Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Experience of Abraham (Part 6) -- Found but Confounded

He found it.

This was it.

My dad had borrowed the Life-Study of Revelation from the older couple and began to read it. Revelation upon revelation. What has been previously discouraged from digging before have all been excavated for him to enjoy.

Remember how I recounted previously that through the study of the Word, it was revealed to my dad what is commonly known as deification (a.k.a. God's Economy) -- God becoming man to make man God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Well, this revelation was so common with Brother Lee's writings - he spoke it in such a conversational manner.

So my dad began to dig deeper, get into these truths that Brother Lee opened up so that others may enjoy...

-- I'm going to add an insertion here, because I have been enjoying this lately and I really want to share it with you all. It's the principle of ministry as revealed in 2 Timothy 2:2. In this verse is the principle of ministry, and it reveals five generations. Here's the verse:

"And the things which you have heard from me through many witnesses, these commit to faithful men, who will be competent to teach others also."

So, you can see that "the things" that Paul refers to here is the New Testament vision which was given to him. And like I said, five generations:

1st generation: "me" - referring to Paul
2nd generation: many witnesses
3rd generation: "you" - referring to Timothy
4th generation: faithful men
5th generation: others

What we see is the principle of ministry, which is that the work of the ministry is the passing on of a vision. Paul's ministry was to pass on the vision to many witnesses, through whom Timothy received it as well. Now, Paul encourages Timothy to continue passing this on to faithful men, who will be faithful to pass it onto others. The point that I'm trying to make here is that in our studying of the Word and the truth, we cannot forsake the generations before us. The way we see further is by standing on the shoulders of the generation before us. Their experiences, their studies, their constitution is so that we can stand on their shoulders so we can see further, and if needed, we may be those whom the generation after us may need to stand upon to see the final piece.

God has given His members gifts as revealed in Ephesians 4:12, and to ignore these ones is to reject God's gifts. What does this mean? It means that it's not scriptural that we interpret the Word by our own selves. Note here that I didn't say read or study -- what I'm trying to point out that all our studies and personal interpretations need to be checked by those who have gone before us.

Beginning with Martin Luther and the foundational truth of justification by faith, many church figures in between, the brethren, and others have gone before us. Many like to dispute this, but I have to confess that I have received much help from the ministry of Brother Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. This is because they have stood on the shoulders of others, and have given their lives to have others stand on theirs. I recently read some small portions from Brother Lee's "Four Crucial Elements in the Scriptures?" (can't remember the title exactly), but the gist of it is that in the Bible there are four main elements: Christ, the Spirit, life and the Church. Many others like to put emphasis in minor details - how should we baptize people, what about the presbytery, head-covering, sitting arrangements. NO! The emphasis in the Bible is Christ, the Spirit, life and the Church. In the beginning you have Christ, in the end you have the Church, and in between you have Spirit and life. Without Brother Witness Lee, I probably would have been stuck in the minor details of the Bible ( who is the greatest apostle? what was Paul's background? etc...).

-- Sorry for the tangent. Back to the story. Now I see how and why my dad was able to make the decisions he made. What decisions, you ask?

So he found this ministry and the more he read it, the more light he received. Even in the areas regarding the ground of the church. In Acts it is revealed that the for every city there should be one church. I won't go too much into details here because I have to admit that I am not fully constituted and knowledged to speak on this topic (it's on my list). It was also exposed to my dad that denominations are divisive through their names and practices. As the church, you are the wife and bride of Christ. Yet, many denominations name, categorize, and differentiate themselves as Baptist, Presbyterian, or Adventist. It's like if I had a wife, her name would be Mrs. Bang. Yet, she wants to be called Mrs. Baptist or Mrs. Adventist. You get the point. Anyhow, I have nothing against my fellow brothers and sisters who are members of the Body of Christ. I just hate the system that divides the Body. So my dad decided to rename our denomination. I forget what it was, but it was probably something like Santiago Baptist Church or Korean Santiago Baptist Church? Anyhow, change that to just the Church in Santiago as revealed in Acts and elsewhere (the Church in Antioch, the Church in Ephesus). Simple enough right? Just change the name and we'll be standing in oneness with the universal Body of Christ.

