[Note: This is Part A of the testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 7 December 2002. Part B continues directly.]
Fundamentally, there are only two kinds of Christians. One kind is simply a person who is outwardly a Christian — he goes to church, believes certain things, attends Bible study, is even active in the church. You would have to call him a Christian. But the other kind is a person who walks with God. Whether he comes to church on Sunday or is in another part of the world, it does not matter — he is always walking with God. And the church is mostly full of just the first kind, and that is what worries me. When I say outward, I do not mean it does not involve the mind or the emotions. What I mean is this: if the life of Christ has not reached the deepest part of your being, then you are simply a Christian in the outer sense of the word.
When I talk with Brother Ross, I immediately recognise here is a person who in the deepest part of his being has a communication with God. I can feel that in his heart there is a connection with God. But with most Christians, you will soon recognise that this depth, this spiritual element, is not there. The question we must ask ourselves — 到底我是哪一类的基督徒? — is: which kind of Christian am I? Am I one of those who is a good Christian because he never misses church on Sunday, is active in the church, does this and that? But do I really know God? Do I really find that I can commune with him? Do I hear his soft whispering voice — not with this physical ear, but the ear of my spirit? When he wants to tell me to do something, would I know? Otherwise, what is the point of the Christian life? Biblical Christianity is a Christianity of communion with God. The most important thing is that the Christian life is a relationship with God.
When I share my testimony, I am not sharing it to entertain anyone with exciting stories that one reads when one has nothing better to do. The whole purpose is so that you see what a Christian in the inner sense is — the kind of person who learns to walk with the living God. And when you walk with God, you are always telling others what God did this week and God did that week. And you wonder: well, what about me? The reason you may not have those experiences is simply that his life has not yet reached the deepest part of your person.
You are reading these days in Luke chapter 17, verses one to ten. The Lord says: if you have faith, you say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and go into the sea. Now, of course, his point is not about mulberry trees. Who cares whether a mulberry tree is uprooted or not, unless it is troubling your garden? And why plant it in the sea — what has the sea to do with the mulberry tree? I can tell you that in two thousand years of church history, nobody has ever uprooted a mulberry tree and planted it in the sea, nor has anyone discovered a need to do so. Clearly the Lord is telling us: if you walk with me, you are going to see amazing things. You will see impossible things happening — not about mulberry trees, but impossible things having to do with eternal life and the gospel reaching people. That is what my testimony is concerned about.
Once you walk with God, you feel his feelings. His emotions become your emotions. Take Brother Ross as an example at hand. He is a foreigner with no Chinese blood in him, no missionary family background, no reason at all to care about the Chinese people. So why would he care whether the Chinese people have a chance at eternal life? And yet here is a foreigner who rushed over from England just a few days ago, stopping over here, then rushing to Australia in three days to arrange a group to go to China, then rushing back to London. Running all over the world for the sake of our people — not his people, our people. He feels what is in God's heart in a way that perhaps many of us do not feel. There is only one explanation for it.
Ross went to Cambridge as a young student to study law. But when he met with God and God met with him at Cambridge, he gave up law. He turned to theology, which he found — I know exactly what he meant — not very helpful in its academic form, but he continued anyway. The point I want to make is this: do you feel what God feels? He burns inside to get the gospel to China. And in the deepest part of my being, I feel the same thing. That is why when I hear him speak, there is a 共鸣 — a resonance — in my heart. All my life I have been pondering how to get the gospel to the Chinese people.
I sometimes, to be honest, complained to God and said: Lord, you are not very fair to us. These foreigners have had the gospel for two thousand years; we are only getting it in the last two hundred years. This is not fair, is it? But I discovered I was wrong. The gospel reached China a long time ago — in the Tang Dynasty, in the seventh century, in the time of Emperor Tai Tung. This open-minded and capable emperor wrote an edict with his own hand after reading the gospel as brought by early missionaries from the Middle East — not British or French missionaries, but from the Middle East. Having read it, he wrote: this is very good; we Chinese people need the gospel; I give these people liberty to preach the gospel through all of China. And yet the gospel failed in China. Scholars are still discussing to this day why it failed, and I have been recently reading up on that subject to learn the lessons from history so we do not repeat the same mistakes.
