KIM KI DONG THEOLOGY SERIES #4
CHRIST'S HEALING AND
HIS HOLY SIGNS IN MY LIFE B y K i D ong K im Translated from Korean by John K.I. Hur and Christine R.E Hong The English Translation Institute for Dr. Ki Dong Kim's Works Berea International Theological Seminary
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On the Occasion of the Second Impression...
I believe that there is no greater blessing from God than to have used such a petty servant that I am since I am neither righteous nor outstanding, but weak and deficient. I thank Him and grant my blessings to those who will read the present book and obtain the boldness of faith. This kind of power does not testify to a person's personal righteousness but to the very fact that God uses as His vessel an unrighteous being which strives to live on faith with a pure heart. Only God's righteousness works through Christ. What the Lord requires from us is faith. Without faith one cannot please God. Many cannot experience His great power through Christ because their premise is doubt. Doubt is to make oneself an enemy of God and deny His glory and the power that is fully entrusted in Jesus. Worldly fame or authority cannot receive God's power. I do not doubt that one can become a powerful servant of the Lord after he has forsaken with humility all his possessions, like Zaccheus. I have gone through so many persecutions and hardship because of Christ's healing and his holy sings but how can I deny the fact that God uses me and that Jesus called me as his servant? If a person of faith means to believe in the Lord and know his word, he will not be able to doubt that his word, which calls the dead as the living, works within us. I would rather be equipped with God's
power all my life and stand rash persecutions and sufferings and consider it a greater glory that to be powerless and live comfortably in this world. It is only by the grace of the Lord and the work of the Holy Spirit that I know the Lord and am so much blessed. I publish this book for one purpose: that everybody becomes part of his body, receives grace and is blessed. The Lord is humble. He had no form or comeliness, as a tender plant, a sheep silent before its shearers, but limitless power was manifested from him and I do not doubt that if we submit ourselves with humility like him, Christ's healing and his holy sings will appear in the same manner. I wish that this book be recommended to those who have not experienced yet the Living One because of their conceptual faith, so that they rely on the living God the Father, Jesus Christ and the works of the Holy Spirit. Who can stop the witnesses of Christ? What do death and threat mean to those who dedicated their lives to the Lord? O Lord! Your promises have not changed. You, the Redeemer who was crucified two thousand years ago, were raised from the dead and sat at the right side of God, manifest yourself as ever.
I will forsake my life as your witness because I know God, I know the Lord and have been guided by the Holy Spirit. Let the readers have better faith and let them experience God's love and power through greater power. Amen.
February, 1989
PREFACE
This book is my autobiography, my truth, my confession and testimony of faith. Abundant has been God's grace and love during my thirty years of Christian life. How would I dare spare my life for Him since He called me in spite of all my weaknesses and sins, and let me do His works? is not God living and is not He keeping His promises today just as He did to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob thousands of years ago? I cannot count the number of times I disobeyed Him even though I professed to believe Him. But hasn't He always kept open the doors of repentance and bestowed mercy so that we can enter anytime, anywhere? The Lord is my King and God is my good Father. There is no exaggeration in this book. On the contrary, everything is understated as far as feelings are concerned. Had I been a more skilled writer, readers could have been as greatly moved as I was, and shared my impressions. It is a pity that I cannot express one tenth of what I wish everyone to experience. I did not write for the purpose of showing myself off, but out of gratitude to the Lord. I want to tell my descendants through this book how much God blessed our family, and how He used me. It will remind them of the great grace of the Lord for the next thousand generations, and make them wish that there be no pagans among them. I sincerely hope that nobody doubts about the veracity of the
contents of this book. I am absolutely convinced that if one knows about the actuality of these signs and kneels down before the Lord, the same promised powers of grace will be manifested to him. In other words, this book is an instrument for those who want to have a better faith. The totality of the contents is my testimony. I am grateful for being able to live daily on faith. I also give thanks to my coworkers and to all of forty thousand family members of Sungrak Church. What I pray everyday is: "Let me heal ten million sick people in my lifetime" and "Give me wisdom, power and knowledge to my faith." My lifetime mission is to pastor, to preach the gospel, to expel unclean spirits and to heal the sick. This is what the Lord wants. He wants to give everybody his power, he wants to give even more to those who ask for it and he wants to give to the obedient ones. I believe in what I pray and I believe in their answers as well. I firmly intend to use to the full extent the power which God lavished in my soul and so, I am doing this work. I keep on praying for my coworkers to experience the same power and congratulate them for it if from their bodies the same signs and power are manifested. This book is divided in two parts. Part I is my autobiography,
my testimony, the record of my faith experiences. Part II is the chronological compilation of sermons preached during my healing crusades. I have no doubt that anyone who believes and acts exactly according to my book will experience the same power and signs. Some people in the stories asked for anonymity as Korean traditions require. Besides, due to my carelessness, I lost some pictures that could have been used to further confirm my experiences in Jesus Christ. I did not include either pictures of some of my past co-workers as they did not allow it. I dedicate this book to my wife who devoted her life to my pastoral ministry and to the saints of Sungrak Church. I close the foreword in the hope that every saint becomes powerful.
