In Prison at the Prime of Youth
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| Picture of the Church of Almighty God |
Chenxi, Hebei Province
Everyone says the prime of our youth is the most splendid and purest time of life. Perhaps for many, those years are full of beautiful memories, but what I never would have expected was that I spent the prime of my own youth in prison. You might look at me strangely for this, but I do not regret it. Even though that time behind bars was full of bitterness and tears, it was the most precious gift of my life, and I gained a great deal from it.
I was born into a happy family, and since childhood have worshiped Jesus along with my mom. When I was fifteen, my family and I, convinced that Almighty God is Jesus come again, gladly accepted His work of the last days.
One day in April of 2002, when I was seventeen, a sister and I were at a place fulfilling our duties. At 1:00 in the morning, we were soundly asleep at our host’s house when we were suddenly awakened by some loud, urgent bangs on the door. We heard someone outside yelling, “Open the door! Open the door!” No sooner had the sister who hosted us opened it than a few police officers abruptly pushed inside and said, aggressively, “We’re from the Public Security Bureau.” Hearing these three words, “Public Security Bureau,” made me immediately nervous. Were they here to arrest us for our belief in God? I had heard about some brothers and sisters being arrested and persecuted over their faith; could it be that this was now happening to me? Just then my heart began to beat wildly, thu-thump, thu-thump, and in my panic, I did not know what to do. I therefore hurriedly prayed to God: “God, I implore You to be with me. Give me faith and courage. No matter what happens, I will always be willing to stand testimony for You. I also beseech You to give me Your wisdom and grant me with the words I should speak, so that I will not betray You nor sell out my brothers and sisters.” After praying, my heart gradually calmed down. I saw those four or five evil cops rifling through the room like bandits, searching through the bedding, each cabinet, box, and even what was under the bed until finally they came up with some books of God’s utterances as well as CDs of hymns. The leader said to me in a deadpan voice, “Your possession of these things is evidence that you believe in God. Come with us and you can make a statement.” Shocked, I said, “If there is something to say, I can just say it here; I don’t want to go with you.” He immediately put on a smile and replied, “Don’t be afraid; let’s just take a little trip to make a statement. I’ll bring you back here very soon.” Taking him at his word, I went with them and got into the police car.
It never occurred to me that that little trip would be the commencement of my prison life.
As soon as we entered the courtyard of the police station, those evil cops started shouting at me to get out of the vehicle. Their facial expressions had changed very quickly, and suddenly they seemed to be completely different people from who they had been before. When we got to the office, several burly officers came in after us and stood to my left and right. Their power over me now secured, the leader of the group of evil cops bellowed at me, “What are you called? Where are you from? How many of you are there in total?” I had just opened my mouth and was in the middle of responding when he lunged at me and slapped me twice in the face—smack, smack! I was stunned into silence. I wondered to myself, Why did he hit me? I wasn’t even finished answering. Why were they being so rough and uncivilized, completely different from what I’d imagined the people’s police to be like? Next, he went on to ask me how old I was, and when I answered honestly that I was seventeen, slap, slap, he smacked my face again and scolded me for telling lies. After that, no matter what I said, he indiscriminately delivered blow after blow to my face to the point that I was seeing stars, my head was spinning, a “weng weng” sound was ringing in my ears, and my face was on fire with pain. It was then that I finally understood: These evil cops had not brought me there to ask me any questions at all; they simply wanted to use violence to force me into submission. I recalled having heard my brothers and sisters say that trying to reason with these vicious policemen would not work, but instead would just cause no end of trouble. Now, having experienced this for myself, from then on I did not utter a word no matter what they asked. When they saw that I would not talk, they screamed at me, “You son of a bitch! I’ll give you something to think about! Otherwise you wouldn’t give us a truthful account!” As this was said, one of them punched me fiercely two times in the chest, causing me to fall heavily on the floor. He then kicked me hard, two times, and pulled me back up from the floor to yell at me to kneel down. I did not obey, so he kicked me a few times in the knees. The wave of intense pain that swept over me forced me to kneel on the floor with a kerthump. