How I have Come to Know God IV

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How I have Come to Know God IV

by Pastor Eric H.H. Chang, December, 2000

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Part Four - My London Days

To Declare His glory
In this part, I would like to do what the Scripture calls 'declare' or 'witness'. I would declare His glory, declare His mercy, declare His goodness, declare His wisdom, declare the Name of the Lord, declare who He is, what is His character, and what God is like.

To be a Christian is to know Christ
Becoming a Christian, as far as I am concerned, is not a matter of joining some religion. I have never been interested in religion as such and 'til this day I am still not interested in religion. Becoming a Christian is a matter of knowing God. It is a matter of knowing God as a living person, or Three Persons, the Trinity. It is in this process of knowing him that we realize what it is to be a Christian and to grow in the Christian life. Being a Christian is not how much you have learned in terms of studies. I have nothing against learning, as I myself have spent enough time in that matter. You are not a Christian simply because you know what Christianity is in terms of its doctrines, of its history, of its structure, or of its organization. None of this makes you a Christian, not even if you believe all the items of the Creed. Fundamentally, being a Christian is knowing Christ. As Paul says, all he wants to do is to know Christ (Philippians 3:8,10). In 1 John 5:20, it says that to know Christ is life -- life eternal. So everything depends on knowing Him. What I want to declare is what He has taught me about Himself.

God reveals Himself differently to different people
I also want to make it clear that everyone's experiences are bound to be different. Therefore, your experience is not something you have to measure against mine, because God reveals Himself differently to different people. I want to stress this point because sometimes an experience can be very dramatic and you say, "I have not had such dramatic experiences." It does not matter. You can experience Him less dramatically, but nonetheless in very real ways.

We do not choose to make an experience dramatic or not. For example, when the Lord Jesus revealed Himself to the apostle Paul, he was not yet an apostle and he was still called Saul. But on the Damascus Road, a blinding light from heaven caused him to fall off his horse and to be blinded for several days. Very dramatic stuff. And you say, "I never have experiences like that." It does not matter. Your experience of God is not less real just because you did not fall off your horse, nor because you were not blinded for three days.

Be prepared to endure extraordinary sufferings
One thing I do want to say is this: if the experience is particularly outstanding (or you might say dramatic), you might need to be prepared that the Lord is going to ask you to do something that is very tough. For example, Paul did have this very dramatic experience. And the consequence is that the Lord has some very difficult things for him to do. In other words, if you are interested in getting some very outstanding experiences, you better be prepared to endure some very outstanding sufferings, which was what Paul was called to (Acts 9:16). If you are not very keen on extraordinary sufferings, you better forget about extraordinary experiences. Just listen to somebody else talk about it, and let them go through the sufferings.

When I share these things, I will not talk much about the sufferings of which I think by the Lord's mercies, I would say, I have a fair share of. Every time when these attacks and sufferings come, I recall that this was what the Lord has called me to, and a major part of His calling was to constantly confirm to me His relationship with me in a very living way through these experiences.

To Declare
The word 'declare' in the Bible occurs repeatedly in the Psalms:

"Declare His deeds among His people." Psalms 9:11
"Come and hear all you who fear God and I will declare what He has done for my soul." Psalms 66:16
"That I may declare all Your works." Psalms 73:28

This goes on and on through the Psalms: to declare His works, to declare His glory to the nations, to the people. This is basically what I am doing now. I shall declare Your mighty deeds, Your mighty works. I shall declare Your greatness. Psalms 145:6.

Many people say to me, "It is not fair that God gives some dramatic experiences to you and He does not give me any." Well, I hope you bear carefully in mind what I said. You can have the same experiences, even greater ones, provided you are prepared to suffer for His sake. If not, do not even think about it. That means to say, every revelation of the Lord (that is basically what every one of these experiences is) brings with it a certain price tag. And if you are not prepared for that, do not even seek them.

For me, I delight in this privilege of knowing the Lord, and more and more in the sufferings attached to it. I would say with the apostle Paul, "That I may know Him, the fellowship of His sufferings and even to be conformed to His death." (Philippians 3:10) That is how he is going to know Him. How much do you really want to know the Lord?

London Years
Let me get on with this fourth part of my testimony. I want to indicate that I will only highlight certain incidents, as within an hour I have no way to get through even a section of my testimony about one period of time: the London period. The previous sharings dealt somewhat with my background in China, and then my time in Scotland. In this chapter, I will concentrate on the years during which I was in London. During those years, I experienced so many things which the Lord did in my life but, as I said, I can only give you certain highlights here and there.

Our needs become an opportunity for us to experience God
It is through all kinds of problems and sufferings in particular that the Lord reveals Himself. If there were no problems, we would have no opportunity to experience what God will do. For example, if you have no financial or material needs and you are never in financial difficulty as a servant of the Lord or as a child of God, how would you have a chance to experience His provision? You do not have a need, so there is no opportunity for God to intervene. I can only feel sorry for those who have no needs because they also have no opportunity to experience God. Bear this point very much in mind.

