Vol 21 Issue 19

Very fitting it is for the Christian that occasionally his attention is called to terms found in the Scriptures which are more or less difficult for him to define and understand. Undoubtedly the term “soul” as it appears in Holy Writ is one which frequently causes some difficulty. To determine the meaning of the term “soul” as it is found in the New Testament, we turn to the original Greek, and find that there the word pseuceh is generally employed to express what in English is called “soul”. The word means “to breathe, blow”, and refers in some instances to...

John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost”, gives a vivid and terrifying description of death and its origin. According to the poem Satan is searching his way out of hell to seek out the created world in order to tempt man. He makes his way to the “gates of Hell” and there he finds: “On either side a formidable Shape; The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold, Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked With wide Cerberean mouths...

Our Synod of 1945 is a matter of the past again. The details of its decisions are recorded in the minutes, and presently when the Acts are published our people will be able to read about the work which Synod performed. This article is merely meant as a brief report mentioning some of the most important decisions. I have not in my possession the minutes, hence, will be unable to quote decisions or enter into a number of details. On the other hand I do believe that our reading public is not first of all interested in a host of...

The word Canon in this connection denotes the infallibly inspired writings in distinction from the productions of the church teachers and from the numerous apocryphal works—gospels, Acts, and epistles—that were composed in the first four centuries. The apocrypha were fictitious stories designed either to fill the gaps of the history of Jesus and the apostles or to glorify Christianity. From among all these spurious writings the church had to draw its New Testament Canon. For this task the church was qualified by Christ Spirit. The Old Testament Canon. This Canon came to the Christian church from the church of the...

The Philistines succeeded finally in getting Samson into their power. They took him, bored out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza, bound him in fetters of brass made him grind in the prison house, and gave glory to their god. In the midst of their jubilation, he pulled down over himself and them the temple of their god where they were congregated and his soul died with the Philistines. The liberal interpreters pass a harsh judgment on this last doing of Samson. “The last scene of Samson’s history awaits us,” writes one of their number,—“the gigantic effort, the awful...

Chapter 2: The Death Of Believers (continued) Moreover, it is only in the body of this death that believers are able to fulfill their calling in this world, according to God’s good pleasure over them. For they must, for a time, represent the cause of the Son of God in antithesis to the world of sin. They must be to the glory of the grace of (Him that called them in all their walk and conversation, fight the good fight of faith, and that, too, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. And in this cause they are...

Superficial, too, is the way in which the “Complaint” makes use of quotations from Calvin to prove that the great reformer supports its contention that God earnestly seeks the salvation of all men, reprobate as well as elect. The complainants quote Calvin on the well-known text in Ezekiel 18:23, and their quotation appears to justify their contention only when you read it very superficially, and especially when you permit it to stand out of its proper context. Yet, even the quotation does not teach that “God sincerely offers salvation to all who hear, reprobate as well as elect, and that...