A month before Dato Tan Chong Jin retired as Deputy Commissioner of Police in Malaysia, he shared with Salt&Light the incredible story of how he escaped death not once, not twice, but three times.

Little did he know that the story would open doors to a new ministry.

The first time Dato Tan could have died was in January 2020. He became disoriented while scuba diving in Malaysia with colleagues. Had one of them not hauled him to the surface, Dato Tan would have drowned.

The next year in March, his car narrowly missed being crushed by a collapsing flyover under construction. An overloaded trailer had crashed into the temporary steel scaffolding of a segment of the flyover, causing the flyover to fall across two lanes of a major road. Five people in a van travelling right behind Dato Tan’s car were crushed to death.

Two weeks later, Dato Tan contracted COVID and had to be hospitalised for 21 days; he was in a coma for five days. At one point, his pulse rate – 30-odd beats a minute – was just half of what is normal, and the oxygen level in his blood dropped to 40%, where 90% would already be considered a clinical emergency.

Dato Tan contracted Covid and the virus attacked his lungs to such an extent that he became critically ill.

“The doctors told my wife, ‘You all need to get ready.’”

Yet, inexplicably, he woke up on Good Friday. By Easter, he was well enough to sit up and listen to the Easter service on the handphone. The timing of his revival was not lost on him.

Dato Tan, 62, is sure that he was saved for a purpose. In the two years since he retired, God has been showing him what that purpose is.

Tell His story

After his testimony was published on Salt&Light, invitations came one by one from churches for Dato Tan to share his story, beginning with his own church, Full Gospel Assembly Church in Kuala Lumpur. He has since travelled to Klang, Kelantan and Taiping to tell of how God spared him.

By word of moutn, churches hear of Dato Tan’s testimony and have been inviting him to share his story to their congregations.

“The Easter I shared in a church was very significant to me because I woke from my coma on Good Friday.

“As I moved on, I prayed also to God that besides opening doors for me to speak in churches, to give me a chance to share my testimony with people I meet.”

Everyone loves a good story, and Dato Tan tells his at every opportunity – at wedding dinners, over drinks with friends, to strangers he meets.

“It is my real-life experience. I tell them how God saved me and gave me a purpose and opportunities to share my testimony.”

This year, he got an even bigger platform. He shared his story at a Police Day fellowship to fellow law enforcement officers.

Dato Tan speaking to fellow policemen on Police Day.

His story has also been published in a book Out of the Jaws of Death that chronicles accounts of believers whose lives were miraculously saved.

Most recently, Dato Tan took his story into prison. He joined Malaysia CARE, a Christian NGO that reaches out to inmates.

“I have a burden for these prisoners to be given a chance to come back to society. A month ago, I shared my story with 64 inmates. When I issued an altar call, nearly 30 of them came up to be prayed for.”

No more desire to smoke  

These open doors have also given Dato Tan the opportunity to share more stories of God’s goodness. On top of his personal testimony, he also tells of how his parents had supernatural encounters with God.  

Dato Tan became a Christian in 1986 while he was still in university. He was the first in his family to become a believer.

“When I told my father, he said, ‘Very good that you believe in a God.’ My parents were not very religious but my father believed there is a God up there.”

Dato Tan’s father became a believer a few years after Dato Tan himself accepted Jesus into his life.

Two years later when Dato Tan joined the police force in Kuala Lumpur, he asked his church to look in on his family in Ipoh and share the Gospel with them. His father and sister ended up going to church and becoming Christians in 1989.

Then came a call from home.

“My father told me that the pastor asked him to go for water baptism. But Dad said it was very difficult because after water baptism, you must be a new person. But he had been smoking for 50 over years.

“My father told me, ‘Drinking and mahjong I can stop. But smoking, how to?’

“I told him, ‘As you see in Matthew 7:7, ask and it shall be given. So just ask God, don’t worry about anything.’”

Dato Tan’s father, together with his sister, was baptised two weeks later on Christmas Day, but not before stopping by the roadside to puff his last puff. On the way home from church, his father decided to stop by at the coffeeshop where his mother sold fried noodles.

“When my father got there, his friends invited him to join them for a game of mahjong. He did not even complete one round before he felt very heavy,” said Dato Tan.

“My father didn’t know it was the Holy Spirit working in him. He told my mum, ‘Close up the stall. We have to go back. I’m not well.’”

They rode his motorcycle home. But midway through the journey, he felt so ill he had to stop. The only prayer he knew to utter was “Hallelujah”.

Dato Tan’s mother called for an ambulance. At the hospital, the doctor discovered that the senior Tan’s blood pressure was abnormally high and he had him hospitalised for five days.

“From the day he was admitted into hospital, his desire to smoke just disappeared,” said Dato Tan.

Dato Tan’s father was 55 then. Till the day he passed away at 78, he never touched a single stick of cigarette again.

Slain by the Spirit   

Dato Tan’s mother remained resistant to the Gospel. In 1991, she went to Kuala Lumpur to visit Dato Tan’s sister who had moved there to work. Dato Tan’s sister brought her to a prayer meeting.

“After the meeting, the pastor said, ‘Auntie, come, I pray for you.’ But my mum said, ‘No, no, I’m not a Christian.’

“The pastor said, ‘I pray for good health only.’ She agreed. He laid hands on her and straight away, she fell to the ground, slain by the Holy Spirit.”

Though resistant at first, Dato Tan’s mother became a Christian after her encounters with God.

That Sunday, Dato Tan’s mother went to a church service with his sister. Again, the pastor prayed for her and again she was slain by the Spirit.

The next Wednesday, Dato Tan’s mother went to the prayer meeting. The pastor prayed for her and she was slain by the Spirit for the third time.

“When she was on the floor, she raised her hands up. When she finally got up, the pastor asked, ‘Do you want to accept Jesus as your personal Saviour?’

“Straight away my mum said she wanted. I believe she must have experienced God or she would not have said ‘yes’ straight away.”

When Dato Tan’s mothers returned to Ipoh, she asked the pastor of the Ipoh church to remove all the objects of worship from her house.

“God is real. What we cannot do, God can do for us. God blessed my family.”

Faith at home

Since his return from near death, Dato Tan has also started something new in his family – a family altar.

Every Thursday, the whole family – his wife, two sons aged 32 and 28 who have already moved out of the family home, and his youngest son aged 22 – comes together for a time of family devotion.

Dato Tan (centre in red) with his wife Anna (second, left) and their three sons.

“We see what is going on in each other’s lives, we share the Word and pray for each other. I told them, ‘Truly you can see what God is doing.’”

That his adult children have been willing to carve out time every week to do this with Dato Tan and his wife is proof that they see God’s hand at work and the importance of the Christian faith.

The other new thing for Dato Tan is that now he and his wife have a common ministry. Whenever he shares his testimony, she shares her side of the story.

When Dato Tan was in a coma after contracting COVID in 2020, she had been a faithful prayer warrior, praying and getting all their Christian friends to pray.

“When I was dying, she was in agony waiting, cannot do anything. So when she gives a talk, she shares about how you can trust through prayer and how to pray for your husband.

“I am thankful that God gave me back my life to share His good news.”

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