All Articles For Address at Annual Meeting of Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA)

* The text of the address given at the annual meeting of the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA) on September 22, 2011 at Faith Protestant Reformed Church, Jenison, MI. Introduction In the last few days of September and the first three days of October, 1951, that is, sixty years ago to the month and almost to the day, the synod of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) took the most important decisions in their history to that date, indeed, to the present day. By votes consistently of nine to seven—the slimmest majority possible, one vote—the synod adopted a document called “The...

Rev. Eriks is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hudsonville, Michigan. This is the text of the speech given on September 24, 2009 at the annual meeting of the RFPA. Do you read good, Reformed books? Do you read the Standard Bearer and the books published by the RFPA? In your home do you teach your children to read? Do you model this in your home? If you are doing this, my desire is that you be encouraged to continue reading good, Reformed material. If you are struggling to read, may you be inspired to read good, Reformed (RFPA)...

Dr. Torlach is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia and a student in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. * Address at the RFPA annual meeting, held September 25, 2008. Previous article in this series: January 15, 2009, p. 187. Two ministers in the Baptist churches in Tasmania, Revs. Rodman and Lyons, had been openly rejected by the assemblies of the Baptist Union in Tasmania. A Union, by the way, is similar to a Classis. This Union had said, in part, that it “calls upon the associated churches of the Baptist Union of Tasmania to resist the presentation of...

Dr. Torlach is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia and a student in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. * Address at the RFPA annual meeting, held September 25, 2008. Previous article in this series: January 1, 2009, p. 161. It was in just this environment that many of the founding members of the EPC were living in the early 1950s. In fact, they came from very diverse backgrounds. It is quite surprising, when one looks back at some of those founding members, to see where they actually came from. They had backgrounds in the Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian,...

Dr. Torlach is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia and a student in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. *Address at the RFPA annual meeting, held September 25, 2008. First of all, I’d like to thank the RFPA for asking me to speak tonight. It is an honor and a privilege to do so. It is good to be able to give you a little more information about the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia, or the EPC, as I’ll be referring to it tonight. It seemed to me a little strange to be asked to speak about the EPC...

Mr. Hoeksema is a member of Trinity Protestant Reformed Church. This article is the text of his address to the RFPA at their annual meeting on September 27, 2007. Mr. Hoeksema is editor of Redeemed with Judgment, a collection of sermons by the late Prof. H.C. Hoeksema on the prophecy of Isaiah. Volume 1 is now available. History  The history of this book goes back some forty or more years. In 1959 HCH (as I will respectfully refer to my father) was appointed professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament in the Theological School of the Protestant Reformed Churches, a post...

*Speech at the RFPA Annual Meeting held on September 21, 2006.   Introduction  The original purpose of the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA) is tied to the beginning of the Protestant Reformed Churches and the common grace controversy. Negatively, it was a response to the reality that the Revs. Herman Hoeksema and Henry Danhof were cut off from publishing. In the periodicals of the Christian Reformed Church (in which they were ministers) they were not allowed to criticize common grace. Nor were they given opportunity to demonstrate that this grievous error was contrary to Scripture and the Reformed confessions. A...

Rev. Van Baren is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches. *This was the address given at the annual RFPA meeting held on September 22, 2005. Several months ago Mr. Fred Hanko called and asked me to speak at this meeting on the subject: “All Around Us.” I hesitated. But Mr. Hanko is a persuasive man. Finally I agreed. Yet I could hardly imagine crowds of eager and anxious people coming to hear a moving speech about “All Around Us.” By way of introduction, I give you a bit of information about the rubric and its origin. The rubric...

Prof. Engelsma is professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. *Originally the text of Prof. Engelsma’s speech at the annual meeting of the RFPA on September 23, 2004 in Grandville PR Church. Previous article in this two-part series: February 15, 2005, p. 226. The content of the Standard Bearer is theological, but the theology of the magazine is not simply Reformed doctrine. It is Reformed doctrine as confessed and developed by the Protestant Reformed Churches. The Standard Bearer is a Protestant Reformed magazine. This, too, belongs to its nature and purpose, its personality. In fact, as...

Prof. Engelsma is professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary, and recently retired editor of the SB. From the Reformed Free Publishing Association, publisher of the Standard Bearer, I received an invitation a few months ago to speak at the annual meeting of the association, “reflecting on your years as editor of the Standard Bearer.” My first inclination was to reject this topic because it requires me to talk about myself. This is a subject that is unappealing to me and that would be unedifying to you. On second thought, however, I decided that the topic...