AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF PASTOR RONY TAN

Often, in the midst of an adversity or tragedy, many such godless people instinctively turn to God in prayer. In their heart of hearts, they know better.

As far as I can remember, I have always believed that there is a God. Nobody taught me this universal Truth. I believe that God exists as naturally as I breathe air.

However, I did not believe in Him, that is to say, I did not put my trust in Him. I had never doubted His bigness and power; but I most definitely doubted His love and concern for poor human beings like us. I saw Him as a big bully and we as helpless creatures who could not fend for ourselves.

Life under God’s control, as I viewed it, was haphazard – full of accidents, sicknesses and wars. To me, life was meaningless and God was uncaring. Therefore, I had no faith in Him.

I was born into a Taoist family. Like most idol-worshipers, my parents claimed to be Buddhists, despite the fact that they knew next to nothing about Buddhism.

True worshipers of Buddha do not worship idols or dead ancestors. In fact, Buddha himself, humble as he was, had never instructed his followers to worship him.

But like many Chinese in those days, my parents worshiped a great variety of gods. Being fearful and superstitious, they sought to worship whatever their relatives, friends and neighbors recommended. Yet, for many years, they mistakenly thought they were Buddhists.

Although my heart was not in it, I blindly followed them and also called myself a Buddhist. This is a basic error in belief among most Chinese families. They have no basis for worship to begin with.

Even till today, most people, who claim to be Buddhists, are actually Taoists. And they are not even practicing Taoists because they know very little about both Buddhism and Taoism.

It is, therefore, not far-fetched to state that most people who claim to be Buddhists are wearing that religious label out of filial piety. It is important to understand that we should not be honoring our parents by blindly following their religious errors. But instead, we should objectively seek the Truth and then lead them out of errors into God’s Truth. That is the greatest honor we can pay our parents.

When I was a little boy, I was terribly fearful of the many idols I had seen. They looked so fierce and menacing. I was told that they were carved out of wood or stone and painted to look angry and hostile so as to ward off evil spirits.

But I reasoned within myself that they looked so evil themselves. Even the supposedly gentler-looking statues looked ghostly and scary to me. I wasn’t sure if they could ward off evil spirits or they were evil spirits themselves; but I was certain that they were no deities. In fact, they put me off.

When I was in my teens, I could not help noticing that those so-called gods were so confined to specific places determined by the worshipers, and they were so helpless too.

When my aunty was about to shift house, she brought down her dusty idols from a high, blackened corner of the room to wash and clean them up. After drying their stained bodies, she put new clothes on them. They still looked fierce but helpless – fiercely helpless. The sight of it all seemed so strange and unbelievable.

Not long after I had become a Christian, I was talking to a carpenter in his workshop. In those days, my evangelistic fervor was totally devoid of wisdom and sensitivity.

Trying to provoke him to reason objectively about his man-made god, I said, “You can move freely, but your god is fixed by you in a spot. So what’s the point of worshiping such a god?”

He smiled proudly and said, “You don’t understand, that’s the way I like it. When I want him to bless me, I will come to him where he is. When I want to go to a bar to drink and enjoy myself, he cannot see me.”

I was speechless because he still couldn’t see the point. Perhaps he also thought that I was a dummy because I chose a God Who could see me in everything that I do as He is with me everywhere I go.

As a child, my heart was filled with uncertainties, doubts and fears. I could not trust the idols because I knew that they were powerless. I could not trust the powerful God because I thought He was uncaring. I could not trust my adult relatives to teach and instruct me in religious things because they were so lost and bewildered themselves. So I was left on my own to figure out the mysteries of life in order to make some sense out of sheer nonsense.

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CHAPTER 2
AN ENDLESS CYCLE OF LIFE

When I was six, I learned from an older friend that everyone must die someday. This dreadful, universal fact of life so greatly shook me at that tender age that I began to live in fear of the mysterious and unknown ... death.

Many a long troubled night, I lay awake with a strange sadness in my heart, wondering what this life was all about. My inquisitive yet helpless mind would go round and round in an endless circle, unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

This awful discovery that I must surely die someday, and so must my loved ones, robbed me of whatever “meaningfulness” of living I had before. My cozy little world, built around my own concept of life and death, seemed to have come to a certain end that day.

