Vol 50 Issue 16

Rev. R. Harbach has accepted the call to serve as home missionary. He plans to preach his farewell sermon on May 5 and expects to be in Houston soon thereafter. Rev. G. Lubbers, who is currently working in Houston, has declined the call extended to him from our Prospect Park congregation. Rev. Lanting has accepted the call from Loveland, Colorado. 

We now come to consider the faith of Jephthah, the mighty man of valor, in the days of the Judges. We will consider this judge a bit more in depth than we did both Gideon and Samson. He is blazoned on the pages of Scripture in Hebrews 11 as a man of faith, who subdued kingdoms by faith, and yet this man of God is often misunderstood in his greatness and spiritual stature in the days of the shadows. Let us attend to the teaching of Scripture concerning this giant in Israel.

To achieve a proper understanding of the truth, it is first of all necessary that we understand that God is Truth. He is truth in and of Himself. All truth is in Him and in God there is no lie. Therefore God determines what is true, i.e., what is right and what is wrong. That truth God has revealed to His people in the holy Scriptures. Those Scriptures contain within them the entire revelation of that truth. The Scriptures are the fulness of the revelation of God. They are not the revelation of the fulness of God, for they are...

The first article in this series dealt with the use of the term, hyper-Calvinism, to attack Calvinism itself. The second article pointed out that there has been a doctrinal error that might be called hyper-Calvinism, and found it to consist of the denial that God calls everyone who hears the preaching of the gospel to repent and to believe in Jesus Christ. The previous article also began to show that the hyper-Calvinistic denial of the call of the gospel is not Biblical, Reformed doctrine. This will be concluded in the present article. 

In this season of tornadoes and terrible havoc wrought by them, another meditation of the late Rev. G. Vos comes to mind. He wrote about another tornado which struck the Grand Rapids area some 18 years ago. Those who were there still remember it distinctly. The Rev. G. Vos, in his unique way, brought that devastating disaster into proper perspective. . . .Yet how soon we forget!

The committee which was responsible for preparing this anniversary volume of the Standard Bearerwanted an article from each of the departed writers which would, on the one hand, be fitting in some respect for an anniversary commemoration, but which would, on the other hand, somehow fit with the general topic of the rubric for which the writer was responsible. 

We had intended to write a rather exhaustive critique of the Unanimous Testimony of Faith drafted by Dr. G. C. Berkouwer and Dr. Herman Ridderbos as a possible step toward a new confession for theGereformeerde Kerken. We may still do this at a later date if it should prove necessary and feasible. However, there have been some significant and rather surprising developments with respect to this document in the Netherlands.

Question  Before answering this question I should point out that this is not one of the questions handed in at the question hour after my recent lecture in First Church on “Why Are We Protestant Reformed?” My plan is to try to answer all of those questions in the June issue. The present question is one which has been in the Question Box for some time. It, along with some others, came from a reader in Jenison, Michigan who informs me that he had a discussion about this passage.

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. ”  James1:2-4