Religious Persecution - After Enduring Hardship, My Love for God Is Even Stronger (Part 1)

By Zhou Rui, Jiangxi Province

My name is Zhou Rui and I am a Christian of The Church of Almighty God. From the time I began to understand things, I watched my parents work hard in the fields from morning to night in order to make a living. Despite their significant efforts, they hardly earned any money every year, so our family always lived in considerable poverty. Whenever I saw those people with power and influence who lived quite comfortably without needing to labor hard, I felt envious of them, and so I made a firm resolution: When I grew up, I would definitely be successful in a career or get a government position to remedy the poverty and backwardness of my family so that my parents, too, could live the life of the rich. However, I struggled for this ideal for many years, yet was never able to get what I wanted; I continued to live a poor life. I often sighed in worry over having nothing to show for how busy I’d been, and gradually I lost my faith in life. Just when I began to lose heart and despair of life, Almighty God’s salvation of the last days came upon me. From His words I grasped some truths and came to know the root cause of human suffering in the world. I also understood how people needed to live in order to live a life that was most meaningful and worthwhile. From then on, confused and helpless though I had been, I found my direction in life. Leaving depression and dejection behind, I felt a new vitality and lease on life, and saw the hope of life. Afterward, so that those who were still living in suffering and in helplessness could also obtain this extremely rare salvation, I began going from place to place, energetically preaching God’s salvation of the last days. What I did not expect, however, was that in the process of spreading the gospel, I was captured twice by the Chinese government and suffered brutal, inhumane torture…. In this dark pit of monstrosities, Almighty God never left my side; His words gave me faith and strength, leading me again and again to victory over Satan’s dark forces and reinforcing my love for Him.

