Vol 37 Issue 13

Year Book changes: Hope Church, Clerk: David Meulenberg, 1743 Moelker, S. W., Grand Rapids, Mich.; Treas., John J. Dykstra, 3343 Flamingo, S.W., Grand Rapids, Mich.; Kalamazoo, Sec’y-Treas., William Clason, 1317 Pinehurst, Kalamazoo, Mich. 

THE VIEWS OF AN ECUMENICAL LEADER Recently the name of Bishop James A. Pike, a bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, has appeared repeatedly in the news. He became prominent at the time of the election campaign of last year through his fierce opposition to the election of John F. Kennedy as a worthy president of the United States. His views were based upon Kennedy’s Catholicism.

“The Ministers shall do their utmost to the end that the father present his child for Baptism.”  —Article 57, D.K.O.

We all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that there is one only simple and spiritual Being, which we call God; and that He is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good. “We all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth . . . .”

The spark that ignited that great movement in the history of the Church of God which is known as the Reformation was Luther’s nailing of the ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg. And the incident which led to this act of the German Reformer was the shameless sale of indulgences as practiced by Tetzel, an eloquent Dominican Friar who peddled indulgences in an unusually scandalous and shameless manner near the Saxony border in the neighborhood of Wittenberg.

Prophesying is not a lost art.  Indeed, if we mean no more by prophesying than telling the future and predicting what lies before us in the days to come, we will have to qualify that statement a little.  Yet we want to insist that even as far as predicting the future is concerned prophesying is not a lost art. 

We now come to our concluding essay on this section of this chapter under consideration, to wit, the verses 3-11.

“And the Lord said unto Moses . . . stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him. . . And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.” Exodus 9:13, 16

As I have said before, the pictures of the marriage and of the marriage supper symbolize the same thing; and they both signify the final and complete union of the church of all ages with Christ. It is a picture of eternity, or, if you please, a picture of the inauguration of eternity. In connection with that view, we stated that chapter seventeen, verse 1, to chapter nineteen, verse 10, belong together and constitute one vision.

I will adduce a few more passages which Dr. Kuiper quotes to show that Calvin also taught a well-meant offer of salvation to all that hear the gospel preached unto them. First, there is a quotation from Calvin’s Institutes, Book III, 24, 15: