My Journal

By using the right, simple to the point definition for Predestination vs. Arminianism when someone asked "What is Calvinist/Arminian" on Facebook which she later was convinced that she held to the Calvinist's view and I replied "God be praised". I had a hard time tracking but after using Facebook's cool feature of downloading your entire comments (and also possible for other contents), I managed to find it easily. So here it is:

Kristina Grace
What does it mean to be an Arminian?

Darien Lam
Kristina Grace
Arminian: God chooses me because I chose him.
Calvinist: I choose him because God chose me.
Low-IQ-but-wants-to-join-the-rank: Both are right.
Defender-of-the-Low-IQ-but-still-not-enough-IQ: It's both right and both wrong.
The vengeful son of the low-IQ: Everyone's wrong, for I follow Christ.

Kristina Grace
Darien Lam I think I like the calvinist view best

Darien Lam
Kristina Grace God be praised 

David Mills
Darien Lam Accurate!

Ray Ortiz
Darien Lam very well put

GCC Sermon on: I Corinthians 7:25-40 "Watch and Pray"

Sermon question #1: How much of what you feel you need to accomplish in life comes from people? How much from God? How can you calibrate correctly?
Ans: I think the form of the question is typical of fundamentalist: the world vs. spiritual being mutually exclusive. Though it may not be the intent of the questioner. Though not as colorful, the right question would be "...how much from God, how much not from God..." this way we don't follow the Gnostics.

Questions #2 & 3 are similar.
#2. Who or what is your second master? What will you do about it?
Ans: I assume the second master was expected to be self. Anything else seems to be the propagation of that self.
#3. How does a homeward bound life change everything? In what ways does it make your life more rich?
Ans: This is a good one. It reminds us that we are pilgrims. Though we must take care again not to follow the Gnostics in this, for God has placed us in this fallen world which was also His creation. We are thus, to work out both worlds.

The sermon touches on Paul's view on marriage, though not of his own "opinion", but as someone holding the office of an apostle. In Point II.A: Cannot serve two masters - Worldly marriage, the pastor said "Bad marriage is worse than no marriage [at all?]" [a quote apparently from Neil Clark Warren co-founder of eHarmony] to weigh in on how being single is better, despite that there's nothing wrong but good in the blessing of marriage. Perhaps in reference to 1 Corinthians 7:1,7-8,26,28,33-35,38 (...does better...),40. The pastor also seems to imply that the right singleness is defined as being unattracted to the opposite sex.

My reaction: The quote is a fun play with words especially it being obvious even from a worldly sense, but one can also say "bad singleness is worse than being married" though not likely to be as popular as the former quote because this one is at a more spiritual level and a more serious effect in the relationship with God. Bad singleness leads to an unhealthy view of women, of genders, and thus unto the Creator of genders essentially. So, the quote itself though interesting, is moot if it is not clarified (i.e. only focusing on sexual aspects, etc.). The only reason Paul gave to imply being single as better than marriage is simply less distraction (v.35). And only those who recognize this distraction in a full zeal to serve God is considered truly called by God to make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake (Matthew 19:12), to marry oneself into the fellowship of God's children as father, mother, son, daughter, such as Paul. This blessed singleness is certainly not being complacent in the Lord, doing less than a zealous married couple. There seems to be a common erroneous American fundamentalist (any other cultures as well) Christian view on marriage being identical to sex or sexual relationship, as if in marriage one must have sex, though it's presumed. Such view itself is perhaps why Paul (along with other reasons that equate quality from above with from beneath) came up with 1 Corinthians 7, contrary to this shallow view of these Christians, to break away from the wrong conception of marriage. Sex is not a required, nor should it be the only component in marriage. So there is no such thing as I am not attracted or interested in the opposite sex. Such is the beginning of a bad singleness view.

