On the Ministers Who Do Not Truly Care for the Sheep of the Lord

A few days ago, Rev. Lin of CCCNY asked me to be Stephen Tong's translator, because he is coming to CCCNY to preach this Sunday, due to the Concert Tour of GRII/STEMI. I thanked her for the honor but I rejected the offer due the fact that I've already promised Stephen (of my church at Grace) to take over the sound system for this week's service.

I do wonder, if Pak Tong was the one requesting to preach or Rev. Lin was the one asking him to. The latter seems more plausible, so this entry will presuppose that. If it's the former, it still wouldn't excuse the latter, for Rev. Lin could easily persuade otherwise, if she has any sense of preparation for the Glory instead of conservation of her buried talents: "Look Lord, this church still has its name after so many decades, lo, there thou hast that is thine." (Matthew 25:25)

At his age, Stephen Tong would still not mind to preach, even though he has said that he's done and it's time for new blood and for him to focus on using other means such as music for the glory of God. So I don't think he's at his prime to preach anymore according to his last rally here. Moreover, his goal this time is the concert, not preaching. A bad true cannot bear good fruit (Matthew 7:18). Therefore, not only would Rev. Lin not produce any heir (pun intended) for the new generation of preachers over all these years, she has no shame in asking an old retired man to preach, making Stephen Tong work double shifts (preach by morning, conduct by night). This shows how little she cares actually for the Kingdom of God. I mean, who asks her visiting 85 year old grandpa to mow the lawn when she had 40 years prior to prepare for it?

Nadia and I have left the church for more than a decade now, yet no one from that church even bothered to ask why. What sort of ministerial leadership is this in a church? They would rather conclude their own slander: "They left because Nadia doesn't understand Chinese" even though she's been there fore 4 years prior. Rev. Lin couldn't even get it right as to whose the one who decided the leave: I or Nadia.

One telltale sign of such hired hands (John 10:12), in today's churches, is to see what does the minister do when a church member leaves all of a sudden. The common hired hands response would be: "They left us because they have been seduced by Satan, by the world". As if the minister's own church is truer than anywhere else. Very self-centered isn't it? This seems to be a very common American Reformed church habit. So it's not just on Laura Lin. But Tim Ferguson of Westfield OPC, Paul Murphy of NYC MERF, etc. Murphy maybe worse than Lin on this as he would justify himself: "Well, if you didn't become our official member, why should I care about you? That's not in my job description, that's not what I'm paid for." According to the logic from some of his sermons. Ferguson would at least give a "holier than thou" call: "Are you coming back to church, no? ok. Bye". Murphy (above my paygrade justification) and Lin ("Oh it must be because Nadia making you leave our church right?" - slander justification) could compete with each other to see who wins the trophy of the most convincing hired hand.

Another sign is that they have no zeal for bringing the Gospel themselves to others outside of the church. They would love to support evangelical groups. Rev. Lin is the worst kind I've seen, that doing the gospel is an "undesirable" labor that is done in obedience, and such "unpleasant" command will be rewarded one day, due to the fulfilment of such "unwanted" task. Instead of emmanuel, reward is the ultimate goal in life for people like her. Some may not support (not called to do so, allegedly) gospel ministries themselves but at least they would affirm its importance, that we must do with pleasure, this is already a very low bar, bordering unconverted ministry, so Rev. Laura Lin's even worse than this.

Of course, what people like her will always convince themselves is: "But I have given my life for the Lord, oh Lord, Lord, have I not done all these in my life, for your NAME?!" (Matthew 7:22)

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Vocabulary: 舉案齊眉

It signifies a marital relationship marked by mutual respect and harmony.

From China's 4 ugliest women story:

:將放置飯菜的木盤高舉,與眉平齊,為東漢孟光對其夫梁鴻敬愛的表示。典出《東觀漢記.卷一八.梁鴻列傳》。後用「舉案齊眉」比喻夫妻相敬如賓。

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Learning Android and Command Line Terminal

Every so often I would come across some command lines instructions for certain features in Android phones. I've never paid attention to it, until now. Thanks to this site. I may just try it for fun. I had always thought that I am missing something but not too essential.

