Testimony A Catholic Received Holy Spirit Br Raymond K. 2019.11
1. Opening and introduction
In the name of Jesus Christ I testify, and I ask for the guidance from our heavenly Father. Anything I say in this testimony which is truthful and edifying, I give all credit to God. Any mistakes I make or oversights I make, I take full responsibility and credit for that.
Our beloved Sister Annie asked me to give a testimony about how I received the Holy Spirit and came to the church. Sister Annie was one of the first people. I think she was nine years old when I first came to the church, and I was a young man. Today I m an old man. I m 70 years old, and time goes by so quickly.
So, how did I come to the church? Well, essentially, I was minding my own business, and a sequence of serendipitous circumstances happened to encounter me. So I ll begin from the beginning.
2. Life in New Jersey and meeting my future wife
At the time I was working on Wall Street in Manhattan, and I lived in New Jersey. I used to commute from New Jersey to New York City. My wife had moved recently with her family to the neighborhood that I lived in. They moved from Taiwan. The family operated a restaurant in Kearny, New Jersey.
Because of the proximity, I became acquainted with my wife and her family. The first time I walked into that restaurant, my mother-in-law greeted me. She looked at me and said, Would you like to have something to eat?
At the time I was an agnostic and atheist. An agnostic is a person who doesn t think much about God, doesn t care about God, and doesn t know anything about God.
But I lived in a multicultural society, and I was always interested in learning something about other cultures and the way other people lived. Growing up, I had a lot of Catholic friends and Jewish friends. Most of our community was comprised of European immigrants and Black people. I had many friends among all of these groups. I had Greek friends, Italian friends.
I originally lived in a Polish-Jewish neighborhood. I was raised as a Roman Catholic. This was shortly after the end of World War II.
3. My grandmother and my childhood understanding of religion
I remember my grandmother was a big influence on my life. She was a very pious, very practical, and very charitable person. But one thing I didn t like about it was she made me go to church with her every Sunday.
I remember one Sunday we were going to church, and a young woman was coming in the other direction. She said hello to my grandmother. I estimate I was maybe four or five years old. The woman coming toward us was maybe 18 or 20 years old, and my grandmother was in her fifties or maybe early sixties at the time.
My family spoke Polish at home, and most of the community the Jewish people and the Catholic people all spoke Polish. But this young woman greeted my grandmother in English. She said, Hello, Sophie. The conversation ensued in English. She had an accent, and I later learned it was a British accent. She was speaking English with a British accent, not an American accent.
After the conversation finished, we started walking toward the church again. I asked my grandmother, Why don t you turn around and call her and ask her to join us to go to church with us? She said to me, No, she doesn t go on Sunday. She goes on Saturday.
I said, But Grandma, you mean she s Jewish? She said, Yes, she s Jewish. I said, Well then why wasn t she speaking Polish? Why was she speaking English?
My grandmother laughed. She said, Well, her parents came from Poland, but they moved to England to escape the war. She was born and raised in England, so she speaks English.
I was having this conversation with my grandmother. I said, We go on Sunday, the Jews go on Saturday. Why don t we go on Saturday so we could all be together and worship together?
My grandmother looked at me. She said, Look, I want to explain something to you. My best friend, Rachel, is Jewish. Her grandson, Howard, who you play with, is also Jewish. They re Jewish because God wanted them to be Jewish, and we re Catholic because God wanted us to be Catholic.
She said, Understand this: any religion which teaches its people to respect the Creator, the one Creator; to respect the created order; to show compassion and charity to all of God s created beings; to obey the law and to be good citizens, is a good religion.
She said, We do that and the Jews do that. They re both good religions, but you must always remember one thing. The reason why you re a Catholic and your friend Howard is a Jew is because God wanted you to be in that spot. Once God puts you in that spot, you must never switch.
4. Questions about Christianity
Well, that was a long time ago. Over 20 years later, I met my wife Lei Shiansiao. I was interested in learning something about Chinese culture and Chinese language, so I kept up a conversation with the family and my wife. I was always interested about their religion.
Even though I was an agnostic, I was curious about why people believe certain things. After I got out of high school, I started having these ideas that maybe God doesn t exist and maybe it s not important. I really went in this direction where I thought the only thing that mattered was the things that you can see.
I really didn t care about God from the point of view of knowing about God, but I was interested in knowing why people, if they did believe in God, believed like they did.
I would periodically ask my wife what religion she was, and she would always say, Christian. I said, Well, that s an open field. There are a lot of different Christian religions. She would never give me any details about the church or about what she believed. She would just say, We re just Christian, and we worship on Saturday.
