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Miss Johanna Timmer, 1901–1978

Miss Timmer was widely known in the Christian Reformed Community as an outstanding leader and teacher. She was the first dean of women at Calvin College and served as dean and teacher for fourteen years. She was the first acting president of the Reformed Bible Institute (now Reformed Bible College) as well as a much loved and admired teacher.

Those of us who knew her as a teacher were impressed with her love for God’s Word and the Reformed faith. She taught with such conviction and enthusiasm that the doctrines of the Bible became alive and precious. She taught with great thoroughness, and asked of us such mastery of the truths she presented as to make them a permanent possession in our minds and hearts.

Miss Timmcr was a spiritually strong woman and many Christians found in her a pillar of strength to lean upon in their own uncertainties and doubts. She had strong convictions and even those who did not always agree with her position had to admire her consistency in holding to them and living them.

To Miss Timmer God was great and adorable. She humbly acknowledged His sovereign grace in her life and attitude. That sovereign, electing grace of God was a most precious doctrine to her. It was the last subject we discussed together when she asked mc to submit for publication in THE OUTLOOK a talk I gave at the RBC convocation exercises last fall. We then confessed to one another that our only blessedness is in the objective, gracious act of God’s grace in Christ. “Nothing in my hands 1 bring. Simply to the cross I cling.” When I was a student at Calvin she told me her favorite song at that time was “Beneath the Cross of Jesus, I feign would take my stand.”

Miss Timmer is now standing before the majestic throne of God, robed in the white garment of Christ’s righteousness. But she has also with all God‘s saints helped to fashion the bride’s wedding garment, by God’s grace, weaving in the fine, clean, white linen of her own righteous deeds. See Revelation 19:8.