All Articles For Kortering J. H.

During the past several months it has been revealed through the Lord’s guidance, that our congregation at Holland received another pastor and shepherd. And although this is a change in that we no. longer hear the voice of our former pastor Rev. W. Hofman, and now hear our present pastor Rev. B. Kok, essentially nothing new has taken place in that both of these beloved brethren set forth to us the Word of life.

Below follows a copy of a letter that the writer wrote to one of his dear friends in our midst on Jan. 15th, 1950. And since the text of this letter is more fitting even today after only one year of history, he ventures to proclaim it to all our Churches as a testimony that the Synod of 1951 is in duty bound to go forward and adopt the proposed declaration of principles. Your welcome letter of Dec. 24th last was received and we were very glad indeed to receive it. Old friendships as they are based upon the tie...

IV. The Professor continues. Preaching of the ele­ments III 1, 2, 3, (as stated in the previous is­sue) form the key that open the Kingdom to believers and shuts the Kingdom to unbe­lievers.

I hesitate to publicly enter the arguments that have been carried on for some time in our Church papers, however, since we owe everything that we as Protestant Reformed Churches have received by God’s grace to our esteemed leaders, Rev. H. Hoeksema and Rev. G. M. Ophoff, it hurts me to see their writ­ings quoted time and again in support of the condi­tional theology coming out of the Netherlands from the Liberated Churches.

IV.   The Professor continues. Preaching of the ele­ments III 1, 2, 3, (as stated in the previous is­sue) form the keys that, opens the Kingdom to believers, and, shuts the Kingdom to unbe­lievers. 1.  God justified His People in His Counsel from all eternity by choosing them in Christ and imputing to them His satisfaction and right­eousness, thus opened to them the Kingdom.

With reference to the former Rev. Kok’s, “News Items from Holland,” in Concordia, Nov. 5, 1958, the undersigned simply makes the following testimony from the Consistory records, beginning as early as the latter part of 1949, when the Holwerda-Kok case ori­ginated in the Netherlands.

An error crept into the printing of my article entitled above in the Standard Bearer dated Dec. 1, 1953. The year in which the undersigned registered his disagreement with with Consistory’s stand taken on Dec. 20, 1950, against Synod adopting the Declaration of Principles should be Feb. 22, 1951 in place of Feb. 22, 1953.