My dear readers,

1. “Hilltop” re-visited

After an absence of five years, it was an eye-opening visit for the three of us from Calvary Pandan BPC (Deacon Ko Swee Chay, Preacher Lek Aik Wee, and the writer). Rev Bill Ebert met us at the airport. Our clearing of Immigration and Customs was pleasant. On the way to Hilltop, we passed by the almost completed Ninoy Aquino Airport, rotting away from idle disuse because of some industrial dispute for the past three years.

Our eighty-minute drive through the city and suburbs gave the general impression of some progress since our last visit in 2002. New buildings and constructions, smoother flow of traffic and better road conditions were welcome signs of improved economy.

We were pleasantly surprised, the 5-acre Hilltop campus at Antipolo was much more shaded by the growth and increase of plantings. The seven massive buildings were barely visible, hidden by the trees. We were housed by Pastor Bill Ebert and Mrs Darla Ebert in their quarters, comfortable and roomy. We had a happy surprise when Pastor Pang Kok Hiong flew in from Guam to join in our meetings. Mealtimes were joyous gatherings as we shared our daily bread and the latest news of God’s goodness to each one.

2. From “Dangerously Ill” to “Pictures of Health”

Pandan members may recall our timely aid to Pastor Lubaton (President, Center for Biblical Studies, Hilltop) and Pastor Bill Ebert (Dean of Academics, CBS) both stricken by serious illness a few years ago. It was then our privilege to come to their aid, and to offer urgent prayers before God’s throne of grace.

Both men are in the “pink of health” and bearing full loads of responsibility at the Center for Biblical Studies. It must surely gladden Pandan’s praying people to know that our efforts were not in vain. To all of our folks, please accept a hearty vote of thanks from the Hilltop families of Lubaton and Eberts.

3. A hefty 135 kg of “Printed Matter” safely transported

By courtesy of Brother Joey Seow (SIA Manager in Zurich, Switzerland) the three of us took 135 kg of Bibles, Year Planners 2008, “The Reason Why,” Theology for Everyone, Daily Remembrancer, KJV Q & A, and my sermon notes. The Customs Officers were kindly disposed toward us, thank God.

Again, I’d like our readers to be informed that our coming to Hilltop is only possible because of our co-labouring in the ministry. In our first world plenty, we as your ambassadors, are being used of God to bless many fellow believers here, living in third world conditions and poverty. And yet we all share the same joy of the Lord. The blessing is mutual, advantage to us! Remember, the Lord said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35 )

4. Lord’s Day 14 October: My First Message

At 10.15 am we gathered at Hilltop CBS Chapel, “Calvary Pandan Hall” (named in appreciation of our relationship). My first sermon “Will our Sons defend the faith?” is reproduced hereat.

Will our Sons defend the Faith?
Dr SH Tow, Sr Pastor, Calvary BP Church, Singapore

The perilous end times foretold in God’s Word are well and truly come upon Planet Earth. Everywhere candlesticks which once burned have been extinguished, removed by the One who says, “Thou hast left thy first love” (Rev 2:4 ). Darkness prevails except for a flame here, a flicker there, where God’s remnant few hold fast the faithful Word against the fast gathering ecumenical gloom. How few are those who have not left their first love!

But in every age of decline God does not leave Himself without a witness. In every situation God has His man: in Egypt Moses stood against the Pharaoh; on Mt Carmel Elijah withstood the priests of Baal; in Babylon Daniel walked in the lions’ den. In the New Testament Church Age, the Apostle Paul stood before Rome’s Governors, loyal to His Lord. God’s witness to the truth is never extinguished, not even in today’s universal darkness.

Thirty years ago, during the heyday of Billy Graham Crusades and ecumenical co-operative evangelism, a warning protest came from Pastor Dan Ebert III from the Philippines: “Will our sons defend the faith?” In Singapore we stood against the Billy Graham Crusade at the National Stadium in 1978. Pastor Dan Ebert’s book was a timely boost to our meager forces.

In his Author’s Introduction (1976), Rev Dan Ebert III wrote:
“… It was with extreme regret and heaviness of heart that the section on Neo-Evangelicalism was written. But the confusion sown on the mission fields of Asia today makes an exposition on the dangers of compromise with unbelief a great necessity. These portions are written with the prayer that some of the Master’s sheep might be spared from the apostasy with which many Christian leaders are now so openly in fellowship …”

The same concern over the rising tide of the apostasy was expressed by the sons, Bill and Dan IV. Bill Ebert wrote: “… today, in 1992 during the 12th year of my missionary service, the desire for my own children, both physical and spiritual, to defend the faith holds a major place in my heart and mind. I learned the importance of standing firmly for the truths of the Scripture from my father, the author of Will our Sons Defend The Faith. My prayer is that in this same way the message of this book will touch the lives of many of God’s people causing them also to stand firm for the basic doctrinal truths of the Scripture.”

