Rev. Lloyd Cross is pastor of the Peace Reformed Church (Reformed Church in the U.S., Eureka Classis) of Garner, Iowa. He writes:

“The Christian Reformed Church has had a glorious history in this country. It was glorious because the Bible as God’s infallible Word was taken seriously. We fear that the Christian Reformed Church is today losing its heritage. We plead with you to remember ‘the rock from whence you are hewn.’ Greatness lies in continued faithfulness to Christ and His Word. We humbly challenge you to that greatness. Compromise, we have found, spells one word—death.”

People of the same faith in the Lord Jesus Christ should know each other. Such however is not always the case. Perhaps many readers of THE OUTLOOK are not very familiar, if at all, with the Reformed Church in the U. S., Eureka Classis. It is not because either one of us is new. It is rather that we do not always have the best communication with each other. This article, by request of the editor of THE OUTLOOK, is intended as a brief introduction of the Reformed Church in the U. S. to the readers of THE OUTLOOK.

This is good and timely. We in the Eureka Classis, RUCS, have gone through very trying times. We see the Christian Reformed Church going through trying times today. We see THE OUTLOOK championing the cause of the historic biblical faith, the Reformed Faith. We seek by the grace of our sovereign God to also champion the cause of the historic Reformed Faith. We believe not only in holding the line, but in propagating the biblical faith in our humanistic nation and world. We seek to be uncompromising and positive in the Christian witness in a compromising and nihilistic age in both the civil and ecclesiastical world.

The Reformed Church in the U.S. came to this country as early as 1710. Our roots go back to Germany rather than to Holland where the roots of many of the readers of THE OUTLOOK go. Early in the 1700′s Pennsylvania became the hub of the German Reformed Church in this country. In 1710 the first German Reformed congregation was established in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. For the better part of the 18th century we had a close relationship with the Dutch Reformed Church in Holland. Financial aid was received by us from several Synods in Holland. Our first Synod was held in Philadelphia in 1747 which marked the beginning of the German Reformed denomination in America.

In our second Synod meeting in 1748 the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dordt were made our official creeds. Sometime later, for reasons not presently known, the Canons of Dordt were dropped. However, the Eureka Classis meeting at its 64th annual session in April 1974 at Menno, South Dakota, took steps toward readopting the Canons of Dordt as part of our creedal standards.

By the time of the Revolutionary War, the German Reformed Church was the sixth largest denomination in the U.S. In 1863 the adjective “German” was dropped from our name and we have since been known as the Reformed Church in the U.S. though our constituency is still largely German.

By 1934 our denomination numbered about a quarter of a million members, roughly the size of the Christian Reformed Church today. We operated some 18 colleges and seminaries. A number of Christian grade schools had been in existence also. We had 58 classes and 6 synods.

Now the sad part of our history. Unbelief in the form of liberalism Vegan to be tolerated already in the 19th century in this denomination. Discipline, in the love of the Lord and His Word, was not firmly exercised against those who began to undermine the faith. The result was disastrous. The Reformed Church in the U.S. became very ecumenically minded in an apostate direction. It became a member and promoter of the old ultra liberal Federal Council of Churches. In 1934 came the big and final break. The Reformed ChUl”ch in the U. S. merged with the Evangelical Synod of North America, which denomination itself had been the result of a merger of Lutheran and Reformed elements tracing back to Germany. It was an unbiblical union with much confusion on all sides. The new church was known as the Evangelical and Reformed elements tracing back to Germany. It evangelical nor Reformed. Its creeds were the Heidelberg Catechism, Luther‘s Catechism, and the Augsburg Confession, but none was binding! It was in effect a creedless church.

However we find in our own denomination the pattern God used in the Old Testament days and in church history since the time of the apostles. He brings out a remnant. God separated a remnant out of apostate Israel. He did that again in the Reformation. He has donI?” it in modern times. In 1934 by the sheer sovereign grace of God, one Classis in the Reformed Church in the U. S. did not go along with the merger. Also some individual Reformed congregations did not join. The Classis Eureka, now the continuing Reformed Church in the U. S., refused to give up its Reformed confession and principles. The Eureka Classis continues today, by the sovereign grace of God, as the Reformed Church in the U.S. seeking steadfast faithfulness to the Reformed Faith as summarized in the Heidelberg Catechism.

The “remnant” of the Reformed Church in the U.S. today consists of 24 churches, 21 ministers, 1300 families, 4,000 baptized members, and 3,000 communicant members. It is a small “remnant” indeed.

We presently maintain fraternal relations with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church which has a very similar history to ours. About 10 years ago we also had some fraternal relations with the Christian Reformed Church. These relations however have deteriorated in the light of the ill winds we see beginning to blow in the Christian Reformed Church today. In 1957 we adopted Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia as “our” seminary. We support a foreign missionary in Taiwan and are active in a number of home mission works. Our Eureka Classis, small in numbers, is however large geographically as it stretches from Napoleon, Ohio to Bakersfield, Shafter, Sacramento, and Anderson, California. We support Dordt College and Hope Haven.

Can we learn from church history? We pray we will. We pray that the Christian Reformed Church will take the lessons seriously also. We speak as those who have had to learn some very bitter lessons from the hand of our God. We thank Him for His sovereign grace which alone preserved the Eureka Classis from apostasy. We plead now with all those in the Christian Reformed Church who love the Lord and His Word of grace to be separate from unbelief. Humbly we would challenge you as brethren in the Lord to “test the spirits” in this day.

The Christian Reformed Church has had a glorious history in this country. It was glorious because the Bible as God’s infallible Word was taken seriously. We fear that the Christian Reformed Church is today losing its heritage. We plead with you to remember “the rock from whence you were hewn.” Greatness lies in continued faithfulness to Christ and His Word. We humbly challenge you to that greatness. Compromise, we have found. spells one word—death. The Evangelical and Reformed Church has since by further merger become the United Church of Christ. Its witness to the power of Christ and His kingdom is dead. The future is with Christ in adherence to the Scriptures.

We are presently deeply concerned with, among other issues, the rise of neo-Dooyeweerdianism and the Cosmonomic Philosophy in the CHC and also at Dordt College. The Eureka Classis at its recent annual meeting set up a committee to study the presence of the Cosmonomic Philosophy at Dordt. We are concerned that it is a philosophy which might not be carefully derived from the Scriptures. We are also concerned (hat its doctrine of the Word of God might not be carefully derived from the Word itself.

Brethren, it is the gospel of the Bible which alone today is adequate to challenge the Humanism that is engulfing America and the western world. If, in order to present that gospel as a clear trumpet sound. it means separation from a larger body, so be it. The power is not in man but in the presence of the Lord. By the sheer grace of God, the Reformed Church in the U.S., Eureka Classis, has found that out. We humbly pray that the lessons of our history might help our brethren in the Christian Reformed Church.