Bible Study With Jairus

Bible Study With Jairus - Leviticus 15

Bible Study with Jairus - Leviticus 15

Stop Hiding: How to cleanse your heart’s infection

In Leviticus 15, we find a shockingly candid discussion of human discharges. Though our culture is often hesitant to discuss these topics, God had an urgent reason to bring this subject to our attention. God’s laws about cleansing discharges can teach us an important lesson about the cleansing blood of Jesus and the importance of spiritual sanitation.

In this passage, a few types of discharges are specifically described, such as emission of semen or menstrual bleeding. But the rest of the discharges are not clearly specified. The New Testament hints at a few other types of discharges, such as the bleeding woman who touched the cloak of the Lord and was healed (Mark 5). In modern medical terminology, we could say she might have had a bleeding disorder like hemophilia.

Discharges can also include infectious emissions, such as pus. Under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, these discharges can have important practical implications for our Christian life today. Let's dive in!

When someone receives a serious cut or wound, it’s important to stop the bleeding and keep the wound clean and dry so that it can heal. Otherwise, we run the risk of infection. During war time, many people died from untreated injuries. The wounds themselves were not life-threatening, but the infection that followed caused death. An infected wound can cause disease or even claim your life.

Both blood and water play an important role in guarding against infection. Blood cleans the wound as it flows through the damaged tissue, washing away dirt and killing bacteria. Later, it creates a scab, allowing the wound to heal.

Not only do we need blood to cleanse from the inside, but we also need water (or another disinfectant) to clean from the outside. The wound needs to be washed to remove toxins trying to enter from the outside world. Otherwise, the germs will get into the blood stream and damage the body.

The same is true spiritually. As Christians, our sins are cleansed by the blood of Jesus washing away our stains. Revelation 1:5 says that Jesus “loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood.” (NKJV) His blood cleanses us as we repent and confess our sins.

However, we also need to be washed externally. Ephesians 5:26 says that Jesus wants to “cleanse [the church] with the washing of water by the word” (NKJV). Jesus washes us with his word, and we participate actively through confession and repentance. The blood of Jesus is always effective, but there are conditions for the blood of Jesus to cleanse us. We need to allow God’s word to wash us (John 13:8). We need to confess our sins and turn to him for forgiveness.

We need to wash away worldly influences in our lives. Otherwise, the infection of sin will quickly and insidiously sneak in from the outside. Before we have a chance to confess it and turn to the Lord for cleansing, sin will begin to take over every part of our lives.

When we fail to receive the washing of Jesus’ word and blood, our uncleanness can cause permanent damage to our bodies and to the body of Christ. Just like an infection can cause irreversible damage and death, unrepentant sin can also bring chastisement and discipline. The Bible makes it very clear that some brothers and sisters who ate the bread and drank the cup of the Lord unworthily, would sleep (physically die) because of their uncleansed sin (1 Corinthians 11:30).

Unhealed sins can cause a “spiritual discharge.” Just like an infected wound oozes pus, unconfessed sins cause a discharge that is difficult to cure. We must be careful not to allow sinful influences to pile up, or they will become an overwhelming force that will cause irreversible damage.

What is a discharge? The inspiration that we got from the Holy Spirit is that a discharge represents wounds that won’t heal. Whether it is the discharge of blood or hemophilia or other circumstances, these physical wounds won’t heal.

Why won’t the wounds heal? Shouldn't blood automatically be condensed into scabs and heal naturally? Yes, this is normally the case. However, if bacteria and contamination from the external environment have continuously interfered with healing, the wound will become infected. It will cause a discharge.

When there is an infection inside, it manifests in a visible way: a discharge. When our heart is not clean from sin, our actions will leak out onto ourselves and others. After hearing this presentation, one lady shared that her discharge is an entertainment program. She enjoys watching this program, even though she knows it is not good for her spiritual life. Even though she regrets the way the show affects her spiritual life and her fellowship with God, she can’t seem to overcome it. She asked, “How do I overcome this weakness?”

I can relate to this lady’s question. In the past, I indulged my propensity for a certain website full of gossip. This website has a lot of worldly content, and when I used it, I felt tainted by worldly thoughts. For a long time, I couldn’t overcome my habit with this website.

However, the teachings of Brother Witness Lee helped me tremendously. He said that if we have a weakness we are struggling with, we should not try to overcome it in our own strength. Instead, we should invite the Lord to come into this situation and ask Him to do it with us. Of course, the Lord is not willing to be shared with unclean and sinful things, so He has to remove your weakness.

I began to practice Witness Lee’s suggestion. Every time I struggled with weakness, I prayed, “Lord, I am already doing this, so I’d like to invite You to do it with me, because you promise that you will be with me every day until the end of the world. If You are not happy with me doing this, please remove my desire for it.” After a period of prayer, the Lord removed my desire for this website, and I am no longer interested in this site.

Why does this method work? The reason is simple. The book of Hebrew tells us that Jesus Christ has cleansed us once and forever through His blood. We can just come to the Holy of Holies without fear. Don’t be paralyzed by fear, thinking that you cannot come to the Holy of Holies once you have sinned. Even when you rush to the Holy of Holies with bloody sins, not only will you not be killed, but you will also be washed and cleansed by the blood. You can run to the throne of grace with repentance and without fear (Hebrews 4:16).

In order to receive the cleansing of Jesus, we first have to come to him. We have to stop hiding in fear. Remember Adam’s initial reaction after his first sin? He hid himself from the presence of the Lord God. What was God’s first reaction? He was looking for Adam, asking, "Adam, where are you?" When we sin, we are soiled by sin. But then, we are tempted to make the problem worse by hiding from God.

Brother Witness Lee explained the difference between sin and the world by using the example of a child. A child who didn’t want to listen to his parents jumped into a mud pit to play, covering his body with grime. The dirt represents sin.

But imagine that a sinister man came up to that filthy child and said to him, “You don’t listen to your parents. See, you are so dirty. Your parents will blame or punish you or won’t want you anymore. You might as well just follow me to a fun place. There are no parental constraints there. You can just do whatever you want.”

This voice represents the world. The world is a system that Satan created to trap us.  It is far away from God. When you sin, you fall into the mud pit, making your whole body dirty. If you run to your parents, they will gladly help you wash it.

But the world complicates things, because now you are deceived into the world by Satan. Not only did you fall into the mud pit, but you are also abducted.

When you are lost in the world and covered in sin, what is your parents’ first priority? To get you back home. Your parents not only need to help you cleanse your body, but they also must look for you first. The child is worried that he can’t see his parents because he’s too filthy, but his parents are primarily worried about finding the child first. It is not that they don’t want to wash him, but first they want to get him back home.

The prodigal son had a similar concern in Luke 15. He worried that he would not be accepted by his father because he ate with the pigs, making him unclean. The father, however, was worried about whether his son could come back after he was lost. When the father saw his younger son come back, he hugged him first, even though he was dirty. Let's go back to the previous example. A child fell into the mud pit and got lost. If he comes back, would his parents bathe him or hug him first? We all know that parents would hug him first before bathing him.

In the same way, there’s no way that you can be washed by Christ if you refuse to come to him. You can trust that he will cleanse you willingly, without shaming you for your sin. Leave your idols and lies behind and run into his waiting arms. Then, he will wash you and make you clean.

This washing has two layers. One is washing with water. This is washing with water through the word specifically mentioned in Ephesians 5. We wash away the contamination in the world to keep away from the continuous attack of the bacteria. We fight against the world system that tries to tell us to run from God instead of coming to him for cleansing.

We also wash in the blood, which removes all our sins. The relationship between the two is dynamic and complementary. Both are necessary, but the order and application is important.

A sinful man, not daring to return to God because he is afraid of God’s punishment, will hide from Him. The result of hiding is to wander away from God into the world system created by Satan. John told us that if we love the world, love for the Father is not in us (1 John 2:15). The world system is against the Heavenly Father, and was created by Satan to entice us to wander away from God. Far from God, we will be unable to access his cleansing. Bacteria of sin will flood our system, and it will be difficult to have complete treatment and healing. The prodigal son had to stop hiding, leave his sin, turn around, and come back to the father before his cleansing could begin.

In many churches in the United States, people talk about the cleansing blood of Christ, but they still commit sins. One of the reasons is that American society is very secular and worldly. It has abundant material wealth, which has a powerful attraction for Christians. A statistic shows that 70% of American Christians that were surveyed admitted to having watched pornographic videos. In a materially developed country such as the United States, Christians face more temptations than Christians in many parts of the world. Christians in the United States face a unique challenge from the Lord: overcoming the world. If we hide from God and continue to live in an unclean environment, we will not take advantage of the healing blood of Jesus. Gradually, we will begin to suffer from discharge.

While I was reading this passage, the Holy Spirit reminded me that a discharge points to a perpetual wound that does not eventually heal. Many Christians continue to leak infectious discharge in their spiritual lives. Originally, Christians were called to be a light situated on top of the mountain to illuminate the whole city (Matthew 5). We are also called to be the salt to cleanse world. Instead, we have joined the world, like Lot’s wife. We have become a pillar of useless salt, rather than becoming salt that cleanses. Not only do we not illuminate, but the salt has also lost its effectiveness. We fail to live out our testimony as Christians, and we prevent others from knowing and believing in the Lord through our witness.

Many times, people do not believe in the Lord because we Christians have not lived out our testimony. We say one thing and do another. Instead of seeing the Lord in us, they think that we are hypocrites. This is a type of discharge as we lose our strong foundation of life in Christ.

On the other hand, if our unbelieving friends and relatives see the true power of God shining through our lives, they are more willing to believe in Christ. In 2010, we returned to China to receive herbal treatments for our infertility. At that time, my father was still very opposed to the Lord and my mother had been worshipping Buddha for many years.

In 2016, God told me that I would have a child that year, so I returned to China during the Chinese New Year. I told my family about it, but they didn’t believe it. After I got my miracle baby in 2017, my family was greatly shocked. Their hearts began to loosen up, and they gradually opened themselves up to the Lord. I returned to China in the fall of 2018 to pay them a visit, and my parents were all baptized.  

I started witnessing to my family in 2002, when I was baptized. But they weren’t baptized until 2018—twelve long years. My parents saw true miracles and divine life lived out in my life. They saw how I was sanctified, detached from the world, and healed from discharges. They believed in God because of the testimony they saw in my life.

 Let’s go back and take a brief look at the verses of Leviticus 15. Leviticus 15:2-13 is all about how to cleanse a discharge. In verse 13, God says, "When a man is cleansed from his discharge, he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing; he must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean." (NIV) Later, God said: "On the eighth day he must take two doves or two young pigeons and come before the LORD to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and give them to the priest. The priest is to sacrifice them, the one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. In this way he will make atonement before the LORD for the man because of his discharge." Leviticus 15:14-15 (NIV)

Birds were used for sin offerings and burnt offerings to make atonement, but it happened only after washing with water. In other words, water comes first and then atonement comes later. It doesn’t mean that washing with water is more powerful than the cleansing effect of blood. Instead, I mean that it’s vitally important to stop running, turn away from the world system, and come to Christ so he can cleanse you through his powerful blood.

Similarly, Leviticus 15:16-28 says that men's emission of semen or women's menstrual bleeding must be washed with water. The pattern continues in verse 29. Two doves or two young pigeons were offered for a sin offering and burnt offering. These sacrifices include the blood that cleanses the sin. However, the washing in water preceded washing in blood.

This is not to say that water is more important than blood. No. Jesus shed his precious blood, doing a work that we cannot do on our own. God provided the blood of the Son of God to wash away our sins. We cannot do His work.

But as human beings, we play a part in coming to him for cleansing. We can detach from the contamination of the world and wash in water through the Word. We must use our free will to voluntarily draw near to God for cleansing. His blood will cleanse us from all our sins. We can come to the Holy of Holies without fear and draw near to Him.

Dear Christian friends, are you caught in an endless cycle of sin? Do you feel like your life is full of infected wounds, oozing with pus? Do you think that even the blood of the Lord cannot save you?

Like Jacob, you can remove your idols of loving yourself and the world (Genesis 35). You can come to the house of God, like Jacob went to Bethel. There, you will meet God. All your sins will be washed in the blood, and Heavenly Father will come and hug you.

Don’t hide from God. Leave your sins behind. Throw off the world’s contamination, the lies that tell you that God doesn’t want you. Rush over to meet Him. He won’t kill you. Before you even reach his presence, His blood will meet you first to cleanse you.

Bible Study With Jairus - Buddhist Mother Accepts Christ

Bible Study With Jairus - Buddhist Mother Accepts Christ
 
Have you ever tried to witness to a Buddhist friend about Christ only to hear them say they are perfectly content with Buddhism? Even if you try to argue that Jesus is the one true God, you may be met with anger. It is true that some Buddhists can be won over by a Christian who demonstrates Jesus’ love and patience, but typically this is a long process with a limited rate of effectiveness.  

In my hometown, there are a lot of Buddhist believers. I am referring to the city of Handan, China. In China, there are two main groups of people who do not believe in the Christian God. The first group are atheists and they claim to believe in no god. They think burning incense to Buddha is superstitious and worshiping Christ is a crutch for the weak and unsure. They don’t believe in God, spirits or ghosts. The other type of person believes that gods exist, but they only worship the gods whom they think will do something for them. If an idol they worshiped manifested itself or helped them at some point, their loyalty will stay with that god.

I have a lot of direct experiences with people of the second group. Both my great-grandfather and grandfather are devout believers of Lü Zu. This is a god in Taoism. A local legend teaches that one day the Japanese were preparing to attack our village. Due to heavy fog, however, the Japanese got lost and were not able to enter our village. The villagers thought it was a manifestation of Lü Zu, so they built a special temple for him. The temple was demolished during the Cultural Revolution but restored afterward. After it was rebuilt, incense burned and flourished showing the power of the people’s faith and superstition. I never met my great grandfather, but I heard from my family that he was an enthusiast of the Lü Zu Temple. When it was being built, my grandfather even donated wood to it. It was clear to anyone who came to visit that my grandfather worshipped Lü Zu.

My mother, on the other hand, always worshipped Guanyin Bodhisattva. In fact, our house was built on the site of a Bodhisattva temple that was previously demolished. Villagers said that our family lived in the “West Temple.” Before my mother came to faith in Jesus Christ, one of her reasons for worshiping buddha had always been that “our family is in the West Temple.” She was not willing to offend the gods by denying this privilege and tradition. Although my mother was not on good terms with my grandfather for most of her life and she also didn’t worship Lü Zu, she still highly respected the village sorcerer of the Lü Zu Temple. This sorcerer didn’t have a good education nor did he come from an influential family line. It happened that suddenly one day, this man became possessed by a deity and became a sorcerer henceforth. Everyone often asked him questions; they treated him like a Christian would treat a prophet. He was a frequent and respected guest at the Lü Zu Temple. When I was young, he even used to visit my house. I didn’t like him at all, however. Like my father who was deeply influenced by communist education, I really hated this kind of feudal superstition.

Later in my life, I became a Christian and moved to the United States. I have always tried to witness to my family, but with trivial effect. My mom always said that we should go our own way. She stated once, “You believe in your Christ; I believe in my Bodhisattva.” Despite her suggestion, I still tried to witness to her. One year I took my parents on vacation to another city. My friend, a Christian brother, treated us to eat and witnessed to my parents. My father ended up leaving the restaurant in anger.

By 2016, my wife and I had been married for ten years and experienced ten years of infertility. In addition to seeking medical help, I prayed that God would heal us. My mother also desired that we would be healed, so she prayed to Bodhisattva, asked the sorcerer for help and petitioned children on our behalf from all kinds of idols around my hometown. In 2010, our first in vitro fertilization (IVF) failed and my wife and I were very sad. Around that time, my parents came to the United States for a short visit. I thought that maybe my mother would encounter the Lord in this time. I took her to participate in the activities of our church in New Jersey and when she saw people being baptized, I encouraged her to accept the Lord. She hesitated.

In the end, she did not make a faith confession nor get baptized. In fact, when she saw our infertility situation, she said upon leaving, “Believing in Jesus hasn’t brought blessing to you… I will not believe in your God.” After returning to China, she continued worshiping Bodhisattva, and her heart became more hardened to the gospel. We seemed to have gone back to square one: I believed in the Christian God and my mother worshiped Buddha.

One day, I said to my mom, “You worship your Bodhisattva, and I believe in my God. We are all praying for us to have children. Why don’t we play a game? Let’s see if your Bodhisattva or my God is more reliable.” This was my attempt to show her that the Christian God is the true God and powerful enough to heal my wife’s barrenness. At that time though, my faith was nothing spectacular and I didn’t have any special revelation yet from God that we would have a baby. I was simply relying on a Christian’s basic belief in God.

