JOHN SUNG: “A PROBLEMATIC STORY”?

The Trinity Theological Journal of 2013 published by Trinity Theological College (TTC) in Singapore contains an article on John Sung written by the Rev Canon Dr Michael Nai-Chiu Poon, an Anglican priest and lecturer at TTC and director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia.

The Rev Poon’s article is titled “Interpreting John Sung’s Legacy in Southeast Asia” (pp133-157). In his article, he says that the John Sung story is “a problematic story”. He accuses authors Timothy Tow, Leslie Lyall, William Schubert and others who had written on John Sung for “spreading misinformation in the retelling and republication process.” He claims that John Sung was not what people said he was, and what happened in the Asian Awakening in the 1930/40s did not truly happen as told. Since there was to the Rev Poon a “reimagining” of John Sung in the many “unscholarly” accounts of his life and ministry, he recommends the use of historical criticism to deconstruct the “tale”, “narrative” and “problematic story” of John Sung. It is thus no surprise that when the Rev Poon presented his paper to an academic audience in Singapore a few years ago, “it was greeted with a sense of bemusement and suspicion.”

Unbelief is rife in the Christian universities and seminaries today. The liberals and modernists in the name of “scholarship” have a sceptical attitude towards the biblical and historical accounts of the person and work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Now, they attempt to cast doubt on the work of God and His Spirit in the life and ministry of His servant John Sung. It must be pointed out that the historical-critical method and its quest for the “Historical Jesus” has blinded modernistic scholars to the living and true God who is both Creator and Saviour, and the truth of His wonderful providence in history and in the lives of His saints. “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matt 7:20).

Although the biographies of John Sung were not written under divine inspiration and must be read with biblical and spiritual discernment in the light of the perfect standard of the Canonical Scriptures, it must be noted that many of the writers on the life of John Sung like our founding pastor—the Rev Dr Timothy Tow—wrote as eyewitnesses to what they had seen and heard. Another eyewitness was the Rev Dr Paul Contento who laid the foundation stone of the Far Eastern Bible College and was a missionary to China. Hereunder is the Rev Contento’s personal testimony of his encounter with John Sung which was published in the Life B-P Weekly of 29 March 1987. “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” (2 Cor 13:1). JK

MY ENCOUNTER WITH DR JOHN SUNG

The Rev Paul Contento

Dr John Sung had the Power. “What power?” you may ask. He had the power spoken of in Acts 1:8: “You shall receive power after the HoIy Spirit has come upon you.”

I began church planting on the China-Mongolian border of Ningsia Province. After eight years of relentless, seven days a week itinerant preaching, people’s hearts seemed as dry and barren as the sand dunes in the area.

Around, 1933, we began hearing of a Bethel Band consisting of five very bright young Chinese evangelists having much success in bringing revival to many churches in the main cities of China. Christians were truly repenting of their sins, and the transformation in their lives made them strong witnesses to the unconverted.

The star revivalist was a Dr John Sung with a doctorate in chemistry from Ohio State University, who having had a deep spiritual experience and renewal of the Holy Spirit, threw his doctorate parchment into the sea on his way back to China. He was so dynamic and dramatic that people came to listen to him and not the others, so it was inevitable that the team eventually split up and Dr Sung campaigned not only in the cities of China but in most of the countries of Southeast Asia. Where he went churches were revived, teaching seminars were held and witnessing bands were formed. Pastors, elders, deacons came under conviction of sin, and when they confessed and changed, whole congregations were transformed.

In 1938, Dr Sung held a campaign in Kunming, S W China with the same results. Then he came out to Tali in west Yunnan where we were temporarily working. Because of a typhoon, few of the tribes came to the meetings, so he began with only 50 people in the audience. He was our guest for two weeks. He preached three times a day—morning, afternoon and evening—two hours each time. We met at meal times and engaged him in some conversations, but he ate sparsely and kept to his room until preaching time.

One day he told us he was going to pray for us missionaries. He said, “Come at two o’clock.” We met and he asked us to kneel down. There was no excitement. I was not feeling anything. Then suddenly he put his hands on my head and said, “In the Name of Jesus, be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Suddenly, I felt like an electric shock go right through me from my head to my feet. I began to tremble and the shock waves continued for some time. When we left the room, I did not tell anyone, not even my wife. But I knew that I was a changed person. Up until then I preached from a sense of duty, but now I suddenly loved to preach the Gospel. The church preaching hall open to the street was mostly closed because neither the missionaries nor the church evangelist cared to preach in it. Now I began to preach, and for three months preached every day with much joy and pleasure in doing so.

The Word of God became more real and I could preach with a zeal I never thought I had in me. It is over 40 years since that experience, but even now, when my mind goes back to that experience, I feel a new urge to witness at every opportunity. It has been a driving force in my life.

Read John Sung My Teacher by the Rev Dr Timothy Tow. Available at the book table and FEBC Bookroom, 9A Gilstead Road (Tel: 62549188).

PLANNING TO STUDY IN THE USA? READ THIS FIRST!

Freefall of the American University: How Our Colleges Are Corrupting the Minds and Morals of the Next Generation by Jim Nelson Black (Nashville: WND Books, 2004), 366 pages. Available at the book table.

The fate of the next generation is in your hands. When you send your children off to college, do you know where your money is going? Do you know what they’re being taught?

According to author, educator, and researcher Jim Nelson Black, the one thing they’re not being taught is the truth. Instead, he says in this provocative analysis, they’re being “intellectually scarred, morally neutered, socially and intellectually programmed.” American institutions of higher learning, says Black, are “responsible for the collapse of educational standards and a debasement of morality that is unprecedented in American history.”

With hundreds of disturbing examples and dozens of powerful first-person interviews with faculty, students, and alumni of America’s premier universities, Black puts the reader right in the middle of one of the most important controversies of our day. Freefall of the American University presents an eye-opening assessment of where we stand, where things went wrong, and what must be done to turn it around.– publisher’s blurb

QUESTION FROM AN ACADEMIC

In a recent email, I was asked this question by an Oxford PhD:

Dear Dr Khoo,

If possible, could you briefly let me know what you will think as the 5 to 10 most critical issues that the church faces today?

My reply:

Thank you for your question. The single most critical issue facing the church today is: The denial of the Reformation and Reformed doctrine of the verbal and plenary preservation (VPP) of the Holy Scriptures and hence the sole, supreme and final authority of the Bible and its present infallibility and inerrancy (Sola Scriptura) through rationalistic Textual Criticism, the corrupt Westcott and Hort Text and modern Critical Texts, and the plethora of modern versions based on those corrupt texts and the mutilation/ distortion of the Scriptures by means of the dynamic equivalence method of translation.

“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps 11:3). JK

VERSE FOR THE WEEK

“He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.” Prov 28:8

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