In his teenage years, Gideon Lo used to be fit and athletic.

He loved basketball and never went a day without playing football.

Teenaged Gideon (in blue) was obsessed with sports.

Numerous sports balls in the boot of Gideon’s family car.

During his Temasek Polytechnic school holidays, however, he found himself suddenly and mysteriously ill for an extended period of two months.

The lymph nodes on both sides of his neck swelled to almost the size of tennis balls and angry rashes colonised his chest, neck and face. His bones ached to the point where he could not make big movements, and a fever of up to 39°C raged on persistently.

Illness undiagnosed

Visits from one General Practitioner (GP) to another failed to uncover any diagnosis for his condition, and the medications they prescribed did not help alleviate it.

Eventually, he went to consult a respiratory specialist at Gleneagles Hospital who narrowed the cause down to a potent and rare virus, though the doctor could not identify the exact virus.

One night, as per his usual daily practice, Gideon knelt beside his bed to pray at 11pm before heading to bed.

As he prayed, stories of various instances of healing in the Bible kept coming to the forefront of his thoughts.

He was reminded of the blind man in John 9, the leprous man in Matthew 8 and the paralytic in Mark 2 who were all healed by Jesus.

So, Gideon continued praying, saying: “Lord, I know You are the same yesterday, today and forever. Would You also heal me?”

Although Gideon, then 18, believed that God was real from the various miracles he had  witnessed in his family since young, he did not expect anything extraordinary to happen.

Gideon, at 18, posing with his cousin.

“After all, it was a simple prayer, and it was part of my regular routine of reading my Bible and praying every night,” Gideon said.

What happened next, however, changed his life.

And the door knob turned

Gideon heard the door knob turning, and the door frame shuddering as the door opened. As he turned his head to the left to check who was at the door, he saw a bright figure stepping in.

The light emanating from the figure was so bright that it outshone all the white lights in his room.

“He was really glorious, yet somehow the light wasn’t piercing to my eyes. I don’t know how I knew, but I just knew that He was Jesus,” said Gideon.

“It is You!” Gideon exclaimed.

“Yes, it is Me. My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus answered, quoting His Word.

As Jesus stood beside him, He placed His right hand on Gideon’s forehead.

The bedroom that Gideon prayed in before Jesus walked in.

“As He was near me, I tried to see His face. I couldn’t see His facial features as it was so bright but I saw the smile on His face,” said Gideon.

“His hand felt so comfortable and assuring. Surprisingly, I felt no fear, just awe and wonder,” he added.

Strong in an instant

The moment Jesus placed His hand on his forehead, Gideon was instantly healed.

Filled with excitement, he leaped up to his feet and stood in front of the mirror to examine his body.

His lymph nodes were no longer swollen. When he took off his T-shirt, he saw that all the rashes had disappeared. His fever and the pain in his bones were also gone, and he had never felt as strong as he did at that moment.

Feeling the adrenaline rush from encountering Jesus in person and witnessing a miracle, Gideon ran to his parents’ room at 2am in the morning to wake them up and tell them what had happened.

“Hallelujah!” his father exclaimed, as his mother touched his neck to verify that the swelling of his lymph nodes had indeed subsided.

Gideon with his sister and parents.

Gideon then barged into his sister’s room to share the good news with her. Surprised, she also praised God for His mercy.

Not surprisingly, Gideon could not sleep that night.

He went downstairs at 3am, turned on his computer and shot off a long email documenting what had just happened to everyone on his email list, mainly churchmates from The Church in Singapore along Derbyshire Road.

“I was really grateful as I was reminded of the verses in Psalm 8:4: What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” said Gideon in wonder.

“Jesus could have said a word from heaven or sent an angel and I could be healed but He came in person physically.”

The Throne Room 

Unknown to Gideon’s church friends who subsequently read his email, there was a second part to his supernatural encounter that night.

After he was instantly healed, and while he was still awake and kneeling by his bed, Gideon found himself taken up to heaven in his spirit.

“The specific places that He brought me to ­­– which He also allowed me to remember thereafter – was really meaningful to me because I later realised that those places were mentioned in the Bible. That was important to me because I grew up in a church that taught us to have a biblical basis for almost everything,” said Gideon.

One of the places in heaven that he visited was the Throne Room of God.

“It was a vast space and the Throne was quite a distance away from me,” he said.

He saw God on the Throne, in the form of a “figure like that of man” as written about in Ezekiel 1:26. Radiant rainbow colours were flowing out from God like a dynamic wave, as described in Ezekiel 1:26 and Revelation 4:3.

Before the Throne was a crystal-like sea of glass (Revelation 4:6). Gideon also saw many beings around the Throne, as described in the two chapters, but he did not focus on them as he found himself captivated by the vivid colours of the rainbow emanating from the Throne.

So when Gideon found himself back in his room, with his eyes wide open and his body still kneeling by the bed, he had immediately jumped up to examine his healed body in the mirror and rushed off to share the good news with his family.

However, he kept the visit to heaven to himself until the next day.

“I needed some time to process what had just happened, and I was also afraid of whether anyone would believe me,” said Gideon.

His family members listened to him and pondered about it in their hearts.

