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We had the Canadian UBF Staff Education Conference at a retreat center in a suburb of Montreal from August 12-13. Dr. John P. from Kwangju II UBF lectured on Christian church history from the viewpoint of theological issues. His lectures were divided into five sections: the early church, the medieval church, the reformation, the modern church, and the church history of North America and the direction of Canada UBF in light of the history of Christianity.

According to Dr. John’s lecture, the theological issue of the early church was “Jesus is the Christ”; the medieval church’s issue was “Who is the head of the church: the pope or the emperor?”; the issue of the reformation period was “Salvation by faith alone or by deeds?”; and the issue of the modern church was “Revelation of God or human reason?” We could see that church history from the early church to the modern church could be summarized as “Church history is God’s history that fought against humanism and the sin of mankind.” Sin is man’s real and fundamental problem and God raised his servants in each generation to defend the gospel of Jesus and serve God’s purpose in their generation. We learned that the creative minority in the history of God was God’s people who served Jesus Christ as their Lord over that of the emperors, who held on to the word of God over that of the secular law, and who longed for heavenly glory rather than compromising with the worldly authorities. They were people who had absolute faith in the word of God and had God’s vision in their hearts and transformed their society as the salt and the light of the world.

We were challenged by the early Christians’ clear gospel faith not to compromise with the relativistic ideas of society, but to preach the gospel with absolute faith in Jesus Christ. Not only that, we had a meaningful Q&A session after each section of the lectures, and leaders were encouraged to hold on to the gospel faith and follow the word of God no matter what happens. Thank God for giving us a precious opportunity to study the history of the Christian church with a clear viewpoint through the help of Dr. John. May God bless each Canadian chapter to double their ministry and raise Canadian disciples and national leaders!

Reported by M. Paul C.