All Articles For John

Rev. Bruinsma is pastor of First Protestant Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan. OK, so I am miserable. Just plain not happy. Something is wrong, but what exactly it is I am not sure. But one thing is for certain, something is askew. My parents are a constant bother. Everything I do or say, it seems, upsets them; and they end up either arguing with me or yelling at the top of their lungs. Then, to make matters worse, a brother or sister has to throw in a snide remark here and there. Sometimes I wonder whether it is even worth...

Rev. Heys is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.  Psalm 51:7 It seems strange, does it not? David, way back in the days of the Old Testament, spoke of being made whiter than snow. Could man in that period of time know anything that is whiter than snow? In fact, can we today point to anything that is whiter than snow? We read in Isaiah 1:18 these words: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be...

Rev. Dykstra is pastor of the Protestant Reofmred Church of Doon, Iowa. The great Reformation of Luther and Calvin was preeminently a preaching Reformation. Both Calvin and Luther were powerful preachers, as were many of the other leaders in the Reformation. They were great theologians who ably defended the doctrines of the Reformation in print. Yet the power that carried the Reformation into the hearts and lives of the people was their preaching of Christ crucified, salvation by grace, justification by faith, and the necessary God glorifying life. In short, they preached the truths of the Bible; and, by this,...

Calvin College professor Philip C. Holtrop has just given us a historical and theological study of the controversy between John Calvin and Jerome Bolsec over predestination: The study is contained in two volumes entitled, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination from 1551- 1555 (Lewistown, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993). The cost of the two volumes, that run to more than 1,000 pages, is $199.90. The issue was Calvin’s teaching of God’s eternal, double predestination, election and reprobation. Bolsec rejected predestination as an eternal decree. Although he raised his objection specifically against reprobation, Bolsec likewise opposed election as an eternal...

Rev. Lubbers is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith…  I Timothy 4:1-5

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Randolph, Wisconsin. In our last article we considered your struggle with doubt. We concluded that all doubt must be faced and must be resolved, and that the resolution of that doubt comes by going to the Bible for the answers to our questions. It seems to me, however, that to stop there is not sufficient. For there are those who may in fact have doubts about the Bible itself, its authenticity and its authority. Especially those of you who go on to college will find your Christian faith under attack...

Rev. Kamps is pastor of Southwest Protestant Reformed Church in Granville, Michigan. The Christian man understands well that true freedom is freedom from one’s own depraved reasoning. One is free when he is governed by Christ Jesus through the Word of God. God in Christ makes a man free from the prejudices found in the hearts of depraved men and from the deceptions of his own heart. Freedom is itself the gift of God’s grace in Christ. The freedom we are considering is therefore religious freedom. Free to obey God alone. We have but one Master. This is not contradictory....

Rev. denHartog is pastor of Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Redlands, California. Sickness and disease is a common, fearful reality that we all have to deal with in this sin-cursed world. How many hundreds of different kinds of sicknesses there are! From birth our bodies are filled with an army of germs and potential diseases. Some already afflict the babe in its mother’s womb and prevent it from ever seeing the light of a single day. Sickness can afflict man in the strength of his youth and cut him down and leave him languishing on a bed without even being...

Thomas Manton was a Presbyterian preacher in London, England in the 17th century. His Commentary on Jude was first published in 1658. It richly deserves its fortune of being republished down through the years. Manton has correctly grasped the thrust of Jude: the command to the church to contend for the Christian Faith against those enemies within, whom we would call antinomians but whom Manton calls the “fanatical and libertine party” (p. 14). The error of such church members was that “in the gospel chiefly they abused the doctrine of Christian liberty and free justification by Christ” (p. 152). This makes a...

Prof. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Introduction Frederick III, better known as The Pious, has gone down in history as the father of the Heidelberg Catechism. This alone is sufficient to secure for him a cherished place in the memory of God’s people. But from a certain point of view this was not the spiritually high point of Frederick’s life. After all, although he ordered the Catechism to be written, he did not compose it himself. Probably the clearest touch of his finger on the Catechism is Question & Answer 80,...