Yang Yi, Jiangsu Province
I am a Christian of the Church of Almighty God. I have been a follower of Almighty God for over ten years. During this time, one thing I’ll never forget is the awful tribulation when I was arrested by the CCP police a decade ago. Back then, despite my being tortured and trampled on by evil demons, and coming close to death several times, Almighty God used His mighty hand to guide and protect me, to bring me back to life, and take me back to safety…. Through this, I truly experienced the transcendence and greatness of the power of God’s life, and gained the precious wealth of life conferred upon me by God.
It was January 23, 2004 (the second day of Chinese New Year). I needed to go and visit a sister from the church; she was in trouble and in urgent need of help. Living a long way away, I had to get up early to get a taxi so I’d be back the same day. I left home just as it was getting light. There was hardly anyone on the streets, just the workers cleaning up rubbish. I anxiously searched for a taxi, but there were none about. I went to a taxi rank to wait, and stepped into the road to flag one down when I saw it coming—but it turned out to be a vehicle belonging to the Environmental Protection Bureau. They asked me why I’d flagged them down. “I’m sorry, it was a mistake, I thought you were a taxi,” I said. “We think you were putting up illegal posters,” they replied. “Did you see me? Where are the posters I was putting up?” I said. Without giving me the chance to defend myself, they three rushed forward and forcibly searched my bag. They rifled through everything in my bag—a copy of a sermon, a notepad, a purse, a cell phone and a disabled beeper, and so on. Then they took a closer look at the copy of a sermon and the notepad. Seeing there were no posters in my bag, they held up the copy of a sermon and said: “You might not have been putting up illegal posters, but you believe in Almighty God.” Next, they rang the National Security Brigade’s Religious Division. Soon after, four people from the National Security Brigade arrived. They knew I was a believer in Almighty God as soon as they saw the things in my bag. Without letting me say anything, they bundled me into their vehicle, then locked the door to stop me running away.
When we arrived at the Public Security Bureau, the police led me into a room. One of them fiddled with my beeper and mobile phone, looking for clues. He turned on the phone but it showed low battery, then said the battery was completely empty. Try as he might, he couldn’t get it to turn on. Holding the phone, he looked worried. I was puzzled too—I’d just charged the phone that morning. How could it have no power? I suddenly realized that God had miraculously arranged this to stop the police from finding any information about the other brothers and sisters. I also understood the words spoken by God: “any and all things, living or dead, will shift, change, renew, and disappear according to God’s thoughts. This is how God rules over all things” (“God Is the Source of Man’s Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). This gave me a true knowledge of God’s sovereignty and arrangement of all things, and strengthened my faith in future cooperation. Pointing at the things in the bag, the police officer asked accusingly: “These show that you’re clearly no ordinary church member. You must be one of the senior leadership, someone important. For junior leaders don’t have beepers or mobile phones. Am I right?” “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I replied. “You’re pretending you don’t!” he roared, then ordered me to squat as I spoke. Seeing I wasn’t going to play ball, they surrounded me and began punching and kicking me—enough to kill me. My face bloody and swollen, my whole body aching unbearably, I collapsed on the floor. I was incensed. I wanted to talk reason to them, to argue my case: What have I done wrong? Why did you beat me like that? But I had no way of talking sense with them, because the CCP government doesn’t talk sense. I was perplexed, but I didn’t want to give in to their beatings. Just as I was at a loss, I suddenly thought of how, since these evil officers of the CCP government were being so absurd, since they weren’t letting me speak any words of reason, I needn’t say anything to them. I was better of keeping silent—that way I’d be of no use to them. When I thought of this, I stopped paying any attention to what they were saying.
Seeing that this approach had no effect on me, the evil policemen flew into a rage and grew even more barbaric: They turned to torture to extract a confession. They handcuffed me to a metal chair screwed to the ground in such a position that I could neither squat nor stand. One of them placed my uncuffed hand on the chair and struck on it with a shoe, only stopping when the back of my hand had gone black and blue; another squashed my toes beneath his leather shoe. Only then did I experience that pain in the fingers shoots straight to the heart. After that, six or seven policemen took turns at me. One of them concentrated on my joints, and pinched them so hard that a month later I still couldn’t bend my arm. Another grabbed my hair and shook my head from side to side, then wrenched it back so I was looking up. “Look at the sky and see if there’s a God!” he said viciously. They carried on until nightfall. Seeing that they weren’t going to get anything out of me, and because it was Chinese New Year, they sent me straight to the detention center.
