HEREIN IS LOVE, NOT THAT WE LOVED GOD,
BUT THAT HE LOVED US, AND SENT HIS SON. . .
I John 4:10

Last Sunday my husband, Pastor D. A. Waite, began the first half of John's "love" letter. I was impressed with something that he said, commenting on verse ten of the fourth chapter, concerning "love." My husband looked out at us here in our house church that morning and asked, "Do you know in your marriage, which one of you `loved' first? " "Was it you or your mate? " he further questioned.

I tried to remember. I couldn't come up with the answer. Of course, it was a long time ago--over fifty years ago that we had fallen in love with each other. My husband and I had graduated from the same high school together in 1945. It was during our senior year that UNCLE CHARLIE, our high school janitor, introduced young Waite to Jesus Christ. It was that summer, before college, that we "dated." Then he left for the University of Michigan. I thought that was the end of our friendship. I cried, for I knew that D. A. Waite would find a better girl to be his wife--a wiser and prettier one who didn't limp.

Then Pastor Waite talked about God's love. "Who loved first--God or us?" he further asked. To the born-again Christian, there should be no wondering, no pondering, no surmising! With full authority, Pastor declared that it was God who loved first. There is not a minuscule of doubt as to whose love showed itself first. OF COURSE IT WAS GOD'S!

"How did God show us that he loved us?" was another questioned posed to us that Sunday morning. Then Pastor declared, "GOD SENT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD TO SAVE OUR SOULS!" What a beautiful truth!

WHY NOT DROP IN AND VISIT OUR SUNDAY MORNING CHURCH SERVICE SOON! COME VISIT THE HISTORIC SIGHTS IN PHILADELPHIA/ or BEAUTIFUL SOUTH JERSEY (which includes the Atlantic Ocean a few miles from us) for a week or so. While here, make the Bible For Today Baptist Church one of your stops. We live in a big brick house on 900 Park Avenue, in Collingswood, New Jersey. Been living here for thirty-eight years; but the church is only five years old. I guarantee you will find a spiritual blessing as we are taught the WORDS OF GOD together. PASTOR WAITE is a verse by verse Bible expositor. Some preachers barely use the Bible at all these days. PASTOR WAITE TEACHES A HALF A CHAPTER A WEEK FROM WHATEVER BOOK HE IS TEACHING, AS WELL AS BRINGING INTO THE MESSAGE SUPPORTING SCRIPTURES FROM OTHER PARTS OF THE BIBLE.

THE BIBLE FOR TODAY BAPTIST CHURCH IS FIVE YEARS OLD!

Well, after the umpteenth time of hearing the same kind of "father’s day" sermon year after year, as well as the emptiness of many sermons that we were subjected to as we sat on Sunday mornings and evenings in the church pew, God worked in Dr. Waite’s heart. I didn’t know it at the time myself; but that afternoon, as some of our children and a grandchild were sitting in our living room showering him with "happy day" words and gifts, suddenly he said, "I think I am going to start a church!" We prayed about this contemplation for a couple of months. As the weeks went by, he was constrained to do so. We took all our furniture out of our living room and put it in the dining room--scattering that room’s contents in various parts of the house and in our garage’s attic.

Our first Sunday was October 4, 1998. The first sermon was from the book of Romans! We had no idea who would be there, if anyone, but that morning, our living room was filled with people--some out of nowhere. PRAISE THE LORD! Dr. Waite and I have put our hand to the plow, so to speak; and, with His help, we are not turning back. The church has been a real blessing to us. Of course, there have been heartaches. It wouldn’t be a Baptist church without them, would it? The opportunities for service have outweighed the tears. Some have come and some have left--but God abideth faithful. SERMONS IN PRINT

