Vol 21 Issue 06

With the heart-consoling words “Comfort ye, Comfort ye My people”, the divine author of this prophecy given through Isaiah begins the fortieth chapter of this book of prophecy. Herewith He begins the final section of this book, a section which speaks of the salvation of God’s people and of the glory that awaits them in the New Jerusalem. In, this section of the prophecy of Isaiah there appears this concept of the servant of Jehovah which we shall briefly consider in this essay. The concept is first mentioned in Isaiah 41:8, 9 where we read, “But thou, Israel art My...

His Dualistic-Synthetic Conception of History To attempt a comprehensive criticism of Kuyper’s Stone-Lectures, with some regard to details in an article of five typewritten pages would be preposterous. These lectures cover every subject in the encyclopedia, of human knowledge. And what is more the author’s conception of Christian Encyclopedia is presupposed throughout. To understand these lectures one must bear in mind that they were written in maturer years of Kuyper’s life and that they give in abbreviated form his entire Life-and-World-View. Should we voice our objections against the various elements with which we take issue in these lectures, without attempting...

The entire verse of this second chapter of II Peter reads as follows: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false, teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” The problem of the particular phrase which is the topic of this article is not that these false teachers denied the Lord. That of course is rather characteristic of false teachers. But the point is we are told by the apostle Peter that these false teachers denied the Lord...

The Social Life of the First Church at Jerusalem. The Book of Acts gives, us a beautiful picture of the social life of the believers at Jerusalem after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It cannot be said with certainty how long this ideal condition lasted but we do read that “the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common”. And further “Neither was there any among them...

The war with the Ammonites had been won. God had given victory. The adversary had been subdued before the children of Israel. Jephthah was again in hits house in Mizpah. He had done with his daughter according to his vow. At least two months must have gone by when the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together and, marching northward, came to Jephthah in a body. It was apparent that they were in an evil mood. They demanded to know why Jephthah had fought that war with Ammon without them, seeing that the Gileadites were but fugitives of Ephraim among the...

Now, as we discuss the kingship of Christ in connection with the twelfth Lord’s Day of our Heidelberg Catechism, we must needs limit ourselves to a consideration] of this function of our Savior as an aspect of His office in general. If we fail to do this, we will be tempted also to treat of Christ’s exaltation at the right hand of God, whereby He is raised to the glory of His present dominion over all things. The two are, of course, closely connected. Yet, of the latter we must not speak here, for of this the Catechism speaks in...

We stated that the action of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in the United States, in 1932, whereby the proposed Plan of Union was unanimously adopted, must be considered of principal importance. For, as fair as the Synod was concerned, the Reformed Church had simply shifted to the confessional basis of the Evangelical Synod of North America: the Augsburg Confession, Luther’s Catechism, and the Heidelberg Catechism. However, we recall that this resolution and proposal was to be referred to the classes of the Reformed Church in the United States, and to the districts of the Evangelical Synod of...

The above caption characterizes a good deal of so-called “evangelical” preaching in our country. A very good illustration of this may be found in la, book that was recently sent to me by the Zondervan Publishing House. The book bears the title “Ye Must Be Born Again,” and its author is Hyman Appelman, who himself attributes, the sensationalism that characterizes his preaching to the fact that he is a converted Jew. Since I received the book, the author was invited to conduct a series of “evangelistic” meetings in Grand Rapids, which by this time are concluded. Moreover, the editor of...