By Huigai
After I came to accept God’s work in the last days, although I attended gatherings, my heart wasn’t often in them. Instead, I was always thinking about how to make a lot of money and live a life as top dog. I never really treated belief in God seriously. Only when I found myself at death’s door did I finally have an awakening.
September is the best time for picking chestnuts. To make the most of this money-making opportunity, one morning, I took my two children up the mountain to help me gather them. Once up the mountain, I climbed a chestnut tree that was over nine meters tall and, standing on a branch that hung over six meters off the ground, I vigorously beat the tree with a bamboo pole to make the chestnuts fall to the ground. After beating the tree for around an hour, I suddenly heard a snapping sound and I instantly realized that the branch I was standing on had broken. I thought to myself: I’m done for. There’re rocks on both sides down below as well as broken bamboo stakes. Whether I fall onto the rocks or the bamboo stakes, I’ll die…. As I fell down with the branch, I hurriedly called on God to save me. I fell onto a patch of ground without rocks or bamboo stakes, but my head hit the branch I had broken, and I was struck by an explosion of pain. It was hard to breathe, and I felt like I was suffocating. My right hand then began to swell up a lot and went numb. Slowly, I raised my left hand and my left leg and found that I could still move them. All I could hear just then was my two children crying and yelling, “Daddy! Daddy’s fallen from the tree….” Hearing my children wail, I wanted to respond but I couldn’t make any sound. I hurriedly said a prayer to God: “O God, I’ve now fallen from a tree and I’m afraid I will die. I feel so distressed and weak. Please give me faith!” After I’d prayed, I thought of God’s words: “Almighty God is an all-powerful physician! … So long as you still have one breath, God will not let you die.” Yes, I thought. God is an all-powerful God; He rules over all things and He controls the destinies of mankind. I must have faith in God, for my life and my death are in His hands. If it is not yet my time, then God won’t let me die if I have but one breath left…. God’s words gave me hope and courage, and the fear I felt in my heart was greatly abated.
Afterward, my family took me to the County People’s Hospital. After examining me, the doctor saw that I was in a bad way and told me to transfer to the municipal hospital. Though I couldn’t speak, my mind was still very clear, and when he said this to me, I felt very afraid and I kept calling on God. Later, my family had me transferred to the municipal hospital. By that time, it was already past 5pm. After acquainting himself with my condition, the doctor said, “This patient was injured at gone 10am this morning and it is now after 5pm. He is in critical condition and we cannot delay any longer. Quickly, go and pay the hospitalization fee!”
Around an hour later, the results of the examination came back. The doctor looked them over and then said to my wife, “Your husband is now in a very critical condition. He has bleeding on the brain, and once the blood clots and blocks the blood vessels, he could die at any moment. He also has a hairline fracture in his right cervical vertebrae, a posterior neck dislocation and a broken fragment of bone from the back of his skull is pressing on a major nerve. If this fragment of bone moves one centimeter downward, then your husband will die.” The doctor then asked my wife to sign a form and said, “If you want us to keep treating him, then you have to sign this form to show you understand the severity of his condition….” When I heard him say this, I felt such pain and despair. If a blood vessel became blocked then my life would end—our human lives are truly so fragile and insignificant. Though I was in a bad way, had it not been for God’s wondrous protection that day, then I would have died right there under that tree. Thinking this, and with feelings of gratitude and self-reproach, I said a prayer to God: “O God! Though I believe in You, I don’t know You. Whenever I attended gatherings, my heart just wasn’t there, and whenever I read Your words, I just went through the motions and gave them a perfunctory reading, and instead thought only about how to make money. I fell from such a high tree today and I didn’t die, all because of Your great protection. You didn’t treat me according to my rebelliousness, but instead saved me with a forgiving, merciful heart, giving me the chance to repent. O God! You gave me my life, and whether I live or die, I entrust it all into Your hands. I wish to submit to Your arrangements.”
