The 2009 Presbyterian Convention in Pakistan

Thank the Lord for a faithful Presbyterian and Reformed Church in Pakistan. This faithful testimony of the Gospel began in Lahore, Pakistan, in the late 1960s with the formation of the Bible-Believing Lahore Church Council, Lahore, Pakistan, (BBLCCL) working in partnership with Westminster Biblical Missions, Inc. Today the Bible-Believing Lahore Church Council has grown to approximately fifty congregations with about thirty-nine pastors. Other ministries within the BBLCCL consist of a Presbyterian Theological Seminary, four Calvin's Academies with about 2,500 students, a Bible Literacy Program, two medical clinics, and a sewing class for women. The small beginnings of the BBLCCL were blessed of God and established in 1973 when Sardar Ahmed Din, who worked for the Consulate at the Pakistan Embassy to support his family, opposed the liberal trends of the World Council of Churches within the Lahore Church Council in Lahore, Pakistan. Rev. Din led a small group of faithful Bible-believing Christians out of the Lahore Church Council and organized a church that would stand upon the Word of God alone and faithfully confess the doctrines of the Westminster standards of the Reformed faith.

The Beginning of the Convention at Lahore, Pakistan

By the providence of God, Rev. Din, in the early 1970s was introduced to a faithful Presbyterian minister in the United States by the name of Rev. Earl Pinckney. Providentially, Rev. Pinckney and a number of other Presbyterian men were in the process of the formation of a mission board and asked Rev. Din to join them. This was the beginning of Westminster Biblical Missions. Soon after organizing the first congregations of the BBLCCL, the Presbyterian Theological Seminary was founded to train men for the ministry. Since the mid 1970s graduates of the seminary have been preaching the gospel and planting Presbyterian congregations. In 1993 the BBLCCL congregations began meeting at Calvin's Academy #1 for the first Annual Presbyterian Convention. Guest speakers were invited to conduct worship services and Bible studies for the congregations and other guests were welcomed to attend for a time of spiritual refreshing in the Word of God. These meetings typically lasted four or five days with upwards of three thousand people in attendance.

The Sixteenth Annual Presbyterian Convention

Last year the Presbyterian Convention was cancelled because of the high risks of terrorists attacks. Although the terrorist alerts remained this year, precautions were taken so that the Presbyterian Convention of 2009 could convene. The Rev. Jonathan Merica, a minister in the Reformed Church in the U.S. and pastor at Calvary Reformed Chapel, Stockton, California, was invited to be the guest speaker. He welcomed the opportunity to minister to the people of God. Rev. Merica presently labors as the Assistant to Rev. Dennis Roe, the General Secretary of Westminster Biblical Missions and a minister in the RCUS. Rev. Emmanuel Gill and Rev. Sardar Din were the translators for the worship services and Bible studies into the Urdu language. Rev. Merica was very grateful for the several men who provided security while traveling through the dangerous areas where terrorist threats were more prevalent. He praises God for His protection and leading of the convention meetings. During one trip to the worship service at Lakho Dehar on November 2, the driver unwittingly decided to travel a different road. Had they not changed their route, they would have been at the scene of a suicide bombing, where six police officers were killed and others injured. During Rev. Merica's stay there were terrorist bombings that occurred in other areas of Pakistan. One occurred in Lahore, but not close enough to be a danger to our Christian brethren of the BBLCCL. Sadly, bombings are becoming more frequent in the Lahore area. We need to pray faithfully for the protection of God's people in a land that is militantly hostile to Christianity.

The earth on which we are privileged to live is a fantastic production of the Creator's hand. The unbelievable variety of physical things from "simple" (try making one) atoms of hydrogen to the complex combinations of thousands of individual molecules (each made up of millions of atoms) that make up the physical chemicals of biological life bear witness to the unimaginable intelligence of their Designer-Creator. Indeed, only a divine Person of immense power and wisdom could possibly have come up with a tiny part of this universe. The universe literally shouts out the greatness of its Creator at every turn of our attention.

