Lectures Begin in Bacolod (11/4/13)

Our venue today was on the third floor of a building with many shops on the first two floors and meeting rooms on the third. It was within walking distance of our hotel. We started start very close to the 9:00am start advertised — a rarity in the Philippines. We had an attendance of 82 souls. It was the best audience I have seen here in Bacolod manifesting a sincere desire to know the truth. Many took copious notes and turned to the Scriptures cited following the points that were being made. It was truly thrilling to see the level of interest shown!

I began with a short introduction to the lectures taken from 1 Peter 1:17-25 noting that the “seed” bringing salvation is the gospel. If that same seed is sown anywhere today, it will produce the same spiritual fruit of salvation seen in NT times. The next lesson was on “God’s Use of Prophets” showing how God inspired His message verbally. Since God caused the apostles and prophets to say exactly what He intended, that message cannot be changed regarding anything it teaches. The morning session was concluded with the first of a two part lesson on “Authority” or how we know if a religious practice is acceptable to God or condemned by God.

The afternoon session began we the second part of the lesson showing the methods by which God authorizes one to act acceptably and how we can understand His will. Jonathan Carino then gave an excellent lesson on “The Church in the Eternal Purpose of God.” The last lesson of the afternoon session was “Salvation & Saul,” a lesson designed specifically to refute the doctrine that one is saved by “faith only” as well as other false claims about how men are saved. We noted the inescapable fact from Scripture that Saul was saved at the point of being baptized for the remission of sins, there meeting the blood of Christ (“baptized into His death”) and “raised in newness of life.”

We offered a question / answer session to complete our time for the afternoon. The questions were excellent, showing a very clear interest in the points presented. None were argumentative, but obvious cases of “seekers” who wanted to understand what is the truth of God’s word. The questions dealt with the morality authorized by God, the freewill of man, whether there are prophets living on earth today, if there is a certain formula that one must say in baptizing a person into Christ, what will happen to those who live in a remote place where they may never have heard the gospel, and the importance of salvation.

While we do not know whether there will be any visible responses from this crowd, we can easily see that many are very interested and are understanding the gospel message. Thank you all for your help in every way as you make this effort possible through your prayers, financial help and encouragement. Thanks to you, the seed is being sown in the hearts of men and women, and that is our responsibility. We trust that God will see to the increase in His time as we know His word will not return unto Him void. May God bless all of you richly in your service to Him!