FAR EASTERN BIBLE COLLEGE
We thank the Lord for the close of another successful semester. No dropouts. Both faculty and students persevered to the end. Elder Han Soon Juan who had to cancel his English classes halfway last semester due to illness is back teaching at full tank. We have a number of elderly lecturers, viz. the Rev Koa Keng Woo, the Rev Stephen Khoo and Mrs Ivy Tow, all well past threescore years and ten and still going strong. Rev Koa is 87. We praise the Lord for granting them the health and strength to continue serving at FEBC. We continue to see good attendance at our Basic Theology for Everyone (BTFE) night classes with many registering for credit working towards their certificates. Theology is not only for the clergy but also laity.
The July–November 2016 semester ended with a thanksgiving service on Friday November 11. Joshua Yong, a ThM graduate of FEBC and preacher at Calvary Pandan BPC, was the Lord’s messenger. He spoke on “The Challenges Young Preachers Face in the Ministry.” Mrs Leanne Joseph an expectant mother and almost done with her MRE gave her testimony of God’s goodness and grace, Deborah and Judith sang a hymn about walking with Jesus, and the students presented a skit entitled “When Rapture Comes.”
One special item at the thanksgiving service was the video of student life on campus. Produced by the students, it gives a good introduction to FEBC especially for aspiring students. You can view it at FEBC’s YouTube channel (google “youtube febc college”). FEBC is sometimes likened to a monastery but it is hardly. Even if seen as one, a Reformed seminary is spiritually liberating and lively. You see this in the video. Students live together with much life and joy unlike the Augustinian monastery that Luther was in before his conversion.
Most of the foreign students will be returning to their home countries during the college vacation and serving in their respective churches. The new semester will start on Tuesday January 3 with a day of prayer as usual. We expect eight new students when school reopens. Dorm space is getting tight especially the men’s dorms. We will do our best to accommodate all single students.
In the new semester (January–April 2017), the BTFE course offerings are (1) Genesis by the Rev Dr Quek Suan Yew, and (2) Eschatology by the Rev Dr Jeffrey Khoo. The online courses are Systematic Theology II: Anthropology, (2) Old Testament Poetry, and (3) Petrine Epistles. Go to www.febc.edu.sg for details. A good number of alumni have signed up for the new online In-Ministry courses, a few to read for their Doctor of Religious Education (DRE) degree.
In the new year, some members of the faculty will be examining candidates for ordination—Pr Lal Lian Uk (MDiv 2006) from Myanmar will be examined on 10 January 2017, his second. Pr Clement Chew of Tabernacle BPC is in the pipeline.
We praise the Lord that the Rev Joseph Poon (MDiv 2012) is now Pastor of BPCWA (Bible-Presbyterian Church of Western Australia, Perth) elected by the congregation on October 16, 2016. We praise the Lord for raising up His servants to fill the pulpit and pastoral ministries of our B-P Churches locally and overseas. FEBC is fulfilling a great need to keep our B-P Churches biblically and spiritually alive today. The Rev Dr Paul Contento, a good friend of FEBC, had rightly said, “Without the Bible College, the Church will die.”
Since 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, a 4th Reformation Pilgrimage is planned, May 10-22, 2017 (DV). Before the Pilgrimage will be the Daily Vacation Bible College (DVBC) in the first week of May at the Resort Lautan Biru, FEBC’s campus in Mersing. God willing, the Principal will teach “The Seven Stars of the Protestant Reformation.” “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation” (Heb 13:7).
We look forward to the new year. May the Lord bless us with a good one.
SEA OF GALILEE, SEA OF LIFE
There is a Jewish saying, “The Lord has created seven seas, but the Sea of Galilee is his delight.” The Sea of Galilee is indeed a beautiful sea shaped like a harp. It is a Sea full of life. Jesus performed many miracles and taught many things by the Sea. It is no wonder that the Rev Dr Timothy Tow, FEBC’s founding principal, made a fish pond in the shape of that blessed Sea in the grounds of the college to remind Lifers and FEBCers that they like the Sea of Galilee should be God’s delight.
But FEBC’s “Sea of Galilee” which was so full of life turned into a sea of death when the water mains underneath the road beside the college grounds burst in the early morning of Monday November 14, 2016. The water gushed out from the earth and flowed into the premises and into the “Sea of Galilee” (henceforth “the pond”).
It was destructive. It led to the death of the pond’s inhabitants. One student remarked that it looked a little like the Genesis Flood when “all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up” and water gushed out from underneath the earth. 400 fish died that night under the spell of the Super Moon.
The students cleaned up the pond the next day. Thankfully there is a remnant that survived. This remnant will reproduce and replenish the pond once more just like “the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward”; just like the animals that went out of the ark, “they may breed abundantly … and be fruitful, and multiply.”
What spiritual lesson is there for us? Surely in the midst of a deadly and destructive world, the Lord will protect and preserve us, and may we like the Sea of Galilee be full of Jesus, full of life, always renewing, always giving. As the Rev Tow was wont to say, “Galilee that gives and gives is ever full. The Dead Sea that gets and gets is dead empty.” This is in line with what the Apostle Paul said in Acts 20:35 quoting our Lord, “I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
SEKOLAH TINGGI TEOLOGIA CALVARY BATAM
The Sekolah Tinggi Teologia Calvary Batam (Calvary Batam Bible College) is the brainchild of the Rev Kiantoro Lie, an alumnus of FEBC and the pastor of Calvary Batam BPC. He founded the College in 1999. The faculty comprises mainly FEBC graduates.
Since then it has seen two graduation exercises. The first batch of students graduated in 2008. November 14, 2016 saw the second with five receiving their diplomas.
I was invited to be the graduation speaker. I spoke on “The Four Aspects of the Great Commission” (Matt 28:18–20). My student Peter Yoksan, MDiv and ThM graduate of FEBC, ably interpreted my message into Bahasa Indonesia. As God had raised foreign missionaries like Ludwig Nommensen in 1862 to evangelise the Bataks in Sumatra, and E L Denninger in 1865 to the Ono Niha of Nias, it is now for the Indonesians themselves to reach out to their own people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not enough just to preach the Gospel but also to teach the whole Bible. Christianity is not just John 3:16. “The Unfinished Commission” a hymn written by the Rev Dr Timothy Tow translated into Indonesian was sung to reinforce the message. The Rev Daniel Arianto, another FEBC alumnus and pastor of a Baptist church in Jakarta, prayed for the graduands.
Starting and running a Bible College requires a mandate from God. Without God’s mandate, it is simply vanity and vainglory. JK
