All Articles For II Thessalonians

Prof. Decker is professor of Practical Theology in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Laboring While It Is Day About two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries that restrict the church in some way, according to a recent study by Issachar Frontier ‘Missions Strategies. The study finds Saudi Arabia leading the list of 54 countries considered “restricted access nations.” These nations prohibit the publishing of Christian literature, deny access to missionaries, and forbid people to gather in religious assembly. India and Indonesia are included on this list despite the fact that these countries do allow some mission activity. Even if these...

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. The biblical teaching about Antichrist, who will come in place of Christ and against Christ, is that he will be both a political and an ecclesiastical power. His reign of terror for the people of God will be a reign over both the “church” and the “world.” One horrible result of the reign of the Antichrist will be a persecution of God’s people. Even though some do not believe that there will be a great persecution (some postmillennialists) and others believe that, although there will be a...

Ben wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Rev. C. Hanko, a former pastor of the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, perhaps said it best. “We build churches not for the past, or the present, but for the future.” And judging from the new facilities of First Church, the church building should serve their needs for some time to come. On Thursday, October 16, the flock of First Church along with many friends and well wishers from surrounding churches met to dedicate what God has so graciously provided. It proved to be both...

Robert D. Decker is professor of New Testament and Practical Theology in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Drop-outs, Cults, and Fast Growing Churches: Three different news reports in three different Church magazines at first glance appear to have little in common. Upon a bit of reflection, however, they do have something in common. That something is crucial to the life and well being of the church. The first concerns a ministers’ conference recently held in the Netherlands. The church must neither shut itself off from the world nor accommodate herself and her message to the spirit and thinking of the modern...

John A. Heys is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. When one walks around a foundation that has been laid for a building that is under construction, that foundation will not tell whether the building will be a hotel, warehouse, office building, hospital, factory or any other large building. It will not tell us how many stories the building will have, or whether the outside walls of the building will be made of wood or stone. But that foundation will tell us how long and wide the building will be, and that someone wants a building, and wants...

John A. Heys is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. As he came forth from the hand of God, Adam could, the day he was created, praise God for His almighty power, inscrutable wisdom, undeniable sovereignty, boundless love and grace. All Adam was and had was God’s gift to him. He had earned nothing; for he did not even exist before God called him into being. God owed him nothing, but he owed God everlasting praise for everything that he was and had. With us, before he fell into sin, he could sing as we do from Psalter...

Prof. Decker is professor of Practical Theology in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Matthew 24:32-35 When you think about the Lord’s coming and of the end of the world,...

Barrett L. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. The following or similar events could happen in your church. Because a man of the church falls into the sin of drunkenness, drives while intoxicated, and finally slams into a parked car, he is arrested, put in jail, and the story appears in the next day’s daily paper. The elders visit the man and find that he is sincerely penitent. He even appears before the consistory out of the desire to show the elders that his repentance is sincere. But the consistory makes a public announcement...

Labor is an institution of God. Like marriage and government, labor is a creation ordinance. The God Who made man, made man to work. We ought to work. Work is good for us. We should be thankful that we can work. We can be sure that we will work in heaven, in the new creation of God.

In the end, there is only one thing that matters in the life of a church or in the life of an individual. That one thing is that the church or individual has the truth. If a church has the truth, no matter how small it may be numerically, no matter how insignificant it may be in the eyes of men, no matter how it lacks resources and means, that church is great, and prosperous, and important. If a man has the truth, no matter how lowly his station in life, no matter how adverse the circumstances of his life, he...