PASTORAL CHAT
My Dear Readers
Last Lord’s Day I ministered at Berean’s new place of worship somewhere behind Lavender St. It leads from a back lane to a Super Food Court which also faces Jalan Besar. Two Life Church Session members, Elder Tan Nee Keng and Deacon Wee Hian Kok are now worshipping at Berean and studying at FEBC.
This Lord’s Day I am called to preach at the 18th Anniversary Service of Tabernacle B-P Church at Siglap, 3.30 pm, by Elder John Leong. Now, here comes another B-P Church celebrating her 1st Anniversary. It is the Gethsemane B-P Mission Church in Cebu, Philippines, July 3, 05. In line with this they would appreciate it if I could write a short greeting to the Church to be printed in their Church bulletin on that day.
Why me? Because the young Filipino Pastor there is a graduate of FEBC with a growing congregation of 50–60 supported by Rev. Dr. Das Koshy, pastor of Gethsemane BPC, Singapore. His name is Reggor Galarpe.
Here are my greetings to this B-P Filipino Church, “May many more Filipino students come and study at FEBC in Singapore and return to establish many more BP Churches in Cebu and beyond for Christ is soon coming.” – T. Tow. In regard to Christ’s Coming, Jesus says “there will be an extension of the gospel in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14). Our shifting to RELC has broadened our contact with not a few other nationalities. Let our members who find them sitting next in church show their welcome. We have observed among them Indonesians, Australians, Indians, Malaysians, Americans, mainland Chinese, etc. Those who come regularly to True Life we would bring into the sheepfold, i.e. they must know whether Christ’s death and resurrection has saved them. If they have found the Saviour they must prepare to get baptised at the next Church Anniversary.
If we hear of another B-P Church reaching out to found another B-P Church, e.g. Tee Chung Seng of Kelapa Sawit now in Jemaluang, 13 miles south of Mersing, we must try to help them.
Last Wednesday news was received that Dr. Arthur Steele was hospitalised and his daughters have asked us to pray for him. We prayed for him on Friday, our Prayer Meeting night. Lord, have mercy.
– T. T.
KNOWING OUR BIBLE-PRESBYTERIAN FAITH
by Dr Jeffrey Khoo
Why should we know our Bible-Presbyterian Faith? Don’t we know it already? Every member catechised and baptised in the B-P Church should know why he is B-P, but sadly, this is sometimes not the case. Some may know it in the head, but not in the heart. Some know it in name, but not in practice. Some may believe in the B-P Faith, but do not care to defend it. These are the fence sitters who can smile at both truth and error. On the Bible issue, the KJV is good, but the NIV, NASB, TEV, RSV, CEV, ESV etc are also good (maybe even better, their distorted translations, and their underlying corrupt text notwithstanding).
Will our sons defend the Faith? There is a real need today for Protestant sons to know the Historic Christian Faith not just doctrinally but also polemically in the spirit of Jude 3, “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
How we thank God for the 16th Century Protestant Reformation! How we thank God for the brave and godly servants like Luther, Calvin, and Knox whom the Lord had raised to defend the Faith. Without the Light of the Reformation, we would still be in Roman Catholic darkness and bondage today.
Reformation is unending and ever continuing. We remember the 20th Century Reformation Movement under Dr Carl McIntire. The B-P Church and all faithful fundamentalists fought hard and well against modernism, ecumenism and neoevangelicalism. It was a battle for the Bible, and the battle was fought and won. The doctrine of Verbal Plenary Inspiration (VPI) has become the orthodox expression of our belief in a totally inerrant and infallible Scripture.
The battle for the Bible continues into the 21st Century. Now the battle concerns the doctrine of the Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP) of Scripture. Neo-fundamentalists are denying that the Church has a perfect Bible today. They claim that the Bible was perfect only in the past when it was first given, but no longer perfect today. God may have inspired His words perfectly, but did not preserve His words perfectly. They teach that Christians do not have all of God’s words today, and even if they do, they cannot be totally sure where the inspired words are. There is no tangible Word of God that is infallible and inerrant in every way today. Every Hebrew text is impure, every Greek text is impure, every translation is impure. There is simply no such thing as a perfect Bible, no such thing as a perfect Written Standard today. If that be the case, how can we be sure that Christianity is true? If the Bible today contains mistakes, how can we know for certain that our faith is sure? “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom 10:17). But they insist that the Word of God is impure and imperfect today because God did not preserve His words infallibly. If we do not have an infallible and inerrant Scripture today, then is not our faith vain? Are we still not in our sins? Christians are a most miserable lot for sure!
But our Protestant Confessions of Faith since the days of the Reformation affirm that our Scriptures have been “kept pure in all ages” (Westminster Confession, I:9). We have a perfect Bible today, and on the basis of the doctrine of the special providential preservation of God’s words in the original languages, Christians by the logic of faith can know for sure where the inspired words today are found or located (Heb 11:3, 6).
