Foreword
The first time I met Yi-lin was a moment long to be remembered.
The Director of the FEBC Hong Kong studio and his wife had told me of this young Red Guard, so recently a freedom swimmer through the shark- and gunboat-infested waters that separate Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland.
The Hong Kong staff had kindly given a reception in honor of my visit, and a crowd of about two hundred of the Christian community had gathered for the occasion. Prior to my introduction, Mr. Lin led me to the front where a slender, rather shy-looking young man stood beside a veiled object.
"Mr. Bowman," he said, "this is Yi-lin. He has a present he would like to give you."
With that, the veil was pulled away. I was stunned! There was a lovely oil painting of me, done by this young Chinese freedom swimmer who had never seen me!
The years of the Far East Broadcasting Company's ministry to China swept through my mind at that moment. For many of those years, the hours of daily broadcasting to the mainland had been purely by faith. Very rarely had a letter from the mainland been able to get through to us.1 And now . . . here stood one young Chinese who had first heard of God's love through FEBC. His life had eventually been transformed and given new meaning through what he had heard.
At that moment of meeting, my heart was flooded with
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immediate love for Yi-lin; I am afraid I did a very "unoriental" thing and spontaneously gave him a big hug.
The first years after his swim to freedom, Yi-lin found it difficult to speak of the tragedies of the Cultural Revolution in China, which ended in 1969, and in which he, a Red Guard, had been a willing participant.
Nights were filled with terrible nightmares, as scenes from those days in China played on the screen of his subconscious mind.
As a Red Guard Yi-lin had joined in plundering people's homes, burning books . . . and bibles, destroying every vestige of the "capitalistic" past, for the cause of the Cultural Revolution.
His apprehension by the grace of our Lord can best be described in the words of Saul of Tarsus, who became the beloved Apostle Paul:
". . . Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." (1 Timothy 1:13-14).
After some years as a follower of Christ Yi-lin now feels compelled to tell his story for the sake of the young people in his new world of freedom, many of whom find the communist ideology appealing.
This story is not that of Yi-lin alone, but of the disillusionment of millions of young mainland Chinese who, like him, had once been dedicated tot he great Cultural Revolution.
The deep philosophical thought of this intelligent young man gives tremendous insight into young communist minds in China who today seek for an answer to the meaning of life. That meaning, which they believed they had found in Mao, dissolved in their very hands . . . and today, they search again.
Yi-lin has found the meaning which they now seek. It all began for him as a boy of eleven when he first secretly listened to the stations of FEBC carrying the message of "love."
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The seed was sown in his young heart . . . and remained latent through more than a decade before it finally germinated and sprang forth, bringing peace and meaning to his then discordant life.
I highly commend to you this moving, true story of Yi-lin, my friend and brother.
Robert H. Bowman, President
Far East Broadcasting Company
La Mirada, California
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1. With the easing of censorship in China in 1979, thousands of letters have suddenly begun to pour into our Hong Kong address from people on the mainland.
