When the Chinese dictator Mao Zedong died in 1976, his physician, Dr. Li Zhisui, was given an impossible task. The Politburo demanded, “The chairman’s body is to be permanently preserved.” The staff objected. The doctor objected. He had seen the dry and shrunken remains of Lenin and Stalin. He knew a body with no life was doomed to rot.

But he had his commands. Twenty-two liters of formaldehyde were pumped into the body. The result was horrifying. Mao’s face swelled up like a ball, and his neck was as thick as his head. His ears stuck out in right angles, and the chemical oozed from his pores. A team of embalmers worked for five hours with towels and cotton balls to force the liquids down into his body. Finally the face looked normal, but the chest was so swollen that his jacket had to be slit in the back and his body covered with the red Communist Party flag.

That sufficed for the funeral, but the powers above wanted the body permanently preserved to lie in state at Tiananmen Square. For a year Dr. Zhisui supervised a team working in an underground hospital as they tried to preserve the remains. Because of the futility of the task, a government official ordered that an identical wax dummy be made. Both the body and the replica were taken to the mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. Tens of thousands came to file past a crystal casket and pay their respects to the man who’d ruled China for twenty-seven years. But even the doctor didn’t know if they were seeing Mao or a waxwork dummy…

“Though we were spiritually dead because of the things we did against God, he gave us new life with Christ” (Eph 2:5). God’s solution is not to preserve the dead-but to raise the dead. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone; the new has come! (2 Cor 5:17 NIV)

In the Grip of Grace

copyright [Word Publishing, 1996] Max Lucado, p. 60,61, 64.

Used by permission