Six years passed by. My wife and I tried five more IVF’s, but each one failed. Finally, our doctor announced we would never be able to have a baby through natural means. He said we could never have a birth by natural means. We fell into despair. I decided to leave my Evangelical church in 2015 on a search for supernatural healing. I participated in countless Charismatic healing conferences, but we still remained without a miracle. That is until I received a word from the Lord in January 2016. I found out by accident that there was going to be a prophetic meeting called the Elijah List Conference in a small town in Oregon. Hopeful, I signed up and flew from Eastern Maryland to attend the special meeting.

One of the speakers at this meeting was Dutch Sheets. In a moment of being filled with the Holy Spirit, he prophetically declared, “You are here today to attend this special meeting. Don’t think it is accidental; God is leading you. Starting from today, you will clearly hear God’s voice like you’ve never heard it before.” Upon hearing this, I was moved and greatly encouraged in my spirit. During the break, I stopped at a store and said to God, “Please speak to me clearly today.”

I continued walking until I saw a Christian bookstore. I could see inside through the glass window. I stopped to sit on the bench outside the door. Not long after I sat down, my eyes caught the attention of a 2016 calendar which had the title, “2016 Prepare Your Family.” Suddenly, I heard God say to me: “Prepare your family in 2016. You will have a child this year.” I had never heard God speak so clearly. I was both shocked and ecstatic! I immediately called my wife to tell her.

Despite clearly hearing God’s words that day, I didn’t know what month it would come to pass. Regardless, I returned to China to celebrate the New Year in February 2016 and I widely publicized to my family that God was going to give us a child that year. My sister is a simple person. She said dubiously, “Since our younger brother said this in advance, if it is true, it seems that the God that he believes in is true.” My mother was still hard-hearted, however. Even to the point that when I prayed for the infertility problem of my two cousins, my mother commented, “You aren’t even able to solve your own problem. Don’t make a fool of yourself.”

After returning to the United States, a few more months passed, and my wife and I still hadn’t conceived. It was an agonizing time for us. However, after having a dream that indicated that we would have a baby the following month, we finally and miraculously became pregnant! When my wife was less than three months pregnant, I still had not told my mother about it. My mother, however, sensed something was different and asked if something happened. When I told her about our pregnancy, she was very happy for us, but she said nothing about God. Finally, during a video call with my mom, I brought up the topic of Jesus again. This time, to my surprise, she quickly responded, “I’m willing to believe in Jesus Christ.” When I asked her why, she promptly stated, “Isn’t the truth right before me? Your God is real.”

My mother was finally able to see that the Christian God is the true God! Both my father and mother were stunned by the wonderful healing power of God when we gave birth to a healthy baby. Our game ended. Afterwards, I got the privilege of leading my mother in the sinner’s prayer and she accepted Jesus. She repented for the sins of her parents to the third and fourth generations of our family and she also repented for ancestral worship. God also did wonderful a work in my father. He started praying over himself before going to bed every night. He did this for more than a year. Eventually, I had a prophetic dream about my parents that I believed confirmed to me their salvation.

Some people may believe in the Lord the moment they hear the gospel. This, however, was not my mother’s experience. My mother’s process of turning away from idols was gradual and ongoing. She moved from accepting Christ to eventually stopping idol worship. She only reluctantly disposed of her Buddha statue after the local temple kindly refused her donation of it. However, I knew my mother had really come to believe in Christ when she told me I could tear down a photo of Bodhisattva that still remained on her wall. In the end, my mother, who worshipped Buddha for a lifetime, came to confess the name of Jesus Christ as the true God because she witnessed a miracle. My mother witnessed the miraculous power of Almighty God, and this is the purpose of signs and wonders—that many may come to know the Christ, the one true God.

I am grateful to Elijah List who held a conference that hosted the authentic presence of the Holy Spirit. It was there that I received both the prophetic gift to hear God and God’s prophetic promise of a child. Not only are my wife and I proud parents today, but we are ecstatic that my family has also been impacted by our miracle.

 

Bible Study With Jairus - Miracle Baby

By 2015, I had been in the United States for 13 years and a Christian for the same amount of time. In 2006, my wife and I married and like many other Chinese couples, we had every intention of building a family. In 2015, however, we also approached 10 years of bareness. We wanted a child, but we simply could not have one.

We realized something was wrong when we were not getting pregnant without prevention. From 2010 to 2014, we attempted in vitro fertilization (IVF) five times. Top medical professionals were treating us, but all our attempts failed. When we tried Chinese herbal remedies, they too were fruitless. I hit my lowest point when our doctor announced we would never be able to have a baby though natural means. Our doctor assured us that the only way to have a baby was through an egg donor. In desperation, we tried an egg donor too. I felt completely hopeless when our egg donor bailed at the last minute. 

As a Christian, the only thing I knew to do was turn to God. This was not always my approach to life, however. I am Chinese and was born and raised in China to a family that worshiped Buddha and other gods. My father was an atheist, my mother was a devout follower of Buddha, and my grandparents worshipped another local idol. Even our house was built on a former Buddhist temple. Before I came to the USA, I met the Lord during my first year of graduate school at London’s School of Economics. Shortly after, I bought a one-way ticket to the USA and this began a new kind of life for me.

When my wife and I reached the point of hopelessness, I began to consider that maybe the Lord had another way of fixing our barrenness. I decided that I would pray every day until God healed us. I desired supernatural healing and to hear prophetic words, but up until this point in my life, I had not had many encounters with miracles or prophecy. In fact, I only knew of such things because of an encounter I had years before where Jesus appeared to me in a vision during a conference and told me he would return after the body of Christ had been built up. I later came to understand this meant Christ intended for the gift of prophecy to continue.

For many years, though, and like many other persons in evangelical churches, my wife and I had no interest or knowledge in these Pentecostal or Charismatic things. We had general impressions or thoughts about Pentecostals such as, “speaking in tongues may be from the devil,” “false prophecies,” and “deceived by evil spirits.” I even heard accusations about the prophetic movement that said prophecies catered to self or ego. As in, these so-called prophecies make someone feel awesome about themselves but are from the soul or even of devilish deceit. They promote a believers' ego but do nothing beneficial for a person’s spirit and may even harm one’s spiritual growth.

My wife and I were content in our denomination where love, holiness, and knowledge of the Word of God were the focus. My perspective changed, however, when I decided to reach out to the older, more experienced believers in my denomination to help us receive a miracle. Our elders spoke kind words to us and showed concern for our situation, but they did not receive a vision or a prophetic word from the Lord to give to us. Some members said that it was the Father’s will for us not to have children, and we needed to accept it. Others said that it was God’s wisdom for us to have more time to serve Him. With all their biblical knowledge, my church elders could not prophetically nor supernaturally minister to us. I came to understand that they could not do this because they did not believe in these practices. However, I was desperate to hear what the Spirit of God was saying about my situation, so I started to search on my own. 

I gradually began leaving my denomination and turning to other churches to seek help. I began listening to Pentecostal and other healing evangelists of the past and today, and I attended as many healing services as I could across the USA. In October 2015, my wife and I went to New York to attend a healing service. Though skeptical as a medical professional, my wife assured me that if her name was called out, she would believe she would have a child. That day, the minister did call out a word of knowledge that a lady would have a child, but to our dismay, the minister said a different woman’s name. Although reluctant, I still persuaded my wife to stay until the end to receive prayer. When this did not result in anything miraculous, my wife further doubted these healing services. 

However, I still believed God would give us a miracle. In another crazy attempt to get my wife healed, I flew to Kentucky to a healing conference where I had the minister pray over an airplane pillow to heal my wife. Needless to say, nothing happened, but I persisted.

In October of 2015, I convinced my wife to join me for another trip to North Carolina to receive prayer from a well-known healing evangelist. I had read an article that this man once prophesied to a woman, and that woman conceived a year later. This man even jokingly says in his own preaching that when he comes to town, every woman gets pregnant! At the conference, both a prophetic and healing team prayed over us. It was at this meeting that a lady saw a vision of the Lord using a sword to cut off a dragon in my wife’s family line, removing ancestral curses. Later, the two main evangelists prayed over us with anointing oil. Interestingly, the prophetic lady said that whatever needed to be taken care of in the spiritual realm was complete, but that it often took ten months to a year to manifest in the physical realm.

We returned encouraged from this conference, but we were still a little hesitant. That is until we began receiving more prophecies. One Sunday, a couple months later, the senior pastor of the church we were visiting suddenly became filled with the Holy Spirit while preaching and stopped to prophesy a line of Psalm 127 over us. He said, in reference to children being a heritage from the Lord, “your quiver is full.” Not knowing our situation, he told us that God was going to give us children.

Again, I was greatly encouraged, but I desired to hear God personally speak to me that this was true. A final visit to a conference in Oregon in January of the following year sealed the deal for me. There, a well-known prophet spoke to the crowd and said, “Today, you come here not by coincidence. It is God who leads you here, and from today on, you will hear God speaking to you like you never have before.” I believed and during the lunch break, I wandered near a store and entreated the Lord to speak to me. When I sat down in a chair outside of a Christian bookstore, my eye caught a Peanuts calendar in the display. The cover said, “Peanuts 2016 Family Planner.” 
 
Suddenly, God spoke clearly to me: “2016, plan your family; you will have a child this year.” I was astonished! I had never heard God speaking to me so clearly, and He just said I was going to have a child that year! I immediately called my wife and she encouraged me to buy the calendar as a memorial. Filled with joy, I shared with the cashier what God had told me. I cannot describe that dear lady’s face, but she must have been thinking, “This crazy Chinese man thinks God will give him a baby through a calendar!” I could totally sense the unbelief in the air.

Meanwhile, I went back to China to visit my family in February 2016. My mother, who still worshiped Buddha, had been desperately praying to all kinds of idols to help us to have a baby. I had been trying to preach the Gospel to her since 2003 but with trivial effect. Since I heard God’s voice clearly saying I would have a child that year, I boldly told all my family members. I even prayed for my two cousins who could not have a baby. My mother, displeased with my behavior, commented that I should not share such nonsense with others since I could not even take care of my own family matters. I, however, guarded what the Lord said, and I continued to believe the Word I received. 

Months later back in the USA, we continued waiting for our miracle, but I admit I began to get discouraged again. One day in desperation, I prayed, “Dear Holy Spirit, those people in Pentecostal churches always teach that we should have an intimate relationship with you. Now, I have prayed to both the Father and Jesus many times and I don’t know when this [pregnancy] is going to happen. Can you ask the Father and Jesus for me when this will happen?”

That night, shortly after this prayer, I had a dream. A woman (representative of the Holy Spirit) pointed to the back of a male figure (Jesus). She said to me, “Did He not tell you that you will have a child next month?” I woke up the next morning and told my wife about this dream. By this point, however, my wife had a tough time believing a pregnancy would ever happen. Shortly after, we ended up in quarrel that left us on non-speaking terms for two weeks. During this painful time, I remember worshiping the Lord one day with my arms raised while my computer screen played Chris Tomlin’s song, “Good Good Father.” With tears in my eyes, I reasserted my love and commitment to God whether I received my miracle baby or not.

My wife and I continued on non-speaking terms until it finally happened. One day I received a text from her that read, “You have won the lottery!” We reconciled when she found out she was miraculously pregnant on May 28, 2016. Our miracle baby girl, Elim, was born in early 2017, healthy and beautiful.

What’s even more amazing is the way God personally spoke to us with the word “peanuts.” In 2010, during our first IVF attempt, we were incredibly hopeful to have twins. My wife and I jokingly named our would-be twins, “peanuts” per Chinese and Taiwan translations of the word. When this IVF failed, my wife was devastated. Naturally, when I saw the word “Peanuts” and two small figures on the cover of that calendar, I could not help but remember our traumatic experience. Only God and my wife knew the secret meaning behind “peanuts,” and He used the very words of defeat to deliver a prophetic word that would become our miracle victory. I have come to see that God not only speaks powerfully, but he speaks intimately.

As for my family, this event became a turning point for their salvation. My older sister confessed belief in Jesus Christ. My mother was stunned and decided to turn away from her idols that she had worshipped her whole life. When I asked her why she was willing to believe now, she commented, “Isn’t the truth right before me? Your God is real.” Ten years of persuasion and preaching could not change my mother’s heart, but prophecy turned things around. In 2018, I visited China again and had the privilege of baptizing my parents into the family of Christ. Through all of this, I have come to fervently believe in the gifts of prophecy and healing, and my wife and I gladly congregate and fellowship with the “crazy” Charismatics and Pentecostals that I have now consider ourselves two of. 

Bible Study with Jairus – Acts 12

Bible Study with Jairus – Acts 12

The beginning of Acts chapter 12 discusses how after James was killed, Peter was imprisoned and then miraculously rescued by an angel.  The end of the chapter talks about Herod being struck by an angel, eaten by worms, and dying because he didn’t give praise to God.

 

Let’s look at the following verses:

12:21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. (NIV)

12:22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” (NIV)

12:23  Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. (NIV)

 

A member of our Bible study asked the question, “What exactly did Herod say that made God strike him like that?” Is it because what he said was not the word of God?  Was it perhaps the word of man which was then exalted by the people as the word of God, so he committed the sin of presumptuousness and was struck by God?  Did God tell him what to say but he didn’t give praise to God and was therefore struck down? There are many evil people in the Bible, and many of them were punished.  Herod’s demise of being struck by God’s messenger, eaten by worms and dying, is a rare case.

 

This is a difficult question to answer, because the Bible doesn’t record what Herod said, so we have no way of knowing. If we look at the train of thought in this chapter from the beginning, it may help us understand this question.

 

Aside from Herod's death being strange, James' death is also hard to understand.,  When we compare it with Peter's miraculous rescue, James died unjustly.  This doesn’t seem fair at first glance. Peter was imprisoned and magically rescued by an angel.  Then we have James, who was persecuted and killed by Herod without God intervening at all.  Peter, like us, also encountered unjust things. When the Lord Jesus was with His disciples on earth, He told Peter, “When you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” (NIV, John 21:18). This indicates the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God (NIV, John 21:19). Peter’s first question to Jesus was, “What about John?” (NIV, John 21:21). The Lord said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” (NIV, John 21:22). In the end, there was a rumor spreading that John would not die. But John explained that the Lord was not saying that he wouldn’t die. Rather, the Lord was saying that if He wanted him to remain alive until He returned, it was none of Peter’s business. This was a matter between the Lord and John.  The Lord said to Peter, "Follow me."

 

We follow Christ on an individual basis, not focusing on other people’s lives. The most important thing is for each of us to follow the Lord and be faithful to the end.

 

Peter and James weren’t the only ones who encountered injustice.  Why are Christians persecuted and often put to death in some countries, yet in other countries, they live in peace?  Why are there Christians who endure much suffering for the Lord while others have peace and prosperity? We don’t compare ourselves with Peter, James, and John today.  We generally compare ourselves with people around us, especially those who may be better off financially or spiritually speaking.

 

Reading and understanding the Bible should be easy because it means exactly what it says.  The Bible is God’s love letter to us, and He means for us to understand it.  Why do we find it difficult?  One reason is we complicate the simplicity of it, preventing our minds from understanding its true meaning.  We must read the word as a child would and allow the Holy Spirit to interpret the meaning.

 

I’ll use myself as an example.  I left the Local Church Movement under the Lord’s direction several years ago. I was saved in this church and fellowshipped there for ten years.  I moved to a Charismatic church to observe and learn.  One of the most important things that I learned was that we are all restricted by our denomination’s theology to a certain extent.  This is why the body of Christ doesn’t operate in unity.  We all have truths that are shaped by our denominations and we have a hard time seeing any truth outside of that.  When I was going through this process,  it was painful because the identity I had formed in the Local Church Movement was being challenged.  As we grow up, our identity is shaped by our culture, ethnic group, our country, as well as our church background.  Allowing ourselves to be open and explore other denominations, and the truths they hold will help us take the limits off of our own mindsets.  This is a challenging process but well worth the effort to break down the barriers that have been formed.

 

We can look at marriage through this same lens.  Instead of looking at an issue from your perspective, try looking at it from your spouse’s perspective.  Many arguments could be avoided and problems solved more quickly if we put aside selfishness and see the other person’s view.  As Christians, if we could look past our denomination’s way of thinking and see problems from different points of view, God could use us in a mighty way for His glory.  Unfortunately, many remain stuck in their denominations thinking and are restricting themselves in the kingdom of God without even realizing it.

