Extreme caution must be levied anytime we first-world Christians discuss the persecution of the church.  On one hand, we might not only declare that we not only have our rights, but we might also declare that any locale that persecutes Christians, or any other religion for that matter, is barbaric and inferior.  On the other hand, we must admit that many of us are soft and have never truly felt the flames of religious adversity, had our faith tempted by physical trials of the flesh, or lived in an environment where criticism of outsiders, coupled with skepticism, represents a way of life.

When considering a similar matter, Jesus presents a stern warning during his rebuke of the Pharisees:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!

-Matthew 23:29-32

While perhaps the modern church isn’t building tombs for Biblical prophets, I believe the modern church has a tendency to construct ideological alters and laud people who once would have been on the fringe, to hagiographize people that might be rejected or marginalized if they walked through our own Protestant church doors.  Some Catholic thinkers, charismatic healers, and fringe evangelists come to mind.

Nevertheless, scripture is filled with stories of those that have been persecuted for their faith, and it was written to provide encouragement for all who believe.  Reading narratives of persecuted contemporaries that reinforce this legacy should provide that same sense of inspiration.  It should also challenge the reader to examine how he might react under the same pressures and consider the outcome of our own faith should it too be challenged with pain, physical torture, or even the brink of death.

And no modern book will challenge the reader more to consider these horrendous outcomes and possibilities than Brother Yun’s The Heavenly Man. Translated by Paul Hattaway, the book chronicles decades of persecution that Brother Yun endured under China’s Communist regime and the remarkable ways that the Lord consistently rescued his ministry and preserved his life.

Brother Yun’s story begins in China in the year 1974, a time when the Cultural Revolution was still destroying the old ways and ripping a red streak across the land.  Yun’s father, a former Nationalist military leader, was teetering on the brink of death with lung cancer.  Without proper treatment, he would die.  Miraculously,  Yun’s mother’s prayerful cries to the Lord for healing were answered and it sparked a revival and awakening within the small family.

As Yun grew older he developed a ravenous spiritual hunger that could only be filled with a Bible, something a poor, government-monitored family in Red China would have little access to receiving. Again, miraculously, Yun’s prayers were answered, and this would serve as an encouragement that would spur him to a hazardous life of ministry.

God intervened again and provided Yun a wife, a woman named Deling who courageously agreed to answer God’s call to marry an impoverished, house-church pastor. Eventually Yun’s preaching grew bolder and the Communist government’s suspicion of Yun’s activities would grow greater. Many times Yun would go to prison, endure torture, and be offered only scant food. In one particularly graphic passage, Yun shares his pain and hardship:

The guards electrocuted me again and again, and forced me to crawl like a dog through human feces. They kicked me with steel-capped boots, forcing me to roll over into the excrement.  They even used their electric batons to stab me inside my mouth. I cannot easily describe the pain this caused. I thought my brain was going to explode.

The Heavenly Man is not for the feint of heart, and it is literally filled with dozens of accounts such as this.  The process of reading this book would be quite masochistic if Yun did not also describe how the Lord would give him strength to endure each and every trial.  Once Yun completed a 74 day fast; several times, like Joseph of Genesis, he would earn the favor of prison guards; other times Yun would receive solace and consolation from other Christian prisoners, usually people he converted; and, most miraculously, he would simply walk out of a maximum security prison.

But Yun’s point in the volume is not to talk about himself; all of Yun’s stories of hardship and triumph are designed to give glory to the One that gave him the strength to endure. He ends this book with a call for all churches to support missions.  Yun believes that the Western churches, if given the proper direction and a unified spirit, can spur and finance the believers of the developing world to evangelize Muslims and Buddhists in nations that still have little or no exposure to the Good News of Christ. Eventually, Yun claims, a westward expansion of the gospel will continue until the Christian movement evangelizes every tongue, tribe, and nation- finally returning back to where it started, the city of Jerusalem.

More information about Brother Yun and the way he sees God’s vision for world evangelism can be found at the Back to Jerusalem website (www.backtojerusalem.com).

You can support this website by purchasing this book through my Amazon Associate’s link.  Please remember, you must click the link for this website to benefit.

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