Vol 61 Issue 17

Rev. Joostens has asked for a two-week extension to consider the call to be pastor of Lynden Church in Washington. Rev. Dale Kuiper has received the call to be minister at Isabel Church in South Dakota. Rev. M. DeVries has accepted the call to Edgerton, Minnesota. Rev. Bruinsma writes that a few aspects of the work which need much time and labor are the need to begin a consistent and solid program to teach the young children the Bible and the truths of our Protestant Reformed Churches. Hand in hand with this is the difficulty of maintaining the interest of...

Classis East met in regular session on May 8, 1985 at the Kalamazoo Protestant Reformed Church. Each church was represented by two delegates. Rev. B. Gritters chaired this meeting of classis. The main item of business was the treatment of an appeal of a brother who maintained that his consistory did not thoroughly treat his protest. Classis decided that the consistory did in fact thoroughly treat the protest and thus the appeal was not sustained. In other action, classis approved the ministerial credentials of Rev. M. DeVries who has accepted the call to Edgerton. Because of his leaving, Southwest Church...

BORN SLAVES, Clifford Pond; Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Phillipsburg, N.J.; 93 pp., $3.50 (paper). (Reviewed by Prof. H.C. Hoeksema) This little book offers a summary of Martin Luther’s classic work, The Bondage of the Will. In a brief preface about “The question” the author, or compiler, of this work tells us the gist of the book: “The question is-does man have something called ‘free-will? Can a man freely and without help turn to Christ for salvation from his sins? Erasmus answers: ‘Yes!’ Luther says a resounding: ‘no!’ Luther was convinced that ‘free-will’ strikes at the heart of the biblical doctrine...

* In the fall of 1989, I gave the address to the annual meeting of the Reformed Free Publishing Association, publisher of the Standard Bearer. This was my first address to the parent body as editor of the magazine – my “inaugural address. ” The group instructed me to publish the speech in the SB. Belatedly, I now obey the order. I have, however, taken the liberty to revise the speech, significantly so in places, as those who heard the speech will discover when they read especially the last two installments. There will be four installments in this series of...

In forbidding murder, the Sixth Commandment gives us a lesson in love and its duties. As with all the Commandments, the negative prohibition of the Sixth Commandment implies a positive requirement. And in the case of the Sixth Commandment, that positive requirement is the same as the basic demand of the whole second table of the Law, that we love our neighbor for God’s sake. This Sixth Commandment, however, requires the highest possible expression of that love when it demands that we preserve the life of our neighbor and seek his well-being. We must show this love for our neighbor...

The Word of God is clear and understandable to the believing child of God. This is the position of the Reformation. Over against Rome, which set aside Scripture’s sole authority and clarity in order to teach the doctrines of men, the Reformers exalted the Word of God to its proper place as the all-sufficient rule of faith and life. This objective principle of truth was the guiding principle of the church’s reformation. It does not stand by itself, however; the Word of God must be spiritually appropriated and its meaning understood. And this is a matter of the inner principle...

Understanding the Sacraments Baptism is one of the two sacraments Christ has instituted in the Christian church. There are many erroneous views that have arisen concerning the sacraments. There are those, for example, who claim that the sacraments themselves work salvation. The water of baptism itself has the power to wash away sin. The bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper themselves nourish the soul to life eternal. Those who hold these views also elevate the sacraments, particularly the Lords Supper, to the place of prominence in worship, even above the preaching. Then there are those who go to the...

The Holy Spirit guided all the events that led to our receiving the inspired record of the Old Testament. Even though we do not have any of the original manuscripts (some were written as long ago as 1500 B.C.), we do have some copies through the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and we have the Massoretic, text which was drawn from the copies available about the ninth century A.D. We follow this history given by Merrill Unger in hisIntroductory Guide to the Old Testament. He writes on page 116: The Old Testament being an ancient document, some parts of...

In the previous issue we began an exposition of I Corinthians 9:19-23. We believe this passage has much to teach concerning the mission task of the church. Here we learn how the missionary ought to regard himself, his work, and those to whom he preaches the gospel. Continuing this exposition we pay particular attention to verse twenty which reads, “And I became to the Jews as a Jew in order that I might gain the Jews; to those under the law as under the law, [though not being myself under the law], in order that I might gain them that are...

In the last few articles which we have written on the subject of the order of worship we have been talking about those elements at the beginning and the end of the worship service in which the minister himself speaks. We noticed that the minister speaks, sometimes on behalf of the congregation and sometimes as the mouthpiece of God through Christ. Those elements are called: the salutation—”Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ”; the votum—”Our help is in the name of the Lord Who made heaven and earth”; and the benedictions—spoken at the beginning and the end of the worship services....