 

Similarly, if we can break away from our earthly thoughts and read the Bible from a heavenly perspective, many things that we don’t understand will become much clearer. It's not that the Bible is difficult to understand,  but we don’t have a clear view from where we are standing.  The Bible is written from a higher spiritual realm, and if our thoughts are limited to this world, we will have a difficult time understanding it.

 

 

 People tend to have the mindset of judging a person by his or her success or failure.  James didn’t seem to have much written about his ministry success and was killed by Herod, martyred for his faith in Jesus.  Peter, on the other hand, gets arrested and supernaturally released from prison by angels.  James’ death seems to get overlooked by Peter’s success.  It ends with Herod getting struck with worms by an angel of the Lord and eventually dying.  How do we reconcile James’ death and Peter’s supernatural escape?

 

Perhaps we aren’t taking into account what James was doing in heaven after he died. He may have been praying for Peter’s life to be extended.  Christians know that when something is said or done in the physical world, there is also something happening in the spirit realm.  For example, we are baptized by immersion in water on the outside, but at the same time, we are immersed in the Holy Spirit in the spiritual realm.  We may not be able to see what is happening in the spirit realm but we can often see the effect of that realm.  A person who is baptized may have a changed countenance or deep joy that wasn’t present before they were immersed.  Their life may undergo positive changes after baptism.  They may have a deeper understanding of the Bible than before. 

 

Our prayers are things that happen in the physical world.   What we pray can be seen and heard physically, yet at the same time, our prayers are having a great effect in the spiritual realm.  God is listening and making the impossible possible.

 

Kat Kerr, an American prophet who claims she has been taken to heaven thousands of times by the Lord, told a story about a Christian couple whose daughter died in a skateboarding accident.  The daughter’s parents were devastated and blamed God for not intervening.  The Lord allowed Kat to see that their daughter was leading a group of young people in heaven.  The Lord told her that in His wisdom, He had to decide whether it was more beneficial for this girl to stay on earth with her parents or be powerfully used in heaven with the young people there.  In the end, He decided her leadership in Heaven was needed.  The girl’s parents were so relieved to hear what Kat saw and heard.  It helped heal their sorrowing hearts.

 

Hearing stories like this may be difficult to believe, but whether you believe it or not, I think it is worth referencing.  I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in 2015 and since that time, I have had a variety of visions of Heaven.  I have encountered Chinese believers and others, although I didn’t know their names.  Heaven is not just a throne with God sitting there with people shouting, “Glory, Glory, Glory.”  You are mistaken if you believe this.  In one of my heavenly encounters, I saw buildings, someone preaching, and a variety of meetings and discussions held by groups of people in heaven.  It’s a very busy place!  In addition to God and the angels, the believers who arrive in heaven are also very busy.  In my prophetic dreams, I am often led by the Holy Spirit, going somewhere with the angels, preaching the gospel or attending a meeting.  From my limited experience, I surmise that God, the angels and believers in heaven are cooperating with people on earth.

 

Hebrews 12:1 tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, which are the saints that have already passed away.  Our job is to lay aside burdens and sin and run the race with endurance that is set before us.  Those who have gone to heaven before us aren’t just lying around doing nothing but singing hallelujah all day.  They are busy doing a variety of services and operating in their gifting in heaven.  We just can’t see them.

 

Many of us think that when we die, it’s all over.  This is a very limited view and keeps us from understanding what the Bible says.  Death is not the end; it’s only the beginning.  Like the couple who lost their daughter in the skateboarding accident, we don’t always understand this.  When James was killed, it wasn’t because the enemy had triumphed over God or that God abandoned him.  James’ death was the beginning of his heavenly ministry.  God arranged it through His wisdom.  Who knows, James may be sitting at Jesus’ right or left hand.  We aren’t sure, but we shouldn’t neglect his ministry in heaven.  Jesus said that Abel’s blood continues to speak today so James’ martyrdom and testimony are doing the same.

 

It will be easier to understand Peter’s miraculous rescue and Herod being eaten by worms if we recognize James’ ministry in heaven. Although God and the angels were involved, perhaps James’ prayer, testimony, and role in heaven affected these circumstances.

 

We are not trying to contrast James’s heavenly ministry with Jesus.  Rather, we are opposing the thought that “when we die, it’s over.”  I have read many testimonies about people who visited heaven. They say that the believers who have passed away are still praying for their loved ones on earth and participating in prayer in heaven.  Let’s try to overcome the concept of time and space when looking at the Bible.  It may help us understand it on a deeper level.

 

To sum up this chapter, James died a martyr, but in his heavenly ministry, it’s possible that he prayed that God would spare Peter and save him from death.  Again, we realize that James is not equal to Jesus but rest assured that believers in heaven do pray for us and situations will change because of that.  Let’s not lose hope by only seeing one side of the story.  What looks like a tragedy in appearance may actually turn things around.  If we only focus on loss and failure, it prevents us from receiving the blessings from the other side.

 

Bible Study with Jairus -Romans 16

Bible Study with Jairus – Romans 16

The verses that inspired our bible group were Romans 16:19-20 (ESV), "For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." A brother in our group asked, “Why does Paul say be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil? What does this mean?”

I said, “First, let’s look at the structure of Romans 16.” Romans 16:1-16 consists of greetings to people in the Roman church; verses 17-20 are words of exhortation; verses 21-23 are more greetings from Paul and others that were sent to people in the Roman church; and verses 25-27 are Paul's summary of the gospel. When Paul wrote his letters, he probably wrote on parchment. In his day, there were no computers or even paper, so we can imagine it was very inconvenient to write a letter. The greetings in verses 1-16 and 21-23 are naturally indispensable in the last chapter. We can assume that what appears in the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans must be his burdensome words since he took the time to write more. Paul’s summary of the book of Romans in verses 25-27 seems to be very important, but why is his exhortation in verses 17-20 so important that it was placed in the last chapter?

One of the difficulties of the Roman Church was the societal conflict between the Jews and Gentiles, which may have led to the conflict between Jewish and Gentile believers within the Roman church. These societal challenges were just external causes of conflict. Those who taught differently within the church are what Paul refers to as the internal causes of conflict. Paul said in verses 17-18 (ESV), "I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive."

It is evident to us that Paul knew that some people in the church in Rome were "wolves in sheep's clothing." They did not consider the interest of the sheep or the flock as the most important thing. Rather, these persons deceived believers out of self-interest. This situation was not only present in Paul's time, but it also exists among churches today. Upon hearing of the situation, Paul’s first natural reaction was to blame these "wolves in sheep's clothing." At the same time, he reminded the innocent believers to be "wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil." The direction to stay away from evil and be "innocent as to what is evil" is easy to understand. No Christian is willing to or should do evil. But the good deeds of Christians are sometimes taken advantage of by the enemy. For example, we may recall the story of the farmer who saved a snake out of goodwill. Unfortunately, this goodwill was certainly done without wisdom because the snake bites the farmer, and he dies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_and_the_Viper.)

Throughout the ages, there have been many cults and heretical persons who deceived Christians. If you observe carefully, you will find that among them are also many innocent people who simply love the Lord. I will use an example from the religious cult known as the Eastern Lightening. There are many Eastern Lightening believers in my hometown in China. Once, I went back to my hometown and I heard Christians telling stories about this group. One story claimed that they kidnapped Christians, confiscated their Bibles, and then locked them in a specific place for brainwashing. As part of their brainwashing tactics, the Eastern Lightening would not beat or scold a person but rather wash their feet and care for them to falsely gain their trust. Gradually, some people became brainwashed. The believer who told me this story said that one of his relatives who had been kidnapped was a mature Christian and knew the Scriptures very well. After being kidnapped, the Eastern Lightening were not successful in brainwashing him with inerrant teaching because of his knowledge of biblical truth. Eventually, he was released. Now, I'm not sure if this group really kidnapped this man or just forced him to go with them. Hearing the testimony firsthand, however, still shocked me.

I often have prophetic dreams. One night I had a strange dream related to the Eastern Lightening. In this dream, a mysterious man drove me to a place. When we arrived, there were many young people and they seemed to be having a training of some sort, like a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) class training. In Chinese society, this kind of business model is often used as a scheme to cheat or deceive people. I later realized this training of young persons was symbolic of the evil intention of the Eastern Lightening to deceive its members, especially aiming at “innocent” as represented by the younger generation. When we got there, the mysterious man made a detour and drove toward the group. I got out of the car and went to meet these young people. During our conversation, I felt I received a revelation regarding them. While many people there were innocent, one of their leaders was not. He interrupted me in a very rude manner when I was conversing, and I understood that he came to hinder me. After some time, we left. The mysterious man confirmed what I felt—that many of these young people were very innocent, but some of their leaders did not allow them to accept help. I had not made a connection between the dream and the Eastern Lightening group until I saw the words "Eastern Lightening" written in Chinese in my dream.

Often vehicles in prophetic dreams represent ministry. According to James Goll, an American prophet, the Holy Spirit often appears in our prophetic dreams as a mysterious person with no face. I believe the mysterious person in this prophetic dream was the Holy Spirit. This prophetic dream afforded me a different perspective toward young persons indoctrinated into the Eastern Lightening. I now have a compassionate heart towards the innocent ones in Eastern Lightening who are generally regarded as heretics by Christian standards. I think that there are people in this group who are innocent in their intentions and simply without knowledge or discretion; therefore, they are easily deceived. I didn't feel particularly burdened for these people at first, but after this dream, I began to feel burdened to pray for the deceived ones within their cult. Moreover, I know God was speaking to me that I must prepare myself well and spread the truth in order to help many others who are being deceived.

I recall several verses related to this. Jesus taught us to be faithful and wise. Matthew 24:45 (ESV) says, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time?" Three examples are cited below to illustrate what it means to be faithful and wise.

The first example is found in the story of Matthew 24:47-51 (ESV). An evil servant says, "My master is delayed” (v. 48). The wicked servant begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards. The verses continue, “the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is an example of unfaithfulness, which is not doing what God wants us to do.

The second example is the story of the foolish virgins and the wise virgins in Matthew 25. The foolish virgins had lamps but had not brought enough oil to keep them lit for the unexpected delay that occurred. The wise virgins took both lamps and sufficient oil. The foolish virgins are neither faithful nor prudent. The wise virgins are both faithful and prudent.

The third example is a story found in Matthew 25:14-30. There were two talents and five talents given to servants. Each servant duplicated their gifts making two talents and five talents more. They were called faithful servants by the Lord. But the man who took one talent and buried the gift was called a wicked servant by the Lord and was thrown into darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

"Faithfulness" as termed in the third story includes being "faithful and wise." We know that many people are "faithful," but not necessarily "wise." For example, Paul said in Romans 16:19 (ESV), “Your obedience is known to all," which means that they were very faithful. In the latter part of this verse, however, Paul specifically tells them to be "wise as to what is good," which means that they must also be wise. In other words, Paul meant that even though separations and deceptions come to make us stumble, if the believer is obedient but still lacks wisdom to judge, the believer himself is responsible for his own deception. This sentence is an exhortation by Paul to ordinary believers urging them to learn how to judge others’ teachings and resist blindly following just anyone.

In the age we live in today, apart from being faithful to God, believers and church leaders need to be wise. Take the example of US election. What is God's will for the election? Is it Trump or Biden? This question not only tests whether we are faithful to God, but it also tests whether we are wise.

There is a well-known leader and Evangelical Christian in the United States who actively supported Trump to be elected. After the United States confirmed the electoral vote on December 14, 2020, and the media announced the news of Biden's victory, this leader announced and acknowledged Biden as the new President of the United States. Afterward, he was criticized by American Charismatic church leaders for acknowledging Biden's victory too early. Many people with prophetic gifts claim that God told them that Trump will eventually win and continue to be president for four years. In this process, there will be a great battle, but eventually, God will interfere in the US election allowing Trump and the conservative forces he represents to win. In the end, the purpose of this triumph would be so that the United States could return to its Christian foundation and continue to spread the gospel to the world.

Aside from these prophets, there are other so-called prophets who prophesied Trump's victory, but after finding out that Trump did not win, they apologized and admitted that their prophecy was wrong. These people have received criticism for following the crowd and not speaking from a place of truly hearing God.

Among Christians, different perspectives and attitudes about the election emerged. Some Christians did not clearly see that this election represented a life and death battle between God’s righteousness and the evil power of Satan. They, therefore, held an indifferent and powerless attitude. They said, "It's in the hands of God anyway. Whosoever God chooses, let it be." This attitude shows that such persons are not sure what God's will and choice are. Other Christians strongly believed the prophets’ messages that Trump is the "chosen one." That is, he is chosen to accomplish God's will for the United States and God wants to use Trump to: (1) save the United States from a falling trend; (2) bring the United States back to God; and (3) deal with other nations through his leadership so as to create conditions for the world’s greatest revival. Of course, lastly, there are some Christians that oppose Trump and support his opponent.

If you are a Christian in the United States, or if you are a Christian from another country who cares about the US election, my question for you is, “How can you demonstrate being ‘wise as to what is good’?” I believe when some Christians vote, their purpose and motive are innocent and good because their intention is to serve the Lord and glorify God. However, what we choose and whether we are ‘wise as to what is good’ will bring different results.

There was a time when Christians in the United States believed that politics were strictly politics and the church should focus only on spiritual things. They thought that participating in politics was Caesar's business, and they should let only Caesar do it. However, US leftists have taken advantage of the "unwise" attitude of the American church by gradually using democracy in American society to change the "vocal minority" into the majority, or at least to the point that it has almost an equal footing with the power of Christianity. Many people in the body of Christ experienced a spiritual awakening because of this. They realized that when the church did not participate in politics, it gave the US leftists and other groups a chance to grow. The leftists' active participation in political elections and changes in education affected a complete generation.

The church was caught off guard by this group and began to pray eagerly to God about it. Over the years, I have followed this intercessory fasting movement in the United States. I believe I have a very clear understanding of these people's prayers for repentance and confession for the United States. I believe that it was because of this prayer movement, including both repentance and confession, that God raised up Donald Trump. As he became the President of the United States, expectations were confounded. Many like myself believe that Trump’s initial presidency was a result of God's answer to the prayer of the American church.

Eventually, many American churches pushed beyond the limitations of the past that said, "churches do not participate in politics." Now, believers have begun to actively participate in American politics. Of course, we Christians also engage in spiritual warfare; therefore, intercession, fasting, and repentance remain the foundational pieces for fighting to bring things to pass. However, this does not mean that churches and Christians should not participate in politics. The United States is a democratic society and politics require democratic participation. Your non-participation is equal to you giving up your opportunity to influence others.

I believe the most critical thing that helped bring this shift to the American church is when it started to repent and call for God's help, and God responded to this call. God has given me and many other Christians words and prophetic dreams that indicate there will be a great revival in the United States, China, and in other countries around the world. I personally reside among the group of people who still believe God will supernaturally intervene in the post-election process and bring Trump back to the White House. I believe this is part of God's plan for America and the world. I also believe that Trump's re-election is just the tip of the iceberg. God still has so many things to do and I think God wants to use Trump to continue to accomplish more things in the United States. This includes strengthening the country’s Christian foundation in order to rebuild and revive American churches. At the same time, the United States must remain salt and light and act as a role model for the world in matters such as protecting Israel and exporting the gospel.

My belief in Trump’s return is not only based on what I have heard others say about Trump and his re-election. Surprised by the election results on November 4^th, I prayed asking God what was happening. On the early morning of November 5, I had the following dream about fishing. I saw a fish hooked on the end of a hook. A mysterious man and small child were playing with the fish by swinging the fishing lines. Then I heard something in my spirit: “They will continue to play for a while until they catch a bigger fish using this fish as bait.” My interpretation is that God still has everything in his hands, but there is a purposeful delay. My dream led me to believe that God will still turn things around.

While I believe that these are things God will do in America, He will also continue to expose deeds that are being done in darkness thereby getting rid of forces that oppose Him. This can be likened to when the Israelites were chased to the Red Sea. They were in despair, but God parted the waters for them to cross while drowning their Egyptian enemies. The current political situation in the United States is the same. Many people, including those with prophetic gifts, do not know exactly how God will bring His will to pass. Yet, many of us carry a certainty in our Spirit that God will turn things around. We should live in God's peace now and celebrate God's victory before we see it.

A brother in our group commented that his own experience is like this. He feels he is not very aware of the political situation in the United States. He falls into the category of persons that verse 19 refers to: “obedience is known to all." However, he lacks being "wise as to what is good." After evaluating himself, this man concluded that being "wise as to what is good" is not simply a matter of good and evil but whether one can clearly hear God's voice and understand what God's will is.

