MY FIRST BIBLE!

MY FIRST BIBLE

I come from a family with Chinese folk religion. Every year during Ching Ming Festival (Chinese All Souls Day), my whole family would follow my father to worship the altars of my ancestors and the altar of a god. But my mother never joined us in this worship. She said she was a Christian. She could help my father to prepare the things for worship but she could not worship. She held to this principle.

Since I was young, I realized my mother’s thinking was different from the other family members. Sometimes she would talk about her belief in God. One day, a villager who returned from overseas, gave my mother a blue colored Gideons New Testament.

When I was transferred as a student to Bau Secondary School, on the night before my departure from my home, my mother gave me that copy of Gideons New Testament. She told me to take it and to read it. I happily took the book. I loved to read and I thought I would read it like a novel.  Whenever I was free, I would read the New Testament. I gained an elementary knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ. I liked particularly to read about the miracles of Jesus, which I thought were amazing indeed.

That New Testament gave me some impressions of Christianity. However, since young, I had always considered Christianity as a western religion. The Chinese should believe in their Chinese gods.  At one time, after watching the Jesus film produced by the Campus Crusade, I was very touched and I decided to believe in God.

After that, I read the Gideon New Testament diligently with the hope of understanding more about Jesus Christ. That New Testament had built the foundation of my faith in Jesus. Finally, in 1985, I was baptized.

Under the encouragement of a pastor, I bought a full Bible because I wanted to read the Bible starting from the first book of Genesis. That copy of Gideon New Testament was put aside. Because of frequent shifting of home, I do not know where that book is now.

In 2007, when a Gideon member Brother Richard Wong shared about the Gideons ministry in my church, I suddenly remembered my first Bible was a Gideons New Testament.  Someone says, “The best way of evangelism is to distribute Bible.” I want to encourage the Gideon members to continue their work of distribution and placement of bibles. Your labor in the Lord will not be in vain.

Rev. Mok Ing Huat

(Ching Daw Methodist Church, Kuching)