God’s
Hand Protected Us From the Fire
Zhihui
I
am a Christian,
and my family started a printworks in which we invested over one
million yuan. Although the factory was not large, it was all the
property we had. The workshop we rent was located in the district
under the jurisdiction of an army, and my landlord was a veteran. The
entire plant was a long and wide iron-roofed single story building in
a straight line, covering about 8,000 or 9,000 square meters. The
landlord rent the middle part to a young couple who were engaged in
recycling cloth waste, and the workshop I rent were at the end of the
whole building, about 1,000 square meters. The rest belonged to the
landlord, who ran a cloth processing factory (which processed the
rags into wool). As the piece goods business was slack in 2015 and
the market price was very low, the landlord stored a large quantity
of stock in his factory. The young couple and my family were also in
the cloths business, so the factories were piled high with rags and
cloth. These rags were all chemical fiber and were inflammable.
During
the Spring Festival in 2016, the workers were all on holiday, and
only my younger brother (a believer in God) was helping tending the
factory. Around 12:30 a.m. on February 27, he called me and told me
urgently that the plant was on fire. I knew the fire didn’t break
out for no reason: The landlord was building on a workshop on the
plant building these days. The other day, I saw sparks flying when
the welders he hired were working. I warned the workers again and
again that the workshops were piled with inflammable goods, and
advised them to be careful and cover these goods with damp cloths.
However, they didn’t take my warnings seriously. I had never
expected that the fire really happened.
When
I hung up the phone, I burned with anxiety. Then I hastily walked out
the door to have a look. Seeing the smoke rising from the direction
of the plant, I couldn’t help shivering all over, thinking: The
starch and cloths stored in the factory are all inflammable goods. If
they catch fire, it will be all over! Deeply uneasy, my husband and I
hurriedly drove to the plant. On our way there, I found the fire was
much more serious than I had thought. Heavy smoke from the fire could
be seen for dozens of kilometers, and even the sky was blackened. The
whistles of the fire police and traffic police kept jangling. And the
road was already overcrowded by the onlookers. When we were about 2
or 3 kilometers away from the plant, we found the police had closed
the road, for the fire was too fierce. So we couldn’t drive any
farther but had to pull over and watch at the side of the road,
anxiously waiting for news. There were about two or three police cars
and seven or eight fire engines on the scene, and more fire engines
were on their way to the plant. Onlookers were saying, “Oh my God!
That’s too bad. This is unfortunate for those who run the factories
there. Everything must be burnt out.” “The fire is so fierce,
perhaps nothing will be spared.” Hearing this, my husband also said
bitterly, “We are finished!” Seeing his desperate face, and
looking up at the black sky, I got into a panic, my legs trembling. I
thought: We have invested all our money in this factory. If it really
burns out, we will not only become bankrupt but will never get back
the 800,000 yuan we have lent, and we will even owe tens of thousands
of yuan to others. In that case, we will be burdened with heavy debt
and never rise again. This thought made me feel heavy-hearted. In
desperation, I suddenly remembered God. So I kept calling to God in
my heart, “Oh God! You know I’m very depressed. May You keep my
heart quiet, and guide me to understand Your will in this accident
and accept the fact.”
As
I was contemplating, God enlightened me to remember Job’s
experience. Job was a man who feared God and shunned evil. He
possessed a great wealth, and had many sons and daughters and a
mountainful of sheep and oxen. However, all he had were robbed all of
a sudden. When encountering these calamities, he didn’t have the
slightest complaint against God. Instead, he obeyed God and fell down
on the ground to extoll God’s name. Since he believed that whether
man received blessings or suffered misfortune was ruled by God, he
could calmly face all the disasters that befell him. What I
encountered today was the same. Outwardly, this fire was caused by
the workers’ carelessness, yet it was also a trial for me. Now that
I had heard many God’s
words and
the sermons on entering into life, I should learn to obey God. At
this thought, I no longer worried that much. Instead, I was willing
to obey God, commit everything into God’s hand, and let Him control
and arrange it. Later, as the fire was still fierce and we couldn’t
enter the plant, we decided to go home rather than watched at the
side of the road. After we got home, my younger brother, who had
escaped the fire, also came back, his face and hands blackened by the
smoke. I knew he also worried about the factory, so we fellowshiped
about Job’s experience together to know God’s sovereignty and
learn to obey God whenever anything happened.
