Vol 84 Issue 07

Mr. Wigger is a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan.   Young People’s Activities  The Young People’s Society of the Grace PRC in Standale, MI have made plans to assist the elderly members of their congregation during the winter months. Plans call for the young people to clean off any snow that may have accumulated on their vehicles during the worship service, warm the vehicles up, drive them to the church entrance, and then assist the elderly members into their vehicles. Members of the Young People’s Society of the Peace PRC in Lansing, IL invited the young...

Rev. Bruinsma is Eastern Home Missionary of the Protestant Reformed Churches, stationed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Previous article in this series: November 15, 2007, p. 89. In the last article we defined missions. We also began our treatment of the biblical foundation on which all mission work must be built. If the church is to be zealous in her mission work, she must understand that the Bible teaches the indispensable need to carry on such work. We concluded our last article stating that the necessity of missions rests upon the truth of the covenant. There are two means that God employs...

Rev. Kleyn is pastor of First Protestant Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan. Previous article in this series: August 2007, p. 324. As Reformed believers, we view the preaching as being, without question, the most important element in worship. It is indispensable as the chief means of grace that produces and strengthens our faith. It is the precious word of the gospel that saves and comforts our souls. It is the blessed word of Christ Himself that powerfully directs us in thankful obedience to our God. For this reason, we come to the house of God each Lord’s day with a...

Rev. Lanning is pastor of Faith Protestant Reformed Church in Jenison, Michigan. The name Henry Danhof is familiar to the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). Whenever the history of the PRC is told, Danhof’s name has a prominent place at the beginning of that history. Danhof, along with Revs. Herman Hoeksema and George Ophoff, was a minister in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in the early 1900s. Along with Hoeksema and Ophoff, Danhof held that the Three Points of Common Grace, adopted by the Synod of 1924, were false doctrine. Danhof, along with Hoeksema and Ophoff, was deposed by a classis of the...

Rev. Kleyn is pastor of Trinity Protestant Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan. Several years ago—around eight—there was much “to do” in Reformed writing and circles on the topic of the second coming of Christ. As Y2K approached, there was among the population in general a nervousness. In many Christian circles there was much misunderstanding and fear, and along with this came a torrent of erroneous teaching concerning the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. And we Reformed people responded in our writing, teaching, and witnessing by presenting the biblical teaching on the timing of Christ’s coming,...

* Not Anabaptist, But Reformed was a pamphlet written by Danhof and Hoeksema in 1923 as a “Provisional Response to Rev. Jan Karel Van Baalen Concerning the Denial of Common Grace.” Translated here from the Dutch by seminarian Daniel Holstege. Previous article in this series: November 15, 2007, p. 92. We now turn to chapter four of Rev. Jan Karel Van Baalen’s pamphlet.¹ We can pass by the third chapter in silence except for this one observation: Rev. Van Baalen surely could have gathered his facts and material a bit better and could have studied a bit more thoroughly. That...

Rev. Hanko is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Lynden, Washington. Previous article in this series: September 1, 2007, p. 472.   The Conclusion, Chapter 4:4-6 (continued)  5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. That the coming of Elijah in these last verses of Malachi is a reference to John the Baptist and...

Prof. Engelsma is professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Previous article in this series: December 1, 2007, p. 102. Controversy over the Covenant In 1861, two ministers, K.J. Pieters and J.R. Kreulen, introduced a new doctrine of the covenant into the Christian Separated [Dutch: “Afgescheidene“] Reformed Church—the denomination formed in the Netherlands by the Secession of 1834. This doctrine was a radical departure from the doctrine of the covenant of the “fathers of the Secession.” The fundamental feature of the covenant doctrine of Pieters and Kreulen was its denial that the covenant of grace with...

Year of our Lord, 2007, year’s end. Looking back, not a year marked by significant events. So we might judge. Not like 2001 and 9/11 and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Not like 2004 and the tsunami off the coast of Sumatra, the day after Christmas, with the resulting tidal wave breaking the set bounds of the sea, sweeping life away upwards of 200,000 souls. Not like 2005 and the series of hurricanes that battered our coasts, culminating in Hurricane Katrina and what it did to New Orleans, that city of sin, as well as to the...

In this issue you will find the first article by Rev. Andrew Lanning on the life and ministry of Rev. H. Danhof, a man whose name “has a prominent place” at the beginning of PRC history. But it may well be that many of theStandard Bearer readers know very little about Danhof. You will find this, and the subsequent articles, to be a fascinating account of the life of one of the three ministers deposed by the CRC in 1924, but who never became Protestant Reformed. Along the way, Rev. Lanning points out important lessons that can be drawn from the...