Zhang Jiao’s Water Couldn’t Heal. Why Did People Believe?

My hometown is in a poor county in western Shandong. A few years ago, in the name of “environmental protection,” all the cooking pots and stoves in the villages were dismantled. Burning coal for heat was banned too, and everyone was required to switch to natural gas.

Winter temperatures average below −10°C. A gas wall-mounted boiler can keep a room in the teens Celsius, but running it costs roughly 30 to 40 yuan a day.

Farmers over sixty receive about 150 yuan a month in pension payments. Buying natural gas with that money would not last a week.

Then a Christian church cleared out several spacious rooms. Tables and chairs filled them. The wall-mounted boilers burned through the night. A kind-looking elderly woman stood at the door, calling to the shivering villagers: “Come in, children. Have some hot water, warm yourselves, and listen to the Lord’s teachings.”

They knew nothing about the history behind the cross. They knew even less about what happened in the Garden of Eden, and they could not understand the hymns the believers sang. They knew only that it was warm inside, and once they entered, they did not have to freeze anymore.