Despite the sure teaching of Scripture (Ps 12:6-7, Matt 5:18, 24:35), and the clear testimony of the Protestant Confessions concerning the perfect preservation of Scripture, so-called fundamentalists today say that the perfect preservation of the Holy Scriptures is a “new doctrine.” They say that God did not promise that He will preserve His words infallibly to the jot and tittle. Those who teach the 100% perfection of the Bible today are branded as “heretics.” They accuse those who teach that the Bible is 100% perfect and without any mistakes of being “ungodly” and “unscholarly.” The godly and scholarly man today is the one who agrees with the socalled “facts” and “evidences” that the Bible today contains some “insignificant mistakes,” and has “built-in redundancies.” If asked about whether the Bible today has mistakes or not, the best that Christians can say today is, “There are no mistakes in the Bible that should cause us any worry.” According to these neofundamentalists, claiming that “The Bible has no mistakes whatsoever, period” is extreme and untenable.
“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do” (Ps 11:3)?
Our foundations are not destroyed and can never be. In my article—“Identifying Our Bible-Presbyterian Faith”— published in the 50th anniversary magazine of Life B-P Church, I wrote concerning our Roots, our Book, our Lord, our Work, our Hope. But let me restate them in light of the present battle for the VPP of Scripture.
(1) Our Roots: The B-P Faith is rooted in the Protestant Reformation and in Biblical Fundamentalism. Our roots tell us that we need to keep on “earnestly contending for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). Calvin in the 16th Century and McIntire in the 20th Century had their own spiritual and doctrinal battles to fight, and we have ours (read The Singapore B-P Church Story by her founding pastor Rev Dr Timothy Tow). In the 21st Century, it is for the perfect preservation of the Holy Scriptures. The 16th and 20th Century Reformation cry of Sola Scriptura (Scriptures Alone) must ring true even today as we seek to defend…
(2) Our Book: The B-P Faith is anchored solely on the divinely inspired and supernaturally preserved Word of God. The Bible in our hands today is not only 100% inspired but also 100% preserved (Ps 12:6-7, 2 Tim 3:16, 1 Pet 1:23-25). The Bible today is in the 100% inspired and 100% preserved Hebrew and Greek Scriptures on which the Authorised KJV is based, and not in the corrupt Westcott and Hort text underlying the inferior modern English versions. There is only one Bible today (the inspired and preserved original language Bible), because we have only one Lord. (Read my books—Kept Pure in All Ages: Recapturing the Authorised Version and the Doctrine of Providential Preservation; and KJV Questions and Answers, accessible from www.febc.edu.sg/press.htm.)
(3) Our Lord: The B-P Faith believes in a Saviour who is 100%God and 100%Man in one Person—Jesus Christ—the only living and true God and Saviour of the world. Our Lord and Saviour who is all-powerful and allknowing surely could not have allowed any of His inspired words (not just the doctrines) to be lost for He had promised to preserve them to the last iota (Matt 5:18). Our Lord can only tell the truth; He cannot lie (Rom 3:4). His promises are true and He has kept His words. If this be the case, what then is our duty?
(4) Our Work: The B-P Faith is a militant faith which separates from all forms of unbelief and apostasy. It is the duty of every Christian to believe the Bible and defend the Bible wholeheartedly and courageously against the insidious attacks on the Scriptures by neoevangelicalism which says the Bible is imperfectly inspired (no perfect Bible in the past), and neo-fundamentalism which says the Bible is imperfectly preserved (no perfect Bible in the present). Confusion arises when no clear stand is taken, when lines are blurred. There is a vital need to take a separatist stand and a declared position “for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:9 cf 2 Cor 6:14-7:1, 2 Thess 3:16-14).We seek God’s approval, not man’s. The compromiser is the one who seeks the popular vote. But one with God is majority! (For a critique of neofundamentalism, read my articles, “The Emergence of Neo-Fundamentalism,” The Burning Bush [January 2004], and “Bob Jones University, Neo-Fundamentalism, and Biblical Preservation,” The Burning Bush [July 2005] in www.febc.edu.sg/burningbush.htm. It is no surprise that neo-fundamentalists today are prepared to abandon the good name of “Biblical fundamentalism” in favour of a rather vague “preservationism” or “paleoevangelicalism” as suggested recently.)
(5) Our Hope: The B-P Faith believes in the glorious promise that once a Christian is saved, he is always saved. The God of the Christian Bible who has promised to preserve every one of His inspired Hebrew and Greek words has also promised to preserve every one of His saints who have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ (John 10:27-29, Rom 8:28-39). We reject the mistaken Arminian view that a Christian can fall into and out of grace—saved at one moment, and unsaved the next. The Lord will never disown His children even when they are sometimes disobedient, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb 12:6). Every Christian will surely get to heaven. The Holy Spirit who indwells every believer guarantees it (Eph 1:13-14). (For in-depth study, read Calvin’s Institutes Abridged by Rev Dr Timothy Tow available at www.febc.edu.sg/press.htm.)
We are confident that the foundations of our faith are sure and secure. Our foundations are none other than the Living Word—our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who is “the same yesterday, today and for ever,” and the Written Word—the 100% inspired and 100% preserved Hebrew and Greek words of the Reformation Text that are incorruptible, unchangeable, and forever infallible and inerrant, that form the basis of all faithful translations of the Protestant Reformation.
As Bible-Presbyterians, we are BIBLE first, then Presbyterians. But certain pastors and presbyters today override the Bible and criticise the Bible they hold in their hands. The question and challenge of the hour remains: Will history repeat itself? Is this the generation that will see the downfall of the B-P Church? Will B-P sons deny the Faith, or will they defend the Faith? O Lord, save us from the apostasy to come!
