Vol 70 Issue 15

Mr. Wigger is an elder in the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Evangelism Activities Rev. Mahtani, pastor of Trinity PRC in Houston, TX, along with Mr. Hib Kuiper, a member of Hudsonville, MI PRC, currently spending his winter in Houston, traveled in late March to Versailles, Missouri, a city about three hours’ drive east of Kansas City, to meet with a family who has shown interest in moving to Houston and joining Trinity PRC. These emissaries went with a good supply of material about our churches, including a Psalter, books about the faith and practice of the PRC, and...

Rev. Terpstra is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of South Holland, Illinois. A relatively new and influential movement is sweeping through the churches of this country and beyond -the modem church-growth movement. It purports to have a greater passion for reaching the lost and getting people to attend worship services, a more relevant perspective on the growth of the church, and a better way to evangelize than the church of the past. The movement has pressed forward with its own agenda of church growth and evangelism; it is serious about getting its message and methods out and about “awakening”...

Rev. VanOverloop is pastor of Bethel Protestant Reformed Church in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Every true church has a concern for evangelism and missions-a genuine, Scripturally-directed concern to proclaim the gospel to others. Every member of the church is responsible for evangelism and mission work. The Great Commission comes, not to missionaries, mission committees, or evangelism committees, but to the church. The Great Commission is not the responsibility only of the consistory or of an evangelism committee or society. It is the church, as a whole, which must give answer to God for its response to her Lord’s Commission. There...

Rev. Moore is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. In this article we set forth the theory that it is proper that we have a missionary-at-large, or even more than one. At the outset, let me say that this article is written in the knowledge that Synod 1988 rejected the concept missionary-at-large. However, we believe that this was due to the fact that there were certain aspects of this concept that the Mission Committee did not or was not able to consider. This was true also of the Synod, and this led, to some extent, to a...

Rev. Haak is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Lynden, Washington. In Acts 16:9, 10 we have the record of the Macedonian call. This occurred during Paul’s second missionary journey. “And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. (In the original, the ‘Come’ could be translated literally, ‘Cross over,’ a word referring to crossing over water, Troas and Macedonia being divided by water and being on two separate continents.) And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia,...

Rev. Dykstra is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Doon, Iowa. Acts 13:1-4  Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth...

The preceding editorials pointed out the danger that feminism enters the Reformed churches through the “soft spot” of the congregational meeting. This has taken place recently in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (“Liberated”). Their General Synod of Ommen 1993 decided that women should participate in the congregational meeting as voting members. In order to justify this decision in the face of the apostolic prohibition against women’s ruling in the church, the Liberated synod declared that the congregational meeting does not govern and that election of officebearers is not an exercise of authority. No doubt, the declaration was well-intended. But...

Rev. Heys is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? Isaiah 53:1 How we answer the first question which Isaiah asks in this verse depends on how we answer the second. By that first question Isaiah asks whether we believe what God has presented through him in the preceding chapter. There is in Isaiah 52:9-10 this glorious truth “Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his...