By Rev. John Kao

About 1947, I attended a secondary school in Shanghai, China, that was infiltrated with Communistic, atheistic and materialistic ideas. The following year, when I returned home to Kiangsi, I learned that my mother had become a Christian through the preaching of a British missionary. She wanted me to read the Bible, to pray and to attend church with her.

I said, “Mother, these are things that Christians do. I am not a Christian.”

Mother said, “You can at least try; otherwise, how will you know that you don’t want to be a Christian?”

As a good Chinese boy should, I tried to do all these things just to please her, but I believed that the Bible was filled with myths and funny stories.

When I heard the preacher challenging loudly, “You are a sinner, you must repent and receive Jesus as you Savior!” I argued in my heart, “No! If I am a sinner, I should be in jail. I am a good boy at home and in school. I have no sin and I will have nothing to do with Jesus.” I was in this state of mind for nearly two years.

In 1949 I followed my parents from Mainland China to Hong Kong to escape the Communists. My mother took us to Kowloon City Baptist Church.

On the second day of Chinese New Year, at the Youth Spring Retreat, the pastor preached on 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” I was convicted of my sinfulness, and I raised my hand to accept Jesus Christ to be my Savior. After that, everything started to change.

I prayed, and I realized that my heavenly Father listened to my prayers. I read the Bible, and I believed that it was the Word of God, even though I did not understand many things. I had an appetite for God’s Word.

When I saw other Christians carrying their Bibles, I felt a brotherly love toward them. I enjoyed the fellowship of other brothers and sisters in church. I started to talk to unbelievers about Jesus even though from time to time I experienced ridicule. I had pity on them and prayed for them. From all these changes in my life I realized that I had become a child of God.

A Christian counselor suggested that I carefully read the First Epistle of John. I discovered many verses that verified the changes in my life, and I found these comforting and assuring words: “This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”