My Journal

I was 40 minutes late at 7:40pm. I did not expect Michael Liu to be later than I. Nonetheless, it must be noted that I was late during my last lunch time with him, last Tuesday. I was almost an hour late. I must say, the Q44 was 30 minutes late as well. But no, I cannot put all faults to the MTA bus, nor Michael's change of time from 11am to 12pm.

Traffic? Perhaps.

I heard him preach/sharing his testimony. Perhaps I've heard it once or that I thought I knew him well enough, that I was easily distracted away from his speech. The whole sermon by Dr. Tong lasted 2 hours simply because he included Michael's testimony in the first half. I can see how others would be troubled by it. The program made no mention of this detail.

It is not easy to do what Dr. Tong does. To reach out to youths that love God. With thousands of people meeting him every time, filtering out the "right" ones is certainly tough. Not to mention attacks from the narrow hearts.

I agree with Rev. Tong's agony with today's lack of Chinese evangelists. I do pray for Michael Liu. I also pray that he does not get swayed by the extreme evangelists who thinks being gospel amplifiers is equal to gospel preaching.

I took in my heart a few things from Dr. Tong's message:

1. Take everything and philosophize it, and then, theologize it, before letting it pass one's hold on it.

2. Mazda, the Japanese automobile brand, is etymologically a pagan god.

3. Those who always complain how often they were being mistreated, are proud. If you think you are good when you are good to others, then you are no good. Repeat this by replacing "good" with "spiritual", etc.

4. Dr. Tong finally (perhaps not the first time) named "Yuan Zhiming" as the one who equate Lao Zi's Dao De Jing to the Bible as God's special revelation.

Posted in Theologization | Leave a comment

Liberal Love

Posted on September 17, 2013 by timlyg

Theft can be justified...Only possible with the liberals.

This was shared on facebook by a friend (Lisa Moon). Now I know her theology.

In the past, the scribes confused everyone with the misuse of the Law, now the liberals confuse everyone with the misuse of Love.

Posted in Theologization | Leave a comment

Sunday Service Today

Posted on September 15, 2013 by timlyg

Today, my wife and I attended Church of Grace to Fujianese in Chinatown. The reason we chose this church is because Dr. Stephen Tong is coming to the same church for a Gospel rally tomorrow (and the following 2 days). I simply wanted to "check out" what this church is about.

We went to the English service, pastored by a friendly Indonesian pastor (Rev. Elias). The location of the English service at 9am is at 71 Hester Street, while the main church is at 133 Allen Street. The English service uses a rented school space.

The congregation is made largely of high school kids, about 50 of them, who in turn lead the much younger children later. I do not know how they lead the children but I'd worry.

According to the pastor, he was the one who invited Dr. Tong since he seems to have some connection with Dr. Tong's ministry. He mentioned he once taught at Dr. Tong's reformed seminary.

Update 4/19/2024: The "Rev. Elias" is actually Eliyah Shira. I've made another entry about him before. Looks like he's pastoring at Arlington Chinese Bible Church in Dallas-Fort Worth Texas now. Seems o be the kind of pastor who moves around, starting from various cities in Texas, then to New York and now back to TX again. I do not think he's genuine. I paste the bio from his Arlington church in the comment, before he disappears again or something.

Posted in Reflection | 1 Comment