Source: Asia Harvest, October 2019<\/p>\n
[During the Cultural Revolution] in the 1950s a total of 49 Chinese pastors from the Wenzhou area were arrested and sent to prison labor camps in northeast China\u2019s frozen Heilongjiang Province. Of these men, Miao Zizhong was the only one to survive the ordeal and return home alive.<\/p>\n
Miao grew up without knowing the gospel, and he regularly hurled foul-mouthed insults at the servants of the Lord. He became an angry man, bitterly lashing out at other people without provocation.<\/p>\n
Everything began to change in Miao\u2019s life in 1948, one year before China became a Communist country. When he was 32 he contracted a serious disease, and when he went to the largest hospital in Wenzhou they declared his case incurable and advised him to return home and prepare for death. News got around that Miao was perishing, and a relative visited and pleaded with him to believe in Jesus Christ. He accepted the gospel and repented of his sins.<\/p>\n
From the moment Miao received God\u2019s offer of salvation, his physical condition improved, and after a while he was completely healed. Overcome with gratitude to the Lord for sparing his life, Miao surrendered his future to God\u2019s service, and he immediately traveled to another district to preach the gospel.<\/p>\n
For the next six years Miao continued to proclaim good news to the spiritually hungry people of Zhejiang, until the authorities caught up with him in the winter of 1954. He was hauled in front of a \u201cstruggle session\u201d by the local people\u2019s militia, and was lectured about the evils of Christianity and commanded to sign a statement renouncing his faith. With a calm demeanor, Miao looked his persecutors in the eyes and declared:<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus is the Savior of my life. I would be ungrateful to deny Him and as such I would go to hell. I cannot do this.\u201d Upon hearing that, the cadres began to gnash their teeth and with their fists they started beating Miao viciously. He prayed fervently, asking the Lord for help. The evil men used every method, but in the end were unable to coerce him into submission.<\/p>\n
\u00bb Full story includes a picture of Miao Zizhong<\/a>, who went on to serve the Church in China for decades. It\u2019s an excerpt from the recent book Zhejiang: The Jerusalem of China<\/em>. We pray that the testimony of this house church leader will stir up the faith of believers in China who are again experiencing heavy persecution.<\/p>\n \u00bb From another Asian context, read Pastor Spends Months in Canoe to Bring Gospel to Filipino Islands<\/a> (Mission Network News).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Asia Harvest, October 2019 [During the Cultural Revolution] in the 1950s a total of 49 Chinese pastors from the Wenzhou area were arrested and sent to prison labor camps in northeast China\u2019s frozen Heilongjiang Province. Of these men, Miao Zizhong was the only one to survive the ordeal and return home alive. Miao grew … Continue reading CHINA: A Testimony<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8890,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889\/revisions\/8890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}