Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Someone Unworthy — a testimony from Brother Michael J.C. Liu

Translated by Sean Kwong

Good evening:

Whenever I am giving my testimony on stage, I think of myself as
someone unworthy. If you are a Christian, you need to understand that
it is a privilege for an individual to share a testimony for God. Who
are we? We are totally depraved; it is by God’s grace and grace alone
that we are saved. What make us to be worthy to serve Lord God Almighty?
What makes us to be worthy to offer something to the Lord God? The whole
earth is His, and everything is created by Him. It is Him who is worthy
of all the praises. His name alone should be glorified.

When I was 14, my mother sent me to New York City. At that time,
she joined a Christian church. Many new immigrants got their spiritual
and practical needs met there, including my mother. She felt warmly
welcomed in the church. When I was 15 years old, she was baptized,
after which, she commanded me to attend her church. Before this, she
was always very gentle; she had never used her authority as
a mother. I thought I must listen to her first commandment, ever. As a
result, I went to the church.

To my surprise, a Christian church was very different from everywhere
else I had encountered. My impression was that New York City was very
goal-oriented. However, what I felt in church was different from this.

When I was in Taiwan, I had attended school for some time. From
elementary school to junior high, I had always felt that people around
me were very realistic. In school, everybody wanted to be a top
student who was respected by schoolmates and favoured by teachers. On
the other hand, those who did not succeed academically were dismissed
and ignored. This was not the same in Church. People in church treated
each other well. Both the seniors from my high school and counsellors
in church were very kind. Their attitude was so different from other
people. As a result, I felt I should listen to Christians.

They talked about why people should read Bible. I was told not to
start form the book of Genesis in Old Testament because it was too
difficult for me to understand. Instead, I started from the Gospel of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Particularly, I was also told that the
Gospel of Mark was the shortest, which made it to be suitable for
beginners.

So I began reading form the Gospel of Matthew. My mother told me to
skip whatever was hard to understand, such as Jesus’ genealogy. When I
read it for the very first time, I discovered that the Bible,
especially the words of The New Testament, were very powerful. It was
different from the books that I had read before, including the Analects of
Confucius, Buddhist classics or The Koran. The Bible spoke to me more
profoundly. Moreover, its content did not seem like something made
up. According to the narrative of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I
could tell they were standing next to Jesus Christ when he made one
man rise from death. In other words, they were eyewitnesses of
Jesus—what they were writing down was what they had seen.

All these things together made the Bible trustworthy. After I read the
Bible, I was amazed by the personality of Jesus Christ. His greatness was
beyond my understanding. I told myself, “If Jesus is God, I want to
believe in him.” Everything in him was good. He made blind to see, the
lame to walk, and He made the dead to be alive again. Everything he did was
good; His words were pure, and His wisdom was above all. But
then, they killed him. I thought to myself, “How could they kill Him?
What were these people doing?” However, just when I thought that he
was dead, he resurrected. Wow! This was huge! Resurrection! I wanted
to make sure I understood it correctly, so I asked a reliable and special
teacher in church. I trusted him because he was different from all the
other teachers in my school years: he was a Christian. He always wore
a smile on his face. I respected him as my teacher, and I believed
that he would not lie to me.

I asked him, “The Bible said Jesus Christ is God, is that true?”.
“Of course, it is true”, he replied.

In my opinion, if he said it was true, it must be true. Therefore, I
believed that the Bible I read couldn’t be wrong. This conclusion
matched the true feelings in my heart. In fact, it was the truth, for
if Jesus Christ was not God, then who was God? As I continued reading
the Bible, I discovered that God was truly righteous. I found this to
be the case after I studied the book of Exodus, where God made his
divine laws known. Through this process, I discovered that he was
indeed righteous. For example, his instructions and His standard of
righteousness proved what a just God He is. He is so holy that even
his punishments towards people were based on righteousness. Such a God
like this cannot be wrong.

Another fact was that God cannot lie. He said there is only one God,
but other people say that there are many gods. Because the statements
contradict each other, the logical conclusion is that one of the
statements is a lie. I concluded, “My God cannot lie, so the others
must be the false teachers”. It was pretty simple: Jesus Christ was
God, my God was God. This God is the real God. He has power, and the
words in His book also have power. Therefore, it was real. Up to that
moment, everything sounded great.

And then, I began reading from the book of Revelation. I had heard
about the book of Revelation back in Taiwan. Those of you who enjoy
reading comics will know that Japanese writers and cartoonists are
very bold, even to the point of using Bible verses and stories in
their comic strips. One of the comics that I read was based on the
book of Revelation. Even then I was horrified by those scenes about
the last days. When I later read the book of Revelation, I was even
more horrified to discover that everything I read was real and
whatever spoken by God was about to happen. I was scared to death as I
read “the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever (Revelation
14:11)”. It took me a long time before I dared to read the book of
Revelation again. I felt horrified whenever I read that book because
these basic biblical concepts had been in my mind since I was fifteen
or sixteen years old. (To be continued…)




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