Vol 52 Issue 04

[Address delivered at the Annual RFPA Meeting, Sept. 18, 1975] 

The October calendar has been filled with all kinds of special meetings—especially in the greater Grand Rapids area. In addition to the normal consistory meetings, catechism classes, societies, Sunday school, school board meetings and the like, some of the October ‘extras’ include three PTA meetings, Men’s League with Rev. Veldman speaking on “The Power of Unceasing Prayer,” Mr. & Mrs. League with Rev. Veldman again on “Patriotism—What should we teach our children?—What should be our attitude toward our Country?”, Ladies League with Rev.

The editor of our Standard Bearer forwarded to the undersigned the following letter from a Rev. Peter Vander Weide of First Jenison Christian Reformed church, and I quote:  Dear Prof. Hoeksema: 

A triangle has three sides. But it derives its name from the fact that it has three angles. And at least two of these angles are sharp, sharper than those of a square, rectangle, pentagon, hexagon or octagon, all of which have more sides and more angles than the triangle.  When, therefore, one introduces a living triangle into a family circle, somebody is going to get hurt by the sharp points of that triangle. And this comes to such clear manifestation in the life of Abram. 

These lines are not written because there is a lack of Christian giving in our churches. To my knowledge there is not. The head of a family who gives twelve to twenty dollars a week to the church and pays from a thousand to thirty-five hundred dollars a year in school tuition does not have to be exhorted to give. But there are reasons why we should be confronted by this topic nevertheless.

Perhaps none of our readers needs warning concerning many of the practices of cults which have been adopted, increasingly, by many in our land. Yet the deceptiveness and appeal of some of this might warrant a warning. These last days are characterized by the attraction toward that which is devilish.  One of the popular practices today is called Transcendental Meditation. So popular has it become, that Time magazine featured this in one of its latest issues (Oct. 13, 1975). The magazine speaks of its popularity and describes the practice as follows:

In our last article, after some introductory remarks, we began dealing with the relation between Christ and His people as that relation is defined in Scripture in terms of a shepherd and his sheep. We discussed the fact that this is the implied relationship in what is called, “Pastoral Theology”—the general subject with which this rubric has to do. We discussed the fact already that Scripture often calls Christ the Shepherd of His sheep, and we made brief mention of the fact that Christ is the Shepherd because He is the revelation of Jehovah God, Who alone is our Shepherd.

Dear Rev. Williamson: 

We were unable, due to space limitations, to continue our Tour Report in this issue. Our editorial, however, is related to our Australasian Tour.  By way of explanation, the following:  1) You will recall that earlier we mentioned the fact that we had contact with people of the Reformed Church of New Zealand. 

Gremlins! There must have been a bad gremlin in the office of our typesetting service when Volume 52 began. I carefully reminded our printer that this was “Volume LII, Number 1.” But you will notice—if you have not noticed already—that our page numbers are in the 500s! That’s where that gremlin did his work: our printer failed to begin the new volume at page 1. To prevent utter confusion in the annual Index and in the bound volumes we simply decided to continue throughout this volume with consecutive numbering. Next year—hopefully—we’ll begin at page 1.