If you have no physical problems, you also do not experience God. I have to depend on God every day physically. I have now come to this stage where I cannot get through a day without His daily sustenance. I used to be as fit as anyone here and maybe even fitter, very fit and strong physically. Today, I have problems with my back, and even standing for 10 or 15 minutes can give me intense pain. So what do you do? You have to learn to depend upon God. My need becomes His opportunity.

Andrew McBeath, a man of God
In Scotland, I spent two years in the Bible Training Institute which was one of the oldest and best known Bible Institutes in the United Kingdom. It was in fact set up through Moody. Many of you who have been Christians for a long time in the Western Tradition would know the great preacher D.L. Moody. Moody Bible Institute in Chicago also came into being as a result of his ministry. Sanky of course was his music minister. Wherever Moody went, Sanky followed and provided the music ministry. As you know, many of the famous British songs and hymns are written by Sanky. They held an evangelistic campaign in the United Kingdom. Many people turned to the Lord at that time. As a result of that, many people desired to be trained in the Lord's work. That's how the Bible Institute was set up.

The principal was Andrew McBeath, a scholarly man, but more important than that, a fine servant of God. As I look through my life, I try to count how many true servants of God I have met -- people that stand out in my mind as men of God. "Man of God" is not a title that one can throw around lightly. Very few people qualify truly for that title. I think there is no higher title in all of the Bible than the title 'man of God'. There are very few of those around. In my whole life, I can count perhaps fewer than there are the fingers on one hand.

I would list Andrew McBeath as one of these men. When you meet this man and have a chance to get to know him a little, you know that you have met a man of God. First of all, his outstanding humility struck me. I arrived one month late because I could not get a visa. I was having all kinds of visa troubles and finally I got to Glasgow one month after the Bible Institute term had already started. And Mr. McBeath himself welcomed me. Why should a principal welcome a new student? After all, he could have sent somebody to welcome me as there were lots of other students around, but he welcomed me personally. Not only that, he took me to his own living quarters which was in the same building as the Bible Institute. He took me to his own apartment and introduced me to his family. I had never heard of a principal who takes the trouble to introduce a student to his family. He introduced me to his wife who was sick at that time. So she greeted me sitting up in bed.

Most of you who are married will understand that when a wife is sick in bed and does not have her hair properly combed, she does not like to see visitors. But no problem. Andrew McBeath introduced me to his wife and she very graciously welcomed me as well. That was my first taste of his graciousness and his humility.

One day while I was walking down one of the corridors, suddenly Mr. McBeath appeared. He said to me, "Come". I wondered to myself what was going on. He called me to the side and handed me an envelope. I looked at the envelope and asked, "What is it?" He said to me, "The Lord has spoken to me and I would like to give you my tithe. This is my tithe." I was deeply touched. There are so many students in the Bible Institute and here is the principal himself giving me not just any gifts but his own tithe. I was speechless. I was stunned and deeply moved. This is just to give you an idea of the quality of this man. I was still only a first year student.

You can see the way his whole life radiated Christ. It was truly beautiful. What I took away from the Bible Institute was not a lot of knowledge but above all, the impression of what a man of God is like. There is nothing more precious, not only to have met one, but to have developed a friendship with such a man.

Many years later, when he was quite old, I once phoned him from Liverpool where I was pastoring. I asked him what he thought of the laying on of hands which I had been studying in the Bible. I had steadfastly refused ordination. I did not want to be ordained because I did not like to be addressed as 'Reverend so and so' or 'Pastor so and so'. I did not wish to have any titles. In fact, I wanted to serve the Lord even without pay, which I did for all the time in Liverpool. I received no salary during those five years. I declined to receive pay. That did not make life very easy, but I wanted to show the church that I did not preach the Gospel for money. I did not want any income from serving. In fact I never said anything about it. When I left Liverpool five years later, some people discovered that in all the five years I was there, I never received a salary. And they were quite shocked. They asked, "Where did all the money that we put into the offering box go?" I said, "It has gone into the Lord's work. Just because it did not come to me, it does not mean that it did not go to the Lord's work." And they said, "How come you never said so?" I said, "I said so in the beginning but you had not yet come to the church at the time. " The church had grown from a small handful of people to a larger congregation and most of them did not have any idea about this matter.

But I did want to know about the laying on of hands which I saw several times mentioned in Scripture. So one day, I phoned Mr. McBeath and said, "Reverend McBeath, what do you think about the laying on of hands?" He said, "Oh yes, it is very important." I said, "Alright, what else can you tell me?" He said, "I am coming to Liverpool." I said, "Is it going to be such a long exposition that you have to come to Liverpool to tell me about this?"

