He was on the verge of taking his own life when Jesus came to heal and save him.

Zhang Heng, a Chinese who was once an atheist, said he had long suffered from an unspecified medical condition that left him paralysed until 1979 when he found out about Jesus Christ, The Christian Post reported.

Before that, Heng said he was in deep despair as he had already lost hope that he would be able to walk again. He said at one point he cried out to God for help even though he was an atheist.

God responded to his plea by sending him a preacher who introduced him to Jesus, Heng told hundreds of people who gathered at the Movement Day Global Cities conference at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City on Wednesday.

He said the preacher told him that if he received Jesus, he would be forgiven and he could be healed and get into Heaven. "Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins and three days later rose," the preacher told him.

"I was not too much concerned about forgiveness, all I was concerned about was my own health," Heng told the audience, eliciting laughter.

The preacher instructed Heng to pray and fast for seven days. "On the seventh day, the Lord healed me," Heng testified. "I rose up and walked."

The miracle stunned Heng's family, and they immediately accepted Jesus into their lives, praising Him and repenting their sins.

"The whole family saw this and just knelt down to pray to receive the Lord as their personal saviour," he said to applause.

That miraculous healing started his journey into Christianity, which eventually resulted in the creation of hundreds of churches in China.

Heng is now a senior pastor at Zaidao Church in Beijing and the associate director of China Gospel Mission.

A month after Heng's healing, his family held a thanksgiving party at their house and invited friends and the preacher who told them about God.

"The preacher shared the Gospel with them and I gave out my own testimony telling everybody what Jesus had been doing in my life. More than 50 people just came to faith. We started a church that very night," Heng said.

Eight years later, Heng's group grew into a movement that led to the creation of at least 200 churches which attracted more than 20,000 converts.