Once I’d been admitted to the hospital, the doctor inserted a drip that would help stop my bleeding and nourish my body at the same time. On that first evening, the blood that was clotting on my brain came out of my mouth, and I used up 10 rolls of toilet paper in one night. The day after was China’s National Day and the attending physician took a three-day vacation. Over these three days, blood kept pouring from my mouth. On the fourth day, the attending physician came again to examine me. The tests showed that I still had bleeding on the brain, and he told me that I was not out of the woods yet. A week after the accident, the doctor examined me once again. When he looked at the results, he shook his head and said, “We’ve given you the medicine you should have but we still haven’t been able to stem the bleeding in your brain. You’re still in critical condition. The other attending physicians and I have been discussing your case and there’s nothing else we can do for you. Your best bet is to transfer to another hospital.” As she listened to what the doctor was saying, my wife didn’t know what to do for the best. She was afraid that I really would die, and so she demanded the doctor perform an operation. The doctor said, “Your husband can’t be operated on at the moment. His head is like a broken egg shell. All we can do is give him injections to stop his bleeding and to nourish his body. To operate on him would be too dangerous.” The doctor’s words came like a bolt from the blue. A week had gone by and I still wasn’t out of danger. Could I really not be healed? Is this how I would leave the world? But then I thought of all that had happened since the accident. A week had gone by and the doctors had said many times that I was in critical condition and that I could die at any time. And yet I’d gotten this far and was not dead yet—had I not already witnessed God’s great power? At that moment, I realized just how little faith I had in God. Whether I lived or died was not up to the doctors but was up to God. Just as God’s words say: “Starting today, I will let all people begin to know Me—the only true God, who created everything…, who controls and arranges everything in its entirety; the King who is in charge of the kingdom; the God Himself who manages the cosmos; and, moreover, the God who controls the life and death of humans and who holds the key of Hades.” Yes, I thought. God was in charge of my life and death, and unless God permitted it, I would not lose my life no matter how much danger I was in. Just then, my faith in God grew somewhat. No matter what happened, I wished to rely on God and look to Him.
After that, I was examined every three days. Every time I was examined, I only had to move my head the slightest bit and the wound in my head that had only just begun to heal would break open and start bleeding again and I would feel tremendous pain. No painkiller that I took had any effect. On the eleventh day, the doctor said that I still had bleeding on the brain and that I was in a very critical condition. He asked us again to transfer to another hospital as soon as possible.
My wife saw that whenever I moved my head the slightest amount, my head would start bleeding again and I would feel tremendous pain. If I was jolted around on my way to another hospital, then she feared I would die on the way there, and so she was hesitant to agree to the doctor’s request. After she told me of her concerns, I became very agitated and felt that death was beckoning to me at every moment. I was also worried that, as I kept bleeding and could not be operated on, if I was transferred to the provincial hospital that was so far away, would my condition get even worse? The more I thought about it, the more distressed I felt, and so I said a prayer to God in my heart: “O God, my condition is serious right now and I’m in constant danger of dying. I feel so pained and trapped. The doctors here don’t dare to treat me and they’ve asked that I be transferred to another hospital. O God, faced with this situation I feel so anxious and afraid. I don’t understand Your will and I don’t know how to experience this situation. Please give me Your guidance. I wish to act according to Your desire.” I then thought of God’s words: “Faith is like a single log bridge: Those who cling abjectly to life will have difficulty in crossing it, but those who are ready to sacrifice themselves can pass over, sure of foot and worry-free. If man harbors timid and fearful thoughts, it is because Satan has fooled them, afraid that we will cross the bridge of faith to enter into God. Satan is trying by every way possible to send us its thoughts. We should at every moment pray for God to illuminate us with His light, at every moment rely on God to purge Satan’s poison from within us, practice within our spirit at every moment how to come close to God, and let God have dominion over our whole being.” God’s words gave me faith and I realized that all my anxiety and worries were the disruptions of Satan. Satan wanted to use my condition to topple my faith, to make me live in a state of fretfulness and so that I would lose my faith and shun God. It was all Satan’s deceitful scheme. It had been over ten days since the accident and the blood in my brain just kept bleeding out. But not only had I not died, I had actually always been clearly conscious—was this not God’s wondrous deed? The doctor was now saying that I was still in danger, and this was a test to see whether or not I had true faith in God and whether or not I was truly relying on Him. I had to avoid sinking into the temptation of Satan, and I became willing to rely on God and look to God, and to not lose my faith in God. I decided to totally entrust my life and my death into God’s hands and submit to His sovereignty. In the end, we decided not to transfer to the provincial hospital.
Afterward, my wife often wetted a towel with hot salted water and applied it to my injured right hand. Gradually, the blood clots in my hand dispersed and the pain was not as severe. On the twelfth day, my wife wetted a towel and held it to my head as a hot compress. She had done this for two days, and the blood clots in my head finally began to disperse from the heat, and the pain in my head slowly grew less. That evening, I began to feel a little hungry and I managed to eat a bowl of soup. Because I’d been in such pain since being admitted to hospital, I hadn’t eaten a thing, and seeing my condition improve a little made my wife really happy. On the morning of the thirteenth day, my elder brother took my scans to the provincial hospital and showed them to four attending physicians there and explained my condition to them. The doctors all said, “We’ve been seeing patients for 20 years and this is the first time we’ve come across such a patient as this. That he hasn’t died after such a serious injury to his head is a miracle. He really must have someone watching over him.” When I heard this, I just kept thanking God in my heart.
After being in hospital for 17 days, the doctor saw that I was no longer in a critical condition and requested that I return to the county hospital for ongoing treatment. After I was released from hospital, however, I didn’t go to the county hospital and I didn’t go for nutritional injections. I just paid a few hundred yuan for a prescription of western medicine to take home with me and my wife made pork bone soup for me every day, and in this way, I was nursed back to health at home.