Notice this godly man. He came all the way down from Scotland which is a long way down to Liverpool. I thought he was going to come to Liverpool to expound to me about the laying on of hands. It was just before Easter. When he got to Liverpool, I said, "I am wondering why you have come all the way down to Liverpool to tell me about the laying on of hands." He said, "I did not come here to tell you about the laying on of hands, but I came here to conduct the laying on of hands." I was speechless. I said, "What?" He said, "When you know something is Scriptural, you do it. You do not talk about it, you do it."

The amazing thing was that he came down on a weekday just before Easter and three days later, on Easter Sunday, I was ordained and received the laying on of hands. The church was not even notified on the previous Sunday because I didn't even know I was going to be ordained.

That shows you another secret of a man of God. He does not just talk; he does it. It is Scriptural, and though you may not understand everything about it, you do it. He never expounded it to me. He never explained anything about the laying on of hands to me. He just got on to do the laying on of hands. Looking back, I consider it a very high privilege that I was ordained by an exceptional servant of the Lord, a man of outstanding quality. I regard this truly as the apostolic succession through men of God.

I am spending some time on this because I would like to testify that there are very few men of God around. And in God's wisdom and kindness, He granted me such a privilege to meet a few of them. In the past, I shared about one or two others whom I have met, but that is not in line with today's testimony.

Andrew McBeath has written a number of books. Before I left Glasgow, I went to say good-bye to him in his office in the college. Always in his kind and very gentle way, he said goodbye to me at that time and he said, "My book has just been published and I would like to give you a copy." So he autographed a copy and handed it to me. It was a book, significantly, about the book of Job. Being very immature at the time, I really did not catch the significance of it. Only later did I understand that the reason he wrote the commentary on Job was because of his long experience of suffering for the Lord. Yet, he never talked about his sufferings. Only later, I gathered from here and there how much he suffered. You do not become a man of God without a lot of sufferings. His commentary on Job was of great value because there are lots of commentaries and books written by scholars sitting in their arm chairs, but Andrew McBeath was a man rich in both scholarship and experience. He experienced many things for the Lord as he went about preaching the Gospel in other places in the world.

Furthering my studies in London
When I left Scotland, one of the last thing that Mr. McBeath said to me was, "Eric, you have to go on to higher levels of training because God has given you the gift. You have what it takes to go much higher. So go down to London and continue further studies." I have to tell you the truth that I was not interested in further studies. The fire was burning in my heart and I wanted to go out there to preach the Gospel. I did not want to waste more time sitting in college rooms studying stuff that was going to bore me to death. I never liked school all that much. I loved the sports field but not so much the school.

Here was Mr. McBeath telling me to go for higher studies and I thought, "Oh no." But you do have to listen a bit more carefully when a servant of the Lord speaks. So I said, "Alright, I will go down to London and if the Lord opens the way for me, I will go and study, and if the Lord does not open the way, great! I will go and preach the Gospel."

Well, I do not know whether he was praying but everywhere I went, the door was open for me. I thought this is incredible. The fact of the matter is that I had no time to do my University entrance studies (the GCE) in the usual way of taking two or three years. I was not even interested but because Mr. McBeath said all this, I had to do a bit of studies. Surely, studying here and there part time would not get very far. After all, London University is not the easiest university to get into in England. But behold, it must be this man of God praying because every college I went to, I was immediately accepted on the spot. I thought, this is quite amazing. How many people have tried and never got accepted. I just walked in and the professor said, "I will accept you."

I was pondering on what exactly to study. Maybe some of you are confronted with this question, "What to study?" I thought, "Well, I want to study something that will be useful for the Lord's work." I thought to myself, "Lord, what do you want me to study? I am waiting." I thought, "Because my heart's desire is to bring the Gospel to China, I better get more deeply acquainted with China." I thought, "What can I study that has something to do with China?"

I should tell you that any studies that have to do with literature, philosophy or history was something I dreaded, because in what studies I ever did in school, I was only good in science subjects and absolutely hopeless in arts. I could not write an essay. I did not know how to write an essay. I would not have a clue as to what I was supposed to do. With science subjects, it was straight-forward. Two and two equals four. That one, I can cope with. It is quite simple. But to write an essay, I had no idea what to do. My art subjects were absolutely terrible. If I could scrape a pass, I was very grateful for that. With the science subject, I did reasonably well. My best subject was always mathematics. It was like nice games that I could play with, so it was great fun. I never understood why people were terrified of mathematics. But I was terrified of the arts. And now I realized that I was not going to study science subjects because I did not know what I was going to do with them in the Lord's work at that time. Certainly there are uses for them but I am just talking about my own considerations at the time. For other people, it might be useful in some way or another, like opening up a door, perhaps to find a job in China or somewhere. But for myself, I was thinking of deepening my understanding of the culture and the language. So I went into Oriental philosophy and other subjects like literature and history which took me very much into the arts. Here, I was doing the very thing I was no good at doing.

