This morning my Tung Ling Bible School classmate came to preach in the church service. He is John Sim and we renewed contacts through Facebook a few years back. Rev Dr John Sim had been in the pastoral ministry for at least three decades and currently lectures and administrates at Vanguard University, California. He holds several theological degrees, including the MDiv and MTh(Princeton), and a DMin (Fuller). He is featured in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Religion, and Who’s Who Among Asian Americans. John works at Vanguard University, a Christian Liberal Arts university belonging to the Assemblies of God, where he teaches Bible and Theology. We met up after our Facebook contact, and I have been inviting him to take the pulpit whenever he came to visit family.
This would be the third time he preached in WRPF but this time I added two afternoon lectures. He preached on the subject, “Can I trust the Bible?” during the Sunday service, and in the afternoon he lectured on “The Land of the Bible”, which explained the significance of knowing some geography to better understand the Bible. We were blessed and enriched by all the sessions.
Before this, we had met for lunch, three of us, all classmates from Tung Ling Bible School when it was still situated in the borrowed premises of the Church of Singapore, Marine Parade. There was John, myself and Benjamin Foo, who studied in Moody Bible College, planted a church locally while working in the Stock Exchange of Singapore. We talked a little about everything: the past, the Celebration of Hope, our families, the future, and what we were currently doing. We met for a meal and fellowship every time John is around. It was a blessed and encouraging time.