Day of Pentecost

You know that the summaries are in demand when your own wife demands the
summary. Ha ha...

Dr Tong was back from his New Zealand gospel rallies, the first time he held
rallies in New Zealand. He was very happy with the series of 8 sessions held
there, although the crowd size was smaller than he was used to due to the
small Chinese population there (the best attendance was 2,400). Nonetheless,
a total of 13,000 people came over the whole period, and Tong reported that
he has had perhaps one of the best responses to his altar calls when some
55% of attendees on one session responded to the altar call. He said that an
American evangelist was holding a rally at the same time with him, but there
was no response to his altar calls. Tong said that clearly the mandate for
the gospel has moved from the west to the east.

Tong did not preach on Hebrews, but gave a message on the Holy Spirit since
the Sunday was Pentecost Sunday. During the year, Tong will deviate from
Hebrews during Christmas, Pentecost Sunday, and Easter; and when special
events occurred, like the Sept 11th incident. This would be the third time
he preached on Pentecost Sunday (this being the third year of expository
preaching on Hebrews), and he wanted the theme to be the relationship
between the Holy Spirit, and the Commission of Christ.

His focal passages were John 20: 19-23 and Acts 1: 5 -9:

JN 20:19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples
were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and
stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 20 After he said this, he
showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw
the Lord.
JN 20:21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I
am sending you." 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the
Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do
not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

Acts 1:5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit."6 So when they met together, they asked him,
"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"7 He
said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has
set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea
and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."9 After he said this, he was
taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

Tong started by relating the incident in John 20 when Mary Magdalene
witnessed the resurrected Christ, and wanted to grab on to Him. Christ
refused her because now He has been transformed. Tong said that we are often
stuck with our old traditions and old concepts, and cannot understand when
to let God take control of our lives. Jesus had been transformed completely
through the resurrection, but his disciples had not. The disciples were
gathering in the upper room to pray primarily because they were afraid
(verse 19), and wanted safety in numbers, closing the door and staying
inside. Tong said that the door to the gospel is never closed by God's
enemies, although we often like to say so. In reality, the door to the
gospel is always closed from inside, by the people of God who are afraid;
just as the door to Noah's Ark was closed from the inside. But the
transformed Jesus could pass through that closed door and be with His
people, and God is the one who would open the door of the gospel, despite
the faithless church, just as He opened the door of the Ark.

Tong then turned his attention to John 20:2. He placed emphasis on the
description of the commission of Christ, in that the disciples are to be
sent out as the Father has sent the Son. How did the Father send the Son? He
sent Him from Glory to humiliation, from wealth to poverty, from power to
weakness; the clearest manifestation is the birth in a lowly, smelly manger.
This is the same manner to which Christ would send His disciples, but we
often do not realise this.

In giving them the commission, Christ breathed on them and tell them to be
prepared to receive the Holy Spirit. Tong went into a discourse on how this
signified that Jesus Christ is God, as God breathed His life into man when
he was created from dust. I remember that the last time Tong spoke on this,
he spent a lot of time on this theme, and rebuked evangelists like Benny
Hinn who practiced the same thing, breathing on people during his gospel
rally and saying 'receive the Holy Spirit'. Tong emphasized that this is an
act that can only be done genuinely by God, as Jesus is God. The Father sent
the Son, the Father and Son sent the Holy Spirit. To imitate that act is to
display a pathetic lack of understanding of scripture, and to blaspheme
against God Almighty.

