50 Years Building His Kingdom - Far Eastern Bible College

Why Far Eastern
Bible College
the Bible College,
the Church would
“WITHOUT
die!” These words were
said by the late missionary to China and
friend of Far Eastern Bible College
(FEBC), Rev. Dr Paul Contento. Our
founding principal, Rev. Dr Timothy Tow,
restates it in the positive,
“When we build the Bible
College, we build the
Church.” Formal theological
training is vital for
church growth. In his
book—Forty Years on the
Road to Church Growth—
our principal wrote, “Without
proper Bible training,
the Church that relies on
self-taught evangelists or
missionaries will be stifled
in growth, inasmuch as the
tether of their theological
knowledge is short and the
ability of their preaching
skills is limited.” Many a
self-made pastor have run
off their bobbins due to a
lack of intensive, systematic
training in the Word.
The trend is indeed towards
the trained. Thus, in obedience
to the Pauline mandate,
“And the things that
thou hast heard of me
among many witnesses, the
same commit thou to faithful
men, who shall be able
to teach others also” (2 Tim
2:2), the Far Eastern Bible
College has been instituted. On April 28,
1962, the Rev. Dr Paul Contento laid the
foundation stone, and prayed God to raise
up a Moody or a Wesley from the halls of
FEBC.
The founding principal, who is also
the founding pastor of Life B-P Church,
“There was a crying
need for a Biblebelieving
and Bibledefending
training
institute for the
propagation of the
gospel and defence
of the faith in the
Far East.”
was burdened to set up a Bible College as
early as 1954. In those days, theology at
the college level was taught by modernist
professors. There was a crying need for a
Bible-believing and Bible-defending training
institute for the propagation of the
Gospel and the defence of the faith in the
Far East. There was a need
to train Asians for Asia, to
repel the stranglehold of
“theological colonialism”
of modernism and
ecumenism. This same
need remains today with the
rise of new strains of virulent
“isms”, viz. post-modernism,
neo-evangelicalism,
charismatism, hyper-
Calvinism, neo-Pharisaism,
and the syncretism in heretical
counselling and
church growth methods. With many a seminary
in the West today drowned by the deluge
of unbelief and apostasy, the need for
a theologically fundamental Bible college
is never so great.
FEBC, from the outset, has stressed
the need for both spiritual cultivation and
The Faculty of FEBC
when it opened on
17 September 1962
Page 111