Vol 91 Issue 07

Denomination Activities In accordance with Article 67 of our Church Order the consistories of the Protestant Reformed Churches in the USA called their congregations to worship on the National Day of Thanksgiving, November 27. We were encouraged to “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks…” I Thessalonians 5:16-18. Sister-Church Activities Did you know that one of the sister churches of the PRC, the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church of Ballymena, Northern Ireland has a wide-ranging website? That is certainly an understatement. The site www.cprf.co.uk is extremely impressive! Its “languages” link contains Reformed literature in some 121 foreign tongues. The...

The Sovereignty of God, Arthur W. Pink. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1984 (first published 1918). Softcover. 269 pages. (also available online, Kindle, Hardback, Audio book). ISBN 0-8010-7088-0. ISBN 13: 9780801070884. [Reviewed by Dr. Julien Kennedy, Ballymena, NI.] I would guess that this book, more than any other, has been used by God to introduce people to and reinforce their belief in the Reformed doctrines of sovereign grace. It is a must-read for anyone disenchanted with the false theology of their churches, for those interested in assessing Calvinism, and, I would go as far as to say, for every...

It is often said that mission work involves making many sacrifices. From time to time we have received well-meaning comments along those lines as part of expressions of thanks for doing the work of foreign missions. And it could easily be argued that this is true. Missionaries (perhaps especially foreign ones) could no doubt produce a list of things they have had to “give up,” so to speak. But to dwell on these things would not be spiritually healthy, nor helpful. Many years ago a fellow saint who was involved in foreign labors made some observations that struck my wife...

Any institution that is going to attempt to raise children needs to have a firmly established order. The reason the family is the ideal institution is that the institution of the covenant family is built on God’s order. The world increasingly has abandoned and rejected the order of God. The result has been that the institution of the family in America is falling apart. Furthermore, the prevalence of ungodly divorce and remarriage in our society has destroyed many homes. It is impossible for the public schools in our land to repair the damage that has been done to the institution...

Introduction Beginning with this issue of the Standard Bearer, the undersigned has agreed to write a series of articles explaining the Second Helvetic Confession. These articles will regularly appear in the rubric “Believing and Confessing.” This first article and the one that is to follow will serve as a general introduction to this new series. In this article we will focus on the author of the Second Helvetic Confession, Heinrich Bullinger. In the next article we will take an overview of the confession that he penned. Very likely most readers of the Standard Bearer are not familiar with this Reformed...

Previous article in this series: December 1, 2014, p. 106. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men: A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease. Ecclesiastes 6:1, 2 “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun…” (Eccl. 6:1a). The Word of God introduces a new observation of what...

Is Anybody Out There? The July, 2014 issue of National Geographic poses the question on its cover: “Is Anybody Out There?” In the background is a picture of the planet Jupiter with Europa, one of its moons, in the foreground. The article is entitled “The Hunt for Life beyond Earth.” The subject is the (foolish and unbelieving) search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which today goes by the acronym SETI, and refers to the various projects involved. Astrobiology is their area of expertise. Wait, astrobiology?! We all know that astronomy, the study of the stars, is a real and legitimate science. But...

The beginning and ending of each year is a rather momentous time for mankind. It is celebrated with festivities the world over. We consider the year a significant marker of time, and remember important events by the year in which they occur. The church also recognizes each new year’s connection to Christ by holding worship services, referring to it as ‘the year of our Lord,’ and assigning it a date “AD” that denotes the years that have passed since Jesus’ first coming. Yet how often do we consider the biblical importance of this prominent, universal, and regular unit of time?

Year of our Lord, 2014. The important words in the above statement, of course, are the words “our Lord,” historically represented by the letters AD (Anno Domini). I say ‘historically,’ because even that reference is under assault in our post-modern, increasingly anti-Christian age and society, as you know. Newly published books, when it comes to historical references, are in the process of replacing AD with CE (for Common Era) and BC with BCE (Before the Common Era), so that any suggestions that the central event of time was the birth and coming of this Jesus of Nazareth are expunged. In...

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27 As a new year looms before us, many are filled with fear and dread. The world is filled with turmoil and violence. What have we seen of late? Crisis in Ukraine with Russia’s intrusion; the ongoing civil strife in Syria; Iran’s threat of nuclear war; the barbaric acts committed by the Islamic State; fighting between Hamas and Israel; the worst Ebola epidemic in history—these are a few...