November 11, 1988 Ki Dong Kim
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I CHRIST'S GOSPEL AND EVANGELIZATION IN PRACTICE Church Initiation My Prayer Is Answered I Heal for the First Time On the Church Construction Site God Puts and End to Poultry Farming A Strange Light in the Sky Healing Power Is Manifested Again The Fasting Prayer on Mount Chorong A Dead Woman Is Raised A Young Girl with a Wen My First Revival Crusade The Dead Is Raised Again Unexpected Visit of an Angel
Mount Chungbang Crusade The Sign of the Handkerchief Forty Days of Prayer and Fasting A Seven-Year-Old Boy with Poliomyelitis The Faith of a Certain Cripple The Paralytic Who Jumped to His Feet The First Tent Crusade The Lump of Uterine Cancer A Hat-Wearing Leper On the High School Platform God's Power like a River The Psycho on the Train The Girl Fed with a Rubber Hose The Tent Made by My Wife The Seventeen-Hour-And-Ten-Minute Sermon
Prayer for a Larger Tent A Young Man with Tuberculosis The Broken Cane The Blind See The Deaf for Forty-two Years Hears Under the New Large Tent Faith Heals Diseases Lecturer Samson Soul Winning by Love The Second Tent Burns Are Healed by Demon Expulsion Multiple Skull Fractures The Power of Repentance and Its Signs The Problem Was Caused by the Mother God's Power Is the Same A Crippled Woman Brought by Her Daughter-in-Law
Answers to Prayer Church Plantation Pastoral Ministry Faith Confession
PART II CHRIST'S HEALING AND THE GOSPEL Chapter 1. The Promises of God Chapter 2. The Name of God Chapter 3. The Power of the Holy Spirit Chapter 4. Prayer Chapter 5. Faith Chapter 6. Deeds Chapter 7. The Power to Overcome the Devil Conclusion
PART
CHRIST'S GOSPEL AND
EVANGELIZATION IN PRACTICE
Church Initiation
I was nineteen and it was in mid-October. Ripened grains were swaying in gold waves in the fields and waiting for the croppers’ sickle. “Who am I, What am I?” I was torturing myself in trying to find an answer and was gazing helplessly at the clear blue sky. The bell tower of a church at a distance caught my attention and I drew my steps toward it. Though there was a Presbyterian church about a hundred meters from my house, people in the vicinity did not attend for her being plated by and composed mostly of the refugees who had fled from North Korean invaders. It was considered as foreign. That is why I walked one kilometer to a Methodist church. Even unbelievers used to say that if one day they ever go to church they would choose this one which had more than fifty years of history. This was probably one aspect of provincial traditionalism. The church bell of the Yesan Methodist Church sounded unusually joyful and clear to me and drew me there. The red paint of the fifty-year-old building had faded away and the tin roof was
CHRIST'S GOSPEL AND EVANGELIZATION IN PRACTICE ‧ 19
stained with rust. The iron bell hung in a not so high belfry and echoed throughout the entire building whenever it tolled. I had been very shy since childhood. Due probably to my family’s poverty, I was always disheartened and it was a real torture for me to appear in public. The day I went to church, I had arrived so early that it was still the hour of Sunday school for children so I just hung around the church aimlessly for a while. In front of the old church, there was a new stone church building under construction. The wall was about two meters high and the wooden window frames were heavily covered with dust. The construction was slow as it depended entirely on meager offerings. The yard was strewn here and there with sand and gravel. It was boring to wait for the worship to begin and I was afraid of the mockery of the passers-by of the village. So I started to sweep the churchyard. I wanted to ask God about myself if ever He was living, I had not made up my mind yet to attend regularly. Had God not spoken to me then, I wonder whether I would have known the value of my existence in this world, and still be alive today. At last, adults started to gather whereas children were leaving. I said hello to the pastor for the first time. As we were living in the same small town, we knew each other but we had never talked. I introduced myself formally. The decision to attend this church sprang up when I looked up uneasily at his merciful face with my dark sunburned face soaked in the bitterness of poverty. The pastor in charge of that old country church was Kyung Rin Oh. In him, I saw the true image of the pastor, and till now I revere him as the teacher of my life.
