The Heavenly Man - Book Review

The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun

I was totally in shock as I was reading this book. I think you will be too.

In the Western world where I live, in the world of prosperity and comfort, many of us have settled more or less for lukewarm churches, stagnant growth of believers, and lack of the genuine power of God working among people's lives. When we read of the time of the early churches in the New Testament, with unbelievable miracles, reformations, and persecutions, we might feel that those times are something of the past. We raise our eyebrows and are tempted to question if they even happen anymore in the 21st century.

However, they do!

Even more amazingly... in communist China.

This book will open your eyes to the wonderful work that God is doing in this day to get people ready for the coming of our Lord Jesus. The gospel is really going to all nations, tongues, and people. Yes, even now, while many of us who have much light may be sleeping. Not only that, but in such powerful ways we never would have thought of. Let me give you a small taste of the beginning of Brother Yun's journey.

His story starts in 1974, when Bibles were extremely rare in China, and if anyone was caught with one, the owner's family would be beaten and the Bible would be burned. However, after the miraculous healing of his father from cancer, Brother Yun's family go through a revival and dedicate themselves to God. Brother Yun earnestly longs for a copy of the Bible, and decides to pray every day for one. After a month, nothing happens, so he starts months of fasting and prayer, in which he eats nothing during the day and eats only one bowl of rice in the evening. His parents worry about his sanity, but after months of difficulties, prayer, and weeping, he receives a vision, in which there is a kind old man with two other men, and they give him a red bag with bread inside, and when Brother Yun puts it in his mouth, it turns into a Bible! Brother Yun wakes up from his dream, searching all over the house for the Bible because the vision had been so real. But it's not there, and he begins to weep loudly, waking his parents in the middle of the night. His parents think that their son, after all those months, has lost his mind, and they all cry together, kneeling on the floor...
when they hear a knock on the door.

A voice calls his name, and Brother Yun rushes over and replies, "Are you bringing the bread to me?" The soft answer is, "Yes, we have a bread feast to give you." He opens the door and realizes that the two men are the same two men he saw in his vision! He receives a red bag, which has a Bible inside.

Later, Brother Yun finds out that the two men came from a far village, where an elderly evangelist was about to bury a Bible in the ground, maybe to dig it back up when times were better. Three months before Brother Yun gets the Bible, the evangelist was shown by God a specific young man in a certain house in a certain village to give that Bible to. However, the evangelist had suffered so much and almost died in his long years of persecution, and it was a few months before he obeyed and sent the two men to deliver it.

From then on, Brother Yun fully trusts God's Word and begins the work of spreading the gospel in China. Find out the rest of his story from the book, filled with tortures, changed lives, heart-warming moments... all the way to the part where he miraculously escapes from prison and from the country! I definitely recommend it. :)