Continuing from Part 3...
Well, I'm still alive, so that must mean that all that prayer and fasting must have compelled the Lord to move His hand of mercy upon me. During this time, my dad met a group of believers called the Bereans, who were very devout Christians in studying the Word. My dad admits he got a lot of light through their diligent studying and endeavoring to see the Word. Soon after, he somehow got connected with the head pastor of Sung-Rak Baptist, who asked him to join him there. And that's where my memory begins.
But my story isn't very interesting there yet. All I remember doing is climbing walls to not miss my school bus, solving those korean math worksheets, growing a caterpillar which I ended up killing by feeding the wrong kind of lettuce, cartwheel-kicking (yes, I kicked him as I was doing a cartwheel, I got him on the face too!) a classmate of mine because we got in a fight, being really embarrassed to run shirtless during a soccer practice and somehow believing that Santa Claus did not exist, because on December 25th of 1997 -- the day we left Korea to go to Chile -- it did not snow.
Slow down! How did Chile get into the picture? (And for those who don't know what Chile is, it is a country in South America).
As my dad began to pastor the Baptist church in Korea, he was mainly in charge of taking care of college students. Somehow, through his deep study in the word, he came to realize this matter concerning deification (organic salvation). For those who do not know what organic salvation is, it is the "will be saved in His life" (Rom. 5:10) and "shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13) salvation that the Bible speaks of. This is different from a sinner's initial salvation where he is saved from eternal perdition. This is an organic (meaning, by and through the divine life) salvation that goes on after our initial salvation, where we grow in our spiritual zoe-life. This is how a child of God (Rom. 8:16) becomes a full-grown man (Eph. 4:13) by partaking of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). The reason why I mention Romans 5:10 and 10:13 is that you can see that the verb saved is in the future sense. Paul was speaking to the Romans, who were already believers in Christ. Was he telling them to be saved again? Surely he must have been referring to this matter of organic salvation where a believer is further saved to become mature in Christ. To be concise, God became a man so that man can become God in life, nature but not in the Godhead.
Anyhow, I don't know if those were the same verses that my dad saw, but I just wanted to provide biblical proof regarding this. This was also what the original church figures saw as well (Athenasius and others).
So after seeing this revelation, there was no U-turn for my dad. He began to preach concerning this to the ones he was taking care of. And soon enough, word spread and some of the other pastors heard about this and were infuriated regarding this. (Okay, you may think that I'm biased because this is what my dad saw, but until you can prove that God did not become man so that man may become God in life and nature with the Bible, I will stand faithful regarding this vision I personally saw as well).
There was inner turmoil going around the congregation. As other pastors began to hear regarding this word, they began to label is heresy and my dad was being told to repent of his heretical teachings. Faithful to the Bible, my dad did not. However, this became such a serious problem among the pastors, that something had to be done. Pretty soon afterwards, my dad was asked to come to a meeting of pastors... except it wasn't too much of a meeting. In that "meeting" all the pastors including the head pastor of the congregation sat around in a circle around my dad, questioning him, telling him to dismiss what he taught, calling him a heretic, etc.. The head pastor believed my dad was correct, but being political about the whole situation, he didn't readily stand up for my dad. Opportunely or unopportunely (you decide), some Korean Christians from halfway around the globe had been requesting some one to lead their congregation in a country by the name of Chile. The head pastor took this opportunity to sort of protect my dad, but also take care of this angry mess in Seoul. So basically, my dad was euphemistically excommunicated to be sent away to Chile...
I think I wrote a lot for a day..
No comments:
Post a Comment