Except, it wasn't that simple. My dad wasn't peaceful. And he kept dwelling on this sense for a period of time. The longer he dwelt on it, the more uncomfortable it became. Well, it happens to be, that there was already a Church in Santiago meeting in the local ground of oneness. So by renaming our congregation as the Church in Santiago, was just a change in shell, not the kernel.

I forget how my dad got in contact with the brothers in Santiago (from the real church in Santiago). It must have again been through that old couple who had ties with the Korean Gospel Book Room. It happens to be, that KGBR had close ties with the Living Stream Ministry (LSM) in Anaheim, California. LSM was founded by Brother Lee himself, and publishes his and Watchman Nee's materials.

Now, isn't this even better!? Finding the source of the flow of riches! Well, there was only one hindrance. My dad had to give up his pastorship.

Friday, October 21, 2011

The Experience of Abraham (Part 5) -- Still Seeking


So, if you haven't caught the last blogs, here they are. But they were both my side of the story. I think it's time to return to dad's side now. 

Dad went to Chile before we did. In fact, the last Christmas we had in Korea, he wasn't there with the fam. I guess it wasn't such a big deal since we didn't celebrate Christmas anyway. I don't remember why he had to leave early, but I think he went to sort of scout the land. There was a small number of Korean Christian families in Santiago, Chile, and about the time my dad got into all this trouble, they have been contacting the head pastor of the Baptist church for someone to come and take care of the work in Santiago. So, seeing there wasn't much of an option, and believing that this was the Lord's way, my dad left for Chile before us. I think the original plan was to stay for a few weeks in Santiago, and then if well attested, move with the family for some extent of time (can't recall the exact number.. but it wasn't supposed to be a permanent thing). Well, they liked my dad so much, that they didn't just want him to have him back, they wanted to keep him. 

Thus begins our family's move to Chile - a country of a language unknown and far alike from Korean, of foreign food and culture, and far away from the comfort of familiarity. 

In the experience of Isaac series I'll explain the details of what our family went through and stuff, but in this series, I'll just kind of zero in on dad. 

So, he began to minister in Chile - establishing the Baptist Church in Santiago that consisted of a few Korean families. The congregation owned a piece of land and some property that barely resembled a building. Most of the families in the congregation were pretty wealthy. They had all established some kind of retail business (clothing, glasses, carpet, etc...) and were enjoying the no-competition market and faring well in this foreign country. So, financial support was no biggie for our family. We had an apartment, a car, a stipend and many other benefits supported by the members of the congregation. 

I'll describe very briefly four families (that I remember) that play an integral role in the story that is about to be developed:

I forget the surname of the couple, but I think it was they that really pushed for my dad to come and to stay in Chile. They were the main financial contributors to our families.

Then, there is this other older couple that I still remembered very well. Whenever the husband would pray, he would pray, very, ver-y, ve-r-y slowly. He prayed as if every word he spoke was being prayed into being. They owned a shirt-pressing-printing business. I don't know if that's what it's called, but they basically pressed logos or brands into plain shirts and sold them. They once printed a picture of a pokemon on a t-shirt and gave it to me. It was one of my favorite shirts, since none of my friends were able to find anything like it. 

Then, there was Miri's family. I think their surname was Jung. They had three children, one was older than me, and the other two younger. I think the dad owned some glasses business.

There was Esteban's family. The dad was a mediocre Christian who obviously cared about his business more than his faith. Nevertheless of who he was, I was good friends with Esteban. We would love hanging out together and playing GameBoy together. They would always lead in having some recreational activity. One summer, I remember we went to a summer house together. It was a very nice house with a fireplace and a pool (where we found a mice that fell one morning). Funniest thing. One day we were getting bored and tired of all the physical activities, Esteban's dad went out and buy a TV so we can play Nintendo games. I always thought it was so strange of him to just go sporadically buy a TV in the middle of nowhere. But anyway, it kept us well occupied.

