Arrived June 29 into Pontianak and came to the interior of Kalamantan Barat to a village called Kuala Randau Saturday, July 2

In Kuala Randau on Sunday, July 3, I taught on the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation from John 3:8 where we read “the wind blows where is wills, you can hear the sound of it, but can not tell where it comes from or where it goes.”
This is my sixth trip into this area. This was the best “team-preaching” experience that I have had with my co-worker Ron. This excursion greatly helped me see how they co-labor at the teaching and mentoring among the tribal congregations. Paul would travel with a missionary team and in some epistles he would open with “Paul, Silas and Timothy” or “Paul and Timothy.” Paul was a teamworker.
In all we traveled with fourteen men, Ron, myself and 12 experienced believers from the tribal area. Our trip took 9 days.
We spoke at 7 congregations to about 700 people
We had special meeting with 30 plus leaders.
There were 20 plus sessions.

We returned to Kuala Randau Monday, July 11 for a debrief with some of the team. Ron was running a fever and was spent. He had also injured a rib in a bike mishap.

After two days rest in Kuala Randua, we rode cycle on an hour ride to Tangun Maju. This village is where the gospel first entered Semandang land, and where there is a strong congregation of about 450 believers.
More than a hundred leaders were gathered early Wednesday morning to hear ministry on the book of the Revelation. In our first two hour session we spoke about the panoramic visions of Daniel 2 and 7. We felt this would provide an historical framework for our next teachings. Then we gave a chronological overview of the Revelation. On Wednesday afternoon we began to step our way passage by passage through the book. On Thursday we continued, but only made our way to the beginning of chapter 8 by our final session. The believers may invite us back, and without that invitation I will not be able to return. Of course there are several other hurdles that must be crossed for any trip of this sort. I have to be able to get into the country. I have to have the co-operation of the local missionaries. And I have to have a good translator.
On Saturday we returned to Pontianak. Since then we have been in cell phone contact and Ron and I have been able to call our wives. We have given reports to the missionaries about our activities.

On Tuesday July 20 we flew to Jakarta for a week with the two meetings in the Jakarta area. Three Semandang men came along. These are respected men. They have been interested in how the two meetings in Jakarta operate and so they contacted Adam Benny and Adam invited them to come visit. Ron and I are going there so it was felt that this would be a good time for all of us to be together.

We have Bible studies in the morning on the letter to the Ephesians, visitation in the afternoon and teaching meetings in the evening.

Yours in the happy service of the very best of Masters,

John

Ann writing:

John almost went back to Indonesia the end of May. His friend Ron Risse is there for June and July. He had the privilege of being with Ron Risse on his previous trips to Kalamantan. This is on the Indonesian island of Borneo. Ron very much wanted John to come this summer. But John had not seen his way clear to go along. I had some health concerns and the Lord knows what we can bear. So we concluded that the door was closed. John feels the time there has been profitable and John loves being with hungry hearts. He was simply hindered from going. A large conference in the tribal area of Semandang will be held the end of June. Thousands of believers attend. On his previous trips he participated in three and four day conferences on the True Church, and on God’s Plan of the Ages. They used charts and would travel from key village to key village. Now the older congregations are wanting teaching on the book of the Revelation. Ron and John work well together. We did continue to pray, and wondered if somehow John could join up with Ron for the month of July.

At a recent prayer meeting the Lord impressed John with Paul’s words in 1 Thess. 2:17-18 about how Paul was so bold in his prayers.  Paul wrote: “But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us.” We would hesitate to say “Satan hindered us.” But to Paul the battle was so real. John read these verses, commented on them and then mentioned to the saints how he had been praying and praying about coming with Ron for another trip into Kalamantan. The believers all prayed and John felt that we had put the matter in God’s hands. The next day an elderly couple contacted John and gave him a substantial gift. He went home and found an economic ticket and today he has a round trip to Jakarta, arriving June 29 and leaving Aug. 3. Why the delays? Why the obstructions? The Lord knows best. “As for God, His way is perfect.” God willing at the end of July John will be with the saints in Singapore and will see the Chinese friends around Jakarta.