He is right. The following story about David illustrates the importance of hearing God’s voice and obeying. The wives and children of David’s men were taken captive by the Amalekites. When David and his men returned and found out about this, they wept loudly. David's two wives were also taken captive. Because of this, David's men wanted to stone him to death. The Bible does not record David's reaction in the flesh, but it does say that "David strengthened himself in the Lord his God" (ESV, 1 Samuel 30:6). Through the ephod brought by the priest, David inquired of the Lord if he would be able to overtake the enemy. The Lord said, “Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue” (ESV, 1 Samuel 30:8). David, therefore, brought people together to overtake the Amalekites in war. On their way, David ran into an Egyptian who had not eaten food or drunk water for three days and three nights. David gave him food to eat and water to drink and revived him back to life. It turned out that this man had been a slave to the Amalekites and was abandoned because he was sick. David promised to guarantee his safety, so the man took David to the Amalekites. God gave David favor and set the circumstances to bring him directly in confrontation with his enemy. In the end, David’s strategy to inquire of the Lord and obey was his reason for success in defeating the Amalekites. This is what it means to be wise—to inquire, hear, and obey.

In fact, the Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that knowledge of the Holy One is insight (ESV, Proverbs 9:10). The Bible also instructs believers in this way: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (ESV, Matthew 7:7-11). If you are humbly seeking God's will for yourself and this age, God will reveal himself to you. In most cases where a person is unsure, it is not likely that God is unwilling to reveal things to you but that you may not have sought enough.

Now that we have looked at what it means to be both wise and innocent, let’s discuss the rest of the verses of Romans 16 that talk about crushing Satan and living in peace.

Verse 16:20 (ESV) says, “the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet.” Note that it says, "under your feet." Our God of peace does not only crush Satan under his feet, but also under our feet. When we are confronted with societal conflicts and it seems that Satan is winning, we must remember to live with God’s peace. God’s peace is the greatest weapon believers have in this world. As God shakes the world, his purpose if to move people's hearts to be open to the gospel thereby bringing many people into His Kingdom. In this shaking process, believers should be steadfast people who know God's will and live in God's peace. They should not be swayed by rumors and tides like people in the world who go up and down like the waves. Christians should persevere in the face of obstacles just like the Lord Jesus did. A state of peace and rest does not indicate sleeping, however. Instead, Christians should work vigorously to impact society and have an external influence; in their interior, they live in peace by the Spirit of God that dwells inside them.

We may live this way because we know that God will prevail and will prevail greatly in the end. Romans 16:25-27 describes how Paul was able to live in peace and sincerely believe that the God of peace would crush Satan under his feet. Paul received God’s revelation that he would be entrusted with the gospel, so much to the point that he could even refer to it as "my gospel." This mystery of the gospel—the message of the work of Jesus Christ—was a revelation hidden from many in past times but revealed to the prophets and apostles such as Paul. As Paul learned of his mission to preach Jesus Christ, he himself learned to live in peace amidst the many crises he encountered completing his mission.

While it was a shock for many that Biden was inaugurated on January 20^th, some prophets still believe God will intervene and change this. We will observe what happens. I told the brothers and sisters attending our Bible Study that if I am wrong, then many of us who claim to believe in modern prophets including myself, will need to reflect on ourselves to consider if and how we have misheard God’s voice. If we are right, however, that Trump will be re-elected or brought back to the White House supernaturally, many Christians who do not believe in modern prophets would do well to reflect on how these prophets heard God’s voice, but they did not hear and believe their words. The final verdict regarding the upcoming election is a test for American society and a test for the prophetic movement and the gifts of prophecy.

Written by Jairus Bible World Ministries on December 20, 2020 and updated on February 5^th, 2021.

Bible Study with Jairus - Romans 15

Bible Study with Jairus – Romans 15

As we read Romans 15, we especially prayed that God would speak timely words to us and lead us in our current lives.

Today is December 6, 2020 and the US election results have not yet been released. The coronavirus pandemic is still raging in the United States, and there are various negative news reports and comments spreading beyond the USA. Scores of people have been working at home for a long time, and there are still many uncertainties. We don't know when the pandemic will end; when we can go back to work; whether it is safe to get a COVID-19 vaccine; who will be the president of the United States; what the future of the United States will be; and how China-US relations will develop. These questions and many others invoke and weaken the hearts of many people, including the hearts of Christians. Many feel confused and are even living in fear. Christians are no exception.

Under such circumstances, what timely words can Romans 15 provide us to comfort our hearts?

Let me first point out that the context of the book of Romans is somewhat similar to our society today. The gospel of the Roman church was very prosperous and believers had strong faith. However, serious racial conflicts occurred in Rome. The conflict between Jews and Gentiles escalated to the point that that all Jews were forced to leave Rome during the reign of Claudius (Acts 18:2). These serious racial conflicts within their society inevitably penetrated the church leading to conflicts between Jewish and Gentile believers within the Roman church.

During the time the Jews were ordered to leave Rome, Priscilla and Aquila had arrived in Corinth from Rome where they met Paul. All three of them were tentmakers. I assume Paul gradually learned about the situation regarding the Roman church through his contact with these two which led him to become burdened with visiting the Roman church. Since the church in Rome had not been founded by Paul and he had never visited it before, we may wonder why Paul was so burdened for them. In my recording of the reading of the book of Romans, I mentioned many times that Paul may have learned about the situation of the Roman church–the conflicts between Gentile and Jewish believers–through Priscilla, Aquila, and others. Therefore, he was particularly burdened to visit them in Rome. He hoped that on his way to preaching the gospel in Spain, he would visit Rome (Romans 15:23-24).

Although Paul had such hopes, he was not sure whether he would make it to Rome since he was mostly determined to go to Jerusalem to bring the financial offering of the Gentile church to the Jewish believers. Paul’s purpose in doing this was to increase fellowship between the Jewish and Gentile believers. Since the Gentile believers had received spiritual blessings from the Jews and Christ and the gospel came from them, Paul also believed that Gentile believers should bring material blessings to the Jews, especially the poor among the saints at Jerusalem (Romans 15:25-27).

However, it was revealed through the prophecy of Agabus and others that if Paul arrived in Jerusalem he would be bound, and his life would be in danger. Therefore, Paul is unsure whether he will really have the opportunity to go to Rome, visit the church there, and go on to Spain through Rome. These were uncertainties for him. Under such circumstances, Paul wrote the book of Romans which is composed of sixteen chapters. Paul wrote to expose the truth of the gospel to the people of the Roman church. In the book of Romans, he specifically mentions that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Jews and Gentiles are both sinners, but all are justified by faith (Romans 3:24).

Romans is like an exhortation letter written to the Jews and Gentiles. It talks about the sins of the Jews and the Gentiles but that God first revealed himself to the Jews (Romans 3:2) and that the ancestry of Christ can be traced back to the Jewish patriarchs (Romans 9:5). In other words, God blesses the Gentiles through the Jews, and Paul uses this illustration to exhort the Gentiles to accept the Jews. On the other hand, Paul also exhorts the Jews to accept the Gentiles because God accepts them.

Romans 15 is the penultimate chapter of the book of Romans. One more chapter and the book is finished. Therefore, at the beginning of this chapter, Paul once again talks about "how Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs" (ESV, Romans 15:8); and how God accepted the Gentiles (Romans 15:9-12).

We can envision the conflict between the Jewish and Gentile believers in the Roman Church. Perhaps it is no less than the racial conflict in American society today. The serious racial conflicts between African Americans and Whites in American society are also reflected in the church. Although I personally don't think that the former president Donald Trump is racist, he is portrayed as such by some media outlets and, therefore, opposed by most African American churches and believers. I personally believe that Trump was a vessel chosen by God to bring America back to the foundations of a Christian nation. But because racial conflicts penetrate the church, many Christians clash over whether to support Trump or Biden.

Some Christians who support Trump say, “Isn’t it obvious that God has chosen Trump to bring the United States back to its foundation of a Christian nation? Biden and left-wing supporters condone abortion and homosexuality. Shouldn't every Christian oppose this? If you support Biden, wouldn't it be like murdering babies and accepting homosexuality? Do you still need to think about this? Shouldn't you support Trump who favors protecting lives and opposes abortion?” Since many people who oppose Trump believe that Trump is a racist, they claim he does not accept immigrants and even encourages white supremacists trends. They point out his sarcasm when talking about immigrants as leverage for their argument. I know a lot of African American pastors and believers that oppose Trump, some of whom are my seminary classmates and friends on Facebook. According to statistics, in the 2016 presidential election, only 8% of African American voters voted for Trump. Chinese immigrants have split into two factions. One group supports Trump are are called "Trumpists;" the other party is termed "Anti-Trumpists". The two factions often criticize each other on the internet.

Coupled with the raging pandemic, we Christians live in such an environment. Many people worry about their lives and do not know what the future holds. A lady in our meeting recently commented, “In this situation, how can we hear God's voice clearly and know what to do?” She admitted that she can’t hear God's voice clearly and is often confused.

It can be comforting to see that Romans 15 is showing us that even an apostle like Paul, a person living in the center of God's will, did not fully understand God's leading. The Bible tells us that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (ESV, 1 Corinthians 13:9). In other words, even if we are prophets and God has spoken to us, what we hear and the pictures we see are not comprehensive. There’s a lot that may still be unclear. Many prophecies were given that Trump would serve a second term of presidency and even that he will eventually win again. However, many things in the natural do not line up with this. Regardless, I firmly believe this will come to pass, but I know many Christians are still in doubt. We have the prophetic words, but we are not sure of their details.

Paul’s situation was similar. He insisted on going to Jerusalem, but Agabus and others told him through the Holy Spirit that he might be bound when he gets there. Still, Paul insisted on going, even if it meant  sacrificing his life. Since Paul was not clear about whether he would eventually go to the church in Rome, so he wrote the book of Romans. But when he was in Jerusalem, the Lord stood beside him during the night and encouraged him: "Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome." (ESV, Acts 23:11) This was something Paul didn't know before he went to Jerusalem. When he was imprisoned in Jerusalem, then the Lord appeared to encourage him. It’s through the confirmation of Lord's prophetic words that Paul became sure he would reach Rome. He still hoped to travel from Rome to Spain, but the Bible and historical records unfortunately do not record in detail whether he had eventually arrived in Spain. Perhaps, he was already martyred in Rome before he arrived there. Even after receiving confirmation from the Lord, Paul still did not know about every step of his life.

Therefore, people expecting us (Christians) to know everything today is impossible. We don’t know when the coronavirus will end. We don’t even know who the president of the United States will be. But this is not important. The important thing is that Paul lived completely by faith and hope in God during his process, and he also encourages believers today to live by faith and hope during theirs. This is the inspiration I received when I read Romans 15. I encourage you brothers and sisters joining our Bible Study, not to focus on the difficulties and perplexities of the environment around you, but to focus on God's laws and His loving nature. We should focus on His promises as well. Just as God opened a path for the Israelites through the Red Sea and saved the Israelites from the hand of the Philistines, He will also save us from today's Pharaohs and enemies. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He is eternal. He saved us in the past, He will also save us now. Since He loves us, He will save us to the end (Hebrews 7:25).

Paul had experienced a great deal of suffering in his life, but he was full of endurance and hope in his suffering. He said, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” (ESV, Romans 5:3-5) In his suffering, Paul developed faith, joy, endurance, character and hope. Hope did not put him to shame, but rather elevated him to stand victoriously before God.

Today, we Christians experience suffering. We may not fully understand God’s will and His presence in our society. Therefore, during these times, God wants us to learn how to endure and have faith amidst crises. We need to know God's laws and His loving nature. We need to also know and trust that He will save us even to the end. If we are rooted in Him and if we rest in Him, we will be saved because God’s word tells us, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (ESV, Isaiah 30:15) Paul also said in Romans 16:20 (ESV), “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." At this time, we Christians should live out our faith with endurance and be full of hope for God's promises and salvation. We should also be full of peace and should not be restless with the changes happening around us including uncertain rumors. Remember, our victory lies in resting in the Lord! The result of certain things according to God will be manifest, but the process is also important. It is a process of maturing our faith and endurance. We cannot overlook the process.

The verses I prayed and sang this week were Romans 15:5-6 and 15:13. These are Paul's exhortations in this chapter. Verses 5-6 (ESV) say, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Here, Paul identified God as the God of endurance and encouragement! When the Jewish and Gentile believers in the Roman church were in conflict, Paul encouraged everyone to endure and accept each other in love. He prayed that the God of endurance and encouragement would allow Jewish and Gentile believers to accept each other in Christ Jesus that they may live in harmony with one another. This is also good encouragement for the American Church today. Verse 13 of Romans 15 (ESV) says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." I spent time this week praying this verse. This verse again mentions that God is the God of hope. Because of our faith, we are filled with joy and peace. We will also abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Several of us who read this verse felt that this is what the Holy Spirit is really saying to us today. In the current, difficult atmosphere of the United States, we must learn to be rooted in the Lord, exercise our faith and endurance, and be full of joy and peace. Let us be filled with the Holy Spirit and be full of hope for God and the future.

I recall hearing a preacher state that when the great revival is approaching, God will allow turmoil to happen in society. The turmoil includes plagues, wars, and disasters. The purpose of these is to shake people’s hearts and shake everything that can be shaken, so as to produce an unshakable kingdom (Hebrews 12:28). At this time, churches and Christians are like medical teams prepared by God. They are called and trained by God to find the injured, bind up their wounds and preach the gospel to them. The best time to preach the gospel is during times of turmoil. Turbulent environments are environments set up by God to shocks unbelievers by allowing them to see that believers are living in peace, joy, endurance and hope amidst the turbulence. Although Christians are touched by it, they demonstrate a trust in God thus showing unbelievers that God does exist. These unbelievers will therefore trust and accept the Lord. Unfortunately, many Christians are as panicky and fearful as the people of the world, thus they cannot fulfill God's call and become a witness for Jesus Christ. Instead of rushing out to the battlefield to heal the wounded and rescue the dying, some people are hiding in the trenches because of fear. I recall jokingly hearing that the people who hide in the trenches because of fear of death often cannot escape the cannonball attack. The turbulent atmosphere raised up by God is not for the purpose of judging the church, but the world. The church brings salvation and is a lighthouse and a doctor when the world experiences turmoil. If we, Christians, are afraid and anxious, how can we be a lighthouse in the storm?

In one of my prophetic dreams, I saw an angel stretching out a huge stick from heaven to the ocean on earth. He began to stir it and after which, I saw the waves surging. Many people’s houses were destroyed and people were running for their lives. I found myself, however, miraculously swimming to a safe place. My interpretation is that the time of turmoil is just beginning. The purpose of turmoil is to shake people's hearts and bring in the great harvest of the gospel. Those who are living God’s will, who testify to the Lord and preach the gospel, will receive His miraculous protection. We must seize the opportunity to preach the gospel. We must especially live in peace, joy, endurance and hope so that the God of peace can crush Satan under our feet.

Peace is our greatest weapon during chaotic times. John Wesley once preached the gospel to American Indians. His results were not good and instead very frustrating. On his way back to England, the ship encountered a huge wave during its voyage. The passengers on the ship screamed in terror, and Wesley was also very frightened. He then saw a group of Moravian brothers gathered very quietly in the front singing hymns. Their faith in God moved Wesley deeply and it caused Wesley to recognize his lack of faith. This became a spiritual turning point in Wesley’s life. Later, Wesley became a devoted servant of God and brought great revival to England. This shows that Christians living in faith and peace in God are a very strong testimony.

I still have countless prophetic dreams. In some of these dreams, God has told me that this world will go through a lot of fierce turmoil and immense spiritual warfare. But God has a beautiful purpose. Countless people will enter the unshakable Kingdom of God because of this. We should not simply hope that the turmoil will pass. We should learn to endure, have faith, and be full of joy, peace, and hope during the turmoil.

Peter said, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (ESV, 1 Peter 1:6-9) Paul also had the same experience as Peter. His life was full of trials and hardships, but he lived in joy, peace, endurance and hope. Paul continually urges believers to pray and live out this same experience.

This is the inspiration and the timely words of the Holy Spirit that we received when reading Romans 15 in our group time. I hope these words will encourage any Christians who are currently dealing with anxiety. Don't worry, God sits on the throne and reigns. He controls everything. We just need to turn our hearts to Him. If we sin, we should repent and. We may also pray that the world repent and be saved. God will surely guard us amidst our difficulties! Since He loves us, He will save us to the end. Because Jesus Christ, our high priest, lives forever!

