Vol 73 Issue 11

Mrs. Lubbers is a wife and mother in the Protestant Reformed Church of South Holland, Illinois. When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women … if it be a son, then ye shall kill him…. Exodus 1:16 Two women. Two women who, through Gods gracious guidance, forever changed the course of human history. Two women, distinguished by names! The first Hebrew names mentioned since the death of Joseph some 300 years earlier. Shiphrah and Puah. Shiphrah and Puah were two relatively obscure midwives living in the land of Goshen in Egypt under the cruel and tyrannical...

Mr. Wigger is an elder of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Denominational Activities You may remember that our February lst installment of the “News” included an item concerning the conference held in mid- January between our churches and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia. This conference, held in Australia, was attended by Prof. H. Hanko and Rev. R. VanOverloop, two members of our denomination’s Committee for Contact. Eight lectures were given on four main issues: The Regulative Principle of Worship, The Relation between Church and State, Divorce and Remarriage, and Eternal Justification. Prof. Hanko and Rev. VanOverloop each presented...

January 8, 1997 First (GR) Protestant Reformed Church Classis East met in regular session on Wednesday, January 8, 1997 at the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. Rev. A. Spriensma chaired this session of classis. Each church was represented by two delegates. Special welcome was given to Rev, Charles Terpstra, who was attending Classis East for the first time, to Rev. Sungho Lee of the Koshin Presbyterian Church of South Korea, and to the church history class of Covenant Christian High School. 

Cheah Fook Meng has recently graduated from the Protestant Reformed Seminary. He is a member of the First Evangelical Reformed Church of Singapore. When the ERCS first started as a new denomination with only one church 14 years ago, the congregation was very new to the Reformed faith. The leaders had just emerged from a crash course in the Reformed faith under Pastor denHartog. And even after the ERCS was instituted, leaders and people were still spending hours trying to understand the Reformed faith from the creeds and the Scriptures. The pioneers of the ERCS, who had once been busy with...

Prof. Deckeris professor of Practical Theology in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. The elders of the church are called by God to take oversight of the congregation. This, as is apparent from Holy Scripture and the Reformed confessions, is a very serious matter. Oversight involves church discipline, and church discipline is one of the three marks of the true church which easily distinguish her from the false church. Church discipline may be understood in two senses. In the broader sense it refers to the spiritual care and rule of the congregation by the elders. This would include the visiting of the...

“Trendy Sermons, Vacant Pews” A reader from Lynden, Washington sends in an interesting book review found in the Wall Street Journal, January 3, 1997. The author reviews a book called: The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity by Thomas C. Reeves. The author of the book and its reviewer seem to agree concerning the problem of the churches today. It is of interest that a paper such as the Wall Street Journal and its reviewer should make the kind of comments found in the article. There is not only a recognition of the sad state of the churches today,...

Rev. Hanko, the writer of this “In Memoriam,” is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Rev. Herman Veldman was a son of Jacob and Evelyn Veldman. The latter was a sister of the late Rev. Herman Hoeksema Herman was born to them on April 22, 1908 on Chicago’s west side. He was next to the youngest in a family of seven children, having five sisters and one brother, the late Rev. Richard Veldman. His father was co-owner of a blacksmith shop located on the corner of 14th and Paulina. His parents were members of the First Christian Reformed...

News from Seminary Hill The faculty have recently licensed two more seminarians to speak a word of edification in the churches: Nathan Brummel and Garry Eriks. Mr. Brummel is an unmarried third-year student originally from the Edgerton, MN PRC. Mr. Eriks is a married second-year student originally from the South Holland, IL PRC. He and his wife Jennifer (Buys) have one child. The faculty are arranging an internship for Mr. Brummel later this year. The four seniors are back for the second semester after completing their internships. Daniel Kleyn was in South Holland, IL PRC; James Laning, in Southwest PRC...

Wholly Appropriate Permit me to express a word of encouragement and appreciation where the contributions to the Standard Bearer of Mrs. MaryBeth Lubbers are concerned. When reading Matthew 5:28, it is worth remembering the use of “desire” in Luke 22:15. Apparently, not having grasped that the word is used of the Lord seems to lead some away from the God-breathed Word and into the realm of Greek philosophy, where spirit is seen as good, while matter is perceived as per se evil. If Miss Reitsma’s eyes “danced with mischief,” would it not have been wholly within the framework of our...

This one by Dr. Jelle Faber, emeritus professor of theology in the Canadian Reformed Churches. It appears in the recent book, American Secession Theologians on Covenant and Baptism & Extra- Scriptural Binding – A New Danger (Neerlandia, Alberta, Canada: Inheritance, 1996). I intend to review the book in a forthcoming issue of the Standard Bearer. The confession is that the doctrine of the covenant held by the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (“liberated”) is essentially the same as the doctrine of the covenant taught by Christian Reformed theologian William Heyns. This admission is of extraordinary importance to the Protestant Reformed...