Vol 48 Issue 13

In this issue we welcome back to our columns the Rev. B. Woudenberg. His department is a new one. In it he will reflect on some of the practical implications of the precious truth of God’s covenant of friendship with His people in Christ Jesus. Follow this department from the very beginning!

Classis West met in Pella, Iowa on March 1. Seven ministers and fourteen elders represented the churches of Classis West.  Rev. R. Decker, president of the previous Classis, led the Classis in opening devotions. He read from Ephesians 4 and addressed the delegates on verses 1-3.  Rev. J. Kortering presided over the Classis, and Rev. R. Decker served as secretary. 

At a Congregational Meeting held in Grand Rapids’ Hope Church on March 3, a call was extended to Rev. D. Kuiper for minister, and to Rev. B. Woudenberg for home missionary of our churches.  For the news editor . . . another unscheduled respite, courtesy of Classis West.  —DD

The first words which the devil spoke to man in his state of righteousness were a series of questions. The first words which God spoke to man after he fell from his state of righteousness likewise were a series of questions.

In our preaching on the island of Jamaica we are confronted with a somewhat different rejection of errors from those which we must constantly reject in the midst of our churches in the States. I say rather advisedly that this difference is “somewhat”; it is merely a matter of degree. Because of these errors we also must have a somewhat careful selection of texts for our preaching. Without making this preaching a riding of certain pet notions and a one-sided emphasis, it is necessary to pin-point these errors and to refute them with the Word of God.

The attitude of parents toward their children determines in a large measure the way they treat them. In those homes where children are not wanted, parents sometimes treat their own flesh worse than the beast. When children are desired and enjoyed, the whole atmosphere of the home breathes with a spirit of love and happiness. All of this is a mere natural and human relationship within the home. 

A WORD OF INTRODUCTION  Anyone who sat with any regularity under the preaching of the Reverend Herman Hoeksema knows that there were few subjects that gave to him greater satisfaction than the subject of the Covenant of Grace.

ANGLICAN AND CATHOLIC AGREEMENT One of the burning issues at the time of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century was the question of the presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper—particularly in the elements of the bread and wine, and the corollary question of the repeated sacrifice of Christ in the mass. As most children of the Reformation know, the Lutherans rejected the doctrine of the mass but retained some elements of Roman Catholic thought in their doctrine of consubstantiation.

9. Its Supralapsarian Character (concluded) Election takes us back to the beginning of things, to the beginning of God’s counsel, since it has to do with what has priority in the divine mind. We have been dealing with the divine order of God’s eternal purpose as that order is revealed in and may be deduced from Scripture. This, of course, means that we have been setting forth Supralapsarianism, for that, we believe, is the predestinarian view to be found in Scripture.

“And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of the skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.” John 19:17