Vol 56 Issue 06

At this writing, there are a number of calls outstanding from a number of our churches. Rev. Dale Kuiper has received the call to serve as pastor of our Hope, Walker, Michigan congregation. Rev. Wayne Bekkering has received the call to our church in Redlands, California. Our church in Lynden, Washington, has extended a call to Rev. James Slopsema of Edgerton, Minnesota, to serve as home missionary in the Northwest Washington area. 

STORY BIBLE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN, by Anne De Vries, Paideia Press, 1978, 254 pages. (Reviewed by Gertrude Hoeksema)  Originally written in the Dutch language, under the title of Kleuter Vertelboek Voor de Bijbelse Geschiedenis, this story Bible was recently translated into English. It contains selected stories from both the Old and New Testaments, and was written for children from four to eight years old. 

THE WORKS OF THE FLESH MANIFEST Galatians 5:19-21 (Continued) 

Jacob, as we begin to follow him in his journey from his father’s house to Padan-Aram, is on the way to his mother’s family. He needed no passport or visa, and could easily cross the borders of the lands through which he had to go. Born in the land of Canaan he learned to speak the language of its inhabitants and seems to have encountered no problem with speaking to those along the way, all the way to Haran itself. For he speaks to complete strangers at the well and is clearly understood by them. 

(In the last installment Kuyper has spoken of the authority which belongs to the office of believers in the church and the authority which belongs to the special offices in the church. He has discussed this question in a very general way and reserved particular discussion of it for future paragraphs. He now turns his attention briefly to the relationship between the authority of the church and the authority of the magistrates.) 21. How This Authority of the Churches Is Related to the Authority Of the Magistrate.

Prof. R. Decker, the editor of this rubric, asked me to write an article for his rubric. His request was that I give a report of the work we have begun in Birmingham. 

That we live in what the Bible calls “the last time” there simply can be no question. The signs of Christ’s coming about which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke to us in a passage such as Matthew 24 are all being fulfilled: wars and rumors of wars, nation rising up against nation, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes. All these are occurring today in ever greater measure.

It seems that The Banner tries to maintain somewhat of a balance between the pro-Boer and anti-Boer articles. At any rate, the November 23 issue contains an article by Dr. Fred Klooster entitled, “Predestination—A Calvinistic Note.” 

Dr. Daane is rather free to characterize theologians and their theology as “scholastic.” When he does so, he uses the term in a pejorative, i.e., unfavorable, sense. Scholasticism is a bad word. Thus, for example, he refers in the quotation above to Turretin as “the best-honed theologian of seventeenth-century Reformed scholasticism.” Along the same lines, Daane maintains that one may not conclude logically from the truth of election to the truth of reprobation. 

It is rather ironic, I think, that in the current discussion of reprobation in the Christian Reformed Church the late Herman Hoeksema and his view of predestination functions as a kind of catalyst. After all, for by far the greater part of his career Herman Hoeksema was not Christian Reformed. And the reason why he was not Christian Reformed was certainly closely connected with his view of sovereign predestination, and more specifically with his view of sovereign reprobation.