It was a day in June of 2003; two of my brothers and I had gone to a village to spread the gospel, when we were reported by a wicked person. Five or six policemen in three police cars sped up to us and placed us in handcuffs without asking a single question. Pushing and kicking us, they forced us into the vehicles and drove us over to the Public Security Bureau. In the car I did not feel much fear at all. I had always felt that the purpose of spreading the gospel was to bring people salvation, so we had not been doing anything wrong; once we arrived at the Public Security Bureau, I would explain the situation, and the police would let us go. How could I have known, however, that the Chinese government’s policemen were crueler and more savage than any ruffians or evil tyrants. After we arrived at the PSB, the police didn’t even give us a chance to explain before separating us and questioning us individually. No sooner had I entered the interrogation room than a policeman barked at me, “The Communist Party’s policy is ‘Leniency for those who confess, and severity for those who resist.’ Do you know that?” Subsequently, he asked about my personal information. Seeing that my answers did not satisfy him, another policeman walked up next to me and grunted, “Hmph. You’re not playing ball. We’ll have to teach you a lesson and see if that will make you tell the truth.” Then he waved his hand and said, “Bring a few bricks over so we can punish him!” No sooner had he said this than two policemen walked over, took one of my hands, and yanked it from above my shoulder down along my back while wrenching my other hand upward, and then forcefully cuffed them together. Immediately I felt unbearable pain, as though my arms were about to break. How could such a weak person as I endure such torment? A moment later I collapsed to the ground. Seeing this, the evil police abruptly hauled the handcuffs upward and wedged two bricks between my hands and my back. A sudden, acute pain shot straight through to my heart, as though thousands of ants were chewing through my bones. In utter agony, I used all my remaining strength to implore God: “Almighty God, save me. Almighty God, save me….” Though by then I had only accepted God’s salvation of the last days for three months or so, was not yet equipped with many of His words, and only understood a scant few truths, nevertheless, as I continuously supplicated, God granted me faith and strength and planted a firm conviction inside of me: I must stand testimony for God; I absolutely must not surrender to Satan! Thereupon, I gritted my teeth and absolutely refused to say another word. Flustered and exasperated, the evil policemen tried another vicious ploy in an effort to subdue me: They placed two bricks on the floor and forced me to kneel on top of them; at the same time, they pulled up hard on my handcuffs. My arms were immediately in so much unbearable pain it felt like they were broken. I made myself kneel there for a few minutes before again falling motionless to the floor, whereupon the policemen violently lifted me back up by the handcuffs, and forced me to continue kneeling. In this manner they tortured me over and over. It was the height of summer, so I was both in agony and hot; beads of sweat dripped down continuously from my face. I was having such a hard time holding up that I was having trouble breathing, and I nearly fainted. Even so, this gang of evil policemen merely rejoiced at my misfortune. “Feeling okay?” one of them said. “If you keep on refusing to talk, we have a lot more ways to deal with you!” Seeing that I wasn’t answering, they fumed with frustration and said, “So you haven’t had enough then? Again!” … After two or three hours of this torment, I was aching from head to toe and had no strength left. I fell to the floor and could not move, and even lost all control of my bladder and bowels. Up against the savage torture of these evil policemen, I genuinely hated myself for having been so blind and ignorant before; naively, I had assumed that the PSB would be a place of reason and that the policemen would uphold justice and release me. I never expected that they would be so malicious and cruel as to try to extort a confession through torture without a shred of evidence, torturing me almost to death. They really are evil in the extreme! I lay on the floor as if fallen to pieces and could not have moved even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t know how they planned to torture me further, nor did I know how much longer I could hold up. In my suffering and helplessness, all I could do was to continuously implore God to give me strength so that I could keep on enduring. God heard my pleas, and took pity on me, causing me to recall one of His utterances: “Now is a crucial moment. Be sure not to be disheartened or discouraged. You must look forward in everything…. So long as one breath remains to you, persevere to the very end; only this will be worthy of praise” (“Chapter 20” of Utterances of Christ in the Beginning in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words granted me enormous faith and strength. They were so true! Since I was walking the path of light and righteousness, I should have the faith to keep going; even if it came to my final breath, I still had to persevere to the end! God’s words hummed with life force, they enabled me to have the faith and courage with which to fight these evil demons to the end, and I slowly regained some of my physical strength as well. After that, the evil police continued to interrogate me, and kept stomping ruthlessly on my feet until they were crushed and mangled. Nevertheless, I felt no more pain. I knew this was due to God’s wonderful deeds; having taken pity on me and shown solicitude for my weakness, He had alleviated my suffering. Later, the malicious policemen detained us with the charge of “disrupting public order.” That night, they cuffed us each to a separate three- or four-hundred-pound block of cement, to which we remained chained until the following evening, when they again transported us over to the local detention house.

