Pastor Zhang Rongliang has spent much of his life in prison and has spent decades in China as public enemy number one and yet he refused to quit preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“The police follow me everywhere I go,” the 76 year old pastor told me during a meeting we had together recently in China. Even during the short time that we shared a meal together, Pastor Zhang received a phone call from the local police station asking him where he was and what he was doing. “They want me to go to the police station to check in,” he said while smiling.
Pastor Zhang is a former Communist Party member, turned pastor, who took a stand for Christ and was targeted with prison, work camps, and torture, all the while helping to build a network of millions of faithful believers. Spanning the time of Mao’s regime to today, Zhang was able to help build one of the largest house church movements in Chinese history.
In his book “I STAND WITH CHRIST,” Pastor Zhang shares his personal testimony of how he was imprisoned, tortured, and almost killed for refusing to deny Christ in China. When it was clear that he could not be broken, he was finally released, but the Chinese Communist Party keeps him on a short leash. He is not allowed to travel to other areas of China without permission from the police, he is not allowed to have a passport to travel abroad, and he is not allowed to pastor any legal church in China.
But that has not kept Pastor Zhang from preaching the Gospel. “You see this,” Pastor Zhang shows me the phone in his hand. “This allows me to continue sharing,” he said with a victorious smile.
Pastor Zhang shares morning devotions every day with thousands of people all around China through a simple broadcast from his phone.
“Are you worried about being arrested again?” I ask, worried for his safety.
“I am only worried about what happens when I don’t share about Jesus,” he replied.
To read more about Pastor Zhang’s personal testimony, click on the link below