--

So my dad continued to pastor and minister the Korean families in Santiago, Chile. My sister and I were still attending that first school I described earlier in the Isaac series. I can still recall the transformation of the building we used to hold the sunday services. We would meet in the basement. Since there were so many under-developed rooms in that property, it was a ton of fun for us. There was always adventure everywhere. The only bad thing was that there was no one to play with. The youngest boy of the Jung family was the only boy, and he was far too young for us to get along or play sports. Everybody else, being a girl excluded me from their gossiping and girl plays (not that I was interested).

Anyhow, even in Chile, my dad still labored in the Word and in the truth. And one day, my dad recounts, he went to visit the older couple who owned the shirt-printing-pressing business. They lived upstairs of the store they owned, and we would walk through the entrance of the store, go in back where they stored all the things, and climb a set of stairs to reach upstairs. Now this brother was quite a seeker himself and he had somehow gotten his hands on some wonderful Bible expositions/commentaries. And, he had somehow gotten in contact with a Korean Christian publisher by the name of the Korean Gospel Book Room and on a wonderful set of exposition called the Life-Study of the Bible by Witness Lee. I personally have read some of these books and these are eye-opening, life-altering books that have helped me grow in my Christian life.

Anyhow, at that time (and I still believe at the present) the book of Revelation was not opened to those in the Baptist denominations (and I also believe to many other Christian groups). But this Brother by the name of Witness Lee had it down. You have to read his testimony (http://www.witnesslee.org/witness-lee-testimony.html), this man was truly a seeker, and one who had so much earthly potential, but sacrificed so much that may others would be benefited through him. Anyhow, he had the book of Revelation down. While many groups  were getting confused more and more by this book, Brother Witness Lee received revelation from the book of Revelation.

Let me give you a brief glimpse - the only way to interpret the Bible is by the Bible and because the entire Bible is God's speaking, and there is 66 books, no book can stand on its own, and thus you have to look at the Bible as a whole. The first two chapters of the Bible (Gen. 1, 2) and the last two chapters of the Bible (Rev. 21, 22) are the only chapters in the Bible were Satan is not present -- either not entered the scene, or have been cast out to the lake of fire. In these two books, we can find God's original purpose. In both of these two beginning and end sections, we find similarities. There is the tree of life, and a river of life in both of these sections. There are building materials in Genesis, and there is a built building in Revelation. There is Eve in Genesis, and there is the Bride in Revelation. And so much more. Well, through these items you can see that God's original intention is that man would partake of life! -- the tree of life is for eating, the river of life for drinking -- and this would issue in the individual materials that are meant to be built together as the New Jerusalem, which is His Bride. This is a very, very brief glimpse of the help  I have received through the ministry of Witness Lee.

And this is what my dad had found..

Thursday, October 13, 2011

The Experience of Isaac (Part 3) -- The Journey in Chile Continues

Sometime in the middle of attending that school, my parents felt it was best for us to get the best education possible. Apparently, the free public schools in Chile are not that great. The government doesn't fund education as much as the States do, and thus, a lot of resources were short. I realized that the school I attended was composed mostly of those in the bottom of the pyramid. Well, of course, I didn't realize that when I went there.. only when I went to another school did I realize that.


For the second grade, I started attending a school called S.E.K. a private catholic school nearby the commercial area of Santiago. The school campus was really nice. It took an entire block that was gated with green posts and tall bushes. On the south side of the school, was a reddish-colored track with white lines, the gymnasium and the swimming pool. If you go up north of the track, you run across the giant stairs, which separated the field area from the cafeteria and the outdoor basketball courts. There were three full-sized courts, one standard size and two that were shorted to accommodate kids like us who were not so tall at that time. On the northern-most and eastern-most parts of the campus, there were classrooms, ranging from kindergarten all the way to high school. So, in a sense, it was a pretty big school, but on the other hand, it was a small class of maybe 60-70 kids per grade.