Here, there is a clear link between the sending of the disciples, and the
receiving of the Holy Spirit. It was the last moment of Christ's presence on
earth, and He stayed for 40 days to continue to educate His disciples. Jesus
Christ pointed out to the disciples that His baptism was completely
different from that of John the Baptist, who prophesized that Jesus would
baptise with the Holy Spirit (Matt 3:11). And indeed Christ was the Baptist
for all who believe, baptising them in the Holy Spirit when they accept Him
as their personal Saviour. The baptism here is one at which the Holy Spirit
brings the believer back to the first baptism at the Day of Pentecost; just
as the Holy Spirit will bring the sinner to the Christ on the cross.
Historically, the Holy Spirit came during Pentecost once, just as Christ
died once. But the individual experiences that death of Christ and
resurrection, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit at another time unique to
himself, because the Holy Spirit brings that person back to the effect of
the actual crucifixion, resurrection of Christ, and descend of the Holy
Spirit. The believer therefore, will be sanctified via the salvation of
Christ, the Word of God, and the act of the Holy Spirit.

But Acts 1 showed that the disciples still completely missed the point,
right up to the ascension. They still thought that Christ had come to
restore the kingdom, the physical and political kingdom. This, said Tong,
must surely make Jesus Christ the loneliest person on the face of the earth.
We are still like the early disciples, completely missing the point about
what our commission is all about in relation to the power of the Holy
Spirit.

Tong said that he believes that one of the major problems with preachers
today lies with the way they have been taught by their seminaries. Again, he
drew parallel between the US and China. In the US, there are lots of
seminaries teaching about church growth, yet they are in rapid decline. In
China, they have nothing, yet they are experiencing tremendous growth. The
key reason said Tong, is that the commission is a command that comes with a
promise, that the disciples will receive power from the Holy Spirit, so that
they can be His witnesses to the whole world.

Here, Jesus Christ never promised anything except the power of the Holy
Spirit. He never promised a return plane ticket, a good salary package,
retirement benefits, car usage... things that most preachers are demanding
today before they would consider any ministry. Tong said that without the
Holy Spirit, you can have all the wealth in the world and still not have any
power to change the world. He cited an example of a church in Amsterdam,
built at huge cost, but sold for 1 Dutch guider to a para-church
organisation because the attendance had been so pathetic that it has to sell
out before being converted into a commercial centre. Tong said that
full-timers had forgotten that Christ said that He will send forth His
disciples in the same manner as the Father sent Him, that is, in
humiliation, in poverty, in suffering. Once we missed that, we cannot have
the power of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples needed to have a paradigm shift, and must know now that the
gospel must come from Christ sending them as the Father sent Him, that they
will have the Holy Spirit with them, that they will receive power, that they
will be witnesses, and the gospel will be universal for all people. This is
difficult for them to grasp. Tong emphasized that the gospel is to be
preached by witnesses, people who actually live the lives and exemplify
Christ - this is what witnessing means. On the contrary, the church is
filled with people who talk about witnessing, or the theories of witnessing,
or what is right behaviour; anything but being a witness themselves. The
gospel is to be lived, not talked about.

Tong ended with a moving personal example. He said that the first time he
was invited to preach in Taiwan, no one sent him any plane tickets. The
ticket would have cost 10 months' of his salary (he was in his twenties
then, making $10 a month). He accepted the invitation, sold his beloved
accordion and his first rolex watch to raise funds for himself. He flew to
Taipei, and preached tirelessly for 226 sessions in 2 months. The longest
preaching session lasted 12 hours a stretch, till he was completely
exhausted. In the end, he was rewarded with a plane ticket home, and just
enough money to buy 4 boxes of books, 2 of which got lost on the way back.
The 2 remaining boxes were mainly filled with Chinese books (banned in
Indonesia), but the LORD allowed the custom officers to pull out randomly 2
books for inspection, both turned out to be English, so the boxes went
through custom. What Tong did not tell the congregation was that he found
out later that someone in the organising committee took his honorarium for
himself, and gave him only a small portion (he told me that during a lunch
conversation some time back).

Tong's point was that when the Holy Spirit says go, He will empower us to go
beyond the usual human considerations. Ours is a role of obedience, upon
which power will surely come. One cannot have both self-reliance, and the
power of the Holy Spirit. One cannot keep plotting his own profit and loss,
and still expect his ministry to have power. As the Father sent the Son, so
have the Son sent His disciples.

===

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.