We should become ministers of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit (ESV, Romans 15:16). This is God's will for us! May we receive endurance and encouragement from the God of endurance and encouragement! May we get hope from the God of hope!

Bible Study with Jairus - My Spiritual Biography

SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

The Journey to Faith

I was born in the Hebei province of China. My hometown was a small village in the south Hebei province. It is adjacent to the Henan province and is located near a river. My family was poor but started to earn more money when my father began to work at the local township auditing department. My mother stayed in the village to grow crops and feed pigs. In spite of the hardships, my family’s financial situation was more stable than other families in the village.

As a child, I always wondered what our purpose was on earth. I would often think about this in my yard while looking up at the stars. Sometimes I sat on a small hill near my village wondering, “Where will I be in the future?”

My older sister enrolled in college in 1981 and was the only one in our county to be accepted into a college that year, which ended up being a huge event. Not only did the local teaching authority pay a lot of attention to this, but it also changed the mind of my grandpa and other family members in regards to the possibility of success. It was not common for a child from a rural village to enter college. Also, people in the village were prejudiced against females. So, my grandpa said that my brother and I must be accepted into college.

When it was my turn to go to college, I was accepted into a college in Beijing. However, I faced many hardships. Not only was I pressured financially, but I also had to face inequalities. There are always prejudices against people from rural or poor areas in China. I felt hurt inside and sometimes became very shy and withdrawn. After four years of college, I stayed and worked there for another four years. I wasn’t satisfied with that life, and I still felt empty and didn’t know what my purpose in life was.

Because of this, I decided to study abroad, which is a dream of many Chinese students. I got a joint offer from the London School of Economics in the UK and the University of Southern California. The tuition for the university in London was around 10,300 pounds, but I only had 10,000 pounds. By the third semester, I ran out of money. I did not have enough money to pay rent, tuition, and living expenses. I was also unable to find a job. I asked my family to help, and they gave me 1000 pounds. The university later offered help with my tuition, so that problem was solved.

At this point in time, I began to look for a part-time job. One day, I was lingering in a park near McDonald’s when I heard people singing hymns. This attracted me to their gathering in the park. They were a group of Christians. They also portrayed through a play how Jesus was crucified. I was so touched and could not help but cry.

One sister named Mary came to me and shared with me about God. I asked her if she had ever seen God. How can you say there is a God if you have never seen Him? She said she did not believe it either when she was a student at Oxford. But one day, when she went to a meeting with her father, she was touched when her father was sharing something about the invisible God with other Christians. She thought that was probably God because she did not have it. She sent me a Bible later and asked me to come to her church, but I never had a chance to visit because I had already started to work at McDonald’s part-time. I worked the night shift, starting from 8:00PM to 3:00AM or 4:00AM, which was very tiring. Sometimes I tried to get up in the morning to visit her church, but I did not have the strength to wake up.

I had already finished my first year of school in London at that time, and I was looking forward to coming to the United States to finish my second-year study, but I did not have the money. I worked out a way to get the school to send me the I-20 form[1] first, and then I got the F-1 student visa as well. But I still did not have the money. I was hoping to get a scholarship from the University of Southern California, but they replied very late and only gave me a tuition waiver for 8 credits. I had to finish 24 credits to graduate.

It was a painful struggle to decide if I should come to the US. I had a visa, but I did not have enough money. I really didn’t want to go back to China at that time for a few reasons, and I was not satisfied with my one year study in the UK. Most importantly, I felt I was seeking something, but hadn’t found it yet.

My life was full of anxiety. I cried out in my innermost being, saying, “Whoever gives me peace, I will believe in him.” Finally, I decided to come to the US with a one-way ticket and a couple of hundred dollars. When I was on the airplane, I didn’t even have a plan or know what I would do. On the first night in the US, I stayed in a classmate’s house. The second night, I had to move out, but I had no place to go. Next, I signed the housing contract with the school and moved into a dorm, but I could not sleep that night. The next morning, I went to the registrar’s office, but I couldn’t decide if I should register. I knew that if I registered, I would have to pay the fee. If I didn’t register, I would just go back to China immediately.

I felt torn between the two choices, so I wandered outside of the office from morning until late afternoon. It was a painful experience. Eventually, I decided to go back to China because I realized that I could not survive here. I had already fulfilled my dream by coming to America, so I started to look for some Chinese students who could tell me where to find a travel agency to buy a plane ticket.

Before I did this, I cried out to God again from the deepest part of me: “God, I am such a sinner; do you still remember me?” I remember exactly how I said it, and it was in English, not in Chinese. After that, I felt peace in my heart and decided to go back to China. I found a couple of Chinese students and asked them if they knew where to buy plane tickets, but they told me they had no idea.

Later, another student walked across the street, but I couldn’t tell if he was Chinese or Korean. He looked Korean, so I asked if he was Korean. He was actually Chinese and a brother from the Church in Los Angeles associated with the ministries of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. I asked him about the travel agency, and he asked me why I wanted to go back. I told him the reason, and he told me that I should not go back, and I should finish my studies here.

He brought me to the Brother House near campus, and I fellowshipped with a church elder and other members who lived in this home.  The Brother House was a home where several Christian men lived together. The brothers were willing to let me move into their house. The brothers even agreed to let me pay the rent later if I had no money. The brothers taught me how to pray, and we prayed together before we went to see the housing department and my department director. The housing department agreed to cancel my contract, and the department director agreed that all the 8 credits of scholarship were for the first semester. Originally, 4 credits were for the first semester, and 4 credits were for the second semester. As an international student, I was required to register at least 8 credits to become a full-time student. All of my problems seemed to be solved within a couple of days! I even found a part-time job on campus to help cover food and other needs.

I still didn’t have money for my second semester’s tuition, but the brothers taught me to pray unto God. They told me that the Lord would take care of my needs if I dedicated myself to the Lord. I also felt sinful when I first believed in the Lord, so I prayed desperately for Him to take care of my needs and forgive all my sins. It took about six months for me to feel the assurance of forgiveness, and with the help of our department director and fellow believers, I was able to pay the tuition later.

However, I continued to struggle with financial problems. Upon graduation, I couldn’t afford the monthly meal expenses because I no longer held a job on campus. During this time, I worked at a toy store for a little while. I ended up quitting this job because the boss was constantly cursing at employees. When I was in desperate need, I received a call from a Chinese magazine that had received my application and wanted to interview me. I went there by bus, and at one bus stop, the bus driver told me I was going in the wrong direction. I was actually going in the right direction, but I didn’t know. So I started to walk in the opposite direction to take another bus. While I was walking a little bit, a van stopped by me in the street corner and asked me where I was going. A Hispanic man gave me a ride to the company, and I arrived for my appointment at exactly 9:00AM. Later I thanked him and asked him why he helped me. I also called him brother when I thanked him. It turned out he really was a brother in Christ. He said that he was touched when he saw me walking and decided that he would drive me wherever I needed to go. He also told me that he would generally never stop for a stranger since he had three kids in the van in car seats. They were on their way to a daycare center.

I ended up getting the reporting job at the Chinese magazine. But when the boss asked me to have an interview in a certain place, I told her that I did not have a car yet. She cried out, “My God!” The other boss later asked me to get a car as soon as possible. Before that, I had to take the bus to work. At that time, a brother who moved out of the brother’s house left a 1984 Lincoln Town Car for me to use, but I did not have a driver’s license. I failed a couple of times but finally got it by the due date my boss gave me. Later on, I learned the owners of this magazine were also Christians.

During that month, I was planning to come to work by bus, but just a couple of days after I started work, all the MTA(Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority) bus drivers in Los Angeles went on strike for one month, so I was unable to take the bus. Luckily, one private bus was still running from my company to downtown LA, and a Korean brother dropped me off at the bus stop when he went to work. After I got off work, I took the bus downtown and waited for the brothers to take me home. This sometimes took a couple of hours, and I used this time to recite the verses from the book of John while I was waiting. I was so touched by the brotherly love at that time.

This difficult time had led me to receive the Lord and to dedicate myself to Him. In the journey of my belief, there were many miracles. After I started to work, my financial situation got better and better. The Lord’s hand was still guiding my life. I got the reporting job in November of 2003. That year, I overheard some believers talking about the first New Jersey Chinese Speaking Perfecting training in August of that year. This is an annual Chinese speaking conference within our denomination. They were talking about how the Lord’s Spirit was working powerfully there, and how a brother from The Church in Riverside was completely changed after participating in this training. I was determined to join this training in 2004, and I knew I would experience big changes by attending. I felt this plan was not from me, but it was the Spirit leading me.

In that meeting in August 2004 at the Church in Franklin, the Spirit was everywhere. The main topic in that training session was to dedicate your whole being to the Lord and to prepare for His second coming. Everyone was encouraged to dedicate himself or herself to the Lord. I refused to do so even though many brothers urged me to. The second to last time, two brothers urged me again to dedicate myself to the Lord, but I refused again. They looked at me with judgment in their eyes, but I didn’t take it personally. However, I felt the judgment from the Lord strongly. I felt like he was reminding me by saying, “How many times did you say that you would dedicate your life to me if I did certain things for you?” It only took me a second to recall all my prayers in which I had asked the Lord to take care of my needs and promised that I would dedicate my life to Him. I had forgotten these prayers a long time ago, but the Lord always remembers.

That night, I knelt and prayed to the Lord. “Lord, I still have a hard time believing the truth about your second coming. I would dedicate myself to you if you revealed this to me.” Later, when I fell to sleep, I felt two people were fighting for my heart. The Lord was stronger, and He took it. The next day I dedicated my life to the Lord. While one brother was talking about the New Jerusalem, I felt the heavens open in my spirit. The Lord spoke to me and said, “If the body of Christ, the New Jerusalem, is built up, I will come back.” This proved to me that only those who had dedicated their lives to the Lord could see this vision, just like many brothers had told me.

I was completely changed when I came back from the training. I changed a lot of bad habits and started to pursue the truth. I read the Bible and the book Life Study by Witness Lee every day. The local believers were so surprised that I had changed.

 

Overcoming the Past

My father was looked down upon by the villagers and his coworkers due to his character and inability to socialize with others. Many people considered him to be a socially awkward person. At one point, he started to work in a brick factory in a nearby village. He started as a laborer, then he became a keeper of the factory warehouse, and after that, he became an accountant. He worked long hours, and he was not able to be there for me emotionally while I was growing up. After this, my father was able to get a government job with the help of a family member who held a position in local government. But my father was still looked down upon by his coworkers even at his new job. His coworkers would point at me and say things like, “Even though his father was such a nerd, his sons are doing great.”  But these words hurt me greatly. As a result of this, I never learned how to socialize with others, so I was often considered socially awkward as well. It was not as noticeable before high school because we lived in a small town where people did not have as many differences. It became more of an issue later when I went to a big city like Beijing to study.

I developed low self-esteem because of my circumstances. Not only did I see my father’s failures in his life, but I inherited some of his weaknesses as well. So whenever would I fail at something, I would pity myself. I would think, “How can I amount to anything because I am the son of my father.” This was a lie, but I kept repeating it, and I believed it. This became a shadow in my life for many years. On the one hand, this made me work hard to try to not be like my father, but on the other hand, nothing made me more upset than when my wife said to me, “You are exactly like your dad.” I never wanted to be like him. I told myself I would study hard to acquire the skills to excel in life as I knew I was not strong enough physically to fight with others, and I didn’t know how to socialize. I felt like at least I needed to be good at something so people would respect me. I felt this drive to excel in my early life, so I wouldn’t end up like my father.

My father was not good at his new job or good at socializing with others. I felt if he had been good at either one, he would have been in a much better position. If I reflect back now, I believe my father was probably having some emotional issues. He didn’t talk much and only focused on his basic needs, like eating and sleeping a lot. Because of this, he didn’t take much responsibility as a husband or father.

As a result, my mother shouldered most of the responsibilities at home, even though my father was the main breadwinner as he had a stable job in the local government. People often made fun of him because they thought that he got his job from the help of others and not because of his own ability. I remember one instance in the village when the leaders were giving us a hard time in regard to allocating some land for us to build our house. I saw my mom arguing fiercely with them and accusing them of their wrongdoings. My father would never do this due to his weak character. After a few days, my mom ended up inviting these leaders to eat at our home. She was bribing them or trying to make peace with them. She finally resolved the issue, and we got the land we needed to build our house. My mom was a strong woman, and she also had a lot more friends than my father. She loved me very much, especially since I was her youngest son, and I learned a lot from her. I developed perseverance and flexibility.  Even though I encountered many difficult moments in my life down the road, I never gave up. I became even more resilient, and my will to succeed became even stronger after I experienced failures. My wife also saw this quality in me, and she joked, “You are just a little Xiao Qiang that will never die.”  Xiao Qiang is a nickname for a cockroach in Chinese. People use it in a sarcastic manner to describe someone with a strong and resilient character that you just can’t kill, even as you can never seem to eradicate cockroaches completely. During my childhood, I got bullied a lot by my peers due to my weak build and lack of male protection at home. But through this, I developed a strong will because I kept fighting even if I lost. I feel this character trait is the main reason that God is using or calling me to do His will.  The call that God has entrusted me with requires a lot of perseverance and discipline. It may be God who was training me through these circumstances in my early life.

In spite of this, I was still timid and afraid to step out because of my fears. In recent years the Lord miraculously delivered me from some of these strongholds. I don’t have time to go through all of my experiences with deliverance here, but I will share one example. I did end up forgiving my father and loving him after my conversion to Christianity.  This issue became especially clear to me during an inner healing session, where a minister told me that it was the enemy's plan to put an end to God’s calling on my life by attacking my father. I believe he was experiencing difficulty expressing his emotions because of this.

 

The Leading of the Holy Spirit in My Life

I took the college entrance exam three times before finally being accepted into a college in Beijing. When I was selecting a major and a college, I was planning on studying philosophy at a renowned university in Beijing. One day around noon, at the time I usually rest, I had a hard time sleeping. I remembered something others had told me during my high school years. A friend of mine told me I would be a good journalist because he thought I spoke eloquently. So I decided to choose journalism as a major in another college that focused on liberal arts instead. I realized years later that this was the leading of the Holy Spirit, even though at that time, I did not know Him. God had led me on a journey to study media and become familiar with these areas. I used to dream of becoming a TV host and having a successful career in this field. But after coming to the US, I started to spend most of my time learning about spiritual things, and my dream of being successful in media died down gradually. One day in 2016, I received a prophetic word from a woman, and she said God wanted me to return to media. It was God who gave me the desire initially. I also had a prophetic dream where I was taken to a heavenly meeting.  Many who were called to TV evangelism were gathered there. I was led to a large TV studio, and I saw a poster that relayed the reason I was chosen to be part of this ministry. The sign said, “eloquent in speaking,” just like my high school classmate had told me. I also had more than a dozen dreams in which either the Lord or various angels asked me to start making films. I figured the media or films would play an important role in the coming revival in China, which I personally feel I am called to be part of. I also had a dream in which a spiritual being or angel decreed to me in English that I would soon be on national TV. I also had many dreams where my cell phone would grow larger and larger and eventually turn into a big TV. Currently, my ministry work is mainly done by using my phone to record audio for social media sites.

Even though all these dreams may be true now, I had no knowledge of my future while I was in college. The liberal arts college had more students from affluent families than regular colleges, so I experienced culture shock when I started. I will share an experience to illustrate this. At the beginning of the first semester, I met some classmates chatting in a restaurant near the main cafeteria. I just went to say hello and later left. They didn’t know that I was leaving so they ordered a lot of food. I never thought of joining them because the cost of one meal could cost 1/4 of my monthly expenses for food. They were confused that I did not come back to join them, so they thought I was strange. Situations like this continued to occur and magnified my personal weaknesses, such as lack of social skills and other flaws. I started to develop some hostile relationships with others, which made my life miserable, and I became even more closed. In some situations, I had been taken advantage of, so I figured the reason my life was miserable was that I came from a rural area, and people were prejudiced against me. Another issue was that I was too simple and naive and not sophisticated enough to survive in this environment. During this time, an old Chinese history book called Thick Black Theory from 1911 was very popular. The book presents an idea that the more hardened your heart is, the more successful you will be in Chinese society. The original author may have intended to expose this negative culture, but some people used it for different purposes. Because I wasn’t in a good place, I had thoughts of taking advantage of others even though I knew it wasn’t like me. This left me with regrets later on and became a turning point for me to repent and receive salvation.

