Wang Lan, Beijing
August 6, 2012
On July 21, 2012, the biggest flood in sixty years ripped through our village. The disaster fell from heaven, the floodwater mixed mud and stones and ravaged the whole village. Most of the houses were destroyed by the water and the mudslides.
After five o’clock that afternoon, the rain was coming down very heavily. There were floodwaters and big stones coming down from above our house, and the floodwaters were huge in front and behind our house. They washed away my daughter’s chicken run with thousands of chickens, they washed away the pig pens, and the pigs too. The water was about to rush over our home. We had a 94 year old and a ten-month-old baby. We were frantic. As I was carrying the 94 year old and the baby up into the higher building, water was starting to come into the lower one. The rain kept coming down. The water rose up toward the higher building as we watched. I was beside myself. I quickly called the village cadre, he said I should run up the mountain, and that they were also having a hard enough time getting themselves out, it was every man for himself. In my panic, I thought of God’s words, “The disaster is brought down by Me and of course orchestrated by Me” (“You Ought to Do Enough Good Deeds to Prepare for Your Destination” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Believing in God means relying on God, you can’t rely on people, so I stood in the doorway crying and called out a loud plea to God: “Oh God, save us! Oh God, save us!” The whole family got down on our knees and prayed: “Oh God, if we die in this disaster it is by Your righteousness, because we are too rebellious. If we escape this disaster it is by Your grace. We will begin again, and will be considerate of Your will, do our duties and spread the gospel.” It got dark and we didn’t dare go out. The whole family sat together sharing with each other God’s grasp of the fate of all humanity, how if God has a person die, there’s nowhere a person can go to hide, they will not pass out of God’s hands, and we were not afraid of death.
The rain came down hard, then soft, and kept coming down the whole night.
When dawn came we got up and saw that there was a great pile of rocks and sand above our house, and the water had gone around the building we spent the night in; it was amazing. I looked at the mud and debris both front and back of our home. With the big waters and the big rocks above us, the building we’d sheltered in was the most dangerous one, but not a drop of water or mud had gotten in, and the one we didn’t stay in was completely underwater, with a lot of things washed away. We really saw the love and salvation of God. If it wasn’t for God watching over us and protecting us none of us would have survived. The whole family thanked God from the bottom of our hearts. It was God that gave us this chance at life, we should cherish it, and do our best from now on to do our duties and satisfy God!
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