All Articles For Bruinsma, Wilbur G

Previous article in this series: November 15, 2021, p. 88. Tensions were running high! It was the talk of the churches. Is God’s covenant conditioned on faith or is it unconditional and rooted in election? The Protestant Reformed Churches and her ministers were divided on the answer to this all-important question. Would Arminianism be injected into the truth of God’s covenant, resulting in a “semi-Arminianism,” or would the truth of God’s sovereignty in salvation prevail? The Mission Committee set in motion the events that resulted in the actions of the Synod of 1950. At its August 8, 1949 meeting (Article...

Previous articles in this series: June 2021, p. 403 The spiritual nurture of our children from the time of infancy is vital to the confidence, security, and strength they will exhibit in their future lives. Though the topic “Nurturing Preschool Children” may seem blasé and undeserving of our attention, this could not be further from the truth. The years from birth to the time our children enter school are the most formative years of their lives. Neither do we concern ourselves in these articles with the care given our little children from an earthly, material point of view, though this...

Previous article in this series: April 15, 2021, p. 329. After the synod of 1948, Protestant Reformed mission work among the Dutch immigrants in Canada who had been members of the Liberated Churches (LC) in the Netherlands became an obsession. The Mission Committee, First PRC (the calling church of our missionaries), and most of the membership of the PRC viewed this labor as most advantageous for church extension. There were a few who eyed this work with suspicion. Rev. George Ophoff was wary of the sharp doctrinal differences between the LC and the PRC on the covenant (conditional vs. unconditional)....

Previous article in this series: December 1, 2020, p. 113. I am not a trained professional who has received a degree in child psychology or family practice. I do not have a Ph.D. in sociology or family counseling. Neither is it my life’s occupation to diagnose childhood disorders or strange behavior patterns in children. I am not saying that these practices are wrong or unnecessary. I am merely saying these are not my credentials. My credentials are more of a practical nature. I was raised in a covenant home with believing parents, my father being a strict disciplinarian and my...

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy...

Previous article in this series: January 1, 2021, p. 161. There were divisions among the members of the Mission Committee and among the members of the committee appointed by First PRC of Grand Rapids. The Lord had now provided our churches with two missionaries who were to work together in the labors of home missions. In 1948 there were two possible places to perform their work: in Lynden, Washington and in Ontario, Canada among the Dutch immigrants who had been members of the Liberated Churches (LC) in the Netherlands. Some men on the Mission Committee and First PRC committee wanted...

Previous article in this series: June 2020, p. 403. In our last article we gave a broad overview of the troubles brewing in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) during the years we are now treating. The trial God sent our churches found its focus in the person of the Dutch theologian, Dr. Klaas Schilder, and his theology of a conditional covenant. This false doctrine seeped into the hearts of many Protestant Reformed pastors, and by them into the hearts of the sheep God had entrusted into their care. Between the years 1947 and 1953 a deep division formed in the...

In the first article on this subject we answered the question, who are our children? We learned two important truths that are vital to the proper spiritual nurturing of our children. First, we must instruct our children as children of the promise of God’s covenant. God promises believing parents that He will save a people unto Himself in the line of those generations born into the church. This promise does not include every child born into the church. Rather, that promise is spoken organically to the church as a body. But this does not deter believing parents from teaching their...

Childcare: volumes have been written on this subject. Many of them are produced by secular (unbelieving) sociologists and child psychologists. Many others are generated by “Christians” who write with a religious flare but ignore the truth of Scripture while imbibing the unbelieving mindset of this world. Magazines are displayed on the table in doctors’ offices and immediately sent to the home free of charge as soon as a publisher finds out from the hospital that a mother has had her baby. Books, magazines, blogs, and videos on parenting are available everywhere. They are downloaded, read, or listened to with the...

The minutes of the Mission Committee (MC) from 1947 through 1949 do not reveal the unrest that was developing in the Protestant Reformed Churches at that time. But there it was. There were various reasons for this unrest, but in the late 1940s much of it centered in a Dutch theologian by the name of Dr. Klaas Schilder. We took note in a previous article that Dr. Schilder made a visit to the United States in 1939. Already then he had become well known to the pastors and members of the PRC and the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). He gave...