Zhao Guiqin (January 1, 1960 – August 16, 2024) was born in Yongli Village, Xinhua Town, Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province. She was an old neighbor of my family. When I was a child, I could see the smoke coming out of her chimney when she was cooking. Zhao Guiqin was modest, and hospitable; she respected the elderly and loved the young. She always welcomed people with a smile. Men, women and children in the village like her very much. My peers of similar age affectionately call her “Second Sister.” Later, she was ordained as an elder because of her faithful service in the church. From then on, the brothers and sisters called her “Elder” or “Elder Zhao.” I remember that in 1992, Zhao showed me a handwritten testimony of faith. The basic content is as follows:
Zhao and her husband married and had two lovely children. When she was sick, one child was nursing while the other was just beginning to walk. She suffered from bone tuberculosis, femoral head necrosis, and anorexia. In order to cure her illness, she had to worship various idols, burn incense, and seek fortune-telling. Once the fortune teller Zhao Xiazi (xiazi means a blind man) told her that there were monsters on her husband’s head, so he asked Zhao to dig three feet into the ground and bury a mirror where her husband slept. Because her husband was driving outside to make a living, she was afraid that her husband would be angry, so she asked her brother to secretly dig up the cement floor and bury the mirror inside. She tried all kinds of weird methods but none of them could cure her disease, and instead it got worse. She went to Beijing to see a doctor but she didn’t get a good result, and she was almost deceived by a scammer. Around 1989, her second aunt took her to seek treatment from an old lady with small feet who practiced witchcraft in Heli Town. The old lady said, “Oh, this child is hopeless” and refused to help her. She cried when she came out. Later, her second aunt said that if there was no other way, she could send her to the church established in north side of the town. Some people said that the church could save people. The second aunt didn’t believe it either, so she took her to the church because she had no choice. When they arrived at the church, everyone had finished worshiping, and she sat in the church and cried all the time. When the meeting ended, someone asked her why she was crying. She said she was dying and had two children. Later, someone from the church shared the gospel with her. She said she had worshiped many gods but nothing worked. The evangelist said: “Those gods you worship are all false gods. We worship the only true God, just like what we Chinese call Lao Tian Ye (Lao Tian Ye means Heavenly Grandpa).” The evangelist also said: “If you believe in the Lord, even if you are not well, your soul can go to heaven and you will never suffer any more.” So, she believed it. She was very pious and sometimes knelt in the snow in the northeast to pray. At that time, she cried out to God every day, asking God to let her see her child grow up to 10 years old. (But she never expected that her grandson is already 14 years old this year!) As a result, God not only healed her, but also used her greatly later. She didn’t have any serious health problems after that until last year.”
Zhao was the first person who clearly told me the gospel of Christ. People often say that there were “three excesses” among Christians in China at that time: many were old people, many were sick, and many were women. Most people believe in the Lord with utilitarianism, that is to satisfy their physical needs, to be healed of illness, to have peace at home, etc. We met every Wednesday night, Friday night, and Sunday night, and Uncle Shen Xuchun (who has passed away) read the spiritual materials. At that time, I had congenital heart disease and was in a state of heart failure. When I first went to church, I also had a therapeutic and skeptical attitude. After one meeting, she said: “Everyone in the world is a sinner. We all inherited original sin from Adam. Every day we commit sins such as lying, swearing, jealousy, stealing, etc. To save us, the loving God gave His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to us. He died for us on the cross and rose again from the death on the third day. As long as we are willing to admit that we are sinners and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, our sins can be forgiven, and we can receive eternal life in heaven through faith in Jesus.” The gospel she shared made me understand the true meaning of believing in the Lord. Our mother and sister experienced many hardships when they first believed in the Lord. My brother blew up his finger while playing with a detonator in school. Their faith weakened. Zhao came to our house to tell us the Lord’s true way. She said: “It is not always smooth sailing for our believers in the Lord. The Lord allows us to encounter all kinds of sufferings and tests. But no matter what kind of suffering we go through, the Lord will be with us.” Her words made me vaguely remember that believing in the Lord is not about ensuring that everything goes well for us, but about having the Lord’s presence during trials.
