Chapter 7

Enlarge the Territory

"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back, lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities." (Isaiah 54:2-3)

One day when I was in the Shanghai Gospel Church, I lost a red pencil that I always used every day for Bible study. Whenever I read the Bible, I used that red pencil to mark down the precious Scriptures. Without a red pencil I felt that I could not grasp the main points when I studied the Bible, so I was very upset. I decided to buy another one as soon as possible. However, many stores which I visited had only cheap ones, and the quality of them were poor. The lead of the pencil would break by one use. Those cheap ones could never be compared with my old red pencil which I had bought before the Liberation of China. The next day right after I lost the red pencil, after I finished morning prayer and before I started to read the Bible, I was pondering this matter again in my heart. I could not help saying to the Lord: "How awful it is to lose the red pencil! However, nothing will come upon me unless you permit it. I truly do not understand why you allowed me to lose the red pencil." Immediately, a scripture came upon me: "In all things God works for the good of those who love Him." In my heart I said to myself: "I would like to see how this thing will work for the good of me!" Two days later, a sister and I went to visit a believer who lived in the remote suburbs. It was dusk when we left her house, but I saw there was a small store beside the road, and I wanted to go in to see whether they had red pencils. My heart was murmuring: "I could not even find a good red pencil in the big store in town, how could this small store have anything?" However, I still went in and asked a clerk. He said that they did have some, but they were expensive, about fifty cents a pencil. He showed one to me which was imported, very fine, delicate and with a silver luminous cover. Immediately I acted as if I had just found a treasure. So long as the quality was good, I would buy it, no matter how expensive it was. In order to study God's word, I did not care how much it would cost. The next morning, after I prayed, before I opened my eyes, I used my left hand to hold the red pencil that I had just bought last night. I felt so happy. I pressed it against my chest, and my right hand kept on stroking it. My heart was full of gratitude. I said: "What a good red pencil it is; it is even better than my old one." When I opened my eyes, "Made in Germany," three silver letters, on the red pencil radiated directly into my eyes, and it seemed as if they were flashing and blinking. It seemed to tell me: "Do you understand? Now can you understand?" "I see." All of a sudden I rejoiced greatly in the Spirit. I looked at the word "Germany, " and it seemed it was looking at me too. Since then, "Germany" entered into my heart and has never left me. I realized that the Lord used the printings on this red pencil to tell me that there was a relationship between Germany and my territory of ministry. It is just as God promised to Abraham: "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever." (Genesis 13:14-15)

Soon because the House of God in Beijing was dissolved, the Gospel Church dared not receive me any more because I was from the mountain. I was guided by the Lord to go with my mother to stay in the house of a distant relative, who lived downtown. My mother had gone from Kwanzhou to the House of God in Beijing earlier. However, when the House of God was destroyed, she came to Shanghai to stay with me. There were seven people in the family of this distant relative. Both the husband and the wife were unemployed. They had only one bedroom and one living room. Since the husband feared God, he gladly gave the bedroom to my mother and me. Also he cleaned up a little attic for me to use as a prayer room. I still served God day and night by praying and reading the Bible. One night, in a dream I saw two foreign names of places on a piece of paper: one of the names looked like "Chicago" and the other was "Phecheng," I woke up and laughed in my heart, how could I dream of such a strange place as "Phecheng." I had never seen such a place. Unexpectedly, in the morning I saw a book of world maps on the desk. I just opened it and saw "Phecheng," a big city in America, which was a Chinese abbreviation of Philadelphia. It truly surprised me. There was a place named Phecheng. This was absolutely not a random dream. (Today after forty years, I have been to Philadelphia to witness for God.) Through His power I have accomplished what He instructed me to do.

Another time, after I came back from a family fellowship and was very tired, I still went up to the attic to watch in prayer. I knelt there until midnight and then I fell asleep. Suddenly, a map shining with a strong light was presented before me. My right pointer was controlled by the Holy Spirit to draw a little circle on the map, and I stopped there for a long time. Then the Holy Spirit suddenly used a great power to pull my right pointer to the south, drawing a big circle from right to left. My heart said: "O the Lord enlarges my territory greatly!" When I woke up from this vision, my right pointer felt as numb as it would after an electric shock.