12th Nov 2012. By Natasha Kim. CM –
This particular Sunday saw me visiting C3 Church Subang Jaya (Christian City Church), attending their services for the second time. The day before I must admit, I felt dreadfully unwell but somehow or rather I knew that God would give me strength to get out of bed. True enough, though sniffling all the way to Church, when I got there it was as if my flu was totally gone. I was very happy! In the presence of God all feelings of unwellness disappear. That is true for me, every time I attend Church. Although it did come back after I am always amazed at how God works and I still praise Him.
This particular Church never fails to express how strong they are in terms of praise and worship. Despite being small, they have big voices when it comes to singing for God. Their voices can even be heard from the other corner of the building near the lift, and funnily enough that is how I found my way there the first time that I attended.
On this particular Sunday morning, a guest speaker named Rev Louise Emmanuel came to preach. Pastor is above 70 years old and still full of energy. He began his sermon with a reading from John 15:18 which says, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.”
Miracle after Miracle He still did not see
Pastor Louise then started telling his story saying, “When I was “manufactured” by my mother and father, God had already chosen me only I did not know it. From Penang I moved to Taiping, next to a house which happened to be occupied by my wife Vivian. God has chosen the both of us and put us side by side.” God works in amazing ways.
When he left school, he became a school teacher. It wasn’t long before that was done though, because the headmaster called him out one day and said to him, “I see a very mean streak about you, the way you’re beating up our students!.” He used to take six “rotans” to school instead of books, saying, “Those days, we were encouraged to use it and I used it heavily.”
He was then told by a friend that with that sort of strict character, that he should just as well join the Malaysian army, and he proceeded on to does just that! After he returned from training in England he was posted back to Taiping because there was a lot of communist action there then. He says, “At that time there were black roads, dangerous roads which civilians were not allowed to enter.” One fine day, he happened to be on a “black road” where the communists had set up an ambush which they miraculously allowed him to pass by. A little while later 14 police men passed by the same road and every one of them were killed in the ambush. He says, “God has chosen me and it wasn’t my time to die!” However, at that point of his life, instead of doing what people would normally do and that is, praising and thanking God for the miracle, Pastor humorously says, “I gave glory to beers and hard liquor – Anchor, Tiger, Carlsberg and Hennessy.” He refused to straighten up his life after that incident.
At the same time, he wanted to become a millionaire; he had a lot of hopes for himself so he left the army and went to work at the stock market. Starting out there he did not do very well, but he went around the world to learn their ways. “I was qualified now in MC, a “Master Crook”, he humorously says. “Eventually I became good at it and became a fund manager, a consultant to several banks and companies and more. That’s the life of the “devil and crooks”, and that’s the way to make money. When you cannot manage the wealth, pride takes over.” He even went so far as to make himself great by asking someone to build a 75 feet “feng-shui” fountain in his house and even asked for a Chinese driver since he could not get over the fact that people looked down on Indians and that most drivers were Indians. The Bible says that human pride goes before destruction and Pastor Louise’s life was heading straight into that direction.
God has a Funny Sense of Humour
He reached his goal of becoming a multi-millionaire but to his dismay found out he was very ill one day. After several tests he found out that he had high blood pressure, a swollen heart and that his liver was wearing off. He was told to write a will for his immediate family because his time was running out. On top of that, in the year 1987, all the stock markets in the world tumbled down and that wiped him out. He says, “With this situation I thought of committing suicide”. He tried to commit suicide from the 19th floor of a building but there was suddenly a voice that asked him to look down, and when he did he saw several dogs fighting over a packet of food. “I know it was the Lord telling me, that you jump and you will be the packet of food for the dogs.” he says. With that he abandoned his suicide mission, for now.
Then when all went wrong, he decided to head to Singapore instead to have a bit of fun before planning to commit suicide. He travelled there with his wife and was headed to Lucky Plaza. Right before they could cross the road it started raining heavily, they had to run around looking for cover and that’s how they ended up in a Christian meeting like this miraculously.
There he saw a sight he had never seen before. He says, “I saw the preacher walking up and down and people falling down. We haven’t seen comedies like that before.” He wanted to leave immediately but all the exit lights were off so they could not see and walk out of the place. The preacher called him up and somehow or rather his wife was “ slained in the Spirit” and was lying on the floor, and in that incident he ended up saying the sinner’s prayer with the preacher. He was very hesitant to do it but he prayed along anyway.
The Realization
Eventually and miraculously, when he went back to Kuala Lumpur, the doctors noticed that his swollen heart was gradually shrinking back to normal size and his whole body was feeling renewed and better. One day he heard a voice saying, “Close down your stock market business”. He says, “I lost all my money but most of it was unrighteous money”. Proverbs 13 says, “Unrighteous wealth will be taken away”.
With much joy today he confidently says, “Everything we have is from the Lord Jesus Christ, as a result we are quite wealthy because me and my wife has built up 17 Churches in different poor countries around the world. Now I have been blessed with righteous money, and I have helped and taken 10 people away from committing suicide.”
Praise the Lord!
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