Hiding in an Attic

“And it was told Joshua, saying, ‘The five kings have been found hidden in the cave at Makkedah’.” [Joshua 10:17]

One of the most bizarre records for hiding out was made by a young Chinese foreign exchange student by the name of Cheng Guan Lim. He was studying engineering at the University of Michigan but was doing very badly in physics and math. If his studies did not improve, he would have to leave school, quit his job as janitor at Ann Arbor’s First Methodist Church, and take the humiliating news of his academic failure back to his father, who was a schoolteacher in Singapore.

One day in October 1955, Cheng disappeared. His friends, including the Rev. Eugene Ransom, pastor of the church, called the police, but they found no clues. Cheng’s Methodist friends had another mystery to ponder: strange bumping noises that came out of the deserted church at night. Early one morning, four years after Chang’s disappearance, a pair of private detectives called in by Rev. Ransom, heard a trap door to the church attic slam. Together with police, they climbed up and swept their flashlights about the attic. And there, crouched above them in the rafters, was Cheng.

For four years the attic of the church had been his home. The bumping noises had been Cheng skipping rope to keep in shape. During the day he slept on padding from a pew. At night he walked around the church and helped himself to food from the kitchen. Physically, Cheng seemed unaffected by his hermit’s existence. But as police hauled him off to the county jail, his four-year preoccupation with loss of face suddenly vanished. “I have been a coward,” he said. “I’m glad I was found.”

Instead of leaving him in jail, local businessmen started a fund to help him finish his education. The university permitted him to resume studies, and he eventually graduated in 1961 and later went on to earn his master’s degree. Cheng eventually returned to Singapore.

Did you know that the Bible speaks of a time when Satan will be forced to live the life of a hermit? “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:1,2). Like the five enemy kings in the time of Joshua who were found hidden in a cave, Satan will someday be brought out and destroyed forever.