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My
brush with the law began when I was about fourteen. I became involved with
gangland activities and Secret Societies after my release from prison at the
age of sixteen. By the time I was seventeen I had already become one of the top
young gang leaders in Singapore. At seventeen and half I was involved in a
major gang war which resulted in the death of an opposing gang member. I was
sentenced to hang for my involvement in that gang killing.However,
under British law, no youth under the age of eighteen could be hanged. So I was
sentenced to be detained indefinitely during Her Majesty's
Pleasure. This was even worse than life imprisonment.
Finally
I was pardoned and released after seven years in prison, but I was not changed.
Not too long after my release from prison, I got involved in gang robberies
involving firearms. I was again was arrested and slated for trial in
Singapore's "high court". While waiting for trial, I faked insanity
so that I would be sent to the mental hospital. Then came that daring escape! Together
with two other inmates, we overpowered the doctor, locked the guards in our
prison ward, climbed on to the roof and jumped over a 20-foot wall to freedom! I was
at large for almost a year and became one of the ten most wanted men in
Singapore until I was recaptured. Pressured into a plea bargain and confession,
I was sentenced to a seven year concurrent term plus whipping.
I kept
my pattern of being tough, merciless and sly in Changi Prison. Soon I had
people doing my laundry, cleaning my cell for me and even managed to profit
through a money-lending rackets in the prison itself. Then came my Nemesis.
There
was this prison officer who was insulting, nagging, and trying to provoke me
into retaliation. Eventually I concluded that there was no way out for me. I
was fated to be sent into solitary and I determined to make that officer pay. I
found a piece of metal and day after day I patiently sharpened it on the cement
floor of my cell, honing it into a crude dagger. Finally I was ready for the
hated officer.
It was
during this time of confinement that I began to experience the most dreadful
feeling that almost drove me mad. The long period of confinement had caused my
mind to succumb to "claustrophobia."
A terrible disease of the mind that caused me to experience dreadful nightmares
and sleepless nights of fear. Fear and nightmares of being buried alive. It was
during one of these nights when I was experiencing one of his worst attacks of
claustrophobia that I had this miraculous experience. Another prisoner from a
cell nearby had managed to smuggle seven pages torn from a book he had for me
to read. I found out that the pages had been torn out from a Gideons New
Testament. In anger I crumpled the pages and flung them away towards the toilet
bowl in his cell.
Frustrated
and bored I began to pace the cell until I was tired. I sat on the concrete bed
in my cell and after a while my eyes wandered to the crumpled pages on the
floor. Finally I picked them up and began to read. An old man, Zechariah, and
his aged wife (probably a hundred years old, I thought) had no children. Then
there was an angel telling the old man that his wife would become pregnant and
bear a son! What a joke! The old lady was going to be pregnant! Smirking at the
impossibility, I read on. The second story was just as incredible--a young
woman was also told by the angelic visitor that she too would become pregnant! My
cynical mind began to be very amused as I thought of how stupid the story was.
Maybe, I mused the angel would appear to a young man next and say to him,
"Young man, YOU too will be pregnant!" but I continued to read on.
"You shall call his name Jesus," the next line read. I tensed. That
name! What had my teacher taught me when I was in primary school? That if
anyone asked anything in the name of Jesus, God would do it? Yes, that was it! I
will do just that!
I stared
at the spy-hole, half expecting the door to open. It did not. The next day
came. The door remained closed. Angry that nothing was happening I shouted at
God. "God,
I won't let you off! Get me out of this cell!" I demanded.
The
next day came, and the next and the next. I continued stubbornly to remind God
that I was asking in the Jesus' name and I expected an answer. "God,
I hold you to your promise," I declared grimly.
The
10th day - and the 11lth. Apparently God was not listening. On 14th
morning I was still sleeping when my cell door opened! As I was led out I
turned to look back at the cell where I had been confined for almost three
months. Pinned on the the door was the notice: "Prisoner 7172 is to remain
locked in maximum security until the day of his discharge." It was signed
by the Superintendent of Prisons. Somehow
that order had been canceled!
