Vol 40 Issue 10

Our Redlands congregation has extended a call to Rev. B. Woudenberg, of Edgerton, Minn. 

SPACE IN HEAVEN  In an old book that recently came into my possession, there was a newspaper clipping that is worth sharing with our readers. It reads in full:

The church is assembled in worship. Her members have convened in the House of God in an attitude of spiritual reverence in the awareness of the presence of the Holy One.

The Creation of the Angels (continued)  Our Confession states, first of all, that God “also created the angels good . . . .” 

Although we must yet call attention to the Reformed conception of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we may now present, in brief, the three. Protestant theories of this means of grace. As far as the Zwinglian theory is concerned, that has been commonly defined as the commemoration theory, according to which the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is merely a remembrance feast, a remembrance of the death of our departed Friend.

At the end of that “Love Chapter,” I Corinthians 13, Paul states that “Now abideth faith, hope and love (“charity” in some translations), these three; but the greatest of these is love.” We do well to note that love is not the most enduring of all these, but the greatest. The position is sometimes held that only love enters into the new Jerusalem. There we will need no faith and hope, only love. This is not the case.

We cannot close our discussion and exposition of these first five verses of the first chapter of Malachi without saying a bit more in detail about the hatred of the LORD for Esau. This hatred for Esau is, indeed, not presented and mentioned here as a fact by itself; it is emphatically stated by the LORD to show Israel, on this background, that the love of God for Jacob is entirely sovereign. It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth.

And Jephthah vowed a now unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,  Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Amman, shall surely be the LORD’s and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. Judges 11:30, 31

Only, it depends upon the acceptance of this gracious bequest on the part of God, whether or not the sacrament is applicable to and valid for him that receives it. This view of the sacrament is the conception of the late Professor Heyns, who taught for many years in the Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church. And it is also the view of the Liberated in the Netherlands, or those that belong to the Reformed Churches under Article 31. According to this conception, the essence of the covenant is the promise of, God.

We must still discuss the Scriptural passages to which the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church refers as proof for the “Third Point.” In another connection we already discussed the text inLuke 6:33. We will not repeat this here.  We must bear in mind that these passages are quoted (without any interpretation) to prove that the natural man can do good.  The texts to which Synod referred are the following: