Country Singapore Weekly attendance Approx. 1,000 Founded 15 October 1950 Phone +65 6594 9399 Construction cost 500,000 SGD | Membership Approx. 1,000 Website www.lifebpc.com Opened 1962 Founder Timothy Tow Groundbreaking 1960 | |
Denomination Bible-Presbyterian churches (Singapore) Address 9A Gilstead Rd, Singapore 309063 Similar Singapore Life Church, Covenant Evangelical Free Chu, Prinsep Street Presbyter, Bethany Independent‑Presbyterian Church Si, St Matthew's Church - S | ||
Life Bible-Presbyterian Church (Abbreviation: LBPC; Chinese: 笃信圣经长老会生命堂) is a reformed, fundamental, and separatist Bible-Presbyterian church located at Gilstead Road, under the Novena Planning Area, within the Central Region of Singapore. It is the first and oldest Bible-Presbyterian church in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and the mother church of Bible-Presbyterian churches in the region. Church members are referred to as "Lifers." The pastor is the Rev Charles Seet.
Contents
The church motto is "Holding Forth the Word of Life" (Philippians 2:16).
History
Life Bible-Presbyterian Church ("LBPC") was established by Timothy Tow, who in 1950 became pastor of the Life Church English Service at Say Mia Tng a Chinese Presbyterian Church at Prinsep Street (not to be confused with Prinsep Street Presbyterian Church). In 1955 Tow and others left the Chinese Presbyterian Synod to form the Bible-Presbyterian Church and LBPC was established. In 1963, LBPC moved into new premises in 9 & 9A Gilstead Road. The acquisition of 10 Gilstead Road was completed on 30 April 1990.
In 1988, the Synod of the Bible-Presbyterian Church was dissolved, but LBPC and other Bible-Presbyterian churches continue to exist under their respective names.).
Controversy
The Far Eastern Bible College ("FEBC") shares premises with LBPC, but it had a falling out with LBPC over Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP). FEBC teaches that God has supernaturally preserved each and every one of His inspired Hebrew/Aramaic OT words and Greek NT words to the last jot and tittle so that God’s people will always have in their possession His infallible and inerrant Word kept intact without the loss of any word, and that the infallible and inerrant words of Scripture are found in the faithfully preserved Traditional/Byzantine/Majority manuscripts and fully represented in the Printed and Received Text (or Textus Receptus) that underlie the Reformation Bibles best represented by the KJV, and NOT in the corrupted and rejected texts of Westcott and Hort that underlie the many modern versions of the English Bible like the NIV, NASV, ESV, RSV, TEV, CEV, TLB, etc., but the Board of Elders of LBPC disagrees.
Lawsuit
In 2008 the church sued the college directors, including Timothy Tow, over allegedly “deviant Bible teachings” in an attempt to force FEBC to leave the Gilstead Road premises. However the church failed as the Court of Appeal of Singapore, the apex court in the Singapore legal system, ruled on 26 April 2011 that (i) “the College, in adopting the VPP doctrine, has not deviated from the fundamental principles which guide and inform the work of the College right from its inception, and as expressed in the Westminster Confession”; (ii) “[i]t is not inconsistent for a Christian who believes fully in the principles contained within the Westminster Confession (and the VPI [Verbal Plenary Inspiration] doctrine) to also subscribe to the VPP doctrine”; and (iii) “[i]n the absence of anything in the Westminster Confession that deals with the status of the apographs, we [the Court] hesitate to find that the verbal plenary preservation doctrine is a deviation from the principles contained within the Westminster Confession."