Hebrews 11: 26: 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater
value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his
reward.

This week's session was one of those which started in a manner that I am
still not comfortable with.

I usually arrive early at about 6.45 pm to spend some time in meditation and
prayer, and Dr Tong would come at 7.20 pm or so. This week, he was
surprisingly there at 7 pm. When I asked him why, he said that he was not
feeling well. Then he simply slumped over the desk and went completely
still - I did not know what to do, and went to alert Rev Thomas Koh, who
then came in and sat behind him. We were joined by Rev Lee Chong Ming, who
was there to lead songs; later Dr Lou Jian Hwa came in. All of us dared not
utter a word, and sat silently in the room for like 20 minutes or so, each
one of us spontaneously and naturally praying silently for Dr Tong while he
rested. The silence was only broken by Rev Koh's handphone some 5 minutes
before 7.30 pm. When it was time for me and Rev Lee to leave to lead in
songs, he was still slumped over. In the past, this has happened once, and I
had to go into the side room to call him when it was time to preach. He was
completely exhausted, having spent the week traveling and holding breakneck
theological sessions in Taipei and KaoXiong. He is so stubborn about burning
candles at 3 ends that we knew better than to talk him out of it, so all we
could do was to support him in prayer. The full-timers joked nervously about
who will take the pulpit if Dr Tong cannot make it; and Rev Koh later told
Dr Tong to drink only the soup (someone brewed a fortified chicken-ginseng
thing for him earlier) and forget about dinner since he is so weak.

I urged the congregation to pray for him while I led in prayer. At 7.45 pm,
he dutifully appeared on stage, and when he started speaking, I could sense
that he was trembling a little. About 10 minutes into the sermon, as usual,
he came completely alive again, completely charged up. In fact, he spoke
faster and with greater urgency than normal, and I did not have enough time
to jot down notes (which I do for the purpose of these emails). I wanted to
slow down my translation so that he can have more time to rest, but he just
pressed on rapidly. Even persistent coughing could not stop him and he kept
speaking in between coughs. I would slow down when he was coughing, but he
would immediately speak in between coughs rather than slow down. At one
stage, he went so fast that I thought *I* will collapse! Till this day, I
have absolutely no idea how he does that, except that the power of the Holy
Spirit is evidently upon the man.

This week we moved on to the next verse, and again I wondered what he can
come up with, and again he surpassed my expectation.

Tong started out by reviewing a little about last session's lesson. He went
on to talk about what I believe is one of his greater contribution to Asian
Theology, his understanding of suffering. He began by a discourse on the
paradoxical nature of suffering. If one has a toothache, it is due to the
nerve in one's gum. If you take out that nerve, and leave it on the table,
the pain is gone. But is the pain found within that nerve on the table? If
so, pain would still exist although you do not feel it. So the question is
whether pain is an objective, or subjective experience, or is it completely
neutral in nature. Tong concluded that suffering is not a neutral
expereince, and there is great relationship between suffering and life. He
asserted that only the human being suffers so very much. An animal that is
able to be devoured by another animal would simply have some muscular spasm
or pain, but the human being would suffer so much more.

Not only is the human being's sufferings physical, it can also be mental and
indeed spiritual. Tong's definition of suffering is for one to be
constrained a little from one's original freedom. Tong's definition of
enjoyment in contrast would be for one to be freed a little from one's
original constraint. This is an interesting and true definition based on
relativity, and actually applies very well everywhere.

Tong then gave 4 broad sources for suffering:

1. Fallen Nature: Genesis tells us that the earth had been cursed because of
the Fall of man. Suffering from natural disasters Tong said, is a very low
level, primitive sort of suffering. In this, everyone is hit, Christians and
non-Christians alike.

2. Human-caused: This is self-explanatory; sufferings that come about from
human sin and errors.

3. Satan's assualt: Here, Tong further segregated the types of Satanic
assaults into 3 broad categories:
a. Satan is the Opposer (which is the meaning of the Hebrew word for
Satan) - He opposes God's will and aims to subvert it, causing suffering
b. Satan is the Tempter, and the human being will suffer if he falls into
temptation
c. Satan is the Accuser, who accuses the saints before God, causing the
saints to suffer spiritually

4. God-allowed Trials for the saints - this is as illustrated by Job.

He then illustrated with an example of how God would allow sufferings to
come as a trial for us. He said that the Bible says God walks with us in the
midst of our suffering (can't find the scriptural reference), and opens our
ears (Isaiah 35:5 I think) through our sufferings. Sometimes we simply
cannot learn any lessons without sufferings. Tong related a recent incident
when he was rushed to the deathbed of someone whom he had preached to for
decades. Every time he spoke to him about Jesus Christ, this person would
reject him (so Tong told the congregation not to think that he is such a
great evangelist, because even he fails in evangelism). But now that the
person lies dying, completely wasted away by cancer, suddenly his ears are
opened to the gospel, and he accepted Christ. So suffering has its purpose,
one of which would be to enable us to be returned back to God.

