18. SEPARATISTS SEPARATING

The Christian is called of God “... with an holy calling... according to his own purpose... ” ( 2 Tim 1:9 ), to be, “... a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that (we) should shew forth the praises of him who hath called (us) out of darkness into his marvellous light” ( 1 Pet 1:9,10 ).

The apostle Peter exhorts us with similar words: “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall” ( 2 Pet 1:10 ).

There is ample encouragement and warning in God’s Word to keep His people faithful and steadfast. Our adversary, however, is wily and ever ready to stumble the unwary and cause him to fall from the faith.

Paul’s grave fears for the Christians at Ephesus are expressed in these words: “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears” (Acts 20:28-31 ).

We do well to heed the Apostle’s warning, for we too are vulnerable.

As we approah the day of our Lord’s return, we are further warned: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” ( 2 Thess 2:3,4 ). Except we follow the Lord closely we too shall fall away. The peril from anti-Christian forces grows by the day.

The message of Biblical Separation was first brought to us by God’s servant John Sung. For the first time we learnt of the rise of the apostasy in Amercia. When Dr Sung graduated with his doctorate in chemical engineering in 1926, he was persuaded to enrol at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

We quote from “John Sung My Teacher”

“In one short semester, his faith was shaken by the modernist teachings of men like Harry Emerson Fosdick and Henry Sloane Coffin. Not knowing that Union Theological Seminary was the hotbed of the “God is dead” theology, John Sung’s faith was eroded and undermined by the unbelieving teachers.

In this Mecca of liberal theology, the Bible was taken at best to be a partiality inspired book, but riddled with human inaccuracies and errors. Every subject for discussion taken from the Bible was put through the sieve of human reasoning. Science judged the Bible and not the Bible science. The first eleven chapters of Genesis were written off as myth or saga. Miracles could not be accepted. Therefore the virgin birth of Christ, His substitutionary and vicarious death for man lost in sin, His bodily resurrection, were consigned to the winds. Jesus was merely a man, and a good man at that — for our example. Heaven meant to be full and hell to be hungry. Prayer was regarded to be some psychological process and auto-suggestion or in Dr Sung’s words, “hypnotism. ” Could a more confusing bedlam of theological training be found than this to confound a soul in conflict?

“Slowly and steadily Dr Sung’s faith in God was whittled away. Coming close to being an atheist, the brilliant scholar in science but befuddled student in theology turned to sages and sutras of the Orient. If Christ be not risen the study of theology was in vain, to be sure! ( 1 Cor 15:14 ). If Christ be not risen Christianity was no better than Buddhism or Taoism. Dr Sung in veering away from Christ took to Taoism. Tao, the Way propounded by China’s own metaphysical philosopher, taught “chastity and stillness. ” He attempted a translation of Tao Teh-ching, the writings of Laotse.

“From Taoism, he branched into Buddhism. He indulged in chanting the Buddhist scriptures hoping that by practising the self-denial of Buddha he might earn his salvation. But these exertions availed him nothing. He finally searched the Koran, but again to no avail. He concluded neither science nor religion could satisfy the quest of his soul. “My soul at this time, ” he wrote, “was lost in a desert country. ” I could not eat or sleep. My faith was like a storm-tossed ship without captain or compass. My heart was filled with misery and sadness. ”

That was John Sung’s testimony (John Sung My Teacher, by Timothy Tow, 1985). By God’s almighty grace, he was delivered from the graveyard of apostasy and restored to the faith. Then God called him to a life-long ministry to bear the Gospel message to his fellow countrymen in China and South-east Asia.

During the revival meetings of the 1930s, I was blessed by the Spirit-powered messages of God’s servant. Not only did he preach the soul-saving Gospel message of repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, but John Sung boldly denounced and condemned the Satanic teachings of the liberal and modernist professors who had all but caused the shipwreck of his faith.

Forever imprinted in my memory are the words of Dr Sung: (“Devil head, devil brain, preaching devil doctrine”). How apt and direct are these words from one who was almost led astray.

Years later in 1950, it pleased God to raise up the Bible-Presbyterian Church, Singapore. This church is rightly seen as a fruit of the Asian Revival of the 1930s brought by Dr Sung.

For two happy decades, we sowed and planted and watered, and God gave the increase. As our own sons answered the call, they were sent overseas for theological training, later returning to become teachers in our churches and seminary, the Far Eastern Bible College.

Then we were to experience for ourselves the fulfilment of God’s prophetic word, that “... of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things” (Acts 20:30 ).

Among the modernst doctrines brought into Church and College by our own men were the following:

a) On “The Creation”

“The Creation story is found in Babylonian and Assyrian literature, as well as in the Bible. Question: Which one is correct? Answer: The Old Testament Account was most likely the true one. ”

b) On “The age of the Patriarchs”

“The dates of the earlier part of Genesis are difficult to determine, especially the age of the patriarchs. Our conclusions are that man really lived that long, or, that there must be some other explanation for the “years” in Genesis, e. g. if years were months, then Noah’s 950 years were in effect 950 months and he was 80 years old when he died. ”

c) On “Noah’s Flood”

“We have no way of determining the facts of the case... was the Flood over the whole world or only on a part of it? ”

To this “Bible teacher” the Word of God was not to be trusted and the OT record was open to doubt and speculation. Does not this questioning of the Word of God remind you of the serpent’s question, “Yea, hath God said? ” (Gen 3:1 ).

This infiltration of liberal theology (among other false teachings) led to the break-up of the Bible-Presbyterian Synod in 1988.

Here we reprint an excerpt from Calvary B-P Church Weekly of 6 November 1988.

After 38 years the “falling away” takes its toll

“The subtle and insidious inroads of liberalism were more sensed than seen; but as Jude the apostle has warned —“men crept in unawares. ” For more than a decade we have striven to keep the B-P Church pure and free from the cancer of new evangelicalism and liberalism. We invited stalwarts of the faith to teach and persuade; we organised annual conferences to promote our original fundamentalist-separatist stand; we called together the pastors for weekly prayer meetings, annual meetings, etc. In October 1987 the smouldering conflict between Biblical fundamentalism and liberal-new evangelicalism flared into the open. Calvary called for a return to the original B-P stand. Its 95 theses sounded the warning. Now, a year later the lines are drawn and a “parting of the ways” has come. The B-P Church of Singapore is being dissolved, thus freeing those of fundamentalist persuasion from being unequally yoked together with new evangelicals and liberals. ”

Alas! the adversary has taken a casualty from among the ranks of Singapore’s first “Biblical Separatists. ” While it was painful, yet it was needful that a cancerous growth be excised in order to save the body.

Today, seventeen years after the Synod dissolution, Calvary B-P Church has been preserved and enlarged, by the mercies of God, into a global witness to continue with the Gospel work entrusted to us. Soli deo gloria.