In solitary confinement and on suicide watch, this hardened criminal heard a voice that changed his life

Tobin Toh grew up picking fights with others – from when he was a young primary school student till when he was in secondary school.

He was not interested in studying. After two days in Secondary Two, he asked to quit school.

“My uncle said, ‘No.’ But Nai Nai (grandmother) said, ‘Don’t force him.’

“No one dared to defy her,” he said in Mandarin.

She seemed to be the only one who cared about him. His parents were divorced. His older sister and younger brother were living with an aunt.

Tobin was sent to live with his uncle, and was expected to help out in the family business supplying ang ku kueh (glutinous rice pastries) and wah kueh (Hokkien steamed rice cakes) to shops.

“I had to chop wood for the fire, wash the bowls used to make wah kueh and help make the kueh,” he said.

“If I hid in the room to do homework, my uncle would beat me with a wooden board till the board broke. So, I had no time to do my homework.”

“We met outside at Changi Point near the camp before booking in and fought with people from the other platoons.”

After Tobin dropped out of school, his uncle enrolled him in the SAF Boys’ School. The eight-year programme involved two years of training and six years of work in the Singapore Armed Forces.

But Tobin was expelled in under three months.

“First week, I got into a fight. Then every week I was involved in fights. We met outside at Changi Point near the camp before booking in and fought with people from the other platoons.”

Gangster life

Gang members were among those expelled along with Tobin.

“I joined their gang so that I would have people backing me and I wouldn’t get bullied,” he said.

He left his uncle’s house and moved into gambling dens and temples with them.

“When I did not go home, no one came to look for me. My uncle never asked me where I went.

“But I continued to help out at his business during peak periods,” he said.

To make a living, Tobin harassed transvestite prostitutes for protection money.

“They were working in our gang territory. At first, I didn’t dare do it. But after watching my seniors beat them, I also beat them.

“My most serious injury was on my back. The knife went so deep it almost hit bone. I required 20 stitches.”

“I never felt guilty or bad. In fact, I felt emboldened because with one shout, they would hand over the protection money.”

Tobin also worked as a runner in a horse-betting ring. And as part of the gang, he took drugs. Although he never became addicted, he got into many fights.

“In my first fight, I got slashed by a broken beer bottle. I thought: ‘Why should I be the one to be slashed? I should slash other people.’ After that, I always made sure I had some kind of weapon with me.

“My most serious injury was on my back. The knife went so deep it almost hit bone. I required 20 stitches,” he said.

When he was just 14 years old, Tobin was arrested for being in a gang fight. He was placed on police supervision for three years.

Money problems

In those years, Tobin played billiards for money and gambled heavily to supplement his income.

In his early 20s, he met a girl he wanted to marry. He left the gang and started a hawker stall with his younger brother selling Penang food.

Money was good. But by then Tobin was addicted to gambling.

“Marriage was good but I wasn’t. Even when I won a lot of money, I didn’t bring it home,” he said.

When his luck ran out, Tobin found himself owing a five-figure sum. He managed to pay it off.

Then, he found himself in debt for $400,000.

“It was too much. I couldn’t pay,” he said.

To make money quickly, he sold pirated CDs (compact discs) at pasar malams (night markets). Business boomed and before he knew it, he was in charge of a chain of businesses, bribing people to cover up his illegal dealings.

But he was arrested in a sting operation and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.

A bright light

In prison, he managed to get on a Work Release Scheme (WRS) during his last year. It allowed him to work by day and return to a community supervision centre by night.

But one day, his wife asked for a divorce.

“Because of that, I was no longer eligible for WRS. No family support. And I got put in a PC room,” he said, referring to protective custody.

PC is designed to keep prisoners from harm and from harming themselves. The prison officers were afraid that Tobin would try to take his own life.

“I didn’t want to kill myself. I wanted to get out and take revenge.”

“I didn’t want to kill myself,” Tobin said. “I wanted to get out and take revenge.”