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Journal of the Week

7/9/2025 我今站在主的言語上 詩歌 short children's hymn. Also, if there's bad recording in Stephen Tong's series, STEMI Taiwan's youtube channel maybe a good place to find recovery, such as this one, on Hebrews 5

#站在上帝話語上而永不退卻、永不妥協的心,有多重要❓(希伯來書要理問答 第759問)(因此講原始影音嚴重不良,請多看文字內容。): Isaiah 56:7 House of Prayer vs. Sermon Preaching in the Church (minister of the Word)

#為何馬丁路德以不妥協的精神,強調行為與救恩不能相提並論❓(希伯來書要理問答 第760問)(因此講原始影音嚴重不良,請多看文字內容。)Why by grace alone (Sola Gratia) and yet I am working so hard? Tong: Many churches do not realize this, that Martin Luther though in shallowness, looked down on the book of James because of its emphasis on WORK, but in motive, Luther was greatly important to do so because our work has absolutely no part in the Gospel in God's grace. Because of Luther, the Catholics adjusted (for the better) their theology to put more emphasis on grace, though they still require work in salvation. Unfortunately, a couple hundred years later, the Lutheran also adjusted (for the worse) their theology, seeing that the book of James is also God's revelation, a sort of balancing act of God using James' notion of work and Paul's faith together.

Paraphrased from Perplexity.ai: Of course, the Catholics wouldn't admit that they "adjusted" their theology because of Luther, but rather: "Clarified" and "Reaffirmed" their own doctrine of grace and justification, in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the counter-reformation movement: Though it affirms the necessity of grace, it conflates justification with sanctification in order to credit man's work. I would say that the Reformed compatibilism view trump this.

我今站在主的言语上, 虽世界过去或灭亡。 主的言语永远必长存, 我今站在主的言语上

7/8/2025 TUES Came across lots of shocking news (to me at least) regarding Ruby Franke, former youtuber of 8 Passengers channel. A mormon mother who shared her family life on Youtube. She's now imprisoned, and apparently estranged from all her children and especially her oldest daughter, Shari, who wrote a book (The House of My Mother, A Daughter's Quest for Freedom, apparently the book was actually written by the ghost writer Caroline Ryder) about it. I would probably expand any detail of this here instead of creating a new entry. Also, this is a reminder to me that it is crucial to really download any important/interesting/good Youtube videos, because Youtube really would just ban/delete/remove/cancel videos they don't like at any time.

There are tons of videos about this news, even movies and TV documentary series made.

7/7/2025 Mon

Charlie Kirk mentioned ESOP to a guy in Che Guevara (Argentinian/Cuban Marxist) T-shirt, after asking Kirk about the Mondragon Corporation in Spain (founded by a priest) which Kirk criticized as "widely inefficient". ESOP is what my company SP has started using a couple of years back. This was after dealing with the Marxist audience with the concept of ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Program) being practiced in Florida already by Publix (grocery store).

Another interesting public exchange by Charlie Kirk is the one labeled "Can you Be a Christian and a Nationalist". This has been a particularly interesting topic for me due to the recent debate between Stephen Wolfe (proponent of Christian Nationalism) and Chris Gordon.

My take: Charlie Kirk is good, but he actually lost this one in general. His fundamentalist mentality cause him to make false accusations here and there of his interlocutor, without deeper thinking (viz. low IQ).

In this case Nick wins the general argument. I'm not sure if Nick's a lefty or a Catholic, but his argument is more reformed than Kirk's. Kirk argued as if America = the Church. He miscited (he said in City of God, 3rd Chapter) Augustine's Just War Theory. He misinterpreted ekklesia (Matthew 16:18) as government instead of church, an apparently fundamentalist low IQ view of Israel/nation vs. the Church. Nick should have stuck to Israel being the shadow type of the Church. And that Christian Nationalism is simply man's work, rather than God's work to bring God's kingdom to Earth.

7/6/2025 Sun

2nd time a new family visited our church today. Orlando was the one I spoke to first. I believe the one called 伊莎贝拉, is the wife, whose sister is 娜塔莉 (Thanks to Nadia for helping me remember), whose husband, 弗朗西斯, whose little boy is Calvin. Chinese transliteration for privacy.

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Book Review: Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller

I haven't read the book, but summaries and reviews I've read show that this perhaps Keller's best work.