It was not our intent, in the beginning of our church, to put Dr. Waite’s sermons into print; but the Lord has supplied financially for six books--five are his "verse by verse" Sunday morning BIBLE STUDIES and one is Making Marriage Melodious. This sermon printing has been as much a surprise to Pastor Waite as anything he has ever done. Though, at this writing, he has preached verse by verse through all the epistles except II JOHN, III JOHN, JUDE, and looking forward to REVELATION soon, he was not constrained to put the sermons into print, as they were taught, for a few years. This burden came later. Our daughter, in Florida, has typed all the sermons into print as needed; and one son, for awhile, was able to help get them into form. Now we have a Christian helper in nearby Pennsylvania who has been willing to keep one chapter ahead of Dr. Waite in the pruning of his sermons into book shape. Others have volunteered to proof read. Some have said they would help. For instance, one woman said, "I’ll proof read for you, Pastor." After receiving the material, she never said a word as to her progress or non-progress. The book has long ago been printed. Another woman said "Oh, I can type for you, Pastor" He gave her a small assignment--the epistle of Philemon. We never saw one typed page! That’s how some people are. I don’t know if you know it or not, but getting a book into shape for printing is a major undertaking. It is an undertaking of faithfulness. Of course, there are always mistakes. But love us anyway.

Order the sermon called GOD’S LOVE MANIFESTED (BFT/TP #3154/4 @$4.00+$2.00 S&H). That’s the one I told you about at the start of this UPDATE. BETTER STILL, BECOME A PART OF OUR VIDEO FAMILY BY BEING A MONTHLY SUBSCRIBER TO OUR WEEKLY WORSHIP SERVICES. Many people do this. Some cannot find a King James Bible teaching church. Others are eager to learn from Pastor Waite also, in addition to their local church services. For a GIFT of $l5.00 + $5.00 S&H, you can receive four sermons, as well as the music, in one video cassette. If you prefer audio cassettes, order them. If all of this seems complicated to you, just call our 1-800-JOHN 10:9 order line and we’ll explain it all to you.

BESIDES THE SUNDAY MORNING SERMONS, THE BIBLE FOR TODAY OFFERS YOU OUR DISCUSSION STUDIES. On Thursday evenings, we are finishing a long study in ISAIAH--and soon will be beginning the book of JEREMIAH. Now these studies are found, along with the Sunday sermons and my JUST FOR WOMEN radio programs, on SermonAudio.Com. CALL US FOR PRICES ON THESE STUDIES. Not many Pastor/teachers can teach by the question and answer method. Once you become used to this method, you will feel that plain talking-teaching is a wee-bit one-sided. I like a teacher who makes me think as he teaches. We are all so busy these days, and tired, that half the time, we have to be kept awake to keep our brains in gear. Life really moves along at a fast pace, doesn’t it?

AS I BEGIN THIS LETTER TO YOU, WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO MY HUSBAND’S SPEAKING IN THE EVENING OF OCTOBER 23, 2003, AT THE SOUTHWEST RADIO CHURCH MINISTRIES’ WILLOW VALLEY BIBLE CONFERENCE. That center is in the Amish Country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. If you have never been there, you’ll enjoy the surroundings very much.

Dr. Waite will be speaking at 8:30 P.M., Lord willing, on the subject THE ERODING TEXTUAL AUTHORITY OF THE NEW BIBLE VERSIONS. Maybe you don’t know it, but there is a controversy over the Southern Baptist’s new Bible translation called the BROADMAN-HOLEMAN CHRISTIAN STANDARD BIBLE (HCSB). It is put out by the BROADMAN-HOLEMAN PRESS. DR. NOAH HUTCHINGS, the director of Southwest Radio Church Ministries, has taken a lot of heat over his stand on this and other Bible versions, you may or may not know. Dr. Waite will buttress this good KJB position with his 108-slide power-point presentation. I know you’ll be glad to hear what my husband has to say on the subject. I may or may not video (BFT #3158VCR @ $15.00+$4.00 S&H)--depending--, but we will have audio tapes of this talk for sure (unless the machine breaks down.) (BFT #3158TP @ $4.00+$2.00 S&H). The booklet entitled Holes in the Holman Bible is BFT #2966 @$4.00 +$2.00 S&H.

This new 240-page hardback book is being prepared at the printers right now. It will be the fifth in a series of preaching verse by verse books from Dr. Waite’s church sermons. The cover will be orange and yellow, with the same format as the other books. I hope you have ordered them. If you order this new book, along with the other four, we can give you a special price of all five commentaries for only $40.00 with the marriage book thrown in free. This is a $65.00 value. So hurry and write or call. Give us time to get your order to you, as the Colossians & Philemon--Verse by Verse is still at the printers. It will be ready on Thursday, October 31st. I can’t wait to see it!

