In Southwestern China, some villages dominated by other religions later built Christian churches, and Christianity became the new identity of these villagers. How did that happen and what kind of legends did they go through?
As one of the first batch of co-workers to believe and participate in church service after the reform and opening up, W (pseudonym) shared his faith and service experience with the Gospel Times, an online Christian newspaper. In the nearly 40 years since W became a believer after being healed by the Lord, he has experienced many wonderful works of God in the local area.
In 1987, W was seriously ill and was hospitalized in the hospital for a long time and could not get better, nor did he find out what disease it was. At that time he even looked for someone to drive away ghosts, but the disease could still not be healed. At this time, his mother knew that some people in the village used to believe in Christianity, so she invited several senior Christians to come over, but, after 30 years since the start of the Cultural Revolution, they had forgotten how to pray, and they could not even sing one complete hymn. They came over and sang whatever they could remember, but it was amazing that W soon felt much better. So they started meeting with only 50 or 60 people, and by 1996, the church there had a revival, and the number of believers had grown to several thousand.
At the end of 1995, more than 20 co-workers went to Village X to spread the gospel, and the whole village started to believe in the Lord. In 1996, they built a church there, and W stayed there for three months. A few months after he went home, someone came to tell him that many children in Village X were sick, saying that it was because of the ghosts in the church, and no one dared to go to church anymore. So W went there with six or seven female co-workers since they had no male co-workers at that time. When they found that the grass at the church door was very long, they and the villagers took hoes to weed and then took the quilts to live in the church.
"No, you can't live here." The villagers thought there were ghosts here, but W told them, "There are no ghosts here, but only the Lord." He stayed at the church that night.
The next morning, the villagers came to the church very early to see if W was okay, and he was fine. "At this time they told me that now too many children were sick and had high fever. I asked them to take their children to the church." After more than ten minutes they came back with more than a dozen children, all with a fever. W invited everyone to pray for the sick children together, "at the beginning, no one knew how to pray. I said that you can say what I say. Within 10 minutes, all these kids had no more fever. It was amazing."
On the third day, one sister came and said that her husband had been out of surgery for three months and still could not walk, so everyone went to her house to pray for her husband, and unexpectedly he walked to church the next day. After some time, that sister said that her husband was dead, and the coworkers hastened to her home to pray and sing, and he was alive again. Then they helped him to get up, drink several bowls of rice soup, and walk slowly. This senior man lived for nearly 30 more years until his death recently.
In addition, there is a senior man who was said to raised ghosts. At first, he came to W and told W that he wanted his family to come to Jesus, but he could not, because he was a ghost raiser and worried that something bad may happen to the villagers if he went to the church. W later went to his home and helped him tear down his idols. Previously, on the first day and the 15th of every month, his family was afraid to stay at home, because he may have been crazy at that time, but since the demolition, his home has been very safe, and nothing weird ever happened in the village.
Looking back on that time, W said that he experienced many miracles in Village X, and felt that God had special compassion there. At the same time, the church here was also revived. "At that time, there was no sermon on the altar. People would just read the Bible together." He believed in the Lord since 1987, and read the Bible for the first time in 1992, and when everyone gathered together from 1987 to 1992, there was no Bible. We would begin and end with the Lord's Prayer, and sing hymns in the middle. After he got the Bible in 1992, he began to know more about the truth and to manage the church according to the teachings of the Bible. "People have not done anything. It is all the power of God."
W introduced that the local people believed in the Lord quickly after experiencing God's grace, but once they returned to the village, they faced a lot of persecution and pressure, such as being unable to enter the ancestral grave after dying, being unable to receive dividends of the collective assets of the village, and even being cut off from water and electricity, some of which were written in the village rules and covenants. "It is very difficult for them to convert to Christianity and very easy to change back. But some people still hold on to their faith and give up dividends."
Some people say that signs and wonders seem to be much less now, and even doubt whether they exist, but W believes that it is not true, "As the Bible tells us, signs and wonders happen when we have faith. But now people are used to doing things in their own way, and they don't believe that the Bible says that Christ’s wills are higher than your thoughts, and they are all by their reason and their way, so how can they see miracles?" In his view, signs and wonders will never be lacking, but they will not be seen if people have their way of doing things.
Not only in the 1990s but even today, miracles of healing are still happening in W's church service. "Sometimes they will say that my prayer is really 'great', and I say that it’s not true. Don't give me the credit for this. I don't have the power. God hears my prayers and does the work."
W said prayer requires faith, and those who pray need faith in particular. "It's not enough to simply fulfill my duty as a pastor or co-worker by praying for you and leaving the outcome to God. If I approach prayer with that mindset, people won’t experience healing. Instead, I must pray with faith, trusting in God’s power to heal."
In W’s view, the development of the church has become slow, partly because people are too realistic and rational nowadays. Especially when preaching the gospel to young people, their reply is often "I will go when I get older". He felt a special need to pray for young people now. He thinks the good thing is that now, through visits and prayer, the situation is gradually improving, and some young people are returning to the church.
- Edited by Karen Luo, translated by Nicolas Cao