Then Dan IV wrote: “There are increasingly dark dangers of compromise in the ecclesiastical world, especially in evangelical overtures towards Rome, ecumenical evangelism, and widespread departure from sound doctrine. This reprint is also timely as it coincides with the inauguration of the facilities of the Hilltop Christian Ministries in Antipolo, Rizal – the purpose of which is to provide a center for a healthy biblical fundamentalism in this part of the world. – Rev Dan Ebert IV.

I recall how God drew our pathways together to join forces in the common cause of our great God and Saviour. In 1935, Brother Timothy and I came under the fiery ministry of Dr John Sung, “Flame of God in the Far East.” Dr Sung’s soul-hot preaching of three 2-hour sermons daily for two weeks each year, over four consecutive years (1935 – 38) literally burned God’s Word into our bones, never to be forgotten through all of life.

Vividly imprinted in my heart are the doctor’s scathing denunciation of liberal preachers such as Emerson Fosdick and Henry Sloan Coffin of Union Theological Seminary, N.Y., which he described as “devil heads with devil brains preaching devil doctrines.” Once for all our minds were fully and permanently convinced of the deadly poison of modernist and liberal preachers from western seminaries and institutions. Dr John Sung’s impact remains powerfully imprinted in my mind to this day.

In 1948 Brother Timothy while at Faith Theological Seminary in America, received the challenge of the Twentieth Century Reformation from God’s servant Dr Carl McIntire, calling on God’s people to “earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 3 ) and to come out of the Satanic ecumenical movement (2 Cor 6: 4-8 ) and be separate. Through the international assemblies of the ICCC (International Council of Christian Churches) and FECC (Far Eastern Council of Christian Churches), my brother Timothy and I came into the company of Rev Antionio Ormeo, President of the FECC, and through him, we came to know Rev Dan Ebert and family. This was in the 1970s.

What Rev Dan Ebert III warned in his book (1976) came to pass in the course of the next two decades. In 1994 and 1997, by two epochal declarations, Evangelicalism publicly capitulated to the wily craft of the master deceiver, to tell the world that the faith of our fathers, hardwon with the blood of the martyrs over five hundred years is no more relevant, but now “Evangelicals and Catholics are Together.” By a stroke of the pen the Gospel of Jesus Christ was signed over to the custody of Mother Rome. What ecumenical evangelicalism had practiced for decades was formally and finally acknowledged.

Dr Billy Graham’s universalistic dream of years was telecast May 31, 1997, over television Southern California. He told the world that God was calling people out of various religions, and that all faiths lead to God. This New Christianity will carry the Church into the Third Millennium. The adversary has scored a major victory.

In a January 2, 2007 Fox News interview, Tony Snow asked Billy Graham: “When you get to Heaven, who’s going to speak first, you or God?” Graham replied: “When I get there, I am sure that Jesus is going to say that He will welcome me. But I think that He is going to say: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Or He may say: “You’re in the wrong place.” SNOW: “You really worry that you may be told You’re in the wrong place.” GRAHAM: “Yes, because I have not – I’m not a righteous man. People put me up on a pedestal that I don’t belong in my personal life. And they think I am better than I am. Newspapers and television have made me out to be a saint. I’m not. I’m not a Mother Teresa. And I feel that very much.” (Christian News, July 27, 2005).

Reader, wake up! You have the warnings from God’s prophetic Word, and God’s Word being inspired is inerrant and infallible – no surprise: evangelists, world-renowned preachers, will fall away from the faith, indeed, have fallen away from the faith, and brought in damnable heresies, denying the Lord that bought them (2 Pet 2:1 ). Find them for yourself in the Modern English Bibles.

The thing which surprises us is the extent and magnitude of the apostasy overtaking those who once appeared to stand for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Today we marvel at the denominations and the “big names” which have defected from the faith of the Gospel, the falling away being accelerated by the ecumenical doctrine of “love and togetherness” and the wildly popular “Charismatic Movement” which has all but erased denominational barriers everywhere in the global march to Rome.

Over and above all these, the adversary has compounded the damage done by introducing “Contemporary Worship and Music” and a flood of “Contemporary or Modern English Bibles.” The latter is Satan’s master stroke in his strategy of global dominance, a move which has taken Christendom by stealth. Without firing a shot, the Adversary entered and captured the camp. He who holds the Book holds the key.

Today, confusion reigns: the Word of the Gospel is all but obscured in a mass of deception and false teaching, backed by a hundred perverted Modern English Bibles. Only the faithful few still hold to the Book which was once delivered by the Reformation martyrs, at the cost of blood.

Question: Will our sons defend the Bible which stands true to the faith which was once delivered unto the saints?

Lovingly in the Lord
Dr SH Tow, Senior Pastor