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1. Thoughts After Reading Experiences of Truth
Recalling the moment I first met the teacher and the astonishment and emotion I felt hearing the lectures on truth, I’m filled with gratitude for the grace that rescued me from the deprivation and chaos of my past days when I didn’t know the truth.
God is a God of true love who lifts up the weak, the lacking, and the insignificant of this world, fulfilling the words that the poor and the mourning are blessed.
Though we receive the same nourishment of truth from the same root, I feel how the size, taste, and quality of the fruit differ depending on the condition of the branches that receive it.
For me, who is led by pride, self-righteousness, and judgment, unable to take even a step away from the habits of sin, I feel an even greater need for the gift of God’s power.
The reason I haven’t received grace is that I rely on judgment, self-righteousness, zeal, and thoughts, lacking longing and prayer for grace.
I notice that the style and content of my writing remain unchanged from past to present—too stiff, lacking softness and detail.
As someone called first to God’s truth, I felt I should record and testify to the process of truth through the teacher in greater detail.
2. Faith Life Before Meeting the Teacher of Truth
In my third year of middle school, I was led to a Full Gospel church with about 100 members by a neighborhood friend. I actively participated in Holy Spirit revivals, all-night prayers, and followed others to prayer retreats, embracing a mystical faith. In high school, I attended a traditional Presbyterian church with a 100-year history and 500 members, pioneered by a missionary my mother attended, until I got married. There, I served as vice president of the high school group, president of the college group, Sunday school teacher, and choir member, earning recognition as a faithful young man. However, after three years of military service, I returned to find the pastor I admired and followed had been pushed out by senior elders to another region, and the church had split into three due to internal conflicts among the leaders. Disappointed and detached from the church I had poured my passion into, I moved to a church that grew to 10,000 members after getting married.
For 15 years, I served there as a Sunday school teacher, choir member, small group leader, worship leader, and in various committees—family ministry, missions, pastoral care—eventually becoming a deacon. Church work took precedence over my job; Sundays were spent entirely at church, and weekdays were filled with events and ministries, leaving no day without church involvement. I was a member the senior pastor was proud of, recognized by the congregation. I believed this was the path to salvation, the way to receive great heavenly rewards, and the way to live according to God’s will. Yet, despite following Christian teachings to the best of my ability for years, I saw that the congregation lacked true joy, peace, and gratitude. Outwardly holy, they were no different from the world—sinning, fighting, slandering—while hypocrisy, humanism, and corruption grew worse within the church. I, too, bore no transformed fruit of goodness, love, or gratitude as the Bible describes. Church life became formal, religious activities exhausted me, and my heart grew thirsty. Eventually, I began to question Christian teachings. While searching online, I found a website called “The Way to Heaven and Salvation,” where I realized the falsehood of Christian doctrine and came to meet the teacher of truth.
3. Experiences of God’s Work
I was an exemplary student, earned a master’s degree, and worked as a deputy manager at a financial institution and a director at a consulting firm—an elite path by some standards. Living according to God’s will was my highest value. Discovering that Christianity and worldly teachings were false and that there was a true prophet sent by God, I began living with the teacher and now recount some of the ways I’ve experienced God’s work.
1) A Heart Given by God
Having only worked two office jobs in my life, I found myself in the truth community doing dozens of new tasks—farming, livestock management, construction, civil engineering, restaurant work, factory work, delivery—gaining skills and abilities from technical to difficult, lowly, and labor-intensive jobs. Through this, I experienced not just with my head but with my body and heart the toil, sweat, and circumstances of people in various occupations. All of God’s people, including the prophets of the Bible, aren’t raised in wealth, comfort, or a greenhouse like delicate flowers. They grow through hardship and trials to understand the tears of the poor, the pain of the hungry, and to embrace struggling sheep. The Bible’s portrayal of Christ growing up in a wealthy, comfortable home is a corruption; His being forsaken, bearing suffering, and enduring hardship doesn’t refer only to His death on the cross but to His entire life. Meeting the teacher of truth makes this abundantly clear.