Before that, I had my own childish theory of life and death. I had always, in my early childhood, believed that man would live forever in this world unless one was shot down by a Red Indian (as I had so often seen in the movies).

But in the normal process, I thought, man’s life was an endless cycle of growing up, growing old and shrunken, and becoming a little baby to start life all over again. It never did occur to me that we mortals simply have no choice but to die physically; but still, I saw no reason why we should, if we were not being killed by some Red Indians.

Later I began to understand that we, human beings, age in the process of time and are overcome by some physical weakness or sickness. So we just die. It’s only natural. It will happen to everyone someday.

When I first learned of these awful facts of life, my tender heart cried out, “Why must it be natural that a man should age and die? If it is natural, then what’s the meaning and purpose of life? Why should we be living in the first place? And why is this voice deep inside my heart telling me in its own persistent, unique way and language that it is unnatural for man to die? And the same voice is also trying to tell me that something had happened, making the unnatural natural.”

What had actually happened?

My young and unspoilt mind could not accept that death was just meant to be, not if there is a God Who is good and perfect. If death for man was in God’s original plan and purpose, then life itself is totally senseless.

The truth of the matter is that God Who is, by His very nature, incapable of evil could not so plan that man should suffer and die. But we misunderstand God in the restriction of our finite understanding, blaming Him for all the evil of the world, especially when we do not know the origin of sin and evil.

Even when I did not know the truth of these vital issues, I somehow understood that death is just not natural. Was God, in His own special way, impressing upon the heart of a little boy that He had never originally intended that His highest creation, man, should die? Something dreadful had happened to make it so, but it was originally not intended to be that way.

The Almighty, in His immense love and infinite wisdom, was preparing my little heart to receive His great Truth someday: – the Truth about Himself – the Truth about the devil – the Truth about man – the Truth about sin – the Truth about life and death – the Truth about eternity and – the glorious Truth about the forgiveness and cleansing of our sins in Jesus Christ, the only hope and salvation for man.

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CHAPTER 3
WHAT IS TRUTH

What is Truth? Jesus not only speaks and reveals the Truth. He is the whole embodiment of Truth. He is the only One Who has the authority to say “I am the Truth.”

If Christ the Truth had not been revealed to the world, mankind would never have known the way of salvation. Two thousand years ago, Jesus and all the essential Truth were revealed to the world.

A truth is a revealed fact by God to man. Many events had taken place in the history of mankind. Numerous historical records have been known to be inaccurate.

Let us not talk about the events that happened millions of years ago; just take those that had transpired only a couple of days ago and we are already at a loss in trying to differentiate facts from misconceptions, suppositions and even downright lies.

How then can one be absolutely sure that a certain event did actually take place a million years ago? Nobody could unless God clearly reveals it. Only God can because He was there. You and I were not. In fact, there has not been a time when this self-existing Personality is not around with perfect knowledge of everything and everyone.

Let the evolutionists churn out a wide variety of differing theories, each contradicting the other, and let them re-imagine and change their theories with every freshly dug-out fossil remains. The revelation of God in the Holy Bible remains unchanged. This is what Truth is all about. Truth is an absolute, stubborn fact from God.

The evolutionists insist that human life started to evolve from lower forms of life millions of years ago. Were they there? If not, how do they know? Have they ever seen a reasonable phase of evolution take place?

On the other hand, God’s Word says, “In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the earth.” Was God there? If the answer is in the affirmative, no further questions need to be asked. God was there. He made it happen and now He reveals it to us. That is Truth.

When I first heard the Gospel Truth in its basic totality years later, my poor heart responded in sudden recognition and gladness, “This is it! These are the answers – God’s answers – to those tormenting questions of my heart. Here is the Truth I have been searching for all these years. Now I’ve got it! Now I know!”

John 8:32 says, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

God’s Truth has set me free from the lies and bondage of the devil, from superstitions, darkness and fear, and from the power of sin.

If you really hunger for Truth, God will somehow come and reveal it to you personally. He will show you His wonderful plan and purpose for your life. God loves to satisfy a hungry soul.