He spent the day “in a blur”.

“Then, at midnight, I saw a light like a match light.

“It was soothing,” he recalled. “The more I looked at the light, the whiter it became and the calmer I felt.

“Then a voice spoke in my heart, ‘Do you want to take revenge?’

“The voice said, ‘Don’t think of revenge. Let Me show you what you have done.'”

 Tobin saw his life flash by “like a film”. 

“I saw all the bad things I had done – how I had been so bad to my wife and friends.

“Then the voice asked, ‘Do you still want to take revenge?’ I saw that everything was my fault and I wept.

“I saw the light get whiter and whiter. Then the voice said, ‘Do you want to follow Me?’”

Tobin replied: “Yes.”

“I didn’t know who He was. I thought it was a god from my days involved in another religion.”

An old ugly cross

When Tobin was waiting to be interviewed for a transfer to another prison, the prisoner next to him gave him a Bible.

“He said, ‘You look troubled.’ Then he told me to read a chapter of Proverbs a day.”

Though Tobin ended up using the Bible as a pillow, he did as he was advised.

“How did God know I did these bad things?”

“As I read, I felt like there were a lot of good things I didn’t do. But all the bad things, I did. The more I read, the more frightened I got.

“How did God know I did these things?”

Then he asked a friend for a Chinese Bible. His friend told him to read about the works of Jesus Christ in the New Testament of the Bible.

“As I read about how Jesus helped all these people, I asked Him to help me because I had done so many bad things.”

During one church service in prison, Tobin decided to become a Christian.

“The preacher led me to give my life to Jesus,” he said.

The preacher was Ps Don Wong, the founder and executive director of The New Charis Mission, a halfway house that operates a residential rehabilitation programme.

That night, Tobin had another supernatural encounter.

“When the cross fell on me … a deity I had allowed to possess me flew out of my mouth.”

“It was in the middle of the night. I saw an old, ugly cross. The cross fell on me and I shouted out.

“When I did, a deity I had allowed to possess me flew out of my mouth. I saw it. It looked exactly like the deity I used to pray to.

“It tried to go back into me but it couldn’t,” he said.

The next day when Tobin read the Bible, “it became clearer and clearer”.

Previously, he would get “sleepier and sleepier” as he read and would only understand bits and pieces. “But that morning, everything became clear.

“From that day onwards, I prayed, I read the Bible. It all came naturally. It was like something in my brain opened up.”

He gave up reading novels and started reading Christian books.

“That was how I got to know Jesus more and more.”

A free man?

When Tobin completed his prison sentence, he found himself homeless. 

But his mother invited him to live with her – they had not lived together since the divorce.

“It was awkward. I slept in the living room,” he said.

Wanting independence, he bought over a place in Geylang to lease to sex workers where they could ply their trade.

“I was a Christian but I still wanted to do bad things. But I felt no peace.”

“I was a Christian but I still wanted to do bad things. But I felt no peace,” Tobin admitted.

“I used to be so daring. I had the attitude Die, die lor. But now, I didn’t know where my courage went.”

Within a month, however, his plan fell through.

“I wanted to hire a stand-in to use his name to buy the place. Before I could do it, he got arrested. I couldn’t start my business.”

So Tobin accepted his sister’s offer to work in the family business making kueh (traditional Chinese cakes).

He moved out of his mother’s house and slept in the factory.

“Look! Pay attention!”

Meanwhile, Tobin tried settling into a church. Nothing seemed to fit until a cousin took him to Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC).

“I met an old friend who used to fight alongside me. We had the same background. So I felt comfortable.”

Tobin was baptised less than a year later, in November 2004.

At the church, he met the woman who would become his wife. They were both serving as ushers. 

One day while waiting to pick up friends to attend a gathering for the ushers, he felt a voice speak to his heart: “Look! Pay attention.”

When Tobin looked up, he caught sight of Siew May’s back as she walked away. Though he had seen her around, he had never spoken to her – until the gathering. 