On Sunday School: Continuing (from v.40) The Gospel According (I think "of" and "according" are interchangeable, one isn't really more humble than the other, as the pastor seemed to make a big deal of few weeks ago. But for clarity, the issue has to do with "of" being genitive or simply identical as "according" and thus "according" is used to avoid such confusion. But "according" can also be used in a very self-centered way, so it's kind of moot. I think I am using the word moot a lot recently) to John 6:22-71

This time Phil brought up an interesting point when the doctrine of predestination was touched on again (though it seems that there are some who may still be struggling: God never did anything bad to Esau, God sees the heart-almost like Molinism, etc.), when he referenced 2 Peter 3:9:...not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Phil was hoping for (not much trying on his part) ALL to be interpreted as ONLY the elects, but the pastor disagreed and referred to the entire world. I guess the pastor was implying "sufficient for all, efficient only for the elect". John Calvin has this: For God there stretches forth his hand without a difference to all, but lays hold only of those, to lead them to himself, whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world. Calvin also said of similar thing in John 3:16: Let us remember, on the other hand, that while life is promised universally to all who believe in Christ, still faith is not common to all. For Christ is made known and held out to the view of all, but the elect alone are they whose eyes God opens, that they may seek him by faith.

Stephen Tong once expounded 1Tim 2:4's "ALL" as simply the Elects. Which means he would have agreed with Phil, though on different verse at least. From here, it seems John Calvin's pushing for "ALL" to simply mean "that there is no people and no rank in the world that is excluded from salvation; because God wishes that the gospel should be proclaimed to all without exception."

So my conclusion is that I do find Calvin more convincing than Stephen Tong on this. But I don't see how Stephen Tong could be wrong, as the two views are not contradicting but painting a better picture.

Looks like someone beat me to it. This will help me venture further, what else the "Reformed" Baptists got wrong, apart from Christology (they would usually say that Christ's human nature is uncreated), and Paedobaptism (a flawed understanding of covenant on their part).

In case this link is broken, I've saved this site to my library drive.

Already I can see that on the first line, the difference was when LBCF added the line at the very beginning (1.1): The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. This shows one of the point I've been trying to make against the Fundamentalists: That they do not fully understand the doctrine of revelation (mainly that the revelation itself and the interpretation of revelation are not the same thing) and they cannot fully distinguish the General from the Special revelation. They do not reject the distinction apparently, but it would seem that they are conflating or confused about the two revelations.

1.5 they added to church...church "of God", making me wonder if they belittle the significance of the terms visible vs. invisible churches to the understanding of the terminology. So I looked further, to Chapter 25: of the Church. And indeed, there's lots of modification by the Baptists to avoid such terminology. It seems that the Baptists have huge problem with this entire chapter of 25.

Sermon: Godliness and Contentment 1 Corinthians 7:17-24

I'm glad that the pastor brought up the topic of activeness. He coined "Active Contentment", which is also used by other religions but it is fine and a good thing. Against stagnation. Though he would state he have mentioned it a few times, but I do feel it wasn't brought up enough, against stagnation, especially when dealing with paradoxical topics related to that, only one side was usually covered. In general, I believe proper pedagogy in teaching of potential paradoxes, one must cover both polar extremes of the the issues. These are well aware by folks like Tim Keller, Stephen Tong, etc.

As always I love reading his questions in the program, usually in 3 questions. I do find these questions quite simple, but perhaps that's better for the general congregation. So, I will make note of them here only if they serve an ulterior but important purpose. Somewhat.
#1. What are you most frustrated about that you cannot influence? Why can't you let it go? Where is God in that frustration?
This can be view from a common level, someone weak in spiritual life, because it speaks of letting it go, as if the thing you wish to influence is not a godly thing. But I focus this question perhaps from a perspective not intended by the questioner, that the thing I am frustrated from is not able to serving God from what I perceived as vision given me. To evangelize, give out tracts. I previous churches, though I would struggle as well, but I am quite convicted to not evangelize that way I am planning to because I do wish to defend this reason: These churches, pastors, elders, leaders, don't even care about the Gospel, they don't truly love to evangelize, they don't truly love sinners, they at best only know the textbook answers to church matters. Why should I bring new believers or non-believers to them? It's bad testimonies. Same reason Machen disapproved of having Bibles in all public schools. But now I finally found a pastor that does a much better job in this area than the former ones I've seen, it now becomes a burden to me. I can no longer use that reason as an excuse here. So, I know have to face the obstacles of being lazy, pushing myself to actually start my own gospel tracts (I want to create my own, after consuming through the tracts the pastor gave me, or whatever I have kept myself, as well as what I've learned in the past). So that this new tract is even children friendly, lots of pictures, for clarity in an artistic way.

