Lord’s Day, Vol. 7 No. 5
Blessed 5thAnniversary Thanksgiving
Launch Out into the Deep (Luke 5:1-11) was the title of our 5thAnniversary Thanksgiving Message. It was a call by Jesus to His disciples, to experience the sufficiency of His care in their lives as they commit themselves whole-heartedly to His leading. A fitting message to His church, a people called out from the world, whom Christ leads, as the Commander-in-Chief. You will have no lack. You will experience the sufficiency and His surpassing power, as you bear His Name, as members of the household of God, to a dying world that do not know Him and is often hostile to His good news of salvation, marching headlong to a Christ-less, fearsome eternity.
It was 7 years ago when we first began bible study on the 2ndfloor of this rented premises of The Salvation Army on Wednesday at 11 am. The year was January 2012. This was a group of elderly folks who have been meeting together for weekly Bible Study since 2007. It started from a visitation to the home of Mr Tan Kwi Hwa after his knee operation. He felt a desire for regular Bible Study and therefore opened his home. The group adopted Jeremiah 33:3 as a guiding verse, Jeremiah 33:3 “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
It was in end December 2011 that the Lord led us here with another brother in Christ to look for a place to locate our Bible Study.
When we entered the office, we saw the verse Jeremiah 33:3 hung on a side wall which visibly caught our eyes giving us a mental note to keep praying while to seek the Lord’s will.
We were given a welcome by an elderly lady who was sympathetic to our need for a place to pray and study God’s Word so she agreed to rent us a meeting room on a weekly basis for Bible Study. We trusted the Lord to provide for us the rental to support our Bible Study. The Lord since then has not failed us. We did not miss to pay our rent, were on time each month. As I recall, this is the humble beginning of Blessed Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church.
It was on 15 August 2013 when we first began Prayer Meeting with consultation with our Pastoral Advisor Rev Dr Tow Siang Hwa. It was on a Thursday night. We first met fortnightly. There were 12 who came to pray in our first prayer meeting. As mentioned, the group has quite a number of older folks, therefore, the effort to gather for prayer in the night was a challenge. Nevertheless, they persevered. We persevered while registration was made to the Registrar of Societies. We began to worship as a fellowship on 17 November 2013 in the Worship Centre Auditorium. We began in faith that our Lord Jesus will help us to catch men as fish.
Gleaning from our text in Luke 5:1-11 are three thoughts:
(1) A Ministry of the Word of God (v1-3)
(2) A Ministry Supported by the Power of God (v4-9)
(3) A Ministry Requiring Wholehearted Consecration to God (v10-11)
(3) A Ministry of the Word of God (v1-3)
KJV Luke 5:1 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, 2And saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. 3And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.
Our Lord’s ministry was focused upon the preaching and teaching of the Word of God – And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
Our work is to point men to Jesus through His forever written Word. We are thankful to God for giving us the King James Bible. The underlying Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words are God’s very preserved Word to the jot and tittle. This is a truth that gives us our confidence in declaring God’s Word to you. It is true that we need the Bible plainly taught to God’s people so that they may understand and know and do the will of God for their lives. This comes with the pure Word. It is not our intelligence, not our intellect, not our ability.
The modern versions are translated from the corrupt Greek text of Westcott and Hort, two theological heretics who published their Greek text that rejected the Textus Receptus having 9,970 Greek words either added, subtracted, or changed from the Textus Receptus. Why should we compromise the purity of God’s Word to His people? As such, here at Blessed Hope BP Church, we will not migrate to any of the modern versions, but continue to use the King James Bible for our primary text in church and at home for our bible study because it is a faithful Word for Word translation, the best that we know that is available to us, a direct result of the 16thCentury Reformation movement, the only Bible that is without a copyright to it.
Today, there is a blinding of this generation. I visited different book rooms selling Bibles, the King James Bible stock is just not there. It is my prayer that we will revive the use of the King James Bible in this generation. We will endeavour, by the grace of God, to stock King James Bible in our newly begun Noah’s Ark Book room for the blessing of our members and friends, and beyond.
On 1 February 2014, we began a sermon broadcast ministry with Sermon Audio providing an archive (www.sermonaudio.com/blessedhope) to date, of more than 770 audio and 435 video messages 24 hours and 7 days a week with 33,104 downloads of audio sermons and 4,017 downloads of video sermons as of December 2018. Our messages were being compared with another church using the modern version in the Sermon Audio. Among the evangelical Christian circle, our messages seemed to have been weightier as the other church has unsubscribed themselves from the broadcast. I believe, it must be due to the purity of God’s Word that we have to declare to you. It is the purity of the text that brings forth the power of the message, not our eloquence.
…to be continued.
Yours lovingly,
Pastor Lek Aik Wee