22. The True Story of Former Gangster Young-moon Park

Young-moon Park was a gangster who lived a rough life in his youth, associating with bad friends.

When his wife left him due to family discord, he was consumed with a desire for revenge and made a terrifying plan to kill his entire family. But in the midst of this, he had an amazing experience and dramatically converted.

April 3, 1986 was a day that changed my entire life.

In 1985, after causing a motorcycle accident while drunk and being released from jail, my wife demanded a divorce. I made a thorough plan to kill 8 people - my wife, her family members who encouraged the divorce, and even young children. Before carrying out this plan, I went to visit my mother in Gwangju one last time and reserved a 10:40 pm train ticket to Seoul. It was the night of April 3, 1986.

But just 40 minutes before boarding the train to Seoul, I heard a loud, resounding voice that I had never heard before. It was an extremely loud and resounding voice that felt like it would burst my eardrums.

"Hey you! Hey you!"

Finding it so strange, I went outside the front gate to look, but no one was there. Puzzled, I went back inside, held the cigarette I was about to smoke, and was just about to strike a match when suddenly the room lit up. Startled, I instinctively looked towards the door and cried out in amazement.

A vivid rainbow light of seven colors cascaded down (Revelation 4:3) and from above, something descended through the light. Looking closely, it was a person dressed in white (Revelation 1:13). Due to the bright light, I couldn't see the face clearly, but it was definitely in the form of a human like us. Soon, a square-shaped chariot followed behind the person in white.

There were three chairs in the chariot. The middle one was empty and two people in white sat on either side. If I had been a believer in Jesus, I surely would have felt greatly moved, but I was completely ignorant in that regard and didn't know what to do.

But one strange thing was that I could feel the burning hatred completely disappear. I woke up my mother who was sleeping next to me, but she couldn't see this scene. She told me to stop talking nonsense and went back to sleep.

When I looked at the chariot again, I was utterly shocked. Wasn't there a person who looked exactly like me sitting in the empty middle seat? I clearly checked by touching my body, but it was like looking in a mirror. As soon as I sat in that chariot, it departed and from that moment, I vividly saw heaven and hell.

Passing along a path of dazzling golden light, smelling a fragrance of flowers that cannot be experienced in this world, I passed through a flower garden and came to a place with people like me. There I could see people from all over the world (Revelation 7:9).

And I could clearly see the face of my uncle who had believed in Jesus and passed away from illness.

But there was no trace of illness and my uncle's appearance was exactly as I remembered him when I was in 3rd or 4th grade - a fresh, youthful face and physique in his 30s.

That face shone only with the peace and joy of having cast off all the worries and anxieties of this world (Revelation 21:4). Listening to the faint sound of music playing continuously, the golden chariot ran for days and passed by a place with shining golden houses. The angels beside me who had not answered any of my questions finally spoke clearly when we reached this place, "This is heaven."

Those houses stretched out as far as I could see, too numerous to count. What was common about those golden houses, so bright they hurt the eyes and unlike anything seen in this world, was that they all looked newly built and spotless, as if equipped and waiting for their owners to move in at any moment (John 14:2-3).

Unlike where my uncle was, not a single person could be seen here. I asked about this, but again, I received no answer. Suddenly, the chariot was entering a place as dark as night. Only the area illuminated by a light the size of a full moon, in the shape of the person in white leading the chariot, was bright. The sound of music that had been playing also ceased.

Before I knew it, fear crept into my heart. Terrified, I thought, 'After showing me so many beautiful things that cannot be seen in this world, will they now kill me?'

Soon, the light in the shape of a person was shining on someone. There, I saw my father who had passed away 6 years prior.

When he was alive, my father was a Confucian scholar, a pillar of the family who served as an official at the Confucian academy and took charge of family affairs. When he was alive, he would shout in disapproval at the mere mention of the word 'Jesus.' When that father passed away, his entire body was swollen from illness and the coffin had to be made twice as large. It was miserable. But the appearance of my father I saw here was exactly that miserable state right before he died, suffering in agony.

So many blue vipers with triangular heads that his ankles could not be seen were crawling all over my father's body, biting, tearing, and clawing, turning his entire body bloody. I wailed and cried out for my father, but he could not hear my desperate cries at all.

The second place I went to had countless people running in droves on top of a huge metal grate, like a round hearth, trying to avoid the fiercely burning flames. In a word, it was a scene of utter chaos (Revelation 20:15). Here, I saw another familiar person. It was my uncle who had lived like a miser, believing that money was the answer to everything. My uncle also could not hear my voice.