Entering the detention house was like being dropped into a kind of hell. The correctional officers forced me to string together colored light bulbs. At first, I was made to string together six thousand of them per day, but after that, the amount increased each day until it eventually reached twelve thousand. As a result of this excessive daily workload, I wore my fingers to the bone, yet still was unable to complete the task. I had no choice but to keep stringing them together through the night. Sometimes I really couldn’t bear it, and wanted to take a nap, but as soon as I was seen by them, I would be viciously beaten. The correctional officers would even incite the jailhouse bullies by saying out loud, “If these convicts can’t get the job done or do it right, you should give them a couple shots of ‘penicillin.’” What they meant by giving a shot of “penicillin” referred to slamming one’s knee into an inmate’s crotch, elbowing him hard in the middle of the back while he was bent over in pain, and then using one’s heel to stomp on the inmate’s foot. This vicious method could sometimes cause a person to faint on the spot and even be left crippled for life. In this devilish prison, I did arduous hard labor every day and still had to take cruel beatings. On top of that, the three meals we were fed each day were not even fit for dogs or pigs: The dishes we ate were made of unseasoned radish leaves and swamp cabbage (which was often interspersed with rotten leaves and roots, sand, and mud), along with about a hundred and fifty grams of rice and a cup of the water that had been used to wash the rice in. All day long, I was so hungry my stomach was constantly growling. In this sort of environment, I only had Almighty God to rely on; whenever I took a beating, I would pray urgently, imploring God to give me faith and strength so that I could overcome Satan’s temptations. After more than twenty days of being ravaged and tormented, my body had become emaciated beyond recognition: I had no strength in my arms and legs, I could not stand up straight, and I didn’t even have the strength to stretch out my arms. Nevertheless, not only were the perverse guards indifferent to my plight, but they even misappropriated the few hundred yuan my family sent me. As time went on, my physical condition got worse and worse; I got so weak that I could not help complaining to myself, “Why, in this country, does a person who believes in God have to be subjected to such suffering? Isn’t the reason I spread the gospel to bring people before God to receive God’s salvation? And I have not even committed any crimes….” The more I thought about this, the harder it was to bear and the more wronged I felt. All I could do was continuously pray to God and implore Him to take pity on me and save me. In the midst of my misery and helplessness, God led me to remember a hymn of His utterances: “2 Perhaps you all remember these words: ‘For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ These words shall be fulfilled by God during the last days, and they shall be fulfilled in those who have been brutally persecuted by the great red dragon in the land where it lies coiled. The great red dragon persecutes God and is the enemy of God, and so, in this land, those who believe in God are thus subjected to humiliation and oppression, and God’s words are fulfilled in you, this group of people, as a result. 3 It is tremendously difficult for God to carry out His work in the land of the great red dragon—but it is through this difficulty that God does one stage of His work, making manifest His wisdom and His wondrous deeds, and using this opportunity to make this group of people complete. It is through people’s suffering, through their caliber, and through all the satanic dispositions of the people of this filthy land that God does His work of purification and conquest, so that, from this, He may gain glory, and so that He may gain those who will bear witness to His deeds. Such is the entire significance of all the sacrifices that God has made for this group of people” (“You Are Those Who Will Receive the Inheritance of God” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs). God’s words gave me enormous comfort and encouragement, and they enabled me to understand His will. Because we believe in God in an atheist country, we are destined to endure the demon Satan’s coercion and persecution; however, our being subjected to this anguish is permitted by God, therefore suffering like this has value and meaning. It is exactly by way of such persecution and suffering that God plants the truth within us, thereby qualifying us to bear His promise. This “suffering” is God’s blessing, and to be able to stay loyal to God through this suffering is a testimony to God’s victory over Satan, and it is also compelling evidence that I have been gained by God. “Today,” I thought, “because I follow God, I suffer such persecution at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party demons, and this is God showing me special favor, so by rights I should submit to God’s orchestration and happily face and accept it with steadfast peace of mind.” I recalled another of God’s utterances, spoken in the Age of Grace: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). In that moment, I had even more faith and strength: No matter how Satan and demons might torture me, I was determined not to give in to them, and I swore that I would stand testimony and satisfy God! Endowed with authority and power, God’s words had dispelled the desolation and helplessness I’d felt inside, and alleviated the ruinous physical suffering I had been subjected to. They allowed me to see the light in the darkness, and my spirit grew stronger and more unyielding.

