The
years 1977 to 1980 saw me and my newly married beloved wife, Rani, living and
working in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah and Kuching, Sarawak, two eastern States in the
tropical island of Borneo in Malaysia, located in South East Asia. It was my
job then as a pilot in those years to help people to get into the interior parts
of Sabah and Sarawak wherever small planes could access. The alternative was to
walk for days through jungle paths, connecting villages and by boats on mighty
jungle rivers connecting major towns.
In
1978, I had a very busy schedule of flights in Borneo, during which time I had
to stay overnights in tiny towns and villages, due to schedules or grounded by
bad weather. The places where I stayed were small country-inns euphemistically
called ‘Hotels,’ named grandly with names like ‘The Palace Hotel, ‘The
Garden Hotel’, etc. In reality these were not much more than old brick shop
houses converted to places to stay for weary travelers.
One
night in the little oil town of Miri, in Sarawak, I was in the ‘Garden
Hotel’ and as was my habit before bed to read something. Next to my bed,
lying dust covered on a wooden shelf was a dark red book. I picked it up, it was
the Bible. I had never read a Bible before, so merely out of curiosity; I
started to read from page 1, ‘In the beginning…..’I read until I fell
asleep, left the hotel the next morning and went my way.
Often, I returned to the same hotel time after time and so were other small
places where I stayed in and found Bibles there too. I had opportunity and
cause to continue reading the Bible from where I had left at my last stay. “Something”
in the Book held me riveted and spellbound and I began to think.
My
religious background was based on idolatry and animism, bound by powerful
superstitions and belief systems. I was shocked to hear the Bible describing
idolatry as an “An Abomination to God”. Those were very strong
words indeed, which tore at my very core, in my heart I rebelled at
these revelations. The Word of God even pleaded with Man, ‘Come now, let us
reason together, says the Lord’ in an effort to draw Himself to the
Man He had created……….
(Isa
1:18). Then the Redeemer of God was revealed in the Gospels and New Testament
and the reading of the Bible in its entirety was the continuity of thought
from beginning to the end. It was like a Novel on Life itself. So I went on
reading the Bible for about eighteen months at different times and places but
always in these same resting places in the Ulu (the backcountry).
However, it never occurred to me to take the Bible home.
Our
life then was pretty ordinary and predictable, and we were enjoying our newly
married life. My wife Rani, is my childhood sweetheart and I readily admit that
I love her very much indeed. She was expecting our first child in 1980 and soon
it was time for her to bring forth the child. The place was a new
private Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, so new that she, I and the night nurses were
the only people in the Hospital that night! The time was 0200 hrs or what we in
the business call ‘O- Dark –Thirty’, when one is usually dragged out to work!’.
Beholding my beloved wife in painful labour prior to the delivery, I began to
ponder on many things: Who is
Man
and why this great suffering and sorrow in childbearing……Our future life as a
family, etc, etc. Right at the start of my reading, a revelation in the Book of
Genesis had struck me on the origins of the sufferings of Man. I recalled Genesis
3:16 reveals that the “pain of Childbirth through which Man will be re-created
in the flesh”. Those Words came alive to me on that night of nights. So I
paced the corridors, looked out at a beautiful night sky from the balcony of
the hospital and began a silent conversation with God. “Dear Lord, here I am at
the threshold of a great event in my life and how will this change my life, is
this all true that the Bible has been saying? That all men have sinned and that
the plan for man’s redemption was through the revealed Christ? Are you real?
Will you really respond to me? What about my ‘abomination’ of idolatry. Is that
forgivable?
Next
morning a beautiful little baby girl was born and when I saw her coming out,
with one eye looking directly at me, I felt a great melting of indescribable
Joy and something else, as the
Bible
describes…. “night passes into day, with nary a word said”; so it was
that God revealed Himself to me that morning, in an instant, without a
word, answering all my questions in one moment of overpowering feeling of love
and joy in beholding the coming of this child, our Child.
When Rani was
settled in the ward, I went home declaring to God in my heart,
Lord,
let it be that henceforth, that I and my children, and my children’s children,
shall never again bow down before mute idols but……
“AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSEHOLD, WE WILL
CHOOSE TO SERVE THE LORD”.
(Josh 24.15)
In
the days that followed, in the following days I revealed my thoughts to Rani,
who was taken aback at my strange behaviour. I had never told her about reading
the Bible previously or my thoughts. God was gracious, The Lord himself spoke
to Rani, one night, three weeks later in an audible voice, saying “LISTEN TO
WHAT YOUR HUSBAND SAYS AND FOLLOW ME”, which voice she
immediately obeyed. She later described to me how amidst all those troubling
and doubtful moments, a voice of peace and authority comforted her with these
words from The Gospel of John 14.:27 : ‘My Peace I leave
unto you, not as the world giveth, but I give unto you. Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid’…..immortal words
uttered by the Lord Himself, when He walked this Earth. Those words
prompted in Rani a great Faith which she revealed to me and agreed that we
should serve the Lord together. We went across to a nearby church and met with
the young Pastor and told him our story and requested Baptism. The Pastor was
visibly amazed at our story and invited us to join his church. Rani and I were
baptized, while our little one, whom we named Rohini Rachel, was dedicated to
the Lord for his purposes.
Two
years later, the Lord added a single arrow to my quiver and we had a son, Isaac
Soorian. Both our children are believers and baptized in the Name of the Lord.
Shortly
after the above, I was posted back to Kuala Lumpur, the Airline’s main base of
operations and our hometown. We joined a local church, where our spiritual
training began in earnest. I began sharing joyfully my testimony with all. We
hosted home meetings, testimonies and attended many prayer rallies and heavily
engaged in Evangelical work, sometimes with our little ones in tow.
In
1983, I was invited by the “Gideons” to share my testimony of salvation in a
meeting in which I joined as a member. My beloved wife also joined the Gideons
as an Auxiliary or wife of a Gideon and together we have engaged in this
Ministry for past thirty years, distributing the Word of God for the benefit of
the unsaved.
One
day I was back in Kuching, the same state where I had first read the Bible, now
returned as a member of the Gideon Ministry, sharing my testimony at their
Pastor’s Banquet and encouraging them. My attention was drawn to an elderly man
sitting quietly at the back….weeping. At the end of the meeting, I went back to
meet him and he said his name was Eric Thien. Eric said He’d been a Gideon for
thirty years. I asked him why he was weeping.
This is what he
said:
“For
thirty years, I had been faithfully placing the Word of God the length and
breath of Sarawak, in the very towns you visited. I asked God today, wracked by
self doubts, if all my work had been in vain. I came to this meeting today,
expecting it to be the same, and I asked God to show me one person who had
received Him because of this work before I die and here you are today, in
answer to my doubts…….God has shown me my work has not been in vain…I am ready
to die”.
One week later
Eric, went home to the Lord!
For those who are
still looking for The Saviour:
Harden
not your heart, neither be doubtful, read for yourself what the Word of
God has to say to YOU, as The Psalmist asks God in Ps 8:4 “What IS
Man that that You are mindful of him” Over and over again the Bible reveals
the great Love that God has for His penultimate creation and the Salvation that
He has revealed in His in fallible Word. His Holy Spirit will speak to you and
perhaps you too may discover the same truths that I have and be able to glorify
the God who is as real as each passing day.
Capt K Sivaraman
President
Gideons Kuala
Lumpur South Camp
Malaysia
April 2015
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