The work here in Grand Rapids is busy. Because we have four of the boys living at home, they bring a constant stream of young men (to be fed) whom they are reaching out or seeking to influence for good. They are active with Bible studies, teen meetings, children’s meetings, some open air work and visitation. Instead of planning it, John and I are attending their events! They truly have become arrows (Psa.127:4-5). My role often involves the things that need organizing and a woman’s touch. Our assembly just put on a community supper at our new meeting place, spearheaded by Jimmy Sanders and our boys, Ben and Seth. Last Wednesday they began witnessing at a music festival that will happen every Wednesday night throughout the summer. We saw two young men saved through this effort last year, and we expect and are praying for more fruit, fruit that remains.

Remember praying for Michael? He was with us all last summer. He made his eighth grade graduation. HE LEARNED TO READ. Ben worked so hard last summer trying to get Mike to read. His reading is still like a 3^rd grader but at least he made progress, huge progress! Recently at our dinner table, Mike was able to read aloud John 1:1-12, with little prompting. We still see him once a week and the boys see him more often. We do not think he has come to Christ yet. Keep praying.

I have been spending time with C––––  who was working at a nearby restaurant when a Christian friend spoke to her and recommended that she see me for discipleship. She was saved after a couple months and several bible studies. Pray that she will be “strengthened, established, settled” in the truths of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. She comes from a large family and now we pray for the blessing of God in that whole family as well. Then there is T––––, who is a new christian and is the girlfriend of the young man saved as a result of the Wednesday music festival mentioned above. These two girls have become my IN TENTS program for this year.

Yours in His happy service,

Ann

John writes that “he that has the Son has life and he that does not have the Son of God does not have life.” This must mean that when a person is saved he is not just taking things from Christ. He is taking the Lord Jesus in a personal way. So salvation is not saying, “I want your eternal life (in the sense of longevity in heaven), I want forgiveness, I want inward joy, I want this and I want that, but I have no interest in Christ personally.” Initially the prodigal wanted the inheritance, but he did not want the father. Later, in a strange way, the elder son talked about wanting the party and the goat, but not wanting the father. The elder son illustrates the superficial faith of the religious person who does not want or even like to be with God. If we are offered eternal life, forgiveness, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and all the blessings of being in Christ, we discover that they are only received when we receive Christ Himself. Christ says “I am the door, by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”
The old Israelites were told about the cities of refuge and there were roads leading to each of those cities. I see the evangelist’s job as keeping those roads cleared and well marked. This is like John the Baptist crying out, “make straight the ways of the Lord.” If the obstacles to believing are only intellectual then we are involved in intellectual discussions with people to persuade them of certain facts concerning the reliability of Scripture and the historicity of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. We argue with them about the reasonableness of there being a final judgment involving whether people go to heaven or hell. We refute the legal notion that a sinner can do enough good works to satisfy an infinitely holy God. We help people do the math.
But faith is not just intellectual assent. The intellect is certainly involved. Explaining the facts related to the gospel has its place, depending on what the particular difficulty is that the seeker has. But faith is more than intellectual assent. When John begins his gospel he tells us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:5). People all need to see the light and accept it. They need to comprehend it. But the obstacle to comprehending the light is something Christ calls “darkness.” This darkness is the great obstacle to believing. Later in John 3 the Lord explains the nature of this darkness in John 3:18-21. The darkness may involve intellectual reasonings in a secondary way, but principally the darkness involves moral choices. “…Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Everyone practicing evil hates the light…” While hate and love have an emotional side, we can also say they are choices. Men choose to hate certain people or to love a certain person.
And believing in Christ is a personal choice. It is a moral choice. We look at Him and find ourselves making a choice. Do I like what I see? If a man is heavily invested in morally evil behavior then he has a problem believing someone that he does not even like. That sinner needs to reverse his mindset if he will ever be saved. Everywhere we see Christ in scripture we find moral qualities shining out: His holiness, His truthfulness, His mercy, His humility, His courage, His love.
Before a proud sinner can receive the humble Jesus of Nazareth what must happen? Note John 5:44 in this connection. Christ asks, “how can you believe, you who receive honor one from another and do not seek the honor that only comes from God?” When a big man squeezes in at the narrow door he must humble himself and become a little man.
Faith in Christ must be a moral choice, and it must involve more than intellectual assent.
John the Baptist called on his hearers to “flee from the wrath to come.” How does someone flee the wrath? If the wrath to come is God’s wrath does that mean we flee from God? That cannot be. Rather the sinner needs to flee to God for salvation. By the accompanying dialogs that John had with seekers we discover that John is telling them to flee from their sins. An evangelism that studiously avoids calling on sinners to forsake their sins is wrong. Over the years a school has risen up among fundamentalists that has repeatedly taught that calling on sinners to forsake their sins is legalism or worse.
I understand that there are some good Bible teachers who mistakenly belabor the distinction between the gospel to the circumcision and the gospel to the uncircumcision. There is a tendency in some to say the gospel Christ preached and the gospel that Paul preached are fundamentally different. They use dispensationalism as an interpretative devise to resolve a seeming conflict and make troublesome passages go away. Could it be that Dispensationalism is being wounded in the house of its friends? If we are defining faith in Christ in such a way as to distance it from the way Christ Himself preached, then we are offenders.
My concern with many fundamentalist’s approach is that they treat faith as intellectual assent and not as a moral choice. If that approach only touches a secondary issue, then it is going to be shallow in its results. If we follow this mistaken approach as a safe guide then we will be adding elder brothers to the fold.