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled downward forcefully, and then suddenly yanked my head backward, forcing me to look up. He cursed at me while pummeling my face a couple more times, and my only sensation was that the world was spinning. Presently, I fell to the floor. Just then, the head of the evil cops suddenly spotted the watch on my wrist. Staring at it covetously, he shouted, “What are you wearing there?” Right away, one of the policemen grabbed my wrist and forcefully pulled the watch off it, then gave it to his “master.” Seeing such mean behavior filled me with hate for them. After that, as they asked me more questions, I just glared at them in silence, and that aggravated them even further. One of the vicious cops grabbed me by the collar as if he were picking up a little chicken, and raised me up from the floor to roar at me, “Oh, you’re a big man, aren’t you? I’ll tell you when to keep quiet!” As he said this, he hit me fiercely a couple more times, and I again was beaten to the floor. By then my whole body was aching unbearably, and I no longer had any strength to struggle. I just lay on the floor with my eyes closed, not moving. In my heart, I urgently supplicated to God: “God, I don’t know what further atrocities this gang of wicked cops is going to perpetrate against me. You know I am small in stature, and that I am physically weak. I implore You to protect me. I would rather die than be a Judas and betray You.” As I prayed, God’s words enlightened me within: “You must suffer hardship for the truth, you must give yourself to the truth, you must endure humiliation for the truth, and to gain more of the truth you must undergo more suffering. This is what you should do” (“The Experiences of Peter: His Knowledge of Chastisement and Judgment” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). These words of God gave me infinite power and caused me to recognize that only in a state of suffering could one understand and obtain even more of the truth. I knew that if I had not suffered physically that day, then I would not have seen the true faces of these evil policemen, and would instead have continued to be deceived by their façade. The reason God has come among humans to engage in such arduous work is precisely to allow people to obtain the truth so that they can differentiate between black and white, right and wrong; it is so that they can understand the difference between righteousness and evil, holiness and ugliness. It is so that they can know who should be despised and rejected, and who should be worshiped and looked up to. On that day, I saw clearly the ugly face of Satan. As long as I still had a breath left in me, I would stand testimony for God, and would never give in to the forces of evil. Just then, I heard someone next to me say, “How come she’s not moving anymore? Is she dead?” After that, someone deliberately stepped on my hand and pressed down hard on it with his foot while bellowing ferociously, “Get up! We’re gonna take you somewhere else. If you still won’t talk when we get there, you’ll get what’s coming to you!” Because God’s words had added to my faith and strength, I was not at all frightened by their intimidation. In my heart, I was prepared to fight against Satan.
Later, I was escorted to the County Public Security Bureau. When we got to the interrogation room, the leader of those evil cops and his entourage surrounded me and questioned me repeatedly, pacing back and forth in front of me and trying to force me to sell out my church’s leaders and my brothers and sisters. When they saw that I still wasn’t going to give them the answers they wanted to hear, the three of them took turns slapping me in the face over and over. I don’t know how many times I was hit; all I could hear was smack, smack, as they hit my face, a sound that seemed to ring out with particular volume against that quiet night. Their hands now sore, the evil cops began to hit me with books. There was a salty taste in my mouth and blood was dripping on my clothes. They beat me until in the end I couldn’t even feel the pain anymore; my face just felt swollen and numb. Finally, seeing that they weren’t going to get any valuable information out of my mouth, the vicious cops took out a phone book and, pleased with themselves, said, “We found this in your bag. Even if you won’t tell us anything, we still have another trick up our sleeve!” Suddenly, I felt extremely anxious: If any of my brothers or sisters answered the phone, it could lead to their being arrested. It could also link them to the church, and the consequences could be disastrous. Just then, I recalled a passage of God’s words: “Almighty God dominates all things and events! So long as our hearts look up to Him at all times and we enter into the spirit and associate with Him, then He will show us all the things we seek and His will is sure to be revealed to us; our hearts will then be in joy and peace, steady with perfect clarity” (“The Seventh Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words showed me the way of practice, and the path I should take. At any given time, God had always been the only One I could rely on as well as my sole salvation. I therefore repeatedly prayed to God, imploring Him to protect these brothers and sisters. As a result, when they dialed through those phone numbers one by one, some of the calls rang out without anyone answering while others could not get through at all. In the end, spitting curses in frustration, the evil cops tossed the phone book on the table and stopped trying. This was truly an example of God’s almightiness and sovereignty and of His wondrous actions; I could not help but express my thanks and praise to God.