Are you hungry for Him? Do you really want to know the answers to life’s perplexing questions, not just answers from man’s endless speculations but from the heart of God, the very Source of all life?

When Truth comes and you respond by opening up your heart like a flower bud opens itself to sunlight and rainfall, new life will spring forth in your being – the very Life force of God Himself. His peace that surpasses all human knowledge and understanding will flood your heart. Great questions of life will be answered in your spirit with quenching satisfaction. You will know Truth from error.

Often, you may not be able to put those answers received into human vocabulary or to give physical evidence to satisfy the demands of man’s finite and natural mind, but you will know supernaturally a deep certain knowing way down inside that finally you have been shown the eternal Truth from God your Creator.

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CHAPTER 4
LOOKING FOR EVIDENCES

Man, not transformed by the regenerating power of God, is prone to the wildest religious speculations. And in the grip of satanic delusion, a person would even spend all of his life savings and his entire lifetime to establish and propagate those imaginations as truths.

Deception is one of Satan’s greatest strategies and countless are trapped, blinded, deceived and bound. Only eternity will reveal the extent of such religious deception. Countless of people live and die in total darkness. Who could imagine the awful fate that they would be sharing with the chief deceiver whom they regard as their god?

I was but a little child, untaught in religious matters. Yet somehow I had conjured up the idea of an endless life cycle of growing up, growing old and shrunken, and being processed to become a little baby to start life all over again. In fact, I had wilder ungodly speculations since then, all of which may sound fascinating but are certainly destructive and deadly to pure faith in God.

Oftentimes, when I hear of strange teachings from false religions, cults and even certain humbuggery education, I cannot help but be amazed at the striking similarity of thoughts I used to have when my mind was in darkness. These dishes from Satan’s brewing pot are spiced and served with educational or religious flavors. But they are absurd, to say the least.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

Even at the age of six, I felt rather positive about my speculation and wanted badly to hear from someone that I was right. However, I could not bring myself to confide in an older folk for confirmation. So I began to look for so-called evidences on which my theory could stand, just like what every evolutionist would do.

They would conjure up a hypothesis and then look for so-called evidences. And I did not have to look very far, for my two grandmothers were both not only old but also tiny and shrunken. I even noted that their feet were unusually small and shrunken.

Both my grandmothers came from China. But I did not know that there was a Chinese tradition in China which demanded the binding of little girls’ feet to retard the growth of their feet. In those days, the Chinese regarded tiny feet, no matter how marred and hideously deformed, as a symbol of a lady’s beauty and gentility.

Very thoughtfully I estimated that both of them were entering into the shrinking phase of the process and it would not be long before they would become cute little babies once again. I thought they giggled very much like babies too. Oh, I could hardly wait for the whole process to be completed so that I could carry them in my arms for a change. It seemed like a fair deal to me. They had taken good care of me. Now it was my turn to take care of them. This, of course, led to all kinds of rampant and vain imaginations.

There were times I greatly wondered if other people had such similar notions. Sometimes I felt the need to unburden myself and discuss freely with somebody more knowledgeable than I was. But I was afraid that nobody could understand me. I was not even sure whether it was proper for one to think of these things. Maybe it was not for I had never, to my knowledge, heard anyone discussing such issues.

I do not remember how long I secretly cherished that cozy theory of an endless earthly life. But there came a day when I had a rude awakening ... an awakening that left me stranded within my soul for years to come. It came like a sudden death sentence.

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CHAPTER 5
THE BUBBLE BURST

It was evening. I was playing marbles in a nearby open ground with my next-door playmate. It was a usual evening ... and a usual game with a usual friend ... but little did I realize my entire outlook on life, from that day forth, was about to undergo a traumatic change for many years to come.

Ah Seng was about three years my senior. He commanded my respect because he seemed to know much more about everything than I did. It would be a very good idea to consult him about my theory of an endless life, I thought. However, I was hesitant for fear that he might make me a laughingstock in my own hometown in case, only just in case, my theory was wrong.

There we were playing our usual game and I made a quick decision to take a gamble, even at the risk of being the oddball of the community. I desperately wanted to know for sure, and I knew that Ah Seng had the answer. But then it could possibly be that I was right after all, yet strangely, I did not possess my usual confidence. Anyway, I steadied myself and thought of the best possible approach.

