Things got off to an interesting start this morning as I awoke to find we had no water pressure in the hotel. Hoping the water pressure would return shortly, I went to eat breakfast. A television crew came up just as I was seated and they interviewed what apparently was a high government official. (Soldiers in camouflage fatigues were everywhere, fully armed with machine guns.) Needless to say, I tarried no longer than absolutely necessary to eat my breakfast. Upon return to my room, I found that the water pressure had increased to a small trickle, so, for the second straight morning, I “showered” under a very slim stream of cold water.
The lectures started promptly at 9am with singing. I gave the first lecture after the singing and spoke on “Identifying the NT Church.” Jonathan Carino followed with a short lesson on “The Establishment of the Church.” Both of those lessons addressed points to show the difference between the church Jesus built and the denominations of man. I then preached on “Salvation and Saul.” As noted previously, that lesson deals with the plan of salvation and refutes the doctrine of salvation by faith only.
After lunch, I started by teaching a lesson entitled “Grace, Faith & Works” to show how all fit together in our salvation. The basic point is that God’s grace saves the one who responds in faith to obey all conditions given by God. After that, I immediately followed with a lesson on “Counting the Cost.” We then had a question and answer session with numerous questions, the bulk of which concerned whether one must be “re-baptized” if previously baptized into a denomination. The questioners seemed open and seeking. It is obvious that several were deeply affected by the truth heard.
An invitation was extended at the end of the lectures, but none responded to be baptized. Several told me they were taking outlines to consider studying, but stated that they were close to making the decision to obey. One man that attended was from an institutional Church of Christ here in the Philippines. He was very impressed with the truth he heard and its clarity in opposition to denominationalism. He also understood the teaching on the organization of the NT church. His comment in leaving was that he had never heard on preach before who truly depended only on what the Bible teaches. Several of our Filipino brethren have agreed to study with him as he is very seriously thinking of leaving institutionalism to work with the faithful congregation here.
It is interesting to me that blackouts have hit us several times every day, but they have never hit during a sermon that was using the projector! They are recurring repeatedly at night and this has given me much trouble in posting to the blog and sending out reports. Once I was unable to send any reports out because of it. Please check the blog for the earliest report, complete with pictures.
The Lord willing, we fly to Cebu tomorrow and begin work on that island on Sunday.
