The Children Are No More

“And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord God, “That I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight; I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist, and baldness on every head; I will make it like mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.

Amos 8:9-10

In the past, the Sunday school division at The City Of Praise Rawang was once a thriving place with kids and toddlers from all over town, coming together to sing songs and learn about God through short storytelling. It was headed by David Lee’s wife, Grace Tsen.

A proud mother of several kids and an auntie to over a dozen others, Grace was a trained Sunday school teacher, having elementary skills in teaching children. She raised several individuals from the church to take on the role of leading the kids in Sunday school. It all went well and was indeed a great going. More and more children came on Sundays and the church premises exploded with the noise and kids running everywhere when Sunday school was in session. To be able to see so many joyful young faces, busy with their own merrymaking, was indeed a glorious sight. So many were seen darting around and having fun yelling at each other, it was like God’s school that is match-made in heaven. It became like the place where Christ would probably gather the minors and say to the rest, let them come to me.

It all went well until my own daughter was selected by Grace herself to take on the role of leadership. And our nightmare began. Before my daughter was chosen, Grace already had several youth leaders in the church, identified as having potential to take over the management of its Sunday school services. One such person is a fine young lady by the name of Sherly Baccalio, whom by the age of 18, was already leading the youth group and occasionally helping out in the church, including its Sunday school services. She was a very responsible individual who loves the Lord and believed in serving God in the church.

Then all hell broke loose after Sherly left the church and never came back. That was the point Grace decided that she desperately needed a replacement. So my daughter became one of her targets. Initially, I never suspected anything amiss. Each Sunday, my daughter came home and told me what she had been doing in church. Well, she said she was holding the Bible and teaching young kids in Sunday school. Looks pretty normal, isn’t it? Yeah, wait till you read on.

So every Sunday I asked my daughter how was her day in church and what she did there. And every week, her answers to me were the same; she took on the role of a full-fledged Sunday school teacher in charge of a school of kids under her. That was her role in church. The shocking part is this; when this happened, my daughter then was barely a 12-year-old kid. And as parents, neither my wife nor myself were consulted or gave anyone in the church permission to appoint my daughter as one of their Sunday school teachers. At home, I have not even completed the four gospels of the New Testament with my daughter, but she comes home every week, telling me she’s already a Sunday school teacher and am well on her way teaching other kids. Do you see now what is wrong?

I questioned my daughter further, did auntie Grace taught her how to lead the kids in Sunday school. My daughter replied and said no. She was simply instructed to take the Bible and sometimes other materials were given to her, and she was told to teach on her own. It was from this point forward, I knew I had to pull the plug and thereafter, I stopped my kids from going to church altogether. While parents sent their children and left them under the care of two supposedly caring pastors, in hope that the kids will benefit and learn about God, instead they were made used to drive others in the group and to keep the business disguised as a church, running. My twelve-year-old kid was made to become a leader to teach other younger ones about the Bible that she herself have yet to know anything about. If by now this does not raise any red flag to you, it surely does to me.

And it was also from this point forward, I knew the truth why Sherly left City Of Praise Rawang. The incident turned comical when Grace and her husband started blaming Sherly’s boyfriend, a guy who came from a different religious background, for the reason of her disinterest in Christianity. And they compounded their idiocy by obtaining opinions from their false prophet friends, whom alluded the causes to the devil attacking them and their church. Subsequently, they organized many group prayer meetings, to seek help from God, by misconstruing Matthew 18:19-20, thinking that if many among them would come together as one in prayer , God will at some point cave in to their demands. And they had their false prophets exercise their imaginary powers, to speak away all ills and to ward off demons and devils that are supposedly surrounding them and their church.

Because Grace and her husband had all their lives believed and coached others that salvation and faith in God is by mere professing alone, likewise they also believed that getting rid of imaginary demons and devils can also be achieved by lip service alone. But they never once examined themselves. They never saw themselves as the ones doing the devil’s will and that they are the rot that is causing others in their flock to turn bad and stumble.

How my own daughter was treated by Grace Tsen and her husband, was exactly how they treated Sherly all her life. They took in vulnerable people and peasants from the streets, made them comfortable, and then made use of them. Under the disguise of treating them as one of their own, calling them as family in Christ, they instill in the minds of others, that by serving them, these people are serving God. While, they made and treated other people like their own on the outside, but in reality people were being misled and conned to serve Grace Tsen and her husband to become slaves to earn money for them.