Later on, despite not having any evidence, the Chinese government imposed a sentence on me of a year of reeducation through labor. When the police transported me to the labor camp, the prison guards there saw that I was barely more than skin and bones and hardly even looked human anymore. Afraid that I would die, they did not dare to accept me, so the policemen had no choice but to take me back to the detention house. By then I had been tortured by those evil police to the point where I wasn’t able to eat, yet not only did they not give me medical treatment, but they even said I was faking it. When they saw that I could not get any food down, they got someone to pry my mouth open and forcibly poured it in. When they saw me having trouble swallowing, they beat me. I was force-fed and beaten like a rag doll three times in all. Upon seeing that they could not pour any more food into me, they had no alternative but to take me to the hospital. Examinations revealed that my veins had hardened; my blood had turned into a black paste, and could not circulate properly. The doctor said, “If this man is detained any longer, he will undoubtedly die.” Nevertheless, the hateful, evil police still would not let me go. Later, with my life hanging on by a thread, the other prisoners said I was beyond hope and a total goner. By then I was in utter anguish; I felt that being so young and having only recently accepted God’s work of the last days, there was still so much for me to enjoy, and I had not yet seen the day of God’s glory. I truly was not resigned to being tortured to death by the Chinese government. I absolutely despised this pack of utterly heartless, evil police, and had even more hate for this perverse, Heaven-defying, wicked, satanic regime that was the Chinese government. It was what had deprived me of my freedom to follow the true God, and it was what had brought me to the brink of death and would not allow me to worship the true God. The Communist Party frantically resists God, cruelly persecutes Christians, and wishes to exterminate everyone who believes in God and turn China into a godless region. This wicked demon Satan is indeed the enemy that is irreconcilably opposed to God, and what’s more, it is the enemy I can never forgive. I vowed that even if I were to be tortured to death that day, I absolutely would not compromise or give in to Satan! In my grief and indignation, I recalled something God had said: “Thousands of years of hate are concentrated in the heart, millennia of sinfulness are inscribed upon the heart—how could this not inspire loathing? Avenge God, completely snuff out His enemy, do not allow it to run rampant any longer, and do not permit it to kick up as much trouble as it wishes anymore! Now is the time: Man has long since gathered all his strength, he has devoted all his efforts, paid every price, for this, to tear off the hideous face of this demon and allow people, who have been blinded, and have endured every manner of suffering and hardship, to rise up from their pain and turn their backs on this evil old devil” (“Work and Entry (8)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). After pondering God’s words, I saw even more clearly the evil, vicious demonic face of the Chinese government, and recognized that in that very moment, I was facing a spiritual battle between life and death, between good and evil. The Chinese government’s goal in devastating me like this was to force me to forsake God and betray Him, but God had reminded and encouraged me to stand strong, rid myself of the hold death had over me, and bear victorious testimony for God. I could not withdraw into negativity; I had to cooperate diligently with God and submit to His orchestrations and arrangements. Like Peter, I had to submit unto death and, in my last living moment, bear firm, resounding testimony for God and comfort His heart. My life was in God’s hands and, though Satan might injure and slaughter my physical body, it could not destroy my soul, let alone do anything to obstruct my determination to believe in God and pursue the truth. Whether or not I survived that day, my only wish was to entrust my life to God and accept His orchestrations; even if I were to be maimed to death, I absolutely would not surrender to Satan! When I became willing to sacrifice my life and I resolved to stand testimony for God, God opened up a way out for me by rousing the other convicts to feed me. When that happened, I was filled with excitement; deep down I knew God was by my side and had always been with me. All along, He had been watching over me and protecting me, empathizing with my weakness and carefully arranging everything for me. In that dark lair of devils, even though my body had been ravaged, within my heart I no longer felt so much pain and distress. After that, the evil cops kept me detained for another fifteen days, but seeing that my life was just hanging by a thread and that I could die at any time, they finally had no choice but to release me. I had originally weighed more than fifty kilos, but during the nearly two months that I was locked up, I had been tormented until I was just skin and bones, weighing a mere twenty-five or thirty kilos, and my life hung in the balance. Even so, this pack of monsters still wanted to fine me ten thousand yuan. In the end, seeing that my family really had no way of coming up with such a large sum of money, they demanded six hundred yuan to cover my food expenses, and only after it had been paid did they let me go.

Suffering this inhuman torture and cruel treatment at the hands of the Chinese government left me feeling as though I had barely escaped the gates of hell. That I had been able to walk out alive was completely thanks to God’s care and protection; it was God showing me His great salvation. Thinking of God’s love, I felt doubly moved, and gained an even deeper appreciation for the preciousness of God’s words. Thereupon, I avidly read His utterances daily after that, and frequently prayed to God. Gradually, I gained more and more understanding of the work God was doing to save humanity in the last days. After a while, under God’s care, my body gradually recovered, and I again began to spread the gospel and bear testimony to God’s work of the last days. However, as long as the satanic regime remains standing, it will never stop trying to disrupt and destroy God’s work. Later, I was again subjected to frantic pursuit and arrest by the Chinese government’s police.

To be continue…  

Source From: The Church of Almighty God Website