The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun [Paperback]

Brother Yun (Author), Paul Hattaway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2002

A dramatic autobiography of one of China's dedicated, courageous, and intensely persecuted house church leaders.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Amazing story and highly recommended for church libraries. (Church Libraries 20040603)

About the Author

Brother Yun travels widely from his current base in Germany.

Paul Hattaway is the international director of Asia Harvest, an organization committed to serving the church throughout Asia. He is an expert on the Chinese church and author of the bestselling titles The Heavenly Man, which has sold more than 500,000 in English alone, and Back to Jerusalem.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 351 pages
• Publisher: Monarch Books (December 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082546207X
• ISBN-13: 978-0825462078
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (337 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Chinese
  • #8 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Evangelism > Missions & Missionary Work

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

267 of 272 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What True Faith Looks Like - Why Our Freedoms are Precious January 24, 2004

By Upward Call

Many Christians in America are causally aware that outside the West, Jesus' followers experince difficulty because of their faith. We observe November's Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, and afterward go on with our lives. You cannot read this piercing biography of Liu Zhenying, better known as Brother Yun, and remain unchanged.

These recorded experiences show in a concrete way what it is for Chinese Christians to live hard lives of extreme danger because of their faith: police raids in the night, long imprisonment without trial, beatings (no citizen of the West is equipped to imagine what a beating is), forced abortions and sterilizations, starvation, dehydration, isolation, nakedness. But from this, God produces lives of committment to Christ, lives of joy, and and intense motivation to carry the message of the Gospel around the world, at any cost.

It was as if I was reading something from the Book of Acts. Unimagined miracles side by side with heartbreaking hardship - happening daily half a world away.

After reading this book, you'll appreciate the impact Jesus has on civilization as we know it. You'll see how dark and brutal civilization becomes without Christ. You'll understand why the freedoms and protections we take for granted are a treasure.

But you will also see how dangerous peace, safety and material prosperity can be to your spiritual health and to your committment to serving the cause of Christ.

What will it cost you to NOT read this book?

167 of 169 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars THE SPIRITUAL POWER OF 'THE CRUCIFIED LIFE' ..... February 12, 2004

By Leonardo LCH Lenbenhear

I wish I could give this book six or seven stars. There
are a few truly rare books out there that can genuinely
change your life for the better: this is definitely one
of those books.
You will be amazed to read the fascinating and heartrending
testimony of bro.Yun, a leader in the Chinese underground
church, and how his "faith of abandonment to GOD" leads
him into astounding testings and overcoming power to
testify of the faithfulness and supernatural power of
Christ in daily life: a life that seeks nothing but the
glory of God and the salvation of others as a true servant
in the Kingdom of Christ and His Church.
Just to read the triumphs and tragedies of chapters 11 and
12 alone is more than worth the price of this book. It's a
modern-day classic that will, perhaps, challenge your faith
and your life as no other book you may ever read.
I know now beyond any shadow of doubt that most Christians
in the Western and developed world are virtually spiritual
pygmies compared to our brethren suffering under persecution
and rising to the task of giving testimony to The Gospel with
their very lives and their all for Christ, and Christ alone.
~ This is what genuine, - from the heart CHRISTianity is
all about. The book is a rare treasure. don't miss it, OR
the Message.

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Grace under Persecution April 11, 2003

By A. Jennerjahn

Amazon Verified Purchase

We lightly speak of our own 'cross' or of 'persecution', but those of us in America have no idea what other believers are going through.

Brother Yun has experienced unbelievable persecution, including torture and imprisonment. He has also experienced unbelievable grace and miracles. And in a paradox that continues to confound, he describes how the true church actually flourishes amidst persecution.

Be warned -- it is hard to read. Not in the sense of literary difficulty (the language is easy), but it will cause you to search your own soul. You cannot read this without questioning your own commitment level. Yet at the same time, one is tempted to read quickly, at breakneck pace, just to follow the adventure, and see how it all turns out. It's an adventure story -- truly a 'page-turner'.

