International Christians at GICF

Human ExperienceFaith Matters
Written By Edward Wolfe

In October, my wife and I visited my son and family in China. One of the delights of our month there was getting to know Albert’s church family, the Guangzhou International Christian Fellowship (GICF).

Meeting each Sunday in the Hilton Hotel, the congregation of about 300 included people from many countries and cultures. I met people in the congregation from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, the Ukraine, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia, South America, Mexico, and other countries as well. Guangzhou is a center of international trade, and so foreigners from many countries come there.

The government regulates whether their own Chinese citizens can attend the church—no, they can’t unless they have a foreign passport or residence permit.

At the church leadership’s request, Albert arranged for me to speak to the congregation on the subject “Is Jesus Real?”, the title of my latest book. [See sermons, week 41, for mine: https://gicf.net/2024-sermons.] In the book and in my sermon, I cited five types of evidence, including human experience, that Jesus is real and the Bible is true. Human experience includes people from across the globe (like GICF) and through the centuries who have found that Jesus is real. The church itself was evidence that Jesus is real and the Bible is true.

The Q&A session after the worship service included these questions, among others:

  • How can we be sure all of the Bible is authentic when it was written and compiled by different people?

  • There are so may gods in the world; why should we believe in the God of the Bible?

  • What is the best way to explain Jesus being wholly man and wholly God?

  • How can I make a deep connection with the Lord?

  • What is the best example you could use to explain the Trinity?

While my book addresses many of the questions asked, my son (who co-chaired the session with me) and I did our best to answer each of the 25 questions asked. I was struck that many of the questions could easily have been raised by an American audience.

I was thrilled to meet people from so many countries and cultures for whom, like my family and me, Jesus is real and the Bible is true.

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Edward Wolfe

Edward Wolfe has been a fan of Christian apologetics since his teenage years, when he began seriously to question the truth of the Bible and the reality of Jesus. About twenty years ago, he started noticing that Christian evidences roughly fell into five categories, the five featured on this website.
Although much of his professional life has been in Christian circles (12 years on the faculties of Pacific Christian College, now a part of Hope International University, and Manhattan Christian College and also 12 years at First Christian Church of Tempe), much of his professional life has been in public institutions (4 years at the University of Colorado and 19 years at Tempe Preparatory Academy).
His formal academic preparation has been in the field of music. His bachelor degree was in Church Music with a minor in Bible where he studied with Roger Koerner, Sue Magnusson, Russel Squire, and John Rowe; his master’s was in Choral Conducting where he studied with Howard Swan, Gordon Paine, and Roger Ardrey; and his doctorate was in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Literature, where he also studied group dynamics, humanistic psychology, and Gestalt theory with Guy Duckworth.
He and his wife Louise have four grown children and six grandchildren.

https://WolfeMusicEd.com
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