Happy 1st Anniversary!

In 5 days' time, it will be the first anniversary of the launch of the Anointed Sermons podcast on iTunes.

And what better way to celebrate it than by God showering his unmerited favour upon it!!!

I was checking out the statistics and noticed that there has been a sudden exponential spike in the number of sermon downloads.  The month of Dec 2012 is not over, and there is already more than 3,500.

When the podcast was first launched on 2 Jan 2012, there was about 1,000 downloads that month.  It peaked to about 1,500 in April 2012, and therefter hovered around the 700 level.

Just a bit of background for those who may not know about Rev Reuben.  He was 5 years with Paya Lebar Methodist Church (PLMC) as her youth pastor, from 1 August 2007 to 31 July 2012.  He was transferred back to his home church Toa Payoh Methodist Church (TPMC) effective 1 August 2012.

PLMC has a membership of about 2,500.  TPMC has about 800 members.  The number of downloads this month has exceeded the combined memberships, which would indicate that the audience for his podcast has gone beyond that.

Because his sermons are focused purely on Jesus and His finished work, God is prospering his ministry.  Do we have another Ps Joseph Prince in the making?  Why not? :-D

Both of them preach without having to refer to any printouts or notes, which means that the Holy Spirit is the One giving them the utterance and they preach sincerely from the heart.

Ps Prince's church started with just 200 in the early 1990s and have exploded to more than 30,000.

Sure am looking forward to the day when Rev Reuben preaches to tens of thousands.  Amen?

Meanwhile, Happy 1st Anniversary!

Exceedingly Abundantly!

Wow!  God does really provide exceedingly abundantly over and above what we can ask or imagine!

The idea of launching Rev Reuben's Anointed Sermons on iTunes was first mooted in December last year, and it was more "experimental" than anything else.  I had gone to the library to read up on podcasting and also browsed the Internet to see what was the most user-friendly and easiest way to get started -- and came across a site known as Podbean.

Podbean offers a free, no-frills, entry-level version, and so registration was done on 27 December 2011.

Registration on Podbean

Having created the podcast, the next step was to get it approved by the iTunes store.  That emailed duly arrived on 2 January 2012.

Podcast Approval

And so, the podcast was officially launched and made available on the iTunes store.

But what was unexpected was receiving the following email just 3 days later, on 5 January 2012...

Bandwidth Quota Warning

It was a message from Podbean notifying me that the bandwidth quota allocated to my free account with them had reached 80%!  In other words, there was a significant number of people downloading the sermons to listen to!  I had a make a decision quick -- either ignore the message and deprive other listeners from accessing the sermons or upgrade to a paid version.

I was prompted to choose the latter.

And so, I duly paid US$49.50 via Paypal, as a way of sowing into Rev Reubs ministry.

Sowing of US$49.50 into the ministry 

Having done so, I received the following email confirmation from Podbean that my account had been upgraded from Podbean basic - free to Podbean Advanced:

The upgraded version allows one to track the number of downloads as well as where the downloaders are located.  I checked out the statistics every now and then and saw that there was a steady stream each day.

But what was totally unexpected was that just about a month later, it started appearing in the iTunes store under "New and Noteworthy"and that caused the number of downloads to suddenly spike up!  God had caused the sowing to produced a harvest so soon and so overwhelmingly!  In fact, Anointed Sermons topped the category again just a week ago (17 Mar 2012) and was even listed as high as number 42 on the overall chart, among spiritual giants such as Joseph Prince, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren and Joyce Meyer.  Hallelujah!

The number 1 "New and Noteworthy" on 17 March 2012

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Reached number 42 on the charts

In celebration of the above, the following (which I consider to be my personal favorites -- authorship has its privileges) will be made available on the podcast over the next couple weeks:

#024 -- Gospel Vs a Different Gospel

#035 -- His Name Shall Be Called

#039 -- Rahab's Life-Changing Faith

#050 -- God's Family

#057 -- Cross-Purposes

#062 -- God is For Us

#078 -- Rich

#080 -- The Redeemer

#091 -- All Yes and Amen?

By the way, interest in these sermons also come from all over the world -- Canada, USA, England, Germany, Romania, Russia, Italy, India, Philippines, Brunei, Australia and of course, Singapore.

All over the world

Only Africa and South America have yet to show any interest, but let's call for it that they will very soon.  Amen?

Anointed Sermons on iTunes Store

Great news!  Rev Reuben's anointed sermons are now available for download in the form of audio podcasts from the Singapore iTunes store at the following link:

http://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/anointed-sermons-by-rev-reuben/id492484789?ls=1

Anointed Sermons available from the Singapore iTunes Store 

You can also search the Store using keywords such as "plmc", "paya", "lebar" or "reuben".

You can download his 3 most recent sermons, namely:

#108 - Sing Sing Sing (20 Nov 11 11.15)

#109 - Power to Prayer (27 Nov 11 TNG)

#110 - The Name (4 Dec 11 11.15)

And for a limited time only, you can also get to download 4 of his first 5 sermons which he preached back in 2007, namely:

#001 - I Shouldn't Be Here (11 Aug 07 TNG)

#002 - To Be With Him (23 Sep 07 11.15)

#004 - Me? A Masterpiece? (13 Oct 07 TNG) 

#005 - The Hinge (21 Oct 07 11.15)

The 7 episodes: #001, #002, #004, #005, #108, #109 and #110

Happy downloading!

