9 August 2015
Dear Phyllis,
Ten years ago I was staying in the home of General Tha Dam in Saigon, Vietnam. General Tha Dam was the commanding general of the North Vietnamese army when they made the final assault on Saigon and the Russian T-54 tank crashed through the gate of the presidential palace ending the Vietnam war.On Christmas day 2001 General Tha Dam has died of cancer as an unbeliever in a hospital. He went out into eternity and came back from the dead a born-again Christian. I was on black list in Vietnam at the time and couldn't get in to talk with him but four years later I was able to get there and spend a week living with him. Quite obviously the general had one of the more interesting testimonies. I was interested in writing a biography of the general's life and had gone to talk with him about that. The general replied, “I have witnessed to everyone on top, and I don't care what the lower ones under them think. Okay.”
There had been an American chopper pilot who had had a very bad time during the war and said Vietnam was a place he never wanted to see again. But he had been saved and heard of the ministry of carrying Bibles into Vietnam. To get in on this ministry he came to Thailand and went with a team. While in Vietnam he was in a service where they had a foot washing ceremony. The North Vietnamese general knelt down and washed the American pilots feet and the tearful pilot washed his North Vietnamese brothers feet. I had heard several such stories and felt this testimony should be recorded.
While living with him I asked the details how he got saved. He told me his wife had been led to the Lord by another lady in a market. He was furious when his wife refused to make offering before their family Buddhist idol, but he let her stay. A year after his wife's conversion he came down with cancer, He had been in a revolving door with the hospital going in and out for treatment, He obviously was near the end in December of 2001. On the 17th of December a Vietnamese pastor was visiting him in the hospital. He knew nothing about Christianity but knew the Christmas was Jesus' birthday and that was the most celebrated religious day world wide. He thought that Jesus must be some special person. He commanded the pastor to pray exactly as told. The pastor dutifully prayed; “God, if you are God I want to be saved on Christmas day. If You don't save me on Christmas day I know You are not God and just want to die anyway. Amen” After that he tried to have another surgery on Christmas that would save his life, but he was told Christmas was a holiday, everyone was off. It was impossible to have surgery. He thought, “Well, I'm dead.”.
On Christmas morning a Vietnamese pastor visited him at 7:45. At 8:00 o'clock a nurse making the rounds found him dead and thought the pastor had killed him. They put put an arrest warrant for the pastor but never could find him. Then the hospital panicked. They had let the top general in Vietnam die without doing everything they could to save him. They couldn't find a surgeon to do it, but simply to save their own skin they called in a general practitioner who had never done surgery to come in and cut up the corpse.
I asked the general what happened after he died. He told me when his soul left the body it was like he had gone out into empty space. He saw a light in the distance and started moving towards it. While going he heard a Voice saying, “Open your eyes and take back your life.”. He tried but couldn't do it. Moving on, he heard the Voice the second time. Again he tried but couldn't. Going on towards the light he heard the Voice saying to him the third time, “Open your eyes and take your life back.” He did, and the first voice he heard was, “It's finished.”. Two hours had passed. It was now 10:00 o'clock. The doctor had just finished sowing up the cadaver and said to the nurse, “It's finished.” With that the general opened his eyes and said, “I want to go home.” The doctor was somewhat surprised to have a dead man speak to him and replied, “You can't.”. The general persisted, “I want to go home.” So they loaded him in an ambulance and took him home. Two weeks later he was completely recovered riding his motor bike around Saigon. He became a very aggressive Christian and wrote 120 letters to all the top men in the Vietnam government. I was with him in January and he told me that the president of Vietnam had called him three weeks before on Christmas asking him how he enjoyed the church service.
General Tha Dam wanted to start a church in his own home. I happened to be there that Sunday and had the privilege of preaching the first message in his church. I preached on the two most powerful words in the Bible – “But God” – in Eph. 2:4. To illustrate that message I spoke extensively about Tamar and Pharez in Genesis 38. At the end of the message the general said he had always wondered (along with thousands of others) why Genesis 38 was in the Bible. But now he knew.
To write his biography I would need a full-time interpreter and spend several months in Vietnam researching all the locations, people, and events in his life. I was never able to come up with the funds, the interpreter, or the time to do that task.
Five years ago I led a Canadian lady to the Lord who had shot and killed her husband. She was in the womens prison here in Chiang Mai. Joan had such a powerful testimony I was sure when she got out of prison she would write a book of her testimony how she had gotten saved through hearing about General Tha Dams testimony. When she was released and went back to Canada a friend that I worked with pleaded, “If Joan ever writes her testimony please don't let her mention anything out general Tha Dam. We must not let anyone know he is a Christian. If she mentions his name the media will be all over him and that will destroy his testimony.” I couldn't believe it! George said, “Right now he is a national hero but if anyone finds out he is a Christian they would consider him a traitor. We must not let anyone know he is saved”
I was livid. I wrote his son-in-law who was a good friend of mine and asked if this was the general's position or just the fears of this paranoid missionary. Tang had been the first man I ever met in Vietnam and he was the one who took me to the general's house when I went in to talk to him. Tang was as courageous as they come. I knew the general was a courageous man. I knew his bold witness and I was stunned by the paranoid fears of this cowardly missionary. I couldn't imagine the general hiding his light under a bushel basket. To my unending astonishment I wrote three letters to Tang for a confirmation and never got a reply. What happened? I don't know. I heard the general has now gone to be with the Lord two years ago. One of the most amazing testimonies in the past 50 years has died and few people will ever know abut the North Vietnamese general who died on Christmas day and came back to life to tell the world about Jesus who saved him.
Lump, bill
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