Initially I was thinking about doing Greek. I could then specialize in Greek to understand the New Testament better. I walked into the Greek Department of the University College, and said to the professor, "I would like to study Greek." And I was accepted. He only asked me, "Have you applied to Oxford or Cambridge?" I said, "I have not. My church is in London and I have no intention of going to Oxford or Cambridge." He said, "If you apply there I am not going to accept you, but if you are applying to London only, I am going to accept you." I thought, "Well, that was fast." He was not going to beat around the bush.

Afterwards, I realized that what I was going to learn was classical Greek and not New Testament Greek. They are not exactly the same thing. They are related but not the same. I was not prepared to spend three years learning classical Greek as it might be limited in its usefulness later on.

I then went on to the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, and the same thing happened again. I walked in and I said, "I would like to apply for study here." The professor asked me, "Why do you want to study this subject?" I said, "Because I want to preach the Gospel. I am going to be a missionary." I could not be more straight-forward than that. And if he was an anti-religious man, he might have thrown me out there and then. They are not there to train missionaries. Most people who studied in that college were trained to become diplomats. They studied the philosophy, foreign languages and foreign culture and many of them became diplomats. In fact, the former Governor of Hong Kong, David Wilson studied in the same college, doing his post-graduate research. One day, when I heard in the news of his appointment to be the Governor of Hong Kong, I mentioned this fact to my wife Helen. He was the second last Governor before the hand-over in 1997.

Serving in the Chinese church
I went down to London and a brother said to me, "Which church are you going to attend?" "I just arrived in London. I have not got a church." He said, "Come to our church."

I said, "Which church are you going to?"
He said, "We just started a Chinese church."
I said, "May I ask which church?" And he told me about it.
And I said, "Is it the one where I had met a certain Mr. H. before?"
And he said, "Yes, that same one, but that person has already left."
And I thought, "No, I think I will look for another church if you do not mind."
He said, "Please, we are very short of people, how about if you come to the Chinese church."
I said, "I am not very keen on this." The fact is that you are affected by what you hear, isn't it? You are very easily affected negatively. No matter how good a thing is, if somebody says something negative, it is in your mind and thereafter, it is very hard to get rid of.

Anyway, this brother had learned something about the parable concerning persistence, e.g. knocking on the door until the door is opened. He never gave up. He kept asking me week after week and said, "I understand, you do not like that church too much, so how about the Bible studies?"

I said, "What difference does it make?"
He said, "I mean you lead the Bible studies."
I said, "I do not even know the people."
He said, "It is OK, you just lead the Bible studies. There is nobody to lead it.
Aren't you going to do something here to help?"

So finally that was how I got persuaded into going to that church through leading the Bible studies there.

When we talk about Chinese "church", it sounds rather grand. There were about five people in it and they call themselves a church. It should have remained a Bible study. They met in the YMCA chapel and that was perhaps why they considered themselves a church. Five people in the chapel, and they called it a church.

The next thing I knew, I was the only person leading this church temporarily. I do not know where this brother, who had invited me, went to. He suddenly disappeared off to do something else. I was left taking care of this five-person church. This became a ridiculous one-man show because I had to do everything from announcing the hymn to playing the organ. I never played an organ in my life. I knew how to play the piano a little, just enough to get by on hymns. Can you imagine what it sounds like to sing a five stanza hymn with five people who can hardly sing a hymn? So I thought, "Maybe I better play this organ," but I did not know what buttons I was supposed to press on an electronic organ.

The Lord also has a great sense of humor. I would be up there making some announcements and then I would have to jog from the front to the back of the chapel to play the organ located at the back. There was no one on the platform while I was playing the organ. When the hymn was finished, I jogged to the front again.

Gradually by the Lord's working, the chapel became more and more full as the Lord continued to draw people in. Within a few months, the chapel was packed full, not very impressive as there were only about fifty people. The fifty people filled the chapel and we had to open the foyer to put more chairs. As it was getting more full, some people had to stand in the corridor where people were walking up and down.

I began to see the power of the Word of God at work. The Lord was pleased to use somebody totally green, totally inexperienced, and really unfit for the work, but the Lord was gracious in blessing the work. We had to move to a much larger place in the YMCA building a few weeks later.

So far, I have not told you anything dramatic, have I? I have just told you how you can experience the Lord in all these seemingly day to day thing, to experience the power of God even in drawing people to Himself and to His Church.

A year or two later, the Church was still continuing to grow, not under my care, but under the care of a pastor who came from China. When I first came, he was already the pastor of that new work, except that he was in the United States raising funds to purchase a building for the church. Having been away for three to four months, he was surprised to see the chapel packed out.

Pentecostal Experience at Chislehurst
The church continued to grow. Then we had a camp at Chislehurst in Kent, South East of London. In the camp, we did the kind of things that everybody did. About sixty people came to the camp, and the Lord was working powerfully in the camp. Came Easter Day which was also the last day of the camp, the Lord was working in each heart. Already right through the camp, you could see that the Lord was working in different people's hearts. On Easter Sunday there was a treasure hunt for an Easter egg. In order to hunt for the Easter egg, you need to get clues from one point to another. If you do not get the clue correctly, you will end up at the wrong place. From clue to clue, you are supposed to do some Sherlock Holmes detective work to find the egg.

