Halbrook Philippine Report April 20-24, 2013
April 24, 2013th Year of Our Lord
Dear family, brethren, & friends,
Greetings to all from the Philippines where the moon is still shining every night! I am thinking of all of my loved ones back home and praying for all of you. Thank you for sending me here to teach God’s Word – and to also learn and grow from my association with these precious Filipino saints.
On Saturday, April 20, I flew from Laoag City in northern Luzon to Manila, where I caught a connecting flight to Cebu City on the island of Cebu. Jonathan Carino lives here and has labored here in God’s kingdom for many years. We planned to follow up on beachheads which were established during my previous trip.
Early on the first day of the week we drove over two hours to the village near Bogo City named Libjo Tabogon where a new church is meeting in a house owned by one of the members. Gil Suico started the congregation when we baptized 26 people he brought to Bogo City on my previous trip. The church numbers 25-30 but today we had 66 including visitors from several denominations. I taught two lessons entitled “The First Gospel Sermon,” covering Acts 2 verse by verse, to ground them more fully in the fundamentals.
Next we had a lengthy and productive Q & A session with questions covering a wide range of issues from 7th Day Adventist doctrine to worldliness to modest dress. It would lift the hearts of brethren back home to hear so many good questions from sincere searching hearts!
Our round trip took about 5 hours, which was quite exhausting, but I would not trade anything for being there!
Monday we made the long round trip again to reach Bogo City proper. This time we rented a hotel function room made for 40 people and 110 showed up including about 40 denominational “pastors,” mostly Pentecostal and Baptist. This is the result of joint efforts by Gil Suico and Felix Cantulan. Felix was converted last year from the “local church” movement started by a Chineseman named Watchman Nee in 1922 and spread to the U.S. and the Philippines by Witness Lee. Felix gathered contacts among his former members and among denominational preachers in Bogo City and also on the island of Masbate (the world’s 59th largest island in population-I have been invited there a number of times but have not made it, yet).
This very attentive audience of 110 souls studied four lesson and many heard things which were completely new to them on “The Last Great Prophet: Jesus Christ or Mohamed?”, “Jesus Came to Seek and Save the Lost,” “New Beginnings in Christ,” and “When Peter Confessed Christ.” In order to take full advantage of our limited teaching time, I asked them to hold their questions for tomorrow. This was another long hard day worth every minute!
We returned Tuesday , arriving at 11:00 A.M. because the small van of Jonathan Carino had a flat tire. Before lunch I taught on “Judgment by Christ: Jerusalem, and All Men” (Matthew 24 verse by verse). The first lesson after lunch was “Thy Kingdom Come”-both these lessons addressed various aspects of premillennial error. Then the last study was “The Gospel Makes Us Right with God” – we must seek and find the right God, the right Savior, the right gospel, the right baptism, the right church, and the right life. About 110 attended again today. The open forum ran for over an hour with questions ranging from “the last days” to baptism. The sincerity of this audience was clear to all of us.
These denominational preachers said they will gather fellow preachers for meetings like this every three months if I will agree to teach them. I will try to schedule this on the August trip and we will see where it goes from there. When the invitation was extended, a young lady 12 years old came immediately with confidence ready to obey what she had learned. I do not doubt that several of the “pastors” will likewise be baptized. In fact, after we left about 5:30 P.M., many people stayed discussing what they had learned with Gil and Felix until 10:00 P.M.! The comment was heard several times, “We cannot deny what was taught because it all came straight out of the Bible.”
Today, Wednesday, April 24, it was a relief to travel only 30 minutes to reach the small congregation of Benjie “Julius” Labura at Sacred Homes, Cansojong, Talisay City in Metro Cebu. He was converted from the Baptist Church during my previous trip here and is slowly trying to teach what he has learned to his members. There were no baptisms today but there were many good indications of progress. After two first principles lessons, the floor was opened for questions. The questions were again wide ranging from whether babies who die without baptism are saved to the difference between the soul and the spirit.
One of the leading men approached me to say he understood the day’s lessons, so I asked if he understood baptism. He said yes. He remarked to another brother that he had turned away from his vices except for sometimes drinking with his friends and he understood from the lessons that he must first repent of this sin in order to be baptized. Good! We do not want to baptize people who do not understand what it means to first repent.
The church meets in Benjie’s small house and 25-30 squeezed inside with several more listening outside. He is so poor he does not even have a table on which to serve guests. When we took our lunch break, he removed the mat from his bed and brought it in to be used as a very low table. Yet, he was happy to have all these people in his home to study God’s Word – and the people where satisfied that they heard the truth and asked us to return as soon as possible. Meanwhile, follow-up teaching will continue and we are confident there will be conversions.
I constantly thank God for every saint at home who has offered a prayer, a penny, or an encouraging word on behalf of the Philippine work. Without your help and cooperation, this trip would be impossible for me to make. May God bless and keep each one of you!
In Christian love,
Ron Halbrook
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