Gideon, meanwhile, experienced a personal revival from that one remarkable night.

Heaven is real

“My visit to heaven showed me that heaven is real and He is real and, therefore, we have a glorious hope. The time we have on earth is but a fleeting shadow to the eternity we will spend with our Maker.

“So, we have a duty to execute the Father’s will on earth as it is in heaven while we are His ambassadors on the earth,” said Gideon.

Although he was already actively serving in his church in worship ministry and Sunday School, the supernatural encounters fired him up further to pursue the things of God.

He began reading the Word more consistently, and was careful not to fall into sin. He began to be more conscious of using his time on earth for the purposes of God.

Gideon assumed that, after his National Service, he would further his studies in civil engineering, following his studies in IT in polytechnic, in order to take over his father’s construction company eventually.

But during a church youth retreat in Batam, Gideon, then 21, went up to the top of a hill in the early hours of the morning to seek the Lord on his next steps.

That morning, God answered his prayer in five words: “Why don’t you try LASALLE?”

Gideon laughed when he heard it. Though he had played musical tunes by ear since he was a young boy, and had been writing his own songs since his teenage years, he had never considered pursuing music as a career – not to mention studying it.

Gideon performing at an event one year after he was healed.

However, he was certain that he had heard God accurately. He went down the hill to search for a laptop with a working wifi connection, only to discover that the deadline for the application date for the next enrolment had ended two weeks ago.

“I called LASALLE College and they told me that the application period had closed. They told me to come back in two years to apply for the next intake,” said Gideon.

While he was puzzled by the roadblock, he knew God would make a way if that was the path for him.

Shortly afterwards, the school called him back and asked him if he was available for an enrolment audition on a specific day and time. If he could not make it, he would have to wait another two years to join the next cohort of students.

He was still serving National Service then and urgent leave was near impossible to take.

Gideon in a newspaper article on his music studies at LASALLE. He was the top graduate in his cohort.

But Gideon made an astonishing discovery: He had actually already applied for leave on that particular day for a children’s church camp he was to lead.

“After the camp, I went for the audition and was accepted to go straight into the second year of studies. I knew this was His plan for me,” said Gideon.

Releasing the Presence of God

Within the next few years, God also divinely arranged for Gideon to take over a music education business – Manning Music Centre ­– even before he graduated from LASALLE at the age of 24.

Gideon also sells music instruments via a wholesale business called Jerubbaal.  

Gideon runs a music education centre where he hires some 35 full-time staff and freelancers.

He also helms another business which sells affordable music instruments.

In 2014, Gideon did his Masters degree in music therapy in Germany. As he specialised in music therapy for persons with special needs and dementia, he did his housemanship in a psychiatric and special needs nursing home.

Gideon bidding farewell to the friends he made in a German church that he attended while studying music therapy in Germany.

During his time at the home, Gideon saw how using music, in the form of worship songs or hymns, can release the presence of God and raise the quality of life for the elderly and special needs residents.

“They often behaved like children and could not remember my name. But over time, we saw changes,” said Gideon.

“A woman with muscular dystrophy, who often locked her arms in front of her chest, began opening up her arms during the worship sessions. Her physiotherapist noticed that it was the only time she would open up her arms and would take the opportunity to do physiotherapy with her after that,” he recounted.

He also observed how another elderly lady – who could not remember his name – would raise both her hands and shout “hallelujah” whenever she saw him. It meant that she associated him with the worship sessions.

He also saw an 11-year-old child with a learning disability learning new German words when he wrote her a new song every music session.

When he returned to Singapore in 2016, Gideon continued to use his calling in music to impact lives. He worked as a music therapist at The Salvation Army’s Gracehaven residential home, and often shared worship songs and his testimony with the young adults who grappled with anger issues and violent tendencies.

A number of them, who see him as their spiritual brother, keep in touch with him even after leaving Gracehaven.

Making the right choices for eternity

As a former guitar ensemble conductor in schools and at national events such as the Chingay Parade, Gideon also seeks to release God’s peace and presence through his music wherever he goes.

Gideon with other performers and PM Lee Hsien Loong at Chingay 2018.

In 2011, he also started his own YouTube channel called TheNewVocal where he shares with the online community the worship songs he composes.

One of the songs, “Voice of Hope”, was released during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Right before he awoke from his sleep one morning in 2020, God showed him angels and saints in heaven singing a song in a language he could not understand.

Gideon recording “Voice of Hope” during the Covid pandemic.

When he woke up, Gideon recorded the tune of the chorus that he had heard on his handphone. He later sought God about it and composed lyrics for the tune.

“I believe God wanted me to write and release this song into the world during a time when people were being plagued with fear and insecurities far greater than what a mere virus could have caused,” he said.

By sharing his experiences, he hopes that believers will be encouraged to live their lives more intentionally and purposefully for God and His Kingdom.  

“In the blink of an eye, all of us, hopefully, will be in heaven and we will see all God’s mysteries for ourselves, except that by then everything will be crystal clear and no longer mysteries,” he said.

“Since the short time we have here on earth qualifies us for eternity, then we need to learn how to redeem our time here and make the right choices. Our time in eternity, and who we spend it with, is what matters ultimately.”

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