I want to tell you what happens when that burden — when you feel God's feeling within you — leads you to act. China is so big. How can we reach it in a short time, since the time is short? One way, of course, is by radio. We need to broadcast the gospel into China. So a few years ago, I began to consider how we could do this. In our church in Montreal we have a professor of electrical engineering from McGill — Professor Boon Teck, as we call him by his personal name. I asked him about broadcasting into China, since he is in the electrical engineering field. He said he is in heavy electrical engineering — generators and power equipment — but he knows a professor who specialises in broadcasting and would introduce me to him.
So he introduced me to this elderly professor from McGill who specialises in broadcasting. And the first question this professor asked me was: do you have a lot of money? I said: no, I do not have a lot of money. He said: how are you going to broadcast into China? He told me frankly that shortwave broadcasting stations are usually affordable only to governments — only national governments have enough money to build such things. We are talking millions and millions of dollars, and not Chinese dollars — millions of US dollars. He suggested that I get in touch with CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and see if I could buy time from them.
I continued to wait on the Lord and said: here is something impossible. Building a real broadcasting station is a much bigger job than pulling a tree out of the ground. You can hire a machine for one hour and pull your mulberry tree out. But a radio station — are we kidding? I think that professor must have thought this man is really out of his mind. But I believe in the word of God. I believe God can do more than pull mulberry trees up and plant them in the sea. We have not seen anything yet.
Two years later, one of the co-workers came to me and said: I have something to tell you. There is an American organisation that wants to sell a radio station. Suddenly all my conversations and thoughts about the broadcasting professor and the radio station came flooding back. For some reason known only to God, this organisation approached us — we didn't even know them, and they certainly did not know us — and asked if we wanted to buy their station. I hardly dared to ask how much it would cost. I remembered what the professor had said. The figure was named to me, and I was told that this organisation was in very serious financial difficulty and was willing to sell the station at a fraction of its original cost. But even a fraction — we are talking six-digit numbers in US dollars. A million dollars? Where would we get a million dollars from? Have any of our leaders ever approached you to ask for one dollar for the radio station? Has there ever been any fundraising in the churches for this? As you are my witnesses, nobody has ever asked you for a cent. There is only one person I talked to: my God. And I said: where do I have a million dollars?
So you can see what I mean. Now we are really talking about something much bigger than pulling out a mulberry tree. Yet if we could just pool together a few hundred dollars each from our congregation and manage something together — well, in that case, why do I need to believe in Jesus' words? If I can work it out by human means, I have no particular need to trust in God. I prefer to talk with God directly.
The American people who owned the station came to see us and we discussed the matter. Trusting in the Lord, we proceeded to say: all right, we will take the station. And I asked them to remain in a nominal partnership with us — they had no say in running the station, but nominally hold a ten-percent share. And to my amazement, they kept thanking us. Here they were selling at a fraction of the cost, and they were thanking us — because I did not realise at the time that we were not just acquiring a station, but were actually saving them from collapse. As a result, we became very good friends in the Lord. As you know, today we are broadcasting into China every day for four and a half hours.
I would like you to think about what that means. Some co-workers from the radio station came to meet with me before this camp. And it showed that eighty percent of China can receive the broadcast. Now, eighty percent of 1.3 billion people — that is nearly one billion people. Imagine that. We can reach more people in one day with the gospel through the broadcast than most Christians could do in several lifetimes. Now this is not man's accomplishment. None of us can accomplish any of these things. I want to show you that the passage you are reading in Luke 17 is something that I am personally testifying to you that God has done — and more.
So some of you are saying: okay, now you are talking about something like a million US dollars. Where did it come from? First of all, you had to go forward by faith. I eventually had no idea how to get this money. There was somebody who wanted to offer the money, but I refused it. Why? Because his spiritual life was not acceptable. He had the money and was willing to give. But unless he repented of a certain sin — a sin in which he had offended someone else completely unnecessarily — I would not accept his money. He thought that if I had no other source, and he held out long enough, I would be forced to accept. He did not want to repent, and he thought he had his hand on my throat. And to this day I have not accepted his money. Right — and now I do not need his money anymore, because the station has been paid off. He was amazed. And I still demand the repentance. You don't repent; I don't want your money.