Nevertheless, they had not given up, and continued to interrogate me about the church’s affairs. I did not answer. Flustered and exasperated, they came up with an even more despicable move to try to make me suffer: One of the evil cops forced me to squat, and I had to hold my arms out even with my shoulders and was not allowed to move at all. Before long, my legs began to tremble and I couldn’t hold my arms out straight anymore, and my body involuntarily began to stand back up. The policeman took an iron bar and glared at me like a tiger watching his prey. No sooner had I stood up than he brutally beat me on the legs, causing so much pain that I nearly fell back to my knees. Over the next half hour, whenever my legs or arms moved even the slightest bit, he would immediately beat me with the bar. I don’t know how many times he hit me. Due to having squatted for such a long period of time, both of my legs grew extremely swollen and felt unbearably painful as though they were fractured. As time went by, my legs were shaking even harder and my teeth were chattering continuously. Just then it felt like my strength was going to give out and that I might faint. However, the evil cops just mocked and ridiculed me from the side, constantly sneering and laughing nastily at me, like people cruelly trying to get a monkey to do tricks. The more I looked at their ugly, despicable faces, the more hatred I felt for these evil cops. I suddenly stood and said to them in a loud voice, “I will not squat anymore. Go ahead and sentence me to death! Today I have nothing to lose! I am not even afraid to die, so how could I be scared of you? Such big men you are, yet all you seem to know how to do is bully a little girl like me!” To my surprise, after I said this, the group of evil cops shouted a few more curse words and then stopped interrogating me. At that point I felt very excited, and I understood that this was God maneuvering all things to perfect me: Once I had extricated fear from my heart, my environment changed accordingly. Deep in my heart I truly realized the significance of God’s words: “Just as it is said, ‘The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turns it wherever he will’; then how much more so with those nobodies?” I understood that today, God had allowed Satan’s persecution to befall me, not to intentionally cause me to suffer; but rather, to use it to allow me to realize the power of God’s words, lead me to break away from the control of Satan’s dark influence, and moreover, to let me learn to rely on God and look up to God while I am in danger.
This pack of evil cops had tormented me most of the night; by the time they stopped, it was daylight. They had me sign my name and said they were going to detain me. After that, an elderly policeman, feigning kindness, said to me, “Miss, look; you are so young—in the flower of your youth—so it is best if you hurry up and clearly explain what you know. I guarantee that I will make them release you. If you have any trouble, do not hesitate to tell me. Look; your face has swollen up like a loaf of bread. Haven’t you suffered enough?” Just then, I remembered God’s words: “Why employ various tricks to deceive God’s folk?” (“Work and Entry (8)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). I also recalled something my brothers and sisters had said during meetings: In order to get what they wanted, evil cops would use both carrot and stick and resort to all manner of tricks to deceive you. Thinking of this, I replied to the elderly policeman, “Don’t act like you are a good person; you’re all part of the same group. What do you want me to confess? What you’re doing is called extorting a confession. This is illegal punishment!” Hearing this, he put on an innocent expression and argued, “But I haven’t hit you once. They are the ones who hit you.” I was grateful for God’s guidance and protection, which allowed me to once again prevail over Satan’s temptation.
