Vol 68 Issue 16

One of the most important developments in evangelical and Reformed churches and schools in recent times is the denial of the historicity of Genesis 1-11. The churches and schools either teach or accept the teaching that the events recorded in these chapters never happened. The worlds were not framed by the Word of God in seven successive commands over six days of one evening and one morning each. The human race did not originate by a man’s being formed from the dust and by a woman’s being made from a rib of the man. The Adam and Eve of Genesis 2 and 3...

Mr. Wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Evangelism Activities On Saturday, March 21, the PR Evangelism Planning Committee, consisting of evangelism committees from all the west Michigan PR churches, met. Representatives of our three churches in Illinois were also present. At this meeting final touches were put on a rather ambitious advertising project. Plans call for these Michigan churches to run an advertisement once a month in the religion section of the Grand Rapids Press. This ad will contain the names, addresses, and worship service times of all our PR churches in the Grand...

Prof. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. On the late Massacre in Piedmont Avenge O Lord thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold, Ev’n then who kept thy truth so pure of old When all our Fathers worship’t Stocks and Stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groanes Who were thy Sheep and in their antient Fold Slayn by the bloody Piemontese that roll’d Mother with Infant down the Rocks. Their moans The Vales redoubl’d to the Hills, and they  To Heav’n. Their martyr’d blood and...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Randolph, Wisconsin. With all the attacks upon the mind, it is absolutely essential that we “gird up the loins of our minds,” as the apostle Peter commands us in I Peter 1:13. That means that the foundation of our living and of our thinking must be grounded in clear views of divine truth. Doctrinal knowledge is generally given little value by most today. Perhaps youth tend to undervalue doctrinal knowledge more than anyone else. One reason for that is that youth tend to think in terms of the practical. They often...

Rev. Koole is pastor of Faith Protestant Reformed Church in Jenison, Michigan. In the first installment we suggested that in explaining the disciples’ rejection of Christ’s heavenly kingdom doctrine we must show sympathy to their perplexity. They had not the fullness of the Spirit, and they were on the wrong side of the cross to understand how it fulfilled the temple functions and spelled the defeat of God’s enemies. Christ’s resurrection is what sheds light on the cross and the kingdom. In the second place, there is that which must be criticized in the disciples. There are aspects of their...

Rev. Miersma is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of New Zealand. Of the Communion of the Saints All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head, by his Spirit and by faith, have fellowship with him in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: and being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other’s gifts and graces, and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man. The Westminster Confession of Faith, XXVI, 1 In this way the...

Rev. Dykstra is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Doon, Iowa. Early in the morning of January 31 of this year, two delegates of the Foreign Mission Committee [FMC] of the Protestant Reformed Churches stepped off British Airway flight number 79 [London to Accra] in Accra, the capital of Ghana, West Africa. It is impossible fully to describe this moment in print. Mr. Henry Bleyenburg and I, having left the farmland of northwest Iowa some thirty hours earlier, were definitely out of our element in this tropical city of over one million people. We were greeted by [for us]...

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. Few men have the privilege to work with their own father. Probably fewer still have the privilege to work with their father in the gospel of Jesus Christ. For 30 days in February, my father – Elder Edwin Gritters from Redlands, California – and I had that opportunity to labor in God’s work in Jamaica. First PRC of Grand Rapids and the Mission Committee of the PRC asked us to work together to conduct the third seminar on the island. Gladly we accepted the invitation, and set...

Mr. Doezema is secretary of the Domestic Mission Committee. The truth of Jesus’ words that laborers are “few,” in the face of a “plenteous” harvest, is driven home to the Mission Committee by nearly every report it receives from ministers who have been released by their consistories for a couple of weeks of service in one of our mission fields. Nearly every attempt on their part to evaluate the state of affairs in those fields, as they perceived it, would end in a common refrain: “The simple fact is, there is a crying need for a full-time missionary in ....

The Causes of AIDS Your editorial in the April 1, 1992 Standard Bearer entitled “The Gospel-Truth about AIDS” gave an apt analogy concerning the death of immune-deficient churches. Although AIDS is, indeed, caused by sin and disobedience to the law of God, the blame is not to be put exclusively at the feet of homosexuality. The population of drug addicts in the USA, for instance, has been decimated by AIDS, and many of that group were heterosexuals. In some parts of the world, as sections of Africa, the ravages of AIDS show up most among heterosexuals, their lifestyle in general...