Do you believe in the God who can do the impossible? If I am sharing God's burden to bring the gospel to China, I am only sharing his burden — the burden is his. When you walk in tune with God, you do not look only at what your eyes can see. You look at your bank account and have no money to buy a station — but is God real to you or not? How real is he? Real enough to put a million US dollars on the table? I dare to take that challenge not because I have money in the bank, but because I have a God who says: do it, and trust my word. I tell you the truth: if my God were not real, I would not be standing here today.
I never approached a single person to ask for funds. I never went to somebody and said: you happen to have two or three million dollars lying around. You know how God works? God moved them to come to me. I did not go to them.
[Continues in Part B]
# Testimony of Pastor Eric Chang (Part B) — Radio Station Purchased; God Provides Funds; I Only Want God; Highway Creature; Demon Possession; Back Pain Begins
[Note: This is Part B of the testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 7 December 2002, continuing directly from Part A.]
One co-worker told me that he has a certain large amount of Hong Kong money — his whole life savings, because he had been in a very high-paying position. In Hong Kong dollars he had something like three million, which is roughly less than four hundred thousand US dollars. He talked to me and said: I want to give this money to the Lord. How should I do it? I said: well, at the moment I do not know of anything for you to give to. Just keep it there, and one day when the Lord shows me something, I will talk to you again. A year later he said: so what about my money? I am still waiting. I do not want to keep this money in the bank. I said: please be patient. Another year passed and he said: I have waited too long. Can we get on with this? And you see, when the radio station came up, I said: brother, you still want to give that money, do you? He said: I have waited too long; let us take this out of the way.
You see, it is amazing how God works. One by one, people were coming to me and saying: I have some money, I want to give it to the Lord — where shall I put it? They were asking me. I never talked to anybody. One by one, there was a person who saw me and said: I have some money, how should I use it? When you walk with God, you just see miracles all the time. No leader ever came to you to ask you for one cent. This is just amazing.
Now, the American organisation and we worked out that we would pay them in installments — not in one shot, but in several installments. I think it was four payments over one year, which means that every installment you have to come up with nearly a quarter of a million US dollars. And when it came to the last installment, the American organisation said: we are really having financial difficulty — could you move the payment forward by a month? My God is so great. I said: okay, we will pay you one month early. And they were so grateful, because they got their money a little bit earlier. You see, how do you read your Bible? When I read my Bible I say: oh yes, Lord! Have I experienced this for myself — and more?
Don't you want to walk with God? Are you satisfied with this kind of external Christian life? I tell you the truth: I am not interested in religion — not a bit. I am not even interested in Christianity, as surprising as that may sound. I only want God. Like the Apostle Paul — that I may know him, that is all. I know Jesus Christ and him crucified. I am not a religious person. What you need is not religion. What you need is God. Without Jesus you cannot get to know God — he is the way, the truth and the life. He is the way to God.
Now you will notice that I have not been sharing past experiences today — I am sharing something recent. The radio station has been broadcasting for two years now. Only two years. I know some co-workers would like me to finish my longer testimony from years back, but I have so much recent testimony that I have no time to go back to the past anymore. I do not have to go away into past years to find something to testify — I can tell you what is happening day by day as I walk with my God.
For the last one and a quarter years, I have been working on a set of manuscripts — a manuscript which, if the Lord wills, will be published sometime in the coming year. It expounds the Lord's teaching on salvation from beginning to end, from regeneration to perfection. Brother Ross was very interested in this work, because he told me that China really needs that teaching — there is no proper teaching going on there. And in the last stretch I had to do one chapter every two days in the final editing. Sometimes I was so tired that I literally fell asleep at the computer. Twice I nearly knocked my head on the keyboard, just waking in time. That also is serving the Lord, because I feel his heart — his heart is to get his word out to the people. It is urgent.