After leaving the County Public Security Bureau, I was directly locked up in the detention center by them. As soon as we walked in the front gate, I saw the place was surrounded by very tall walls with electrified concertina wires on top of them, and in each of the four corners was what looked like a sentry tower. In them armed policemen stood guard. It all felt very sinister and terrible. After passing through iron gate after iron gate, I arrived at the cell. When I saw the dilapidated, linen-covered quilts atop the icy kang bed, which were both dark and dirty, and smelled the pungent, foul scent coming from them, I could not help but feel a wave of disgust pass through me, quickly followed by a wave of sadness. I thought to myself: How can people live here? This is nothing more than a pigsty. At mealtime, each prisoner was only given a small steamed bun that was sour and half-raw. Even though I hadn’t eaten all day, seeing this food really made me lose my appetite. On top of that, my face was so swollen from being beaten by the cops, and felt taut as though wrapped in tape. It hurt even just opening my mouth to talk, let alone to eat. Under these circumstances, I was in a very gloomy mood and felt much wronged. The thought that I would actually have to stay here and endure such an inhuman existence made me so emotional that I involuntarily shed some tears. Just then, I recalled a hymn of God’s words: “God has come to this filthy land and silently endures as He is savaged and oppressed by humans. Not once has He resisted, nor has He ever made any excessive requests of them. God does all the work humanity needs: teaching, enlightening, reproaching, the refinement of words, reminding, exhorting, consoling, judging, and revealing. He takes every step for the sake of people’s life, as well as to purify them. Though He removes the future and fate of humanity, all of God’s actions are for their sake. His every step is for people’s existence and to provide all of humanity with a wonderful destination on earth” (“The Practical God Subtly Brings Salvation to Humanity” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs). As I tried to fathom God’s words, I felt enormously humiliated and ashamed. God had come from heaven to earth—from up high to the lowest depths—going from the position of the most honorable Being to that of an insignificant man. The holy God came to this filthy, dirty world of humanity and interacted with corrupt humans, yet all these sufferings God endured in silence. Hadn’t God suffered a great deal more than I had? As a human deeply corrupted by Satan and one without any honor worth speaking of, how was I unable to endure even this little bit of suffering? In this evil, dark time, had I not been fortunate enough to be lifted up by God so that I could follow Him, then there was no telling what sort of situation I would have been in, or whether or not I would even have still been alive. That I felt wronged and sad over this little bit of suffering, and unwilling to accept it, showed that I really lacked conscience and rationality. Realizing this, I stopped feeling wronged, and within me I found some willpower with which to endure my hardship.
Half a month went by, and the head of those evil cops again came to interrogate me. Seeing me remain calm and composed, and that I had no fear at all, he shouted my name and yelled, “Tell me truthfully: Where else have you been arrested before? This is certainly not your first time inside; otherwise, how could you act so calm and seasoned, as if you’re not afraid in the least?” When I heard him say this, I could not help but thank and praise God in my heart. God had protected me and given me courage, thus allowing me to face these evil policemen with complete fearlessness. Just then, anger welled up from within my heart: You are abusing your power by persecuting people for their religious beliefs, arresting, bullying, and injuring those who believe in God without reason. Your actions are against both legality and the laws of Heaven. I believe in God, and am walking the right path; I have not broken the law. Why should I be afraid of you? I will not succumb to the evil forces of your gang! I then retorted, “Do you think everywhere else is so boring that I’d actually want to come here? You have wronged me and pushed me around! Any further efforts of yours to extort a confession or frame me will be useless!” Upon hearing this, the head of the evil cops grew so angry smoke seemed about to billow out of his ears. He screamed, “You’re too goddamned stubborn to tell us anything. You won’t talk, will you? I’m going to give you a three-year sentence, and then we’ll see whether you’re telling the truth or not. I dare you to keep being stubborn!” By then I felt so indignant I could have exploded. In a loud voice I replied, “I’m still young; what is three years to me? I’ll be out of prison in the blink of an eye.” In his anger, the evil cop stood abruptly and growled at his lackeys, “I quit; you go ahead and interrogate her.” He then slammed the door and left. Seeing what had happened, the two cops did not question me any further; they just finished writing a statement for me to sign and then walked out. Witnessing the evil cops’ defeat made me very happy. In my heart I praised God’s victory over Satan.
During the second round of interrogation, they switched tactics. As soon as they walked in the door they pretended to be concerned about me: “You’ve been in here for so long. How come none of your family members have come to see you? They must have given up on you. How about you give them a call yourself, and ask them to come visit you.” Hearing this made me feel unbearably morose. I wondered: Could Mom and Dad really have stopped caring about me? It’s been half a month already, and surely they know about my being arrested; how could they have the heart to let me suffer in here without even coming to see me? The more I thought about this, the lonelier and more helpless I felt. I was homesick and missed my parents, and my desire for freedom was growing more and more intense. Involuntarily, my eyes brimmed with tears, but I did not wish to cry in front of this gang of evil cops. Silently, I prayed to God: God, right now I feel very miserable and in pain, and am very helpless. I beseech You to stop my tears from falling, for I do not want to let Satan see my weakness. However, right now I cannot grasp Your intentions. I beg You to enlighten and guide me. After praying, an idea suddenly flashed through my mind: This was Satan’s ruse; these cops had sown dissension, attempting to twist my view of my parents and stir up hatred of them, with the ultimate goal of taking advantage of my inability to withstand this blow so that I would turn my back on God. Furthermore, their trying to make me contact my family might well be a trick to get them to bring ransom money to fulfill their ulterior motive of raking in some money, or they might know that my family members all believed in God and wished to use this opportunity to arrest them. These evil cops really were full of schemes. Had it not been for God’s enlightenment, I might have telephoned home. Would I not then have indirectly been a Judas? So, I secretly declared to Satan: Vile devil, I simply will not allow you to succeed in your deception. From now on, whether it be blessings or curses that befall me, I will bear them alone; I refuse to involve my family members, and absolutely will not influence my parents’ faith or the fulfillment of their duties. At the same time, I also silently supplicated to God to stop my parents from visiting me, lest they fall into the trap laid by these evil policemen. I then said nonchalantly, “I don’t know why my family members haven’t come to see me. However you want to treat me doesn’t matter to me at all!” The evil cops had no more cards to play. After that, they didn’t interrogate me again.