I said, Well, you worship on Saturday. That s kind of like the Seventh-day Adventists. Do you have any affiliation with that? I never really got an answer.
5. A birthday visit to the Elizabeth church June 1981
One day in 1981, around my wife s birthday, I invited her to go to dinner to celebrate her birthday and see a movie. To my surprise, she said, Yes, I ll go.
We drove to the movie theater in the Meadowlands in New Jersey. It was one of these multiplex theaters where you could have your choice of which movie you wanted to see. The movie we were interested in seeing started, I believe, at 7:30 in the evening. But we got there an hour early, at 6:30. This was in the summer. The weather was nice. It was in June.
When my wife realized that we had to wait an hour for the movie we wanted to see, she said, No, I don t want to see the movie. I said, Well, what do you want to do on your birthday? She said, I want to go to the church and pray.
Here I am, thinking, Wow, I can t imagine anything I d rather do more than go to the church and pray. [Said ironically.] I said, Where is your church? She said, It s in Elizabeth.
I said, Elizabeth? By the time we drive, and the traffic and everything, it s going to take too long. Look, you believe in God. That means God is everywhere. God is even here. There s a nice river over there. I ll sit on the bench and watch the river, and you can pray all you want until the movie starts.
Then she insisted. She said, No, I want to go to the church and pray. I said, Well, it s your birthday. I ll take you to the church and pray. So we drove to the church.
She had the key to the Elizabeth church because I think she was helping with caretaking of the church, cleaning and stuff. The church was shut, and we were the only ones there. She opened the door to the church, walked up to the front of the chapel, knelt down, and started to pray.
6. Learning to pray sincerely
I was standing in back listening to this. Then she turned around, looked at me, and said, Now I want you to pray too. I said, Wait just one minute. You can pray. I don t know how to pray. I wouldn t know if anybody s listening. I feel silly.
She insisted. She said, No, I want you to pray. I said to her, Okay, it s your birthday. You want me to pray, I ll pray. And I m thinking, I can fake it.
So I knelt down and closed my eyes and was doing this, you know. [Demonstrating.] Then she turned around and said, You re not praying. I said, Yes, I am. Look.
Then she started praying, and she would turn around again and say, You re not praying. Well, maybe I m not trying hard enough. I ll try a little harder. Then the third time she said, You re not praying.
Now, I ve been called otherwise, but I consider myself a very humble person. When somebody asks me to do something, and they react like my wife reacted to my attempt to pray, I started thinking about this. So I wanted to perform an experiment.
I said to myself, Look, she doesn t know whether I m praying or not. She s just doing that just trying to be difficult with me. I m going to prove it now, because now I don t know who I m going to pray to. I don t know, but I m really going to try to pray. I m going to really, really try to pray, and then she s going to turn around and say, You re not praying.
So she started praying, and I closed my eyes, and this is what I said: I don t know if God exists. I don t know if my prayers reach the ears of anything capable of hearing them. But if you are out there and you can hear my prayers, and there is anything you want me to know about you, now s a good time to tell me.
7. An experience of remorse, peace, and power
At that moment, I felt something very strong. I don t really want to call it electricity, but that s the closest thing that I can call it. It came down and sat upon my forehead, and then it traveled all the way down my spine.
Then I started seeing visions of my life. I mentioned my grandmother because my grandmother was really very close to me, but I didn t treat her well. I didn t treat her with respect. I took her for granted.
I saw the events of my life going in this vision. I saw everything I did wrong to the people that I cared about most. I saw how I disrespected my grandparents. I disrespected my parents. I took my friends for granted. I took my brothers for granted.
I saw a picture of myself which I didn t like. Later, when I read the book of Job, there was a proclamation in Job which reminded me of what I felt at that moment.
Job has this close encounter with the Almighty, and he says to the Almighty, I ve heard of you with the hearing of the ears, but now my eye sees you. In other words, other people had told me about you, but now I see you for myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.
I felt so bad. I didn t like the person I was. At that moment a great sense of remorse fell over me, and I just screamed out and I cried.
I saw myself, and it wasn t a pretty picture. I was crying, and I was thinking about my parents, my grandparents, all my friends and people I disrespected, and all of the bad things and bad people I used to hang around with.
In the midst of all this emotional anguish, I said to myself, Oh, what did I do? I wish I could take it back. I m so sorry. At that moment I started to experience this inner peace. I went from emotional anguish to a sense of peace.
Then I started feeling this warmth and this physical power. I felt at that moment like I could walk through a brick wall, and I felt happy.