I'll use Daniel Im's summary for now, highlighting his famous quotes from the book:

  • An idol is something we cannot live without. We must have it.
  • Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.
  • Definition: An idol is anything more important to you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give you what only God can give. Anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.
  • If I have that [idol], then I will feel like my life has meaning. Then I’ll know I have value. And I’ll feel significant and secure.
  • The Bible uses three basic metaphors to talk about how people relate to the idols of their hearts: they love idols, trust idols, and obey idols. Spiritual adultery.
  • Idols give us a sense of being in control and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares: What do we fear the most? What if we lost it would make life not worth living?
  • Idols control us since we feel like we must have them or life is meaningless.
  • Whatever controls us is our Lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves, we are controlled by the lord of our lives.
  • We will always be disappointed by idols, there are four things you can do: You can blame the things that are disappointing you and try to move on to better ones (that’s the way of continued idolatry and spiritual addiction), you can blame yourself and beat yourself (that’s the way of self loathing and shame), you can blame the world (that’s how you get hard, cynical, and empty), or you can reorient the entire focus of your life on God.
  • Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they’re guilty of it.
  • Tithing is a minimum standard for Christian believers.
  • There’s only one way to change at the heart level…and that’s through the gospel.
  • One sign that you’ve made success an idol is the false sense of security it brings. The poor and the marginalized expect suffering. They know that life on this earth is nasty, brutish, and short. Successful people are much more shocked and overwhelmed by troubles: Life isn’t supposed to be this way.
  • It’s a lust…a longing to be inside...Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain ~ C.S. Lewis.
  • It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols.
  • When you pray and hope for something and you don’t get it and you respond with explosive anger or deep despair, then you may have found your real god [idol].
  • What are you looking to in order to justify yourself? It is a counterfeit god.
  • You may know about the love of Christ with your head, but not your heart. How can that be remedied? This takes spiritual disciplines.
  • Spiritual disciplines are forms of worship. And it is worship that is the final way to replace the idols of your heart. You can’t just get relief by figuring out your idols intellectually. You have to actually get the peace that Jesus gives…and that only comes when you worship. analysis can help you discover truths, but then you have to pray them into your heart. That takes time.
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Youtube Monetization

To do so, I need 1000 Subscribers and 4000 views in the last 12 months, according to google AI.

Currently I'm at 342 subscribers and I wasn't even promoting my channel. I think most of these could be bots or some spammer accounts. And I doubt I will reach 4000 views in a year, as my contents really are just for my own diary and online storage, with important ones double backed up to local drives, just in case.

I do plan to play all the hymns on Youtube, read Psalms, etc. That would probably the only self benefiting thing I do on social media that I would care to share with the public in a more professional (I will try) fashion.

But I'll note this here just so I can monitor how many subscribers I'm getting, either more or less.

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On Multiple Social Media accounts

Some think it's dishonest. I think they couldn't think deeper.

One main reason, would be due to the fact that social medias love to block, ban, delete contents/accounts of people whom they disagree with. In that case, I would either need to keep a local backup of everything I posted/followed/saved/etc. or simply have various personas which I monitor to be as consistent as the social media's "policy" as possible. So, time and energy saved, is a wiser move.

So let the shallow thinkers play safe or have their time wasted.

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BigScreen VR Ministry

This is not a justification for not doing evangelism outside in real life. However, it is interesting when in the last few months in 2025, I find lots of advantage in evangelism training using BigScreen.

About a month ago, I created a room called "Ask a Christian - I'll answer you if I know", I've had a young boy from Buffalo joining in, even when I limited the room to only two people. He's probably around 10-13. Seemed to be Caucasian, telling me that he's a Christian who's trying to look for a good church, but his parents brought him to a black church and they weren't comfortable in it. He then asked me about science vs. faith and Trinity.

A few weeks later, an agnostic (adult Scottish?) had me telling him that you need faith even in science, using the classic sitting on a chair by faith example. He was also delighted to engage in and he shared an interesting Youtube video which I do like, on introductions to Christian denominations in 12 minutes, by Redeemed Zoomer:

I've since subscribed to Redeemed Zoomer's Youtube and this is his bio:

I am a Presbyterian seminary student training for ministry in the PCUSA, (Presbyterian Church USA) but I completely oppose the theological liberalism that has hijacked it. I have made it my mission to restore it. My theology is Reformed/Calvinist, but I am very ecumenical and open to learning from other Christian traditions. I am a regular gen Z (zoomer) who was raised in a very secular progressive culture. I was once a leftist, but came to know Christ as a teenager which alienated me from my community. I've dedicated all my life since then to learning the things of God and finding creative ways to share what I know with others.