Add to the physical universe the mysterious spiritual life force that animates all living things (animals and humans have differing souls, one dies, the other returns to God at death), and you have a universe that will always escape the most powerful microscope. The heavens literally do "declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork," and, "there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard" Psalm 19:1, 3). Everywhere we turn, we are face to face with God, thus making the unbeliever without excuse and deserving of hellfire for his refusal to glorify God and be thankful unto Him (Rom. 1:20-21).

In the morally and philosophically squishy world in which we live, it is hard to find good footing. We are always saddened, and frankly befuddled, when we see people who are overwhelmed with the pressures of life drop their heads and look at their own feet. We see this in individual lives and in the lives of whole Protestant denominations. When decisions are made just to please people, we call that liberalism. When we look to strength in numbers or our own personal abilities, we call that weakness and failure. When change means taking your eyes off of sound doctrine, we call that unorthodoxy. All will fail.

In the political arena, some people are apt to think that hope rests in change. In many cases, the church has adopted this same mantra-change will bring security. This is true only if that change is humble repentance, but it is false if change only means following another human solution. It is false if all we are looking for is the lowest common denominator that will please a majority. Real change comes by lifting our eyes to a higher power.

Many of the problems we face are just simply overwhelming for us. When we watch people in Haiti digging through fallen concrete with their bare hands to see if there are any survivors under the rubble, we are vividly reminded of the weakness of man and the power of God. How many seconds did it take to level a city of millions of people? Many people's lives are no different from the destruction in Haiti-they are overwhelmed by the scope of the problem in light of their own abilities. Human depravity digs deep holes. And unrepentant man keeps digging.

There are several important lessons to learn from the recent disaster in Haiti, lessons that actually are common to the series of disasters that seem continuously to plague mankind, but to which most of us just seem to close our eyes and minds. The first of these lessons is humility. We simply do not run the world, and it is foolish arrogance to think otherwise. We have no more power to stop earthquakes than have previous generations. Yet, we live in a part of the world where things go the way we want them to go much of the time so that we begin to think that we are the cause of our own success. How ironic! We hunker down helplessly one day under an ice storm, not able to stop one raindrop, and the next day we are deciding to spend billions on manmade "climate control."

The fact is that God controls the world, and He not only does not consult with us, He tells us why things happen the way they do. Jesus specifically tells us that the age in which we live will be characterized by "wars and rumors of wars," because "nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places" (Matt. 24:6-7). This is exactly what has been happening the last two thousand years and yet many of us tend to look down upon those who take the Bible to be true in what it says. This is the second lesson-we have no means of understanding history if we do not listen to the God who rules it.

Well then, why do these bad things happen? I'm glad you asked, because God tells us that He brings these disasters upon the earth to wake us all up to the fact that we are sinners who need to repent and seek forgiveness from Him. Jesus said, "those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think they were sinners more than all men who dwelt in Jerusalem, I tell you, No, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:4-5). In verses 1-3 of the same chapter He says the same thing about people who were cruelly murdered by Pontius Pilate. In other words, "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23), and there is no human being, man, woman, or child who will escape it, because we are all sinners. Some would like to tell us that death is normal, but the vast outpouring of sympathy for victims of disasters tell us that this is poppycock. None of us likes the idea of dying.

These verses in Luke 13 also tell us that folks who suffer disasters are not worse than the rest of us. Are they sinners, worse than the rest of you? Jesus asks, and answers His own question with "No way." Another time His disciples asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, because he was born blind?" Jesus answered "Neither one, but that the works of God might be displayed clearly." Not only are these things under God's control, God's purpose is that by knowing this we will have real comfort in the face of our own uncertainty. Imagine the difference between Daniel going into the lion's den, or David going into battle with the sure knowledge that God is with him, compared to the terror of believing that this is just a roll of the dice.

The fact is that we do have the comfort of God's presence no matter whether we survive great danger, or we die, as we all will some day. This is because while the "wages of sin is death," Romans 6:23 goes on to say, "but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." You and I can go through life knowing and believing the real God, or we can make life a roll of the dice. This choice is ours, but reality isn't. Haiti did happen.