If you know me, you will know that I am a fun loving person. So I was joining in the fun with everybody looking for the clues. In the end, what happened? I won the egg. It maybe great to win the egg, but coming into the Easter morning thanksgiving service with this great big golden egg in my hand, I felt like a clown. I thought to myself, "Lord, why did I have to win this egg?" This looked ridiculous. I was trying to find somewhere under the chair to hide the egg. Soon the meeting began.

I share this point mainly because many times Christians have a tendency to try to get a spiritual atmosphere by means of music, or by means of working on people's emotions in order to reach a climax in the emotions so as to get the results they desire. There was no attempt to work up any kind of emotional atmosphere. There was no emotional build-up to what was coming. The meeting opened. The person, who was chairing the meeting, stood up and began to say something. By now, everybody had just settled in, laughing and joking. There was a moment of quietness and he said, "Let us open in prayer." This was the last I heard of him and he disappeared from the scene thereafter. He tried to mumble something in prayer, and suddenly the Spirit of God came down. That's why I told you about the Easter egg. There was no psychological preparation whatsoever. It was totally unexpected. One moment, people were laughing and giggling. The next moment, total silence. Then the moment after that, an overpowering sense of the presence of God. Unless you have been through such an experience, there is no way to explain to you what it is like.

I can understand what happened at Pentecost when the Spirit came down. As I told you, when the Spirit came down, He took control of the meeting. The chairman vanished into his seat and we never heard from him again for the rest of the meeting. In other words, he never chaired the meeting. The Lord took control.

I noticed there was some sobbing in one corner. Then there were more sobs. Suddenly there was the sound of crying all through the room in this sixty people gathering. There were tears. Next, people were confessing their sins. People were repenting. The awesome holiness of God is not something you can define on a piece of paper. What is holiness? You get a dictionary and it says holiness is this and that. At the end of it, you still do not know what holiness is.

But if you have ever met with God, nobody has to tell you what holiness is, because you have experienced it. Suddenly there was the awesome sense of His presence. God was in the room, and He was convicting people of sins. The man standing next to me was a big tall hefty fellow who would not want to be seen crying at anytime. I turned around and there he was crying uncontrollably, tears were running down his face. This was going on all around the room. Everywhere, God's power could be felt. Then people stood up asking for the Lord's forgiveness, confessing their sins. It was amazing. The Spirit of the Lord worked through the room one by one. An unforgettable experience.

We lost all sense of time. The meeting was supposed to last for an hour-and-a-half, but it went on hour after hour. Everybody forgot about the program and nobody turned up for lunch. The staff in the camp ground was waiting to serve lunch but nobody turned up. Everyone was in the room and the Spirit of God was working. If you want to talk about dramatic experience, there the power of God was being manifested. That is dramatic, I can tell you. That is the first hand experience of Pentecost. Now I know what Pentecost was like. It was an overpowering presence of God we experienced. I keep using the word 'awesome'. I do not know how else to describe it. Every person was broken in His presence.

After many hours, we concluded the meeting. I was not even sure how it was concluded. We all came out of the room as though in a daze, stunned. I stress the length of time because it was not a two or three seconds experience, which flashed by and was gone, but it was hour after hour of the presence of God. It was not a fleeting, imaginary, ephemeral, evanescent, quickly passing experience. It went on and on, so that you could fully savor it. You could taste it to the full -- His presence. He did not just come and vanish or else you might say, "Did I just see a ghost passing by?" No, He was there. Nobody can be the same again after such an experience. It has probably marked in my spirit more deeply than I can ever understand. The power of that meeting with God was amazing.

I do not think anyone present would have known how to describe that experience. But having experienced the Lord before in various ways, I knew also that as soon as God has done such a remarkable work, the enemy was going to work too. The enemy came in like a flood. What happened was that the numbers in the church just exploded. When the word got around that sixty of us had met with God in Chislehurst, this news traveled around like fire. Everyone wanted to come to our church to find out what was going on. How do you catch this fire? The truth is that there is no technique of catching fire. There is no way to tell you how. How are we going to tell you? It is not as though there is step one, step two, step three. It was totally unprepared for. You have no way to organize it, or even to prepare for it. He just comes when He chooses. It was not as if anyone of us were better than anyone else, or that we were more holy than others, or that we were more saintly than others, or that most of us sang better than other people, or that we clapped our hands better, or that we knew how to do dances better than other people. We were not good at any of those things. Not at all. There was no human reason one can think of. He chose to come.