#3. Who or what can manipulate you the most? How do you stop it and embrace Christian freedom?
This question is more on semantics. At first glance, I for some reason read "of course God can manipulate me the most". But here, manipulate is meant for negative source, judging from the context of the question.

Sunday School:

In sunday school earlier this morning, it was interesting when @45:40 he brought up "I'm not a fan of Billy Graham, he preached Christ, but I think a lot of his motives and methods are wrong". I think the pastor probably wasn't even referring to the Q&A Billy Graham did when he was in his senior years: "That God's grace is wide enough for all religions, etc." to paraphrase, which I think that alone is unclear of his true motive. I tend to judge from benefit of the doubt. But I do see Billy Graham's responses are weaker in his later years. Although, I think pastor Chris' view was probably against something related to alter calling and such. I am not clear, it's a good question to ask him in the future.

For lunch, while most others are probably congregating somewhere for 6:30pm Superbowl, which (not the sport itself but the whole fest of it) I find vain, Nadia and I had a great time with Joy, whose testimony I think Nadia loved listening to. There's some Charismatic bent to it (the devil always tries to...to you..., God told someone to do this and that for me just when I thought of needing those, etc.) But that is okay, I think God certainly use these to bring people closer to God and even to the extend of through shady things (i.e. Hitler causing a jew to become Christian, someone found a lot drawing note in a Buddhist temple saying "you should go to Christian church", etc.) The bottom line is to be always give thanks to God even in seeking out the little things He had in our lives and not capitalize/idolizing these testimonies in such a way that you aren't even aware of the lost of interesting in your listeners for bragging about how God spoilt you too much, and even the so called "miracles" are injected with unholy things: i.e. God caused Biden to give me free money by taking money from rich folks as if God supports communism (which may involve some serious paradoxes: I took the $1000 check cut out by NJ Governor for "low income" property owners, but I disagree with this action of the governor. I personally don't see it sinful, however, to take the money which I disagree, though I have also torn money Rev. Lin once gave me for a different reason before). Joy had none of these today, so the fellowship was great.

Peter writing this to the strangers (saints) of 5 cities: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. I'm trying to find a mnemonics to memorize these 5: PGCAB. PongalCosby? Peter Going Crazy B?

Chapter 1 - a reminder of who we are. "Be ye holy for I am holy" v.16

Chapter 2 - How men in general behave in public

Chapter 3 - How family: wives and husbands behave in general.

Chapter 4 - 苦难神学。 A life a Christian should live that many today may thought to only be for pastors and preachers.

Update: I realize that I had done a very short entry (2023-09-26) on the first epistle of Peter before so I am merging the data here and delete the old one:

Peter writing to the saints (v.2) in the Northern half of Turkey (Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, not Pisidia in the South), whom he knows not (v.1).

Chapter 1

v.2: Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…προγνωσιν (prognosin) here is not the kind of foreknowledge the Pelagians or the Molinists are tempted to define as precognition or prognosis. This is not a 100% forecast of what will come to be, as if God needs to obey a set of rules in Himself. If so, this Author is no better than our common authors of novels.

v.6-7: When we pray for challenges, we are not praying for negativity, as GCC's Pastor Chris often identify it as (it may not be surprising seeing him coming from a generation and culture of not taking up much challenges in life). We are praying for both negativity and positivity that only result in good. Not just one or the other. But here, negativity is stressed. So the wording is best put as challenges rather than negativities, to avoid misunderstanding. For challenges are always negative yet opening the possibility for positivity that is always, always, greater than non-challenges. The focus is in the worth of such sufferings and trials. "If need be" is truly needed. Only through this may greater praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ be found. The genuineness of faith is to be tested, as it is more precious than gold that perishes.

v.11: "Spirit of Christ" - John Calvin in his Galatians 3:19 commentary joined it with Exodus 3:2, that the Angel who appeared to Moses can be no other person.