Then the Lord did something entirely new in my experience. Normally I need at least seven and a half to eight hours of sleep — I always envy those who can go on four or five hours and feel fine. My only comfort was discovering that Einstein also needed eight hours, so at least I am in good company. But then, during that particular stretch of months, I would go to bed very tired at the end of each day's work, and every morning I would wake up five and a half hours later feeling very refreshed. I could not believe it. Five and a half hours of sleep and I am feeling so refreshed? That meant I could put so much more work into the manuscripts. In the last day or two I have been sleeping seven and a half to eight hours again, so perhaps that special mercy was only for that period of time. But it is so amazing to walk with God — day after day, week after week, sleeping those few hours and waking refreshed.
I had to live a very disciplined program every day: working on manuscripts, going out for at least an hour's walk to keep the circulation going and to meditate and commune with the Lord, then back to work. Not to mention that I had to go to Toronto three times to deal with church matters — each time staying about two weeks — which means three times represents one and a half months invested in that work alone. And then there is this. On the last time Helen and I were coming back from Toronto, it was night time on the highway, driving at maximum speed — within permitted limits, of course. At one stretch halfway back to Montreal, at full speed, out of the darkness there suddenly appeared an animal. It came across from the other side of the highway, straight towards the front of our car.
Both Helen and I could not figure out what it was. If it were a deer, I know what a deer looks like. If it were a dog, we all know what a dog looks like. But it looked neither like a dog nor a deer nor anything I have ever seen before. It was about the size of a deer, but had no horns and nothing else about it resembled a deer. A very strange creature, at great speed, coming straight into the front of the car. I was sure we were going to hit it and it would be a disaster — when you are moving at nearly eighty miles an hour and you hit anything, even a cat, that would be quite a problem. A dog at that speed would destroy the front end of the car and could cause a major disaster. So I swerved to the right. Swerving was very dangerous at that speed; the whole car went into a strange swaying motion, and I think I missed that creature by a fraction of an inch. The car went into a very dangerous wobble for quite a while before I could regain control of it. Both sides of the highway drop into a ditch, and at that speed, if I had gone off the road, the car would have overturned. By the grace of God I am here, otherwise neither of us would be.
I have thought back on this several times and tried to picture that animal in my mind. Helen also cannot figure out what it was. I suspect it was not a natural creature. By a simple calculation of physics, given the speed of our car and the speed and direction of that creature, it should have hit at least the front of our car. The only way to avoid it was to swerve — but even swerving meant the creature should still have hit the middle of the car. And yet there was no sound of impact. When I looked in the rear-view mirror, there was nothing in the darkness behind us — nothing at all. That is strange. It should have hit, but it did not. I suspect this was the enemy trying to take some kind of physical or demonic form, attempting to cause an accident. Because if it were a spiritual form, it could not cause damage by impact — it would only need to cause me to swerve and lose control. We are the kind of people the enemy would very much like to put out of business. But we walk with God. The enemy attacks us, yes; but we walk with God.
Only a few months ago I also received a phone call from our co-worker in Montreal. He said there was a serious case of demon possession — could I please come and help? Now, we are talking about Canada, a first-world nation. If you think demon possession has only to do with third-world countries or illiterate farmers, you have missed the picture of spiritual warfare entirely. In this case the husband was a PhD student and his wife was possessed. Neither of them were Christians, but they had nowhere else to turn for help. The husband was quite desperate. So I asked the co-worker to take this couple to our church elder's home, and I went there. The wife, about thirty years old, was in a very bad state of possession. From time to time she was rolling on the floor, and at other times she crawled to my feet. I told her: stand up and sit down, please. Then I asked her questions to determine whether this was a mental problem or a spiritual one — you need spiritual discernment to tell the difference.
I asked questions that I knew she had no natural way of answering. If she had information from the spiritual realm inside her, the spirit could answer. So I asked her name, and the spirit answered, giving his name. The demon was a male spirit possessing this woman. Then I wanted to determine the rank and position of this demon, because in the spirit world there are many different ranks. High-ranking demons are very powerful and much more difficult to deal with. From observing her behaviour I realized we were dealing with a relatively high-ranking demon, and that explained why the co-worker had not been successful in casting him out. The situation was also very complicated because the demon-possessed person does not always want to be relieved of the demon. Some people who are possessed enjoy a certain power given to them by it — with that power, she could control her husband, and everyone was frightened of her. So I had to speak both to the demon and to the woman, because there are two levels.