A month went by. One day, my uncle suddenly came to visit me, saying he was in the middle of trying to get me out of there a few days later. When I walked out of the visitation room, I felt extremely happy. I thought I would finally be able to see the light of day again, as well as my brothers, sisters, and loved ones. So I started daydreaming and looking forward to my uncle coming to get me; every day, I kept my ears open for the sound of the guards’ calling to me that it was time to leave. Sure enough, a week later, a guard did come calling. My heart felt about to beat right out of my rib cage as I joyously arrived at the visitation room. However, when I saw my uncle, he hung his head down. It was a long time before he said in a dispirited tone, “They’ve already finalized your case. You’ve been sentenced to three years.” When I heard this, I was stunned. My mind went completely blank. I fought back the tears, and none came out. It was like I couldn’t hear anything my uncle said after that. I stumbled out of the visitation room in a trance, my feet feeling as though they were filled with lead, with each step heavier than the one before. I have no recollection of how I walked back to my cell. When I got there, I froze, completely paralyzed. I thought to myself, Each day of the past month or more of this inhuman existence has dragged by and felt like a year; how will I be able to make it through three long years of this? The more I dwelled on it, the more my anguish grew, and the more indistinct and unfathomable my future began to seem. Unable to keep them back any longer, I burst into tears. In my heart, however, I knew without a doubt that no one could help me anymore; I could only rely on God. In my grief, I again had come before God. I opened up to Him, saying, “God, I know that all things and all events are in Your hands, but right now my heart feels completely empty. I feel like I am about to fall apart; I think it is going to be very difficult for me to endure three years of suffering in prison. God, I beg You to reveal Your will to me, and I implore You to add to my faith and strength so that I can completely submit to You and bravely accept what has befallen me.” Just then, God’s words enlightened me from within: “For all people, refinement is excruciating, and very difficult to accept—yet it is during refinement that God makes plain His righteous disposition to man, and makes public His requirements for man, and provides more enlightenment, and more actual pruning and dealing; through the comparison between the facts and the truth, He gives man a greater knowledge of himself and the truth, and gives man a greater understanding of God’s will, thus allowing man to have a truer and purer love of God. Such are God’s aims in carrying out refinement” (“Only by Experiencing Refinement Can Man Truly Love God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “During these last days you must bear testimony to God. No matter how great your suffering, you should go on to the very end, and even at your last breath, still you must be faithful to God, and at the mercy of God; only this is truly loving God, and only this is the strong and resounding testimony” (“Only by Experiencing Painful Trials Can You Know the Loveliness of God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Thanks to God’s enlightenment and guidance, I began to reflect upon myself, and gradually discovered my shortcomings. I saw that my love for God was adulterated, and that I had not yet given my absolute submission to God. Ever since I was arrested, and during my struggles against those evil cops, I had shown bravery and fearlessness, and I had not shed a single tear throughout those torture sessions, but that was not my actual stature. It had all been the faith and courage given to me by God’s words that had enabled me to overcome Satan’s temptation and assaults time and time again. I also saw that the evil cops’ essence had been invisible to me. I’d thought the CCP police were law-abiding, and that as a minor I would never be sentenced, or at most would only be locked up for a few months. I’d thought I’d just have to endure a little more pain and hardship and stick it out a bit longer, and then it would pass; it had never even occurred to me that I might actually have to spend three years living this inhuman life in here. Just then, I did not want to continue suffering or submitting to God’s orchestration and arrangements. This was different from the result I had imagined, and just happened to reveal my true stature. Only then did I realize that God really does look deep into people’s hearts, and that His wisdom truly is exercised based on Satan’s schemes. Satan wished to torment me and thoroughly wear me down with this prison sentence, but God had used this opportunity to allow me to discover my shortcomings and recognize my insufficiencies, thereby adding to my actual submission and allowing my life to progress more quickly. God’s enlightenment had guided me out of my predicament and given me infinite power. My heart suddenly felt bright and full, and I understood God’s good intentions and no longer felt miserable. I resolved to follow Peter’s example by allowing God to orchestrate everything, without a single complaint, and to calmly face whatever might come from that day forward.
