All Articles For Veldman R.

(Speech delivered at the last consistorial league meeting). OUR CATECHISM, OUR CHURCH ORDER, THE BAPTISMAL FORM, AND THE SCHOOL QUESTION I have been asked to introduce the following question: Do Lord’s Day 38 of our Heidelberg Catechism, Article 21 of our Church Order, and the Baptismal Pledge enjoin us to have schools of our own? Two remarks of a general nature may serve to introduce my introduction. First, I am not too concerned about the question whether or not these particular passages directly enjoin us to have our own Protestant Reformed Christian Schools. You understand, I am not indifferent toward...

The Wrong Way. As these words are written, the short but pleasant summer season has again come to an end, and schooldays are with us once again. Throughout the country the schools have opened their doors to receive the nation’s children. Our own covenant children, too, have returned to their respective institutions of learning, and on the whole they seem quite happy about it all. We parents are likewise happy. The summer months may be ever so pleasant from many points of view, there is nothing like the satisfaction one gets when home and church and school all come down...

The Christian School. There are some things which a Christian parent should simply find it impossible to do. Sending his children to the public school is one of them. The public school is the school of the world. It is established, supported and controlled by the world. In all its instruction and discipline and life it bears the stamp of the world. There the fear of the Lord has no place and the only wisdom men know is that of the fallen and blind sinner. There stones are offered for bread and serpents for fish. There our covenant Jehovah is...

The rubric “Education” covers a vast territory. It deals with the entire bringing up of the child from the moment, practically, that it is born until it reaches the age of maturity and is prepared to take, its own individual, responsible place in life. True, even then man continues to be educated, to receive instruction. Speaking generally education does not cease until the end of life itself. All a man does, all he ever sees and hears, all his reading and recreation, all the contacts he makes in the world educate him in one way or another, to the good...

What the all-important concept “The fear of the Lord” implies has become clear. Resting on that most basic of all truths that God is GOD, “fear” is all that acknowledges Him as such. It is loving reverence, holy dread, all that and much more. It is all that the creature experiences when he is deeply and properly conscious of the presence of his God. The fear of the Lord implies that we know our God as He is and reveals Himself in all the works of His hands as well as His written Word. It means that we never weary...

Training the child “In His Fear” implies three things: that the fear of the Lord is the purpose, object of all the instruction of our covenant seed; furthermore, that this fear of the Lord is the actual content of all their education, directly or indirectly; finally, that the fear of the Lord is the sphere, the atmosphere wherein our covenant offspring are reared. In this final article before my successor takes over I should like to discuss with you the verb or verbs presupposed by the heading that appears above this rubric. “In His fear” is only an isolated phrase...

Did you ever stop to consider just how much, or how little, our church and denomination really cost us and how much we receive for the price we pay? People complain at times about the size of their congregational budget or the (rising cost of denominational life. In this article a few pertinent facts and figures will be given.

God’s children in the midst of the world face many more temptations than those of yesteryear, and these temptations are becoming increasingly subtle and dangerous. As the world develops in every phase of its life and as all creation’s potentialities are discovered and developed and placed in the service of sin and corruption, the means wherewith to sin and the forms wherein sin manifests itself become more and more numerous and treacherous. For the child of God the world is making itself more difficult than ever before.

At one time or another every Bible reader must have been struck by that last verse of. John’s majestic gospel: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”  How must we take these words from the pen of the disciple whom Jesus loved, as hyperbole or simple fact? Have we to do here with poetic exaggeration, or must we take them literally and at face value?  What is a hyperbole?

The Christmas season is with us once again. What a wonderful time it is for the church of Jesus Christ! And what an amazing thing it is that we are privileged to commemorate these days—the miracle of Bethlehem! There is your salvation, centrally realized in the eternal Word become flesh. There the wonder of all wonders, the Incarnation, is accomplished via the sign of all signs, the Virgin Birth. There infinite justice and equally infinite grace unite to give life out of death, light out of darkness, blessed hope for utter despair, beauty for ashes, heaven for hell.