Sunday Service and Sunday School

Lord, quickly come! That is implied from Rev. 22:20. The Fundamentalists such as Janet Mefferd often use this phrase in her prayers in a annoying tone, that's the dispensationalist talk. One could be tempted to hate that phrase not knowing the biblical reference, because although we do not pray this such that we find mankind despicable, but we long to be with our Lord with the lessons we suffered through Him.

So when the pastor mentioned this in the end of the service, I looked it up. Stephen Tong confirmed this in his Ephesians 1:11-14 lecture series. Most commentaries are on board as well.

We had a guest speaker, Bruce, from Mission to the World, for Sunday school, service and fellowship meal sharing. His 20+ years of mission field work in France was interesting. I had not known how Muslim the south of France has become, particularly in the city of Nimes, where he stayed. MTW has a rule of living with the people, so essentially they would live in the poor project community. However, what I did not get clearly was how their mission works are done, was it only cafe talk only, where is the risk of life, etc. Bruce gave a brief overview of church history from Morocco to Tunisia and some info about Islam. At lunch time, he shared testimony of 3 people he encountered. It was hard for him to follow up with certain individuals, which led me to wonder and even brought it privately to him, whether the fact that they do not follow discipleship with him consistently was due to the fact that they do not see him as someone they would trust, someone who's living among them is mere superficial, temporary, and when things gets tough, he could just leave and enjoy his home in Pennsylvania, USA. Who would trust living and depending on someone like that in the poor community? I asked politely, "...that I hope you could debunk". He politely tried to debunk my theory. Suggesting that another possibilities are: busy in work (Satan's work schedule...something like that), fear of being identified as infidels of Islam. I did not have enough time to ask him of the life risk, as I do not want to delay too long for him. I tried to only ask him questions directed at his own experience, and not what he knows about Islam or history or the Berber's education level or basically what I already know or could search from the Internet, which are what others usually ask as well as what he focused more on telling.

Missionaries from America don't easily impress me. Particularly the ones that return to America as a "break". I have no problem with those who "retire" back home at an old age like Mabel Williamson, but I am skeptical of those who appear to mix missionary work with business vacation. In today's case, I cannot conclude either, due to lack of information. I took as much materials he's printed as I could, about MTW and the Muslim/Berber outreach program, to know more about how American missionaries function, particularly in Muslim countries or rather, communities.

At Fellowship Meal, I asked Pastor Chris who are his favorite theologians/preachers: Martyn Lloyd Jones, J. C. Ryle, R.C. Sproul, B. B. Warfield, Calvin [this is understatement], Joel Beeke, Bob Jones Jr., and pretty much all the reformers he said.