Vol 78 Issue 08

Mr. Wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. Evangelism Activities   Evangelism committees from two of our churches, the Hope PRC in Redlands, CA and the Kalamazoo, MI PRC, have recently completed work on their own home pages on the internet.  If you are interested in giving them a look, we encourage you to check them out at www.kalamazooprotestant reformedchurch.org or www.hope prc.org. Kalamazoo’s Evangelism Committee also continues to be busy each week hosting a radio program on WKPR in Kalamazoo.  This program airs on Friday afternoons at 12:10 p.m. and is entitled, “The Word...

Rev. VanderWal is pastor-elect of Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Redlands, California. The passage we now consider is the solid ground for one of our distinctive doctrines, the unbreakable character of marriage. It is also the solid ground for one of our distinctive practices, the forbidding of divorce, except in cases of adultery, and the forbidding of remarriage in every case. This is a hard doctrine and a hard practice to maintain. The world at present knows almost nothing about a lifetime commitment of husband and wife to one another. More to its shame, the same is also true of...

George Ophoff was Professor of Old Testament Studies in the Protestant Reformed Seminary in its early days. Reprinted here, in edited form, are articles which Ophoff wrote at that time for the Standard Bearer. We concluded our last article by stating three purposes which were served by the shadows of the old dispensation. The first of these purposes was that they demonstrated to the believers of the Old Testament the great truths of sin and grace. The sum total of the shadows was unto the believers their pedagogue to bring them to Christ. Shadows as schoolmasters Let us examine this...

Rev. Terpstra is pastor of First Protestant Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan. A Conscious Involvement   God’s people, we said, have a vital role in the worship of God. They are not passive spectators but active participants. That brings us to our second main point, in which we want to examine specifically our conscious involvement in worship. By looking at the worship service and its various elements, we want to show how we are active and how we must be active. We return to the idea that the Reformed worship service is to be seen as covenant fellowship or dialogue...

Mrs. Meyer is a wife and mother in Hope Protestant Reformed Church of Walker, Michigan. Come, children, let’s take a walk together. There is something we want to show you. It is because of our great love for you that we want to show you this. Not that you are our first love, though. No, there is an object of our love that we love even more than you. Does that scare you? It ought not. In fact, if we did not have this “first love,” our love for you would be worthless. It would do you no good at...

Rev. Koole is pastor of Faith Protestant Reformed Church in Jenison, Michigan. An Alarming Milestone in Human Cloning Yes, human cloning is back in the headlines again, and in blockbuster fashion. Advanced Cell Technology, a small biotech start-up company in Worcester, MA, announced in mid-October that they have successfully engineered the world’s first cloned human embryo. Due to the complex, fragile structure of human DNA, this breakthrough occurred sooner than most had thought possible, taking most by surprise. But, as expected, it was news stirring up reactions of greatest contrast. Many applauded it as the breakthrough of the young century;...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. We have seen that a proper understanding of faith begins, not with the activity of believing, but with the truth that faith is first and essentially a living connection with Christ, the bond which God by His Holy Spirit establishes when He grafts us into His own dear Son.   God’s Work Alone   When we consider the establishment of that graft, we get to the very heart of the truth of the Christian faith. It is in wisdom that the Heidelberg Catechism approaches the question of salvation...

Rev. Kuiper is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church in Randolph, Wisconsin. In telling His church what kind of men her deacons must be, God sets a high standard. We have examined this standard in the past several articles. The deacon must be full of the Holy Ghost, of wisdom, and of faith; he must hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience; he must manifest God’s inworked grace by living a blameless life, being grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre; he must be faithful to one wife, ruling his children...

Hoeksema’s sermons on Romans are valuable in several respects. First, they add to our knowledge of the theological thinking of a great Reformed theologian. The series contributes significantly to our knowledge of Herman Hoeksema’s theology, inasmuch as in the series Hoeksema explains the book of Romans. From the time of the Reformation, the Protestant churches have recognized Romans as the one book of the Bible that, more than any other, sets forth the entire gospel of salvation by the sovereign grace of God in a thorough, systematic way. Martin Luther called the epistle to the Romans “the masterpiece of the...

Rev. Miersma is pastor of Immanuel Protestant Reformed Church in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7 It has been some time since we last looked at the beatitudes which Christ spoke in the first part of His sermon on the mount. There are seven of them, each indicating a virtue which must be evident in the child of God. So far we have treated four of them, each one being negative in character, pointing out that the citizens of the kingdom of heaven are nothing in themselves. They are “poor in spirit,”...