For the last three years I have traveled to Beijing and taught courses in Pastor Zhang’s seminary. On my last trip in the late summer of 2013 we went out to dinner together and I noticed his limp was more pronounced than the previous time I visited so I inquired. The following story came to me from this encounter here written with accuracy by Peter and Jennifer (their English names), two young converts from pastor Zhang’s Ministry.

This is the story of the conversion and calling of Pastor Zhang an evangelist in Central China for the last thirty-five years.

Pastor Zhang was born in a rural area in the central part of China in a locale where people had never heard about the story of Jesus. But things can be changed by the extraordinary grace of God.

When he was sixteen, he was very ill. He could not move any part of his body, just like a human vegetable. The doctor at the hospital told his parents they were powerless to save him, and he would die soon. This feeling of helplessness was terrible to him. The only thing he could do was to cry for help from all kinds of supernatural powers.

At that time, a believer who he knew nothing about nor had ever met, living far away, came to his village by God’s leading. This believer had lost her twin daughters 30 years earlier (i.e. they were separated from her and lost in the great masses of humanity that characterize China). She was a believer in Jesus at this time. Over a long period she kept on praying to Jesus and searching for her daughters insistently. Finally she got a message about where her daughters were. So she came to see her children and by coincidence, one of her daughters was Pastor Zhang’s neighbor. After knowing Pastor Zhang’s story, the older sister told him about Jesus and prayed for him every day. Zhang chose to believe God and swore that if he could walk again, he would pledge his life to Jesus.

Amazingly, he stood at his feet again! All the doctors who had ever treated him were shocked. From thenceforth he walked but always with a limp perchance to remind him forever of the Lord’s amazing grace. Immediately after this healing he began to read the Bible and soon he trained to become a worker of God. By the way, the Bible was not available to every believer in those days. He had to borrow a Bible from a brother and then he wrote out a copy of the New Testament by his hand for himself. After he began to work for God, hundreds of people believed Jesus because of his preaching and story.

Noticeably, preaching was forbidden in China at that time. Pastor Zhang was put in the jail for 2 years. After being set free, he went on with the work. Furthermore, some other works he has done are very profound, such as connecting Chinese churches with the churches around the globe and building up the seminaries.

All the above is what we know about Pastor Zhang. May God bless his workers around the world, especially Pastor Zhang and Daniel Age.