Be inspired by one who made the choice to follow Christ even if it cost everything.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Surviving heaven and hell in modern China March 15, 2004

By Michael JR Jose

The 'Heavenly Man' gets his name from a time when he was being publicly arrested by the Chinese state police for preaching (an offence for which you can still die in China), and he refused to give his name and address to avoid incriminating others. Under pressure, he shouted aloud as a warning for the village to hear, "I am a Heavenly Man". This defiance and denial of the state and assertion of his individual rights only enraged the enforcers even more, but certainly saved a few others from capture that night. The Heavenly Man's true name is Liu Zhenying, and the brothers call him Brother Yun. He was born in a mud hut house in 1958 in Nanyang County, the southern part of Henan Province, China. His peasant farmer village is very small, only 600 souls, but Henan Province has 100 million, and has been widely influenced by his preaching and leadership in the persecuted house church movement. Brother Yun is currently in exile in Europe with his family.

This account of the way things are for the oppressed in modern China is not for the faint-hearted. It is a harrowing but inspired account of his life from his conversion at the age of sixteen (with the rest of his family), up to 2002. Almost every type of miracle is recorded here. Of course, whether the reader believes any or all of them will depend on many things, but most basically it will depend on whether your worldview contains any supernatural aspect. If you go so far as to believe that there is a God and that he can intervene by his Will direct, as opposed to just working through people, then you may be inclined to accept all that he says. He is a veteran of the Chinese state prison system. Under the almost incessant vicious treatment of the communists he was attacked bodily and mentally in torture and public humiliation.... It is no surprise that it took miraculous powers to bring him through: without it he simply would not have survived physically or mentally.

His family and friends also suffered terribly. As China is an honour-shame culture, the absolute rights and wrongs of individual justice and truth are as often as not of no importance in determining your public treatment at the hands of the community and authorities. Being shamed, or the fear of being shamed, is often all it takes in terms of social control and compliance. (The other side of the social compliance mechanism is the Hebrew internalised justice-guilt culture, which 'Westerners' have...so we are eclectic Easterners really. Our jurisprudence is essentially Greek. In the justice-guilt concept what matters most is the actual truth of the case, not what people think or the circumstantial evidence. Our version of honour-shame is sadly exemplified in the debased hysteria of the screaming tabloids, peer pressure in the youth, and fashion victims. But all stable cultures require a blend of both elements.)

The risks of being a Christian in China today are all too evident. Brother Yun and his co-pastors quite rightly condemn the state-controlled 'Three-Self Patriot church' as an ineffectual and neutralised collection of infiltrated collaborators. It is a running dog, paper tiger type of church. They are called 'caged birds' that enable the communists to falsely claim that religious freedom exists.

Yun's conversion starts with the night vision of his mother, desperate in plight, as their father lies dying of cancer. She is converted instantly, and the next day they pray for their father who is healed. The family become Christians. Yun needs a bible (extremely difficult to get at that time), and almost fasts and prays himself to death. The bible is miraculously provided. He shares his faith and preaches. He is then plunged into a whirl of healings, miraculous escapes, supernatural dreams and visions, conversions of almost insane death-row prisoners, and escapes from prison that read like episodes from Star Wars.

The style in which everything is reported is so dry and plain that it seems that only Yun's simplicity saves him from being accused of fantasy beyond the normal reaches of fiction. He speaks as man consumed by the truth and the passion of his convictions. I myself believe what he says, and am one of such sceptic mould that I parse every miracle report and 'word' I hear with great care. If I reject what I hear most often it is on the grounds of 'good intention' and thin evidence: the person's motive may be good but the method bad. To me it clear that Brother Yun has only survived with his life through an incessant stream of miracles.

During his final arrest he broke both his legs. As a well-known escapee he was incarcerated in a maximum-security prison and his broken legs are tortured to cripple him for life. He is warned by God that he must escape very soon or die. At the right moment he walks out of the prison like the invisible man (on the broken legs, not realising that they have been instantly healed), and he eventually escapes to Germany. His family escaped via Burma (where he survives an unspeakably vile Burmese prison), and they now live in exile in the west. Read more ›