Fierce attack upon the church
There came the fierce attack upon the church. As the church exploded in expansion, we jumped to 120, 150, pressing towards 200 people. In a very short time, the church was expanding rapidly. Brothers and sisters, that is bad. You ask why? I will tell you why. Because most of these people were not serious with God. They were all interested in a temporary way. Crowds and numbers are not necessarily a good thing. It is what is deep that abides. What is shallow will not stay. People were curious because they heard that we had an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our church and so they all crowded in. They wanted to catch a bit of this left-over blessing to get some of the rays, to get the left-over warmth, the left-over crumbs under the table. The result was that people suddenly expanded in numbers and they did not know one another very well. The level of the sweetness of fellowship began to drop. Everything began to weaken. The distance between people became greater because we did not really know each other. It takes time to know one another. The sense of a family disappeared. Suddenly we were looking at large numbers of unfamiliar people.

Those of you who have been to our joint camp in Hong Kong will know what I mean. Suddenly you have more than four hundred people gathering there. It is nice to feel the great numbers around but you do not know who is who. Each time you greet somebody, you have to study their name card, "Your name is that, and you are from that church." You are having a little bit of that experience here since some of you do not know each other from the other church. But imagine when there are four hundred people present, it is impossible to get to know one another in any meaningful sense in the limited time available. It is hard to get to know each other, not to mention that you are from all different churches. Some churches are already over a hundred some people and they are having a hard time to get to know one another. These are one of the negative results. Unless you have wise spiritual leadership, what can be a blessing can become ultimately something much less than desirable.

Church Scandal
Also of course, the larger the church, the larger the financial capacity of the church. The greater the level of devotion in the church, the larger the income because the greater the giving. And do you know what that does? That attracts bad people into the church who come in for other reasons, namely for the funds that the church has. So we soon had somebody who tried to become a treasurer in our church with the intention of siphoning some of those funds into his pockets, which he did with considerable success until he was discovered. And this was one of the disasters. This person from East Malaysia worked himself up into the position of becoming one of two treasurers of the church. By means of slander in a very subtle way, he got the other treasurer removed from office. He then somehow managed to contrive that another treasurer would not be appointed in the place of the treasurer that was dismissed. So, he became the sole treasurer of the church. (By the way, the treasurer he contrived to remove was also from Malaysia, a very good man in fact and it was really unfortunate that people believed the slanders brought against this dear brother.) And then he began to siphon off the funds by "fixing" the books.

Notice that I am taking you from the height of spiritual experience to the negative side which often accompanies it. We are in an intense spiritual war, engaged in spiritual battles. This is the nature of spiritual life. When there is triumphant advance, there will be counter attacks. Soon the counter attacks began. This person stole funds amounting to thousands of pounds sterling. We were not able to find out how much he stole, because he destroyed the account books. We brought in outside accountants to try to assess the situation. The losses were enormous.

So you can see, one has to be vigilant and alert. When this thing was exposed, this treasurer promptly vanished. But before he vanished, he married one of the richest girls in the church and disappeared back to East Malaysia. This was a shameful thing to happen in a church. It was a scandal. Our pastor was very distressed by the fact that our church, which had an extraordinary experience of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, now had an outstanding scandal on its hands. A treasurer ran away with an enormous amount of money. The pastor did not know what to do about this and he wanted to keep it hush-hush.

Since I was one of the leaders of the church, I said to him, "Pastor, you can't do that. We must answer to the brothers and sisters in the church. It is their money, the money they offered to the Lord. We have no right to keep this thing hidden."

He said, "But it is bad for the reputation of the church."
I said, "Well, we have to leave that in the Lord's hands. What is right to do, we have to do it. How people think of us is secondary." But he refused to reveal it.
I said, "Well Pastor, if you do not wish to reveal it, I am sorry but I cannot be part of a cover-up, so if you will pardon me, I will leave the church." He was very distressed about that.
He said, "No, no, do not do that."
I said, "I have no choice. I am not going to be part of a cover-up."
He said, "What do you suggest?"
I said this, "This man has stolen the Lord's money, and nobody who steals the money of the living God gets away with it. At Chislehurst we have experienced how real God is. Put this man in His hands, deliver him into the hands of the living God because it is a fearful thing, as the Scripture says, to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31) And then when God has dealt with this evil doer, you do not have to worry about your reputation because the fear of the Lord will be upon every person. They will know that God is the living God. No one can steal His money and get away with it. So let Him deal with it."
He said, "Well, I still do not have confidence to do that."
I said, "Well then, good-bye Pastor, this is where we must part." And I left the church.

The result, of course, was very bad because the more he tried to hide it, the more the people in the church knew about it. I did not say anything about it because I left the church. But the scandal was passed around from mouth to mouth, and people began to leave the church. There were people who wanted to leave the church with me. They said, "If you are going, we will go with you. We set up a new church and you lead us."

I said, 'No, no. You do not understand. I am not going to do that."
They said, "You have been the one giving us Bible studies in these past nearly two years, you are our teacher and we follow you out."
I said, "No. This church is where I have served. This pastor is the pastor of this church, and God forbid that I should do anything to split this church. God forbid that it would be laid to my charge that I raised my hand against the Lord's anointed because whether he is right or wrong, he is the pastor. The Lord anointed him to be the pastor and I will not raise my hand to do anything against him."

