6/28/2025 We have Caesar's family over for dinner today. We talked about predestination because of Joy's absence from our church. I found myself lacking in explaining certain more basic principles well enough: Why does motive matter, why minor differences matter, etc. I've also looked up Timothy Christian School (not bad if based solely on the reviews) which is in Piscataway, the closest Christian (not Catholic) school I could find for Caesar's kid, whom he thought had no other good conservative schools in the area other than a Catholic school he has his eye on. I didn't get a chance to tell him because he apparently had a fever the day after and did not show up in church.
Stephen Tong on (Video clip below) Francis Schaefer: Only 4 of his books worth reading, the rest are of no importance LOL.
1. The God Who Is There
2. He Is There and He Is Not Silent
3. Escape from Reason
4. How Should we then Live
6/27/2025
I got another ticket promotion for the STEMI concert in July. This time from Lyna. I think CCCNY is probably the local church responsible for promoting this concert in NYC. I think Rev. Lin is having a hard time selling the tickets, 1. due to location (some aristocratic place instead of the center of NYC like Madison Square Garden) and 2. bad ticketing system (not clarifying if these free tickets are pick up or required or what not). This is the result of her anti-Gospel stand, a disgrace in Christendom.
So David Tong also critiqued the phrase in his FB, following RC Sproul: "God hates the sin but loves the sinner", Sproul's response: Don't take a lot of comfort in that, sinner. Because it's not the sin that he sends to Hell, it's the sinner."
Thought the context is obviously saying that grace is not a license to sin, which can only be agreed by the rare stupidity, this criticism is often used by those who are actually lazy to preach the Gospel actively/directly to non-believers. And my response to him was:
Sejujurnya, saya mempelajari kutipan ini "God hates the sin but loves the sinner." pertama kali dari Stephen Tong. Namun, tentu saja dalam konteks yang berbeda, karena yang diselamatkan adalah pendosa.
Tapi aku tidak mempermasalahkannya, jika kritikan ini datang dari mereka yang bekerja kuat dalam penginjilan. Sayangnya, hal ini tidak terjadi di kalangan orang Kristen yang di sekitarku.
6/26/2025
David Tong on Facebook: Stephen Tong is not anti-miracle...
Pdt. Stephen Tong tidak anti mukjizat. Bahkan satu keluarganya percaya karena ada yang mendoakan kesembuhan. Dia hanya anti orang yang memalsukan mukjizat.
And my comment: Bisa dikatakan bahawa pelayanannya dimulai dengan mukjizat di rumah sakit ketika berusia 17, sebagai pengusir setan
This is a Tim Keller thing in his book Counterfeit Gods, but the illustration below is a convenient summary, those that are listed on the right as "Also Sin" are most ignored or defended for, and my answer to this good post was simply: "in short, pastor-worship, own family before God's family, etc." In case this picture link below is broken, here's the list:
Sin: absolute bad things =
Lying, cheating, stealing, sexual immorality, murdering, pride, envy, wrath, gluttony
Also Sin: relative bad things/good things turned into idols =
Work, talents, family, sports, music, social media, hobbies, friends, self-image, food, spiritual leaders, romantic relationship
I could also add more of course: health, wealth, volunteer/charity deeds, etc.
Thursday Swam at Edison's LA Fitness. Overall, Edison is my favorite branch, because it's less people in the pool most of the time. I don't need fat people floating around me testing the buoyancy of the water with some delusion of placebo effect. This is the clip of my swim, for freestyle and butterfly stroke/dolphin kick:
6/22/2025 Sunday School covered John Chrysostom.
@9:00 When Bob asked about the connection of Chrysostom with Transubstantiation, the pastor erred in saying that view came later. The term Transubstantiation came later, by Thomas Aquinas, but Chrysostom had already preached the concept in his Matthew Homily 82 "...become the body and blood of Christ..." as real presence, and in his other works.
@16:00 I think the pastor is confused as he claims that Chrysostom was preaching justification by faith = by faith alone, against Rome who prays to him. In Homily 11 on 2 Corinthians, he states: “Faith without works is dead… for faith is completed by works.” It would seem that the pastor practices something similar to veneration, or pastor worship, meaning he doesn't wish to see the cons much from those who are deemed better in Christ, and to see the pros much from those who are deemed problematic. I cannot be sure, curious, if he ever touched on Origen, which will be telling, while Nadia and I were in Malaysia.
I asked S. of where he was for missing the Men's Fellowship the day before, he said he was with F3. It's not the first time I heard of F3 (Fitness, Fellowship, Faith) from him, so I just looked it up. It's started by Christian men but open to all faiths in general. I would say the focus is on a disciplined physical lifestyle. Which is good.
Then met a new guy, Jason, probably ABK (American born Korean), who introduced himself as a medical graduate at first, but we later learned that he had also graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. Despite being a liberal seminary, he was quick to realized the errors of the institution with his evangelical background. He was then attracted to Reformed materials from a fellow student in Princeton who had PCA background apparently. I didn't get a chance to investigate further because some other people love to interrupt and talk about themselves, a usual problem in any group talk more than 2 people. It would seem that he sought to be ordained as a minister. He's already had his eye on Covenant Presbyterian Church in Shorthills (where Jared Smith who preached at ours a couple of times is an elder) as the church for him and his wife and child. So it's likely we won't see much again. But he does gravitate towards reformed, albeit he maybe fundamentalist (i.e. couldn't tell the difference between Reformed vs. biblical), seeing seminary as holding some over-elevated authority (i.e. don't study Karl Barth, Augustine, because they are flawed), as he went into Princeton blindly, theological-wise. Probably like how John Sung went to Union Theological Seminary. The only difference was that Jason wasn't gutsy enough to be treated as a crazy patient like John Sung. He said he's doing online study with Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which according to AI, is more fundamentalist than Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS). It's good enough, I cannot expect too much anyway. He's still considered a rare gem for me.
There's also an older Chinese couple who attended our church a second time today. The husband claimed that they were missionaries in Osaka, from Taiwan. They were just looking for a church here for their son-in-law or something. I didn't get a chance to chat more as Matt took over the conversation, again speaking mostly about himself. All I got was this old WTS graduate works for some missionary organization called IHOP (not likely to be the Charismatic one), but I couldn't find it online, and Matt interrupted again when I tried to prompt for further detail. I think the wife was chickened out and wanted to leave early (not staying for refreshment) maybe because she was afraid to speak English. So that's all I know about them so far. A little too shy to be missionaries, if you ask me. Probably won't see them again since it's not their motive. Maybe I'll ask Matt about this IHOP business since he seems to be the know it all about this.