Editor's note: Elder Gong, The director of the CC&TSPM in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, came to believe in Jesus at the age of 18. He became the first young Christian in the church when China was adopting the opening-up policy. Over the following three decades, he grew from an ordinary believer to serving the church and finally to leading the churches of Duchang County. He has experienced various difficulties and God's faithful guidance all along the way.
Now 53, Gong shared his testimony and the development of Duchang County's churches over the past three decades.
After China adopted the opening-up policy, the churches of Duchang County had good conditions for growth. Though there were very few believers in the countryside at that time, the end of the 80s to the beginning of the 90s was a good time for the reviving rural church. During that decade of cultural reformation, old Christians were all driven to the countryside because of the government's persecution against Christianity but they remained faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ. The following is Gong's story.
My father died when I was 13. As the eldest son, I needed to take care of my 5 young sisters and brothers, so I was compelled to drop out of school and help my mom raise my 5 siblings. Due to poverty, only one of my brothers went to school.
When I was 17 years old, the farming field of the village was divided among the families according to the number of family members. Because my family had many people, we had more land. However, with such a small labor force I had to go out and work at dawn, and if I failed to finish my work for the day I would continue working in the evening until I finished it. This experience as I grew up formed my stubborn and unusual personality. I said to myself, "I will finish the work I was determined to do even if I had to go hungry."
In addition to tiring physical labor, I had to bear pressure from the people around me. The snobbish people in the countryside would often bully my family because we did not have a father and were poor. However, I did not tolerate them. I started fights with people. I took a knife with me. After I had 2 dangerous fights my mom realized that I was not teachable and wanted to end her life, which made me panic. I thought to myself, "What should I do? I am too stubborn. If my mom dies because of me, I do not want to live any longer."
At that time, there was a Christian couple in our village whom I often helped with their farming work. They told me that I had a good heart but I had to change my stubbornness. Otherwise, I would surely cause my mom to die. I told them that I could not change myself. Then they said to me, "Follow us in believing in Jesus. God can change you!" So I started to follow the couple, believing in Jesus at 18.
When I started going to church there was a pastor, Renshan Wang, age 65. He was the first pastor in Duchang in Jiangxi Province and had graduated from Sichuan Seminary. When the seniors knew that I, the only young man in the church, wanted to believe in Jesus, they prayed for me while kneeling down. That is how I came to believe in Jesus.
I accepted Jesus in 1983 with only 8 churches in the county; Without a nearby church building, believers gathered for worship in their homes. I was only 19 at the time and all the other believers of the church were seniors. Seeing that I had become the only young Christian of the church not because of my illness or being healed as others had, some of the seniors were very happy.
When I had still been attending church for less than 5 weeks, I wanted to give up because there was so much farming work to do at home and the journey to the church was long and difficult for me to walk on foot. I also did not want to lose face before people. On the way to the church, I had to pass by many villages and people who knew me, including my friends. When they saw me following a group of seniors they knew that I believed in Jesus, which made me feel embarrassed.
When I decided not to attend Church the next week, I became ill. A tumor appeared in my feet and caused me great pain to me. For 40 days, although a doctor cut it off, it kept appearing. Suffering pain, I lost my appetite and could not sleep. As a result, I lost significant weight. After hearing the doctor's diagnosis that the tumor was in the bones, my mom cried before my father's tomb saying, "our son is hopeless." Then the old couple came to my home to see my mom. They told her that her son wanted to give up on believing in Jesus despite the fact that his name had been included in the book of life in heaven. He needed to repent of the sin of saying he wanted to stop believing in Jesus, which had offended God deeply although many people had prayed for him.
I thought, "There is no other way for me to be healed. If God could perform a miracle on me by healing my feet in a week, I would believe in Jesus again." Then some seniors came to my home to pray for me for three days. A week later I was completely healed of the tumor on my feet and I could set my feet on the ground to walk. But thinking that I had to go to church each week I began to hesitate again. When I was struggling, Pastor Wang came to my home. I told him that I could believe in Jesus but I could not guarantee that I could attend the Sunday service each week. After hearing me, he said, "It is OK."
When I was 21 years old, I married and had children. I was happy but according to the fortunetelling in the village, either my son or I would die. Because of this, I said to myself that I had to believe in Jesus for the sake of my son. My son is now 32.
I would also like to talk about my mother-in-law's three experiences with the Lord when she was living with us, helping to care for our children. The first time she experienced the Lord was when my son was 6 months old. She brought a superstitious symbol of protection to our home and I tore it down. As she slept next to my wife in the bed she saw a glorious light filling the bed. The second experience with the Lord was when she saw an angel in white clothes in our home. We had flooring in the ceiling and on the ground at that time. When she saw the angel's head in the ceiling and its feet on the ground, she said to us that it must be a demon.
Knowing Jesus, my wife told her that it had to be Jesus. Then she cried, "Lord, I thank you!" Suddenly, the shadow of the person disappeared. Several months later my son was about to be 1 year old. Living in the old house, we had never opened the window which was firm and strong. One night at 4 am the window was suddenly opened and I immediately cried, "Lord, save me!" From then on, my faith in Jesus became stronger.
In 1985 I was baptized and built a church in our hometown. In less than 2 years, that church grew from having only 7 believers to more than 30, and I built 5 family churches around our village before 1987. In 1989, The Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Church was formed in Duchang and I was appointed as secretary with Pastor Wang as the director. Learning from Pastor Wang, I began to learn how to manage a church and my stubbornness was gradually changed also.
My wife was baptized into Christ in 1992 although she had believed in Jesus earlier. Because I was busy with church affairs she had to take care of our family and lacked time to attend the worship service. In 1992, with our son growing up and my younger sisters and brothers all having built their homes, she officially believed in Jesus and started attending services on Sundays. Now our family have all become Christians. My mother-in-law who used to worship idols believed in Jesus in 1989 and my cousin, her six daughters, and my aunt all came to believe in Jesus after they saw my change in the Lord.
In 1993, our village was rated a civilized village. There were 43 families in the village and 20 of them believed in Jesus. The government in town wanted me to be the village director, but requested that I stop believing in Jesus. I rejected the offer because my life was given by the Lord and my family's destiny had been changed by God.
We lived in the old house until 1995 when I built two new houses. I built a church in 1996 and covered 10% of the cost for building the church. There were 42 churches at the time with 8 church buildings, but the number of believers had reached up to 5,000.
In 1998, a flood happened in Duchang County and many people's houses were flooded. However, my houses and the church's building were spared from the flood because of their height, so more than 200 fellow countrymen came to the church's building and our home to seek shelter. They said to me, "You are truly a man of God." That is how I received their approval for my faith. It was in the same year that I was recommended as the director of the CCC&TSPM in Duchang.
In Duchang's churches, teachers need to receive theological training and pass a test to receive a certificate before they are allowed to preach, and a writing ministry was developed as well, led by a retired principal. He had served for a while as the director of the Christian Association of the county before he came to believe in Jesus in 2011.
Regarding Jiujiang city, Duchang county has more churches and more believers than any other place. There are 15,000 believers now and the pastors' responsibility is great. In 2008, I was transferred and served in the CCC&TSPM of Jiujiang until 2015. I returned to Duchang when the church there experienced problems with constructing its buildings.
- Translated by Alvin Zhou
