Vol 57 Issue 03

Rev. Kamps of our Doon congregation declined the call extended to him from the First Protestant Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan. From a trio of Reverends Miersma, Kuiper, and Engelsma, Hope Protestant Reformed Church of Redlands has extended a call to Rev. Engelsma. While without a pastor of their own, Redlands has obtained the services of some of our “retired” ministers. We learn from a Redlands bulletin that Rev. Heys even had an opportunity to show his slides of New Zealand and Singapore during his stay there. 

Dear Members and Friends of the RFPA,  I Corinthians 1558, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye, stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” 

In the seventh chapter of the Confession, the Westminster Assembly gives its presentation of the covenant. The first two sections treat God’s relationship to man before the fall, while the remaining four sections deal with God’s relationship to the believer in Christ after the fall. In this issue we will treat only the first two sections.

Decisions! Choices!  Sooner or later everyone must make a choice. Not everyday choices such as “What shall I eat?” or “What shall I wear today?” are meant here. The choice that I want to bring to your attention is as important as life itself. 

Among the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, God has seen fit to include four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Three of these gospels are known as the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.They are called that because they take a general view of the ministry of our Lord. The authors either witnessed personally or had access to oral tradition or written material that dealt with this history. They wrote concerning this with a certain purpose in mind.

Worshipping God is the highest of all religious obligations-and experiences. We are commanded to worship God. This is the solemn obligation which God has placed on every man. We ought to consider worship our most important duty toward God. It ought to be the very heart and center of our life. We must worship the Lord in holy fear. Especially must it be, evident that we are a god-fearing people by the attitude that we have toward the worship of God.

It is 9:30 A.M. on a Sunday morning. God’s people, and you with them, are all seated together in God’s house of worship. You are all prepared to worship and serve your God by singing praises to His name, by reading His Word, and by hearing the voice of the Great Shepherd of the sheep speak to you through His herald, His official ambassador, your minister. And you are very eager for that too. Anxiously you await the moment for your minister to come through the door onto the platform and before the pulpit.

Movies Portray Real Life? One often hears, in excuse for the horrible sins portrayed in the movie and television, that one must present “real life.” Adultery, fornication, murder—all these are “real life.” Yet the desire to portray “real life” stops at the point of religion. This fact was pointed out in a news release in the Grand Rapids Press of Sept. 6, 1980:

Mr. Chairman, Theological School Committee, colleagues of the faculty, students, and fellow saints in Christ, God calls us together tonight to begin another session of our seminary. Frankly I am rather excited about this year. We have new students this year in both the seminary and pre-seminary departments. Among them is a student from our friend and neighbor the Free Reformed Church in North America. We trust that he will find his study with us profitable and blessed. Unless I am mistaken, for the first time in our history we have a foreign student, Mr. Lau Chin Kwee, from Singapore.

The day previous to the publication of this issue was Reformation Day.