Vol 77 Issue 02

Mr. Wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Denomination Activities   As churches we have much to be thankful for. Without any doubt, one of those blessings is our Theological School. From our very beginning we have been blessed with faithful professors who, in turn, have been instrumental in training our churches’ many faithful pastors. I was reminded, recently, of just how great a gift our seminary is when on September 12 our Seminary Convocation took place at the Southwest PRC in Grandville, MI, just a stone’s throw away from our seminary. Even though school...

September 6-8, 2000 at Randolph, Wisconsin After an enjoyable officebearers’ conference on Tuesday, September 5, on the subject of “Understanding the Old Testament,” Classis West met in Randolph, Wisconsin from September 6-8 for an extended session of work. Rev. A. Brummel opened classis with a brief exposition on the qualification of an officebearer to be “blameless.” Rev. A. denHartog then took the chair as president and presided over the assembly. The agenda was weighty, and the decisions taken were of utmost seriousness. The delegates were required to labor all day and long into the night from Wednesday until classis finally...

Rev. Higgs is a pastor in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia. In May 1554 John Knox went to Geneva where he met John Calvin face to face for the first time. It is apparent that there had been correspondence between the two prior to this time, as Calvin had recommended Knox to Bullinger at least as early as March of the same year.1 It was in January 1554 that Knox began this journey to Geneva when he was forced into exile from England. This was due to the ascension to the throne of the devoted Roman Catholic, Mary Tudor,...

Rev. Koole is pastor of Faith Protestant Reformed Church in Jenison, Michigan. As one might suspect from the title of the above-mentioned treatise, its author was not a twenty-first century preacher. In fact, any present-day preacher having the audacity to write a treatise with such a title might be well advised to do so under the cloak of anonymity lest authorities list him as dangerously subversive, and even haul him in for questioning. Well, it was not such a popular little book in the sixteenth century either. When Knox published the First Blast in 1558 from the safety of the...

Rev. Coleborn is a pastor in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia. Introduction One of the primary documents of the Scottish Reformation is The First Book of Discipline. It is a document for the ordering of the life of the Reformed Church in Scotland drawn up at the dawn of the Reformation in Scotland. This document, together with The Book of Common Order, formed the original Church Order of the Reformed Church of Scotland in the days of John Knox. The First Book of Discipline was the work of five other Scottish reformers in addition to John Knox. Knox also,...

Rev. Kleyn is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Edgerton, Minnesota. Prior to the Reformation in Scotland, the Roman Catholic Church was so thoroughly corrupt that any true worship of God was well nigh impossible. Men and women bowed to images. Martyrs, apostles, and virgins were worshiped. Numerous holy days and feasts (often pagan in origin) were constantly being added. The church in Scotland was therefore in dire need of reform, especially in the area of liturgy and worship. In the time of the church’s need, God raised up John Knox to lead the Scottish Reformation. Courageously and boldly...

Rev. Cammenga is pastor of Southwest Protestant Reformed Church in Grandville, Michigan. The History   A unique part both of the heritage and contribution of Scottish Presbyterianism is the Scotch Confession of 1560.1 The Scotch Confession is the manifesto of the Scottish Reformation. It is the first of the distinctly Presbyterian confessions. Its publication in 1560 predates the earliest of our Dutch Reformed confessions, the Belgic Confession having been written in 1561 and the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563. Already on December 3, 1557 a number of Protestant nobles meeting at Edinburgh had signed a “covenant” to maintain, nourish, and defend...

Rev. Hanko is missionary-pastor of the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church in Northern Ireland. Introduction Those who know anything of the history of the Reformation in Scotland know that the doctrine of the covenant and the practice of covenanting played a significant part in Scottish theology and church history. It is well worth inquiring, therefore, into the views of the covenant held by the father of Scottish Presbyterianism, John Knox, as we hope to do in this brief article. Determining exactly what Knox taught about the covenant is somewhat difficult in that Knox, at least as far as is discernible from...

Rev. Terpstra is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan. It should come as no surprise to Protestant Christians that, like the other reformers, so too the Scottish reformer John Knox was a predestinarian. That is, he believed, preached, taught, and wrote about the doctrine of God’s sovereign, eternal predestination. Knox held first of all to the general doctrine of predestination, i.e., that God has in His eternal decrees ordained all things that ever are and that come to pass in time and history. And secondly, Knox held to the doctrine of specific predestination, i.e., that God has...

Rev. Kuiper is pastor of Southeast Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The man who in the estimation of friend and foe alike was the greatest man that Scotland ever produced was born in 1505 near the village of Haddington (some of his biographers place his birth as late as 1512). John Knox’s education was at the Burgh School of Haddington, where the instructors were Roman Catholic and the instruction prepared young men for the clergy or holy orders. Latin was stressed at this school, so much so that the students were required to speak Latin at all times....