All Articles For Stewart, Angus

In the honorable history of the translation of the Bible into English, there is one heroic man and there is one magnificent version that stand out. The former is William Tyndale of Gloucestershire (c.1494-1536) and the latter is the Authorised Version (AV) or the King James Version (KJV) of 1611, named after King James VI of Scotland (1567-1625), who became King James I of England and Ireland (1603-1625). A helpful way to understand both better is to compare them, considering both their striking differences and their highly significant similarities. DIFFERENCES It could be said that, in the minds of both...

14 July, 2023 Dear saints in the Protestant Reformed Churches, Singapore and Malaysia In January, Mary and I were invited to the June Camp of our mutual sister church, the Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church (CERC) of Singapore. I was asked to unfold the CERC’s 2023 and 2024 theme text, Nehemiah 2:17-18, in four lectures. Ministers, like everyone else, have parts of Scripture with which they are less familiar. The book of Nehemiah was one of mine. So I ordered several works or commentaries on Nehemiah, and I have grown more and more impressed with this inspired book. On 23 April,...

British Reformed Fellowship (BRF) Conference After being canceled in 2020 and 2021 because of covid, the 16th BRF family conference on “Union With Christ” finally took place at Castlewellan Castle in Northern Ireland (9-16 July). However, as one attendee put it, “This BRF conference was so good that it made up for not having had one two years ago!” There were 105 people who stayed at the castle for all or part of the week and another 26 who joined us as visitors once or twice or three times. Saints came from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Northern Ireland, Norway, the Republic...

Dear saints in the Protestant Reformed Churches, Church visitation Due to Covid-19 and its regulations, the CPRC did not have church visitation by a delegation from the PRC for the last two years. Thus it was especially good to welcome back Prof. Barry Gritters and Elder Sid Miedema (January 5-14). Like all arriving in the UK in January, the two men had to quarantine on arrival until they received a negative covid test on day two. We had planned to have our congregational dinner at a local restaurant while our American visitors were here but, sadly, we had to cancel...

February 20, 2020 Dear saints in the Protestant Reformed Churches, Due to the pressure of work—mostly good, benefi­cial, and rewarding work—it is now six months since my last letter. The bimonthly epistle is now biannual! Congregational news The new church season began in early September with ten catechumens, eight boys and two girls, in three classes: Old Testament Juniors, New Testament Seniors, and Essentials of Reformed Doctrine. The covenant children are doing well. “Saving Faith: A Biblical and Theological Analysis” is the current subject of our Tuesday morning meet­ings. So far we have treated the significance, necessity, source, subject, object,...

Theme and day trips Previous British Reformed Fellowship (BRF) family conferences have had some wonderful themes, but “Union with Christ,” the subject in July 2020 in Northern Ireland, is perhaps the most appealing. The New Testament is replete with references to our being “in Christ” and His being “in” us. Explicitly combining both concepts, 1 John 4:13 states: “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” Union with Christ in Reformed theology, according to Heinrich Heppe, is “a real, wholesale, spiritual and indissoluble union of the person of...

Previous article in this series: January 1, 2019, p. 165 Translators In addition to those already referred to, let me tell you a little about some of our other translators so that you can appreciate why we believe them to be trustworthy. Let me begin with some of our European helpers. A Danish pastor who had to leave the state Lutheran church because of the truth. He greatly loves RFPA material. A blogger in northern France who is seeking to counteract heresies concerning justification from the New Perspective on Paul and John Piper circles. A Hungarian doctor of law whose...

Previous article in this series: December 15, 2018, p. 141. Translations A number of people ask about the translations that are on the Covenant PRC website (www.cprf.co.uk/languages.htm), so let me tell you first how this foreign language witness started. The translations began in large part as a response to criticism. It was said, scurrilously, that our congregation in Northern Ireland was merely Dutch or merely American, as if God’s truth were nationalistic and not heavenly! So we decided to demonstrate the catholicity of our apostolic faith and spread the Word further. A key person in this is Felipe Sabino, a...

Default position The typical professing evangelical Christian in our day, sadly, is a long way from being able to confess the Reformed faith as summed in our “Three Forms of Unity” and become a member in one of our Reformed churches. In all likelihood, he (or she) holds some Arminian ideas. Even if he calls himself a Calvinist, he probably thinks that God loves everybody, that Christ died for all men head for head (at least in some sense), and that God earnestly desires to save everybody. Romans 9 does not come into it! In eschatology, our representative evangelical is...

Martin Luther truly declared, “The life of married people, if they are in the faith, deserves to be rated higher than those who are famous for miracles.”1 He confessed with gratitude that his heavenly Father gave this wonderful gift to him personally, speaking of “the exceedingly happy marriage that has been bestowed upon me by the grace of God.”2 This article commemorates the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the glorious Protestant Reformation by examining one aspect of it that is both highly significant and deeply touching. It considers the marriage between the greatest German Reformer and the most charismatic...