In Christ,
John

It was June 14 1559 when John Knox preached a tide turning message in St. Andrews which enflamed a revival in Scotland. When Knox was a galley slave under the french he told a fellow prisoner that he would not die there but would one day preach again at St Andrews. That day came. No country of the reformation was more radically changed than Scotland. May we pray and preach as did Knox and rediscover his God. Where now is the Lord God of John Knox?

“And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” Luke 24:27.

Books about presenting the Gospel using chronological Bible teaching:

Discipleship within the Context of the Local Church, Ron Risse, 1987, New Tribes Mission, 154 pages

Firm Foundations: Creation to Christ, Trevor McIlwain, 1993, New Tribes Mission, 582 pages

Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, John Cross, 1996, GoodSeed International, 304 pages

And Beginning with Moses, John Cross, 2002, GoodSeed International, 80 pages

All that the Prophets have Spoken, Yehia Sa’a, 2001, GoodSeed International, 304 pages

All that the Prophets have Spoken: Correspondence Course, Yehia Sa’a, 2002, GoodSeed International, 96 pages

The Way of Righteousness: Good News for Muslims, Paul Bramsen, 1998, CMML, 544 pages

One God, One Message, P. D. Bramsen, 2007, Xulon, 388 pages

What is Chronological Bible Teaching?

Trevor McIlwain emphasizes in the opening pages of his book Firm Foundations (pages 5-6) that the Bible is one book with its own inspired outline. Therefore in order to understand it we should follow that same outline, beginning in Genesis we should progress, step by step, tier by tier, through the Bible in the same order in which it was given. This is God’s way of discovering the intended conclusions of Scripture.

John Cross endorses this thinking. In the introduction to his book Stranger on the Road to Emmaus (pages 7-8) he sees four teaching principles in Scripture:

1. Move from the known to the unknown, from simple to the complex.

2. Start at the beginning and move sequentially through to the end.

3. Do not mix your subject matter. Stick to one theme at a time.

4. Major on the majors.

This approach is not novel or new. What Risse, McIlwain, Cross, and Bramsen are saying in their books agrees with the doctrine of “Progressive Revelation” that instructed believers have always held to.

A.T. Pierson speaks about the unity of Scripture and Progressive Revelation in his excellent book, Many Infallible Proofs:

“This unity appears the more marvelous when we observe the progressive development of revelation. One of the finest scholars of Britain, in one of the grandest books of the century, has devoted the powers of his master-mind to tracing the “Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament.” He shows that, although there could have been no such intent or intelligence in the writers’ minds, and although the books of the New Testament are not even arranged in the order of their production, that order could not, in one instance, be changed without impairing or destroying the symmetry of the book, and that there is a regular progress in the unfolding of doctrine, from the Gospel according to Matthew to the Revelation.

“A wider examination will show the very same progress of doctrine from corner-stone to cap-stone; from foundations first, then story after story, pillars on pedestals and capitals on pillars, and arches on capitals, till, like a dome, flashing back the splendors of the noonday, the Apocalypse spans and crowns and completes the whole, glorious with celestial visions.”

