Fact-check: No, a Chinese Pastor didn’t say he saw South Sudanese collecting firewood in heaven

Writer: Ochaya Jackson

A tweet by Mariana Chep with a screenshot claiming that a Chinese pastor has seen South Sudanese gathering firewood in heaven is false.

“Chinese pastor reveals he saw South Sudanese collecting firewood in heaven,” reads the text on the screenshot shared on Twitter.

The tweet by Mariana Chep got 14 replies, 7 retweets, and 27 reactions by the time of writing this fact-check.

When 211 Check performed keywords search “people collecting firewood in heaven” on Google; the return is that the incident appeared to have been published in 2018 on the Nairaland website, about a supposed Chinese Evangelist Wang Xiu Yin, who reportedly died and resurrected after 17 hours and narrated that he saw many Africans collecting firewood in hell.

And according to BestNewsGH.com, which also published the story in 2018; Wang Xiu Yin was sent back to life after an angel named Luj intervened by saying it was not yet time for him to die.

A reverse image search of the picture in the screenshot shows it is of Chinese-American pastor Po-Ming Wang of Christ Church of Bay Areain San Mateo, California – United States, not pastor Wang Xiu Yin as claimed. Pastor Po-Ming’s picture appeared to have been taken from a YouYube video of him posted in 2014 when he was delivering a Chinese sermon service.

And also, in 2019, a Facebook page Juba Eye posted the same claim that a Chinese pastor interacted with the angel who told the pastor that those gathering firewood in heaven to keep themselves warm were South Sudanese.

Results of the research conducted about the claimed pastor Wang Xiu Yin turned out to be similar to pastor Wang Yi who was imprisoned in 2019 for nine years because of illegal business operations.

Additionally, his name is not among the list of Chinese pastors and religious Ministers who made public petition against persecution in China in 2018.

A search on Google using the keywords Pastor Wang Xiu Yin, and Evangelist Wang Xiu Yin did not yield any results. 

Conclusion:

The Twitter claim that a Chinese pastor found South Sudanese gathering firewood in heaven is false, and the existence of the claimed pastor is rare.

This fact check was published by 211 Check with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and the African Fact-Checking Alliance