Zhao was the one who the Lord used to build his church. The first church God used Paul to establish in Philippi, Europe was through a sister named Lydia (Acts 16:15). Zhao graduated from elementary school (one year of junior high school), but was used by the Lord to establish a church. She used to run a small store (at that time, small stores in rural areas played an important role in the lives of local people. In the small store, people can purchase snacks and daily necessities, etc., and its existence could meet the needs of most rural people). After believing in the Lord, she dedicated the small store as a family gathering point, commonly known as “Kangtou gathering” (Kangtou is a special kind of bed in northeastern China. People sat on Kangtou to have a gathering). 6-7 people began to gather at her home. The number of people who came to the gathering fluctuated. Once a believer in the Lord encountered suffering, a group of people would not come to the gathering. After a while, the church slowly developed again. At the beginning, Zhao got study materials from various places, including the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Catechism, and everyone read together. Gradually, they began to sing hymns, recite the Apostles’ Creed, read the Bible, read spiritual materials, pray, recite the Lord’s Prayer. Zhao organized various church activities and rehearsed gospel programs during festivals, including clapper talk, dance, crosstalk, gospel skits. In addition to performing in the church, we also performed on the streets of surrounding villages to spread the gospel for the Lord.
The gospel had a huge impact in the village, “to open people’s eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). At that time, many people abandoned idols and followed the true God. The gospel gave the whole village hope and strength, and cured many people physically and spiritually, giving them hope in life. It enabled people with little education to seek the truth and increase knowledge through reading the Bible and praying every day. The gospel enabled housewives who used to gossip and criticize others to learn the way of repentance, sing hymns of praise, and pursue eternal life. The gospel also enabled many men who played mahjong and gambled in winter to abandon their bad habits and go to church to worship the Lord. During festivals, they did a kind of China northeastern dance, called “Yangge” in the form of the gospel, were positive and lived a spiritual life. The gospel changed people’s customs of funerals. In traditional Chinese rural areas, when someone died, they would kowtow eight times and bow nine times, make a big fuss, burn paper cows, paper horses, and burn paper money, and the sound of mourning was creepy. After believing in the Lord, people adopted Christian rituals to simplify funerals, with choirs singing, praying, and preaching at funerals. This is both solemn and dignified, hygienic and clean, and it also bears witness to the holy name of the Lord.
In 2000, with the assistance of many churches in Hegang City, brothers and sisters worked together to build a Bethel church building. It was the best building in the whole village and even among the twelve villages in Xinhua Town. Brothers and sisters from many surrounding places, including Yong’an, Sanlian, Silian, Wulian, Liulian, Qilian, Balian, Jiulian, Shilian, Luchang and other places, come here to gather. Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, that church has not been used due to various reasons. The Lord said, “A time to build and a time to tear down.” 20 years ago, the Lord used her and other brothers and sisters to build a church to demonstrate the glory of God. Later, although people could not gather in church, the church penetrated deeply into everyone’s heart. The external cross was torn down, but the crosses in people’s hearts were erected. Over the past 30 years, spiritual churches have been built in the lives of many brothers and sisters. A church is not a church building, but a gathering of believers. The process of building the church goes from invisible to tangible, and then from tangible to invisible. Finally, Christians will be brought together into the eternal kingdom of heaven—the complete spiritual world. Zhao said: “Thank you for the Lord’s step-by-step guidance. In the past, when there was a church building, only a handful people attended the gatherings. Now at least 70-80 people attended each gathering, and everyone loved the Lord very passionately and was full of faith. This is all from God.”
