Christian minister's experience

People St. Augustine has met in the Spiritual World

Another Christian minister's experience

God's Everlasting Love

God transcends time and space, and can choose whether to appear to us or not. This means that although God's love for us is infinite and eternal, there can be circumstances in which God cannot be present. How sad this is!

Here, I would like to introduce another Christian minister's experience of God. He lived a long life of dissipation before becoming a minister on earth. Until his youth, he had no interest in God's existence or in matters of faith, and had no idea about the meaning of life. After he passed his youth, however, he was captured by the thought that God might really exist, and this was because he saw a youth who had been much more spoiled than he embrace a new and sincere life through God's love.

He clearly witnessed that this previously wicked youth had changed his life after meeting God and was now living sincerely for the sake of God, which deeply moved him. So he asked the youth, 'What is life for the sake of God, and how did you meet God?" and his answer was very simple: "I realized God's love, but I cannot show or explain to you the God whom I have met. I am living in full confidence of God's love." The minister however, confessed that even after witnessing the proof of this youth's life, he still lived carelessly for a long time without understanding faith in God or the meaning of life, and then told me the following story of how he experienced God's love.

One morning, he woke up to dazzling sunlight, and a ray of the sun was shining on him. In this light, he could hear something like God's voice, saying, "Your eyes may be dazzled, but open your eyes and see what that light is." When he opened his eyes, there was no sunlight to be seen, and he could see only the light of Jesus' cross shining from outside the window. He followed the light of the cross to a place, where he found a pitiful old man left alone in a shabby house.

After this, the light of the cross disappeared, and as he recovered his senses, he realized that the old man was none other than his father, whom he dearly loved. Although his father was living alone so nearby, he had been living a dissipated life without caring about his father. He felt tremendous regret. As he looked at the cross that had disappeared, tears of repentance and flames of the Holy Spirit arose from the depths of his heart. Repenting for having lived shamefully while neglecting his suffering father, he called out for the Lord at the top of his voice and prayed God to open the way in which he could proceed. At this moment, he heard God's voice saying, "God's love is eternal. The beginning is love, and so is the end. So you love your brothers and sisters and your neighbors."

After this time, his view of life completely changed. Since there was no one around him to take care of him or help him, however, he relied entirely on prayer. He determined to love his own father first, who was so frail that he could not even stand up without someone's help.

Nevertheless, his father said to him, "You leave my side and love and save humankind." At this time, the love of his father and of God made him feel a pain that seemed strong enough to melt heaven and earth. He then went to a friend of his and begged for help, and the friend led him to the church and had him listen to God's word. Thereafter, he made a determination to walk the path of a minister for the sake of God and the development of the church. and devoted himself to loving humanity with God's word. Although God is love from beginning to end, we have almost no sense of His infinite love, and this is why God's love and human life are separated. Whether on earth or in the spiritual world, God's love is unfathomable, infinite, and eternal, and although in many cases God's love may not clearly appear to us, He is still loving us continuously. It is only that we human beings have a wrong idea about His love.

God waited for him and came to him even when he was living a wayward life, and here in the spiritual world, God loved him without asking him about his past sins. God's love is the foundation of eternal happiness, and the only problem is that we human beings are too dull to realize this. This was his conclusion.

May 3, 2000