FEBC’S 40TH GRADUATION SERVICE TONIGHT
On the Lord’s Day 10 May 2015, FEBC will hold its 40th Graduation Service at Calvary Pandan Bible-Presbyterian Church, 6 pm. The Rev Dr Das Koshy will be the Lord’s messenger. True Life and Calvary Pandan choirs will sing. There is a special dinner after the service to thank God for how He has kept and watched over FEBC all these years. We shall eat with joy and gratitude. All are welcome.
A special edition of The Burning Bush to commemorate the Lord’s deliverance of FEBC from those who sought her demise will be given out tonight. This special edition is titled “Purified Seven Times: In Thanksgiving for God’s Preservation of the King James Bible and the Far Eastern Bible College.” In it you will find doctrinal and historical articles explaining and chronicling FEBC’s battle for the Bible and testimonies from those who love the College. These testimonies are precious for they show that FEBC is not alone in this battle for the Bible. There are yet 7000 who have not bowed their knees to Baal (1 Kgs 19:18). They share what FEBC means to them and what they personally had to go through during the days of the lawsuit when Life BPC took FEBC to court over the doctrine of Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP). God has indeed kept His words pure as promised, and His promise to preserve His servants (Ps 12:6-7).
On Monday, FEBC will head to Mersing for her annual retreat at the Resort Lautan Biru, our campus across the Causeway. We will be there for three days and two nights (11-13 May). The Resort Lautan Biru, the brainchild of our founding pastor and principal—the Rev Dr Timothy Tow—is a home away from home. Facing the South China Sea, the Resort is an idyllic place for a spiritual getaway. Clean and economical, the Resort is popular with smaller churches and fellowship groups.
FEBC will be on vacation until 20 July 2015. Students can look forward to a well-deserved break. Most of our foreign students will return to their home country to reunite with family and to serve in their respective churches.
THE BURNING BUSH DEFENDS, EDUCATES AND INFORMS
Sang Kipyegon Charles
The Burning Bush is an outstanding journal in defence of the Christian Faith in these last days characterised by compromise and apostasy. I came in contact with The Burning Bush which is the theological journal of the Far Eastern Bible College (FEBC) through Bomet Bible Institute (BBI). Since then I have come to treasure the journal as the best because it articulates every issue at hand based on the Word of God. Firstly, when the doctrine of Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP) of the Scripture came under severe attack, the journal greatly supplemented the teachings that we received in BBI and FEBC. It supplied a great wealth of instructions proving the doctrine plainly as a biblical truth based upon the very Word of God.
Secondly, the journal provided a clear chronology of events which finally ended in Singapore’s Court of Appeal between FEBC and Life BPC regarding VPP. When I joined FEBC in July 2009, the case was still fresh in court. We were unsure whether we would complete our studies or whether it would come to an abrupt end. Life in FEBC for the next four years was not easy; yet it was the best time to learn how to live by faith from day to day. The student body united together to pray for divine intervention in the case during school days and holidays. During this period, there was a lot of misinformation going around about VPP and FEBC’s position. However, The Burning Bush was a beacon of light in clouds of darkness that brought forth all the necessary information in order to educate and rebut false allegations against the doctrine and the college.
For these reasons, among many others, the journal is not only part of my library for reference in theological issues, it also gives updates regarding our beloved Alma Mater. It is therefore a rich piece of writing and I would not like to miss any issue. May God bless FEBC and the ministry of The Burning Bush as you celebrate God’s faithfulness all these years.
[Charles Sang (BTh 2011, MDiv 2013) is a preacher at Ongata Rongai AGUC, Nairobi, Kenya.]
I LOVE FEBC
Rev Hien Nguyen
It is always my joy to hear about the Far Eastern Bible College (FEBC), to talk about her, to pray for her and to write about her, my Alma Mater. Every time when I recall my days at FEBC, my heart is filled with thanks to God, my Heavenly Father, to Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour, and to the Holy Spirit my Comforter, Teacher and Guide. It was by God’s providential grace alone that I was led to FEBC, to meet my beloved founding Principal of the FEBC and the founding Pastor of Life Bible-Presbyterian Church, the late Rev Dr Timothy Tow, who kindly welcomed me to FEBC after I had decided to leave the Trinity Theological College due to her liberal, modernist, ecumenical, and compromising stands. I joined FEBC in July 2000, and enjoyed the blessed, sound, and biblical teaching and training from godly and Bible-believing Principal and lecturers. How I thank God for His grace and mercy! Praise the Lord!
It is also God’s providence that I am one of the eyewitnesses to what had happened to FEBC and the opposition and persecutions Rev Dr Timothy Tow, Dr Jeffrey Khoo and the FEBC Board of Directors and Faculty suffered from Life BPC leaders who were against our faith in the perfect Word of God, inerrant, infallible, without any mistake, not only in the original Texts (Autographs) but also in the divinely preserved Texts (Apographs), even the Traditional Hebrew Text (Masoretic Text) and the Traditional Greek Text (Textus Receptus) underlying the King James Bible. Personally, I had loved and read God’s Word, the Holy Bible, with much faith, thirst and hunger before reading a book that casts doubt on God’s Word through textual criticism. It was miserable as I had to turn to so-called “scholarly” men and books! It is by God’s grace that my faith in His Word was restored with the doctrine of the Verbal and Plenary Preservation of the Scriptures (VPP), which is based on the Holy Scriptures and our faith in the Verbal and Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures (VPI) (Ps 12:6-7; Matt 5:18; 24:35 etc) that was taught at FEBC when the opposition from several of Life Church leaders occurred in 2002. Thank God for providing some faithful prayer partners like Jonathan, Nelson and later Chang Ha to join me to pray for Rev Tow and FEBC.
