Founder's Day

Saturday evening we joined our folk at the William Booth Corps to celebrate Founder's Day. At this meeting, the Territorial Commander, Colonel Gillian Downer installed the new Territorial Youth Secretary,Captain Zane Haupt. You can read his testimony in this month's War Cry. He shared with us his hopes and desires "I have two passions that I think go hand in hand. The first is to see the Holy Spirit working in and changing people on a daily basis. I love to see spiritual formation and transformation taking place in all believers and including myself. My other passion is for authentic worship." Amen to that and we share his hopes and aspirations.

This territory is terribly short of officers and we hope and pray that our youth will offer themselves for officership. As Candidate's Secretary the Captain will certainly be encouraging our youth to obey the call to be officers of The Salvation Army. We need officers and need them badly.

Sunday we celebrated Founder's Day at our Corps. It was also the welcome of our new Corps assistants - Auxiliary Captains Raymond and Cathy Aloba. They will take over much of the management of Corps affairs and pastoral care of our folk. This will allow our Corps Officer Major Ruth Pascoe to concentrate on her preaching and pastoral activities which cover not only William Booth Corps, but also Eratchippu Corps and the centre at Bukit Panjang. The Major will also conduct training courses for our people in the territory and give pastoral care to our officers.

One thing noticeably missing during this weekend - we did not sing the Founder's Song - "O boundless salvation, deep ocean of love. O fullness of mercy Christ brought from above."

I did Revelation Chapter 17 yesterday - the 39th lesson in this series. John's vision encompasses more than his immediate age. That civilisation has gone, but the enemies of God's people are still around. Whatever anti christian morality infects the church or seduces the believers to forsake God and embrace worldliness, there the scarlet woman, the harlot flaunts her charms. John's vision applies to our generation and our situation.

Never think that evil is just in the world, it invades the church as well and we must be vigilant - watch and pray lest we enter into temptation. Let us pray hard and also search the Scriptures daily. Sadly many of our folk are content with limited knowledge of God's word. I was saddened when one lady in our church said to me, "Your studies are too 'chhim'" meaning too deep for her. She and her ilk are content with superficial knowledge of the word. It's tragic to have such attitude.

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3: 16 & 17 (NASB)