Then I looked over at Shiansiao, and the vision stopped. She turned around and said to me, What happened? What just happened here? I said, You asked me to pray, and that s what happened.
8. Prayer at home and a nighttime experience
That night when I went home, I went up to my room. It was on the second floor of our house, where I slept, and I started praying again.
When I was praying, I had the inner groaning, the inner sound that you have in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I was feeling the power come back.
Then I went to sleep. I had the window open in my room. About an hour after I went to sleep, I thought I woke I thought I was kind of midway between wakefulness and sleeping and then I saw another vision.
I saw this very attractive woman dressed in a purple dress. She had long hair, and she was reclining on a couch. She looked at me and was beckoning me to come to her.
I said, Oh, something s wrong. I said, No. At that moment a black smoke came out from around me, floated across the room, and went out the window.
Now, I don t know whether this was a dream or a vision or what, but this is an experience I had in my sleep.
9. My first Sabbath service
The next day, Shiansiao called me on the phone. She said, I spoke to my mother, and I told her what happened in the church. My mom says she thinks you ought to come to church on Saturday.
So, okay, this was the first time I went to the True Jesus Church when they were having a service. As usual, I came late, so everybody was in the church, and they were praying. I was hearing the sounds, and it sounded like sheep sheep or goats.
Then the door opened, and this deacon came out. His name was Deacon Gao. He looked at me and said, Oh, you re Raymond. We re expecting you. I m thinking to myself, Oh, they told everybody.
I attended my first church service. After the service, there were some elders Deacon Gao, Elder Wu, Huang Gunming, Guo Chaoyi, Hsue Fulong, Tsai Meishi, and maybe some others.
They asked me to join them to have a discussion about what happened. They were interested in hearing what happened, so I told them much of the same that I just recounted here.
They said to me, Well, that s the movement of the Holy Spirit. Now you need to be baptized. We re inviting you to become baptized in our church.
I said, No, I don t think so. I was already baptized in the Catholic Church when I was a baby. But I wouldn t mind attending the service on Saturday.
10. Deciding to be baptized August 1981
I spoke to my grandmother about this, and I spoke to my mom. I was thinking about the baptism. I prayed about it, and I was concerned about betraying my roots. I remembered what my grandmother told me: God wants you to be a Catholic. You must never switch. Although I did switch because I was an atheist, agnostic, that didn t count. But going to another church was something else.
But when I would pray, all through that period from June through August, that power would come every time I knelt down and prayed. I would feel it. It would be a very, very healthy feeling, a very warm feeling that would overcome me while I was in prayer.
I had been having discussions mostly with Elder John Wu. Remember him? I wanted to be closer with my wife, Lei Shiansiao, who was not my wife at that time, and I believed that something very significant happened to me. I knew something very significant happened to me when my wife asked me to pray.
After continual praying and consultation in my prayers, I decided it was the right thing to be baptized, and I was baptized in August of 1981. That was the beginning of my walk with the True Jesus Church and my belief.
11. Continuing to seek truth and giving thanks
Sometimes when I walk into a True Jesus Church and they don t know who I am, they ask me, Are you a truth seeker? I always answer, Of course, and I hope you are too.
We should never stop seeking the truth. Jesus said, Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. He said, Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. He didn t say, Find and stop seeking.
So I consider myself a truth seeker. When somebody asks me, Do you believe in God? I answer unequivocally, No. No, I don t believe in God. I know God exists, so I don t have to believe anymore. That s where I am today.
I tell you, I have a lot to be thankful for. I think when you pray, the best kind of prayer is a prayer of gratitude and appreciation for your parents, for your children, for your friends, and appreciation for the fact that the Almighty God, the Father of Lights, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of change, has chosen you to be born and be part of this creation. It s a wonderful thing.
12. A closing blessing
I m going to leave you with this. Sister Annie mentioned that I learned Hebrew, so I m going to practice my Hebrew right here. This is a blessing that I m going to wish that the Almighty God blesses all of you in this room with and my wife and my son, and all of the people who are no longer here whom I ve known in the past.
Let s turn to Numbers chapter 6. When a Jewish father has a son, and that son comes of age, the father puts his hand on the child s head. Whenever they want to wish a blessing, they also do it. They ll put their hand on the head and recite this. This is called the blessing of Aaron.
I ll say it in Hebrew the way they say it plus or minus an accent Now I ll say it in English. Verse 24.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
I ll leave you with this: May the Lord shine his face upon you. May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may the Lord give you and your children peace all the days of your lives.
Thank you for being part of our True Jesus Church family.