It
was a whole day and whole night before the fire was put out. As the
fire site was still sealed up, my husband and some other guys sneaked
into the plant through the sewer. They found a miracle happened. In
this huge fire, our factory was completely undamaged, while my
landlord’s burnt down: its window-panes burst, and the walls were
burnt, looking like popcorn (because the walls were built of cement
hollow bricks); the iron roofs were burnt to small balls; several
motorbikes exploded in the fire; all the machines in the factory were
burnt out. The damage was at least several million yuan. The chemical
fabrics that the young couple stored in their factory were also
completely burnt, and the net loss was more than half million yuan.
When I learned that our workshop was safe and sound, I was full of
gratitude to God, and couldn’t help kneeling on my knees and
praising the only true Almighty
God.
It was God that protected our workshop and goods from the fire. And
this was really God’s
great power!
Later
I knew that it was because God had miraculously arranged several
things in advance to keep the fire from spreading that our workshop
was undamaged. Actually the source of fire was only 20 meters from
our workshop, so logically, our workshop should have been burnt
first. But miraculously, several days before the fire, the landlord
built on a workshop on the warehouse (20 meters wide) which was just
next to my factory. The warehouse was usually used to store the
cloths, but when the workers grouted the cement, the cloths in the
warehouse all got wet. So they were taken out to be dried in the sun
and thus the warehouse became empty. More miraculously, a
reinforcement bar in the cement board happened to break, and the
cement board collapsed. Therefore, the landlord had to grout the
cement again. It wasn’t until midnight that the work was finished.
When the fire broke out at 11:40 a.m. in the next day, the cement was
still wet, which naturally formed a 20 meters wide protective wall
and thus stopped the fire from spreading to our workshop. More
importantly, the wind was blowing in the direction of the landlord’s
warehouse. If it had blown in our plant’s direction, 20 meters wide
protective wall simply couldn’t stop the fire. I saw that these
coincidences were all God’s wondrous arrangements. This reminded me
of God’s words: “Though
the phrase ‘God’s authority’ may seem unfathomable, God’s
authority is not at all abstract. He is present with man every minute
of his life, leading him through every day. So, in every person’s
day-to-day life he will necessarily see and experience the most
tangible aspect of God’s authority. This tangibility is proof
enough that God’s authority truly exists, and it fully allows one
to recognize and to comprehend the fact that God possesses this
authority”
(“God Himself, the Unique III” ). From these words I saw that
God’s authority and power are beyond man’s imagination, that all
matters and things are indeed in God’s hand, and that disasters are
even more orchestrated by God and will shift according to God’s
thoughts. These are all the manifestations of God’s power and
authority. We are too small to anticipate when and what kind of
disaster we may encounter. God, however, know these things like the
palm of His hand, and will take precautions in advance for us. Our
factory could remain undamaged without any economic loss entirely
because of the power of God’s protection. Since we had invested all
the money our family had in the factory, if the factory had been
burnt down, we would be ruined financially and even carry a heavy
debt. In that case, my whole family would have no way to go on
living. I saw that God’s care and protection helped us be spared a
disaster, and gave us a guarantee of subsistence. I had truly
experienced God’s faithfulness, and that God is indeed our only
reliance.
Through
this fire, I had a more practical understanding of God’s authority
and His ruling over all things. Only God can save us and exempt us
from disasters. The only way by which we can receive God’s keeping
in disasters is to accept His salvation and pursue the truth to
become a man who worships and submits to God. Only then can we escape
suffering the disaster and survive.
