Dearly Beloved Brethren,
Thank you Dr. Alan Cairns and Farewell!
I recalled in January 2011 that I emailed to Dr. Cairns for the possibility of him coming to Singapore to preach God’s Word to us for a period of 2 to 3 months. It was the desire of the Church Session which we committed to the Lord in prayer for His will to be done. Today, we witnessed how the Lord has led the way for Dr. and Mrs. Cairns to come to us and providing every need in the journey and the accommodation here. The Lord has been pleased to bring Dr. and Mrs. Cairns in our midst since 3 January 2012 and that we have the privilege and joy to listen to God’s Word preached to us by Dr. Cairns for 2½ months.
Alas, all good things on earth has to come to an end and today we will listen to the last message preached to us by Dr. Cairns before he departs this Wednesday 14 March 2012. Pray for his safe journey home. Thank God that Mrs. Cairns has arrived safely back about a month ago. We want to thank Dr. Cairns for his willingness and love for God’s people in making the long journey to stay in a hot humid country in Singapore for 2½ months. It is not easy to adjust to a new environment and coupled with the many preaching assignments that were given to him. Thank God for enabling him to do God’s work here and also keeping him in good health.
Dr. Cairns has set for us an example of godliness and what it means to give our all to the Lord and to love the Lord with all our soul, heart and mind. Please read the testimony of Dr. Cairns that he has kindly written for us and printed in today’s weekly. The Lord has indeed used him greatly in Northern Ireland and in USA. I would dare say now that the Lord has also used him in Singapore to be a great spiritual blessing and encouragement to all of us here in Tabernacle BP Church though we be few in number. Let us be doers of the spiritual lessons learned from the preaching of Dr Cairns and also from his life’s testimony and example. Hebrews 13:7, ‘Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.’
We will fondly remember Dr. Alan Cairns and bid our farewell to him. We do not know if we will meet again on earth but we are sure that in Heaven, we will be together in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you Dr. Cairns and God be with you till we meet again!
Our Church has found a new Premises – Praise the Lord!
After months of prayers and searching and waiting upon the Lord, the decision has been made that we will move to a new premises on 1 April 2012 (Sunday). The Lord has provided us a suitable place in the premises of Changi Bethany Church, located at Upper Changi Road East. We can keep to our same time of worship and Sunday School classes. The Lord is good and has always been gracious and merciful to us.
Psalm 117: 1-2, ‘O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.’
There will be many adjustments that all of us have to make in the new premises. For those who do not stay in the East, it will mean further travelling time and some inconvenience. For all of us, we will need to adjust to the new worship halls and rooms and fellowship places. It will not be the same as before. We do not know how much freedom of space and time we can enjoy as we now have in Bethany Evangelical Free Church. Let us never be murmuring people. Be thankful to the Lord for providing us a place and trust God for His leading and purpose. It is always for our spiritual good and that our Church will grow and depend more on the Lord. Romans 8:28, ‘And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.’
One purpose that I am very sure the Lord wants us to fulfill and do is to reach out to the unsaved in our new premises. We have to leave our comfort zone to go a new place. Surely, the Lord wants us to preach the Gospel and bring in the unsaved to our Church in this new premises. There is potential for a Sat children Bible Fellowship. Who will do it for the Lord? There are construction workers working behind the Church building the 4th University SUTD. Can we reach out to them? When the University is ready by end 2014, are there not many university students to reach out to? God has a purpose for us to move to a new premises and we must be ready to do His work. Pray for the Lord to renew our spirit and to use us for His glory.
The new place comes with a much higher rental at $4000 per month. Currently, we are paying only $1200. Based on current offerings and with this new rental payment, our monthly offering is not sufficient to meet our expenditure. Let us trust the Lord to provide our needs. It is also a challenge to us to learn to give unto the Lord and to give more and to give cheerfully from our hearts. The Macedonia Churches set us a good example of giving in 2 Corinthians 8:2, ‘How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.’
We have another farewell to bid but not in sadness – this time to Bethany Evangelical Free Church and we thank this Church for their kindness for allowing us to stay for about 14 years. We look forward to greater things for the Lord in the new premises! Pray and labour for the Lord.
