From Tongji University To the PSB

By Zhou Yue-bo

I became a Christian in China in the eighties. I have no exciting testimonies to share, nor have I experienced spectacular miracles as, for instance, risings from the dead. But in my daily life and in every little incident of my life, I see God's working and his grace.

Foreign students in my class

I enrolled in Shanghai Tongji University in 1982, majoring in Industrial and Residential Construction. I was assigned to Class Five, which was a special class filled with foreign students. In order to help these foreign students improve their Chinese language ability, I was assigned to live in a dorm with some African students. So I ended up living with a group of third world students.

The ones I lived with came from Uganda (actually, most of the students on our floor came from Africa). Every Saturday evening they had a Bible study meeting, and one day they invited me to join them. From then on I became the special guest at their gathering.

My intellectual reasoning prevented me accepting the words of the Bible, for my whole atheist education had made me skeptical about the existence of God. But every time I went to their Bible study gathering, my heart would beat harder and my whole inner being would be in a kind of shock.

After about six months these people had all become my good friends and often came over to visit me. I in turn treated them as my confidantes. These Christians with their big hearts and kind actions stood out from everyone else, and their sincerity impressed me deeply. These Christians were made of "special stuff" and in their lives I saw the power of eternal life and the integrity of the invisible God. By comparison I realised that all the moral instruction I had received, all the monthly political meetings I had attended and all the political studies I had been through had been for nothing. Not only had they failed to improve my life, they made me more and more hypocritical.

One day one of the Christian brothers, Jola, was doing a project in Theoretical Mechanics. I offered to lend him a very rare reference book I had "taken" from the library. The book was so rare that it was not supposed to leave the library premises; there was even a warning message printed on its cover. But I didn't really take this seriously. When Jola saw the warning, however, he demanded sternly that I explain to him where I had got the book from and I airily told him the truth. To my surprise, he went on to demand that I return the book immediately. When he knew I was not willing to return it, he offered to take it back to the library for me. I had always thought of these people as nice mild individuals, but now I realized that when it came to dealing with evil they could be very tough.

It was another six months before I began to read the Bible myself. I wanted to do some research to find out why these Christians who had never had any political education behaved better than those of us who had. What motivated them to exercise such self- discipline? Could Jesus' teachings be greater than those of Communism? After reading the Bible, I saw light and found keys to all my questions. Our sinful nature has led us to become sinful people. All human ideologies are designed only to prune a dying tree rather than to finding a fundamental solution to the problem at its root. But Jesus became flesh, died on the cross and rose from the dead after three days; in Him our lives are transformed and we share in His life so that from that moment on our tree's branches will naturally bear good fruit. I also came to understand that the honest and gracious lives of Christians are the spontaneous outflow of the life of the Creator-God, and that the Holy Spirit is the Christians' unseen teacher.

Finally, alone one evening I came to God. I fell to my knees by my bed, unnable to speak. At the same time, my spirit was set free from intellectual reasonings and my thirsty heart cried out to God. That was the day I was saved and returned to my true spiritual home.

Meetings in the street

Since believing in the Lord, I have experienced a tremendous transformation in my life. I discovered that in Jesus I was able to find everything I had been searching for. The peace and joy within me was beyond description. All the sins and sinful nature that were part of my old self were gone. In the past I used to dodge paying the conductor on the bus, but now I offered the fare as soon as I got on. Sometimes the bus was so crowded that I could not get near the conductor to pay my fare, but when that happened I would still offer to pay even after I had got off the bus. I used to cut into the lines in the cafeteria, but now I always stayed in line. I used to pick up any books I liked from the library without returning them, now I no longer did that.

After I graduated from college, I often went to church for Sunday services. In the eighties China was witnessing a wide-scale revival of Christianity, with great numbers of young people accepting the Lord. In those days, many young brothers and sisters would gather out on the street after Sunday services, talking about Christianity till daybreak, because the churches were unnable to satisfy their spiritual needs.

I got to know some older spiritual leaders who ran underground worship services in homes, and I became one of them. I went to their meetings almost every evening, receiving excellent spiritual training and great enrichment in my life and found myself deeply moved by vivid testimonies of the sufferings they had endured for the Lord's sake in past years.

In 1986 I was baptized at a brother's home. As I was being baptized, I was moved by God's Spirit. With tears in my eyes I prayed, "Oh Lord, I hear you say to me: Who can I send? Who will go for us? Oh Lord, here am I. Send me."

After I was baptized, I participated in underground congregations almost every evening. Because these congregations had long been the target of persecution in China, we had to be very quiet and careful going there. About a dozen or more people would gather in a small room of about 100 square feet. There was no organizational hierarchy, no formality of worship. Every time I went there, I experienced complete liberty of spirit. One day we had a guest, Brother Li, who had spent over twenty years behind bars for the Lord's sake. As he walked into the room, I was so moved that I could scarcely fight back my tears.

A trip to the Public Security Bureau

From 1987 onwards I had been going to different places preaching the Gospel. Wherever I went, I saw revival in the local churches. I saw too that the fields were ready for harvest and there were not enough workers. All of these strengthened my willingness to serve the Lord. Every time I came back from serving the Lord, my heart would be filled with indescribable joy. I said to the Lord: "Oh Lord. I am willing to give up my whole life to you to be a free preacher (Editor: A free preacher was a label the Chinese government gave to all preachers who had not obtained a special license from the government). I am willing to go on my bicycle to all corners of the country preaching Your word. I am willing to breathe my last breath away from home."

One day an elderly sister from Shanghai and I went together to Anhui Province, to its poorest area. We were welcomed by a local co-worker, who had nothing in his home but a shaky table and a couple of chairs. When the believers there heard that we had come to visit them, they came from all over the district to meet us, and by four o'clock in the morning the front yard was completely packed. Later I was told that many of these believers had walked long distances through the night in order to hear God's Word. Now that I am living in a free country, I often feel very upset when I see people coming late for Sunday services.

The Lord guided me to preach the Gospel, establish churches and direct congregations until I came abroad in 1995. At the end of 1995, members of the Public Security Bureau came to my home and confiscated some of my belongings because I had printed a great deal of "illegal religious materials". I was escorted into a car waiting for me at the door and they drove me to the City PSB office on Fuzhou Street. As we went along the road I prayed to God: "Oh Lord, every time I rode my bicycle down this street after our evening srvices, how I longed to walk into the PSB office for your sake! So today I thank you that you have brought me here." After a whole night of interrogation, the Lord protected me after all. I was not worth being jailed, but I was required to pay a fine before I was released.

Today I am here in a foreign country and yet my heart is still in China and I remember her day and night. My constant prayer to God is that I may return to my motherland one day and labour for the Lord till my last breath.

I often remember a song the brothers and sisters in my home church sang as they bade me farewell:

Grant, O Lord, that I may long to live for you;

So I will not be tempted by worldly things.

Strengthen me so that I do not slip but walk forward;

Whenever and wherever I am, may the Lord protect me.

The author came from Shanghai. Now he lives in Cleveland, New Zealand.