As I was taking a shot at his marble, I asked him in a voice that was manipulated to sound as casual as possible, “Ah Seng, do you know what will happen to us when we just grow up and up, and we get older and older?”

Ah Seng let out a snappy laughter and shot back an answer matter-of-factly, “Why, don’t you know? We just die! That’s all.”

That’s all! It was as if he had plunged a dagger into my heart. Not only was the answer so sudden and sure but it sounded so final too! I was shocked to no end. It was like receiving a death penalty in a court of law. I remember the great inner struggle to brace myself; and only my herculean effort kept me from looking horrified, but I was devastated.

That evening my treasured theory crumbled to dust. Although I knew in my heart that what I had just heard was the absolute truth, I just could not accept the cold fact of an inevitable death. It just did not seem right or natural. It did not make any sense either. Why, my humanistic theory seemed more meaningful.

I had always judged God through the eyes of this cruel world. I had always felt that He was not a good God. Now I was certain that indeed He was not. How could He be when He created poor human beings like us every day only to do away with us in the end? How could I accept it?

Of course, at that time in my life, I was totally ignorant of the root cause of death. God is not the author of sin, sickness and death! They came in like a flood because of man’s disobedience and rebellion against God. Up to that day, nobody had told me the truth.

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CHAPTER 6
A MILLION QUESTIONS UNANSWERED

Night was falling. We collected our marbles back into our pockets without exchanging a single word. I did not know what Ah Seng was thinking about; but as for me, a thousand painful questions began racing through my mind. Each question brought depression, fear and torment. My playmate had no idea that he had just dropped a bombshell at the very foundation of my young, impressionable life.

My whole being rose up from the inside of me in a violent yet silent rebellion against God. It was a terrible unrighteous hatred. Why, oh why must God make things that way? I would not if I were God! It did not seem fair to me the way God ran this world. But where could I reach Him to tell Him so?

From the moment Ah Seng uttered those awful words, my whole world looked hopelessly dark, and my future unbearably bleak. I walked slowly, almost reluctantly, dragging my feet home with great heaviness in my young heart.

For the first time, I felt a strange emptiness within me. I felt like laying down everything and give up totally, including my life. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore except for the fact that I loved and cared for my family. So I walked on.

It was dinner time when I got home, but my appetite for food had fled. Why bother about food when I was already “condemned” to die? And for what charge I knew not. In fact, why would I bother with anything at all?

The human heart is so created that it must be filled by God, and God alone. No other substitute will do. Fill it with all the treasures of this world and it will still be empty and void.

No words can describe how I felt as I laid my weary head on the pillow that night and sleep evaded me. As I looked into the darkness of the night, I felt so small and hopeless ... like an abandoned kitten out in the cold, so helplessly afraid of everything.

I began to wonder if Ah Seng or anybody else ever felt the way I did. Could anyone possibly live happily with the knowledge that he must surely die someday? Yet as far as I could see, nobody seemed to be that concerned and affected as I was. Why? Was something wrong with me? Though I feared death yet I dreaded living on.

That night was probably the longest night of my life. Questions that had never existed before in my mind came rushing through; all of them were pressurizing me for answers I did not have. This interrogation lasted for years until I found the answers in Jesus Christ. That night was only the beginning of fear and uncertainty.

Who am I really, and why was I born in the first place?

Why must I die someday? Could it be because of all my little white lies? But are they so terrible?

Who and where is God? Why is He so mysterious? How can I reach Him to make a protest?

Why is there so much sorrow in this life? Does God demand that man should suffer? If so, why?

Is there meaning in life? What really is the purpose of living on?

Where do I go after this life is over? Are Heaven and hell real places? How does God determine where I should go? Will I be able to see my loved ones again?

And on and on I would go ...

Questions triggered off more perplexing questions, and I was left hopelessly confused and bewildered.

It was as if I was left dangling in the air. Later I discovered to my dismay that most people were not at all bothered by such questions. I was furious when even the adults did not have the answers. How on earth could anyone live meaningfully and happily without such basics settled in their souls?

So I grew up with a million whys unanswered.

