Vol 55 Issue 01

Candidate Wilbur Bruinsma has accepted the call he received from our Faith Church in Jenison, Michigan, to become their pastor. We can probably assume that Candidate Bruinsma has declined the call he received from Southeast Church. The trio of Southwest Church consisting of Candidate Bruinsma, Rev. Arie den Hartog and Candidate Michael DeVries has now been reduced to a duo. 

CHRIST AND THE MEDIA, by Malcolm Muggeridge; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; 127 pp., $5.95. (Reviewed by Prof. H. Hanko) 

Greetings to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: It is our continuing desire to build a house of worship for our small congregation in Wyckoff, New Jersey. Since we have obtained permission from our synod to ask again our sister churches to hold a collection in their midst for our building fund, we considered it proper to report to you on our progress. As we reported in the church news column of the Standard Bearer some time ago, we experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining a building permit for our church building because of the current Opposition to...

With these profound, beautiful, and absolute words our Lord Jesus exhorted His disciples shortly before His suffering and-death. This is an absolute statement that stands for us as Christians through all time. To love God or to love Jesus is to keep His commandments. The two are inseparably related, they are indistinguishable. It can be said that there is a reciprocal relationship between loving God and keeping His commandments. To love Him is to keep His commandments, and to keep His commandments is to love Him with all our heart and soul and strength and mind.

As each child of God sails across the ocean of this present life he is met by angry waves and all kinds of contrary winds which seek to bring his ship off course to eventual shipwreck on the shoals and reefs. In order to remain on course this ship must have a very strong helm, that mechanism comprising the rudder and the wheel that is used to steer the ship. The apostle Paul uses this figure to describe the church here on the earth.

Text: “Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.” (The following is the substance of the speech delivered at the 1978 convocation exercises of the seminary held in Hope Protestant Reformed Church.) 

Reviewing the life of Isaac as it is made known to us on the pages of Holy Writ we do not get the impression that Isaac was a spiritually strong man. Indeed, he lived in the shadow of his father, Abraham, of whom much is said in Hebrews 11, that chapter wherein the giants (not heroes) of faith are listed for us, the men who in the Old, Testament towered above the rest of God’s people.

In the last article on signs of the times we began a consideration of various signs in the realm of our society. It was pointed out that these signs, while not perhaps as noticeable or spectacular as those in the realm of nature, are nonetheless very significant for us. And just because they are often overlooked, the importance of seeing and understanding them needs emphasis. 

Some months ago we informed our readers that we intended to write more on the subject of antithetical living, specifically in relation to the so-called “amusement problem.” That is still our intention. And the present editorial is certainly in the context of a discussion of that subject. It is not, however, directly in the line of what we intended to write on this subject; it is rather occasioned by a current discussion in The Banner in connection with a recent review by Prof. Irvin Kroese of the movie entitled “Saturday Night Fever.” 

This is Issue No. 1 of our fifty-fifth volume. We are thankful to God that He has privileged us not only to continue publishing our magazine these many years, but also that He has given us the grace to continue, we firmly believe, in the course which was originally mapped out for our Standard Bearer when it was first held aloft in October, 1924.