All Articles For All Around Us

CONSERVATIVES CLASH OVER ISRAEL AND THE JEWS In a December 1, 2025 blog post, Kevin DeYoung wrote on his website, “Increasingly, the loudest voices arguing for Christian Nationalism are marked by juvenile insults steeped in online jargon from the dissident right. What’s more, some of these proponents traffic openly in racist ideology, antisemitism, and Neo-Nazi sympathies….” Thus, one question he has for Christian Nationalists is this: “Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?”1 What about you? Do you categorically renounce antisemitism (anti-Jewish thinking)? There has been open antisemitism on the political left for a while now, especially since Hamas...

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers—Ephesians 4:29   “THE DEPTH OF EVERYDAY WORDS” Ten thousand…give or take a few. That’s how many words the average speaker utters each day. And according to James, those ten thousand are no mere sounds. Every word is a rudder or a flame (Jam. 3:4, 6), a blessing or a curse (Jam. 3:9), wondrous water or stinging salt (Jam. 3:11), a fig or an olive or a grape (Jam. 3:12). Every word has substance,...

On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, Christian, husband, father of two, at thirty-one years of age, was assassinated by a gunman on a college campus in Utah where he was publicly debating with college students. It was a day we, especially the younger generation, will never forget: shocking, appalling, a day of great heaviness.1 The suspected shooter, twenty-two-year-old Tyler Robinson, grew up in a conservative home, but allowed himself to be radicalized by a dark, twisted ideology. He felt that Charlie Kirk was spreading hate, and so in an act of hatred he murdered him. He now faces the death...

On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump began his inaugural address with remarks that must have annoyed the political left while giving the political right an excitement they had not felt in a long time: “The golden age of America,” he declared, “begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first…. America will soon...

Pastor of Wingham PRC in Wingham, Ontario   BRUTAL PERSECUTION Last February, Open Doors reported that “seventy Christians were discovered beheaded inside a Protestant church” in a northeastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). That part of the country has been torn by war between the DRC and rebel forces backed by neighboring Rwanda for some thirty years. An Islamist militant group with ties to ISIS, called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), has added to the fear and chaos in that same region. They were the ones who carried out the brutal murder of those seventy men and women...

pastor of Georgetown PRC in Hudsonville, Michigan   “THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CRC” For several years now, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) has been enduring internal controversy regarding its position on homosexuality. If you have lost track of these developments and want to get caught up, I recommend reading Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra’s article in the March 15 issue of Christian Renewal.1 Zylstra examines the CRC’s surprising turn—from rushing into liberalism to resting on a historical confessional position of the Heidelberg Catechism. Here is the curious case of the CRC in a nutshell: “How many denominations have gone this far...

pastor of Georgetown PRC in Hudsonville, Michigan   We know Him by two means: first, by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse. Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to...

pastor of the Wingham PRC in Wingham, Ontario, Canada FRACTURING OF THE CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH “At least two dozen churches in the Christian Reformed Church of North America are in the process of severing their ties with the denomination over their disagreements with its increasingly rigid stance on sexuality.”1 Four of those churches are located in Classis Grand Rapids East: Calvin Church, Grace Church, Church of the Servant, and Sherman Street, churches with many professors, staff, and students of Calvin University. On the Canadian side of the border, a new group that I have mentioned before, called “Toward CRC Canada,”...

pastor of Georgetown PRC in Hudsonville, Michigan What dost thou mean by the providence of God? The almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures…yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by His fatherly hand— Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 10, Question and Answer 27 GOD’S HAND IN HURRICANE HELENE Hurricane Helene was one of a few tropical storms that God sent to the southeastern United States this fall, and the most powerful and destructive of those recent storms. Helene was reported to be...

pastor of the Wingham PRC in Wingham, Ontario, Canada Earlier this fall, children across the land went back to school. Most of them go to a public school. But a rising number are going to private schools, or are being homeschooled. The theology editor at Christianity Today, Stefani McDade, recently wrote that the debate about Christians using the public schools “has come back to the foreground of our public life in recent years.” She cites a Gospel Coalition debate in which the popular evangelical author and speaker Jen Wilkin used “faith-led arguments” to promote Christians sending their children to public...