Vol 52 Issue 11

From week to week a steady stream of church bulletins arrive on Linwood Street. This continuing supply of news is appreciated. News editors who invent their copy in the absence of news to report find themselves in a not too enviable position. Occasionally something just a little bit different arrives in the mail. This week such an item arrived—a church directory. You say, what could be interesting about a church directory? The 1976 directory of our Randolph, Wisconsin, congregation is unlike any directory I have ever seen.

The theme of this article expresses the earnest inquiry of many concerning the nature of Scripture. But the theme has a tremendous weakness, for it implies something about one’s approach to Scripture. The theme would leave the impression that one is in doubt concerning who it might be that was the author of Scripture. But be assured that for us the matter is settled. We believe that the Bible is in its entirety the Word of God. We hold that the Bible is the authoritative, infallibly inspired Word of God. 

  GKN Synod Spends Much Time With Kuitert  The following is a quotation from the RES News Exchange Letter of Jan. 6, 1976, Vol. XIII, No. 1, page 1136:

The establishment of our own school and its opening on September 16, 1975 in Redlands is well known to most of you, our brothers and sisters in our beloved Protestant Reformed Churches. You have heard before of our struggles and our aborted attempt of 1973, when at the last moment the way to the opening of our own school was unceremoniously closed. Many of you have undoubtedly brought before God’s throne of grace the needs of our small congregation with regard to truly Reformed covenantal day school instruction.

1. The Loathsome Replacing Finery. “And it shall come to pass (that) instead of spicy odor there shall be rottenness; and instead of a girdle (apron, Gen. 3:7), a rope; and instead of the work of turned work (artificial curls?), baldness; and instead of an embroidered tuxedo, a girdle of sacking, a branding instead of (female) beauty” (Heb. 3:24).

BRINGING CONTINUAL SACRIFICE OF PRAISE TO GOD (Heb. 13:15) That we bring the sacrifice of praise to God through Jesus Christ follows of necessity from the great sacrifice of Christ which He brought without the gate at Jerusalem. That is the God-intended intent, purpose, and design of salvation itself. The highest and chief end of salvation is the glory of God, the glory of His grace.

Those who teach a sincere desire of God to save all always appeal to I Timothy 2:4: “Who (God) will have all men to be saved . . .” Turretin will have no thing of such an interpretation of this text. ” . . .

For some time now there have been growing tensions between the increasingly liberal Gereformeerde Kerken of the Netherlands (GKN) and a sister denomination in South Africa, the Gereformeerde Kerk of South Africa, sometimes referred to as the “Dopper” church. The latter is the smallest of the three Afrikaans churches.

In Waarheid + Eenheid, December 20, 1975, there appears a brief report and commentary which, in my opinion, is symptomatic of the weakness of the movement of the Verontrusten (Concerned) in the Netherlands. The article reads as follows (I translate): 

Somewhat inexplicably there appears in the “NEWS” department of The Banner (Jan. 30, 1976, pp. 24, 25) an article from the pen of James Daane under the title, “The 50th Birthday of the Protestant Reformed Churches.”