Vol 89 Issue 17

Congregation Activities Reflecting on the Word of God found in Ephesians 5:25, “as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it,” we extend our congratulations to four of our congregations who celebrate their anniversaries this month. The Loveland, CO PRC organized June 7, 1958; the Hope PRC in Walker, MI organized on June 8, 1916; the Providence PRC in Hudsonville, MI organized on June 18, 2008; and the Hope PRC in Redlands, CA or­ganized sometime in June (the exact date unknown) in 1932. The Consistory of the Hudson­ville, MI PRC recently gave their approval to a group of...

Dr. Kennedy is a member of Covenant Protestant Reformed Church in Northern Ireland. Holding Hands, Holding Hearts, Richard and Sharon Phillips. P&R Publishing 2006. Paperback. 183 pages. [Reviewed by Dr. Julian Kennedy (NI).] This is an excellent guide for young and not-so-young people contemplating marriage, looking for a mate, or already embarked upon courting. The authors are Presbyterians who rightly state that our ultimate satisfaction is in God alone, not a mate, and that He is the sovereign Matchmaker. They speak from their own personal experience and from their seeing and advising many couples. They start with creation and God’s...

Among other significant parts and stages in mission work, there is this one, which ought not to be overlooked, namely, that of transi­tion. John the Baptist experienced the reality of it and confessed his response to it in the words of John 3:30, quoted as the title for this article. The apostles expe­rienced it. Preachers experience it when moving from one congregation to another. Faithful missionaries and their calling churches have experienced it. In fact, in the PRCA foreign mission labors in the Philippines, the missionaries have experienced an example of the same phenomenon very recently. What John the Bap­tist...

Many love to speak about “culture” today. Christian education, supposedly, is de­signed to teach our children to engage in “cultural activities” that will make this world a better place. But what exactly is culture? What is accomplished by the various “cultural activities” promoted in neo-Calvinistic colleges today? More importantly, what activity would be the biblical counterpart to the world’s idea of developing culture? What is “culture”? A cultural activity is one that is designed to develop human beings, especially by means of education. It refers to the act of “cultivating” people to promote their growth. Just as agriculture has to...

Previous article in this series: March 15, 2013, p. 279. God tells His church what kind of men may, and what sort of men may not, hold the of­fice of elder. That He does this is reasonable. Because the office of elder is found in God’s church, God may dictate who holds the office. In addition, the office itself is God’s institution. And through the body of elders in a congregation, Christ Himself rules the congregation on God’s behalf. We do well, then, to pay close attention to the quali­fications of the office. First, by so doing we show that...

Previous article in this series: April 15, 2013, p. 325. Introduction In our critical examination of the biblical proof put forward by postmillennialism for its erroneous under­standing of the last things, one passage remains to be considered. We have already considered three passages of Scripture to which postmillennialism appeals in sup­port of its doctrine of the end. One was Isaiah 65 with its prophecy of the coming of a glorious kingdom of the Christ. The other two were Matthew 24 and Romans 11:25, 26. The passage that remains is Revelation 20. I have commented on this passage earlier in this...

In a landmark decision on March 7, 2013, the Pres­byterian Church of America (PCA) exonerated federal vision (FV) heretic Peter Leithart. The decision has been a long time coming. In 2007 the PCA adopted a report on the FV. Since then the Peter Leithart case has been going on at various levels in the PCA, notably his lengthy trial last year in his own Pacific Northwest Presbytery (PNWP), in which he was acquitted. One member of the presbytery, a ruling elder, appealed the case to the PCA’s Standing Judicial Committee (SJC), the highest judicial body in the PCA outside of...

Previous article in this series: May 1, 2013, p. 340. We continue our re­sponse to an article entitled “Calvin’s Treatment of the Offer of the Gospel and Divine Grace” found in the Mid-America Journal of Theol­ogy (MJT, vol. 22, 2011) written by Dr. J. Mark Beach. Beach’s thesis is that Calvin was a proponent of the “Free or Well-meant Offer of the Gospel,” and, in close connec­tion with that, that H. Hoeksema’s contention that Calvin was not an advocate of the WMO is specious and incorrect. As stated at the conclusion of our previous article (SB, May 1) we are...

“These things speak and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let not man despise thee.” Titus 2:15 Paul had given to Titus the calling to pastor (shep­herd) the new Christians in the various congrega­tions on the island of Crete. This included the selecting and ordaining of men as officebearers in order that the congregations might be instituted churches (Titus 1:5-8). It also included exhorting and convincing the unruly, vain talkers, and deceivers (Titus 1:10-13). And it included preaching and teaching “the things which become sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1), that is, godliness. Paul detailed the godliness required by a faith that holds for truth what...