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Journal of the Week

7/2/2025 Stephen Tong on Hebrews 5:13 凡只能吃奶的都不熟练仁义的道理,因为他是婴孩

Tong: Those who only preach the love of God, he has never truly loved his own church. Those who preach the righteousness of God, always come before God in holiness.

Tong: Why the pagans come before God in fear in the face of disasters while [childish] Christians, instead of "opportunity to suffer for God", blaming God, why? 不熟练仁义的道理. What did Paul say in Acts 24:25 before high officials, "...of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come!":

7/1/2025 So Tesla celebrated their first driverless Y-model car "delivery" service. This link includes the 3 minute video of the whole process. My only problem with this demo of theirs is how is the end transaction of so called "delivery" done? The end of the video only shows the arrival of destination where the crew claps and opened the driver's door. This is just a demo of robot/driverless auto driving from point A to point B. There were other videos of driverless taxi on Youtube already, chiefly pertaining to Waymo's self-driving taxies.

6/30/2025 I had another entry about this piece Czardas by Vittorio Monti, now again I'm reminded by the same Timothy Chooi, the famous part is around @2:00:

6/30/2025 Art of the day: "The Broad and the Narrow Way", English version of the German pietist image "Der schmale und der breite Weg", Print made by Anonymous artist, Published by Gawin Kirkham and Printed by the Headly Brothers, Issued in 1883, Lithograph on paper

This piece is referencing Matthew 7:13-14. When I saw this in my inbox I immediately was reminded of the same photo I took at Clyde's Deaconry, now in my 2023 General album: 20231014_160053.jpg. It was on sale for $10. I didn't buy. I didn't expect it to be a popular piece.

By Fr. Patrick van der Vorst, using Matthew 8:18-22 "Follow me" theme:

Our moralising print issued in 1883 offers a vivid allegorical panorama, illustrating the stark choice between worldly pleasure and virtuous living. The composition is divided into two contrasting paths. On the left, a grand, wide gate opens to the enticing road of earthly delights. Its path is smooth and alluring, but drawing crowds toward distant mountains consumed by fire and destruction. The sky above this side grows increasingly ominous, symbolising the ultimate ruin that follows a life of indulgence. In contrast, the right side presents a narrow, humble gate, barely noticeable, leading to a steep and arduous road. This path winds past a cross, traversing bridges, valleys, and rocky terrain, symbolising the trials of a virtuous life. Yet above it, the heavens glow with peace and light, revealing that this difficult road leads to eternal joy and union with God. The contrast between darkness and light in the sky above each path powerfully underscores the eternal consequences of our choice: to follow Christ or not.

6/29/2025 We have a missionary, Barry Schutter, who was from GCC long ago, whose work is in London, preaching at our church today. His Sunday School presentation was great, one of the few best from the list we have so far of missionary ministries our church support. Because it looks like he really go out there on the streets to do evangelism, an active role. His sermon also displayed such calling. They have this program called LEAP where they take visiting Christians such as us to experience their London ministry alongside them. His sermon was on the Great Commission of Matthew 28, and on the missionary John Gibson Paton.

I finally got the chance when the pastor has another round of congregant's choice of hymns today. I immediately shouted out #42. Which is the Charismatic favorite modern piece: El Shaddai. My favorite as well, which I discovered, surprisingly in our PCA hymnal the last time the pastor did this hymnals by request thing. I've practiced it on piano ever since. The funny thing is I wasn't aware that the pastor was unfamiliar with this piece (this is popular in the early 90s, mainly among Charismatics) so he was shocked as well @8:00 when most of the congregation (I wonder who) were able to sing this piece well enough. I also loved the way Patty played it on the piano.

Gn. stayed longer in the fellowship meal and helped clean out garbage, out of my expectation.

Nadia seems to think things are against her today: She talked to E. about Joy but failed to convince her that our church lacks caring heart as Joy would likely have put it.

Met some folks from the founding of this church, Ken & Linda (now at South Ridge Community Church in Clinton, probably non-denominational), and there could be others, who came to visit due to Barry Schutter. There's a family of new comers whom I've forgotten their names, I believe their baby's name was Calvin.

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Vocabulary:罄竹難書

形容事情極多,難以寫完,多用來形容罪狀之多,無法一一記載 ~ Google

詳細解釋:

  • 罄(qìng): 用盡,完結。
  • 竹(zhú): 指古代用來書寫的竹簡。
  • 難書(nán shū): 難以寫完,難以記載
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