LIFE OF GIVING

As they made their way to the meeting, they told him some of the stories about this mysterious Brother Wang. It was clear they loved him dearly, and one of the men explained why.

"We were once holding a training seminar here and heard the police were coming. Brother Wang got everyone out, except our main pastor. When the police arrived, Wang dared to bargain with them. He would go to jail if our pastor -- whose wife was eight months pregnant - could go free. The policeman accepted his terms, and Brother Wang spent three years in prison."

"How old is Brother Wang?" Duan asked. When told he was in his early 40s, Duan's face showed great pain.

"What's the matter?" he was asked. "Are you ill from the cart trip?"

"No, I'm not ill," he replied, "just very sad. I once had a son, whom I knew for just two months. He's dead now, but if alive he would have been 42 today.

"My wife called him the 'Christmas Child,' since he was born at Christmas time. I called him 'Isaac,' because we had despaired for so long of having a child."

There was silence as they rode in the open cart under the stars. Brother Duan told the incredible story of how he and his wife had been evangelists in the 1950s. They refused to join the Three Self church, and Wu, an old school bully, kept accusing them of political and criminal offenses. It was only a matter of time before they were jailed or killed, but what would happen to their boy?

One night, Duan's wife heard a strong voice in a vision, saying, "Give your son to your enemy." Knowing nothing about this, Duan read Genesis 22:2 the following morning: "Go get Isaac, your only son, the one you dearly love and sacrifice him to me."

Sharing their impressions, the couple decided on a course of action that caused Duan to wince in pain every day since. They gave their boy to Wu and his wife -- who were childless -- even as Wu arranged for the couple's arrest.

It wasn't until 1978, when Duan was released from jail, that he learned what happened to his wife and son. She had died in the terrible famine of 1958, and his son had disappeared along with the Wu family under the rubble of a devastating earthquake in 1975. Said Duan sadly as the little cart approached the meeting place, "God judged me for being so irresponsible with my little son."