Zhao was a person who prayed and praised. When she was in her hometown in the countryside, she often prayed in the morning. She would go to the church to pray and praise at 4 o’clock every morning alone (sometimes accompanied by one or two older sisters), and each time would last at least an hour and a half. She also organized evening prayer meetings in the evening. She spent at least 3-5 hours a day praying and praising. The content of her prayers is very broad, ranging from world peace, leaders of various departments of the country, and the gospel spreading in churches everywhere, to the health and safety of each brother and sister’s family, and the children’s entrance exams. The Lord used her prayers with great power, and together with pastors and co-workers, she healed the sick and cast out demons, visited the sick, and benefited many people. When I was possessed by an evil spirit in 1993, Zhao came to my house every night to pray, fight the devil, and finally won, so that I was healed and released. She has been using prayer to support my serving for many years. No matter how far I go, I cannot do anything without the power of her and the brothers and sisters’ prayers. Especially during the COVID-19 period, when faced with various obstacles and attacks on the church’s reopening stage, her and the brothers and sisters’ prayers in my hometown church enabled me to overcome challenges and get through the difficulties. She often fasted and prayed for her brothers and sisters, sometimes for one or two days, sometimes for three to five days.
Zhao’s daughter Mingming said: “During the period when her condition worsened, she did not give up praying. She insisted on taking notes and praying no matter how painful it was every day. She always put God’s house first. Living in this small family on earth, she never stayed at my house in another city for more than seven days. She could not stay at her daughter’s house for more than a few days and was anxious to go home to visit the frail and sick elderly, thinking about every brother and sister in the church who needed service. Every night she carefully checked each of the dozens of WeChat groups on two mobile phones. She almost fell asleep on her knees in the arms of the Lord every night. We saw my mother kneeling in bed praying countless times in the middle of the night. She really couldn’t live without God 24 hours a day! Just after chemotherapy, she learned that an elderly Christian in her hometown had passed away. She was worried about the old man’s funeral in the early morning because the old man had told her that he wanted the funeral to be held according to the church’s ritual. She cried and begged the old man’s son to fulfill his wish. She ignored her own health and was very emotional. Every day her room was filled with the sound of sermons and praise. In the later stage, she was paralyzed in the lower body and had incontinence, but she still danced with her hands to praise God and clapped her hands to glorify God.”
Zhao was a caring person. The Lord has placed the great love of the Kingdom of God in her heart. She not only loves her husband, children, and family, but also loves every brother and sister in the church, theological students, and fellow pastors. Although her family was not wealthy, she often gave generously to seminarians, pastors, poor brothers and sisters, etc. Her greatest love for people is to preach the gospel to them. The Lord used her to lead around 40 people from her mother’s family and her husband’s family to believe in the Lord. She taught her children to be kind and asked them to deliver meals and clean houses for the lonely elderly in the village all year round.
To some extent, Zhao was not a brave person. Sometimes she was very timid, just like Judge Gideon. She used to be afraid to speak in public, to do an opening prayer, or meet some officials, but later she overcame these difficulties one by one with the help of the Holy Spirit. After being diagnosed with lung cancer, she never shed tears or showed fear because of the disease. She never cried in front of her family. She always comforted us by saying, “It’s okay, Mom is okay.” The power of the Lord is manifested in weak people. If she were bold and strong, she would be very proud. However, the Lord uses weak and humble people to accomplish His power, so that no fleshly person can boast before God.
Once, I shared with a seeker that I believed in the Lord through Zhao’s sharing. This seeker asked: “She did not have a formal theology training. What if she has a biased understanding of the Bible?” My answer is: “Each of us, including pastors, has limitations in our understanding of the Lord. But thank God, the Holy Spirit has been helping us. On the road of our faith, the Holy Spirit of truth will constantly correct and adjust us, so that we can continue to walk on the right path of the Lord. The most important thing is that people can continue to learn in theological understanding. As long as they confess Jesus Christ as the Lord with their mouths, believe in the Lord’s death and resurrection in their hearts, confess their sins and repent, and exalt and praise the holy name of God, they will obtain it.”
