Gospel, theology and story – Page 20

Category: Gospel, theology and story

Chuang Kwang Liang: “Don’t go down….”

8 November 2010 blogpastor 2 Comments

He went down and up

The nurse injected penicillin, and he felt like something lifted and he stood up. A bright light beamed from his forehead to a door that opened up to a path. As he walked through a hall he saw hundreds of people screaming and crying in the shadows. It was eerie and distressing to hear voices crying in agony and suffering. It was like death filled the whole atmosphere. Next he saw bright sand and stones and entered a beautiful place. He felt extraordinarily happy and good. He said, “I want to stay here forever, I don’t want to leave.”

“Go back to where you came from”

A bright figure stood before him and said, “Go back to where you came from.” Immediately, Chuang Kwang Liang woke up in a hospital bed in Singapore and heard the nurse saying, “Good thing he didn’t die or some mother will be mourning.” It was 1967, when Liang, experienced these visits to what he called “down” and “up”. His girlfriend Margaret kept hearing him say in dialect, “Don’t go down there. It is terrible. I want to go up there.” She was as puzzled as he was about the whole experience and even wondered if he was sound. They were not Christians; they venerated their ancestors.

Trying to figure out the bright figure

He migrated to Australia and worked as an electrician with a mining company in Western Australia. For many years after his strange experience, he had been trying to figure out who was that bright figure and how to go up there. But without success. Jehovah Witnesses had knocked on his doors. A Mormon had talked to him. But they could not answer satisfactorily the questions he asked.

The Lord had pursued him

One day he accepted a brother in law’s invitation to an evangelistic rally. The moment the people worshipped, his eyes rained tears that he could not stop. He lifted his hand like he saw the rest did, and knew that this was it. The speaker was Vernon Falls and he had been invited by Full Gospel Assembly. That night he was saved and filled with the Spirit and knew he had finally met the bright figure who told him to go back to where he came from. The Lord Jesus had pursued him for over two decades. Finally in 1991, Liang gave his life to the Lord.

Meaning and purpose

Asking the FGA pastor, Mrs Ang Swee Khim, what she thought of his experience, she replied, “God loves you and showed you hell and heaven to give you a chance to choose.” Liang was so grateful and became a fiery witness for the Lord. With a fresh infilling of the Spirit, and armed with an understanding of what he had experienced, he went forth boldly to share with everyone who would listen, what he had experienced. In season and out of season, he would share and warn people, colleagues, friends, and family members not to end up down there but be sure they went up there. He now knows why Jesus sent him back to earth. Besides him, many others came to the Lord as a result of his earnest testimony.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end.

The righteousness of God imputed

28 July 2010 blogpastor 25 Comments

This doctrine that we hear as part of the “grace message” of Joseph Prince has roots that go back to the Reformation. The early Reformation creeds give evidence of this. Creeds are succinct summaries of the teachings and faith of groups of Christians. The ones quoted below are from the Calvinist reformers of the Protestant movement. They express the crux of the message that generated the great revivals of the Protestant Reformation. Study them and you will see that these reformers believed that justification…

…..is an undeserved gift of God’s grace;

…..is not just the forgiveness of sins but also the imputation of the perfect obedience and righteousness of Christ to the believer;

…..is received by faith alone apart from works of law, yet this faith is never alone but works through love;

…..cannot be separated from regeneration.

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) was written by Zacharias Ursinus, professor at the University of Heidelberg, and Caspar Olevianus the court preacher.

“Question 60: How are you right with God?

Answer: Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.”

The Belgic Confession(1561) was written by Guido de Bre`s, a Reformed Belgian preacher. Article 22 contains these statements:

“And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified “by faith alone” or by faith “apart from works” (Romans 3:28). However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us – for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness. But Jesus Christ is our righteousness in making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place. And faith is the instrument that keeps us together with him in communion with all his benefits. When those benefits are made ours they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.”

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) was written by 131 pastors and 30 laymen at Wesminster Abbey in London. It is a Puritan Calvinist creed.

XI.1 :“Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; ….by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.”

“Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the [only instrument] of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.”

This message of justification, especially the positive imputation of Christ’s righteousness and its manifold applications, have not been preached much from most Protestant pulpits. The Pentecostals and charismatics and other evangelicals have preached being regenerated and sanctified and anointed, but not much on being justified. Even traditional denominations like the Presbyterians, Methodists,Anglicans, Lutherans have jettisoned justification, deemed as risky and with an antinomian aftertaste, in favor of a more popular taste: the “char kway teow” of user-friendly, practical sermons. My plea is for a more Reformation flavor in our pulpits, especially, the one that is at the heart of the gospel: the message of justification. This is something all churches must do if they want to have healthy disciples. We lose a great source of assurance if we do not. This is my firm conviction.

(Source: Hoekema, Anthony A. “Saved by Grace”, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989, p 170-172)

Paul’s theology

6 July 2010 blogpastor 1 Comment

Michael F. Bird’s “A Bird’s -Eye View of Paul” was written for the common man to understand Paul’s theology. With just the minimum jargon, Bird gives an overview of who Paul was and what he proclaimed. Without going into technical details, he gives perspective by concisely mentioning the different views on various issues. Here is a theologian who writes for God’s people, not fellow academics. In the first chapter, he quoted Scot McKnight, a theologian whose blog I used to read:

“Paul’s theology is not systematics; instead, he is grasped best when at least the following seven Pauline principles are kept on the table as we proceed through his letters.

First, the gospel is the grace of God in revealing Jesus as Messiah and Lord for everyone who believes;

second, everyone stands behind one of the twin heads of humanity, Adam and Christ;

third, Jesus Christ is the centre stage, and it is participation in Him that transfers a person from the Adam line to the Christ line;

fourth, the church is the body of Christ on earth;

fifth, (salvation-)history does not begin with Moses but with Abraham and the promise God gave to him, and finds its crucial turning point in Jesus christ – but will run its course until the consummation in the glorious Lordship of Christ over all;

sixth, Christian behaviour is determined by the Holy Spirit, not the Torah;

seventh, Paul is an apostle and not a philosopher or systematic theologian.

These principles spring into action when Paul meets his various threats(circumcision, wisdom, gifts, works of Torah, ethnocentrism, flesh, rival leaders, and eschatological fights about the Parousia or the general resurrection)”.

(Extract from Scot McKnight in Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and the Atonement Theory)