Charis Ong became a Christian in secondary school. Being in a mission school gave her plenty of opportunities to hear the Gospel.

One day during an altar call at Chapel, she raised her hand to accept Jesus as her Lord and Saviour. From then on, she “felt different”.

In her upper secondary school days, Charis prayed to receive Christ and became very excited about her faith.

“Sec 3 and 4 were very amazing years for me. I had the desire to talk about my faith all the time,” she told Salt&Light.

“Together with a few classmates who were also Christians, we always gathered to pray. We would pray, then chit-chat about God.”

As her parents were of a different faith, Charis never went to church. After secondary school, too poor to further her studies, Charis went to work as a seamstress.

Bereft of Christian influence and support, her fervour for her faith faltered.

She would soon meet a man from a Christian family who was serious about his faith. Within two years, they were married.

For nine years after that, she followed her husband, George Tan, to his church, but by her admission was “not so faithful”.

Charis and George Tan met through a friend and tied the knot in 1981.

“I was a baptised Christian but I still did my own thing. I would only attend church when I felt like it.

“I would tell my husband I had a headache. He didn’t force me. When I didn’t go, my children also didn’t go.”

What would turn Charis from someone “whose heart was not for God” to the pastor of a church she started more than 20 years ago was nothing short of supernatural.

“I would say I didn’t choose God. God chose me,” said Charis, now 66.

“Four of them couldn’t hold me down”

Charis was 34 and a mother of four when she found a strange brown stain on her children’s bed. At first, she thought her oldest son, then 11, had dropped chocolate on the bed.

The second time she saw the same stain on her daughter’s bed, she had the inkling it was something supernatural.

“My hair stood on end.”

She suspected that her domestic helper had something to do with it. Months earlier, she had discovered that her helper had kept a photograph of her husband and pieces of his and her children’s clothing.

“I also found a faceless doll in her room with a name in a foreign language written on it. I thought she might be dabbling in black magic. So I confiscated the doll.”

She confided in her pastor. He sent two visiting missionaries who had experience in dealing with demonic forces to pray for the family that very night.  

“When they prayed for me, against my will I suddenly became very violent. The couple, my husband and one of the brothers in church – four of them couldn’t hold me down. I was struggling.”

Sensing there was a spiritual force holding on to Charis, they asked her if she had kept anything from the helper.

“The moment they saw the doll, they knew.”

The missionary couple (middle row, second and third from right) who prayed for Charis seen here with Charis and her family.

Charis has little recollection of the episode except that she felt “angry, confused and uncomfortable”. The prayers went on till midnight. Deciding that she might need some rest, they took her to her bed and left.

“I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted to be free. I was crying and I don’t know how but I crawled to my front door.

“There was a cross on the door and I cried out, ‘Jesus save me!’”

The moment she uttered the prayer, she felt a release.

The missionary couple returned over the next few days to continue to pray for Charis but she never exhibited such behaviour again.

Fire from the Holy Spirit

While the encounter had “a bit of impact” on her faith, what really transformed Charis was a prayer a church member prayed over her.

“They came to visit me and they prayed for me to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They prayed for fire. The moment I received the fire, I felt it push me against the wall.

“I felt so hot. It was like I was burning. I actually fanned myself with my clothes. I wanted to run away. It was that hot. I had never experienced anything like that before.”

In the years since her youthful zeal for God, Charis had felt that all gods were the same. But that prayer for the Holy Spirit changed her.

“In my mind now, it was clear there is only one God. That was the first change. The second was that I became so excited about God. I couldn’t stop talking about Him to everyone I met.

“For a year after that, nothing was more important to me than reading the Bible. I would memorise verses. I had a hunger and thirst for the Word of God

George and Charis with their four children.

The Tan clan today with all the grandchildren.

“I prayed every morning, ‘Holy Spirit, fill me. I don’t want to be apart from You. I just want to stay with You.’

“I started to pray for people.”

The ties that bind

As Charis prayed for people, she began seeing frightening apparitions.

“I would close my eyes and see them standing in a row. They looked so real to me that I didn’t dare close my eyes. I was so scared. I cried and didn’t know what to do.”

She believed they were what the Bible calls “familiar spirits” (Leviticus 20:27) – supernatural entities associated with sorcery.

For two to three nights, her husband George prayed for her and read the Bible to her. After that, Charis no longer saw any familiar spirits.

But about three months later, she kept seeing a vision of a deity from another religion. For seven days when she closed her eyes or was praying, the vision would appear.

Charis suspected it had something to do with her childhood.

Charis (second from right) as a teen.

“I checked with my mum and she told me that when she was expecting me, she had prayed to this god to give her a girl because she had so many sons. True enough, I turned out to be a girl.”

At the time, she did not know what to do. After those seven days, the vision continued to appear, though not as frequently.

Then the missionary couple who had prayed for Charis returned to Singapore. When George bumped into them by chance, he invited them home. As they talked well into the night, they felt prompted to pray for Charis.

“As they prayed for me, the vision came back to me. I kept saying, ‘I don’t want to be king of that god, I want to be king of Jesus.’ I didn’t even know what that meant.

“As they prayed, my head felt so painful. The more they prayed, the more painful it became. I wanted to knock my head against the wall.

“Then they read Ephesians 1:19-23 to me. When they released the Word to me, I shouted very loudly. I think the whole neighbourhood could hear me. But the headache left me and I became totally free from demonic influences.”

Since she was in Primary 3, Charis had suffered severe headaches especially when it was too crowded or too hot. She had consulted doctors and even had X-rays done but there had been no relief.

After that prayer session, she never had another headache again.

Of heaven and hell

Some months after this, Charis opened her home to a pastor who had come to Singapore for a seminar.

“She asked to pray for me, and when she did, I fell to the floor and felt my spirit leave.

“Suddenly I was in heaven and Jesus was beside me. He was so gentle and so loving. I was not me. I was like a little girl.

“I also saw a big throne. Everything was so bright and I saw a blurred figure on the throne. I knew it was God. I was very excited.”

In the vision, Charis asked Jesus to show her her family members who had passed on. She saw one of her brothers and a sister-in-law. She met Moses as well and then Jesus brought her to a river.

“It was just like in Revelation 22:1. The river was so clear and so pure. When I touched it, there were no ripples.”

Over the next few days, every time the pastor prayed for Charis, she saw a vision.

“Every day was a different part of the vision. One day, God took me to hell.

“The first thing He allowed me to see was my father. When I saw him, I cried so badly. I heard him say, ‘Go back and tell the family: Believe in Jesus Christ.’

“I tried so hard to reach out to him, but I couldn’t reach him.”

In life, Charis’ father had been against Christianity, believing it to be “a Western religion”.

Over the course of several prayers, Charis saw different scenes in hell. She saw her uncles and people she did not know in agony. 

“They were screaming and shouting. I told Jesus, ‘I don’t want to see any more of this. I want to go home.’

“Jesus told me, ‘Now you have seen heaven and hell, I want you to bring the Gospel to the nations.’”

A few months before these visions, Charis had been at a seminar in Malaysia. When she responded to an altar call, she had a vision of Jesus waving a purple scarf at her.

“He told me, ‘Go, go, go.’ But I didn’t know go where? After the visions of heaven and hell, I knew where to go.”

Charis (in front of cake) and her churchmates celebrating her birthday.

Commemorating the anniversary of the Fruitful Vine Church.

It was to start a church with her husband. 

“I was so excited.”

Today, Charis is a pastor of Fruitful Vine Church, a church she started in 2002. 

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