I said to the woman: do you want this demon to go or not? If you do not, you are wasting my time. If I cast him out and you want him back again, I am wasting my time. She said: yes, I want him to go. I said: no, you don't. And until you genuinely tell me you want him to go, I will not do a thing. She said: then I will lose my power. She said: it is better than the torment that is destroying my family. I was not sure she was entirely sincere, but at last I could see that she was being genuinely crushed by the demon and truly wanted him to go. And then finally we cast out the demon.
It is interesting: even the demon wants some respect. When dealing with demons, you do not shout or yell or abuse — even the Bible tells us that when the Archangel contended with Satan, he was not abusive toward him. And this demon said to me respectfully: I have one request. Can I leave through the door? In other words, he does not want to be thrown out through the window. I said: I am not the owner of the house — he can ask the elder. The elder opened the door, and then I commanded the demon to leave in the name of Jesus. As soon as the demon left her, she was a totally different person. One moment she was speaking in that particular way; suddenly she became another person. The demon was gone. But I cautioned her: if she ever opens her heart again to the demon, he will come right back.
A few days later the demon did come back, and the co-worker phoned to say he could not be cast out again. The demon said to those present: I am not afraid of you people. And as for Pastor Eric, he is not here anyway, so there is nothing you can do. I said: do not be discouraged. There is one way you can get rid of this demon — individually you may not have the power, but together, if you confess your sins to one another, all believers present making sure there is no barrier between you, joining in one heart, cast out the demon in Jesus' name, and he will go. And they did. The demon left and did not come back, because he knew he would face a united force again. This is why Jesus prayed in John 17 that they may be one. When his people are united, they can overcome even the highest enemy power.
And you know what happened as a result of this whole incident? Husband and wife both came to the Lord. The husband himself witnessed the power of the Lord and committed his life to him. Both were baptized. Not long afterwards, at another baptism service, Helen and I went along, and a couple came up to us very warmly and lovingly — and I had to look twice to recognise who they were. They were so transformed I could hardly recognise them. That was the husband and the wife. Such a transformation that you hardly knew them anymore. How great is our God? Why would you want to be a so-called Christian who merely goes to church on Sunday? Being a Christian is a matter of life — a new life, a life in which we commune with the living God.
In the remaining minutes, let me tell you one last thing the Lord did in the last few months. I mentioned that I have been spending hours and hours every day sitting at the computer working on these manuscripts. If you do not have a back problem, you do not know what it means to sit at a computer for hours at a time. Sometimes I stand up and my back — oh, you would say it is killing me, and that is about the right description. I cannot go on. But I told you I go out for a walk every day; I try to walk at least an hour a day even with the pain, out of sheer self-discipline — otherwise by now I would be crippled. But even with that discipline, pain is pain. When it reaches a certain level, you cannot walk anymore. The pain was like a thorn, just like Paul said — a sharp thorn jabbing right into my hip. As I walk, the intensity level rises. After walking for barely a minute or a minute and a half, the pain reaches the point where I cannot continue. The only way is to squat down on the ground and let the pain release. After a minute or two, it subsides. Then I stand up and walk another short stretch, and down again. In a shopping centre there are seats; on the street, people wonder what your problem is. Once or twice some kind people came and said: are you alright, do you need help? I had to say: oh, it's okay, I'm just tying my shoe. So many of you who have been with me know this — that's how I was learning humility.
I want to share this part because walking with God is not all sweetness and power. When we want to walk with God, God looks at us and says: yes, he wants to walk with me, but I have a lot of work to do on him. If I give him too much power too quickly, he may get very proud. Even the apostle Paul needed a thorn to keep him humble — a person of that spiritual stature. How much more me? I'm sure there is a lot of hidden pride in me, and God must deal with it if I am going to walk with him.
[Continues in Part C]
# Testimony of Pastor Eric Chang (Part C) — Back Pain Healed September 21; "You Don't Have Because You Didn't Ask"; Walking One Hour; Helen Notices
[Note: This is Part C of the testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 7 December 2002, continuing directly from Part B.]
