This year’s annual meeting of the Reformed Fellowship was held at the Kelloggsville Christian Reformed Church on October 14. The afternoon session featured an address by Mr. Paul Ingeneri, Director of Education and Evangelism at the Seymour C.R. Church, student at Calvin Seminary and a Fellowship board member, on “The Crucial Role of the Eldership in a Church Desiring to Remain Faithful to the Lord.” Since this address is especially appropriate to the time when elders assume their church offices we plan to place it in its entirety in our January issue.
At the evening meeting Dr. Leonard Greenway, well-known Grand Rapids Bible teacher, pastor, counsellor and radio speaker , addressed a crowded church on the subject of “The Old Time Religion.” A Summary follows.*
The Old Time Religion
The speaker cited as a text Jeremiah 6:16, “Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.” He explained that by the “Old Time Religion” he did not have in mind that of southern “hill-billy” or western “cowboy” music, but the Reformed tradition of our Calvinistic forebears. This is resisted in today’s culture as “old–fashioned,” especially among youth who tend to think that they are wiser than their heritage—and need correction. Harry Blamires’ book, Where Do We Stand was cited as deploring the fallacy of disowning the past in the name of evolution, as public ideals appeal to the future with no thought of the past. Our godly forebears have much to teach to us, and especially to today’s young people. With these introductory remarks we were presented with what t he speaker called “The Triple ‘A’s of the Old Time Religion.”
I. The Authority of the Bible
God has spoken; the authority of the Bible is His and it must be so received. Albertus Pieters, the unforgettable professor after 30 years of foreign mission service, although aware of problems of interpretation, etc., taught his students to say of the Bible, “This is the Word of God”—infallible and inerrant—Give it as the Word of God, and God will honor it as His Word. God has blessed His church when it has sought to flourish by the Word of God.
The aim of the new Iowa seminary is to train men who are specialists, not in anthropology and related subjects, but in the Word of God. The church is crying for that. Specialized studies have their place in school, but not in the pulpit. The new seminary aims at exegetical, confessional preaching. Alexander Conrad has said that the most important truth of the Christian religion is that God has spoken. Everything depends on the Divine speech. As James Daane observed in his Preaching with Confidence, the Word makes its own way (Jeremiah 23:29). It is “like a fire” and “like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.”
II. The Antithesis
It is largely forgotten in current Reformed discussions that God has drawn a line between the Kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of light. Remember the “enmity” of Genesis 3:15. The world as world must not as world get into the church. This was a common warning in the church of the past as it opposed worldly amusements and ways of thought. Today that line is blurred, or even erased. An increasing number in the Reformed community want to be congenial and merge with.the world. Francis Schaeffer said that truth is confrontational toward error. Our forefathers knew that and opposed error and compromise. Today we have shuttle-diplomacy between the church and the world in effort to erase the dividing line. Whereas Christ taught us to be aware of our citizenship in heaven, we are under pressure to make ourselves at home and be at ease in the kingdom of earth. The old antithesis is almost gone in many Reformed circles. The world is in the church –in the Christian Reformed and Reformed church today—so that now we can dance—if we “redeem” the dance—whatever that means—and even flirt with the “liturgical dance”! Where is the line implied in “Come out and be separate, saith the Lord”? It is almost rubbed out in many places today. Although some of our forebears may have been a little too rigid and could have been more flexible, they had their basics in line, and if we do not get them back we are doomed to lose our message and identity.
Those basics include the proper catechizing of our youth. The changes which have taken place in catechisms are lamentable. Voices today tell us that catechism is outmoded. We must make it funny in order to entertain. But doctrine is serious and a doctrinally trained church is necessary in order to oppose today’s errors. If we give that up for the sake of children’s fun we may write “Ichabod” over the church.
Although there could have been more contemporary in the past we must teach confessionally. Today’s “something better” turns out to be doctrinally illiterate and the church will suffer in consequence. Christians are called to be “a peculiar people,” and today’s Christians aren’t peculiar. Their blackboards, “overheads” and “underheads” are producing undernourished children. They need to be taught that sin is real and to have nothing to do with Schuller’s “self–esteem” which tells the sinner that he is “worthy,” leaving no place for the Bible doctrine of total depravity. Tinker with that doctrine and you rub out the antithesis.
III. The Adorableness of God
Thank God for forebears who taught the greatness of God, who is to be adored in His grace and saving power. Entering the church was not for entertainment but to worship Him. Genuine worship of God is lost as its forms are turned into novelties and pleasantries in effort to reduce offense and make faith congenial to all. Whereas the old time religion emphasized the adoration of God, the modern stress is on greeting the people and making them feel comfortable. Recent Protestant history has so stressed this horizontal dimension that it has lost a sense of the vertical. Especially in missions the main thrust has come to be sociological rather than theological. Hoekstra’s book, The World Council of Churches and the Demise of Evangelism, calls attention to the betrayal of the gospel by this social preoccupation of churches who have adopted the false idea that action for justice is evangelism. Real evangelism directs people to Christ as the only remedy for sin; social effects result from that evangelism’s calling them back to God.
Professor Samuel Volbeda on his deathbed told his son, “If you live another 25 years you will not recognize the Christian Reformed Church.” Thirty years later much of what he predicted has occurred, as facets of the old time religion are denied.
We must remember that Christ has His own people and His true church and that “no weapon formed against it shall prosper,” for He said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” We must bear witness—must speak out, as the only organization in our immediate circle standing for this today. The “falling away” was predicted and is taking place, but Christ’s true church will endure. Pray for it. It flourishes only by the Word of God.
*A tape of the whole address is available from the Reformed Fellowship Office for $3.00 including postage.