Dear Editor of the Standard Bearer: 

If room permits, please publish the following: Kok is not only church politically corrupt, but, even still worse so, doctrinally CORRUPT! The following, however, is only a sample taken from Kok’s cesspool, which for the most is as yet still uncovered: to the public. We must still deal with that stench continually wherever we read, in Scripture or the Confessions, for Kok has so grievously mutilated, and distorted God’s holy word, and the doctrine of salvation,, so much so, that his evil explanations, must be counteracted continually as we read or study same. If Kok dares to do so with God’s holy word, then be no more surprised that he will do the same with anyone’s writings. 

1. Kok maintained that, man could frustrate (destroy). The decree of God’s will, by disobeying the decree of God’s command. Although God might have determined something as he willed it to be, man could choose not to obey God’s command, and by so doing, the purposed end of the will of God’s would be nullified. Thus God’s will, was dependent on man’s obedience. Kok’s Reformed Conditions? or futilism: there is no God! H.V.P.) 

2. In a certain sermon, Kok, set forth, and stressed the point that, the doctrine of God’s (as we confess and preach it H.V.P.) sovereign grace salvation, was stocks and blockspulman- car-sleeper-service-salvation; which denied man’s moral, rational, natural responsibility. Kok’s denunciation of said doctrine was strengthened by stamping his foot on the platform, evidently to make it stick. It worked in some, and wrecked (?) Holland’s congregation. (I prefer to say: It purified it. H.V.P.) and a bird escaped are we: Thank God! 

3. In a sermon on John 1:17, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” He explained that, law was one thing, and grace and truth, the other; but where Jesus Christ disappeared to no one knows! 

And how that gulf between ‘law’ and grace and ‘grace and truth’, was ever spanned, Kok did not explain (the work of the Holy Spirit conditional? H.V.P.) Thus the law says “You MUST;” and ‘grace and ‘truth’ are man’s vehicles to employ, by God’s command (law) and IF HE OBEYS, man will obtain God’s promise(s) (????), based on verse 16 of Kok’s TYPE grace: But as many as received him etc., verse 12; at the expense of, or hushing to death verse 13: “Which were born, not of blood etc.” But what Kok did with the Holy Spirit of regeneration is BLANK. He hushed it! 

4. His sermon on the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer, he entirely omitted the little word “For,” to then give us a discourse on “The kingdom;” “power;” “glory,” which were God’s. So far Kok! And that is what Kok names the basis for our comfort, that as truly as we pray it, just so truly we shall receive it??? In plain English, then the proper answer to such is: “HELL.” KOK! KOK!, it sent the chills down our spines! 

5. Following said discourses, was a sermon on “Thine only Comfort,” Lord’s Day 1. “What is thine only comfort in life and in death” etc.; and I wondered just how Kok would explain THIS conditionally! The work of the Father was one thing; that of Jesus Christ the other; BUT! BUT! when he came to the work of the Holy Spirit of our complete salvation, then heemphasized that the Holy Spirit would make ussincerely willing and ready to live unto him to then say: “SEE!” So far Kok. In other words: There is your and my (Kok’s) proof, that Hoeksema-Ophoff, Et Alii, deny that WE MUST; but here anyone can read it with his very own eyes. 

6. On Ephesians 5:8, “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light”: Darkness and light were explained entirely in the natural sense (NATURE) BUT! BUT! WALK AS CHILDREN OF LIGHT really put PEP into his homiletics. How this darkness became light was omitted; and verse 9, The fruits of the Spirit evidently didn’t belong to his text; BUT! HOW KOK CAN AFFORD TO DENY THE TRINITY and still expect to be saved, is his problem. 

7. Heb. 2:14, “. . . him, that hath the power of death, that is, the devil;” was Kok’s text and topic for discourse, BUT AGAIN AT THE EXPENSE OF ANY AND ALL HOPE OF OUR SALVATION : which the first part of the very same verse sets forth: “For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he (Jesus our Savior: H.V.P.) also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he (Jesus) might destroy him . . .” (namely: the devil. H.V.P.) “who had the power of death.” KOK! KOK! is that what your “Conscience as your guide” leads you to ? If that were my conscience, I’d throw it away! for it sure is a ROT! May God give you grace to purify that CONSCIENCE of yours, is my humble prayer for you. If such wanton destruction of God’s word, and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and salvation by God’s elective grace in Christ Jesus our Savior must not be branded as the sin described in Hebrews 10:29, then I ask: what must it come to, before the truth of that verse comes to its own? I have lots of it, more; but I must end. To all of you who alike with us have treated Kok with the silk gloves of Christian love: NOT WILLING TO BELIEVE, NOR ACCEPT, THAT KOK’S ENTIRE PROGRAM IS THOROUGLY CORRUPT AND SINFUL, I ask: If Kok will do SUCH with the word of God, as above referred to; can we still then entertain the faintest hope that he will NOT do the same with everyone’s writings? WE KNOW KOK! And that is the reason for our protests against him, now still lying at Classis: simply because he hung himself with the Reformed Church Order, to which he refused to subscribe as a delegate to Classis East. There is MUCH MORE in that CESSPOOL of CORRUPTION, both church-political and doctrinal, but my space allowed is FULL; yours in Christ, for the truth. 

H.A. VanPutten 

P.S. Kok, “What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?” “We would see Jesus.”