v.12: John Gill interestingly associated the hint of the Cherubim facing the mercy seat in Exo 25:20, with "which things the angels desire to look into".

v.20: Calvin treated this verse briefly on the question that "What if" Adam had not sinned. Or if before Adam had sinned, how could the remedy not be posterior to the disease? Calvin answered: God's foreknowledge. But he referred curious minds to his Institutes for further investigation. One could probably find it in Book III, Chapter 23, on the keyword of "foreknowledge". Where "decree" and "foreknowledge" are of equal standard: …he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed that they are so to happen…

It seems that may Christians fall for the quote: Pride is the root of all evil. It's a famous quote. It's in Hollywood, it's what our American Christians seem to love saying or using. They would conflate every bad thing with pride, to their errs.

This is likely from the Roman Catholics. They (St. Gregory the Great) would source it from their apocryphal Ecclesiasticus 10: The beginning of pride is sin. This is nowhere found in Scripture.

However, 1 Timothy 6:10 did attribute the root of all evil to the love of money. And Stephen Tong clarified this from James 1:15, by emphasizing that pride is not the root, but self:
“己”过大 (over-satisfy)，人就贪心；
“己”过高 (over-estimate)，人就骄傲；
“己”好面子 (narcissistic)，人就虚假；

This is started because of the Beatitudes series done by GCC's pastor on Thursday nights' Bible Study. I think it is very good that we do this in person rather than on Zoom. More people were participating, discussing. Even though the pastor would likely just do this one chapter of the book. So I'll skip first to do Chapter 5.

I see a growing (2-3 families) number of folks coming to our church from the Methodist Churches. Now I already know of that denomination's problem today, either in USA (Modernism i.e. LGBTQ+) and the East (Charismatic leaning), with the Western side being infected worse.

After listening to some of these folks sharing their views in the Bible studies, I find that something's off, something's missing. One love to use the phrase "don't sell your soul to the devil", or "pride is the root of all evil", etc. These are far from reformed and have connotation to modernist and Catholicism.

After googling for "When did the United Methodist Church split" and reading this article, I'm now certain that I was right, that this denomination, incorporated heavily with the holiness movement in the 19th century, wasn't well prepared to deal with the attach of Modernism in the early 20th century. Unlike the Presbyterians and the Baptists, who vigorously challenged the Modernist movement in the 1920-30, Reformed on the Presbyterian side, and Fundamentalist on the Baptist side, the United Methodist church gave in to Modernism. Perhaps due to the holiness movement was seemed very legalistic and though the denomination could be credited for being more active than other denominations in humanitarian works, such as abolition of slavery, their pharisaical movement caused them to surrender to the Modernist movement when their leaders and lay leaders failed to meet the high legalistic demand. Until 1966, Rev. Charles Keysor sparked the Good News movement, a sort of fundamentalist, evangelical movement, attacking the Modernist movement with the 5 famous points (Inerrancy of Scripture, Virgin Birth, Jesus' deity - it seems that Keysor replaced this with the Lord's second coming instead?, sacrifice for sins, resurrection) that the fundamentalists back in the 1930s had already dealt with. I think 1966 is just too late. Just like Rome, with their 2nd Vatican Council in 1962-1965 (Vatican II), against Modernism, Relativism and Neo-Paganism.

I think this would blow their minds, the folks that came to our church. I doubt they were aware of their history. Had they known, they wouldn't be sharing how shocked they were that their old denomination had fallen away doctrinally. For all they know, they think they've inherited the faith of the great Evangelists the likes of John Wesley.

I shall begin to be harsher when threating their denomination as I did last Sunday speaking to a couple, of whom the wife grew up in the Methodist church. I flatly told her that it was leaning towards heresy, to which she seemed surprised, even though she was already aware of the basic bad doctrine detection. I had to bring up LGBTQ+ issue every time just to get them to agree with my stand against their former denomination. Thus, this is my conclusion, that they were not aware of their former denomination's history, which at this point, is a no brainer for me. Maybe not so, the me 30 years ago - besides I was dealing with a different kind of Methodists (the Eastern more Evangelical Pentecostal leaning kind), but not anymore now.