Vol 77 Issue 10

Mr. Wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan.   Minister Activities  

January 10, 2001 Georgetown PRC Classis East met in regular session on Wednesday, January 10, 2001 at the Georgetown PRC. Each church was represented by two delegates. Rev. A. Spriensma was the chair for this session. Considerable time was spent on an appeal from a brother against his consistory because of their placing him under discipline. Classis denied this appeal and thereby upheld the decision of the consistory. Classis also had to deal with two requests from consistories for the erasure of a baptized member. Classis approved these two requests. One other request for the increase of censure to the...

Rev. Kleyn is pastor of First Protestant Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Money consumes a large part of our lives. One of the reasons for this is that we all need money. It is impossible to survive in today’s society without it. We need it for the very basics of earthly life: food, clothing, and shelter. It is not simply a commodity, but a necessity. But money also consumes a large part of our lives by choice. We not only use it for the necessities of life, but for many other things besides. We are constantly dealing with it—either earning...

Rev. Gritters is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. In contrast to the new forms of worship, what is proper worship? Reformed, biblical worship is covenantal. We ought to be as precise as possible with our terminology. Our worship is certainly not contemporary. But neither is it simply traditional. Traditional can mean a lot of things. Even Reformed does not mean much today, although our worship is “Reformed” if it’s anything. But I prefer not to describe it now as Reformed, or even biblical, although it is both. Our worship—proper, God-glorifying worship—is also covenantal. By that, I...

Homer Hoeksema was professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. In close connection with the account of the amalgamation of the sons of God and the daughters of men, the church and the world, in Genesis 6, stands the account of God’s evaluation of man and of mankind from a spiritual, ethical point of view, a statement of God’s dealings with man in this wicked state, and a most important revelation concerning the effect of man’s wickedness upon God. As to the first, we read inGenesis 6:5: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great...

Mrs. Meyer is a wife and mother in Hope Protestant Reformed Church of Walker, Michigan. We’ve been talking about grace as a family heirloom from the point of view of teaching our children about the beautiful, cherished truths of particular, sovereign, covenantal grace. They must come to see and know this priceless treasure for what it is. They must love it and guard it as their most precious possession. They must also live it. One of the ways God teaches His children about grace is through parents, but there are other means God uses to apply that grace actually to...

Rev. VanBaren is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Any Story But… It is possible for schools to read stories and show movies about virtually anything. One shudders in hearing of some of the subjects taught in the public schools. One reads of the violence committed within those schools. But one thing, at least in some public schools, is strictly off limits—reading a Bible story. The Greeley Tribune, September 21, 2000, presents the following strange report, written by Charles Haynes: Did a first-grade teacher violate Zachary Hood’s rights when she barred him from reading a story from the...

Prof. Hanko is professor emeritus of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Introduction Not all heresies in the history of the church of Christ involve matters of doctrine. Sometimes the heresies which appeared are matters of church government and the corporate worship of God in the church. In a way, of course, these heresies are also corruptions of the truth. A corruption of church government, for example, is a denial of the truth of the Kingship of Christ over the church. An aberration in worship involves the doctrine of the nature of God and the obligation...

* This is chapter 8 of the second section in the long out-of-print book The Protestant Reformed Churches in America, pp. 377-387. The doctrinal section has been reprinted in Ready to Give an Answer, RFPA, Grandville, 1997. 1.Will you literally quote again the third point of doctrine adopted by the Christian Reformed Church in 1924? Yes, it reads as follows: “Relative to the third point, which is concerned with the question of civil righteousness as performed by the unregenerate, synod declares that according to Scripture and the Confessions the unregenerate, though incapable of doing any saving good, can do civil...

In the November 2000 issue of the Calvin Theological Journal (CTJ), journal of the seminary of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), Professor John Bolt raises anew the issue of the CRC’s third point of common grace. He does this in an article titled, “Common Grace, Theonomy, and Civic Good: The Temptations of Calvinist Politics (Reflections on the Third Point of the CRC Kalamazoo Synod, 1924).” At the end of his reconsideration of the third point, Bolt proposes a reformulation of the third point that he thinks might be acceptable to both the CRC and the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). The...