but the captain just glared at me and said, “You’re not going anywhere!” before kicking me in the lower abdomen. The kick caused me to become incontinent and my cotton-padded pants were soon drenched with urine.

The same day, the police sent me and the other two sisters to a detention center. I couldn’t stand up straight and had to hobble forward with my hands supporting my belly. The guard, an elderly man, had seen enough and said, “They are just believers in God. They didn’t do anything wrong, so why were they beaten like this?” He gave each of us a light blanket, and we had to sleep on the cold floor. My pants still hadn’t dried out, I was absolutely freezing and curled up in the fetal position. Later, the old man brought me some medicine and a cup of warm water. I knew that this was God taking mercy on my weakness and arranging for this man to come help us. I felt thankful to God in my heart. The next day, the police took one of the sisters away for interrogation. We were very worried and continually prayed for her. We felt constantly on edge every day. After three days and two nights, the sister was finally returned to us. As she limped over to her bed, bent at the waist, we rushed to her side. I saw that her entire body was covered in bruises, and that her feet were black and blue and had swollen up like balloons. The sister said that after being taken away, she was continually beaten by the police. Four or five policemen took turns punching and kicking her and also handcuffed her hands behind her back and violently jerked her hands upward, leaving her in so much pain that she passed out several times. The police splashed her with dirty kitchen water to wake her up and would continue beating her. They didn’t give her any food or water for the entire three days and two nights. I was absolutely outraged: This gang of demons had treated her so inhumanely! However, I was also extremely scared. My previous injuries had not yet healed and I didn’t know how the police would torture me going forward. Would I be able to take it? I continually prayed to God in my heart and asked Him to give me strength.

At 8 a.m. on the third day after my sister returned, the captain of the National Security Brigade came to interrogate me. A policeman handcuffed me, pushed down on my neck to make me bend at the waist and pushed me forward. Another policeman kicked me in the groin from behind so hard that I almost fell over. They pushed me into a small room that contained a single bed and handcuffed me to a railing at the head of the bed. I had no idea what torture was in store for me, and my heart was beating up into my throat. With a sinister laugh, the captain said to one of the policemen, “Put some kyushin heart tonic pills in her mouth and make her swallow them. That way, she won’t die so easily when we beat her. We’ve got to get an answer out of her today.” They then forcefully stuffed the pills in my mouth and began beating me with plastic tubes from head to toe, not even letting the instep of my feet go unbeaten. With each strike, I convulsed in pain. As they beat me, they grilled me on the church. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to take their torture, so I hurriedly prayed to God for help. I thought of God’s words which say: “Those whom God refers to as ‘overcomers’ are those who are still able to stand firm in their witness and maintain their confidence and devotion to God when under the influence of Satan and while being laid siege to by Satan, that is, when they find themselves amidst the forces of darkness. If you are still able to keep a pure heart before God and maintain your genuine love for God no matter what, then you are standing firm in your witness in front of God, and this is what God refers to as being an ‘overcomer’” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. You Should Maintain Your Devotion to God). God’s words made me realize that God uses the arrest, persecution, and torture of the great red dragon to perfect our faith and make us into a group of overcomers. Being apprehended by the police and subjected to torture was God’s way of trying and testing me and it was an opportunity to bear witness to God. No matter how the police tormented me, even if they beat me to death, I would never betray God or sell out my brothers and sisters. The police continued asking me who our church’s leader was, and then took their plastic tubes and savagely beat my whole body again. I curled up in a ball on my side, gritted my teeth, and didn’t say a word. After interrogating me all morning and seeing I wasn’t going to say anything, they threatened in exasperation, “If you don’t tell us anything, we’ll slap you with a ten- or twenty-year sentence and you won’t be going anywhere!” After that, they took me back to the cell where they kept us. During the interrogation, I was beaten all over and covered in bruises, but seeing the police with that defeated look on their faces and nothing to show for themselves made me so happy. I continually thanked God for His protection, which allowed me to survive this brush with death.

On our fifteenth day at the detention center, the police took the three of us out into the yard. One of them said, “Let the dogs loose!” Then, in a sinister voice, he added, “We’ll see if you talk now!” At that moment, two police dogs suddenly came bounding out from the side of the yard with their long tongues hanging out and their heads raised high, charging directly at us. When they got to where the three of us were standing, they began running in circles around us. I was extremely frightened and thought, “Will these dogs bite us to death?” I hurriedly prayed to God. During prayer, I recalled the story of Daniel, who despite being thrown into a lion’s den, had not died because God was with him and shut the mouths of the lions, preventing them from biting him. I also recalled God’s words, which say: “You should not be afraid of this and that; no matter how many difficulties and dangers you might face, you are capable of remaining steady before Me, unobstructed by any hindrance, so that My will may be carried out unimpeded. This is your duty…. Be not afraid; with My support, who could ever block this road? Remember this! Do not forget! All that occurs is by My goodwill, 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). God’s words gave me faith. God is my support, and without His permission, the dogs could do nothing to me. My anxiety slowly faded and I had faith that everything was in God’s hands. Amazingly, the dogs just sniffed at us, wagged their tails and left. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, continually thanked God in my heart, and my faith in Him grew even stronger.