While I recovered from my injuries, I thought of a man who had been in the same ward as me who was only in his forties. When he crashed his car, he had still been able to call his family and, after he got to hospital, he had several operations performed on his brain. He had to be on oxygen every day in order for him to breathe, and after that he was constantly in ICU. Then there was a young guy in his thirties who had been in the ward next to mine. He had fallen and injured his cerebral nerves. He had undergone a failed operation at his local hospital and then been transferred to the municipal hospital, but despite having two successive operations, eight days later he was dead. I, on the other hand, had fallen from a chestnut tree branch over six meters from the ground and had also hurt my head. My condition had been worse than theirs, and yet now I had come through safe and sound. God really was protecting me. Just as God’s words say: “Man’s heart and spirit are held in the hand of God, everything of his life is beheld in the eyes of God. Regardless of whether or not you believe this, any and all things, whether living or dead, will shift, change, renew, and disappear in accordance with God’s thoughts. Such is the way in which God presides over all things.” All things both in heaven and on earth, whether living or dead, are all under God’s control and are all constantly changing with the thought of God. I thought of how on either side of where I had fallen there had been both rocks and bamboo stakes. There had been only around a meter of space without any rocks in it and I had fallen exactly into that gap. The doctor had said that if the broken fragment of bone at the back of my skull had moved one centimeter lower then I would have died. After my accident, I had constant bleeding on the brain and had been unable to take any food. The doctors had all said that my blood vessels could become blocked at any time and that there was nothing more they could do for me. And yet, against all expectations, I had miraculously survived. Had all this not been because of God’s great power? In my experiences, I saw that God was so vivid and real and was right by my side, constantly watching over me and protecting me, enabling me to cling indomitably to life. I saw that my life was controlled in God’s hands and this was a fact no one could deny.
Afterward, I read these God’s words, “The most fundamental requirement of man’s belief in God is that he have an honest heart, and that he fully devote himself, and truly obey. What is hardest for man is to provide his whole life in exchange for true belief, through which he can gain the entire truth, and fulfill his duty as a creature of God. This is what is unattainable by those who fail, and it is even more unattainable by those who cannot find Christ. Because man is not good at wholly devoting himself to God, because man is not willing to perform his duty to the Creator, because man has seen the truth but avoids it and walks his own path, because man always seeks by following the path of those who have failed, because man always defies Heaven, thus, man always fails, is always taken in by Satan’s trickery, and is ensnared in his own net.” God’s words were like a two-edged sword piercing my heart and making me feel self-reproach and guilt. As a believer in God, one should pursue the truth, have faith in God and worship God with an honest heart, perform the duty of a created being and be willing to devote oneself to God’s work, for only in this way can one earn God’s praise and attain His salvation. Though I had believed in God, I had been under the dominion of the satanic philosophy that “money is supreme,” and had always wanted to make more money and live as top dog. I had believed that attending church gatherings had taken up time I could have spent earning money and I never focused on reading God’s words. As it turned out, not only did I not earn more money, but I ended up spending the little amount of savings I did have, and if it hadn’t been for God protecting me, I would have been dead already. I finally saw that money, fame and fortune were just as transient as a cloud on the breeze and that, if one loses one’s life, then no matter how much money one makes, it is of no benefit at all; only believing in God, pursuing the truth, seeking to know God, gaining the truth and living by God’s words is the right path to walk in life. I then made a silent resolution before God that my faith in Him would be different from how it had been before. Every day, I quieted myself before God and read His words, and I prayed to God and I entrusted my condition into His hands. Miraculously, after a month I was able to get out of bed and walk slowly. Later, my wife went with me to the hospital for another checkup and the doctors and nurses all looked at me in surprise. The attending physician said to the other doctors, “I never would have thought it! We believed that this man would either become braindead or paralyzed. And yet, contrary to expectations, he has been able to walk here unaided so soon for another checkup. It really is a miracle….” Hearing them discuss my case, I knew that this was all because of God’s great love. Two months later, I was able to do some tasks around the house and I performed as much of my church duties as I was able to manage. At that time, my brothers and sisters in the church found some herbal medicine for me to take, and six months later I had made a full recovery and was able to do manual labor once again.
Whenever I think of my experience, I feel indebted to God, and I hate Satan even more for using money, fame and fortune to deceive me and bind me, and to make me shun God. My life was almost brought to ruin by the harm Satan causes. At the same time, I felt even more God’s love and mercy for me, as He had saved me from the brink of death. I made a resolution to pursue the truth in earnest and never again to fail to live up to the painstaking efforts God goes to. I now wish to preach the gospel with my brothers and sisters to lead even more people before God.