Vol 52 Issue 13

“The word which Isaiah the son of Amotz saw upon (the subject of) Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the last days, the mountain of the house of Jehovah is set up in the summit of the mountains, and is exalted more than the hills; and all the goyim shall flow unto it.

One of the most important decisions a congregation makes is extending a call to one of God’s servants whom they would ask to serve as their pastor. One of the more important decisions a minister of the Word is called upon to make is whether to accept or reject such a call. Since Rev. M. Kamps of Redlands, California, declined the call extended to him by our Edmonton congregation, Edmonton formed a new trio of Rev. R. Miersma, Rev. R. Moore, and Rev. J. Kortering. From that trio, Rev. Moore has received their call.

A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF HISTORY?, Edited by George Marsden & Frank Roberts; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975; 201 pp., $4.50 (paper). [Reviewed by Prof. H. Hanko.] 

The Hebrew believers are admonished in this verse to be good sheep of Christ in relationship to the undershepherds whom He sends to feed and tend them! They are now the church which is outside of the gate of the city of the earthly Jerusalem. They are the church, who have gone outside of the gate, bearing Christ’s reproach. 

Friends! The very word has a cherished ring.  What a difference they make in a person’s life.  Without a friend, life can be so miserable, so alone, so lost in the vast sea of humanity. It’s terrible to be a nonentity. With a friend the strangest place is a challenge, the busiest city a haven, the tragedy of life eased, the fun shared. 

A father who seems to be locked into a low-paying, dead end job that holds little attraction for him and promises few financial rewards. . . . A mother who rises early and retires late, crowding every waking hour with cooking, cleaning, washing, and changing of diapers, often without proper appreciation. . . . A pastor whose church does not grow and whose sermons seem to fall on deaf ears. . . . A young person who cannot seem to find the right young lady, or is never asked by the right young man. . . .

Although the reprobate “are made partakers of external vocation,” Turretin denies that they are called “with the design and intention on God’s part, that they should become partakers of salvation.” There are two reasons why they are called externally by God in the preaching of the gospel, neither of which is a sincere desire of God that they be saved. The first is that the reprobate “are mingled with the elect,” so that “the Call cannot be addressed to men indiscriminately without the reprobate as well as the elect sharing in it” (p. 385).

Dear Timothy,  In the last letter I wrote to you we were talking about the importance of fostering in the minds of the people of God a proper attitude towards the Scriptures. I think I ended that letter with saying that this must be done especially by means of faithful and careful exegesis of Scripture. This holds true whether you are expounding the Word on the pulpit on Sunday, teaching the children in Catechism, bringing the Word of God to the sick and suffering, the aged and dying, or calling the wayward to repentance and confession of sin.

A Word of Introduction 

The change of scene from Sydney, Australia, to Jakarta, Indonesia, staggers the imagination; and both from a physical and a psychological point of view we were hardly prepared for such a change. At this point in our tour all three of us were totally bone-weary.