Three years later, they got married.

Said Tobin: “I believed it was God who told me to look.”

Tobin also started serving in FCBC’s prison ministry. 

“I shared my testimony – how last time I was bad, and then I became good. But I wanted to do more. I wanted to tell others about Jesus as well.”

He also desired to go to Bible college.

He received confirmation from God to go ahead, via a pastor during a service at a halfway house.

“He said that God wanted a brother there to study at a Bible college. I didn’t dare answer.”

After the service, Tobin went up to the pastor, who gave him information about a Bible college.

For the next seven years, Tobin worked as a taxi driver while studying at one college, and subsequently at another where he obtained a degree in theology.

Miracle funding

Not long afterward, Tobin heard about a halfway house that was up for sale. He hit on the idea of buying it to help ex-addicts who were struggling – just as he had when trying to transition to a new life.  

“But I had no money for the deposit. So I told God, ‘If You want me to do it, give me the money’,” he recalled.

Tobin approached Christians he knew and was able to borrow the money he needed – the entire sum of $140,000.

He bought over Watchman’s Home and became its Executive Director.

“I had no money … So I told God, ‘If You want me to do it, give me the money’.”

To provide its residents with jobs, Watchman’s Home ran a moving company. But in the first two years after Tobin took over, the business lost money.

Then, Siew May found that they could apply for government funding and drew up a proposal. Unexpectedly, they were called up for an interview.

Tobin could not speak English well but he wanted to share his vision and passion. So he asked the interview panel if he could make his presentation in Mandarin.

“Among them was one person who did not understand Mandarin. Instead of rejecting me, the others on the panel offered to interpret,” he said.

He was eventually given a grant of over $200,000 – much more than what he had asked for. He was also given funds to buy a new lorry for the moving business.

“It was as if God gave us the money,” he said.

Not only was Tobin able to return all the money he had borrowed, he considered expanding the business.

But God had other plans.

“You have no heart”

In 2022, Tobin had a stroke, and caught Covid and tuberculosis – all at once. He was so sick that thoughts of expansion had to be put on hold.

It took him six months to recover.

In November that year, he was finally well enough to preach again. As he spoke, he had a strong feeling God telling him: “You have no heart.”

“The Watchman’s Home gives ex-addicts a place to stay, helps them find jobs, offers counselling … and restores their confidence.”

He prayed for a long time about it, and realised that he had become so caught up in the moving business that he had lost sight of Watchman’s mission – to provide a place for ex-addicts.

He had lost his “heart for the people”.

Convicted, he sold the lorries and closed the moving business. With the money from the sale, he turned Watchman’s Home into a charity renamed Watchman’s Home Community Services (WHCS).

“I do what I can but what I can’t, I tell God, ‘You have to do. I can’t’.”

It functions as what Tobin calls a “three-quarter-way house”.

He explained: “A halfway house helps stop addiction, but it doesn’t help ex-addicts integrate them into society. When they are no longer part of the strict routine, they go out and they fall again.

“The shelter plugs this gap between the halfway house and the community. It gives them a place to stay, helps them find jobs outside, offers counselling, support groups and helps to restore their confidence.”

Two residents have done well enough to move out and get a place together. Another has gone back to studying to earn a diploma in sports science.

Bridging the gap

Against all odds, Watchman’s Home turns 25 years old this May. God has kept it going, and has always provided the funds it needed, said Tobin.

Even for the 25th anniversary celebration, “I asked and one sponsor just sponsored everything”, Tobin shared. 

“I’ve always been like this – I do what I can but what I can’t, I tell God, ‘You have to do. I can’t.’

“In the past, I felt like it wasn’t about God’s work. It was more like running a moving service. All about money.

“Now I don’t think of money. I think of how to help people.”

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This story first appeared in Salt&Light in two parts. Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2. 

If you would like to know more about Jesus, click here to find a church near you.

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