Vol 47 Issue 05

Rev. M. Schipper presided over the opening devotions, and declared the Classis properly constituted. Noticeably absent from the October meetings were the Revs. Lubber, Kortering, Harbach, and Veldman. The Rev. Lubbers having moved to Jamaica, the Rev. Kortering to Hull, the Rev. Harbach was also in Jamaica, and the Rev. Veldman was ill. All the churches, however were represented by two delegates each. The Rev. G. VanBaren, following the order of rotation, presided, while the Rev. Schipper recorded theminutes. 

In our preceding article we noted that, according to Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church, Vol. II, 583 ff., the apostolic scriptures everywhere bear witness of the salvation wrought through Christ, but that it required time for the profound ideas of a Paul and a John to come up clearly to the view of the church.

About Marriage Regulations For Priests in Leviticus  This question comes from a Grand Rapids reader: Dear Editor: “Recently we were reading at the table from the book of Leviticus; and as we were reading from the 21st chapter, verses 7, 13, and 14, I noticed something that I had never noticed before. “These verses speak of the laws of marriage for the priests. They may marry a virgin, but not a widow, nor one that is put away from her husband. And then they state the reason why they may not take these particular women to wife, namely, because they...

Luther suggested that there were two main purposes for educating the children of believers, a “spiritual” purpose and a “temporal” purpose.

This does not mean that knowing Him in that salvation which is in Christ we now dare to sin against Him. Faith does not give us the courage to sin against our God, Whom we know is a consuming fire. Instead this fear of the Lord causes us to run to the cross to find refuge underneath it. The man who knows and believes the awfully destructive power of electricity and the perfect safety of the insulation on the wire does not, because he believes in the safety of that insulation, now dare to touch that bare wire.

The church service is well under way. Mr. Richman occupies his usual place in the audience. These Thanksgiving services, he thinks, are pretty much routine, not much different from the Sunday services, actually quite drab and lifeless. He listens while the minister reads the text and begins his sermon. And then after a bit his mind wanders. The stock market has been very unsteady. Unemployment seems on the increase in the country, especially now with the soldiers returning from Vietnam. This unrest in the Middle East creates a lot of uncertainty. Real problems all of these.

CREATION AND EVOLUTION IN CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS  The question has recently come up in the California public school system whether it is a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution of this country to teach creation in science classes of the school system. The history of this controversy dates back to about a year ago. At that time a committee presented a report which contained guidelines for teaching science.

Many of our readers have either read or read about a publication of the Calvin College Chimes staff calledthe bananer. This diabolically clever and devilishly humorous little publication was in every respect—in appearance and format and contents—a wicked lampoon, or parody of The Banner. It was, in fact, so much like the latter in appearance that one could easily pick it up for The Banner, only to discover when he began to read that it could not possibly be the weekly magazine of the Christian Reformed Church.

The General Synod of the Gereformeerde Kerken, which has almost become a continuing body through its bad habit of recessing and reconvening, was scheduled to reconvene in the month of October in order to deal with some 200 protests on its agenda, dealing for the most part with the doctrinal departures which have come to be known by the name “the new theology.” Those who have followed our occasional reports on the ecclesiastical situation in the Netherlands will know that for a long time already all has not been well in the Dutch churches and that there has been an increasing...