Without suffering, there is no perfection. The Lord Jesus “although he was a Son, yet he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (NKJV Hebrews 5:8-9). This does not mean that the Lord Jesus was disobedient before, but learned to obey after suffering, but that his obedience during the suffering of the cross demonstrated and witnessed the perfection of his humanity. Zhao had small cell lung cancer in the last stage of her life. In this process, she suffered a lot. When she was a child, she was most afraid of needles. But when she was suffering, she had to face chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the hospital. She experienced a lot of physical pain. In the end, she couldn’t even drink water. But every time a little water was inserted with a needle, she raised her head hard, as if to throw it away. Every time she swallowed a little water, she said “Hallelujah” and “Thank the Lord”. She really didn’t blame God. As long as she could speak, she praised the Lord. She liked to play bawu (a free reed instrument. She used to lead some sisters to play bawu to praise the Lord and preach the gospel at church gatherings, festivals, weddings, and funerals). She said, “I really want to play bawu for the Lord again, but I can’t have enough energy to play it anymore.” During her illness, her family did all their duties, and tried all the methods that could be used by Western and Chinese medicine. Brothers and sisters also made countless prayers. But the Lord is a sovereign God, and He knows what is best for Zhao and everyone. From her suffering, we learned the lesson of relying on the Lord to be strong. From this we understand that only by passing through Mount Calvary can we reach the empty tomb; only by being dealt with by the cross can the glory of resurrection be manifested; “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (NIV 2 Corinthians 4:17).
The Lord said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (NIV John 12:24). Paul also said, “I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who are asleep, so that you don’t grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. Now this I say to you by the word of the Lord: We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first, Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). 1 Corinthians 15:35-44 also says: “But if someone asks, ‘How are the dead raised? And with what body do they come? ‘Foolish man! What you sow cannot come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to come, but only a grain, of wheat or some other kind of cereal; But God gave it a body as He pleased, and gave each seed its own body. All flesh is not the same: there is one flesh among men, another among animals, another among birds, and another among fishes. There are celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial bodies is one, and the glory of the terrestrial bodies is another. The sun has its own glory, the moon has its own glory, and the stars have their own glory, and the glory of one star differs from another. So it is with the resurrection of the dead: it is sown perishable, it is raised imperishable ; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; What is sown is a physical body, what is raised is a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” Last Sunday, August 11, when I was video chatting with Zhao, I saw the glory on her face. I exclaimed, “That is not the face of an earthly person, that is clearly the glory of heaven!” The people who have died in the Lord have the hope of resurrection!
Zhao’s younger sister, Zhao Guihong, shared:
“In the last year of her life, no matter how uncomfortable she was, she never stopped arranging church services. She planned which day to have a church meeting, what to do on which day, who to invite to the meeting, and where to visit. When she passed away, she told me that within three days, God would either heal her or take her away. On the third day, God took her away. She had finished the race she should run, fought the battles she should fight, and kept the faith she should keep. There will be a crown of glory reserved for her. She has rested from all the labor and sorrow, all the pain and suffering on earth.
On the day before she left, she told us a joke. She had been working in a rural production team since she was 15 years old. She liked watches very much, so she bought a small watch from a toy store and took it to work. Other workers asked her, ‘Oh, your watch is so beautiful.’ She said, ‘Of course, it is very beautiful!’ ‘I fooled them all. Later, they found that my watch did not work, so they asked me why. I said, ‘My watch is luminous and can only be seen at night.’ Two years later, the toy watch rusted and was thrown away. She has never bought another one. In fact, it sounds like a joke, and our family members were very sad. She has never bought anything for herself in her life. She met the needs of her family and others, and finally she was the only one missing. When she left, the church bought her a watch, and she liked it very much. She said that she would not wear any other clothes when she left, but a wedding dress. She left in a wedding dress because she would prepare as a bride beautifully dressed for Jesus.”