Although she had many people to make her selection from, including her nephews, nieces and also her own children, but choosing church leaders is not something she would do from among them. People from her own family are not destined to be used and abused, and they are designated instead to seek good education and thereafter expected to be high-flyers in society, earning big money. Thus, Grace will not appoint church leaders from her own family because she would not want to be wasting their time being used by her. As such, the formula she undertook is to make others toil and grind for her, and with the financial returns she gets, she could then afford to send her children to study at colleges, universities or higher institutions.

But little do they know that the future will no longer be dominated by people having paper qualifications, and thus what Grace and her husband are doing is literally in vain and driving their own into a highly competitive marketplace that will eventually cause their own kids to be treated exactly like how they themselves treated others in their own church; used, abused and made into slaves to earn money for other lords. To make matters worse, their inability to understand the ramifications of an oncoming hyperinflation era, will force them further into bondage, constantly living in fear, always lacking in resources and having no means to escape from the routines of serfdom that their parents are setting up for them with their shortsighted mindset.

Thus, the Tsens and the Lees will live out the rest of their lives fulfilling the curses laid out in Psalms 78 that were once prophesied for the Hebrews, and the challenges before them will always be a battle between themselves and God, being persistently torn between anger and fear, and always thrown into situations of having no better alternatives other than to choose between life or death.

Like Sherly and my own daughter, other leaders in the City Of Praise Rawang were never given any formal training. They are expected to grow up and mature on their own, and made to think that they are already equipped as leaders of the church. But if you counted everything these kids had to the last drop, all they had were nothing more than hype and make-believe qualities that have nothing to do with attributes of Godly leadership, essential for shepherding the church. Young leaders were told they are anointed and empowered by God to lead, but in reality it was much otherwise. And when these young adults engages with society and the community at large outside the church, very quickly they will sense something is wrong with themselves. This is the direct result of having years been fooled and being told they are great people, but never once trained to be one.

My daughter also told me something else that shocked the core out of me. Whenever Grace herself was around during Sunday school, she would repeatedly remind the kids that when they grow up, it is their duty to give 10% of their money and income to the church. And I am hearing this evidence from my own daughter, at a time when she was twelve, teaching in Sunday school, and she thought that what auntie Grace had told them is the right thing and is from God.

So there you have it. At the broader aspects of the church, her husband will repeatedly teach other Christians that it is a law stated in the Bible that believers must give to their church. And at the Sunday school, Grace Tsen does nothing better than her husband, other than to prepare the minds of the younger generation, instilling in them with falsehood, that God has commanded every Christian in this world to give away 10% of their income to their church.

While the lie is propagated at every level of the church, the proceeds of the church are used to fund the family members of Grace Tsen and her husband, David Lee. They send their kids to colleges to further their education, while the other kids in the church that are not of their immediate family, are left on their own to fend for themselves.

If you are not a member of the Tsen or the Lee family, you are only worthy to become a contributor to their expenses. Everything you provide to the Lee and the Tsen families, under the pretext of giving to the church, will be like a river of no return and nothing will ever be given back to you, except for empty promises and being persistently told lies that God commanded everyone to give their money to them.

While claiming that they have done everything deserving to be blessed by God, the truth is all along Grace and her husband had done nothing worthy to be called repentance. They offered worthless public apologies without restitution, lip services saying they are sorry but in their hearts their words were nothing more than mere whitewash phrases aimed to cover up or gloss over their faults, and to absolve themselves from blame. And thereafter they will go back to business as usual, repeating the same sins again and again; preaching to others that if they sin, it is okay but as long as they obey their commandment to give them money.

Today, the Sunday school in the City of Praise church in Rawang, is hardly in existence. There’s no more kids and no more noise. Even the numbers among the youth group has dwindled down tremendously. What I wrote here, for all to read and examine, is by no means any rocket science research. It is simply what I saw is what I am writing down and putting it on record.

Naturally, if the church leadership sets out its course to make use of people instead of serving them as how God commanded his shepherds to take care of His flock while He is away, the people will at some point, realize something is not right and they will leave. No one will stay with the group and be constantly devoured and made use of to run errands for these two false pastors and being made to work for them under the disguise of serving God.

Without little children, there will be no Sunday school. Without Sunday school, there will be no more youth fellowship. And without the youths, the days and the future of the church is practically numbered.