The Dutch organist Feike Asma (1912–1984) was renowned in Reformed circles for his unique style and his ability to improvise on familiar psalm and hymn tunes with incredible variety. No two of his performances of a song were identical. However, some of Asma’s best- known renditions were eventually transcribed by other musicians and became available […]
In the 2022 January/February issue of The Outlook, I introduced readers to the sixteenth-century Genevan Psalter, one of the earliest and best-known of the many metrical psalters produced over the past nearly five hundred years. In that article, I discussed its origins in Strasbourg and Geneva, its debt to the much earlier patterns of daily […]
In my article a couple of issues ago, I wrote about the virtue of Christian contentment. Now I turn my attention to its paradoxical partner—Christian dissatisfaction. William Barcley once wrote, “The contented Christian is the most contented person in the world; yet he is also the most unsatisfied.”1 In this article I want to discuss […]
Anyone who’s taken a world literature course will remember the late medieval Italian poet Dante and his Divine Comedy. Most will likely be familiar with Inferno, the first of three books, parts of which are often anthologized; the latter two are Purgatorio and Paradiso. Only die-hard Dante fans or Italian literature students are likely to […]
The letter below is from a prison inmate who has been blessed by The Outlook provided by Reformed Fellowship, and who is among the inmates actively teaching the good news of the gospel to fellow inmates. Greetings again in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank you for your letter of June 30, 2021 in hand […]
For a number of recent winters my wife and I have been privileged to spend a few weeks in an oceanfront condo in Florida. It is located 25 miles north of the Kennedy Space Center, and from that vantage we have witnessed several rocket launches over the years. Close to the appointed launch time people […]
Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm in the Book of Psalms. The Lord is mentioned in only three different places, once in a prayer of belief: “Lord, God of my salvation . . . incline Your ear to my cry” (vv. 1–2, New King James Version), and twice in an urgent plea […]
Apologetics is often associated with the so-called proofs of God’s existence: ontological, cosmological, teleological—and already my head is spinning. But the quest to prove God has several problems. First, it ignores that all people already know God. Even animals can tell us that God created the world (Job 12:7– 10). Everyone knows God. […]
One of Billy Graham’s early crises of faith was over whether he could totally trust the Bible. After much struggle he prayed to God, “I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.”1 Graham’s conclusion sets a good example for […]
During my ministry I have been keeping records of counseling interviews. The earlier records, I must confess, are sketchy and the notations in many instances lack insight and understanding. In more recent years the memoranda have been more complete and the observations have profited from reading and study as well as from the earlier mistakes […]