20 ‧ PART I
The pastor ushered me in and I sat in front of the pulpit. The first sermon I heard was about “Fishers of Men.” Since I knew nothing and had never heard a sermon in my life, I was naturally not very much impressed. I remember it just because it was the first message. It was the starting point of my being brought into the service of the Lord. The next day, I heard about a revival meeting being held in a neighboring Presbyterian church, so I went there and attended for the first time such a gathering. The evangelist was short, his face skinny and his brown suit made him look even shorter but the congregation seemed as if they were tied up by his dignified preaching attitude. His eyes sparkled and when he shouted the word, “Repent!” it seemed as if he knew all about my sins. His name was Hyung Tai Kim. They said that it was his first crusade in my hometown of Yesan after a sojourn on the Samkak Prayer Mountain. His message of repentance was so heart and mind piercing and sharp that even I, a new comer, decided to repent about something. At this very moment, he stopped preaching, pointed his finger to me and asked, “How long have you been attending the church?” “Yesterday was the first day and today is the second. This is my first crusade.” Then he said to the congregation, “God’s favor is upon this young man. It’s better to receive grace when you’re young.” When the whole congregation looked at me, my face and ears turned red with embarrassment and yet, I was quite touched. In fact, I did not know even then what was grace, I was just grateful for what the evangelist had said.
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From that evening on, I started to pray and repent till the next morning in order to receive grace even though I did not have the slightest idea of how to do it. I just kept on repeating and repeating that I was a sinner. I was anguished afterwards: the panicking realization of being a sinner tortured me. “I AM sinner!” It was the first time that I had such a terrifying experience. There was no way to stop the overwhelming sense of guiltiness about things that before, I would have felt indifferent or just a little ashamed of. After the second night spent also in prayer, I could not but call on the evangelist, tell him about my state and ask for help. He then, prayed for about a minute and said, “Young man, the Lord forgave you of all sins. Do not worry any more but rejoice!” No sooner had I heard him saying that my heart overflowed with joy and gratitude! I said, “Thank you!” and I knelt down in front of the pulpit and said over and over. “Lord, I thank you!” I burst forth. Then, all of a sudden a strange thing happened to my mouth. My tongue seemed to twist, and sounds that I did not understand flowed out in rapid succession. I prayed without hesitation. “Lord, if this comes from you, I don’t care if my chin falls off, keep it moving all day long!” My mind was sane and clear but my whole body was as if on fire, and the noises from my mouth gradually changed into a kind of articulate language. Eight hours must have passed in this state when a vision appeared: Angels were going up and down the pulpit, mountains and fields appeared afterwards, ripened grain fields were seen and then again, angels moving. At that moment, I opened my eyes because I found all this strange, but
22 ‧ PART I
whether my eyes were closed or open it was the same. My prayer lasted nine hours in all that day. In the evening, the evangelist began his sermon by saying, “This young man spoke in tongues a little while ago. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will speak in tongues like him. Then he quoted several versed in the Scriptures. I was overwhelmed with infinite joy and gratitude as if my whole life was changed. “To give such a great grace to the poor rustic that I am…” It was also a tremendous shock for me to learn that the grace I experienced was recorded in the Bible. So as soon as the crusade ended, I asked an elder to lend me his Bible for a week. “If you read the Bible, start from Genesis.” I followed his advice and the next week I read again all the way through in one week with a bible from another person, and so forth. In one year, I read forty-two times so that when I was a layman I had read seventy-five times in all. I did not miss a single dawn prayer meeting at the Methodist church and I cleaned the church building daily. On my way home, I used to stop by a Presbyterian church to pray again. I often had visions, but I did not particularly try to interpret them.
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