Mingming said:
“On the day she passed away, she kept smiling, turning over and laughing, drinking water and laughing. She had no pain all day and slept very comfortably. When she turned over, she said, ‘It was such a good sleep!’ She kept saying ‘Amen’ and ‘Thank God.’ We thought it was the effect of the painkillers that made her sleepy, but in fact she was already dying and trying to stay alive. We took her from the hospital to home and first went upstairs in Hegang City. Along the way, she kept smiling and saying, ‘I’m fine, fine!’ In the car, we talked and laughed. She was very beautiful and very comfortable. She couldn’t breathe when she got upstairs. After a while of rescue, she still said ‘Amen’ to my aunt and tried hard to force a smile. We took her to our hometown in Yongli. We called her loudly to let her stay awake until she got home, while giving her a cardiotonic. My brother, my aunt and I sang loudly all the way home: ‘I will bless you today, Jehovah will protect you every day … Rely on Jesus, don’t be shaken, we have been blessed for life!’ In my memory, this song was the blessing my mother always sent to everyone who would leave home, including me, relatives, and friends. Today, we know that she is leaving, she is going to the Heavenly Father, and we have to say ‘goodbye’ to her in the world, so we kept on singing this song to her! When we first arrived at Yongli’s hometown, we put her on the kang, she took her last breath. At this moment, she is enjoying eternal glory in the arms of the Heavenly Father!
Cui Wei, the niece of Zhao, shared: “Thank God for placing such a good Elder aunt in my life. Her life has deeply impacted me. I have been going to her house since I was a child during the summer vacation. Every time I went there, I saw she was lying on the kang, sorting out sermon materials, covering the whole kang, with so many words densely written in her notebook. Every time I went to her house, I saw her reading the Bible, or holding her cell phone to communicate with others and serve others. After the last church meeting, she passed by a village Shilian. On the way, she told my sister (Zhao’s daughter Mingming), ‘I want to go to Shilian to visit a senior.’ The Holy Spirit was leading her, and she happened to see two seniors at the intersection of Shilian. One of them was pushing the other in a wheelchair. They told the second aunt, ‘I thought your church didn’t want us anymore.’ She has always put serving the Lord as the most important thing. Even when she was seriously ill, she never stopped praising God. On her Memorial Service, flowers were placed everywhere. Many people from all around the villages and towns came to pay their respects to her. An 85-year-old elder did a benediction during the Memorial Service. People crying as they followed the hearse for a long distance. The villagers said that this was a grand ceremony that had never been seen before. There are many powerful people in the world, but there are few people who will cry for them when they die. From now on, we must love the Lord even more, pray more, and praise more.”
Mingming added: “Since her illness, many brothers and sisters have been praying for her with tears all the time. Too many other children call her ‘Zhao Ma’ or ‘Granny Guiqin’… She has given many children confidence and encouragement. From children as young as a few years old to centenarians, they all trusted her and liked her! One child said: ‘These days, every time I think of my aunt, I think of her loving smile. This is the beauty she gave me when I grew up…’ Another child posted on WeChat Moments: ‘As a child, when I went back to my hometown, my aunt would say to me: ‘Mei Li, God bless you, the Lord is with you’… From childhood to adulthood, Mei Li was always so good in her eyes… She loves her own children as people, and loves other people’s children as gods … May there be no suffering and pain in the other space, only joy and peace…❤”
There is a saying in Schindler’s List: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” I firmly believe that the Lord has influenced the whole world through Zhao. The Lord has passed the gospel to me through her and many other elders, and I can share the gospel I received from them with my brothers and sisters in the United States. Then, those who receive the gospel we preach will continue to spread it… In this way, the gospel will spread to the ends of the earth until the day when the Lord comes again! May the glory be to the true God of the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Amen!
(Thanks to Heavenly Father for leading the writing of this article; thanks also to Pastor Wang Haixia, Mu Mingna, Zhao Guihong, Zhao Guihua, Cui Wei, and Li Chunyan for providing relevant information)
Thirty years ago, God used us to spread the gospel in the streets and alleys with the skit and Yangge dance.