During my difficult time in college, I realized something. In my class, many students wanted to stay in Beijing after graduating. But only a few bright students or students who have family connections could find jobs in Beijing because China has a Hu Kou[2] system to limit the number of people staying in Beijing. I knew I had no chance of being one of them. I found out that being a graduate student almost guaranteed that I could stay in Beijing, so I decided to take the graduate entrance exam. I focused all my energy on preparing for this exam, and I was very confident that I would be successful. Amazingly I scored third among all the students who tried to enter the graduation program for my major, and they recruited a dozen every year. However, I failed the subject of politics by a few points. I had a really bad headache during the exam, so I did not score well even though I knew the material. I now believe this was God’s intervention, as I never had any issues with headaches. During my college years, I learned from some friends at Beijing University that people can take TOFEL or GRE exams to come to the US to study. I felt naturally drawn to this idea. But I was not sure if I really wanted to leave China. I told myself I would stay in China forever if I could get into Chinese graduate school successfully. If not, I would go to the US to attend graduate school. I was never good at planning or having a balanced approach to life. So after I failed to enter the graduate program, I did not have a job either, and I fell into despair. Only a couple of students from my class were able to get jobs in Beijing, and I did not want to go back to my hometown or go to other places to work. I wanted to stay in Beijing as did many people, and unexpectedly a new opportunity opened up. There was a student from another university in one of the departments in my college that could not work out some legal issues for recruitment after spending many months interning there. Everyone wanted him to stay, but he could not violate the legal bond with his sponsor in his own province. By this time, some of the students had already found jobs, so one teacher recommended me for this position. The department head immediately agreed to recruit me after a brief interview. It was considered a great privilege to be recruited by our own college, and students got full boarding with a citizenship status in Beijing and could become a university or state employee.  So many students wanted to get this position but, they could not. Eventually, this news got out, and it caused turmoil. Other faculty members who were supportive of other students got into fights with this director to try to replace me, and all kinds of rumors were circulated on campus. But the more they pushed, the more firmly this director wanted me to stay. I ended up getting a permanent job in Beijing, and I became a citizen of Beijing. I know there are still people who are mad at me because they didn’t get that job.

Even though I got the job, it didn’t satisfy me, and the thought of going out of the country to study still lingered in my mind. I could not take the graduate exam in China again, as the regulation requires that university employees must get approval from a supervisor to do so. My supervisors were not willing to do so. The only way to apply for graduate school was to apply internationally, and there were no regulations for that. Many students in universities in Beijing were very enthusiastic about studying abroad in the late 1990s. The thought could even be considered contagious, and I was influenced by it through my friends at Beijing University.  After I tried for several years, I finally got an offer from the London School of Economics and the University of Southern California in their joint Media and Globalization program.

At this point, my story connects with my testimony at the beginning of this assignment. It was in London that I started to encounter God. I would later meet some Christians who shared their faith with me and touched my life in a profound way. I did not sleep well at that point because I started to feel I was a sinner because of some things I did in college during my darkest moments. I had no peace, so I would often go out to a nearby soccer field to shout out in English what came to my mind. I heard this was a good way to practice English by speaking out loud whatever came to mind. So I went to shout out all my anxieties and pains and regrets to heaven. I thought I was the only one there, but later I believed it was the Holy Spirit that was there to convict me. Only later on did I learn that the glory of God can also be translated as the weight of God. I certainly felt the weight at that time, and I felt like the sky pressed down upon me  to such an extent that I could not breathe. It was an encounter with God, even though I only realized this years later.

 

 

 

Maturing in Faith

My life was full of miracles and difficult moments one after another. I cannot share all of them in this short biography, but I will share a few stories that impacted my spiritual life greatly.

My spiritual journey continued in 2004. I met my wife at the church I was attending in March 2006, and we got married in November 2006. We were on fire for God, and we planned to evangelize to all of our family. We brought a suitcase of Bibles when we returned to China that winter. When my mother-in-law[3] saw my wife return wearing the clothes that she left China in and with no money, but only a suitcase of Bibles, she was very upset and threw the Bibles down the staircase. With tears in our eyes, we went to my home town. A Christian sister received us, hugged my wife, and they both cried. When we returned to the US, my wife struggled with depression because her communication with her mother was cut off. She did not speak to her mom for almost a year, and we fell into despair again. We experienced many trials in our marriage. Sometimes my wife would say that she never had any arguments with her mother before our marriage. Therefore, if she had not married me, it would not have happened. I argued that I was also a victim, and she should not blame me. This tension kept building, and the Lord used this to break me. In August 2006, I moved from Los Angeles to a new job in New Jersey in order to be closer to my wife, who was a graduate student at the University of Maryland. But after marriage, I quit my job to join her in Maryland at the end of 2007. I lost my H-1B status and became her dependent on F-2 visa[4]. The church I was attending tried to help me obtain a religious visa, but it was denied.  The process of obtaining a religious visa was very strict when it came to qualifications. The church I was attending was not well off financially, and I lacked formal seminary training.  One day we were arguing again, and my wife said to me, “Look, you can’t make money, and you can’t help by applying for a green card either. Let’s not talk about those. Now you even don’t care for me.” I was completely broken. I felt utterly helpless. I was volunteering in my church at the time and planned to serve full time in the future. In March 2009, my wife told me I had to find a job before the end of April. I fell into despair again. It was very difficult for me to find a job in the DC metro area. I just prayed to God and said, “I know it seems impossible, but I will put my trust in you.” It was another prayer out of the deepest part of my inner being. However, a miracle happened again. Against all the odds, I got a full-time job on April 20 2019, working for a non-profit organization in the DC area. Even more amazingly, we got our green cards in a very short time through the sponsorship of my company. Later on, my wife and her mother were able to reconcile, and her mom came to stay with us when she visited. She was also baptized during one of these visits. Currently, she lives with us and helps us to take care of our daughter. She is a great help to us.

We soon experienced another trial in 2010. We recognized we were having trouble getting pregnant after 4 years of marriage. My wife is a physician, and she started to propose trying in vitro fertilization. In 2010 we did our first round of IVF, and we had high hopes of getting pregnant with twins. However, they did not survive beyond three days. My wife fell to depression again.  Both my mom and I were praying that we can have our child. But I prayed to Jesus and she prayed to her idol.

 

 

Who is the Real God? Jesus or Buddha?

My great-grandfather and grandfather are devout believers of Lü Zu, who is a figure in the Taoism religion. It is said in a local legend that one day, the Japanese were preparing to attack our village, but because of the heavy fog, the Japanese got lost. Thus, they were not able to enter our village. The villagers thought that it was a theophany of Lü Zu, and they built a special temple for him, but the temple was demolished during the Cultural Revolution. However, after the Cultural Revolution, the temple was restored. The people rebuilt the temple, and the incense was flourishing, showing the power of faith and even the superstition of the faith among the people. I had not seen my great grandfather, but I heard from my family that my great grandfather was a former enthusiast of the Lüzu Temple. When the temple was being rebuilt, my grandfather also donated wood, and I saw it with my own eyes. Ever since childhood, I saw in my grandfather’s house that he was worshipping Lü Zu.

My hometown also had a lot of Buddhist believers, and my mother had always worshipped Guanyin Bodhisattva. The location of our house was the base of a Bodhisattva temple that was previously demolished. Therefore, villagers said that our family is in the "West Temple."  Before my mother received her faith in Jesus Christ, one of her reasons for not believing in Christ was, "Our family is in the West Temple, how can we not believe this?" Although my mother was not on good terms with my grandfather for most of her life and she didn’t worship Lü Zu, she highly respected the sorcerer in the Lüzu Temple in our village. This sorcerer did not have a good education or an affluent family background. Suddenly one day, he just seemed to be possessed by a deity and became a sorcerer. Everyone often asked him questions and treated him similarly to how Christians treat prophets. This sorcerer was a frequent and respected guest at the Lüzu Temple. When I was young, he used to come to my house, and I disliked him very much because I didn't believe in anything at that time. Like my father, who was deeply influenced by communist education, I really hated this feudal superstition.

I became a Christian when I came to the United States. I have always evangelized my family, but the effect has been very limited. My mom always said, “We should go our own way. You believe in your Christ, I believe in my Bodhisattva.” I took my parents to Qingdao, China, one year, and my friend, a Christian brother, took us out to eat. He tried to evangelize my parents during the meal, but my father left in anger because of it.

My wife and I were married for ten years, but we had experienced 10 years of infertility. In addition to seeking medical help, I also prayed that God would heal us. My mother was also anxious, and she prayed to Bodhisattva, asked the sorcerer, and visited all kinds of idols around my hometown, asking them when we would have children. In 2010 our first IVF failed, which was devastating for my wife and I. During this time, my parents came to the United States for a short visit. After coming in contact with the gospel for a time, my mother intended to accept the gospel to please us. However, when she saw the situation we were in, she did not believe in the Lord, and when she left, she told me instead, "You two believe in Jesus, but you were not blessed. Without a child, you two will quarrel and will not agree. I will not believe in this Lord." After returning, she still worshipped Bodhisattva, and her heart had become more hardened. Because she read a little bit of the Bible in her short time in the United States, I took her to participate in the activities of our church in New Jersey. When she saw people being baptized, I encouraged her to accept the Lord. She seemed to have some hesitation, but on the side, my dad was trying his best to stop her from believing in the Lord. She decided she didn’t want to, and in the end, she was not baptized.

We seemed to have gone back to square one, but I still believed in our God, and my mother still worshipped her Bodhisattva. I then said to my mom, “You worship your Bodhisattva, I believe in my God. We are all praying for us to have children. Why don’t we play a game? Let’s see if your Bodhisattva or my God is reliable.” At that time, my faith was not sufficient because God hadn’t promised and talked with me about our miracle baby yet. I just relied on a Christian's basic belief in God.

Six years had gone by so quickly, and we had tried IVF five or six times, but each time it failed. Finally, the doctor at a big hospital in the United States gave us the diagnosis that we could never give birth naturally, and we fell into despair. I felt like I was forced to leave the evangelical church in 2015 to seek healing for infertility. I went to many different churches in the United States to ask for help, which included charismatic churches, and I sought prayer and healing. I had also participated in countless charismatic healing conferences but never saw any results. In January 2016, I found out by chance that there was a prophetic meeting in a small town in Oregon in the Midwestern United States. I signed up, and I flew from Maryland to attend this special meeting. A speaker named Dutch Sheets was preaching at the meeting, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. He said, "You are here today to attend the special meeting. Don't think it is accidental. God is leading you. Beginning today, you will clearly hear God’s voice that you’ve never had before.” When I heard this, I was moved and greatly encouraged in my spirit. I strolled and walked into a Target store during the break and said to God, “Please speak to me clearly today.”

I inexplicably walked to a place inside the Target store, and I saw a Christian bookstore. I could see the inside through the glass window, and there was a bench outside the door. I happened to see the glass window of the bookstore while I was sitting on the bench. Not long after I sat down, my eyes caught sight of a 2016 calendar with the words “2016 Prepare Your Family”. I heard God say to me: "Prepare your family in 2016. You will have a child this year." I was shocked! I had never heard God clearly like this before. I was ecstatic! I immediately took a photo of this calendar and called my wife to tell her that God had spoken to me and that He told me that we would have a child this year. My wife told me to buy this calendar as a keepsake. After I bought it, I went back to the bench, and just as I sat down, I noticed that there was a picture of a Bible hanging on the wall of the Christian bookstore. It was the same picture I found when I was casually searching on the Internet when I first started the "Jairus Bible World Ministry." I use this picture every time I upload a recording. Then I heard God say to me, "Jairus Bible World Ministry came from me." The church I was attending didn’t encourage the members to have their own ministry, so I was not sure at the time if I was doing the right thing. But once again, God spoke to me clearly. Thus, I slowly overcame my fear of people and started my own ministry.

To my surprise, I clearly heard God's words, but I didn’t know when it would be accomplished. In spite of this, my confidence had increased. I returned to China for the Chinese New Year in February 2016, and I had widely publicized to my family that God would give me a child this year. My sister is a straightforward person, and she said dubiously, “Since younger brother said this in advance if it is true, it seems that the God that he believes is true.” However, my mother was still hard-hearted. At that time, I learned a few healing prayers from the charismatics. When I saw people, I prayed, healing prayers over them. My two cousins also struggled with infertility, so I prayed healing prayers over them, and I prayed to God to let them have children. My mother saw this, and she was very upset. She said, “You are not able to solve your own problem. Don't make a fool of yourself.” My mom still didn’t believe in God.

I went back to the United States, and a few months passed by, but nothing changed. Instead, Satan’s attack on our family was even fiercer, causing my wife and me to quarrel often. I was really in agony, and I prayed for something that may not conform to traditional theology. On May 12, 2016, I said to the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, the charismatic Christians are teaching that we should establish a more intimate relationship with You. I don’t know how many times I have prayed to Heavenly Father and Jesus. Can you ask Heavenly Father and Jesus for me when this miracle will be accomplished?” I slept, and I had a strange dream in the evening. In the dream, a woman pointed at a man’s back and said to me, “Didn't He tell you that you will have a child next month?” I answered her in the dream, “No, I know in my spirit that this will happen soon, but I didn’t know that it will be next month.”

God is not a human being. The way God speaks is mostly through the language of the spirit and often through pictures. The Bible often uses a woman to represent the Holy Spirit, such as the woman in Luke 15, who had swept the house and searched carefully for lost silver coins. Generally, Christians think that she represents the Holy Spirit. I think that the woman in my dream was the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and the person whose back I saw was Jesus Christ’s. I guess the Holy Spirit was telling me, “Didn’t Jesus Christ tell you that you will have a child next month?” I told my wife about my dream, but she didn’t believe it. Instead, Satan once again launched a fierce attack on us. Because of a small issue, my wife was very angry with me, and she barely spoke to me for two weeks. This pained me greatly until May 28, 2016, when my wife found herself miraculously pregnant, and she sent a text message to me: "You won the lottery." We had also reconciled. This incident brought a lot of healing to my wife and me. As David said, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (NIV, Psalm 30:5). The enemy had violently attacked the plans that God had for us, but in the end, God was victorious through us. Our miracle baby was born without any issues and perfectly healthy in early 2017.

When my wife was still in the first trimester, I had not told my mother yet. One day, I was giving out some cash tips in a group of friends and relatives in the WeChat group for a Chinese holiday. My mother was very sensitive and asked if something had happened, so I told her after and she was very happy. Sometime after the baby was born, I was on a video call with my mother, and I asked her about Jesus because I had not mentioned it for a long time since she had previously refused to believe in Him. She said obediently, “I’m willing to believe in Jesus Christ.” I said, “Why?” She replied, “Isn’t your fact placed before me?” My mother finally admitted that my God is the true God. This game ended with my victory.

In 2018, I went back to China to visit my family. I baptized my father and mother into the name of Jesus Christ.

 

Convergence

During this process of seeking healing for my wife, I was led by the Holy Spirit to come out of my evangelical church and begin to learn more about other denominations, including charismatic churches.  I learned about United Theological Seminary through Global Awakening. During this process, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and started to speak in tongues. I also earnestly pursued the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, including prophecy and healing. During one of the difficult times of our barrenness, my wife sometimes pushed me into a corner by talking about divorce. I knew she did not mean it and that she was trying to see how far she could push me. She wanted to see if I would still love her if we didn’t have a baby. Unfortunately, we knew many Chinese families were broken because of this issue. One day when she was pushing me again, I literally heard Satan whisper to me, “just say yes.” I felt I could no longer bear this burden anymore, so I prayed to God, “if you don’t strengthen me right now, I will fall, and I can no longer serve you as I will lose my testimony before you.” Immediately I felt a bolt of electricity poured down from my head toward my entire body, and the grace of the Lord once again sustained me. During this difficult time, I was led into the wilderness to go through a series of trials and tests. The Lord sustained me from the beginning to the end.

Recently I met a Korean prophet who told me that the Holy Spirit had led me every step of my life. This resonated in my heart. One night I had a dream, and in this dream, I found an enormous bird with wings of various colors spread out all over the sky. In the corner of the sky, there was a baby bird learning to fly. But the baby birds starting falling, and the big bird swooped down to carry the baby bird on its back, and they sored in heaven. This dream occurred a couple of times, and then I heard God speak to me in the dream. “I will train you myself like the big bird is training the baby bird.” I felt this dream could be from God. My life so far felt like a thrilling ride of a roller coaster. Through the trials, miracles, and encounters, I was now convinced I was in the hand of God. I struggled for a long time, but I learned to rest in God even though many times, I didn’t see Him or understand what He was doing. But each time, I had greater faith than I did before. God is in control of everything, whether it is regarding our personal lives or world affairs.