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CHAPTER 7
NEGATIVE INPUTS AND EXPERIENCES

The dramatic discovery that every human being, including my loved ones and I, must die someday proved to be too much for me. I became a melancholic person and, unconsciously, I began to cultivate a terribly negative mindset. Consequently, life became meaningless.

To make life even gloomier, I was surrounded by negative people and environment. Although there were moments of fun, laughter and celebration, there were, however, constant misunderstandings, quarrels and animosity among my relatives.

In my adolescence, everyone I knew was an idol-worshiper. So I grew up in dire spiritual darkness.

My paternal granny ill-treated my mother. The setting of my earliest memory was in the common bathroom of my granny’s provision shop. My granny was furiously scolding my weeping mother who was washing a mountain of clothes on a wooden washboard. That unhappy scene was my earliest memory.

My childhood, for the most part, was indeed unhappy. My dad’s relatives were constantly at war. When his biological father died, his mother married a polygamous man. He wasn’t a wealthy man at all. But with quite a few wives, he became the father of many children, and my dad was being neglected.

Sadly, there was a lot of bad blood among the siblings. And these idol-worshipers were casting evil spells on one another.

On my mother’s side, things were no better. For some strange reason, my second aunty was always finding fault with my mom. When my mom was hospitalized for a very serious illness, I felt totally rejected by this aunty. At that time, we were all living under my maternal granny’s roof. My aunty disliked me because she believed that granny loved me more than her own children.

This second aunty was married to a wealthy businessman who had a farm and a kelong. Whenever he returned from his business trips, he would bring back a lot of goodies. All my cousins and other neighboring children would be sitting in a circle and my aunty would distribute the goodies to every child and deliberately leave me out.

I remember that during one lantern festival, my second aunty distributed colorful lanterns to all the children around, except me. I felt so left out.

Toward evening, when my granny came back from her usual gambling session, she bought me the biggest lantern that I had ever seen. That night was one of my happiest nights as a child.

Before my mom was hospitalized, my relatives made me worship Tian Gong by offering him three joss sticks, clasped in my little hands, as I knelt and looked up into the sky. This I did twice, the first plea at the front door and the second plea at the backyard.

What followed next was etched indelibly in my mind. My second aunty, upon the advice of some quack physician, went about collecting urine from little children. When she smilingly approached me, I simply refused to give my urine because I knew that they were about to make my mother drink it.

What I witnessed next made me sad, sick and fearful. My second aunty and another sister pried my mom’s mouth open with a pair of chopsticks and poured the bowl of urine into my mom’s mouth. She struggled, gargled and gasped for breath.

At that time, my dad was separated from my mom. When she was hospitalized for what seemed like many months, I felt completely alone. Granny was supposed to take care of me, but she was out gambling most of the time.

After sometime, my dad came home. Till this day, I do not know exactly why they separated. When my dad came home, he became a responsible husband and father.

I remember that night when my dad came back to seek reconciliation. Not knowing his intention, one of my relatives yelled out urgently, “Quick! Run! Hide! Your dad is coming to take and sell you away!”

Terrified, I ran with all my might and dived underneath a bed. In the process, I crushed a little mouse. I stifled my scream as I was now more fearful of my dad than the mouse. But thankfully, my dad came in peace.

In the book Soulwinning Strategies, I narrated the exciting account of how my dad became a Christian. Years later, I had the joy and privilege of leading my second aunty to the Lord Jesus also.

My maternal granny was the one who nicknamed me Gong Tu or Silly Pig. I loved her, but I hated that name. She didn’t realize that her endearing name was giving me a very poor self-image. That part of my life in relation to the subject of self-esteem has been covered by the book Breakthrough.

When my parents decided to live on their own and apart from granny, we shifted to Chin Swee estate. We were then terribly poor. In that backward estate, we lived in a single rented room which was previously a stable for horses. The condition of that place was simply appalling.

Dad contracted tuberculosis and his children, including me, were sickly. We were on social welfare when my dad was very ill.

The social and health authorities sent an inspector to visit us, and he was appalled by the condition we were in. He shook his head sadly and promised that he would find us a better dwelling place. He kept his promise. Within a few months, we shifted to Tiong Bahru where I spent all my teen years and early adulthood.

