My dear readers,

1. The End Time test is FAITHFULNESS

The pilgrim’s journey is fraught with many a snare and pitfall along the way to the Celestial City. Many travelers start, but few finally arrive in the City. Many look to men and circumstances, but not to the Lord. Only those who faithfully look to the Lord make it to Glory Land.

Our Lord looks for faithfulness. This week we have Part II of “The Bible of Bible-Presbyterianism.”

2. The Bible of Bible-Presbyterianism - II

Brief BP Church History

The BP Church of Singapore took its origin from the BP Church, USA, which separated from the parent PCA (Presbyterian Church of America) over the PCA’s apostasy or “falling away” into the spreading cancer of liberalism or modernism.

A group led by Dr Carl McIntire formed the Bible Presbyterian Church of America and the “Twentieth Century Reformation Movement” to “ ... earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3 ).

In 1948, as a student in Faith Theological Seminary in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, Timothy Tow found a kindred spirit in Dr McIntire, he himself having imbibed the fundamental Christian faith from Dr John Sung during the “Singapore Pentecost” of the 1930s.

Returning to Singapore in 1950, charged with fervour to “earnestly contend for the faith,” Timothy Tow, at the invitation of Mother Church Teochew-speaking Life Church (“Say Mia Tng”) started the Life Church English Service which later became the Life Bible-Presbyterian Church, out of which have sprung up a hundred and more daughter BP Churches.

With the increasing numbers of BP Churches and the passage of time, the original Reformation Spirit of “earnestly contending for the faith” was slowly but surely diluted, if not forsaken and forgotten altogether. With this “downslide,” loyalty to the Reformation Bible KJV also weakened, especially in the past thirty years, with the proliferation of new “Modern English Versions,” the more popular being the NIV, RSV, Good News Bible (GNB, also known as Today’s English Version, TEV), and the New English Bible (NEB).

For the sake of our discussion, we classify English Bibles into two groups:

The Reformation Bible - KJV
Modern English Bibles

The Reformation Bible - KJV

God delivered England out of a thousand years of spiritual darkness with the greatest translation of history, the KJV. Without this Word of God in English enlightening and uniting the people, the Reformation in England could not have withstood the opposing forces of the Counter Reformation. The KJV was the unmoveable bulwark of the Protestant faith withstanding the might of Rome.

For over three hundred years the KJV reigned supreme, the Banner of English Protestantism, and God’s instrument of Gospel revival and Missionary movements around the world. Christians everywhere could hold up the KJV,the mighty Spirit’s sword, as the most faithful and accurate translation of the plenarily and verbally inspired and perfectly preserved Hebrew and Greek texts.

Today, no longer: the KJV is “on the way out,” displaced by Modern English Versions. Christians have forsaken God’s greatest gift, “throwing out the wheat for the tares.”

Let us briefly consider the history of the KJV which is the story of the English Bible.

The Story of the English Bible

The KJV was the crowning glory of a mighty stream of Protestant Bible translations raised of God, and undertaken at the cost of untold sacrifice. Briefly we recall three of the translations and the men who suffered the fires of Rome for their labours.

1. JohnWycliffe (1324 - 1384)

The “Morning Star of Reformation” translated from the Latin Vulgate to give his people their first English Bible so that they could read God’s Word for themselves. Wycliffe preached the glorious Gospel of Salvation by grace through faith, not of works, not by any system or Church. Of immense energy and indomitable courage, he not only preached, but trained young men (“Lollards”) to spread the good Word. These “preacher boys” literally turned the country upside down with the sound of the Gospel.

The Church authorities would have burned Wycliffe except that he died of a stroke. But they dug up his bones and burned them forty-four years later. Many of his Lollard preachers fell into the hands of the Church and, with copies of Wycliffe Bibles hung round their necks, they went to the stake. “They loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11 ). The Wycliffe Bible appearing first in 1382, remained the only English Bible for 143 years, until Tyndale’s Bible arrived in 1525. (To be continued)

Lovingly in the Lord
Dr SH Tow, Senior Pastor