What is called “Dispensationalism” is simply a clarifying and demonstrating of the doctrine of Progressive Revelation. What may sound new to our ears is the corrective side to what McIlwain, Risse, Cross, and Bramsen are saying. Dispensationalism teaches that God has taught us by stages, but some have misunderstood this to make the dispensational stages fight against one another. Instead of building on the previous lessons, some have wrongly dismissed the previous lessons. An example of this might be found in the way some handle Romans 2:1-16. In verse 6 of that chapter Paul quotes from the Old Testament to show how God “will render to each according to their works.”

A second corrective is needed where the evangelical church has so streamlined and simplified their preaching of the Gospel that they have disconnected it from its foundations. By returning to the step by step, beginning to end march through the Bible they hope we can reconnect our favorite Bible verses to their intended usefulness.

—John Bjorlie

030709

When I was working as a review editor at Gospel Folio Press I wrote an email to Edwin Cross concerning the bias of Napolean Noel…

“From :     John <john@uplook.org>            

To :         chapter2uk@aol.com           

Subject : Noel needs a footnote           

Date :      Tue, 01 May 2001 11:55:37 -0400           

Dear Edwin Cross and friends as Chapter Two, 

I have noticed that the full text of William Blaire Neatby’s book A

History of the Plymouth Brethren is now online at

<http://www.cloudnet.com/~dwyman/neatby_ch12.htm>

As you no doubt know, this was first published in1901 and is the source of much of the H. A. Ironside’s later book, A Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement (first published by Zondervan in 1942, and since then available from Loizeaux Brothers). Since you have republished Napoleon Noel’s book, I thought you might take notice of something in Neatby’s work. While everyone admits that Neatby’s book is very sour, yet the student of history also admits that Neatby can not be ignored, as Napolean Noel appears to do. In “The History of the Brethren” Noel says that William Trotter’s account of the division between Darby and Newton, and then Darby and Muller, has never been answered. Noel says about Trotter’s small book, “The Whole Case of Plymouth and Bethesda,” the “accuracy and fairness of which has never, with any reason, that we are aware of, been questioned” (p. 133). This is strange to hear such a knowledgeable man say such a thing, because 35 years earlier William Blair Neatby had taken on William Trotter’s narrative point by point. In chapter 7 of Neatby’s book, “The Doctrinal Controversy at Plymouth in1845″ Neaby deals with Trotter’s narrative from pages 148 to 155. It surprises me that a good publisher like Chapter Two has not included an editor’s footnote to correct Noel’s mistake.

Neatby was the son of one of William Kelly’s close friends and

co-workers. Neatby’s book shows a man who is a careful student and a good writer. While we do not endorse every conclusion Neatby arrives at, still his research and factual material is important and should not be ignored.

Yours in the happy service of the Very Best of Masters,

John Bjorlie”

The poor exclusives do not want to speak about the issues of the original break which is called “the Bethesda Question.” The reason is simple. The rational to justify the exclusive position was this: If assemblies such as in Bristol (where George Muller labored) and Barnstaple (where R. C. Chapman labored) did not follow the same approach to B. W. Newton’s heresies as did the assemblies which agreed with John Darby, then Bristol, Barnstaple, and those like them would become overrun with the heresies of Newton. That was the theory which time has tested and proven to be false. 

The so-called “open assemblies” have produced a large body of literature which is entirely free of the heresies of Newton. Search the writings of W.E. Vine, T. Ernest Wilson, Wm. MacDonald, and any of the representative writers of the movement. These books and articles are thankfully received and endorsed by Exclusives around the world. As an example, The Choice Gleanings Calendar is a block calendar with daily devotions which has been continuously published worldwide by the “open” publisher Gospel Folio Press since the early 1940s. The exclusive publisher Bible Truth Publishers has been a major distributor of this calendar for decades. I mention this as a proof that the leaders among the Exclusives do not really believe that open assemblies are hopelessly infected with Newton’s heresy. 

If the exclusive approach was the only correct and Biblical way to deal with B.W. Newton’s heresy, then why is it that the open assemblies, which number in the thousands worldwide, have been free of these heresies? 

Currently when the exclusives speak about their distinctives they reason about various lesser problems that allegedly have occurred since the original Bethesda Question of 1845-1848.