But they continued to press me, so I decided to disappear. I vanished without telling them where I went to. They could not find me anymore. I pulled up my "tent pegs" and disappeared, not telling anybody where I went to. That was used against me, of course, later on to say that I must have had something to hide and that was why I disappeared. Never mind. Let them say what they will. I would not have it said that I split that church, which I didn't. But all the same, many of the people left the church as they also did not wish to stay anymore.

Nobody runs away from the Living God
I am telling you this because I want to tell you what the Lord did to this man who stole the money. Nobody, but nobody runs away from the living God, I tell you. Because as the Scripture says, "Be sure your sins will find you out." (Numbers 32:23) Because he destroyed most of the books, we could not press charges against him. At least it would be very difficult to press charges. Humanly speaking, there was not very much we could do. More than that, he had already left England. Or else, we would have to work on an extradition to bring him back to England to face trial. And with much of the evidence destroyed, it would be very hard to do that. But we do not have to worry, because our God will take care of everything. God is to be feared in His righteousness, His holiness and to be loved in His mercy and goodness, but these are never separate. To be kind to His church, He has to be severe with evil doers, but evil doers will soon destroy themselves.

This man went back to Malaysia with his newly married wife, but then his marriage began to fall apart. What do you expect from somebody like this? In fact he was so insecure about his marriage that he confiscated his wife's passport to make sure his wife did not run away. Can you imagine that? One day his wife managed to get her passport, (either the old or a new one, I do not know,) and she went off to the United States. Hearing that she had left, he was in such fury that he followed her to the United States. He found her and murdered her. Thinking she was having some relationship with somebody else, he murdered her in one fit of madness and jealousy. Having murdered her, he fled back to East Malaysia.

Well, the United States apparently had some kind of extradition treaty with Malaysia and had him extradited to face charges in the United States. He was sent back and sentenced to death. He was executed in the United States. So where did all the money get him that he stole? Nobody runs away from the justice of God. God has a way to deal with sin.

Sweet Presence of God
In all this long list of things to share, I do not know where to end, therefore I will choose one last point to share with you. Perhaps what I will share with you is one other experience of God that remains deeply imprinted in my mind.

At that point in time, I was staying in North of London in a place called the Foreign Missions Club. I stayed there because it was one of the cheapest places where they gave special consideration to students. As you may know, I lived by faith throughout this time. I always had to look to the Lord for provision. Often times, I would start a term in the college and had no idea whether I could pay the fees for that term. In London, you had to pay on the first day, on the registration day. And often, even up to the day before, I did not have the money to pay. I had to leave the matter in the Lord's hands. It did not worry me at all. I would say, "Lord, if You want me to continue my studies, could You please provide the funds. If You do not want me to continue my studies, I thank You because for me to have a degree or not does not mean anything to me. I will go on if You want me to. I will stop when You want me to stop." Of course, He had complete control, because He controlled the money. So it was not up to me to decide whether to go on or not. The Lord was remarkable in His ways. Sometimes on the very same day of registration, I would receive an envelope, unmarked, anonymous, containing sufficient funds to pay the college fees.

Staying up in North London, I had to cycle down on my bicycle because in that way I could save the bus fares. I usually looked like a panda by the time I got to college because of the pollution in London. I would wear glasses to protect my eyes from all the dust and exhaust fumes coming from the diesel buses. When I got to the college and took off my goggles, there would be two round circles. You can imagine that my face would be more or less black with white patches around the eyes. It looked quite cute. I would see people smile as I walked by. At first, I did not know why they were smiling, then when I looked in the mirror, I saw. That shows you how poor I was at the time as I had to get around in a big city like London on a bicycle. There was scarcely another cyclist in sight, so it was a bit of an oddity to have a cyclist charging around the cars and buses. A few months later, a brother, whom I had known at the Bible Institute and who was now going out to Japan as a missionary, sold me his old motorcycle for a small price. But I still had to wear the goggles when riding the motorcycle, so that "panda effect" remained!

On one weekend in the Foreign Missions Club, I did not have to jump on my bike to rush off to college, so I had an extended time of quietness before the Lord in prayer. As I entered into that time of prayer, suddenly I was transported. I did not know what happened. I did not know if I was transported up to heaven or heaven came down to earth. Suddenly I realized that I was somehow in a different kind of world. I was aware of what was going on around me. I was not in a state of trance, if trance means that you are not conscious of your environment. I was not ecstatic in the sense that one is beside oneself and does not know what is happening. Suddenly I felt that I was in some kind of heavenly world even while I was on earth. It was really mysterious. I really do not know how to describe this. All my faculties were clear, fully alert, fully aware of what was going on, and yet conscious not so much this time of that strong overwhelming power of God's presence as at Chislehurst but simply a gentle pervasive beautiful sense of being in heaven. I do not know what else to call it. I do not know how else to describe it. It was as though everything was full of light. I was there walking in the light. All darkness was driven back and I was surrounded by God's light. And as far away as I looked, everything was light.