I sit down because there is somewhere to sit by the side of the path. When the pain is gone, I stand up and walk another stretch. When the pain comes, I sit down again. So, very interesting exercise — most of the exercise turns out to be standing up and sitting down. And I feel sorry for Helen, because this kind of walking means she has to bear with me day by day: standing there and waiting until the pain is gone, then I stand up, walk another stretch, and sit down again. She is long-suffering.
One day, I was walking by the riverside. I walked and I walked. The pain didn't come. After three minutes — still no pain. This is amazing. I walk another minute. Still no pain. Five minutes? No pain. Lord, what is happening here? What I hadn't told you is that before that day, the words the Lord brought to my mind were these: "You don't have because you didn't ask." I did not ask. Why? Because I felt that I needed the thorn. The hidden pride and whatever other problems I have, the Lord must deal with — so go ahead and give it to me, Lord. But the Lord kept bringing these words: ask, you didn't ask, you don't have. I thought: has the time come that the Lord wants to deal with me in a different way now? Perhaps the old thorn can go, and there is another way to fix me.
There is a small humour in this. I had received a Reader's Digest advertisement for a book, one title of which caught my attention: Walking for Fitness and Happiness. I thought: walking for fitness and happiness — I cannot even walk, never mind fitness and happiness. When you cannot walk and you watch other people strolling by, very comfortable, walking on — that feeling is very strange. I could see people walking freely and look at them with almost envious longing. I remember the old days when I used to walk a whole day from morning to night in the mountains in Europe. I loved to walk. I was very fit. And now here I was hobbling around, having to sit down after eighty feet, then a few more yards, then sit down again. And you are talking to me about walking for fitness and happiness? And the Lord said: ask, ask.
I said: Lord, all right — you give me the courage to ask. I ask. Please, may I be able to walk again? You take walking for granted. Let me tell you, one of these days you may not be able to walk again. Remember my testimony. September the twenty-first: ten minutes walking, no pain. Twenty minutes walking, still no pain. I was still walking and walking faster, still no pain. What is happening? I began to experience something of what the cripple felt when the Lord said: stand up and walk. I walked for one hour without once sitting down, without once stopping. I walked for one hour and I did not want to stop.
I must confess, to my shame: I was afraid that if I stopped walking, I might not be able to walk again. So I had better keep going and enjoy it while it lasts. I say that to my shame — do not think I am a giant of faith. Mustard seed only. So the next day came, to the test. After one hour I had to go back to work on the manuscript; I cannot keep walking forever. I think I walked for one hour and a quarter before going back. Next day, I went out to walk again. Pain did not come back. And the next time — 隔了一天，我又再去走的时候，也没有疼痛了 — still no pain. My heart was just filled with thanksgiving. Lord, I just thank you. It is so amazing what you have done. My dreams were coming back: one day I am going to walk in the mountains once more, like I did in the old days. I just love to walk there and commune with the Lord.
Since that time I have been walking every day, at least one hour, nonstop. But you know what? I did not tell Helen that I had been healed. I said: I will wait and see if she notices. So when I got back to Hong Kong, I said nothing. I just said: let us go for a walk. And then I walked and walked. She did not say anything, so I walked faster. I think because I had just come back, her mind was occupied with other things. And finally, only finally, she noticed: hey, how come? So the other day, before the camp started — we came two days early — we walked along the sea front. She was saying I was walking rather fast. She did not know that I used to do high-speed walking. So now she knows the wonder of my God. After ten years, he healed me, so that now I can walk one hour, two hours, and the other day we walked for over an hour along the waterfront.
So I do not have to testify of what happened five or ten years ago. I can share things from right now, from this week. I think our time is gone and we have to stop here. If I were to testify of everything, we would be here all night — God is so wonderful. I noticed that he chose to heal me at the most impossible time humanly speaking, because never before have I had to sit so many hours every day at the computer working on manuscripts. He chose this moment so that all the glory goes only to him, so there is no human explanation for it. Let us pray. We will pray.