[UPDATE 1, January 5, 2012: It's only been 4 days since the launch of the podcast and already 4 of the 7 sermons have maxed out the indicator bar in terms of popularity!  Praise the LORD!!!]

Popularity indicator bar maxed out for #004, #005, #109 and #110

[UPDATE 2 , January 8, 2012: A total of 20 sermons are now being made available on iTunes, his first 10 sermons (#001 to #010) and his most recent 10 sermons (#101 to #110)]

20 sermons now on iTunes: #001 to #010 and #101 to #110

[UPDATE 3 , February 21, 2012: By the grace of God, Anointed Sermons is the #1 podcast in the Religion and Spirituality category of iTunes' New and Noteworthy!  As a result of being featured, there has been a huge spike in the number of downloads in the past few days.  Praise God for multiplying and prospering Rev Reuben's ministry!  In a matter of less than 2 months, his sermons have now exceeded 1,600 downloads.  Hallelujah!]

#1 New & Noteworthy, Religion & Spirituality

Anointed Resources on the Go

Rev Reubs' sermons

Ps Prince's sermons

I have now hundreds of Ps Joseph Prince's and Rev Reuben Ng's sermons on my iPhone and iPad.

I have also subscribed to the video podcasts of both Ps Prince and Ps Joel Osteen.

[update 2 Jan 2012: I now also subscribe to the audio podcasts of Rev Reuben Ng.]

This is so that wherever I go, I am able to listen to anointed messages and also watch the anointed video podcasts.

podcasts I subscribe to

I have also purchased numerous Ps Prince books but they have all been hardcopy, printed versions.

Hence, when I saw a posting on Facebook two weeks ago that the electronic version of Healing Promises (and others) have been made available on iTunes, I was overjoyed.

Facebook posting regarding iBook version being released

Alas, my joy turned out to be short-lived when I clicked on the link to find that these iBooks could only be purchased from the US App Store...

App Store gift card

So it was truly God's provision and His answer to my prayer that my sister Yvonne, during her recent trip to the States, bought me an iTunes gift card from the US App Store and gave it to me for Christmas.  Thank you dear sister!

Immediately, I logged into the US site to redeem the card and used it to purchase 5 of Ps Prince's iBooks, namely
1. Destined to Reign
2. Destined to Reign Devotional
3. Unmerited Favor
4. 100 Days of Favor
5. Healing Promises.

And so now, in addition to listening to the sermons and watching the podcasts, I am also able to read the ebooks on my iPhone and iPad.

iBooks purchased from US App Store

Hallelujah!

Luke's Account: Nathan to Mary

This post was first published on ROOTSS on Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Today we'll talk about Luke's account of Jesus' genealogy.

As mentioned previously, Luke portrays Jesus as the Son of Man, and hence traces Jesus' ancestry upwards all the way to Adam.

Though both he and Matthew cite David as an ancestor, Luke traces the route via Mary upwards to another son of David via Bethsheba known as Nathan (2 Sam 5:14, 1 Chron 3:5, 1 Chron 14:4).

A point to be made here is that women were generally not included in genealogies (Matthew made an exception by including the names of 5 women, but that was to serve another purpose, ie. even women who were disqualified by the Law, God could qualify). Hence, even though Heli was Mary's dad, Luke puts her husband's name Joseph in the listing. We see from Matthew's account that Joseph's own father was Jacob.

A second point to be made is that even though Joseph was Jesus' adopted and legal father, he was not Jesus' biological father. After all, Mary conceived supernaturally via the Holy Spirit. By tracing the line via Mary, Luke actually attests to the virgin birth since it was a woman's seed (rather than a man's seed) that would crush the serpent's head.

I got most of the above information from a very well-researched article. It addresses the various issues such as genealogical abridgements, property rights, the curse of Jehoiakim, etc, and I commit it to your reading.

Matthew's Account: Solomon to Joseph

This post was first published on ROOTSS on Tuesday, 4th March 2008

Continuing from yesterday, let's talk about Matthew's account of Jesus' genealogy.

Matthew in portraying Jesus as King of the Jews, traced the line via the kings of Judah.

Note that he divides the genealogy into 3 parts of fourteen generations, and mentions this in Matt 1:17.

If we compare this to the genealogy as recorded by Ezra in 1 Chron 3, we realise that Matthew omitted 3 kings of Judah, namely Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah that sat on the throne between Joram and Uzziah.

Scholars refer to this as an "abridged genealogy" which was an acceptable practice because heirship would still be proven and established, even when generations in between are bypassed. Furthermore, the word "son" can also mean "descendent", just like how the blind beggar referred to Jesus as "son" of David in Luke 18.

Besides omitting those names, Matthew also repeats the name of King David twice. This was probably to aid memorisation, since the names fall neatly into 3 parts of fourteen generations each.

Speaking of Joash, we read in 2 Kings 11 that he was the sole survivor of the royal line and was made king at the tender age of 7. The story as to how he was kept alive as an infant is as miraculous as the story of Moses. I will blog about that in a future post.