A Chinese shaman who was on the brink of death reportedly had a dream about Jesus that led her to abandon her religious practices surrounding “demons and darkness” and embrace the Christian faith.
The story, which was recently told in an Open Doors USA blog post by Nick Nichols, surrounds a woman named Ting who Nichols said “made a living summoning the darkness.”
Ting, who lives in northwest China, would look to the spirits to help answer peoples’ questions about marriage, sickness and life more generally, charging a fee to give spiritual responses to those who sought her insight.
Then, one day, Ting fell gravely ill, finding herself bedridden and in deep agony. With death seemingly on her doorstep, she slipped into a deep sleep and had a dream that changed everything, according to Open Doors USA.
“I was in the back seat of a taxi as my brother drove me towards an endless darkness. But then three men, who were wearing brilliant white robes, approached. But their light was so bright, I couldn’t see their faces,” she said of her dream. “They told me I must make a choice. And as they spoke, two other men wearing black robes invited me to follow them.”
Ting continued, “I knew in my heart one of the men wearing a white robe was Jesus. So I followed him.”
After she woke up, Ting instantly remembered everything from that dream as well as her decision to follow Jesus. She also found that her body was suddenly working again; she had been healed. That’s when Ting officially decided to follow Christ.
Speaking of his own reaction to the story, Nichols said he tends to feel fear or even skepticism when he hears of such experiences, which seem outside his own theological box. But, in the end, he kept feeling drawn to Ting’s story and has often prayed for her.
“The more I prayed for her, the more I saw her story as a testament to the ‘power of God that brings salvation’ (Romans 1:16),” he wrote. “Jesus had appeared to her. And He had healed her. And because of this one monumental encounter, without any other shred of evidence, she was willing to risk everything.”
Nichols also asked a very specific and thought-provoking question surrounding Ting’s purported encounter: “Without God’s radical intervention, how else would Ting have believed?”
As The Christian Post noted, people who convert to Christianity in China — especially in the rural area where Ting lives — can often face intense persecution.
And as Faithwire has reported, stories about people claiming that Jesus has appeared to them in dreams appear to be increasingly circulating. We have covered countless stories about Middle Eastern refugees who have reported seeing Christ and have, as a result, converted to the Christian faith.