Text: Jude 1-4
Do you know there are many more injunctions to defend the Gospel than to preach it? While there is one mandate generally to proclaim Christ to all nations, there are countless others against false Christs, false Prophets, false Apostles, false Teachers, false Spirits, false Brethren, false Witnesses. These are found in every Gospel, Acts, the Epistles, not the least in Jude.
Who are called to fight these false agents of the Truth? According to v.1, surely the first called to duty are leaders of the Church, not the least teachers of such an Institute as CBS. In this respect, Rev Dan Ebert III, founder of your School, has fought a good fight by publishing his 176 page Magnum Opus, Will Our Sons Defend the Faith? This important book first saw light in 1976. When I was teaching at my alma mater Faith Seminary, USA for a year in 1978-79, I used this book for my theological classes.
At the instance of Rev Charles Seet, a co-labourer with the author for seven years in the Philippines , we have great pleasure to reprint it. We have known Rev Ebert for two decades. We have become his good friend for his loyalty to our Lord in exposing the Devil's devises to undermine the Word of God.
Like the Monkey-god who can change himself seventy-two times except for his tell-tale wriggling appendage, whatever form Satan has adopted to attack God's Word, whether it be the old Liberalism or Neo-orthodoxy, the Social Gospel or Neo-evangelicalism, is exposed to the bone by our friend.
A new form of attack on God's Word, however, has arisen. It is by the proliferation of translating the Bible based on the corrupt text of Westcott and Hort since the mid-twentieth century. This has caused an alarm bell to be sounded by Edward F. Hills, David Otis Fuller, D. A. Waite, David W. Cloud, G. A. Riplinger, S. H. Tow, the Trinitarian Bible Society, not the least Far Eastern Bible College. The hundred versions now flooding the market, headed by the NIV (New International Version) are now further condemned by the ICCC (International Council of Christian Churches) at its 50th Anniversary, August 1998 to be "perversions". We support only the King James Bible which has served the Church for almost 400 years. It is the most accurate and faithful translation based on the time-honoured and time-preserved Textus Receptus. We believe with the Westminster Confession that "the Words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever" (Ps 12:6,7). For Westcott and Hort to change the Textus Receptus and discard the equivalent of I and II Peter is cutting out a part of the heart of the Bible.
We need not argue against Westcott and Hort but on this score, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully" (Ps 24:3,4). The qualification for anyone to handle sacred Scripture is he must be totally sanctified, but the conspiracy of silence over Westcott and Hort's unholy character has now been shattered!
Westcott and Hort were unregenerate men. They were modernists and liberals. They were secret worshippers of Mary. They were evolutionists, being friends of Darwin and Freud (called Fraud in the Straits Time). Westcott founded the Hermes Club which was infiltrated with homosexuality. This Hermes Club later developed into a Ghost Club which scoffers dubbed the Bogey Club. They became necromancers, consulting with the dead which Deut 18:11 condemns as "abominable". Both ridiculed Christians who believe in the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture as "bibliolaters". Both denied the fundamentals of faith including the virgin birth, blood, and resurrection of our Saviour.
Will Our Sons Defend the Faith? Let the son of the author pick up his father's pen to add a new chapter on "KJB vs. the hundred perversions." And if there arises another form of Satanic attack on God's Word, let his son's son continue "to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints."
"Fighting for the Faith Against an Undercover Enemy" is our watchword. Amen.
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Timothy Tow Siang Hui (28 December 1920 – 20 April 2009) was a Singaporean pastor who founded the Bible-Presbyterian Church. He was also founding principal of the Far Eastern Bible College.
Tow was educated at the Anglo-Chinese School. He was influenced first by John Sung, and later by Carl McIntire. He studied at Faith Theological Seminary and was ordained in Geneva in 1950 at a special meeting of the Philadelphia Presbytery of the Bible Presbyterian Church. Tow returned to Singapore and became pastor of the Life Church English Service at Prinsep Street Presbyterian Church. In 1955, he led a group out of the Chinese Presbyterian Synod to form the Bible-Presbyterian Church. Tow's congregation became known as Life Bible-Presbyterian Church (Life BPC). He later returned to Faith Theological Seminary and completed a Master of Sacred Theology degree.