After that, the police took us to a jail. We met three other sisters in the cell who had also all been beaten badly all over their bodies. Two days later, we were interrogated individually in turns. They took me to a small room and grilled me on various details of the church. When I wouldn’t tell them anything, they kicked me down and made me kneel on the ground, before standing on the backs of my calves and yanking my hair to pull my head backward hard. After that, a policeman straddled my neck, grabbed my hair and pulled my hair back and forth for over ten minutes. When he got off me, he began feeling his private parts and making vulgar motions while looking at me with a lascivious stare. I turned my head away in disgust and thought, “How can he call himself a policeman? He’s a scoundrel, a beast!” After that, he pointed to the drugs in the drawer and said, “We have every kind of drug you can think of in here. One injection and we can turn you into a psycho or a vegetable. No one will treat you like a person after that.” With a sinister laugh, he continued, “The CCP upholds an atheist and materialist philosophy, we’ve got to weed out believers like you. If you don’t give us some information, we’ll use these drugs on you.” As he spoke, he retrieved a cigarette from the drawer, lit it and then placed it under my nose so the smoke went up my nostrils causing me to cough and feel dizzy and nauseous. He then said, “There is a drug in this cigarette that will make you involuntarily tell me everything you know.” This frightened me quite a bit. If I really were drugged and sold out my brothers and sisters, wouldn’t that make me a Judas? And what if their injections caused me to lose my sanity or become a vegetable? How would I live then? I continually prayed to God, “Oh God. I do not want to become a Judas. On my own, I cannot overcome the police’s torment. Please guide and protect me.” Just then, I recalled a passage of God’s words: “Of everything that occurs in the universe, there is nothing in which I do not have the final say. Is there anything that is not in My hands?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God’s Words to the Entire Universe, Chapter 1). Indeed, God holds sovereignty over all things. My life was in His hands and whether or not I would develop a mental illness or become a vegetable was all up to Him. I had to have faith in God. After all, I didn’t seem to be affected at all by the drugged cigarette the policeman was forcing me to inhale and remained very awake. This showed me that God was always with me, protecting and looking after me. I couldn’t help but give thanks to God in my heart and felt less frightened. After the cigarette had burned down about two thirds of the way, the policeman saw that I still seemed to be quite awake and alert and angrily threw the cigarette to the ground and sighed saying, “Send this one to prison!” On the morning of 13 May, a policeman said to me, “Your belief in God violates the laws of the CCP. You have been charged with disturbing public order and have been sentenced to two years of reeducation through labor.” I was fairly upset when I heard him say that. Two months of incarceration had already been unbearable, and I had no idea how I would get through two years of reeducation through labor. The policeman continued, saying, “Don’t bother making an appeal. There is no shortage of wrongful sentencings in this world and you’re not the only one. Even if you appeal, you’ll never win a case against the CCP.” Hearing him spout devilish words, I was even more clear about the evil, ugly essence of the CCP. Two days later, I was sent to a labor camp.

At the labor camp, I was incarcerated together with nine other sisters. Every morning, we had to get up at 5 a.m., and after morning exercises, we were made to start knitting mats. If we were too slow, we would be yelled at, and if we didn’t finish our tasks, we would be punished. Sometimes we had to work through the night and sometimes would even go three days and three nights without sleep. I never ate a full meal during my time in the labor camp, and was in a perpetual state of fatigue, sleep-deprivation and hunger. I would often fall asleep while standing up. The guard would often pick on us because we were believers. I suffered from frequent urination and when I asked to go to the bathroom, the two head prisoners who had been instigated by the guard would intentionally jeer at me, saying, “This isn’t your house, you can’t just go whenever you want! Hold it in!” I would hold it in for so long that I could barely walk, worrying that if I moved too quickly, I would lose control and have an accident. I ended up having to take one step at a time, slowly moving my way over to the bathroom. But when I finally got to the bathroom, I’d be unable to urinate. It was awful. One day, a sixty-year-old sister had a heart attack due to being overworked and collapsed on the floor, foaming at the mouth. The guard not only didn’t help her, he actually kicked her twice. When she awoke, he forced her to continue working. Another time, a head prisoner said a sister’s work was not up to standard despite it clearly being up to standard. The guard said the sister was being passive, slacking off and refusing to do labor and punished her by putting her in a smaller cell, hanging her up and beating her for two days straight. After that, she was brought on a stage at the cafeteria and forced to engage in self-criticism in front of everyone. When I saw the deep, black and blue marks from the handcuffs on the sister’s wrists, I became enraged. Just because of our faith, the great red dragon arrested us, and beat us as they pleased, and sent us for reeducation through labor, abusing us to no end. They weren’t giving us believers any chance of surviving! Just then, I thought of a hymn of God’s words titled “Those in Darkness Should Rise Up”:

1  For thousands of years this has been the land of filth. It is unbearably dirty, misery abounds, ghosts run rampant everywhere, tricking and deceiving, making groundless accusations, being ruthless and vicious, trampling this ghost town and leaving it littered with dead bodies; the stench of decay covers the land and pervades the air, and it is heavily guarded. Who can see the world beyond the skies? How could the people of a ghost town such as this ever have seen God? Have they ever enjoyed the dearness and loveliness of God? What appreciation have they of the matters of the human world? Who of them can understand God’s eager intentions?

2  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 suppress the work of God? Why hound God until He has nowhere to rest His head? Why do you reject the arrival of God? Why are you so unconscionable? Are you willing to endure the injustices in a dark society such as this?

Now is the time: Man has long since gathered all his strength, he has devoted all his efforts and paid every price for this, to tear off the hideous face of this devil and allow people, who have been blinded, and who have endured every manner of suffering and hardship, to rise up from their pain and rebel against this evil old devil.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Work and Entry (8)

I saw with unquestionable certainty that the CCP is a demon that hates the truth and takes God as its enemy; I made up my mind to completely rebel against the CCP, stand firm in my witness for God and humiliate the great red dragon.

Later, we were assigned to making fake eyelashes and had to work overtime every night. Due to the long working hours, my eyesight became blurry and my hands shook while holding the forceps. I had a weak constitution to start with and, due to being overly fatigued, my condition worsened by the day. I would often run a fever, but had to continue working while sick. And even going to the bathroom was an issue—the head prisoner would intentionally pick on me and only let me go once I started crying from holding it in too long. I felt incredibly depressed and miserable and didn’t know how I would make it through those two years. Sometimes I’d feel so aggrieved that I’d feel like crying and sometimes I’d think about killing myself. During that period, I would often pray to God and recalled this passage of His words: “When you face suffering, you must be able to lay aside concern for the flesh and to not make complaints against God. When God hides Himself from you, you must be able to have the faith to follow Him, to maintain your previous love without allowing it to falter or dissipate. No matter what God does, you must submit to His design and be prepared to curse your own flesh rather than make complaints against Him. When you are faced with trials, you must satisfy God, though you may weep bitterly or feel reluctant to part with some beloved object. Only this is true love and faith. No matter what your actual stature is, you must first possess both the will to suffer hardship and true faith, and you must also have the will to rebel against the flesh. You should be willing to endure personal hardships and suffer losses to your personal interests in order to satisfy God’s intentions. You must also be capable of feeling regret about yourself in your heart: In the past, you were unable to satisfy God, and now, you can regret yourself. You must not be lacking in any of these regards—it is through these things that God will perfect you. If you cannot meet these criteria, then you cannot be perfected” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Those Who Are to Be Made Perfect Must Undergo Refinement). In the past, I often said I was willing to emulate Job and Peter, and would stand firm in my witness to satisfy God no matter how terrible the trials I faced were. But now that I was actually faced with this situation, I realized that I had just been reciting slogans and doctrines and didn’t have true faith and submission to God. Satan was tormenting my flesh to try to make me stray from and betray God, but God was using this difficult environment to reveal my deficiencies and perfect my faith and love. I had to rely on God to experience this environment and no matter how much I suffered, I had to satisfy God. Once I submitted to the environment, I didn’t think it was that much of a suffering anymore. Later on, the doctor at the labor camp gave me a physical examination and found that I had severe tachycardia and advanced heart illness. After that, the guard didn’t assign me extra work. I knew that God was opening up a way for me and I thanked Him from the bottom of my heart. Under God’s protection, I made it through one year and ten months of incarceration.

Thinking back on my experience, every time I thought I couldn’t make it through the torture and torment, God’s words gave me faith and strength, guiding me through hardship after hardship. It was only with God’s protection and love that I was able to survive the torture of the great red dragon and walk out of the devilish prison alive despite having a weak constitution and suffering from several illnesses! Thanks be to Almighty God!