One of the greatest struggles, in the beginning, was that I thought I was not smart enough to be used by God. I even felt that I was stupid because of so many failures in my life. I heard a story that greatly encouraged me by D. L. Moody.  He was feeling inferior because of his limited education, but one day he heard a word from an English preacher, the world is yet to see how God can use and will use a person who is absolutely consecrated to God to change the world. D. L. Moody was encouraged greatly and consecrated himself to God, and God used him greatly. I also gained a lot of strength from this word and consecrated myself to God. I know it was not my wisdom but the empowerment of the Holy Spirit who was working in me.

After I left my denomination in 2015, many brothers and sisters who loved and cared for me during my early Christians years shared their concerns. Some thought I was deceived by evil spirits or taken over by my own ambition or crazy charismatic teachings. About a month ago, I woke up one morning feeling very tired, so I laid down again to sleep a little more. As I fell back asleep, I had a dream that I was with a brother who was a friend of mine in the Brother’s House I used to live when I first came to the US. This brother was my roommate for four years, and now he was serving full time in my previous denomination. In this dream, I was explaining to him why I had another meeting in this Brother’s House, which was different from our own denomination. I told him it was because the Lord wanted me to connect with other Christians so my heart could be broadened. In the future, I would not only serve my own denomination, but I would also serve Christians in many other denominations. In other words, the Lord was training me to prepare for bigger ministries.

Later on, when I was driving to work, this brother texted me and told me he wanted to visit me that day. He had just traveled to a nearby state a couple of days ago. I told him about the dream I had that morning, and he was stunned. He visited our home that night, and we had lunch the next day. He did share his concerns with me and politely reminded me to stay healthy physically and mentally as well since I always had these weird dreams.

I had a very difficult time leaving my denomination as the teachings there stressed the unity of our church to a great extent. I was quite concerned that I may have broken the unity of the body of Christ when I left my church. Even though it was difficult, the church and the brothers and sisters there treated me well, and many felt like family to me. This process was very painful, and it felt like a baby being weaned from its mother. At this time, the Lord showed me a vision in my spirit of the Yangtze River in China. He then showed me a tributary in the upper stream and then showed me a tributary in the lower stream. He then told me that I was in oneness with the body of Christ as long as I follow the leading of His Spirit. It was Him who brought me to the upper stream, and now He was leading me to a different stream. The people in the upper stream where I began would join me later, but I would never go back to Tibetan Plateau even though my tributary started there. He encouraged me just to follow the flow, and I was greatly encouraged by these words from the Lord.

I took all of the healing and prophetic classes offered by Global Awakening after I connected with this ministry. Through these courses, I started to learn more about the teachings on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and started to develop my spiritual gifts. I was especially interested in the gifts of healing and prophecy.

In a meeting held by Global Awakening in 2015, I received another baptism of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit fell on me, I fell back a dozen steps and fell down on the chairs along with two other brothers who had been praying with me. After that experience, I started to have more encounters with the spiritual realm, mainly through prophetic dreams. In these dreams, I encountered Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Angels, sometimes evil spirits, and even diseased people (mostly Chinese people) many times. Beginning in 2015, I started to have prophetic dreams almost every night, and I faithfully wrote them down in my journal. Many of them were about the coming revivals in China and other parts of the world. I also had one encounter with Jesus when I was taken to heaven on the last day of 2017. He showed me from behind a glass window that people were coming up to heaven. He challenged me to deal with some issues in my life, so he could use me greatly. He also appeared to me in a dream where I was taken to a campus in China, and he laid his hand on my head. I fell down backward, and he left after I got up. I was also taken to Japan in a prophetic dream, and I saw Jesus taking something out of the nail hole from his leg to rub on the wounds in my hands. My hands were wounded due to my fishing activities there. He also appeared to me in another dream, and He told me that two rivers would emerge in the area of Maryland where I live, but He did not specifically mention what these two rivers were. But when we went to the ministry of Mahesh Chavda for healing prayers and prophetic ministry in 2015, one person who prayed for us saw two lines crossing over the sky and told me he heard the Lord saying “convergence.” I also saw a vision of tornado in 2013, and I felt it was a promise of God that revival will come like a tornado, and it will spread all over the place.

 

The Coming China Revival

When I reflect on this journey of receiving spiritual education, I can clearly see the leading of the Lord. I was saved in a church associated with Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and this denomination focuses a lot on the inner life and spiritual discipline. After thirteen years in this denomination, I was led by the Lord to learn from other charismatic churches. Now I have the opportunity to be educated by UTS, and the people I have met here have also opened my eyes to new perspectives. I believe the training at UTS will further my understanding of God, the Bible, and the Church. I also trust that God will open more doors for me through my connection with UTS and Global Awakening. Like I told one of my peers during the intensive training at Dayton, I hope to be a bridge between the Chinese church and the churches in the West and the rest of the world. Together we can usher in the promised revivals in China and all over the world.

I will conclude this biography with another conversation I had with the Holy Spirit. Before I went to a prophetic conference in 2015, I was reading Chuck Pierce’s book, who was one of the speakers at the conference. In this book, he said Jesus visited him in the 1980s and told him China would be huge one day, and there will be a great revival in China, and this revival would spread all over the world. One day after I came back from the trip, I was pondering this when suddenly I heard the Holy Spirit ask me, “what is a great revival?” I immediately answered Him in my spirit, “I heard that one out of ten people in China is a Christian now, isn’t that a great revival already?” Then the Holy Spirit replied back, “how about two out of ten?” I calculated quickly in my spirit and realized that it would be another 100 million Chinese people. I was quite shocked. Then I heard a prophecy from Bob Jones that one billion souls would be harvested in the coming revival. It is hard to imagine that at least 100 million Chinese wouldn’t be included in this number. I felt my calling was to be a part of this great revival in China.

My main gift is teaching, and I learned from a very young age that I was skilled in public speaking even though I was shy in interpersonal communication. I further developed this gift because I had a desire to become a TV host. I also received a teaching anointing while I was with the church associated with Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. They encouraged everyone to teach the Bible, and I have been leading Bible studies for over 10 years, and it has helped improve the gift of teaching. It was confirmed by many prophetic words that the Lord gave me this skill to break down difficult subjects to allow other people to understand easily. I feel I am called to teach the Word of God to help God’s people understand the deeper meaning behind the Bible. However, before I do that, I need to be well trained myself. I have limited knowledge of theology, and I have learned a lot in my pre-doctoral program at UTS. I am hoping to learn more during my studies in this doctoral program. There is so much richness in the body of Christ, and I hope to learn as much as I can from others.

 

Written by Sean Song

Edited by Danielle Pagnanella

 

[1] The Form I-20 is also known as the Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student Status-For Academic and Language Students.

[2] Hukou is a system of household registration used in mainland China. Wikipedia, Hukou is a system of household registration used in mainland China. Wikipedia, accessed on 12/13/2019

[3] My father-in-law had passed away a while back from a stroke.

 

[4] The F-2 dependent visa is a nonimmigrant visa which allows dependent spouses and children(unmarried, under 21 years old) of F-1 student visa holders to enter into the U.S. https://www.visapro.com/family-visas/f2-visa/faq2/ accessed on 12/13/2019/

Bible Study with Jairus - Why we use the Name Jairus

Jairus means “Jehovah who enlightens.” This is not a commonly used name and until 2016, it didn’t mean anything significant for me more than any other name. However, through a series of personal challenges, Jairus suddenly became very meaningful to me and thus Jairus Bible World Ministries came to bear this name.

I married my wife in 2006. For 10 years, we battled with infertility. We tried every method available to us including Chinese herbal medicine and in vitro fertilization (IVF). Our five IVF attempts failed, and even our last-ditch effort to secure a pregnancy with an egg donor ended quickly when our donor changed her mind at the last minute. You can imagine the darkness my wife and I experienced. Through a long journey of relentless prayer and fighting to believe a prophetic promise from the Lord, God spoke to me in a dream and told me that my wife would soon become pregnant. Miraculously, and to our surprise, my wife found herself pregnant with our miracle daughter on May 28th, 2016. Elim, our crowning glory, was born healthy months later and remains our precious miracle baby.

Though our hearts are now filled with great joy, this ten-year process was not without many dark moments of the soul. When I look back, I can see that God tried to speak to me and give me strength many times, but I had a difficult time hearing him. The years between 2014 and 2016 were a time of transition for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but God was transitioning me from an Evangelical church to a Charismatic congregation and entrusting a ministry to me! I would move from a season of testing in the wilderness to abundance. Yet, before I could, I had to face the reality of my situation.

The reality of our bareness was difficult. I felt like I had hit a wall when it came to receiving healing and also the baptism of the Holy Spirit (as evidenced by tongues and manifestations). These were two things I had been diligently seeking after I became aware that they were available to me. In fact, my desire for these two things is what drove me into Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. I had been a Christian for 13 years, but I had never attended a Charismatic church. In sharing the rest of this story, please be informed that I am not inferring that one denomination is better than nor superior to another. I have learned that each church who is serving Christ embraces certain biblical truths and no denomination has the whole picture. I remain deeply grateful to all of the churches I’ve attended in the past. They have helped me in numerous ways including both spiritually and even financially. Sharing my experience of being in two very different denominations is for the purpose of showing how God was taking me out of my comfort zone to allow me to learn about Him from a different perspective.

The church I was mainly involved with before my charismatic church experiences didn’t encourage individuals to have personal ministries. Instead, a congregant’s main responsibility was to continue building the ministry that the founders of the denomination had started. My background taught me that we should be committed to build the ministry of the age, which is a term we give to the ministry of our founders. This is different than the beliefs of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches who teach and encourage every Christian to have their own ministry. When I first heard this preached, it was a foreign concept to me.

In my determination to know the Lord more and receive a miracle, I committed to pray every day in 2014 until the Lord healed my wife and baptized me in the Holy Spirit. Each day during my lunch break I would sit in a park and pray for these things. I continued to do this until I was overcome with devastation from the failure of our last IVF treatment. The doctor diagnosed that there would be no way for us to naturally conceive. Our only hope was to use an egg donor. As a final option, we tried this as well, but it also rendered fruitless. Looking back, my wife and I believe it was God’s intention for us to conceive naturally. We believed in miracles at the time, but we weren’t completely certain that God was going to give us a child naturally which is why we tried every other option available to us.

Although devastated, my wife and I remained steadfast in our weekly Bible studies. We had been holding Bible studies every week in Chinese with a few other families. One week we came to chapter 5 in the Gospel of Mark. Written there is a story about a man named Jairus who went to Jesus to request his presence to heal his sick daughter. Jesus agreed to go with him and heal his daughter, but on the way to his home, Jesus was stopped by a woman with a bleeding problem. This woman spoke to herself as she made her way to Jesus, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well” (Mk. 5:28 NRSV). Of course, the woman did get healed, and Jesus praised her stating that it was her faith that made her well. Reading the story this time stood out to me in a different way than before.

I raised the question to our participants: “What do you think Jairus’s reaction would have been when Jesus delayed, and this woman was healed?” Would he have said, “Come on, Jesus, my issue is more important; I came to you first because my daughter is dying and now you stop for this unclean woman!? Have some respect, people; there is a line here!” I’m sure I may have felt this way if I were him. I was once at a healing meeting in New York and I witnessed what people are capable of when they are desperate. They all tried to rush in the door of the church to secure a spot inside because the limited space would not hold the couple thousand people in attendance.

Perhaps, though, Jairus may have acted like a saint, and he may have said, “That’s fine, no problem. Her need is more important than mine. Don’t worry, everything is in God’s hands. Even if my daughter dies, she will be in heaven with God.” Or, Jairus could have reacted passively, “Whatever happens, happens. There is nothing I can do anyway. It’s not my call.” The Bible does not describe Jairus’ reaction, but I learned from a great Chinese Bible teacher, Witness Lee, that what the Bible does not say is equally as important as what it does say. I can only imagine that Jairus’s reaction was filled with emotion and panic. At the end of the story, someone from home tells Jairus to no longer ask Jesus to come to his house. Verse 36b says, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But verse 37 records Jesus’ immediate reaction when he heard this: “But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”

What happened between the words spoken by Jairus’ friend in verse 36 and the words Jesus spoke in verse 37? Did Jesus see the agony in Jairus’s face? Or could he see that Jairus’ faith was weak? I think both may have been the case; otherwise, Jesus would not have spoken to him immediately. It’s just like Jesus to step in and speak life to someone in the midst of all the negative voices.

On this particular day of our Bible study, when I read this phrase, “Do not fear, only believe,” it was as if God had spoken it to me personally. These words penetrated my heart. It was like I was being led by the Holy Spirit into the inner emotions of Jairus. For a moment, the woman and Jairus were one. I don’t mean in a literal sense; they were still different people. But in a spiritual sense, these two characters were both a part of me. Some of the feelings Jairus may have experienced such as panic, disappointment or anger resembled some of my own. And yet, like the woman, I was approaching God by faith hoping for a miracle in my wife’s body. I was so impacted by this revelation that I started to use this phrase when I published the recordings of our Bible studies online. 

As our discussion continued, I raised another question. “Why did God allow the delay in the healing of Jairus’ daughter?” We know God is sovereign and nothing can happen except by the will of the Father. We also know that the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Bible and it is no coincidence that Mark put these passages together in one segment. I felt there must have been a purpose in the delay of the healing of his daughter.

My wife always talks about the author, Cao Xueqin, who wrote the novel Dream of the Red Chamber. It is a well-known 18th century classic Chinese novel. Many say that Cao Xueqin was writing about figures related to the Royal family, and it would have put him in danger if they knew he was referencing them. Because of this, he masterfully created several characters and put the different characteristics of one person into them. I find that the Holy Spirit is also a master when it comes to the inspiration behind the writing of the Bible.

I felt the Holy Spirit had revealed the answer to me. The purpose of the delay was obviously to heal the woman with the blood issue. But what does the issue of blood represent? It is the leaking out of life; it is a lack of faith. The leaking of our faith must be stopped first before we can be healed. Perhaps you have heard the saying that God wants to give us what we ask for, but first he will give us something we need. Before the healing of his daughter, Jairus needed to be healed from his lack of faith. This woman with the issue of the blood was a woman of faith and a blaring sign to Jairus of what he needed in order to receive his miracle. What Jairus lacked, this woman stood as an example of.

When I was praying in the park one day in the beginning of 2014, I had a conversation with God that went something like this. I said, “I will never stop bothering you, Lord. If you do not heal my wife and baptize me in your Holy Spirit, I will bug you every day until the end of my life. I will see you one day in heaven and even ask you to your face—WHY? Isaiah 28 says, ‘those who trust in the Lord will be never put to shame.’ If I were put to shame for this matter, the shame will be yours. If you don’t do these things according to your promise, then I can say you are a liar. But I know you are not a liar. I don’t understand what is going on here [in my life].”  All my emotions came pouring out. I was like that infamous woman with the issue of the blood. Sometimes I was adamant, perseverant, and full of faith. But other times I could be like Jairus full of agony and pain while holding the promise of Jesus to heal his daughter.

We all have access to the promises of God concerning healing (which is stated in many verses in the Bible). However, I was experiencing the delay of its coming. My question to you, reader, is this: Are you also experiencing a delay in any promises you have been believing for? Do you see yourself in these two characters? I have certainly seen myself in them.

I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me that day, “The delay has a purpose. Do not fear, only believe.” I felt really encouraged and all of us in the Bible study also felt the same. We ended our time with each person declaring “Do not fear, only believe.” I felt the Lord was using this difficult time to perfect my faith in Him. In due time my wife would be healed.

Now, getting back to what I mentioned earlier. The concept of having my own ministry was foreign to me. It was not on my radar. I even struggled with the fact that it may be against my former church’s teaching. I wondered if it would be seen as pride or self-promotion. Despite my reservations, I still felt I should go ahead and start this ministry. I thought to myself, “What’s a good middle ground I can take?” I decided to use “Jairus” rather than my own name since it had spoken to me so much.

In January 2016, at an Elijah List conference in Oregon, God spoke two things to me. First, he confirmed to me that Jairus Bible World Ministries is from him. Second, he assured me that my wife and I would have a baby that year which we did. God’s response to Jairus, the woman, to me and to all that believe for a promise is the same: “Do not fear; only believe.” I pray this post has been a blessing to you!