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CHAPTER 8
SPIRITUAL CONTRADICTION AND EDUCATION

When I discovered that I must die someday, I began hating God. But there was somehow a spiritual contradiction in my soul. Many times during my childhood, I experienced this phenomenon. I know, no matter how hard I try to explain this, nobody would know exactly what it was like.

There were times, for no rhyme or reason, I would say to myself, “I am I.” And a very strange feeling would come over me. All at once, flashes came into my soul and I could feel that I was special to God – the God that I did not trust. However, at that moment, when these flashes came all over me, I felt so loved by God. And this contradiction baffled me for many years.

The other phenomenon that I experienced was the vision of countless of colorful balls floating down and bringing joy to my heart each night before I fell asleep. Again, during those moments, I felt specially loved of God. I believe that God was trying to break through into my confused heart that He truly loved me.

Having no other entertainment, I used to hang around the womenfolk in the evening as they narrated ghost stories. As a child, I was scared to death when I heard those chilling stories.

Then came bedtime. And it was very difficult for me to obey my mom to go to bed alone without her. They were still chitchatting. My problem was that between where we were and where the room was, there seemed to be a space of many miles in between, and that many demons were lined up along the long corridor I had to pass through. As usual, it was not until my mom threatened to thrash me that I then took off in a dash.

That’s when I would play a silly game in my head. As I ran from where I was to the bedroom, I kept telling the ghosts, not out loud but in my head, “Not yet, not yet, not yet ...”

Then I would jump into bed, covered myself with a blanket right up to my neck and finally said, “Okay, you can come.” I played that stupid game for years, all through my adolescence.

When I became a pastor, I shared this incident with a friend one day and surprisingly, he exclaimed, “I also played the same game when I was young!”

When I was in Pearl’s Hill Primary School, I was a very timid and defeated boy. At the end of each term, under the conduct column of my report book, the teacher would invariably write, “A very good and quiet boy.”

With all the build-up of negatives in my life, I hardly spoke in school. I started to read a lot and I didn’t mix around too much. When I was in primary five and primary six, preparing for the entrance examination (it is now known as PSLE), we had very strict teachers.

Hardly a week went by that we did not have a test in all the subjects we took. For history and geography tests, we were only allowed to make three mistakes out of 30 questions. For the fourth mistake, the penalty was a stroke of cane on the buttocks; then every stroke for each additional mistake.

Our answers would be in a word or a phrase. For instance, the teacher would ask, “What is that invisible line that goes from the North Pole to the South Pole?” Our one-word answer should be “axis”.

After the 30 questions, the teacher would instruct us to exchange our exercise books with the students sitting next to us. Then he would give us the correct answers and we would mark our fellow students’ tests.

Finally, the nerve-wracking part of the session would arrive. Our exercise books were returned to us with our final scores. The number of strokes was worked out. We would then reluctantly line up to receive our punishment. It was a painful time.

Very often, before our test, we would hear the cries of students receiving punishment from the class next door, and that teacher was about to come over to our class for his next whacking session. It was very fearful and depressing.

We were all trained to accurately draw a 1/4-inch margin for all the pages of our exercise books. It should be exactly a 1/4-inch, no more and no less. It seemed like the teacher had a measuring tape in his eyes. If a margin was not exactly a 1/4-inch, punishment by caning would ensue.

The cane was used so often that it split. Whenever a new cane was introduced, we had to stretch our hands to get a sample of it. In my heart I rebelled silently against that practice.

Very soon my classmate and I had to learn to cheat in our tests in order to survive (that’s what we thought). He imitated my handwriting and I imitated his. For questions we couldn’t answer, we agreed to leave the lines blank.

When we exchanged our exercise books, we made sure that we also exchanged our pens. Then as we marked each other’s answers, we began filling the right answers in all the blank spaces. Even then we could not escape caning all the time. We still had to study very hard, or else there would be too many answers to fill in and that would be very dangerous. But we did reduce the number of strokes on our buttocks quite substantially.

I hated the severe strictness of the school. It made me so fearful and depressed. But finally, in the entrance examination, nobody in my school had failed. After countless stripes on our buttocks, it was a 100% success for the school.

