A Former Witch Doctor Became The ‘Apostle Paul Of Vietnam’
“I went to study black magic and became a witchcraft doctor, serving 3,366 gods, they gave me power, but they made me bow my life to their strongholds.” “They also made me hate the gospel.”
As a teenager he left the hopelessness
of Buddhism for the power of black
magic, then American missionaries
demonstrated the amazing power of
the God they served, which made his
3,300 gods seem impotent. After
receiving Christ, he entered into a new
battle with communist authorities for
the soul of the Vietnamese people —
a battle still raging today.
“I grew up in a very strong Buddhist
family,” says Pastor Tran Dinh “Paul”
Ai, founder of Vision Outreach
International Ministries. “I was sent to
a Buddhist temple and trained to be a
Buddhist monk,” he says. “My father
was a very successful Chinese medical
doctor, but he was bothered by
politicians who tried to extort money
from him.”
“He vowed if he had a son he would
send him to the temple so he could be
trained as a monk,” Ai says. “My name
in Vietnamese means ‘Stop loving the
world.’”
At age 15, after only a year of study, he
became disenchanted with the
“hopelessness of Buddhist doctrines.”
Seeking a more powerful religious
experience, he journeyed to the dark
side. “I went to study black magic and
became a witchcraft doctor, serving
3,366 gods,” Ai says. “They gave me
power, but they made me bow my life
to their strongholds,” he says. “They
also made me hate the gospel.”
In 1970, as President Nixon sent
American troops into Cambodia from
Vietnam, causing mounting protests
on U.S. college campuses, American
missionaries entered Ai’s town in South
Vietnam. “A lot of people in my town
went to the crusades and met the
Lord,” Ai says. “Some of my black
magic students came to me and said,
‘Master, you must stop this crusade,
otherwise we will lose all our
customers in this town,” he recalls.
“So I went to the crusade the
following day to check it out.”
Ai expected to find the missionaries
performing “religious activities,” but
was surprised to find them singing
songs, reading the Bible, and giving a
simple message. “They said, ‘We don’t
want to bring to Vietnam a new
religion, because all religions will make
you more and more burdened. But
Jesus promised if you bring your heavy
burdens to him he will give you rest.’”
Opposing American missionaries
This message was grating to Ai, and he
frantically sought some way to stymie
their efforts, afraid the townspeople
would no longer need his services. To
his chagrin, many in the area were
being saved, and offering testimonies
of answered prayers.
Ai turned to his demonic hosts. “I
called up 1,000 gods at that first night,
but at the end of the service I realized
my gods were not showing up to do
their job,” he says. “The next evening I
called up 2,000 gods, but nothing
happened.” He went home to fast
and pray to his 3,366 gods.
“I said you have to wake up and show up and shut down this crusade,” Ai says. ‘I prayed to all 3,366 but none of them showed up,” he says.
Suddenly a dawning realization swept
through his mind. “I realized that
Buddha was a good man who was
wise, but Buddha died. He never
promised to save anybody or help
anybody,” he says. “Then I realized
Jesus Christ is different. He is not only
good and wise, he rose and he’s alive!”
At that moment, as Ai recognized the
futility of his previous religious path,
he surrendered to Jesus Christ as his
Lord and Savior.
“I gave my heart to the Lord, and God
saved my life and set me free and
called me into ministry,” Ai says.
Shortly after this, ‘Tran Dinh’ received
a new name. “After I got saved, they
told me, ‘Brother Ai, there was a man
in the Bible exactly like you. He was so
religious and he hated the gospel and
he persecuted the church. His name
was Saul but finally God got a hold of
his life and his name was changed to
Paul.’”
Tran Dinh accepted their advice and
took the name of Paul. “One month
later when I read through the Bible I
said, ‘Uh-oh, they gave me the wrong
name. Paul is a man who went to
prison after prison, and I don’t want to
be in prison like Paul.’”
Paul and Wife
Despite his misgivings, the new name
stuck. “I was resented by the
community and I was disowned by my
family, but the church accepted me
and discipled me,” he says. Ai’s family
forced him to move out of their home.
Looking back, Ai is thankful his family
kicked him out, because this provided
the impetus for him to attend Bible
school. In April 1975, only two days
before the U.S. evacuated Saigon and
the entire nation fell to the
communists, Pastor Ai was ordained.
Fleeing the communists
Pastor Ai’s immediate impulse after
the fall of Saigon was to join the flood
of his compatriots fleeing the
communists by any means possible.
“All our leadership got together to
seek the Lord, and they decided we
had better get out of the country
before the communists threw us in
prison,” he says. “So we all decided to
leave and got on a boat.”
“But when I got on the boat the Holy
Spirit spoke to me and said, ‘What are
you doing on this boat? Stop loving
the world. Do you want to be a Jonah?’
“It was strong enough to scare me,”
Pastor Ai recalls. His friends on the
boat noticed Ai was sweating
profusely.
“Brother Ai, what happened to you?”
they asked.
“I just heard a word from the Lord,” he
told them.
“We need a word from the Lord
because we’re about to make a very
dangerous journey on the ocean,”
they said.
“God just asked me if I want to be the
Jonah of this boat.”