When I arrived at the detention center, a guard ordered a female prisoner to take all my clothes off and throw them in the trash can. Then they made me put on a dirty, foul-smelling prison uniform. The guards put me in a cell and then lied to the other prisoners, saying: “She especially broke up people’s family. A lot of families have been ruined by her. She’s a liar, she deceives honest people, and upsets the public order….” “Why does she look like a simpleton?” one of the prisoners asked. To which the guards replied: “She’s putting on an act to avoid being sentenced. Who of you are that clever? Anyone who thinks she’s a fool is the biggest idiot of all.” Thus deceived by the guards, all the other prisoners said I was being let off too easily, and that the only thing good for someone as bad as me was the firing squad! Hearing this enraged me—but there was nothing I could do. My attempts at resistance had been to no avail, they only brought more torture and savagery. In the detention center, the guards made the prisoners recite the rules every day: “Confess your crimes and submit to the law. Inciting others to commit crimes is not allowed. Forming gangs is not allowed. Fighting is not allowed. Bullying of others is not allowed. Making false charges against others is not allowed. Grabbing others’ food or possessions is not allowed. Playing tricks on others is not allowed. Prison bullies should be cracked down on. Any violation of the rules should be reported to the supervisors or roundsmen immediately. You must not cover up the facts or try to protect those prisoners who have violated the regulation, and monitoring should be humane. …” In reality, the guards encouraged the other prisoners to torment me, allowing them to play tricks on me every day: When it was 8 or 9 degrees below zero, they soaked my shoes; they secretly poured water in my food; in the evening, when I was asleep, they drenched my cotton-padded jacket; they made me sleep next to the toilet, they often pulled off my quilt in the night, pulled my hair, to keep me from sleep; they snatched my steamed buns; they forced me to clean the toilet, and forced their leftover medicine into my mouth, they didn’t let me relieve myself…. If I didn’t do anything they said, they’d gang up and beat me—and often at such times the supervisors or the roundsmen would hurry out of view or pretend they hadn’t seen anything; sometimes they’d even hide a ways off and watch. If the prisoners went a few days without tormenting me, the supervisors and the roundsmen would ask them: “That stupid bitch has smartened up these last few days, yes? Meanwhile, you lot have gone soft in the head. Anyone who brings that stupid bitch around will get a remission.” The guards’ brutal torment filled me with hatred for them. Today, if I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes and personally experienced it, I would never believe that the CCP government, which is supposed to be full of benevolence and morality, could be so dark, fearful, and horrible—I would never have seen its true face, a face that is fraudulent and duplicitous. All its talk of “serving the people, creating a civilized and harmonious society”—these are lies designed to deceive and hoodwink people, they were a means, a trick, of prettifying itself and gaining kudos it does not deserve. At that time, I thought of the words of God: “Small wonder, then, that God incarnate remains completely hidden: In a dark society such as this, where the demons are merciless and inhumane, how could the king of devils, who kills people in the blink of an eye, tolerate the existence of a God who is lovely, kind, and also holy? How could it applaud and cheer the arrival of God? These lackeys! They repay kindness with hate, they have long since disdained God, they abuse God, they are savage in the extreme, they have not the slightest regard for God, they plunder and pillage, they have lost all conscience, and have not a trace of kindness, and they tempt the innocent into senselessness. Forefathers of the ancient? Beloved leaders? They all oppose God! Their meddling has left all beneath heaven in a state of darkness and chaos! Religious freedom? The legitimate rights and interests of citizens? They are all tricks for covering up sin!” (“Work and Entry (8)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Comparing God’s words to the reality, I saw the dark and evil demonic substance of the CCP government in perfect clarity. To maintain its dark rule, it keeps a tight grip on its people, and stops at nothing to delude and deceive them. Superficially, it purports to provide religious freedom—but in secret, it arrests, oppresses, persecutes, and murders people across the country who believe in God. It even tries to put them all to death. How cunning, brutal, and reactionary the devil is! Where is the freedom? Where are the human rights? Are they not all tricks by which to deceive people? Can people glimpse any hope or light living beneath its dark rule? How can they be free to believe in God and pursue the truth? Only then did I recognize that God had permitted this persecution and tribulation to befall me, that He had used it to show me the viciousness and brutality of the CCP government, to show me its demonic substance that is in enmity to the truth and hostile to God, and to show me that the people’s police, whom the government vigorously promotes and touts as punishing evil, advocating good, and promoting justice, are the accomplices and minions it has meticulously nurtured, a bunch of executioners who have the faces of men but the hearts of beasts, and who would kill in the blink of an eye. To try to outlaw and eradicate God’s work, and to force me to reject and betray God and yield to its despotic power, the CCP government stopped at nothing in torturing and ravaging me—yet little did it know that the more it tortured me, the more clearly I saw its devilish face, and the more I despised and rejected it from the depths of my heart, making me truly yearn for God and trust in God. What’s more, it was precisely because of the guards’ torture that I unwittingly came to understand what it truly means to love what God loves, and hate what God hates, what it means to turn one’s back on Satan and turn one’s heart to God, what it is to be barbaric, what the forces of darkness are, and, furthermore, what it is to be malicious and insidious, and fake and deceitful. I was grateful to God for letting me experience this environment, for allowing me to tell right from wrong and see the right path of life that I should take. My heart—which had been duped by Satan for so long—was finally awakened by God’s love. I felt that there was great meaning in my having the fortune to experience this tribulation and trial, that I had truly been shown special favor.
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