LET ME QUOTE FROM PAGE 92 OF PASTOR WAITE’S NEW BOOK AS HE COMMENTS ON COLOSSIANS 3:1-2. As I was proofreading this passage for my husband, his commentary personally helped me get over a "hurt" hurdle. I was in an airplane at the time, flying to California; but my mind and heart were on earth, with a broken heart. (Read on in this UPDATE where I tell of that situation.)

"We who are saved and are ‘risen with Christ’ must ‘set our affections’ continuously on the ‘things above’ rather than on the ‘things on earth.’ PHRONEO is the Greek word for ‘set your affections.’ It means ‘to direct our minds’ to something. We are to seek and to strive for things in Heaven.

Who is ‘above’ that is, in Heaven? The Lord Jesus Christ is in Heaven. God the Father is in Heaven. God the Holy Spirit is in Heaven. All of the Trinity is everywhere present. We are primarily to think about things that are in Heaven and things that are blessed by the Lord rather than ‘things on the earth.’ Why do so many Christians think so much on earthly things?" (Colossians & Philemon--Preaching Verse by Verse by Pastor D. A. Waite, Th.D., Ph.D.)

IT WILL BE READY BY THE MIDDLE OF DECEMBER
WHOOPS! WE’RE BEHIND SCHEDULE

For you who are waiting to receive the DOCTORED NEW TESTAMENT (BFT #3138 @ $25.00+$4.00 S&H), we want you to know that we heard from the South Korean printers this week. They are busy with its production. You remember that book, don’t you? It is the English version of the SCRIVENER’S ANNOTATED GREEK NEW TESTAMENT (BFT #1670 @ $35 hardback or $45 leather+$4.00 S&H). It is for English readers. D. A. Waite, Jr. has put this together for you people who don’t read Greek. That’s the Textus Receptus Greek that underlies the New Testament of the King James Bible. He has translated the comments and the footnotes so you can understand them. Even I can understand them! It is a marvelous piece of work which took hundreds of hours to accomplish. When you get your book, you should write him (in care of us) and thank him profusely. As you may remember, he is the author of the DEFINED KING JAMES BIBLE’S (DKJB) FOOTNOTES. (BFT #3000 $40 large leather; $35 medium leather; $20 large hardback; $15 medium hardback, special lower prices by the case of 12 + S&H). By the way, the DKJB makes a delightful pew Bible for your church. It is normally $15 each, but only $10 each for a case of 12, making it $120+S&H. Many churches are using this Bible!

THE HORROR OF HARRY POTTER & OTHER TAPES

I ALWAYS HAVE A DREAM THAT I CAN STRAIGHTEN UP MY OFFICE AND MAKE IT A NEAT PLACE FOR A SCHOLARLY ATMOSPHERE. Who am I kidding? Well, anyway, on one of those non-stop cleaning episodes, I went through some old tapes of mine. There was this one--a class from my times with the women in Hammonton, New Jersey a couple years ago--called THE HORROR OF HARRY POTTER (BFT #3155 @ $4.00 +$2.00 S&H) . It sounded pretty good to me, in spite of the nursery noise in the background. So I suggested that my husband put it on the Internet under my name. (My JUST FOR WOMEN radio programs are on SermonAudio.com, you know.) Come to find out--as soon as Dr. Waite put THE HORROR OF HARRY POTTER up on the Internet, people began looking at it like mad. I couldn’t believe it! So far, we’ve had over 260 people view it and over 130 download it. So you must order it today! Personally, I’d forgotten a lot of the facts that I brought out in that teaching.

BFT/tp#3157 by D. A. Waite: BIBLE VERSIONS EXAMINED, a radio interview

BFT/tp#3151 (three tapes) by D. A. Waite, Defending the KJB at Christian Lake Bible Conf.

BFT/tp#3152 [two tapes] by D. A. Waite, Defending the KJB Q&A Discussion at Conference

BFT/tp#3153 by D. A. Waite, King James Only--What Does It Mean?

BFT#3153VCR ($15+ $4 S&H) by D. A. Waite, King James Only--What Does It Mean?