“What?” they cried in unison. “Get out
of the boat—we don’t want to have
Jonah with us.”
Pastor Ai was forced off the boat. “I
was so stupid, I thought, I shouldn’t
have told them that.” Unsure of what
to expect, he made his way back to
his church. “The following day I was
arrested by the communists and sent
to a forced labour camp,” Ai recalls.
He would spend more than ten years in
these camps as the communists
attempted to reeducate him.
“Communism is a religion,” he says.
“They compete with other religions.”
“It was terrible,” Ai says. “I tell
Americans you don’t have prisons here
in America, you have free hotels,” he
says. “In America the prisons have air
conditioning, heat, internet access
and cable TV.
“In Vietnam there was nothing like this,
” Ai says. “I slept on a floor that was
either dirt or cement,” he says.
“Sometimes they don’t give you food
to eat so I have to go out in the jungle
to find leaves to eat.” Ai and his fellow
prisoners worked 10-12 hour
days doing backbreaking agricultural
work: harvesting potatoes, cashew
nuts, and rubber plants.
During his first five-year term he had
no toothbrush, soap, or other personal
items. “After I was released from
prison, I packed a bag with a
toothbrush, soap, towel, and
underwear in it for the next time that
the police came to arrest me. I carried
this bag with me everywhere I went,
and it stayed next to me when I slept
at night.”
Despite persecution by the authorities,
Ai continued his efforts to plant house
churches, planting 24 new churches
from 1988 to 1990. One day he was
picked up by the authorities and
brought to the police station, where he
was warned to stop planting churches.
In 1980 he was released from his first
of eight terms in prison, and married
Ruth Kim-Lan, a former high school
teacher. She became disenchanted
with teaching after the communists
“tried to change the children’s minds
from believing in creation to evolution.”
She felt called to ministry so she could
“teach the children about God and
his creation.”
Ai considered their threats carefully,
but tried to explain he had received a
calling from God. “The water buffalo
was made to plow the field,” he said,
“the horse was made to pull the cart,
and the preacher was made to preach
the Gospel.”
His reply made them burn. “If you will
not stop, you will be back in these
camps,” they warned.
“You do your job and I’ll do mine,”
Pastor Ai replied. About a month later,
Ai was followed by the police and
arrested as he reached his home. He
was sent back to prison, but this time
he had the backpack with him
containing his personal effects.
His backpack did not remain intact for
long. “In prison the guards cut the
straps, a standard practice because of
fear of hanging,” Ai recalls. “There was
a wild man in the prison they called
‘Scissor.’ He was a tailor and he carried
scissors with him all the time as a
weapon. He killed many people both
in and out of prison.
“Everyone in prison was afraid of him,
including the guards,” he adds. “He
used metal cans and cut the metal to
make himself a breastplate to keep
people from stabbing him to death.”
But Pastor Ai began to pray that God
would soften this desperate man. “I
began to share the love of Jesus with
him and told him how Jesus would give
him peace and be his friend,” Ai recalls.
“As I continued to show him friendship
and God’s grace, he gave his heart to
the Lord.”
“As an expression of gratitude, he used
one of his shirts to fix my backpack
and make me a hat for protection
from the sun,” Ai says, knowing he
was violating camp rules.
“If the police ask you where you got
these,” Scissor told him, “just tell them
they are from me and you will be safe.”
Pastor Ai had found an unusual
guardian in the camp. “The Lord used
Scissor to provide for me not only my
backpack and hat but also protection
and many other things I needed in
prison.”
“The authorities thought if they put him
in prison, the church would stop
growing and be destroyed,” writes
Johnny Thinh, a friend and co-laborer
of Pastor Ai’s. “But they were wrong,
because Jesus himself is still the head
of the church, and even the gates of
hell shall not prevail against His church.
“Wherever they moved Pastor Paul Ai,
new churches appeared,” he adds. By
the end of 1997, Pastor Ai’s
denomination had over 15,000
members in 175 congregations, all of
them home churches, based on the
cell group system Pastor Ai learned
from studying church growth in Korea,
China and other nations, according
to Thinh.
In 1999,Pastor Ai was arrested in Hanoi
and sentenced to a five-year term.
“They tried to kill me, but God used a
former State Department official,
acting as an ambassador-at-large,
along with pressure from the U.N., to
win my release. They expelled me —
kicked me out of the country,” he says.
“I left by Christmas 1999.”
Now Pastor Ai’s focus is on reaching
Vietnamese expatriates in a host of
countries. “There are 2.2 million living
in the U.S. and almost 3.0 million living
around the world,” he says. “I want to
reach the Vietnamese overseas and
disciple them so they can go back to
bring the good news of Jesus Christ to
their families and communities.”
“Some day God will open Vietnam just
like He did in the Soviet Union,” Pastor
Ai says. “The underground church is
really growing. My job right now is to
prepare and train disciples for that day.”
“We want to bring believers back to
Vietnam—not with M16 rifles, but with
John 3:16 Bibles,” he says.
Vietnam ranks 20th on Christian
support organization Open Doors
2019 World Watch list of the 50
countries where it is most difficult
to be a Christian.
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