Bible Study with Jairus - My Testimony

Bible Study with Jairus - My Testimony

This post was originally written in 2004 in Chinese for a Chinese Gospel Magazine and was translated into English in 2010 and revised in 2018. After rereading the post I realize it was poorly written but I feel it still reflects my spiritual condition in 2004. In the future I plan to write another testimony telling the story of my salvation from a different perspective that reflects my spiritual growth throughout the years.

The hopeless condition of man is the beginning of knowing God

I was born in the Hebei province of China. My hometown is a small village in the south of Hebei province. It is adjacent to Henan province and is situated near a river. My family was poor but started to earn more money when my father began to work at the local township auditing department. My mom stayed in the village to grow crops and feed pigs. In spite of the hardships my family’s financial situation was more stable than other families in the village.

As a child, I always wondered why we live on earth. I would always think about this in my yard while looking at the stars. Sometimes I sat on a small hill near my village wondering, “Where will I be in the future?”

My older sister was enrolled in college in 1981 and was the only one to be accepted to college in our whole county that year. This was turned into a huge event. Not only did the local teaching authority pay a lot of attention to this, it also changed the mind of my grandpa and other family members. It is not common to have a child from a rural village enter into college. Also, people in the village were prejudiced against females. So, my grandpa said that my brother and I must be accepted into a college.

When it was my turn to go to college I was accepted into a college in Beijing. However, I faced many hardships. Not only was I pressured financially, but I also had to face inequalities. There are always prejudices against people from rural or poor areas in China. I felt hurt inside and sometimes became very passive. After four years of college, I stayed worked there for another 4 years. I wasn’t satisfied with that life and I still felt empty and didn’t know what my purpose in life was.

Because of this, I decided to study abroad, which is the dream of many Chinese students. I got a joint offer from the London School of Economics at UK and the University of Southern California. The tuition for the university in London was around 10,300 pounds, but I only had 10,000 pounds. By the third semester, I ran out of money. I did not have enough money to pay rent, tuition, and living expenses. I was also unable to find a job. I asked my family to help, and they gave me 1000 pounds. The university later offered help with my tuition, so that problem was solved.

At this point in time, I began to look for a full-time job. One day, I was lingering in a park near McDonald’s when I heard people singing hymns. This attracted me to their gathering in the park. They were a group of Christians. They also portrayed through a play how Jesus was crucified. I was so touched and could not help but cry.

One sister named Mary came to me and shared with me about God. I asked her if she had ever seen God. How can you say there is a God if you have never seen Him? She said she did not believe it either when she was a student at Oxford. But one day, when she went to a meeting with her father, she was touched when her father was sharing something about the invisible Christ with other Christians. She thought that was probably God because she did not have it. She sent me a Bible later and asked me to come to her Church, but I never had a chance to visit because I had already started to work at McDonald’s part-time. I worked the night shift, starting from 8 pm to 3 or 4 am. It was very tiring. Sometimes I tried to get up in the morning to visit her church, but I did not have the strength to wake up.

I had already finished my first year of school in London at that time and I was looking forward to coming to the US to finish my second-year study but I did not have the money. I worked out a way to get the school to send me the I-20 first, and then I got the F-1 visa as well. But I still did not have the money. I was hoping to get a scholarship from USC, but they replied very late and only gave me a tuition waiver for 8 credits. I had to finish 24 credits to graduate.

It was a painful struggle to decide if I should come to the US. I had the visa but I did not have enough money. I really didn’t want to go back to China at that time for a few reasons and I was not satisfied with my one year study in the UK. Most importantly, I felt I was seeking something, but hadn’t found it yet.

My life was full of anxiety. I cried out in my innermost being, saying, “Whoever gives me peace, I will believe in him.” Finally, I decided to come to the US with a one-way ticket and a couple hundred dollars. When I was on the airplane, I didn’t even have a plan or know what I would do.

The first night in the US, I stayed in a classmate’s house. The second night, I had to move out, but I had no place to go. I signed the housing contracts with the school and moved into the dorm, but I could not sleep all night. The next morning, I went to the registrar’s office but I couldn’t decide if I should register. I knew that if I registered, I would have to pay the fee. If I didn’t register, I would just go back to China immediately.

I just couldn’t decide. I wandered outside of the office from morning until late afternoon. It was a painful experience. Eventually, I decided to go back to China because I realized that I could not survive here. I had already fulfilled my dream by coming to America. I started to look for some Chinese students to ask where I could find a travel agency to buy a plane ticket.

Just before I did this, I cried out again in my deepest part to God: “God, I am such a sinner, do you still remember me?” I remember exactly how I said it, and it was in English, not in Chinese. After I did that, I felt peaceful in my heart and decided to go back to China. I found a couple of Chinese students and asked them if they knew where to buy plane tickets, but they told me they had no idea.

Later, another student came across the street; I was having a hard time telling if he was Chinese or Korean. He looked Korean, so I asked if he was Korean. He was actually Chinese and a brother from the Church in Los Angeles. I asked him about the same thing, and he asked me why I wanted to go back. I told him the reason. He told me that I should not go back and I should finish my study here.

He brought me to the brother’s house near campus and fellowshipped with the Church elder and brothers who lived in the brother’s house. The brothers were willing to let me move in the brother’s house. The brothers even agreed to let me pay the rent later if I had no money. The brother taught me how to pray, and we prayed together before we went to see the housing department and my department director. The housing department agreed to cancel my contract and the department director agreed that all the 8 credits of scholarship were for the first semester. Originally, 4 credits were for the first semester, and 4 credits were for the second semester. As an international student, I was required to register at least 8 credits to become a full-time student. All of my problems seemed to be solved in a couple of days! I even found a part-time job on campus to help cover food and other needs.

I still didn’t have money for my second semester’s tuition, but the brothers taught me to pray unto God. They told me that the Lord would take care of my needs if I dedicated myself to the Lord. I also felt sinful when I first believed in the Lord, so I prayed desperately for Him to take care of my needs and forgive all my sins. After half a year, I started to feel the assurance of forgiveness. And with the help of our department director and fellow believers, I was able to pay the tuition later.

However, I continued to struggle with financial problems. Upon graduation, I couldn’t afford the monthly meal expenses because I didn’t have the job on campus anymore. So I worked at a toy store for a short period of time. I quit my job later because the boss was constantly cursing at employees. When I was in desperate need, I received a call from a Chinese magazine that had received my application and wanted to interview me. I went there by bus, and in the final bus stop, the bus driver told me I was going in the wrong direction. I was actually going in the right direction, but I didn’t know. So I started to walk in the opposite direction to take another bus. While I was walking a little bit, a van stopped by me in the street corner and asked me where I was going. A Hispanic man gave me a ride to the company and I arrived for my appointment at exactly 9 am. Later I thanked him and asked him why he helped me. I also called him brother when I thanked him. It turned out he really was a brother. He said that he was touched when he saw me walking and decided that he would drive me wherever I needed to go. He also told me that he would generally never stop for a stranger since he had three kids in the van in car seats. They were on their way to a daycare center.

I ended up getting the reporter job at the Chinese magazine. But when the boss asked me to have an interview in a certain place, I told her that I did not have a car yet. She cried out “My God!” The other boss later asked me to get a car as soon as possible. Before that, I could take the bus to work. At that time, a brother who moved out of the brother’s house left an ‘84 Lincoln Town Car for me to use, but I did not have a driver’s license. I failed a couple of times but finally got it by the due date my boss gave me.

During that month, something else happened. I was planning to come to work by bus but just a couple of days after I started to work, all the MTA bus drivers at LA went on strike for one month so I was unable to take the bus. Luckily, one private bus was still running from my company to downtown LA and a Korean brother dropped me at the bus stop when he went to work. After I got off from work, I took the bus downtown and waited for the brothers to take me home. This sometimes took a couple of hours and I used this time to recite the verses from the book of John while I was waiting. I was so touched by the brotherly love at that time.

This difficult time had led me to receive the Lord and to dedicate myself to Him. In the journey of my belief, there were many miracles. After I started to work, my financial situation got better and better. The Lord’s hand was still guiding my life. I got the job in Nov. of 2003. In that year, I overheard some believers talking about the first New Jersey Chinese Speaking Perfecting training in August of that year. This is an annual Chinese speaking conference within our denomination. They were talking about how the Lord’s spirit was working powerfully there, and how a brother from The Church in Riverside was completely changed after participating in this training. I was determined to join this training in 2004, and I knew I would experience big changes in this meeting. This was not from me, it was the Spirit leading me.

In that meeting in August 2004 at the Church in Franklin, the Spirit was everywhere. The main topic in that training was to dedicate your whole being to the Lord and to prepare for His second coming. Everyone was encouraged to dedicate himself or herself to the Lord. I refused to do so even though many brothers urged me to do so. The second to last time, two brothers urged me again to dedicate myself to the Lord. I refused again. They looked at me with judgment in their eyes, but I didn’t take it personally. I felt the judgment from the Lord strongly. He seemed to remind me: How many times did you say that you would dedicate your life to me if I did certain things for you?” I recalled in a second all my prayers in which I asked the Lord to take care of my needs and that I would dedicate my life to Him. I had already forgotten them a long time ago, but the Lord always remembers.

That night, I knelt and prayed to the Lord. “Lord, I still have a hard time believing the truth about your second coming. I would dedicate myself to you if you reveal this to me.” Later when I fell to sleep I felt two people were fighting for my heart. The Lord was stronger, and He took it. The next day I dedicated my life to the Lord. And while one brother was talking about the New Jerusalem, I felt the heavens open in my spirit. The Lord spoke to me: If the body of Christ, the New Jerusalem, is built up, I will come back. This proved that only those who dedicated their lives to the Lord can see the vision. Just like many brothers have told me.

I was completely changed when I came back from the training. I got rid of a lot of bad habits and started to pursue the truth. I read the book Life Study by Witness Lee every day. The believers in my locality were so surprised that I had changed.

Bible Study with Jairus - China’s Great Awakening

At the 2016 Elijah List conference, God challenged me to consider a great revival that is to come to China. Before the conference, I read a book written by Chuck Pierce called God’s Unfolding Battle Plan. In this book, Chuck talks about a time when Jesus visited him in the 1980s and told him there would be a great revival in China. This revival would spread all over the world.

When I found out that Chuck was going to be one of the speakers at that year’s conference, I reread the book on my way there. I was not sure why this particular testimony of revival caught my attention again. I later came to understand that the Holy Spirit was awakening my spirit to something he wanted to share with me.

After the trip, I was walking a street in D.C. one day and I suddenly heard the Holy Spirit ask me, “What constitutes a great revival?” This question came to me after I received the prophetic activation of hearing God’s voice clearer, something we received at the conference. I was surprised by the clarity with which I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me; it had not been this way before the conference. I immediately answered him in my spirit, “I heard that one out of ten people in China is now a Christian; isn’t that a great revival already?” Then the Holy Spirit replied, “How about two out of ten?” I quickly did the calculation in my head and realized that would be another 100 million Chinese people. I was shocked.

Bob Jones once prophesied that one billion souls would be harvested in the soon-coming world revival. For me, it is not hard to imagine that at least 100 million Chinese would be included in this number. Now, to clarify, I don’t think the Holy Spirit meant that only two out of ten Chinese people will be saved. Instead, the Holy Spirit was challenging me to think outside of my box. I am encouraged thinking how China and the world would be if even four or five out of ten Chinese people were saved.

Since immigrating to the United States, thoughts of ministering in my home country of China were never on my mind. I have taught, preached, and ministered mainly to Chinese students and adults within my denomination in the USA. This encounter with the Lord, however, caused me to rethink my ministry. After I accepted that God desired for me to be a part of China’s coming revival, I started to have many prophetic dreams about it. After the Elijah List conference, I also started receiving similar prophetic words and even symbolic tokens from people such as keys.

Prophetic Dream on China’s Future Revival

On January 11, 2016, shortly after coming back from the conference, I had the following dream. There are four scenes. In the first scene, I found myself on a construction site in China and there was a keeper (a guard-like man) there with a roll register in his hand. I got the impression that he was an angel who managed the Book of Life. I went to check if a relative, who had gone missing in China, was on this list of names. After looking, he replied no. I felt so sorry for this relative. In the second scene, I experienced great chaos and upheaval. I was tossed upside down and I saw pending destruction as a steel stick from the construction site fell from a building. By the end of this scene, I saw a building only partly constructed.

In the third scene, my wife and I were in a high glass tower with windows, like you see in big cities. It seemed we were a having a Christian meeting there when suddenly we received a report that we were surrounded by persecutors. Arguments began to arise among the people in the building. Some insisted to go down and some said to go up. I insisted on heading upward, so up we went. In the fourth scene, my wife and I miraculously escaped into a residential building. I told my wife that no one would see us since we appeared just like the residents. As we walked downstairs, I felt peace and a lion-like animal the size of a cat appeared among us. I carried the animal and it seemed calm and meek until we hit a great wall that we could not pass through. Suddenly, the small lion-type animal arose with great strength to help us roll the wall over. Immediately, I saw several horses gallop speedily and powerfully, and a great pasture lay before my eyes. It was powerful and reminded me of something resembling a great breakthrough or revival. I am not sure if this was the last revival that will bring the Lord back, but it was very powerful to this extreme.

I believe the Lord was showing me several stages of the coming China revival through this dream. First, the construction site represents a work in progress. An incomplete or half-erected building symbolizes that a work has begun but is not complete. The angelic being keeping track of lives demonstrates God’s involvement and desire. It shows their salvation is important to God. My attempt to find a dead person can represent the spiritual state of many persons in China, and my sadness shows God’s feelings regarding this matter. Next, the sudden and great chaos and upheaval in the beginning and throughout is representative of the shaking that will take place there. Authorities and systems that have been allowed to stand for a time will fall, and only what is in line with God’s Kingdom will remain (a building left partly standing). The church will also go through immense suffering and during this test, some may fall.

The third scene is symbolic of a few things. God will give favor to those who are spreading the Gospel and discipling persons in China. This is representative of the high tower my wife and I were hosting a Bible study in. Although persecution will arise and has even already, God has given his people the wisdom to see it coming (the glass windows). Wisdom for escape and a battle plan will be granted to those led by the Spirit and commissioned by him. In the dream, wisdom is represented by my ability to discern among those panicking and unsure that our escape from the building will be by climbing upward instead of down. Climbing upward is also significant of looking heavenward to maintain our eyes fixed on the Lord and tuned into His plans. Persecution and shaking naturally entices us to look at our surrounding and environment; we are tempted to descend instead of ascending. To deal with the situation, faith must move Christians rather than fear. The only way to guarantee supernatural delivery is to continue upwards and the Lord will surely rescue such persons.

God will also grant cover when necessary. This is demonstrated by us blending in and appearing like the other residents. Finally, the lion-like animal represents the presence of the Spirit of Christ which will accompany those he calls His own. He will grant them peace amidst the turmoil, and they shall not be afraid. Carrying the lion-like animal is also symbolic of being equipped with the Spirit of Christ. This scene represents both the life of Christ in us and the help he offers. Christ is both meek and mighty, and if a wall stands in our way, Christ will arise with power and strength to make a path for our feet and roll the wall away just as the Spirit rolled Christ’s tomb away.

With Christ, Christians commissioned by him will demolish forces in our path to make it possible for breakthrough to be released (represented by the horses and pasture). As speedily and powerfully as the horses were, so will the awakening there be and pleasant at that (green pasture). This dream is not only representative of what revival may look like for the country of China, but it’s also a call to duty for the Christian leaders sent there—that we should take courage in our work and not fear. We have been equipped with the same Spirit that has raised Christ from the dead and that which will bring a great harvest to the dead souls of China.

Now, although this post is meant to bring knowledge to the body of Christ regarding God’s plans for China, it is also meant to be a personal prophetic message. First, maybe you have felt a strange connection with China and have not been able to identify your place in ministry. Consider that maybe God wants to invite you to be a part of this revival. Pray and ask the Lord what this post means for you. Second, I want to encourage those of you who are reading this and experiencing a difficult time. Perhaps you are even feeling like you’re hitting a wall in your personal life or ministry. Although this is often part of the process of maturing in Christ, I want to prophetically declare that there is a “suddenly” moment that is on its way to you. Do you believe? The lion is roaring over you and your situation. You can trust him for your breakthrough.

To Elijah List, this conference forever shifted my ability to hear and receive messages from the Lord, and it redirected my ministry path. Thank you for hosting the presence of God and making it possible for Christians to walk into their commissioning and ministry. It would seem more than ever that a revival is needed in China and you, Elijah List, are part of bringing God’s prophetic voice to the earth and equipping the saints.