It was a great pain for me when in August 2003 I heard that Rev Tow had to resign from the office of Pastor of Life BPC that he had founded, loved, and laboured hard for her growth for 53 years! After that, we truly thanked God for opening a door for Rev Tow to found True Life BPC, starting with the FEBC Worship Service held at the RELC on the first Sunday of October 2003. We continued praying for FEBC every day, and how we thanked God when we could complete one semester after another until we graduated! The Lord always honours those who honour Him and His Word (1 Sam 2:31). Without God’s grace, God’s Word and the biblical training at FEBC, I would never be what I am today, and that is why I have loved FEBC and prayed for her. With the sound teaching and training at FEBC, especially the original languages of the Scriptures, I now turn to, depend on, trust in and submit to God and His Word alone, and not men and their words. All thanks, praise and glory be to the Lord alone!
Satan does not need to waste his time and energy to attack professing and compromising “Christians” and pastors, but he will spare no effort to attack faithful Christians and pastors who seriously believe and practise the Word of God to the jot and the tittle, and then faithfully teach it and preach it to others. It was a great pain for me again when I heard that Life BPC leaders sued FEBC to evict her from her birthplace and to take over FEBC with their own personnel and programmes in September 2008! However, we continued trusting in our good, faithful and sovereign God, humbly and earnestly crying unto Him with prayers. Our faith was tested when Dr Jeffrey Khoo emailed and informed me that the verdict was in favour of Life BPC! During the court case, all True Life BPC and Life BPC leaders and members prayed to God fervently. Thus, whose prayers would God listen to? Thank God for His sufficient grace that we did not give up our faith in Him and His Word in our prayers for the Court Appeal, knowing that Life BPC’s joy would not last long. And exactly, our faithful and sovereign God did hear His children’s humble prayers and defend FEBC and grant FEBC the victory at the Court of Appeal in April 2011! And later, God has granted FEBC another victory over Life BPC’s lawsuit against FEBC concerning the financial issue and the usage of the premises. How glad and joyful I am with many thanks and praise to God for His help and deliverance of FEBC and for blessing FEBC all these years!
To the brethren who are looking for a faithful Bible College to attend, I would heartily and highly recommend the Far Eastern Bible College and pray that you will also enjoy the blessed time and days with sound and biblical teaching and training at FEBC as I did. Amen.
[The Rev Hien Nguyen (MDiv 2003, ThM 2004) is the pastor of Brisbane Bible-Presbyterian Church, and Vietnamese Bible-Presbyterian Church in Brisbane, Australia.]
2ND REFORMATION PILGRIMAGE
A group of 42 from 11 churches will take part in FEBC’s 2nd Reformation Pilgrimage, this time to England and Scotland, from 15 to 26 May 2015.
The 16th century Reformation did not begin and end in Europe, it spread to the British Isles. We shall see God’s good hand at work in the lives of His saints like John Wycliffe (the morning star of the Reformation), John Knox (firebrand of the Reformation), C H Spurgeon (the prince of preachers), John Wesley (founder of Methodism), John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim’s Progress), William Carey (the father of modern missions), the pilgrim fathers and many others. May all pilgrims be moved to serve the Lord the way they did.
One highlight of this pilgrimage will be our visit to New Life Bible-Presbyterian Church at 44 Salusbury Road, London for our first Lord’s Day worship and fellowship. They have invited me to preach at the morning and evening services. They have also kindly invited us to lunch after the service.
We pray for journey mercies and a blessed time of spiritual learning and reflection. Pilgrims who submit a research journal will earn two credits towards their Certificate of Religious Knowledge (Due date: November 13, 2015). JK
NEPAL QUAKE: KATHMANDU BPC SAFE
Here’s report from Preacher Rajan (Email: 2 May 2015):
“Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank God we all are safe. Indeed it was 7.9 r.s. earthquake. Gorkha, Lamjung, Dhading, Lalitpur, Vaktapur, Kathmandu, Sindhupalchouck, Dolakha and some other districts were badly affected. When the earthquake happened, we were in church and at that time I was preaching about the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ. We felt the earthquake but we were all safe and came out quickly from church to the open area. For 4-5 days we stayed outside near the church building under a tent. Thank God for His protection. But it is sad that three churches were badly affected and one of them is near our area where about 25 people died and another church where about 35-40 people died and one is called Ri V.D.C. of Dhading, where more than 50 people died. Now we are thinking of collecting some funds and going to affected areas to give them food, tents or some needy things with tracts. Do continue to pray for Nepal.”
We thank the Lord for the protection of His people. We can also do our part to help them. “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” (Gal 6:10). JK