Being a pessimist, I wasn’t looking forward to my secondary school education. I presumed that life would be tougher, but little did I know that I was totally wrong. Something was about to fill my emptiness and give me self-confidence.

In my days, Gan Eng Seng School did not have the reputation it has today. There were ruffians and gangsters who wanted to be Hollywood rebels like James Dean and Elvis Presley.

The first time I heard the singing voice of Elvis Presley was from a portable battery-operated turntable a classmate brought to school after the term-end examination. I liked what I heard and I knew instinctively that I could sing like that.

My schoolmates were amazed at my hidden talent. Later, I sang at the school concert. Almost overnight, from a very dull and unsure teenager, I became one of the popular guys in the school.

My self-confidence was boosted and I desired to be a pop singer more than anything else in the world. Now I had a reason for living. So wrapped up was I in the world of pop songs that I forgot about the quest for the meaning of life, at least for the time being.

It took me sometime to learn that when your reason for being is not anchored in eternity, it would fizzle off sooner or later. This is because human beings are God’s highest creation and eternity has been placed within our souls. That’s the reason why no matter where we are and what we are doing, there is this instinctive knowing that we are meant for something more.

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CHAPTER 9
THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE

I honestly do not believe that anyone could ever live meaningfully without Christ and the perspective of eternity. I know that is a strong statement, but it is universally true. Without Christ, you do not even know what you are missing!

Basically, there are three types of people in this world.

One, those who are in Christ. These people are genuinely Blood-washed, born-again Christians who live for Christ and eternity, and whose words and deeds are said and done in the light of eternity. They have a roundabout change in their mindset and attitude.

They know who they are in Christ Jesus. They know that they were created by God for His purpose, and they also know where they would be going after this earthly life is over. Hence, they live by the blessed fact that they are heavenly citizens and are just passing through this world only once. With the transforming power of Christ and the perspective of eternity, they are being enabled to live forgivingly, lovingly and meaningfully right here on earth. Consequently, they know what really is at stake. Above all, they know a personal God. And they know all these without a shadow of doubt. As sure as every second must tick away, they know they are nearer their Creator and Heavenly Home with each passing tick. So they live accordingly.

Two, those who have an earthly cause. These are the people who drown their meaningless, Christless lives in a man-made cause, be it social or political, personal or collective – something to give them meaning for the time being. In my case, my whole world was wrapped up in pop songs.

There is nothing wrong with many earthly ambitions, provided that God is not left out of the picture because without the perspective of God and eternity, our view of life could be distorted and warped. Then our behavior would follow suit.

Hence, there are political or religious fanatics who are desperately attempting to make their own meaning out of this life. They set their own rules and expect everyone to play their games their ways. Many are ready to live and die for that chosen cause. Their means, no matter how cruel and inhumane to those of differing opinions, justify their ends. Their words and deeds are said and done for the supreme purpose of promoting that selfish ambition.

Nobody is allowed to stand in their way. Lying, and cheating, and killing (if deemed necessary) is merely a way of life to them. They live as if there is no God, and that they are going to strive in this crumbling world forever. They are blindly ignorant of the fact that when their fleeting earthly lives are over, they have absolutely no choice but to face their Creator in judgment.

Everything is pointing toward a day of reckoning when every wrong shall, and must, be righted. Not only does my holy and just God demand it, human dignity demands it as well. Every wrongdoing, every crime, every sin that has escaped human detection here below has been faithfully recorded in Heaven. No one outside the forgiveness of Christ can escape. When the book is opened up, how would you stand?

Three, those who are Christless and causeless. These people merely exist from day to day. It is as if they are living in a dream. When the purpose of life is missing, there is no motivation or reason to live on. When that spiritual vacuum in our lives is neither filled by Christ nor by some obsessive drive for personal power or fame, there is no direction or purpose for living.

That is the reason why many people are lost. There is no purpose for life itself, let alone for living meaningfully. So they just drift along, meandering through the river of this life – totally dictated by the currents of circumstances. And should the pressure get to be unbearable, some might just end it all by committing suicide.

Whatever the case may be, they still have to stand before God and answer the ultimate question: have you accepted the only provision by God for the forgiveness of your sins through Jesus Christ, or do you choose to pay the penalty yourself?

