Son of a Mother’s Vow

When Rev Dr Timothy Tow Siang Hui spoke to his congregation at the opening of 1976 after a quarter century’s ministry since 1950, he jovially remarked, “I’m preparing to serve with you till AD 2001, if the Lord tarries.” This is not at all impossible, for he is only 56 [88] years young today! How he was nurtured to become founding pastor Life Bible-Presbyterian Church at Gilstead Road happened like this.* Since his young days, even before he went to school, his devout mother would tell him from time to time, “My son, when you grow up, you are to be a pastor. You are my first son, and I have offered you to the Lord.”

As the boy grew up, he had to leave home and parents in Johor to come and stay with his preacher- grandfather in Singapore in order to go to school. At the manse of the English Presbyterian Mission Church (now Bethel Church) in Upper Serangoon, he began to learn what it was like to be a pastor. Grandfather’s salary paid by the EP Mission was $30 a month. (That was in the late twenties.)

“Mother, I don’t like to be a pastor,” said the boy pensively one day after he returned home on a school vacation. “See how small grandpa’s salary is!” Mother did not argue, nor did she try to impose her will on the young lad.

Repeating on another occasion the vow she had uttered to the Lord, she suddenly made this stupendous offer out of the blue, “Son, if you give your life to serve the Lord, I will send you to  America.” (She said this when the whole world was paralysed by the Great Slump of 1929-30.) 

In August-September 1935, China’s famed revivalist, Dr John Sung, visited Singapore. He took the Lion citadel, as it were, by storm. Thousands thronged the Telok Ayer Methodist Church and its downstairs hall and compound to hear this man of God, day and night, in a fortnight’s campaign. Dr Tow was among the hundreds gloriously saved. When the evangelist appealed for young people to yield their lives for full-time service at a meeting on September 8, 1935 (Dr Tow recalls dates with mimeographic memory), he was one of the first to go forward for the dedication.

“What Mother told me all those years,” he recalls, “flashed back instantaneously on my mind. It was Mother’s vow that quickened my steps up the pulpit.”

In 1937, Dr Tow passed his Senior Cambridge at the head of the class in Anglo-Chinese School. Having cooled off considerably from the religious fervour he had experienced three years before at the John Sung Revival, he proceeded to Raffles College—but only for one term.

“I took up Science merely for the sake of prestige, though I knew I should study theology,” he said. (But none of the theological colleges in Singapore today existed at that time.) “To take such a step with a double mind plunged me into the abyss of the first big failure in my young life. I had lost so much face that I hid myself at home, morose and dejected, for days on end. But such failure as was appointed of God for a higher purpose, as I now see it, led to even greater success.

“Since I loved language study and not science, I found an opening to the Singapore Government’s Interpreters Training Institute. This was a two-year course. By January 1, 1940, I had graduated and was posted to the Supreme Court.

“But soon I grew restless,” he continued, “I was ambitious. I wanted to be somebody in the world.” 

Ambition took him to a competitive exam under the Japanese regime to select two candidates for training as judicial officers. Dr Tow was one of the chosen.

After the War, the young man now in the prime of life was determined to pursue further the study of law. He gained admission to London University and Middle Temple and resigned from Government service on February 26, 1946. He booked a cargo boat costing ₤90, and was all set to sail.

It was at this juncture, while the vessel was still loading, that his mother died after a sudden illness. This held him back for a little season.

“I was not in the least disheartened by mother’s death. I was determined to go to London. To salve my conscience I quoted Scripture out of context like the Devil, ‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ but let me go my way. As for the vow I myself made to the Lord to serve Him full-time, I had it postponed 30 years at the back of my mind. I could serve the Lord, surely, when I grew older.

“Man proposes, God disposes. Five weeks after mother’s death, my seven- month old daughter took ill and died after an operation. When I rushed to her death- bed in hospital, I saw my wife hysterically pinching her in a torrent of tears. ‘Are you really dead, my baby, my darling?’ At the sight of this I fizzled like a punctured balloon. ‘What is life? It is like the vapour of morning-dew.’ No, I am not ‘the captain of my soul.’