The third place the light shone upon was where I saw a friend who had died in a traffic accident. His whole body was wrapped in three hideous-looking serpents, squeezing so tightly that his face was pale blue. This friend was also someone who, like me, loved alcohol and ultimately lost his life because of it.

The fourth place illuminated by the light was where I could see people sunken waist-deep in a deep swamp or quagmire. There, small, pitch-black beasts were striking, tearing, and clawing from the front, back, and sides, turning them bloody. Among the many people suffering, unable to escape and only able to move their bodies side to side to avoid the beasts, I recognized two faces - a relative and a person from my hometown.

At the time I didn't know, but I later found out that the relative attended church, but only after hearing that going to church would cure illnesses. Without assurance of salvation, he merely went in and out of church. Putting one foot inside the church and the other in the world, going half-heartedly, wastes time and ultimately leads to squandering one's life (Matthew 7:21).

The hell I saw, my father in hell and my uncle in heaven, was a place so terrible it defied imagination. In that dark and miserable place, I clearly saw my father, uncle, friend, relative, and people from my hometown, and all I could do was wail at the sight of them.

I, who thought that life simply ended after living in this world and dying, had come face to face with the truth. After seeing hell, the first place the chariot stopped was a place called the "judgment seat" (Revelation 20:13). Here, I saw a "memoir" that recorded the sins I had committed from birth with my eyes, mouth, hands and feet, and even in my heart.

The types of sins I had committed while living in the world amounted to a staggering 132, and each type was subdivided into innumerable varieties. Among them, I saw that the sin of making mistakes while drunk had the most varieties branching out beneath it (1 Corinthians 6:10, Romans 13:13).

I also learned that there were two things that are not sins in worldly life but are considered sins here. One was not believing in Jesus, and the second was cursing, despising, neglecting, and persecuting those who believe in Jesus.

Not attending church, tearing up the Bible and hymnals and burning them, spouting curses at friends who were evangelizing, despising them, and even kicking and slapping them - the sins of those past days were accurately recorded down to the time and date. Here, I asked a question I had been curious about the whole time.

"Why show this place to someone like my brother who would go through fire and water for the sake of believing in Jesus? Why show this place to a sinner like me who detests Jesus and has committed all kinds of sins in the world?" The angel beside me answered, "People like your brother do not need to come to a place like this. People like you need to see it directly with your own eyes, so that you will believe that heaven and hell exist and be able to tell people in the world."

That's right. It was an answer consistent with the Bible verse that says those who believe without seeing are more blessed, like my brother (John 20:29).

Soon the chariot started again, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a loud, resounding voice came to my ears again, unconditionally asking, "Will you believe?" This was the very voice I had heard in the room 40 minutes before I was going to go up to Seoul to kill eight family members.

At that time, although I had never called on God the Father before, the answer "Lord! I believe!" came out spontaneously and I accepted the Lord. Then He spoke again, saying, "Now when you go out into the world, testify to the people of the world exactly as you saw it, that heaven and hell exist, without adding or subtracting anything."

And the last words I heard as we parted were "You will see!"

It felt like I had been on a long journey for days, but when I woke up with a start, trembling, it was 11:10 pm. This had all taken place in a mere 70 minutes. There was no concept of numbers or time there (2 Peter 3:8).

When I came to my senses, my mother was in the corner of the room, trembling and looking at me with a very tense expression. According to my mother, I had been muttering incomprehensible words to myself for over an hour and didn't respond no matter how much she shook me.

Right there, I told my mother in detail everything I had seen.

My mother, who used to shout in disapproval like my father at the mere mention of the word 'Jesus,' shed tears upon hearing about her husband's miserable state.

In this way, my mother and I became companions in Jesus, receiving baptism together and even becoming deacons on the same day. Now, she is so passionate about attending church and evangelizing that she is no less fervent than I am.

From this time on, my life changed 180 degrees. No longer "Believe in my fists," but "Believe only in the Lord Jesus" naturally flowed from my lips. I have been fulfilling my mission as an evangelist to this day.

Even now, the Lord's final command "You will see!" echoing in my ears has brought me this far.

After his conversion, Young-moon Park served diligently as an elder, testifying to heaven and hell, until he passed away in June 2009. Young-moon Park's older brother mentioned in the testimony is Pastor Young-woo Park, who currently serves as the senior pastor of Gwangju Antioch Church.