At first, I was in my room in the Foreign Missions Club. There I was transported into a sweet fellowship with God. It was as though God wanted to say to me, "At Chislehurst, you experience Me in My awesome overwhelming power, frightening in a way; today I want you to experience Me in all my gentleness, my love, my sweetness, my kindness." There was this warm, sweet presence of God not in any way terrifying, not in any way intimidating. Again it came totally unexpected. It was not a work up in my mind; no psychological build-up. Nothing. I had not been singing any songs. Nothing whatsoever. In those days I often prayed on my knees, but I then realized that on my knees I could not stay very long because the hard floor began to make my knees ache quite badly. It distracted me and I could not concentrate anymore. I learned more often to sit down so I could stay on longer with the Lord. And there was His presence. I think it must have been something like two hours in that state of just being lifted up into His sweetness, into the joy of communion with Him. I was totally aware of everything going on.

I looked at my watch and saw that I had a lunch appointment, therefore I would have to get going after those two hours. I realized that to walk there would probably take me something like 40 minutes of walking. I do not remember why I did not go by bike that time. That detail escapes me. I do not recall why I decided to walk. Perhaps I thought that I could continue in His presence without paying so much attention to the traffic. I do not know if that was the reason. That part I do not recall now.

I thanked the Lord for this sweetness, the amazing experience. I walked on the street and do you think His presence was gone? Not at all. It was amazing. As I walked on the street, His presence was there with me. I was still in heaven because where Jesus is, where the Lord is, as the song rightly says, it is heaven there. Wherever He is, there is heaven. As I was walking along, I thought, "Am I still on earth?" How come I see everything clearly and yet I do not seem to be here. It was a sense of being here and not being here, all at the same time. Does this sound strange to you? Unless you experience things, you do not know how to explain them. As I was walking along, there was the presence of the Lord with me. I was thanking Him, praising Him, fellowshipping with Him right up to the point when I got to the house where that meeting was.

When I got to the door of that house, I was clear that this experience had ended at that point. The sweet glow was there but the presence of God was not in that form with me anymore. It ended at the door. Yet all along the street, all along the traffic, I was walking along the road and the cars were going by, His presence was still there. When I got to the door, it was as though the Lord was saying, "I am going to leave you here now. This particular time of communion with Me must come to a close here."

I walked into the door still a bit in a daze, but in a sweet way. I walked into the room and saw a vacant seat as all the seats were taken. There was only one vacant seat. They were seated around in a circle. These were mostly people from our church. I saw the vacant seat and I walked straight to it to sit down. I had never seen the person next to me before. He turned to me and said, "How did you come to know God?" Why does a person open a conversation with you with the first question, "How did you know God?" As I pondered how to answer his question, he went on to say, "I ask this because I want to know how do I get to know God." And I did not even know his name!

Can it be that the presence of God in us is like the fire of the Spirit (Acts 2:3) which, though invisible, draws the other person to Him? You sit down and somebody asks you, "How do you know God?" The strange thing is that I have had people talking to me about wanting to know the Lord and I do not even know who they are. So I began to talk to this young man. The Lord worked powerfully in his life that very day, that very noon time. An hour or so later, he knelt down with me. He was so urgent to commit his life to the Lord. It was not me asking him but it was he asking me, "Can I commit my life to the Lord?" I said, "Alright, let us kneel down here and you commit your life to him." I have seen the Lord do this many times. The power of the Lord virtually drives people to their knees and they want to commit to the Lord. It is amazing. I try to slow them down but they want to keep going. How can I stand in His way? So he committed his life to the Lord. He was in fact due to go into medical studies in London. The power of the Lord so worked in his life that he decided not to go on to study medicine but to train to serve the Lord. The price he paid for that was very high because his father disowned him and was not reconciled to him until recently. We are still in touch.

The Lord grants us experiences not for our personal enjoyment
From this, please notice the fact that the Lord often grants us an experience not for our personal enjoyment. Perhaps one reason the Lord gave me that special communion with Him that day was in order to help this person to turn to Him.

I think that experience was given not just for me but also for him. He was prepared to be rejected by his family. His father was a medical doctor and wanted his son to be a doctor too of course. His father being a Buddhist was absolutely furious, and he did not talk to him again when his son told him that he was going to become a preacher. I said to this brother some years ago when he was in Hong Kong, "Is your father reconciled to you?" He said, "My father still does not talk to me." Thirty years later, and he still did not talk to him. That is how bitter his father was.

To Declare His Works to all His people
I pray that the Lord will bless you through this sharing. I have simply fulfilled what the Scripture says, that we are to declare His glory and His mighty works. This is what I have sought to do this day. To hear about His glory puts a certain responsibility upon you. Nobody can hear His Word and go away without having to respond to God Himself in some way. May the Lord help you to respond to Him in the right way.

( To be continued...)

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