The preaching then took another turn, and Tong declared these first 4
sources of sufferings to be passive sufferings, in that we suffer not
because we looked for it, or were willing. All 4 types of sufferings were
things that came without our choice. He declared verse 26 to be a most
unique verse (but then again, he sees every verse of the Bible to be with
great power), in that here, Moses took an active role in suffering. He
considered sufferings and disgrace as of greater value than all the
treasures of Egypt. Tong pointed out first of all that this is the only
verse in the New Testament that linked someone in the OT with Christ, for
Moses would never have met Christ. But Tong pointed out that Moses must have
had visions into the future, knowing that the Exodus of the Israelites is a
foreshadow of the salvation that Christ brought.

Tong said that all of us want to escape suffering, and would do all sorts of
things NOT to suffer. But Moses chose suffering for Christ's sake, over all
the treasures of Egypt (a point he kept repeating), the action in itself
cannot be understood by the rest of the world. There are 3 reasons behind
this active suffering:

1. For the will of God
2. For righteousness' sake
3. For Christ's sake

Tong reminded the congregation that the Bible clearly says that if one were
to want to lead a life for God, for righteousness and for Christ, one must
be prepared to suffer, as the apostle Paul pointed out (2 Tim 3:12). If one
aspires to be clean in an office of corrupted colleagues, one's existence
would become a threat to the existence of the other people. The holier one
is, the more resistance one would then get from the rest, and persecution as
well. To make a decision then to lead a life of holiness, is necessarily a
decision to lead a life of suffering, humiliation and disgrace. Then again,
Tong said this is the way God has designed the whole thing.

Using Moses as an illustration, Tong said that in the first 40 years of
Moses' life, he would say, "I am somebody", since he was the prince. In the
second 40 years of Moses' life, he would say, "I am nothing", since he is
now a shepherd. It is when he acknowledged from the bottom of his heart that
he was nothing, that God gave him the great last 40 years of his life.

Tong said that this is one of the great secret of ministry. That one must
truthfully acknowledge that he is nothing before God, before the LORD will
use him. Tong said that he has met many people who kept saying they are
nothing out of habit, but actually think they are something before God. One
deacon came to him and said that he is inexperienced, does not know the
Bible much, too young, etc to serve the church. Tong said that he told the
deacon that 30 years later, if he were to still say the same thing honestly,
then he would be the person that God would want to use.

Tong ended with a series of illustrations about the true servant choosing to
lead a life of humility and being prepared to suffer. He cited the example
of George Mueller, the great man of faith and prayer (www.muller.org) When
asked about the secret of the success of his ministry, Muller (who by the
way is one of my heroes), who led a life of absolute simplicity, said that
he has no formula. All he knew was to be faithful to the Bible, which he had
read from cover to cover more than 100 times (inspiring me to do the same!).
Another illustration was about Tong's own seminary professor, a woman
theologian (can't remember the name). He said that this professor led a very
simple lifestyle, and exemplified the lifestyle of Christ. She wrote a book
entitled, "Do we not have rights?", in which she advocated that the greatest
right of a Christian is the right to give up his rights. The book became the
default book of instruction for missionaries from the Inland Missions
Society (London), and it helped to prepare missionaries to suffer for
Christ's sake. Tong said that this sort of understanding is now not
fashionable, and related an incident when he preached at Westminster
Seminary. During photo taking time, he noted that the Americans all rushed
to get the best positions, while the guests were sidelined.

Tong ended the sermon by inviting all to pray together. I quickly signaled
Rev Thomas Koh to come up to take his place, upon which Dr Tong retreated to
the side room and once again, slumped over the desk as though dead. After
the service, one Chinese physician who was in the service quickly came and
rendered some assistance to Dr Tong, giving him a checkup and prescribing
some Chinese medication.

This coming Sunday, Dr Tong will be preaching at Hong Kong's Hong Hum Indoor
Stadium with 14,000 seating capacity for the Hong Kong 2002 Gospel Rally. Do
uphold him in prayer.

END

Disclaimer: This summary does NOT represent the official position of STEMI (Stephen Tong Evangelistic Ministry International), and is the personal opinion of the author, expressed without prejudice. Expressed opinions are meant for academic discussions only.