Vol 67 Issue 07

Mr. Wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Congregational Highlights Neither the prediction by area weather forecasters calling for near blizzard conditions, nor the call for a major earthquake along the New Madrid Fault, kept the men at our Hudsonville, MI PRC home on the evening of December 3. They met that night for their annual congregational meeting. One proposal that might be of interest to our readers was the approval to finance the Reformed Witness Hour’s plan to begin broadcasts over three Trans-World Radio stations in Great Britain. These broadcasts would cover all of...

DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA, Editors: Daniel G. Reid, Robert D. Linder, Bruce L. Shelley, Harry S. Stout. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990. 1305 pages. Hardcover. $39.95. (Reviewed by the Editor.) Breaking new ground, InterVarsity has published an enormously interesting and extremely helpful religious dictionary. 2,400 articles and 1,500 biographical entries cover the ideas, events, people, movements, traditions, institutions, and denominations that have made up the history of Christianity in the United States and Canada. The work is thorough, scholarly, incisive, and generally accurate. The preacher, seminarian, and Christian schoolteacher will find it the best single source of information...

Rev. VanOverloop is pastor of Bethel Protestant Reformed Church in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. One of the concerns of any true church is that for missions and evangelism. It is biblically inaccurate to say that evangelism and missions is the chief purpose or the exclusive purpose of the church. It is equally inaccurate to say that evangelism is not one of the chief concerns of the church. The true church will have a genuine, Scripturally-directed concern to proclaim the gospel to the fullest of its ability. It is essential that clear, biblical principles are hitched to the wagon of fervent,...

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. One sign of the end that ought to jump right out of the news into our faces is the sign of lawlessness. When Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24that iniquity would abound, He said, “lawlessnesswould abound.” Paul emphasizes the lawlessness of the last days when he says that the Antichrist is called the “man of sin,” literally, the “man of lawlessness” (II Thess. 2:3), and adds that the Antichrist will be produced by the “mystery of iniquity”—again, of “lawlessness” (vs. 7). The very thing we see today in our...

Rev. Kamps is pastor of the Southwest Protestant Reformed Church in Grandville, Michigan. Many men happily confess that the Bible is an inspired book. They will even say that this inspiration is of God. After all, the Scriptures themselves declare that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Most men then would recognize that, if they would be taken seriously by the church, they must at least pay lip service to the doctrine of inspiration. But they are determined to deny that the Bible is without error. It is the infallibility of the Word of God that is offensive...

Prof. Decker is professor of Practical Theology in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Jesus is coming soon! The year of our Lord, 1990 saw several terribly significant events occur. Who at the beginning of the year would have dreamed that Communism would collapse in Eastern Europe?! Who would have thought that the “cold war” would come to an end? Who would have predicted that in 1990 the Berlin Wall would be broken down and the two Germanies reunited? Would any one of sound mind have predicted a year ago that Russia would pass a law guaranteeing religious freedom during 1990, or...

Rev. Lubbers is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. The song, which Moses sang together with all the children of Israel, is also a psalm, in the true sense of the word. In fact, we may properly call it the prototype of all the Psalms in the Old Testament Scriptures. We trust that this will be evident in our exposition. This was a song which is denominated the song of Moses, the servant of the Lord (Rev. 15:3). We hold that it is the very keynote of the Song of Moses and of the Lamb. Here the singers are those...

Rev. Kuiper is pastor of Immanuel Protestant Reformed Church in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada. The Christian virtue of contentment is expressed in Scripture with a word that is, to say the least, surprising. Contentment is translated from a compound Greek word meaning “self” and “sufficient.” Literally it means “to be sufficient of one’s self, to possess enough to need no aid or support,” hence, “to be independent.” How surprising, in light of the fact that Scripture on every page instructs us that we are dependent upon God! We live and move and have our being in the God who is near...

Paradox He is I AM.  Before the world began  He was and is.  And by His great command  That which was nothing  Came to light and life as planned,  And void became  His vast domain of praise.  Ancient of Days,  He drew a time out of eternity  And scooped the dust to form a man,  And breathed eternity into a lump of clay and sand.  Such foolishness for One 

Prof. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Noah, after awaking from his drunken stupor, had blessed his two sons, Shem and Japheth. Japheth’s blessing was that the day would come when he would dwell in the tents of Shem. With the work of the apostle Paul, and in subsequent centuries, God brought Japheth into the tents of Shem as the church was established first in Antioch, then in Syria, Greece, and Italy, and finally in the whole of Europe. Gradually Europe, where during the time of the apostle Paul and for many...