“Suddenly I fell into a fainting sensation. I felt it was my turn now to die. I saw myself like a rich young ruler, but with feeble hanging hands relieving a million dollars from my clasp. All the glitters of the world before me vanished like smoke from a smouldering rubbish heap.

“I prayed, ‘Lord, if you give me back my life, I will serve you to the end. No more London, but theology in China.’”

From London to China, a right-about turn, indeed! He found his way to Shanghai where his aunt was, and from there on to Nanking to study under Dr Chia Yu Ming. While in Nanking, Miss Grace Jephson of the China Inland Mission recommended him to transfer to Faith Theological Seminary, USA.

Returning to Singapore in 1947 en route to the United States, he left his wife and children to the care of His people. As he set sail again, with highest hopes in that great land in the New World, he remembered the prophetic words his mother had spoken years before, “Son, if you give your life to serve the Lord, I will send you to America.”

The next three years saw him cloistered among theological books at Wilmington, Delaware where Faith Seminary was. He graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor of Divinity [now Master of Divinity].

Dr Tow returned to Singapore to pastor eight years (1950-1958) at the Presbyterian Life Church English Service, Prinsep Street. Realising that the Lord was calling him to start a Bible College, he returned to Faith Seminary to further preparation. His post- graduate studies earned him a Master’s in Sacred Theology. He was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Divinity by Shelton College in 1964.

Today, 15 years [46 years] after the founding of Far Eastern Bible College in an annex to Life Church, Gilstead Road, Dr Tow continues to be her Principal. Far Eastern Bible College is unique in that it is an independent theological school governed and supported entirely by Singaporeans, without any foreign financial aid. He shares his philosophy of training for FEBC.

“I would like to advise young men and women going into the ministry never to consider pay or prospects, because Jesus offered none. Jesus said, ‘If you are willing to die, come.’ That’s all. That’s one reason why I offer my students no prospects.

“I say instead, ‘If you are willing to give up everything for Christ, then from the lowest rung of the ladder, you will climb to the top. It’s God’s ladder, not yours!’

“The ministry is a call, not a profession. It is one you are in because God has called and you can’t help it. And it is the love of Christ that constrains you to the work. His love is the power of God from above sustaining us here below. So the secret is God’s grace. If He has not called us and we try to do His work for selfish ends, we will be crushed. The cross will be too heavy to carry.”

Indeed, the cross of grief has been a portion of what he has been called to bear. On the afternoon of April 19, 1965, his wife Nancy, daughter Le Anne and aunt Mrs Tow Keng Chuan were taken home “as by a whirlwind.” In a motor accident at Bidor, at the foot of Cameron Highlands.

“It was so sudden and so stunning,” he reminisced. “We were going up the Highlands in a convoy of seven cars, in exuberant spirits. When He took our loved ones away in a flash, I had not time to feel the seriousness of the whole matter. Gradually, it became very painful, but I thank God for His sustaining grace.

“I was bolstered by a verse from Job 13:15, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ I had not the slightest complaint against God. I submitted to His sovereign will.” In loving memory of the deceased ones, Dr Tow wrote:

To that mountain above the moon
Ye have soared away too soon!
But my God has called you to rest,
And His will for us is best

Blest are ye who died in the Lord,
And have found rest from your labour
And your works follow after you
One by one we say adieu!

Sixteen months after this “incident” (“I wouldn’t call it accident,” he said), he married Miss Ivy Tan. She was one of Dr Tow’s first three students at the College, and came into his life as a substitute prepared by the Lord Himself, “like the ram on Mount Moriah.”

With Ivy and their daughter Jemima, he was given by their Church a five-month vacation to Israel in 1969. He considers this “one of the happiest times in my life.” Instead of taking it easy as a vacation was meant to be, he found himself busier than ever. With opportunities for learning and ministry abounding, he studied at the American Institute for Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem, while serving as short-term missionary with the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions (USA).

“It is wonderful to go over the land with Bible in hand and visit all the places where our Lord had trod. To visit Golgotha and the Garden Tomb is a hallowing experience. The Sea of Galilee charms me most, and she has hardly changed since our Lord’s time!” Recently, he has even “imported” the Sea of Galilee right onto his College grounds!