# Testimony of Pastor Eric Chang (Supplement) — Sleep Clarification; Highway Creature Physics; Radio Station Corrections; Broadcast Team Miracle; Chinese Closing
[Note: This is a supplementary addendum to the testimony delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on 7 December 2002. It clarifies and supplements several points from the main testimony.]
He said: when you are in a hurry and limited by time, you skip a lot of points. And after I shared, I was a bit worried that some young people who love the Lord might say: well, he slept five and a half hours, so can I. So I will clarify. It is very important in the spiritual life that we do not imitate the external things. The fact is that I cannot survive on five and a half hours — to be very honest with you. By nature I need seven and a half to eight hours of sleep, like Einstein. That is why I was mystified as to how it was possible for me to go on so long with so little.
When I was young, I once tried to discipline myself to sleep less — even before I was a Christian, I wanted to discipline my mind and body. So I forced myself to sleep less, set the alarm, systematically shortening the time from seven hours to six hours and so on. You know what happened? The next day I found myself with my face in the book. I had been sleeping all night with my face in the book. So please do not try to copy the external. Your body may need a certain amount of sleep, and do not try to destroy your body in the process.
When I said I had been sleeping five and a half hours all those months, I never set the alarm clock. I allowed my body to get all the rest it needs so that it can function properly. But the fact was that amazingly, I woke up at five and a half hours each morning. The Lord woke me up — that is the only way I can understand it, because I did not even set a mental clock. You know that if you set a mental clock you can wake up at the appointed time. But I never said to myself: okay, five and a half hours, my mental clock is set. I just said: I will sleep all I need. And then every morning I woke up after five and a half hours feeling as though I had slept eight — I felt it was such a long time. I looked at the clock and thought: I have slept five and a half hours? That is why I know it was God doing it, not me.
I want to supplement also the highway creature story. You remember the strange creature that came across the highway at great speed — I could not figure out what kind of animal it was. It was quite large, larger than an average dog. By a simple calculation of physics — according to the speed of that creature's movement and the direction of our car — that animal should have hit at least the front part of our car. 根据一些物理的计算，根据那个动物跑的方向和我的车的方向的话，那个动物应该会撞到我的车的前端。这个只是一个基本的物理的原理。 The only way to avoid it was to swerve. 所以我唯一能够逃过这个动物扑过来的就是我把车子移过一边。 But swerving means I would not hit the animal — it does not mean the animal would not hit the car. 那我把我的车子移过一边就是我希望我不要撞到那个动物，可是不表示那个动物不会撞到我的车上。 Because of the speed of its movement, if it did not hit the front of the car, it should have hit at least the middle of the car. 所以就这样子的话，就是它不撞到我的车的前端，大概也可能撞到我车的中间。 I could not swerve very hard — there were only two lanes on that highway and not much room to go to the right. 那个高速公路只是双线的，只是有两条车线，所以我不能够移得太过。 So I was waiting to hear the sound of the impact. 所以其实我在等待那个动物撞在我的车上那个声音。 There was no sound. 可是没有声音。 That is strange. It should have hit, but it did not. 它应该会撞到我的车，可是它没有。 When I looked in the rear-view mirror, nothing — only pitch darkness behind. 我从我的后视镜看，有没有东西，一点东西都没有看到，完全是漆黑的。
So what am I saying? I suspect this was not a real animal. When I think about it, I believe this may have been a demonic form. 我怀疑这个是否是真的一个动物。当我去想的话，我发现到可能这个是魔鬼的化身。 A spiritual entity cannot cause damage by direct impact. It would only need to cause me to swerve — and anyone who swerves hard at that speed on a narrow two-lane highway with ditches on both sides risks overturning. Its purpose may have been to make me swerve and lose control. 它只需要撞在我的车的前端，因为任何一个驾驶员他们都会把车移过去另外一边。可能它的用意就是要我把车移到另外一边，以致我构成一个交通意外。 This is what I omitted in the rush earlier, and it is an important point.
