In the Bible, dreams are very close to the visions given to man by God. The dream Jacob had became his vision (Gen. 28:10-17), and the dream Joseph had also became his vision (37:5-11). In the Bible there are many others who saw visions in their dreams.
I was saved in April of 1925, and from then on I loved the Lord and desired earnestly to know the Bible. At that time I was young and strong, and both my thoughts and intellect were still developing. However, the Lord laid hold of me, and He caused me to spend willingly the most precious years of my life entirely on Him and His Word. Thus, from the reading of the Word I saw the significance of dreams and visions.
Since everyone has dreams, it seems that dreams should be meaningless. Nevertheless, the Bible uses dreams to reveal to us the visions of God. The Chinese Bible uses the expression strange dream. A strange dream is a dream in which a person sees some uncommon scenes; hence, it is called a strange dream. The English word vision denotes a scene, just as a television broadcasts numerous different scenes.
Now I would like to tell you about an extraordinary dream I had in 1943. What God showed me in that dream was not a common scene. Rather, what He showed me was a vision, a strange and miraculous scene. Although I had known the Bible since my youth, before 1943 I had never had any uncommon vision or scene in a dream in my twenty years of being a Christian.
In the evening of July 7, 1937, the night of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, I was on a boat from Chefoo on the way to Tientsin; the next morning I disembarked at Takukou, which was the biggest port in the north. That morning it was unusually quiet; not a soul was to be found. I continued by train, and when it arrived at the Tientsin station, there was a child selling newspaper extras. I read the extra and found out that on the previous night Japan had instigated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and had begun its invasion of China. Because of this, there were wartime conflicts from Tientsin all the way to Peking.
At the time there were a few co-workers who were waiting for me in Peking to travel together to Suiyuan, Shansi, and Shensi. Previously we had decided to preach the gospel in different provinces during the summer. Now that Japan had started the invasion of China, the co-workers and I felt that we should move quickly according to our original plan. We took the train from Peking to Suiyuan, and when we arrived in Suiyuan, we rode an open coach to Taiyuan, which is in Shansi. In Taiyuan we immediately started to meet and preach the gospel in every place. Next we went to Shensi and then went by train to Sian. In Sian we received a telegram from Brother Nee asking us to attend the co-worker’s meeting in Hankow. We went from Sian through Chengchow to Hankow, and there we waited for Brother Nee. While waiting, I received the news that the Japanese army was about to take over Chefoo, so I had to return to Chefoo and get my family out. However, while I was on my way from Hankow to Chefoo, Chefoo was lost to the enemy, and I fell into the hands of the Japanese.
The next year I was arrested and put into prison. It was a short imprisonment, but some marvelous things happened. A few years later, at the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, a great revival began in Chefoo. We met continuously for almost one hundred days, and every day we had new leadings from the Lord. The brothers and sisters consecrated themselves to the extent that every individual and every home was consecrated, and they offered all their possessions, including house deeds, property deeds, stocks, and bank deposits. The serving ones were divided into groups to check and list all the material things offered by the saints. One group checked the garments, another group checked the jewelry, and still another group checked the utensils. They took turns to check and register all the items, one by one.
The news of this revival found its way to the Japanese army headquarters. The Japanese military police received an intelligence report leading them to suppose that in Chefoo there was a man with great charisma who had stirred up a group of people to the point that they gave up even their family possessions and delivered to him all their valuables. The Japanese military police said that apparently I was a preacher, but they had never seen such a phenomenon in Christianity. Therefore, they sent undercover workers disguised as saints to come and listen to the gospel. I knew the Japanese were watching me while I was speaking from the podium, so I cannot say that I was not concerned. On the one hand, I looked to the Lord, and on the other hand, I thought about the condition of Christianity. Born and raised in Christianity, I understood the situation of Christianity quite well. By that time I had worked with Brother Nee for nearly ten years, and I knew the Lord’s truth was with us. Therefore, I had the thought within me, “O Lord, I cannot die.” Where would the truths be if I died? I had only this one thought in mind: I could not die.