Vol 53 Issue 02

Recently Rev. Marvin Kamps was installed as the new pastor of our church in Doon, Iowa. Rev. Kamps’ former charge was in Redlands, California. The Redlands congregation extended a call to Rev. Jason Kortering who has been serving the congregation at Hull, Iowa, just a few miles from Doon. Rev. Kortering has accepted the call to Redlands. Hull has made the following trio: Revs. Dale Kuiper, Mark Hoeksema, and Ronald VanOverloop. 

Classis West of the Protestant Reformed Churches met for two days, September 1 and 2, in Loveland, Colorado. After Rev. M. Hoeksema opened with devotions, addressing Classis from Jude 3, and presided over the approving of the credentials, Rev. M. Kamps took over the chair. Classis heard reports from various committees and instructed its Taped Sermon Committee to investigate the possibility of some revision of the taped sermon program. 

W.C.C. Meets in Nairobi  During the past summer, various of the councils of churches held their meetings—this time in the continent of Africa. Both the World Council of Churches and the International Council of Christian Churches (of which Dr. Carl McIntire is head) met in Nairobi, Kenya, in Africa. The Reformed Ecumenical Synod also met in Africa—but in Cape Town, South Africa. These meetings are scheduled in such locations because of the growing political power of the “third world” nations. 

The Memorial Auditorium in Greenville,, South Carolina, provided the setting as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America was gaveled to order by Retiring Moderator, Judge Leon F. Hendrick, on Tuesday evening, September 14. This was the fourth meeting of the court to be held in the nearly three years’ existence of the PCA, and the first to be held some other place than in one of the denomination’s churches. There are now some 400 churches in the PCA, all of which are entitled to send at least one commissioner to General Assembly.

According to the Scriptures there are many signs of the times. To those who are acquainted with the language of the Bible, the reference of these signs is to the end of the ages, the present world and order of things as we now know and experience them. And, as the title of this department suggests, with those signs we are concerned. We are concerned with all of them in general, to be sure; but it should be our intention to point out very specific signs of the times in the light of God’s Word and to apply them to...

At times one sees disharmony, bickering, and even hatred at evidence in the church of Jesus Christ as it is manifest here below. There is, perhaps, nothing that grieves the soul of a pastor more than to see such lack of love and mutual concern in the flock which he shepherdizes.

“We believe that our most gracious God, in his admirable wisdom and goodness, seeing that man had thus thrown himself into temporal and eternal death, and made himself wholly miserable, was pleased to seek and comfort him, when he trembling fled from his presence, promising him that he would give his Son, who should be made of a woman, to bruise the head of the serpent, and would make him happy.”  The Belgic Confession, Article XVII

Dear Timothy  It has been a long time ago that you wrote me concerning a problem of pastoral counseling in cases of abortion. Now that we have the time, we can come back to this matter. From your letter I did not detect any urgency in an answer, and so I thought it best to complete our discussion on practical preaching before we concentrated on this matter. Since your request to discuss this problem came a number of months ago, it might be well to get the matter clearly before our minds before we discuss it. 

The question must now be faced, whether the Reformed doctrine of the call of the gospel is actually threatened by the error of hyper-Calvinism. Does the denial of the well-meant offer have to exert itself to ward off the danger of restricting the preaching of the gospel to born-again believers; the danger of silencing the call to sinners to repent and believe; and the danger of losing zeal for missions? 

Historical Foreword Addressed to the Reformed Churches of Christ (In which the origin and progress of the differences in the Netherlands, for the removal of which this Synod was chiefly convened, are briefly and faithfully recounted).