Having “walked where Jesus walked” brought him great “stirrings of soul and heart.” This became the inspiration by which his sensitive soul found expression in poetry. Thus he was able to publish Songs and Verses from the Holy Land, a collection of 63 poems and songs written during his sojourn in Bethlehem.

Dr Tow has also translated from Chinese Jason Linn’s Pioneering in Dyak Borneo and many of John Sung’s Revival Sermons, which will be published in two volumes soon. In conjunction with the John Sung publications, he has written the biography of Evangelist Lim Puay Hian titled, In John Sung’s Steps. Dr Tow has moreover abridged Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volume I, Books I & II. This has been serialised in the Far Eastern Beacon and the Australian Beacon during the last several years. He is now in the final stages of abridging Vol II, Books III & IV. [The complete abridgement of Calvin’s Institutes, Books I-IV, was published in one volume in 1997 by the FEBC Press.]

Of his abridgement of Calvin’s theology, he says, “I was introduced to Calvin’s Institutes which was offered as an elective. I discovered it to my delight to be a gem of the greatest price.” He consequently perused through Calvin’s voluminous works during vacations, on his own, and re-studies and teaches it at Far Eastern Bible College. He has now begun teaching it at the Adult Sunday School Class at Life Church.

Lately, he has been visiting places—but not the big cities as before. “I like to go to the ‘ulus’” he said. A recent trip took him to the Kapuas River in West Kalimantan to visit Dyak pastor Barnabas Simin whom Life Church is supporting. “I went there by cargo boat the low way to share the experience of the people.” He plans to go again during the later part of this year.

“You are planning to go the ‘low way’ again?”

“Yes, as before.”

From his wide pastoral experience, he gives me this sermonette when I asked him to share an insight into his ministry.

“I may say one thing for the Sunday pulpiteer. We who are at our regular jobs find that ‘familiarity breeds contempt!’ A pastor who’s been in a Church for a decade or two may feel weary and humdrum. We must not lose courage. We must increase our faith.

“When an evangelist comes from abroad and gets a rousing reception, with souls coming forward, we may be overwhelmed with an inferiority complex. I’ve sometimes felt like this, but that is wrong.

“We should rather see it in this light: he is a soldier, and I am a soldier. It is the ammunition we carry that counts. If, however, we are firing without much faith, like one shivering at the battle-front, of course, we will miss the mark. It is faith that aims. We need the kind of faith that believes what we’re doing is appointed of God and therefore must succeed.

“You see, the Gospel is dynamite. It is the atom bomb of God. So we must launch it with unflinching faith, believing that His Word will not return unto Him void. Unless we believe the Word we preach will bring good results, how can we expect any result at all?”

(A Reprint from Impact Magazine, April 1977)

* Believing in a 100% perfect Bible without any mistake, the Rev Dr Timothy Tow resigned from Life B-P Church in August 2003 to found True Life B-P Church in October the same year.

A Testimony from Dr Arthur Steele (Email: August 30, 2008)

Dear Dr Timothy Tow,

I am 88 years old and getting closer to seeing the Lord, as you are. I also would like to serve the Lord to age 95.

I think it was about 1960 when Phil Clark and I visited you. You impressed me as a leader under clear orders from the Lord to build a college to train the young people to preach and to teach in Singapore and beyond. You were so positive in all that you said and so grounded in God’s Word as you have been all these years.

As you have taught God’s Word so faithfully over the years you consistently exposed the subtle and blatant departure from God’s Word in the major denominations just as the false prophets distorted God’s words to the people in Jerusalem. Jeremiah the godly prophet said in Jeremiah 23:14, “I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing:” In verse 15, “for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.” In verse 16, “they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.” Verse 28, is a great summary verse among the preachers of God’s Word. “The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD.”

Please be assured of my prayers for you and Jeffrey Khoo as you wait on the Lord in the days ahead.

Art Steele

Chancellor, Clearwater Christian College (Editor: Dr Arthur Steele was a member of FEBC’s very first Board of Directors, November 1961.)

Dr Arthur Steele and Dr Timothy Tow standing before the L-Annex of the Far Eastern Bible College at 9A Gilstead Road (Year 2005)