Vol 19 Issue 03

Rev. C. Hanko called the meeting to order. After the singing of No. 174 from the Psalter, he read I Tim. 4 and led in prayer. After the credential letters were accepted and classis was declared constituted. Rev. J. Heys was called upon to preside. Ke speaks a few words of welcome and then gives opportunity to those delegates who are present for the first time to sign the Articles of Subscription. The minutes of the July session are read and accepted. The stated clerk reports that he has carried out all the required correspondence. A brief report of the...

By “our mission work” we naturally mean the mission work our Protestant Reformed Churches are at present engaged in. We might in a sense properly call it church extension since its positive purpose is the establishment of Protestant Reformed Churches wherever there are or come to be, groups of believers that are of one heart and mind with us and wish to confess with us the truth of God’s sovereign grace as we are committed to it. Although as Churches we look forward to the time when our mission work can be extended to include labor among the “unchurched” and...

The largest body of waiter up this globe of ours has been misnamed “The Pacific Ocean’’. It received this name from the explorer, Magellan, to describe its quiet, peaceful nature; for its surface was very calm and peaceful when for the first time he looked out over its surface. Comparing with the stormy Atlantic he and his men had crossed, the name Pacific, which means peaceful, seemed very appropriate for this body of water. However, had he remained there any length of time or sailed homeward across it, we might be calling this vast expanse of water by another name...

That Protestant Reformed instruction for our Protestant Reformed children by Protestant Reformed teachers, sincerely dedicated to and thoroughly equipped for that task, in Protestant Reformed Schools would be ideal no Protestant Reformed person, it seems to me, would care or dare to gainsay. How could this be disputed in view of what is promised when our children are presented for baptism? The question is asked: “Whether you promise and intend to see these children, when come to the years of discretion, instructed and brought up in the aforesaid doctrine, or help or cause them to be instructed therein, to (the...

By corporal punishment is meant the literal use of the rod, i.e. applying it to the body so as to produce pain. In short, it means to give the child a beating. Perhaps most of us have experienced corporal punishment at one time or another, and somehow that is something which seems to linger long in the memories. The subject deals with corporal punishment for the child, that is, under twelve or thirteen years of age. The subject is touchy enough without having to discuss the pro and con of whippings for children who are older than twelve or thirteen....

In public mourning of Aaron, the people of Israel now for thirty days have been encamped under the shadow of Mount Hor, when the command comes to them to press onward to Canaan. It means that the desert period of Israel’s national existence has ended. Moving southwards round the mountains of Edom at the head of the Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, they turned northwards, marching to Moab, by the way of the great eastern desert. The first part of their journey was most trying and difficult. It took them through a region that was pre-eminently “that great and...

Radio Address of Oct, 18, 1942, over W.L.A.V. (Grand Rapids, Michigan) Jesus saves! This brief statement, which one may read now-a-days on billboards and fences, on church buildings and automobiles, is true in all its implications, much more so than those who are responsible for its public display are willing to admit. That Jesus saves is guaranteed by His very name, for His name is not a mere, meaningless appellation, but expresses what He actually is, for it was given Him, not by His parents, but by divine command through a heavenly messenger. And the name signifies: Jehovah saves, or...

This article is a translation of an editorial in the previous issue of our Standard Bearer. Readers who are able to read Dutch may omit this, and proceed to the next article. It was suggested to me, and it had already occurred to me, that it would be expedient to translate the article on Sunday Labor, because many that are not able to follow the Holland are deeply interested in the question. Here follows the translation: When, sometime ago, we expressed our opinion concerning the question of Sunday labor, and declared that in our judgment Sunday work for the purpose...

Frequently the general public, and sometimes even those that ought to know better, speak with disdain about the strict observance of technical rules and methods in the deliberation upon and final settlement of any question. To them a “technicality” is so much red tape. Or, what is worse, to maintain technical principles is to them only an excuse on the part of an assembly for reaching the wrong decision. To say that a certain request was not received by an ecclesiastical gathering on the ground of a “technicality” in their mouth means that such gathering merely looked for some excuse...