“…I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do […]
Last month I wrote an article on contemporary worship (The Outlook, Oct. 1995). In it I raised concerns about the “User-Friendly” movement that has been sweeping over churches in the last two decades. I indicated that the motives of many User-Friendly advocates may not be impugned, but that the effects of much User-Friendly worship were […]
INTRODUCTION In the fourth largest nation in the world (population 180 million), live several million Christians who trace their history to Dutch Reformed missionaries. If the 3000 inhabited islands of Indonesia were superimposed on the United States, they would stretch from Oregon to Bermuda. Indonesians like Americans even though most Americans don’t know this. I […]
The following address was delivered to the Christian Reformed Church Synod ‘95 by the fraternal delegate from the mother church, the GKN. It brought shocked responses from CRC delegates. We must once again repeat the words found at the exit of Dachau concentration camp: “He who will not learn from the past is bound to […]
As many readers know by now, CRC Synod ‘95 chose to continue ecclesiastical relations with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (the GKN). This decision was made on the heels of a flagrantly ungodly speech by the GKN fraternal delegate to synod, who offered the GKN’s stance on homosexuality: Just as in Christ people are […]
Christianity is an intellectual religion. If Christians bypass the intellect they will distort the truth of the Bible immediately. Christianity simply cannot survive in a non-thinking environment, no matter how much zeal is sprinkled on its practice by well-meaning adherents. Christianity is not a faith simply for the formally educated, or even for those philosophers […]
For three decades, adults have argued over the quality of television programming and its effect on children. Now the children have spoken and, as usual, their perception differs from the grown-ups’. In a remarkable survey of children between the ages of 10 and 16, the Los Angeles polling firm of Fairbank, […]
Even as she was fighting her loosing battle with cancer, my friend Marie was learning and applying a ruler that helped her affirm life. As she did this, she also taught me the importance of friends in such circumstances. It’s normal and natural for a person to feel wary about visiting with friends or loved […]
Moby Dick by Herman Melville is probably the greatest novel ever written by an American. On the surface it is a great story of men battling the sea in the pursuit of a particular whale. Beneath the surface it is the story of human relationships and obsessions and of the enigma of our existence. It […]
Of all the “signs of the times” mentioned in the Scriptures, none is better known or more commonly the subject of speculation than the sign of the coming “Antichrist.” The temptation to go beyond the clear teaching of Scripture and to fall prey to an unbiblical curiosity about the signs of the times and the […]