What will your answer be that day?

When I was caught up in the whirlwind of performing in nightclubs and stage shows, I exclaimed to myself, “This is it! This is my destiny! I don’t need anything else!”

Strangely, in my quietest moments, I felt this tug in my heart again to search for the meaning of life, especially when the thrill of my newfound night life wore thin. I was trying to fill the void in my heart with something that could not satisfy for long, let alone eternally. Soon I felt the emptiness again.

Jesus once said that man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Yet most people are trying to satisfy themselves with bread of every description from this world.

At a well in Samaria, Jesus spoke to an outcast lady who was rejected by her neighbors, “Whoever drinks the water from this well will thirst again, but when you drink the living water that I give to you, you will not thirst again.”

The common mistake that everyone makes one time or another is to try to find fulfillment in life without God. King Solomon tried to do that. With his great wealth and power, he tried to fill his life with all kinds of earthly pleasures and activities and he came to the inevitable conclusion, “Everything under the sun is futile.”

Since the under-the-sun perspective did not afford him any meaning or purpose of life, he began looking up – to the above-the-sun perspective. That was when he factored the Almighty God into his life.

It took him years of wilderness before he came to the absolute conclusion, “Everything must begin and end with God. Only the perspective from God’s viewpoint brings meaning and purpose.”

Ecclesiastes 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

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CHAPTER 10
DISTRACTION FROM MY SEARCH

When I saw the enthusiastic response of my audience each time I sang, I became very consumed in my dream to be a pop singer. I would be singing from morning till night whenever I had the chance.

Then I began saving up from my pocket money in order to buy a guitar. At all costs, I got to have a guitar because my pop idol, Elvis, had one. It took me a long time, but finally I was a proud owner of a black acoustic guitar with steel strings.

In those days, nobody I knew had gone to a music school. So I learned my first set of chords – C, A minor, F and G7 – from my dad’s friend. With those four chords, I was able to sing a couple of songs with my guitar. From then on, I picked up additional chords.

One evening, as I was passing through a nearby garden in order to get home, I heard the gentle strumming of guitars. As I went nearer, I found myself in the company of teenagers around my age. I introduced myself and, very soon, we were all strumming the guitars and singing the night away. That was how my band was formed.

We began performing in local nightspots. Initially, it was tough as we were being paid miserably. We didn’t seem to care about money as our passion to perform was unbelievably strong. However, after a year, we began earning a regular decent salary.

At this point, my search for the meaning of this life had convinced me that no man could ever find it. Consequently, I became melancholic and pessimistic in my outlook of life. Like other countless groping souls, I was constantly bewildered by the gloom and hopelessness that seemed to surround this earth.

The usual parrot-like religious chatters sickened me. The gaudy pomp and ceremony displayed by different religions brought no comfort to my heart. They are, to say the least, so irrelevant and unnecessary. I found them repulsive, so I did my best to keep my distance. None seemed to get down to the crux of life’s issues. None answered my questions. All missed the mark; and my soul remained empty still.

From time to time, an older relative or friend would encourage me to join a religion, any one would do, for according to them all religions were good. “Good for what? Do they answer my heart’s questions?” I would ask in the secrecy of my own heart for I did not wish to be impolite. Strangely enough, many of those who gave me that worn-out advice were themselves without any religion. Was it because they did not believe in their own advice, or were they still trying to figure out which was the right path?

Up till then, not one Christian I had met had presented the Gospel to me in its simplicity and basic totality. I doubted if they themselves knew what they were really in for. Even today I find that so many Christians are unable to share the Gospel effectively; and there are those who do not even try. If Christians are not concerned about presenting our Lord Jesus in both words of boldness and conduct of godliness, many a soul’s fate would be sealed by the devil.

Hence, in my late teens, I began to lead a vague and dreamlike existence. I occupied my gloomy days and nights with negative lovesick songs. I just loved to sing songs about how sad and blue I was. With such an influence added to my negative outlook, I do not believe that there was a bluer person in the world than I.

It was at that period of time that I had my first contact with the spirit world. The devil must have had ascertained that the time was just ripe as I was at my most vulnerable point.

To be continued ...

CHAPTER 11

THE MOVING BOTTLE