Elder John Leong
Testimony by Dr Alan Cairns
I had the inestimable privilege of being born to Christian parents and thus learned the gospel from my very earliest days. As a boy of eight years old and a member of the Salvation Army Junior Band (a very poor trombone player!), I attended an evangelistic service conducted by a team of visiting young American men. At that service I received Christ as my Saviour and continued to attend the Salvation Army. Not long after that, our family moved to a new home in another district of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and I began to attend other meetings as well. In due time, the Free Presbyterian Church opened a new church near to where we lived and I started attending Sunday School and church services there. That was a momentous change for me.
In my teenage years I suffered from a distinct lack of assurance of my salvation, mostly because of compromise with the world and the fear of man. However, the Lord graciously challenged me and drew me back to Himself and finally, during an all-night men’s prayer meeting settled the assurance question once and for all. Not long after that, with my schooling finished, I was faced with the challenge of knowing and doing the will of God. In a very remarkable manner the Lord called me to the ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church. My local church supported my application to the Presbytery for acceptance as a student for the ministry and the Presbytery duly accepted me. Our church was still in its infancy and was chronically short of preachers. Thus, just three months after entering theological training, I was given the task of being a student pastor in a small church near Belfast. The appointment was for a six month trial period but I ministered there for four years. The Lord blessed the work and the church grew. Those church members were very loving and supportive, never critical, even though they were listening to a raw young recruit whose knowledge and abilities were pretty limited.
In due course, I knew that the Lord was leading me to accept the call to another Free Presbyterian congregation. It was situated four miles outside the town of Ballymoney and I spent fifteen very happy years as the minister of that congregation. There I had the privilege of seeing the Lord build the church and save many souls. In 1972 we relocated into the town and opened a new church building, which became the scene of some memorably blessed meetings. One gospel mission in 1976 stands out and is still talked about by the people who were there. It followed a wonderful week of prayer, which included an epic twenty-eight hour prayer meeting, and was blessed of God to the conversion of some sixty people.
The congregation in Ballymoney and I believed that I would remain as their minister until I either died or retired. I refused a number of calls from other churches, believing that God had called me to Ballymoney and had not directed me to leave. Thus when our church in Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.A., asked me if I would consider a call to be their minister, I told them very clearly that the Lord had called me to the church I was serving in and had not called me away from it. So they asked, “If God called you, would you leave it and come here?” I replied that I would go anywhere the Lord called me, but that He had not called me to leave Ballymoney. That was enough for them and they started to pray that the Lord would direct my heart toward Greenville. It would take too long to tell how He did that, but He did do it and made it impossible for me to do anything other than move to Greenville.
I served as minister of Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville for almost thirty years, during which time the Lord blessed and built the church and gave us a ministry to prepare young men as pastors and pioneers of new churches. In addition, He gave our church an influential radio ministry and later an internet ministry. My thirty years in Greenville were wonderful years, spent among some of the most precious brethren and sisters any minister could ever wish to have as a congregation.
However, nothing in this world lasts forever and so in 2009 I retired and moved back to Northern Ireland. Being retired has given me the opportunity to help other churches and is the reason I have been able to accept your elders’ invitation to minister here for last ten weeks. I have greatly enjoyed my time with you in Singapore. I have especially enjoyed getting to know quite a number of you better. I trust that the Lord has blessed my ministry to your hearts. I have been praying that He will bring any unsaved people who have attended to a knowledge of Christ as Lord and Saviour and that He will build up His believing people in their most holy faith.
As I prepare to leave Singapore, I would like to thank you all for your friendship, fellowship and generous kindness. I will remember you as you seek to relocate your place of worship and pray for a full time pastor. May the Lord bless you and keep you; may He give you the unity of the Spirit as you seek for a pastor; may He guard and guide the church; may He let you see your families completed in Christ and use you to bring many others to Christ; and in everything, may He make you a means of bringing great glory to His name.
Once again, thank you for your kindness to my wife and me.
“The Lord direct your hearts into the Love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.”
2 Thessalonians 3:5
Dr. Alan Cairns