Having concluded our treatment of the office of deacon, we will examine various aspects of the office of elder, as God permits. My goal is not to treat every aspect of the office of elder in as much detail as I did the office of deacon, but to focus more particularly on various aspects of the work of the elders. We begin by noting the nature of the office of elder: it is the office of rule in the church of Jesus Christ. Scriptural testimony That the office of elder in the church of Jesus Christ is one of rule,...

Evangelism Activities We start this issue of the “News” where we left off last issue with more Reformation Day lectures sponsored by various of our churches. Prof. D. Engelsma, retired professor of theology in our PR Seminary, was able to present his lecture, “Federal Vision, Unconditional Covenant, and the Reformation’s Gospel of Grace,” four times this fall. He spoke first at the First Christian Reformed Church of Byron Center, MI on October 29 at the request of the Evangelism Committee of the Southwest PRC in Grandville, MI. This was followed on November 5 at the Hull, IA PRC, sponsored by...

Mr. Watterson is a post-graduate student in the University of Limerick and a member of the Limerick Reformed Fellowship. For this year’s BRF conference we were magnificently hosted in Hebron Hall, a grand old conference center just outside Cardiff, and conveniently near to the airport. The general opinion of the eighty-some attendees was very much in hearty approval of the facilities. Besides the delicious food, en-suite bathrooms, comfortable mattresses, and sporting facilities, the venue was also well-situated for day-trips to historical places such as Bath in England, Caerphilly Castle, and Tintern Abbey. Some also took trips to Cardiff, and some...

Ichabod! The glory has departed! Let that never be said of this church! That was the thrust of Prof. Herman Hanko’s moving sermon at the official dedication of the new church building of the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church (CPRC) in Northern Ireland (5 August, 2010). The Ballymena congregation was joined on this special occasion by family and friends, neighbors, our building contractor and quantity surveyor, as well as saints from the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) in America and the Limerick Reformed Fellowship (LRF), plus Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. In fact, this was the first CPRC service attended by Anganeta...

Young people, if you look up Proverbs 1:8, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1-5, and Proverbs 7:1, you will find over and over again the call of a father to his son: “My son, listen….” These words, repeated as often as they are, might give us the impression that Solomon must keep calling his son back to him. This son might need to have his attention called back to the wisdom his father wishes to teach him. Or this son might need to be pursued by his father to turn him back to the wisdom that he must learn from his father. You sons and...

With this article we begin a new section on the creation and fall of man. We have talked about God’s act of creating all things. Now we take a look at that special creature that God made in His own image to represent Him and to rule over His kingdom. In this section we will be considering especially what it meant that Adam was created in God’s image, and what happened to man when he fell into sin. There is much debate about this today. Many redefine what it means to bear God’s image. They do so in an effort...

Previous article in this series: December 1, 2010, p. 108. In the first article, I introduced an analysis of the recent synodical report of the United Reformed Churches (URC) on the federal vision heresy. The 2010 Synod of the URC received the report for information and adopted the fifteen doctrinal recommendations of the report.¹ I said that the report is fatally flawed and dangerous because, while the report declares certain federal vision teachings to be contrary to the Reformed creeds, it leaves untouched the vicious root of that heresy in the federal vision’s doctrine of the covenant. What the report...

Previous article in this series: November 1, 2010, p. 67. We considered last time the authorship of the book of Ecclesiastes. Before turning to an exposition of the book, we do well to consider its central theme. That theme is the vanity of man’s life in a fallen and sinful world. This theme, however, must be approached from a certain point of view. God is sovereign in the life of men. That sovereignty extends to the smallest details of life, so that not a hair falls from our head or a sparrow to the ground but by the will of...

Thank you very much for your recent editorials regarding the pressures that our young people face in Christian colleges. We especially appreciated the proper Reformed response to their kingdom language and ideology. The pressures faced by our young people in these institutions are overwhelming. (It is our intention that when our children attend college, they will attend one near home, so that we can “debrief ” them often!) Our hope is that the SB will periodically address these issues in future years. Philip and Karen VanBaren Cedar Lake, IN

This editorial is the story of a delegation from the PRCA’s Contact Committee, two books from the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA), two Reformed believers (husband and wife) who zealously witness to their business clients, and how these all intersect in six small churches in the desert country of Namibia, Africa (which to most Americans is still the “Dark Continent.”) The story is an editorial because it is more than the story of a fascinating trip in a beautiful land teeming with wild animals. The story is a report of a denomination seeking out other true churches in the world,...