Two months later, I was transported to a labor camp. When I received my verdict papers and signed them, I discovered that the three-year sentence had been commuted to one year. In my heart I thanked and praised God over and over. This was all the result of God’s orchestration, and in it I could see the immense love and protection He had for me.
In the labor camp, I saw an even meaner and more brutal side of the evil police. Very early in the morning we would get up and go to work, and were seriously overloaded with tasks to do each day. We had to labor for very long hours every day, and sometimes would work around the clock for several days. Some of the prisoners got sick and needed to be hooked up to an IV, and had to have the drip rate turned up to the fastest notch so that as soon as it was finished they could quickly return to the workshop and get back to work. This led to the majority of convicts subsequently getting some illnesses that were very difficult to cure. Some people, because they worked slowly, were frequently subjected to verbal abuse from the guards; their foul language was simply unthinkable. Some people violated the rules while working, so were punished. For example, they were put on the rope, which meant they had to kneel on the ground and have their hands tied behind their backs, their arms forced to be raised up painfully to neck level. Others were tied to trees with iron chains like dogs, and were flogged mercilessly with a whip. Some people, unable to bear this inhuman torture, would try to starve themselves to death, only to have the evil guards put cuffs on both their ankles and wrists and then hold their bodies down tightly, forcing feeding tubes and fluids into them. They were afraid these prisoners might die, not because they cherished life, but because they were worried about losing the cheap labor they provided. The evil deeds committed by the prison guards really were too many to count, as were the horrendously violent and bloody incidents that happened. This all made me see very clearly that the Chinese Communist Party was the embodiment of Satan that was in the spiritual world; it was the evilest of all devils and the prisons under its regime were hell on earth—not just in name, but in reality. I remember some words on the wall of the office in which I was interrogated caught my eye: “It is forbidden to beat people at will or subject them to illegal punishment, and it is even more forbidden to obtain confessions through torture.” Nevertheless, in reality, their actions were in open opposition to this. They had wantonly beaten me, a girl who was not even an adult yet, and subjected me to illegal punishment; what’s more, they had sentenced me merely because of my belief in God. All of this had caused me to see clearly that the CCP used tricks to hoodwink people while pretending that everything was fine. It was just as God had said: “The devil tightly trusses all of man’s body, it puts out both his eyes, and seals his lips firmly shut. The king of devils has rampaged for several thousand years, right up until today, when it still keeps a close watch on the ghost town, as if it were an impenetrable palace of demons…. 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). After experiencing the evil policemen’s persecution, I was utterly convinced of this passage of words spoken by God, and now had some real knowledge and experience of it. Furthermore, in the labor camp, I had seen with my own eyes the ugliness of all kinds of people: the repulsive faces of those smooth-talking opportunistic snakes who curried favor with the captains, the evil visage of ferociously violent people on a rampage who bullied the weak, and so on. For me, who had not yet set foot into society, during this year of life in prison, I finally saw clearly the corruption of humanity. I witnessed the treachery in people’s hearts, and realized how sinister the human world could be. I also learned to distinguish between positive and negative, black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, and great and despicable; I saw clearly that Satan is ugly, evil, brutal, and that only God is the symbol of holiness and righteousness. Only God symbolizes beauty and goodness; only God is love and salvation. Watched over and safeguarded by God, that unforgettable year passed very quickly for me.
Now, looking back on it, although I underwent some physical suffering during that year of prison life, God used His words to lead and guide me, thus causing my life to mature. I am grateful for God’s predestination. That I was able to set foot upon this correct path of life was the greatest grace and blessing bestowed upon me by God. I will follow and worship Him for the rest of my life!
From The Overcomers’ Testimonies
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