Book Review: The Heavenly Man

The Heavenly Man

by Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway. Monarch Books,

London.

2002

Paperback, 351 pp

        The lady who first brought this book to my attention called it “life changing”. At first the title sounds presumptuous—but far from it. Brother Yun is a Chinese Christian, born into very impoverished circumstances in southern Henan Province in 1958. His mother was illiterate but had heard and responded to the gospel in the late 1940’s. With the Communist revolution in 1949, Christianity seemed to be almost wiped out. But when her husband fell sick with lung and stomach cancer, in her desperation she heard a voice say, “Jesus loves you.” She “repented of her sins and re-dedicated herself to the Lord Jesus Christ.” She then called her whole family together and they all committed to Christ, and even saw their father healed of his cancer.

        The next piece of the story is his search for a single Bible. He had never seen one, but eventually a frightened pastor from pre-revolution days showed him his.

        At only 16 years of age, Yun was on fire for the Lord. After a few years of preaching the gospel at house churches he seems to have come to the attention of the authorities and from then on, he suffered at least four lengthy imprisonments up to 2001. The mid chapters of   the book, detail the horrors of these imprisonments—the beatings, the humiliation, the pain, the loneliness, and yet he reports an unspeakable nearness to the Lord. Some of these horrors we haven’t even imaged, including transportation of human waste, electric batons discharged in his mouth, and beatings till his lower legs were almost pulp. At one point, he decided to fast—and that fast lasted 74 days, till he was so shrivelled up he was hardly recognizable as a man.

        After unimaginable hardship, disease and torture, he was finally given refugee status by Germany, and several years later his wife, son and daughter also escaped.

        There are details throughout the book that we Western Christians may have difficulty with—visions from the Lord, long fastings, dreams, and healings feature very frequently. Someone has even put up a website in Germany, just to debunk everything about Yun. In response Brother Xu (“Shoe”), who has known Yun for decades, has written a Preface that claims, “I testify that every story in this book is true.” And Paul Hattaway, the New Zealander who helped write the book, and is “an expert on the Chinese church”, has put out an 11-page “Open Letter Regarding ‘The Heavenly Man’”, in which he brings out a great deal of testimony to the sincerity and integrity of Brother Yun. I myself watched a video of Brother Yun preaching in a Kansas church, through his Finnish interpreter, and was moved with compassion.

        There is a very great deal more that could be said but in the final analysis, we can only say what the Lord said to the disciples of John the Baptist: “Go back and report…what you hear and see…Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” Matthew 11:4-6.      

       And why was he called “The Heavenly Man”? Because, as he left a secret house church in China, he fell into the clutches of the Public Security Bureau who demanded his address. In order to warn and save the others still in the church, he shouted at the top of his lungs, “I am a heavenly man! I live in Gospel village.” (p.83)