In early 2011, during a winter when we were raising thousands of chickens, I woke up early one morning to clean the chicks’ feed trays and water containers by the creek next to the house, wearing boots. The cold water and the chick droppings didn’t feel bothersome or dirty; instead, a warmth filled my heart, and tears of gratitude welled up. My lips moved as if in prayer: “What am I that You teach me like this?” It wasn’t complaint but gratitude rising—a surprise to me, a heart not my own but given by God. Another instance occurred in the fall of 2015 while making a clay oven floor. I had unevenly cut basalt slabs we’d bought from Nonsan with a grinder, and the teacher rebuked me sharply. I thought, “I’ve only worked in an office; I’m not skilled with a grinder—why scold me this much?” Feeling heavy-hearted, I climbed a nearby ridge and looked down at the forest below. Suddenly, “What am I that You teach me like this?” came with tears and a sense of abundance. I should have been discouraged, but God’s grace poured in, lightening my heart, revealing His providence, and turning it into an experience of overflowing gratitude.
2) God’s Miracles and Protection
a. Seeing the Seraphim of Heaven
“Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.” (Isaiah 6:6)
The seraphim are massive flying vessels ridden by God’s angels to oversee the affairs of the world, unseen by just anyone.
In 2010, the first year living with the teacher and community members in Hancheon-myeon, Hwasun-gun, Jeollanam-do, on October 27 (Wednesday), after Inae returned from running away to Gunpo, she and I went for a walking prayer around 10 p.m. after dinner, along the mountain path at the village’s edge—a route we often took at that time. That night, the sky was pitch black with thick clouds. I first noticed two enormous headlight-like beams moving back and forth, up and down in the sky. I told Inae to look behind us, and she, having seen a seraph five months earlier, exclaimed in surprise, “It’s a seraph!” Realizing it was the seraph the teacher had described, we stared in awe and wonder. About 500 meters above, two large, circular, white fluorescent lights zigzagged left and right, as if performing acrobatics, moving from one end of the sky to the other. Tears streamed down my face, and a prayer rose in my heart: “How can You show this glory to a sinner like me?” While watching the seraph, the surroundings and circumstances felt as if time had stopped—no sound, no movement.
b. Double-Cab Truck Sliding Accident
On December 4, 2017 (Monday), around 6:30 a.m., while carefully driving down a steep farm road in Danyang-gun to head to a construction job, the double-cab truck slipped on thin ice near a bridge where the road curved right. As the vehicle slid toward the stream below, I instinctively prayed, “Lord, help me!” Instead of sliding straight, it miraculously veered diagonally to the right, hitting a utility pole just past the bridge with the passenger-side front. The truck spun clockwise, and as the left rear wheel dropped toward the stream, a short, solid “thud” sounded, stopping the vehicle safely without further rotation. Relieved beyond measure, I got out to check the rear wheel and found no object that could have caused the “thud” to halt it—just bare ground. This was a narrow farm road I’d traveled countless times, with no guardrails and barely wide enough for one vehicle. God’s miraculous protection guided the truck to slide safely and stopped it, saving me. To never forget, I took photos with my phone of the dented front of the truck and the utility pole it struck.
c. Greenhouse Demolition Fire Crisis
On March 6, 2019 (Wednesday), there was a greenhouse about 100 pyeong (approximately 330 square meters) in size along the entrance road to our Danyang community that had collapsed due to strong winds in the past and was left abandoned. We decided to demolish it, so the owner of a scrap metal business in Danyang (Sobaeksan Resources) came to help. He used an oxyacetylene torch to cut the metal pipes while I cleared them away, working together. That morning, snow fell on our community—something not forecasted in the national weather report. I was worried that the scrap dealer’s crane, scheduled to arrive in the morning, might not make it up the road. The scrap dealer, too, was surprised, saying that there was no snow on the way from Danyang, but only our community had snow, which he found strange. Normally, March is a dry month prone to wildfires due to drought, and our community is located 400 meters up a mountainside. The area around the greenhouse was covered with dry grass and turf. While working with the torch, sparks caught on the grass and areas we’d already passed, igniting small fires. We hadn’t prepared any firefighting water, and though we tried stomping them out in a panic, smoke kept rising, and the flames wouldn’t die down easily. It was an urgent situation where we couldn’t even leave to fetch water. Fortunately, the snow that fell that morning delayed the spread of the fire. I called Inae, who was at the lodging, and asked her to bring a water hose. With it, we managed to gradually extinguish the fire.
Even after dousing it with water, the embers didn’t die easily, and smoke persisted, so we had to watch it for about an hour to feel reassured. The scrap dealer, who had rushed around with me to put out the fire, said with relief, “We almost made the 9 o’clock news with a wildfire today,” and I felt the same way. Tears of gratitude and awe welled up for God’s protection, which brought snow to our community alone that morning, unpredicted by any national forecast. To bear witness to this as one of God’s miracles, I saved a screenshot of that day’s weather forecast as evidence.
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