BFT/tp #3155 by Y. S. Waite: THE HORRORS OF HARRY POTTER , a NJ women’s class JFW#39 by Y. S. Waite: GAMBLING CHLOROFORMS THE SOUL, 8 radio programs

JFW#40 by Y. S. Waite: WHAT IS BIBLE INSPIRATION ANYHOW? 8 radio programs

JFW#41 by Y. S. Waite: FORGIVENESS, 8 RADIO PROGRAMS FOR WOMEN

JFW#42 by Y. S. Waite: A DISCUSSION ON FORGIVENESS BY DR. & MRS. WAITE

JFW#43 by Y. S. Waite: MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, & VIRGINS, 8 radio programs

Recently a woman came to me and told me all she had against me. I was surprised & shocked! She had collected a series of "faults" saved up over a period of at least three years. I told her that I was very sorry that I had offended her--and I was truly sorry. This woman was a dear person to me. She’d been a part of our lives for over five years. Both my husband and I had given her and her children much of our time, counsel, and love. Because her parents were deceased, I fancied myself a "mother" to her. I thought of her as a "daughter," and her children as part of my family. I could not believe that I’d offended her so. I thought we could still be friends. That which started out to be a "spiritual" exercise in forgiveness on her part towards me turned into hurtful gossip between several women against me and my husband. This gossip grew, as gossip does, and those women and their husbands and children believed this gossip. Personally, I have been very hurt in my soul over this situation. It has made me question every word that I say and every sigh that I breath. How could people whom we loved, as our own family, find such "fault" with us? The verse of SCRIPTURE that comes to my mind about this is "So persecuted they the prophets which were before you . . ." (Matthew 5:12).

TRUE FORGIVENESS BRINGS RECONCILIATION

The purpose of going to a person with his "faults" for forgiveness is for RECONCILIATION. If that is not the intent in practicing Matthew 18:15, one should stay home. Jesus practiced forgiveness at Calvary. He said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!" It was true. Those who crucified Him did not know what they were doing. It was wrong-- very wrong--but Jesus wanted them to be forgiven. The whole act at Calvary was an act of "forgiveness"! There, Jesus Christ bore our sins in His own body on the cross. What for? He wanted us to be forgiven. HE WANTED US RECONCILED TO GOD! He took all our badness (SINS) in his body and practiced HOLY FORGIVENESS! Christ is the pattern for Christian forgiveness. How twisted a precious verse of SCRIPTURE (Matthew 18:15) becomes when Christian people cannot forgive as Christ forgave! And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin: that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 CORINTHIANS 5:18-21)

A few years ago, I wrote some words about forgiveness in my pamphlet called Within The Borders of Our Lives (BFT# 2998 @ $2.00 +S&H). Let me quote from pages 30-31 the following:

It’s true that people’s personalities do rub other people the wrong way; but we must learn not to make a "meal" of every offence done or spoken of by another towards us as the major crime of the century. Perhaps the offended has no idea in the world that she has offended you. How much better to iron out this hurt feeling with God privately than to succumb to self-pity and some kind of display of offence with the one who has not the faintest idea that she has hurt you. We must remember that other people have problems, too. This one who is offending you may have burdens you never have dreamed she had. So if she says something that seems harsh or uncaring, perhaps she is carrying a heavy burden and her mind is caught up in her personal care.

Getting back to my husband’s sermons in I John, Pastor Waite said the other day that the Apostle really wanted Christians to "love one another." The common denominator in Godly love is the cleansing blood of Christ (1 John 1:7). In chapter two, we see that if we have "perfected love," we keep God’s commandments. The Bible says " He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him." I John 2:9-10). In other words, if we truly "LOVE" like God loves, we will not be stumbled by our Christian brothers and sisters. Why?--because we love them! (I’ve got to remember this.) It is when we take our eyes off of HIM and His "perfected love" that we find fault with one another. Does this speak to you as it speaks to me? Why don’t you look over the epistle of I John and meditate on his commands to "love the brethren." There must have been much in-church bickering in the Apostle John’s days to provoke such teaching. A parent does not have to command "obedience" over and over again to an obedient child. A pastor does not have to teach "love," if he sees love for fellow church people in front of his eyes as he is preaching. What do you think?

In God’s FAITHFUL care,
Yvonne S. Waite
(I Peter 5:8)