In Chile, you don't walk to different classrooms for different classes - instead, the teachers come to you, and you just stay in a single classroom for the rest of the year. Nice blue carpets, new polished stone desks that had storage underneath, and brown-wooded cubbies where we put our workbooks for every subject. The buildings were made with spanish-red bricks that towered like castle walls often interrupted by glass windows. If you walked outside, there was a little garden area like a little plaza. The walkways were covered by green rooftops that protected those walking from sun and rain, held by green posts that we use to spin around in.


And then there were the uniforms. Black v-neck sweaters or cardigans, charcoal gray slacks, white-shirt and a tie. And okay, it's not that I'm a fashionista that I remember such things. Let me explain. Since it was only a year that we were in Chile, my parents did not know any Spanish. So in things that parents should be taking care of such as applications, financial forms, school letters and mailings, my sister and I had to take care of them all. And to this day, an application scars my adolescence persona.


Applications steal away the fiction from a child. It demands one to know facts. It demands one to quantify. It demands one to be realistic. It's good to fill out applications and start learning to bear your own responsibility, but I felt that I was exposed to applications a little bit too early in life. To be honest, I was always scared of filling one out because I knew I had to turn it in, but I didn't know what to check, to bubble, or to scribble in those boxes beyond Name and Address.


Sorry, I went off on a tangent. Anyhow, uniforms. I had to tag along with my parents when we had to go buy uniforms. I'm pretty sure I was like the only kid there at that time. I don't blame my parents for taking me - they spoke no Spanish and needed a way to get around. But seeing the price tags on those private-school standard uniforms and the look on my parent's faces, that was dismaying. I must have been 8 or 9, but even at that age, I knew that my family wasn't the richest, and I knew that however much those articles of clothing cost, it definitely wasn't miniscule.


Anyhow, enough of the negative – let me end this post with something positive. This part of my life was very crucial, a gem. These beginning parts of my adolescence, I treasure them to the utmost even despite all the negative environments. I don’t remember too much of what happened in Korea, except for a few snapshots here and there. But Chile, I do remember very, very clearly. These were the days  I started having best friends, watched my favorite cartoons, played my favorite sports and GameBoy games, collected my first pokemon cards. These were the days.


I miss Christian – we were study buddies that shared much in common. We worked hard and always competed against each other on who would get the highest grade in class as well as who would score the most in the basketball court. He wasn’t the fastest because he was a heavy kid, but he had a pretty nice shot for a child of age 8, 9. I couldn’t afford GameBoys, so I drew my own Pokemon games on a sheet of graph paper. It was a maze that you played with a dice, you can choose which direction to go, and you picked up items like pokeballs, potions, or cash, or you encountered wild pokemons that you had to fight and catch or run away from. Whoever ended at the finish line first would win. I started that craze at school, and Christian was my Robin to my Batman like escapades from boring class lectures.


I miss Tapia. His first name is actually Michael, but we called our Michaels by their last name because there were just too many. One time, I totally forgot about that and I called his house and asked for “Tapia”, his parents picked up and asked “Which one?” I may have struck blank for a couple seconds. He was one of the fast kids in our grade, and we would always compete who can run the fastest. Like many of the kids in school, he lived about a half an hour drive from the city in a rich suburb. I would go over to his huge mansion like house often during the summer. We would swim in his pool then go into his game room and play video games all day long. He was one of the few kids in school that disregarded the fact that my family wasn’t so affluent.


I miss Glen. He lived fairly close to me and during the summer, I would always walk over to his house to hang out. Actually, even afterschool, I would go hang out at his place. I remember his mom would always give us chocolate milk and salami for snack, for which some reason I still can remember the taste.. It wasn't the greatest, but it was funny combination of something salty and something sweet. We would have adventures. On our bikes, with our Pokemon cards, roaming around his apartment complex. Glen was a bit socially awkward, and I think he really appreciated the fact that I hung around with him. I didn't mind him being so awkward. In fact, I would truly say that although Glen wasn't my favorite friend in school, he probably was my best friend. We spent so much time together, he was the one I had to call before leaving for the airport. I'll explain that story later..