A Letter from Bishop Felizardo Abanto

To all the brethren,

Thank God and He allowed me to come here again in America, in order to attend here in the GIBF conference. The leaders of this fellowship who preached were leaders of BBFI but separated because they want to preserve the old doctrinal stands like that in music, KJV, and standards. It was pleasing to the ear to hear messages that I learned from the Bible Baptists 30 years ago.Among the pastors who preached were Dr. Dave Hardy, Sam Davison, Hal Hightower, Wayne Hardy, Jason Gaddis, Brent Loveless, Frank Wood at Kenny Baldwin.

I would like to share to you some of the thoughts I got from them: "When we are young, but especially when we are old, we need God's power to remain faithful and true to God and His word"; "We should be more concerned on the person than on what we could get from him"; "We must be serious on our church music to be godly and understand that it is not just a preparation for worship but is in itself is worship and because we don't just have people as audience, but because God is there also, present"; "We must be reminded of our old beliefs so that we will not compromise our gospel preaching, our godly music, our confrontational soulwinning method, our standards of dress and morality"; "American standards are found everywhere in America from the construction of cities, roads, houses, and even in the kitchens, but why not require standards on the American society and its morals?"; "Our activities and ministries for God are nothing to God and they may even be wicked, if it does not change us and if its focus is not Jesus Christ"; "We should conduct ourselves like true men of God, surrender ourselves to full time ministry and serve Him all of our lives"; and "We should keep ourselves on fire for the Lord by letting His fire burning in our lives and not through the strange fire of the devil".

Why did the BBFI pastors separate from the Southern Baptist Convention? These pastors separated to prevent them from going the direction of the convention toward liberalism, compromise and ecumenism. History repeated itself because some people thought that change is inevitable and you will lose if you will not go with the flow. Some want to make their own name known also that they have done some big thing.

Remember when Franklin Graham came to the Philippines? Who cooperated with him and became leaders? Wasn't it no other than Abante, Vallega, Arias, Tabanda, Nable, etc.? And who didn't cooperate with Franklin Graham? The pastors ng BMP at IBMA at many BBF pastors who are not on the letterhead of BBFPI. Painful but true. Hard to admit but it is happening. We don't want to show that we are holier than them. No. We just want to be faithful and true to God and His Word. Our loyalty is not to a person or to a group. I praise the Lord because there are still many pastors and churches in America that still stands for what I believe in even today. There also many independent pastors in the Philippines who will not go with pentecostalism and ecumenism. What saddens me is my group, where I belong for 30 years, where my roots are, my identity. Our problem is with our leaders who are directly affected by what is happening with the BBFI in America. Where the BBFI goes then the BBFPI follows. It's like the Philippines. Where the USA goes the Phils follows. But not for the good. Lord Jesus, help us. Please Lord, come quickly.

This article was e-mailed to CYPA by Bishop Abanto on October 3, 2009. No word was changed.