Iron Sharpening Iron

Thursday, 24th July 2008

Dearest readers of ROOTSS

A few days ago, I wrote an email to Rev Dr Gordon Wong regarding his review of Destined to Reign, which I have also reproduced here on this blog.

Rev Dr Wong is a lecturer in Trinity Theological College specialising in New Testament Studies. He was kind enough to reply to my email, and we have arranged to meet up for lunch for further discussions. I thank God for opening this door and look forward to an iron-sharpening session with him.

Speaking of which, I invited my own senior pastor out for a lunch treat back in January 2007, but 19 months later, he has still not reverted to me. It appears that he is even busier than President George Bush :-)

Anyway, Rev Dr Wong's nephew Chris is currently worshipping at New Creation Church. He had earlier written a response to his uncle and had hoped that it would be read by his fellow churchmates. I am helping him do the honours by reproducing this in full below...

Thanks Uncle Gordon!

That was a very good writeup, it was concise and to the point, and it addresses some of the main flaws I've come to see in the doctrine at New Creation in a very objective and well-thought out manner, and most importantly, it uses scripture as a foundation rather than opinion, which makes it a joy to read!

I still support very firmly Pastor Prince very firmly, in that on the whole, his preaching, when considered cautiously and prayerfully, has caused me to grow closer to Jesus like nothing else so far. The main thing that has blessed me is that his preaching encourages that righteousness and righteous living (commonly referred to as "works") is a result of salvation and a relationship with God, and not as much a requirement.

On the other hand, I also wholly agree that he tends to use rather vague arguments to justify some of his further fetched interpretations. These are often enough to convince someone who is not too concerned about looking deeper into the text of God's Word, or who come based on the assumption that Pastor Prince is correct unless proven otherwise (there must be heaps of the latter!). For example, several years ago, he did address the issue of Ananias and Sapphira during a Sunday Sermon. He too realised that piece of scripture did have the potential to make a hole in the doctrine, and he did seek God in prayer for the answer, and one night he heard God whispering two sentences to him, "A certain man named Ananias", followed by "A certain disciple named Ananias" over and over again. In response to this, he went to his Bible and did the usual digging. The references were to the the husband of Sapphira, and the man who prayed over Paul immediately after Paul's encounter with Christ on the way to Damascus, as this was how they were referred to in Scripture (or at least in the NKJV interpretation of It). Pastor Prince thus came to the conclusion that Sapphira's husband was referred to as "a certain man" because he did not truly have Jesus in his heart (similar to nominal Christians we find very often in church these days). It is of course clear that the other Ananias who was referred to as "a certain disciple" had a strong (relatively) relationship with God to be able to converse with Him in the manner that he did. The fact that they died, apparently shows the point, since their death gave them no chance for repentance, it is assumed that God knew that they would never repent anyway.

While I certainly am in no position to question anybody's experiences with God (i.e. did God really tell him or not), I have to say that to this day I'm not 100% convinced. The reference you brought up regarding the seven churches in Revelation is also my point of contention with this. This is just one of many examples. Jas and I do find from time to time during his sermons that we have moments that we just look at each other with the "can we take that seriously?" look.

Still, what I do find is that the message that comes through Pastor Prince so far has given me the most appealing picture of the Gospel as a whole. Now, when I say appealing, I don't mean "something I want to hear", but something that appealed to my common sense in the light of almost 16 years (at the time) of Sunday School lessons and church sermons. It made all the bits fall together. Righteousness by grace, and not just a position of righteousness, but a life of righteousness.

After all, it does say in the Word that because we are under grace and not under law, sin shall not have dominion over us, and therefore we are enabled to live righteously. Earlier I said that the message he preached did wonders for my relationship with God. To follow on with that, no other preaching has enabled me to break free of so many sinful addictions and mindsets so far. Or to be more accurate, no other preaching has encouraged me to seek God to break free from sin, rather than to break free from sin in order to seek God, and it was God who through that, continues to enable me to break free from sin.

I think God is using Pastor Prince to break a mindset of legalism, and to encourage a love-relationship with God. However, as you say, I can see that there are many points in his preaching which, if taken too literally or without much thought, could serve as a stumbling block to the receiver. I suppose I'm of the opinion that it is the person who can listen to his sermons objectively and with a questioning, seeking mind, and with strong attention to the Holy Spirit, that would benefit the most! As such, I think the little paper you've written here would be very useful for someone who is genuinely interested in finding Jesus through New Creation church, in contrast to alot of other things written or spoken about pastor Prince which either focus solely on demolishing his teaching or smothering over its weak points, most of which turn out to be equally unconvincing and biased in nature.

Thanks again! I do hope this does get published in the Methodist Message, but a part of me hopes that it will somehow get into circulation at New Creation Church, and be received constructively rather than defensively.

Chris

At the end of the day, the gospel of grace is not a debate involving intellectual arguments where one camp wins and the other camp loses. Rather it should be something that the Christian should experiment and experience for himself. If it does not work for him, well and good --- God will not force His blessings upon anyone. On the other hand, if it works for him, it should ultimately result in life transformation.