He was raised by Christians and became an atheist until a voice said, “I will teach you how to love me” — Salt&Light

He lived a life dedicated to pleasure.

“I was a chain smoker, 60 cigarettes a day. I drank and did all kinds of stupid things.”

Then he got out of a very bad relationship and became so depressed that he couldn’t get out of bed.

Paul Wong was 30 years old at the time.

“I didn’t want to leave the room. I was incapable of acting. Every time I lay in bed, it was as if a heavy burden was weighing on me. Every other day I thought about how I could kill myself.”

His condition was so bad that his father took him to a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with clinical depression and prescribed medication.

“In the morning I had to take medication to keep me awake. In the afternoon I had to take medication to keep me from getting too high. In the evening I was given medication to help me sleep.

“I thought: This is no life,” said Paul.

Then an old classmate invited him to a birthday party and since he had nothing better to do, he went. There he got talking to a woman named Barbara Tjoa, to whom he told his situation. She was so moved that after the party she and her prayer partner began to pray for him.

“After she prayed for me, my life got worse.”

Become an atheist

Paul, now 62, comes from a family of Christians on both his father’s and mother’s side. His parents took him to church regularly and sent him to Sunday school when he was old enough.

Paul as a four-year-old (middle) with his parents and siblings. Both his father’s and his mother’s families were Christian for many generations.

“I went there and listened to the Bible stories. I also came from a mission school. But just because you go to a Christian school or church doesn’t mean you’re a Christian.”

As a teenager, Paul started “doing his own thing.” This got him into “a lot of trouble.” At 16, he was caught fighting.

Paul, then 16, at an Anglo-Chinese school athletics meet in 1978.

“We were dragged into the director’s office. There we found ourselves in a room with three police officers.”

He got off with a warning.

When he completed his military service, Paul stopped going to church.

“I don’t think I was ever a Christian.”

At university, Paul was disappointed by the inability of Christians to answer his questions and influenced by the modules of the philosophy course he was taking, and became an atheist.

Paul at the age of 20. At this point he was already an atheist.

“How do you know the resurrection of Christ is real? How do you know it is not a fake? Was Jesus a madman, a liar, or really who he claimed to be?

“What annoyed me about Christians at that time was that they couldn’t answer the really difficult questions. You can’t even answer those questions and you want to talk to me about salvation?

“Religion made no sense to me at all. I felt that this thing called God was more of a figment of our imagination. If you want to believe, you believe. I believed in myself. I was basically a humanist.”

This worldview influenced his lifestyle.

“I did everything a young guy does. You could see me in a bar every day. My house was a hotel. I think I disappointed my parents terribly during that time.”

No more smokers

In 1991, Paul fell into depression due to a breakup. Shortly afterwards, he met Barbara at a party.

She became both his confidante and his prayer warrior, praying for him along with her prayer companion Dorcas, who would eventually become Paul’s wife.

But when he started praying, his life got worse. He lost his job at the insurance company because his depression made it difficult to hold down a job. Then his depression got worse.

Barbara Tjoa (left) and her friend Dorcas, who was to become Paul’s wife.

“One day it was so bad that I called Barbara around 10 p.m. and we talked until about 2 a.m.

“Whenever I talk to her, she always talks about God. That night she said to me, ‘Where has all your intellectualism gotten you? What do you have to lose by accepting Christ?'”

Since Paul didn’t know the answer, he prayed the sinner’s prayer with her and accepted Jesus into his life.

The next day he woke up not as a new person, but with the same old craving for a cigarette. Within an hour he had smoked four cigarettes.

He called Barbara.

“I told her, ‘I can’t be a Christian.’ She asked me, ‘Why not?’ So I told her I still smoke.

“She told him that smoking did not make him any less of a Christian and encouraged him to pray if he wanted to quit.

“I thought: This woman is crazy. But I’m just going to do her a favor. I’m going to pray.”

He said a simple prayer and asked God to take away his craving for cigarettes. As soon as he finished his prayer, the craving for cigarettes suddenly disappeared. He took all the cigarettes out of his drawer and threw them in the trash can.

“I haven’t touched a cigarette since that morning on June 2, 1992.”

Free at last

Paul began going to church with Barbara. Instead of getting better, Paul’s life deteriorated even further in the months that followed.

“It was the hardest time. The most terrible. The devil was still after my soul.”

He couldn’t sleep. Some days it was so bad he considered killing himself. Other days he struggled to carry on.

“I was like a washing machine going around in circles.”

Accusatory thoughts overwhelmed him, telling him that he was a hypocrite, unworthy of the Christian faith. On the verge of giving up Christianity, he decided to attend one last church service to hear a guest pastor preach.

After the sermon, the pastor called on the people to pray for them. When he did so, rows of people fell to the ground under the power of the Holy Spirit.

“I thought: This is mass emotionalism, mass psychosis. This is crazy. Just because I prayed (about being a Christian) doesn’t mean I put my brain on ice.”

Paul refused to go upstairs to pray. However, he did end up going to the priest to thank him for the “really good news.”

“I thought it was my last conversation before I left God. The pastor looked at me and said, ‘Has anyone prayed for you?’

“Then he prayed, ‘I reject the spirit of intellectualism in you.’ I thought, ‘How did he know that?'”

The priest didn’t even touch him, but Paul fell to the ground.

“Something happened on the floor. It was like my heart was shattered because of the relationship I came from. But I felt like the puzzle of my heart was fitting together.

“Then I heard a voice say, ‘You will never love me the way I love you, but I will teach you how to love me.’

“I realized it was the voice of God. Then something was lifted out of me. It was a demonic spirit. When I stood up, my legs were like tauhu (Tofu) like I’m drunk.

“They prayed for the baptism of the Holy Spirit for me and the depression disappeared. It never came back.”

A sense of Christ

Paul suddenly knew who God was. He became “like a man possessed by the Holy Spirit.” For months he stayed in his room, reading the Bible from cover to cover and praying constantly. He also listened to sermons and read Christian books.

Paul (right) with his wife Dorcas (right, standing) and their sons, daughter-in-law and their beloved dog.

“I did this for six months. My parents were shocked. But I had a new revelation every day.

“I used what I studied in philosophy to read and understand the Bible to break things down and understand them. I began to have a revelation about who God is and who Jesus is.

“I told God, ‘I’m going to take your word as it is. You tell me what to do and I’m going to do it 100%. Because depression, addiction – you’ve set me free from that.'”

Since then, the man, who was proud of the power of his mind and his ability to think logically, said to God, “You have blessed me with a mind. Let me use it to Your glory.”

Over time, God led Paul to realize that it was more logical to accept miracles as coming from God than not.

“I have seen miracles. On a mission trip in Cambodia, there was a child who was born blind in one eye. They prayed for him and his eyes turned until his pupil came back and he could see. How do you explain that?

Paul preaches in Uganda. He financed a water filtration system in the capital city, which brought the gospel to the people there.

“We had this woman in church. She had breast cancer and the cancer had spread throughout her body, her nervous system and her blood. The MRI showed it. After we prayed for her, she was completely healthy. I have the MRI. It’s mind-blowing.

“If I had been an atheist, I would have said it was unclear and would have been perfectly fine with that from a philosophical point of view because we don’t know everything.

“Now I look back and think it was pretty stupid not to admit that it was a miracle from God.”

Paul in a rural church in Sri Lanka.

In 2011, Paul became pastor of New Life Community Church, a position he continues to hold today.

“Since my rebirth, I talk about God everywhere I go. People at work call me Saint Moses. I just laugh. I’ve decided: Whatever God wants me to do, I just do it.”

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