When I entered
the prison yard, my fellow inmates were incredulous. "How
did you get out?" they queried, amazed. The
name of Jesus was on my lips. But how could I say it? It would sound as silly
as to say I was pregnant! To be "religious" would make me out as a
"queer!" I saw admiration in the eyes before me and my pride soared. "I
threatened the superintendent into letting me out," I told my audience. Yet
down inside I felt convinced that Someone greater than the prison
superintendent, some Superhuman Power had worked in my behalf. He was certain
that a miraculous answer had been given to my prayers. Why would the superintendent
change his mind? Why would he risk allowing an "incorrigible" inmate
who was a security risk to associate with the other inmates? The name of Jesus
was again the only convincing answer to those questions. The relief of that relative freedom was tremendous. But soon the monotony of prison life returned. No one came to visit me, not even my mother who previously never failed to come and visit me. |
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Then one day I received a letter from my younger brother: my mother, hospitalized
with cancer, had been given only two weeks to live. Yearning to see her one
last time, I asked to be allowed to visit her. My request was denied. Memories rushed in - my mother in the harsh days of the Japanese
occupation giving her rations to me and my younger brother. When Father had
frightened his sons with horror stories, it was Mother who came in the night to
calm their fears. It was Mother who had loved him through all his troubled
years, Mother who had been too indulgent with her lawless son. Full of remorse, I wished for opportunity to say to her "Mom I'm sorry" and
to beg her forgiveness. Soon word came from my younger brother that Mother had
died, screaming and reaching out for her absent son. Shame for my shabby treatment and indifference to my mother
overwhelmed me. Added to this burden was the recognition that now there was no
one left who cared for me--no one I could turn to. No home nowhere to go when I will be released from prison.
"When I get out, who will receive me?" I moaned. With nothing to live for, I began to wished to die. Grieving,
despondent, I pondered suicide; but how could it be accomplished? I finally
decided to swallow a whole cake of carbolic soap. As I was pondering how I
could do that, a line from an old hymn drifted into my mind, "The Lord is
my shepherd..." The rest of the words I could not recall. I turned to a New Testament placed in his cell by the Gideon's. I
searched for Psalm 23, one I had memorised in my boyhood at the mission school
I attended, but now mostly forgotten. Quickly I thumbed through the pages of
the Testament, then again, turning the pages a bit more slowly, but my search
was futile. Frustrated, I hurled the book against the wall of my cell.
Disconsolately, I picked up a cigarette but when I wanted to light it, I realised
that in my distress after reading my brother’s letter, I had forgotten to bring
my matches into my cell. Then I remembered that prisoners often hid split match
sticks in the spines of books, I began looking for the Testament which I had
earlier hurled away. It lay flat open on the floor, open at the Psalms! And at
Psalms 23! I began reading the verses of the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is
my shepherd... Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
not fear. for Thou art with me...." "For thou art with me!" Those words gripped me as
though they had been spoken aloud. I began to tremble, sensing a Presence with me in my cell. As I
sank to my knees the Holy Presence of God enfolded me. Overwhelmed, humbled, my
spirit melted in the realisation that Someone cared, loved me, even more than
had my mother. Tears came, the first I had shed since boyhood. "God, just take my life and do what You will," I
sobbed. It was a total surrender--no mere turning over a new leaf. The
man who had asserted destructive power now accepted the lordship of a Greater
Power. A wonderful newness came to him that evening. And joy! Gone were
thoughts of suicide, gone was the hopelessness. |
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A New Life (adapted from Viola Phillips
article on Neville's Testimony) |
The
next morning he began reading his New Testament. From then on, all his free
time was given to reading his Testament. The
change that came into Neville's life was not a temporary one. It was a permanent
one. Neville is today still serving God. After his release from prison in the
early seventies, Neville worked for a while as an accountant in a Departmental
store. Later he gave up his well paid job to join the Singapore Bible College.
During his course of study he met Anne, then the secretary to the Dean of the
Bible College. They got married and were blessed with three children. After his
graduation, Neville was invited to serve with Rev. Khoo Siaw Hua, the prison
chaplain, in the prison ministry. Later he served with Rev. Henry Khoo, son of
Rev Khoo Siaw Hua, at the Reformative Training Centre. Since then, his main
ministry has been to street kids, drug addicts and those who were following the
same path to destruction that he did. He has been the mentor of many who would
have destroyed their own lives. Today
Neville is the founding pastor of the Church of God (Evangelical). He has been
instrumental in pioneering several congregations in Malaysia, Indonesia,
Cambodia and Vietnam. Gifted as an evangelist, Neville has traveled widely to
many parts of the world to preach the same Gospel that saved him while he was
in prison. |