I came to Los Angeles to study theology in the United States. In the 1980s, it was a very large church, probably with over 1,000 members at the time. The pastor was great, and God had dramatically called him to become a pastor, and his gifts were great. Then people flocked to him. At that time, I received spiritual training from the pastor of that church. My first impression when I went to that church was that it was strange, scary, and fearful, but I gradually became accustomed to the atmosphere.
After that, I served in Detroit, Michigan and El Paso, Texas, and after 15 years, I returned to that church and worked as an associate pastor. I started working in the first week of October 1998. It was December 20 of that year. A minister called me because he was looking for me, and all the ministers were gathered in a conference room. When I went in, the atmosphere was not good. As soon as I entered, the pastor told me to quit my ministry and leave. He was going to fire me. He told me to pack up my belongings and leave immediately. So I said I needed to know why I had to leave. The reason was that my wife had been doing business with the church members.
At that time, we received $1,000 in ministry fees from the church. The rent for the apartment was $1,000-$1,500. My wife was sick and couldn’t work, and the pastor’s wife couldn’t go anywhere to work, so one of the deacons at that church was doing multi-level marketing and she said she would help us and made my wife do it. My wife had only been at that church for a month or two and didn’t know any of the church members. Multi-level marketing requires meeting people and getting to know them, but it was vague. Another deacon who ran a store said she would help my wife, so she visited her store, and the pastor heard about it. That’s why people stick to wealthy deacons. So I said that kicking me out for that reason was not a reason for my dismissal, but I was kicked out.
Now, Christmas was in 5 days, and I was fired, so I had no idea what was going to happen. I spent Christmas at home in a gloomy mood, and on December 26th, I called my pastor and asked to meet him at a nearby McDonald’s restaurant, so I left.
Still, I served there for 15 years. While I was serving there, it was hell. I cried out every morning and every evening. Since I couldn’t say in Korean, “God, I want to die, take me, I don’t want to live,” I cried out in tongues. At that time, God said, “You’re saying you want to die, so you’re not dead enough. Die more.”
Then, people began to think of me as someone who prayed diligently. The pastor even stopped me from visiting the businesses and homes of the church members. I’m the type of person who works hard at everything, but God didn’t want me to do that. Before I served at that church, when I was in El Paso, I called two pastors of large churches and asked them to let me serve at their churches, but they refused. They are people I know well. If I had gone to that church, I would have worked hard and been recognized for my wisdom, but I would not have been able to do the work that God had called me to do. God needed an environment for me to write a book.
Whenever I preached at the church I served, I talked about the Book of Revelation. When I prepared the contents of the Book of Revelation, I gained deeper understanding, and when I preached, I gained deeper understanding. I was happy to study and preach the Book of Revelation. However, I never dreamed that I would publish a book. However, God was creating an environment for me to publish a book on the Book of Revelation. After publishing the book, I realized that God had called me to preach the end times. To publish the book I prepared for 30 years.
The senior pastor told the administrative pastor not for me to preach about the Book of Revelation. So I told the administrative pastor to tell the senior pastor that if he had such thoughts about my sermons, he should not let me preach. From then on, I couldn’t even preach. So I couldn’t go out and just stayed in my room in the church. At that time, my job was to develop a misionary teaching materials called the International Curriculum I was a job to dub the lectures of world-famous pastors into English, make videos, and make teaching materials. It was developed in 100 languages. The lectures given in English were translated into Spanish. Using this as the original, video tapes were made in Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. instead of Spanish. I have to copy a volume of more than 150 video tapes in each language.
Our church mainly had to deal with Korean, Russian, and Spanish. In order to organize the curriculum material in these languages, I needed to know a little about the structure of Russian and Spanish, so I bought books and studied Spanish and Russian. As I began to understand the languages a little, things progressed. After doing all this, I still had time left, so I started reading books to relieve stress. I read books on politics, economics, science, climate, history, etc., whatever I could find. I opened 5 books at once and when I got bored reading them, I read different books from other fields and became absorbed in a new taste, so I ended up reading about 1,000 books over a period of 10 years.
In El Paso, I was trained in the Bible, prayer, and fasting, and in Los Angeles, I was trained in knowledge. Since the Book of Revelation is a record of civilization at the end of time, doesn’t civilization encompass everything? So I read books to relieve stress, and God pushed me to write the Book of Revelation. Then, I thought of writing a book by collecting the sermons I preached while serving in El Paso and the things I prepared in Los Angeles.
I am grateful for the time I served in the Los Angeles church. I am also grateful to that pastor. Everything is God’s grace, God’s plan, and God’s providence. He made me stressed so I could read books, and he gave me enough time to read books.
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