HEB 11:33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.

We are finally moving on to verses 33 and 34. Dr Tong said that he would not want to preach on Samuel since much of Samuel has been mentioned during the sessions on David, and it is time to move on.

The next few verses actually deal with the experiences of many men and women of faith. When we talk about faith, we often think of it as an intellectual understanding, a form of doctrine, or a particular idea. The book of Hebrews however, shows us that faith is something very real indeed. It is about reality, actual execution of our belief and the result of that lifestyle. This is what the reformed movement is all about. The reformation’s purpose was for us to return to the WORD of God and live our lives in a way consistent with the WORD.

The uniqueness of the Christian understanding of faith is that for us, faith enables us to have victory of all things. Christianity is not about living apart or away from the problems of the world. God did not promise abundance for us in material things, or successes in everything. But neither did He abandon us without any promises. Instead, He promised to be with us through our difficulties, to wipe our tears away, to carry our burdens, and to walk with us along our pathway of suffering. Our trials and sufferings may not go away, but through them all, we will be comforted, so that we in turn can comfort others. Dr Tong asserted that if we ask the LORD to remove all our sufferings, we would certainly be lacking of the essence needed for us to be elevated in our faith. So we need to give thanks to God for our problems, our enemies, our sufferings.

In the next few verses, two types of victories are seen. Verses 33 and 34 contain nine descriptions of the Israelites’ victories, or what Dr Tong described as ‘positive victories’. Verses 35 and 36 however, describe sufferings and what looked like failures of the people. But verse 38 ended by saying that the world was not worthy of these people, meaning that superficially, they seemed to have failed, but in reality, they had what Dr Tong called, ‘reversed victories’. This tells us that there is a direct relationship between faith and suffering. We do live in a world with all sorts of difficulties and problems, a world of sin, temptations, attacks from the evil one. Jesus Christ said that we are not to be taken away from such a world, but we are to have victory over it through our faith. Dr Tong again emphasized that this is unique among all religions, in that for others, faith is built on their own understanding and religiosity; but for Christians, our faith is built upon the promise of God, and not on our own understanding.

We do live in a temporal world, although this temporal world outlast our own temporal existence in that we will die before the world disappears. But faith allows us to surpass this temporal situation, and be eternal (1 John 5). Faith allows us to set our eyes on eternity, and we need to see that only those that know God will last forever. The cultures of the world propose things like truth, goodness and beauty; or wisdom, compassion, and courage as things with eternal values. But the Bible teaches something of a much higher plane. The Bible teaches that faith, hope and love have eternal values. Hebrews chapter 11 is about faith, chapter 12 about hope, and chapter 13 about love. Faith allows us to have victory over the world, hope allows us to see the eternal future, and love tells us to turn around and save the dying world. Dr Tong emphasized that the world can only be saved by Christian, who through faith had overcome the world.

Verses 33 and 34 can be described as faith overcoming fate. It does not matter if one believes in fate or not, or what sort of background one was raised in; faith allows us to overcome all of these things. Dr Tong then launched into a series of illustrations about how we are very influenced by the concept of fate, since we are all Asians (he asked for a show of hands to see if anyone visited a fortune teller before, and to my surprise, many people raised their hands).

The Bible forbids us from seeking counsel from fortune-tellers and sorcerers (Lev 19:31), because the LORD is the source of all our knowledge, not other sources. Interestingly, Dr Tong seems to leave room for the possibility that fortune-teller may display some supernatural abilities. In private conversation, he said that he believes that some of the famous gurus around probably have the aid of Satan in order for them to display phenomena that attracted the crowd.

Dr Tong then gave two illustrations on the bondage that fortune-tellers can give people, even to Christians. The first was about a woman in his congregation who was told by a fortune teller that she will die at age 38. The other was also another woman who was told by a fortune teller that her 2 daughters and 1 son will become 2 sons and 1 daughter when she got old. In both cases, the women were burdened tremendously by what they heard, and had no peace for decades. They confided only to Dr Tong (not even to their husbands!) about this, and Dr Tong lifted their burdens for them. For the first woman, Dr Tong said that he will buy her lunch the day after her 38th birthday (of course she outlived the date later). For the second woman, Dr Tong told her that the 2 daughters will bring back 2 son-in-laws, the one son will bring back one daughter-in-law (hence 2 daughter 1 son becoming 2 sons 1 daughter). The illustrations were very comical (with Dr Tong’s usual comic descriptions), but it is actually quite sad that people can be under bondage for so many years over the remarks of fortune-teller.

The Israelites seem to have suffered a bad fate in their history. Prior to King David, they were a small group of former-slaves. They were small in numbers, and lack military experiences. Yet they were victories over much stronger enemies, the most prominent being the Egyptians. Dr Tong then spent some time illustrating the might of the ancient Egyptians, the intricate pyramids, their culture and military strength. Yet today, Pharaoh is no longer (indeed, there are no true Egyptians anymore, only Arabs), but Moses is still remembered all over the world. His laws still form the basis of most legal system. Dr Tong also spoke on the French Revolution, on how Louis the 14th was once so powerful that he proclaimed himself France. In the end, his descendants were neheaded.

The powers of the world are completely temporal. Dictators like the Italian Mussolini was all powerful while they were alive, but Mussolini’s corpse was mutilated when he died. All other powerful leaders like Mao Tze Tong, Stalin, Hitlet, Suhartho, Deng Xiao Peng are all nowhere else to be found today. God enabled a tiny, helpless people to conquer kingdoms and overcome the world. Till today, the Jewish people remained the people who had garnered the most Nobel prizes and still wield strong influence over the rest of the world in practically every arena or human endeavour.

Verse 33 also points out that the people of God administered justice. Isaiah 42 verse 1 declares that the Servant of God will bring justice to the world. Isaiah went on to describe the Suffering Servant as someone filled with compassion, and will be faithful and steadfast in bringing justice to the world. Dr Tong proclaimed that this is the key role of any Christian, to be the source of justice for the entire world.

The Library of Congress in the USA contains about 100 million books, representing the collective wisdom of all humanity. The inscription in the library however, is not taken from any human sources. The inscription reads, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Our role in life has been made clear by this proclamation. We are to act in justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. Dr Tong then gave an illustration of how a rich man wanted to travel with Dr Tong on one of his mission trip but did not want to travel by economy class. But Dr Tong has always traveled by economy class, and has never bought a business class ticket before (I can testify personally that the man scrimp and save at every turn in his ministry. He would rather spend extra hours waiting at the airport just to save a few tens of dollars by catching another cheaper flight). In the end, the rich man had to learn humility because his pastor traveled humbly.

Dr Tong ended by talking assuring the people that while we walk humbly with God, we do not walk alone. Reformed theology is a theology about covenant. God is a God of promise. With each command He gives, He gives us promises. With each promise, there is a related command from Him. We can trust in God’s promises because of 3 things:

God is faithful and has absolute integrity – so He will never betray His people.
God is unchangeable (immutable) – so He does not change His mind.
God is all powerful – so He can fulfill all His promises.
The ending illustration was about a boy who prayed loudly to God that his grandma had forgotten to get him his Christmas present. When his brother told him to pray quietly because God is not deaf, the little boy answered, “But grandma is deaf!” Dr Tong encouraged all to be convicted that our God is not deaf. He will listen to us, and fulfill His promises to us. When we are certain of this, we would not be afraid of the many trials and difficulties we are to face in our lives.

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.