Third: a correction on the radio station figure. I said the station needed one million US dollars. Actually it was ninety thousand — rather, nine hundred thousand US dollars. 我说那个广播站它需要的是一百万美元。其实是九十万美元。 Why did I say one million? Because after acquiring the station we also needed to purchase additional equipment. 因为当我们接管了这个广播站之后，我们需要去购买一些的工具仪器。 So added together the total came to approximately one million. The one million therefore includes not only the station itself but also the additional equipment. 所以那一百万就是除了给那个广播站之外，还有购买一些的仪器。
This broadcasting station is a building of very large scale. 这个广播站是非常大的规模的一个建筑物。 The antenna alone is four or five storeys high. 它就是那个天线也有四五层楼的那么高。 Inside are very large transmitters, and a single transmitter can cost more than twenty thousand dollars. 它里面它的那个广播器也有很大的那个结管在里面。一只广播站也可能会超过两万多的价格。 So when you buy several of them, you very easily reach a hundred thousand dollars in equipment costs. 所以你多买几个的话，你就很容易用了十万块。
Now God's ways are very wonderful. When we took over this broadcasting station, we had absolutely no knowledge of how to operate one. 但是神的作为是非常的奇妙。当我们去买这个广播站的时候，我们根本都不懂对广播站一点的认识都没有。 We have many co-workers who are engineers, but their engineering training had no connection with broadcasting. Knowing electronics engineering does not mean you know how to operate a broadcast station. 我们有很多的同工，他们是工程师。可是他们工程所学的跟广播是没有联系的。 Among our co-workers there were probably over ten electronics engineers, but not one who knew anything about broadcast technology. 假如我没错的话，我想在我们当中的同工，有大概十多个是电子工程师来的。可是没有一个能够认识一些广播的技术。
So I asked one co-worker — himself an electronics engineer — whether he would accept the challenge of learning broadcast operations almost from scratch. He said yes. And it turned out that the American organisation had a chief engineer — a British man with a PhD in engineering, specialising in broadcasting, and apparently one of the top radio engineers in the entire world. 那个总工程师他是一个英国人。他在工程学上，他有一个博士的衔头。他的专长是在广播。我相信这个也许是世界上一个最专业，最有经验的一个广播工程师其中之一。 The American organisation had wanted to transfer this chief engineer to another location, but God worked in his heart. He told us he did not want to go elsewhere and would stay on to continue in his role. 那很奇妙的就是，神在这位工程师的心里面工作，他就跟我们说，他说他不要跟着调派去别的地方，他又留着这个地方去继续地去负责。 Our co-worker trained intensively with him, learning as much as possible. He learned very fast, and he now serves as the chief engineer there. 所以我们的同工就尽量地向这位工程师学习。这位同工他学习得非常快。他现在就是一个人在那里当总工程师。 The British engineer was eventually invited by his own government to take up another position elsewhere, but God had already prepared a successor. 因为那位英国人他就被他的政府邀请他去接受另外一份的工作。
Not only did God provide the station and the engineering side — he also provided for the broadcast team. We had only about one month from the time we took over the station to the time of first broadcast. I needed to invite another team of co-workers to prepare and handle the broadcast programmes. They had never done broadcast work of any kind before. 我们从接手了这个广播站到我们广播的时候只有大概一个月的时间。我需要去邀请另外一队的同工去负责这个广播的节目。他们从来没有当过广播的工作。 But when December 2000 came and we first went on air, we in Hong Kong opened up the radio and listened. We heard these two co-workers broadcasting, and we looked at one another in wonder. They broadcast excellently — seemingly with twenty years of experience. Their voices were clear; their delivery was calm and confident. 可是当2000年12月，当我们第一次在空中广播的时候，我们在香港的我们就打开了收音机去听那个广播。我们听到这两位同工他们在空中里面去广播。我们很奇怪，他们广播得非常好。他们似乎是有20年的经验了。他们的声音非常的清晰，然后他们的广播也是非常的镇定。 When you listen to it, you would never imagine these were amateur broadcasters who had never had any broadcasting experience. 当你听到这个广播的时候，你没有想过这个其实是业余的广播员，而他们也从来没有广播的经验。 Two years on, we now have broadcasters who are truly experienced. 两年之后，我们就真正有经验的广播员了。
I am so grateful to God for all of this. 我就想补充这几点，我们真的要感谢神。 Let us now give our time to God together. 我们一起把时间交给神。