Last Report

After three hours of teaching this morning, I am writing this last report from the hotel in Manila. After posting this update, my plan is to go out and eat away from the hotel because the meals here are way too expensive. Once I am done, the Lord willing, I plan to return to the room where there is a comfortable bed that is calling my name -- I intend to take full advantage of it.

My first classes started at 8am and went back-to-back for three hours. First, we finished the last of the Old Testament Prophets – Malachi. We saw the didactic style of the prophet where God made His charge against Israel, Israel responded in denial and God details the fact of His charge against them. We also looked at the messianic points in the book. It took about 30 minutes to cover that material, then we moved on to Revelation. Another brownout as we were about to start gave me great concern as we were on a tight schedule, but it passed in less than 5 minutes. I have a presentation showing pictures with a likeness to the characters and actions of John’s vision that I show as I tell the story of the Apocalypse as recorder in Revelation 12 – 22 in order to get the students to see the point of the vision. In essence, it is given to comfort and assure God’s people that the Lord will emerge victorious in the end and the must continue in His service faithfully in order to join in that victory in time and eternity.

After a very short break of 2 or 3 minutes, we continued on with the last lesson in the Church History course. We looked at the concept of Restoration as seen in America, the Philippines or wherever it might take place. The main point was that restoration is a result of taking the word of God as the complete and final authority, without addition or subtraction, for all things in religious matters. I ended with an appeal for each one to commit himself to that purpose because every generation must face digression that can only be fought by committing oneself to an uncompromising stand for the purity of the gospel.

The last subject for the day was on Islam and I had 45 minutes to cover the material. Since we had already overviewed the history of Islam, I spent the time on the teaching of Islam. We examined the Koran to see that it has no claim to verbal inspiration or complete revelation, but clearly denies such. The contrast to the Bible in this point is stark. We saw that the Koran has numerous contradictions and mistakes in fact. We ended by noting a sampling of the many statements in the Koran calling for killing opponents of Islam as well as carnal warfare and terrorism in support of Islam. Those who say that Islam is a peace loving religion are either ignorant of the Koran’s teaching or deliberately deceptive.

When I completed my classes, Ron started teaching his classes while I ate a quick lunch. We then had a short picture taking session and I was off to the airport with Rody and Lordy. At my insistence, they dropped me off and went back to teach their classes. The flight to Manila went fine and I am looking forward to a day of rest tomorrow before flying home on Friday. This report will not be sent by e-mail because my provider has changed my service against my will to an affiliate of Google’s gmail and I cannot send a large volume as before. When I tried last night, all were rejected. So, if you know someone who reads the report by e-mail, please help them get on the blog to see it. May God bless and keep you all. Please keep me in your prayers as I fly home on Friday, the Lord willing.

Brotherly, Harry O.