I came to truly realize that the “Holy Spirit” comprehends all things. As a former atheist from a Buddhist family, I began believing in God and scoured internet sites and Christian books for answers. With no one to explain God to me in detail, I had to seek out information myself. However, every book, pastor, and teacher said different things, leaving me questioning:

During my middle school years, when I longed to know God, a neighborhood friend led me to a rural church. By high school, I found church life enjoyable—Scripture was inspiring, singing hymns was uplifting, and serving felt like a natural duty for a believer. I attended Sunday services, evening services, Wednesday services, and Friday all-night prayers without fail, serving as a Sunday school teacher and spending nearly all day at church on Sundays. I was zealous in the youth group and even planned a short-term mission trip abroad, though it never happened. After marriage, my husband limited me to just Sunday services, and after our divorce, raising two children alone freed me from interference, allowing me to pursue the faith life I’d always wanted. Despite having little and working a modest job to support my kids, I rejoiced that God had made unworthy me His child.

For over ten years, my children and I lived painful days due to my wife’s mental illness, unable to lead a normal life. At night, sleep eluded us—tormented by sleep paralysis and nightmares. Closing my eyes brought terror, so we kept the lights on, but rest was impossible. Social phobia, fear, panic disorder, sleep paralysis—she couldn’t leave the house alone, living in isolation and seclusion, attempting suicide multiple times. We hid or discarded anything that could become a weapon. She took dozens of medications, trying every recommended remedy, but nothing worked. I took her to church for counseling and laying on of hands, but it was futile, leaving only deeper wounds and greater pain.

I attended a mission school run by the Kwangsung Church Foundation for high school. Over those three years, I spent more days attending revival meetings than studying. Dozing off during those sessions meant getting whacked on the back of the head countless times with a long stick. My grades in Bible class were always zero, and I was forced to join the choir, croaking out hymns with a voice that wouldn’t cooperate. I was ignorant of religion, not knowing who God or Christ was.

My family and I spent four years with a woman who claimed to be one of the two witnesses in the Bible. Through her, I came to believe in God. She taught a mishmash of Christianity, Buddhism, and Eastern philosophy—a veritable hodgepodge of doctrines. She sometimes spoke in tongues and taught various things, but all that remained for me was a lack of warmth, no inspiration, just memories of being brainwashed. It was in those days that I met the teacher.

What is truth to me? I want to express, even just a little, in words all that I have seen, heard, learned, and experienced so far. Since childhood, I vaguely attended church and believed in God, but there was always a lingering doubt in one corner of my heart: Does God really exist? Even while attending church, the Bible was merely a textbook unrelated to me, and instead of finding anything to learn or emulate in the pastors who claimed to testify about God, I saw them mistreating congregants for the sake of money. Eventually, I gave up, resigning myself to the belief that “God does not exist.”

Likewise, I’ve often come across people here who are struggling with different kinds of emotional and psychological pain. As I hear their stories, wounds, sins, and sources of shame, there are times when I honestly cannot see where God’s providence might be at work. Some stories are so complex, tangled, and burdened with pain that no clear answer seems possible. And yet, the teacher listens to each case and begins to untangle the knots of emotion and logic—from beginning to end—as if already knowing the entire path. Without hesitation or difficulty, clear answers are given, and time after time, I’m amazed by how every answer is precise, fair, and just—so much so that I cannot help but acknowledge, ‘There’s no way that could be wrong.’

Before encountering this truth through the author(From here on, I will refer to him as ‘teacher.’), my mother, younger sister, and I lived under the oppression of a church and pastor for ten years. They ruled over the congregation with fear through “Physical touch as part of a healing prayer(ㅡBut it was like abuse more than healing for prayer)” (physical discipline), wielding “spiritual” authority as a weapon to silence dissent and abuse believers according to their tastes.

10. God’s Power Over Demons

It was the New Year of 2010. The teacher was on the sixth day of fasting without a single sip of water. Among the members of the online community, there were three sisters. Though all shared the same last name, Yoon, they were from different regions. The teacher remarked that they seemed to be real sisters and said he would visit them after the fast ended. But on the sixth day of his fast, these sisters came to visit.