EARL WATT
• Leader & Times
After surviving the Killing Fields in Cambodia when communists seized control of the country under Pol Pot in 1975, Setan Lee found his faith in Jesus. He returned to the High Plains recently to speak to the Turpin, Okla., Methodist Church.
Cambodia became a constitutional monarchy in 1998, and through the years, Lee was imprisoned in the Asian nation several times for spreading the gospel, but recently he has been given a new venue to reach his home country, and the government actually approached him with the opportunity.
“I was arrested a year before COVID started to destroy the whole world,” Lee said. “I was trying to start a Christian university, but since I am now a U.S. citizen I cannot buy land in Cambodia. They arrested me for that. When COVID hit the world, it hit Cambodia, and the whole country went to extreme lockdown. You couldn’t open the window, couldn’t go to your neighbor’s house, you couldn’t use air conditioning, no electricity.”
The strict lockdown had a deep impact on the people of Cambodia, leaving them with no hope. And the Cambodian government needed someone to provide hope to the people, even if that meant providing a radio show and television time to a person of faith.
“The reason the government called and offered this air time was to help prevent more teenagers from committing suicide, adults from committing suicide,” Lee said. “They told me, ‘We don’t know what to do. We tell them to be patient.’”
Those messages weren’t working, and despite the times Lee was arrested, the government knew he was committed to the country by comparing him to the Cambodian slogan, “The boat left but the port remained.”
“‘You are the port,’ they told me,” Lee said. “‘We arrest you, put you in jail, but you never left us. You are still here, doing what you want to do, to tell about Jesus. You are faithful to that, we need people like you to do a radio talk show.’”
Lee agreed to do a radio show but only if he was allowed to direct people to the Bible.
“They didn’t understand the four gospels,” Lee said. “So I told them, ‘The man written about is Jesus. He was God. The book of John indicates he is God. Then Matthew says he is royalty. Then the third book, Luke, the doctor and historian, tell us Jesus is a man, fully man, fully God, but he came to serve as told in the book of Mark.’ They said, ‘Go for it.’”
He began to read the Bible on the radio, and he split the hour-long show in half with reading the first half and then taking questions live the second half.
But instead of providing the answers himself, Lee always sought the answers by sharing other scriptures.
“They asked if I would be able to answer right away,” Lee said. “I told them, ‘I can’t but Jesus can.’ That’s how I started. I was nervous the first day, especially not knowing the questions. I trust God. He had all the answers.”
His first caller was an upset woman who wanted to divorce her husband. But Lee led her to scripture about the role of the wife and the role of the husband. Lee provided them information on their phone so they could read the scriptures themselves.
“The next day they were the first callers. And the woman said, ‘I love this man,’ and the husband said, ‘I love this woman more than when I first met her. That was my first experience.”
After giving Lee one hour on air, the government decided to increase his time.
“The government called me back,” he said. “They are listening, all the way to the king, and he said, ‘Give him two hours.’”
To keep him on the air, the king’s representative made a $20,000 donation to the station.
Lee is reaching an audience of 7 million with his radio and now video broadcasts, and many are becoming Christians.
“We get a lot of questions and conversions,” he said. “Most days average, from 60 to100. We even had 150 in one day.”
As life returns to normal after COVID, Lee’s numbers have declined some, but recently, he still had about 80 conversions in one week.
And that’s in a nation where the official religion is Buddhism. But with the government’s backing, Lee has been able to make a difference.
“You can’t touch it, you can’t say anything negative about Buddhism,” Lee said. “Every religion in Cambodia, we basically mind our own business. Buddhists abuse their power and criticize Christianity. They are afraid of losing their members. If you are so good, why are you afraid? My television program is so blessed, even Buddhists can’t touch it because it is a government station. God is protecting me and the program. I never mention Buddhists. But I do say every other religion but Christianity is man-made. I never say a bad word of Buddhists. It doesn’t matter, if it’s not Jesus, it’s all man-made. Jesus made man, but man made religion. No one can argue. Buddhism is a man-made religion. God gives me wisdom of what to say.”
And Lee doesn’t try to argue with callers or other believers. Instead, he simply directs them to scripture even if they are trying to anger him.
“I answer in love,” he said. “They just don’t understand. I may not have said it right, so I say, ‘Let’s see what Jesus said.’ And I send them to Him.”
Lee has been heading his organization Transform Asia for decades, and the new media opportunity has allowed him a new pathway to spread the gospel. He is able to stream his messages live even while touring the world and making guest appearances.
He is currently looking to step back from the day-to-day operations of the organization, but there is one job he plans to keep doing.
“I will stay on with radio and television until I can’t do it any more,” said.
