Many readers may be aware that the Christian Reformed Church of Lynwood, Illinois has written to the consistories of other churches of the denomination about the current state of our family of churches. This has elicited a considerable volume of response. On August 27 Rev. Rein Leestma of the Lynwood church, at the invitation of the First Church of Rock Valley, Iowa, addressed a meeting of over 700 about this matter. He stated that when the Lynwood consistory began dealing with this subject it soon realized that there is “white water” ahead for our churches, and he sensed that the attendance at this evening meeting showed a comparable concern in the hearts of many in this area. It is a concern for our churches and ourselves, but even more for our children and grandchildren. Although it is important to all, it rests most immediately and heavily on consistories to whom God has given a “shepherd’s” responsibility toward the rest. This concern drives us first to seek God’s guidance. The current plight of our church family has resulted from the erosion of obedience to the Bible’s authority. Our need to begin with the Bible may be illustrated by the way he once saw a skilled workman laying tiles in a kitchen floor. When he questioned the extraordinary care being given to laying the first tile, the workman explained that if that were not exactly right the whole job would become a mess and by the time the error became apparent the first rows of tile would be set beyond correction. In such matters the beginning has to be right.

The speaker recalled his seminary days when he and most other students were captivated by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner and had little time for Louis Berkhof and Gerhard us Vos. All were eager to become theologically respectable and to gain recognition. After World War II Barth was widely welcomed as a light from heaven, as he spoke of the Word of God and its doctrines. That Word he saw as spoken and then written-the Bible was a human “witness” to it. Barth’s followers soon went beyond him, Bultrnann saying that the Word needed to be “demythologized,” freed from the “myths” that surrounded it. The speaker traced the influence of this way of thinking in our churches, in the seminary president’s defense of a student who thought some parts of the Bible more inspired than others. John Sittema’s little book on Preaching with Authority has highlighted the way Karl Jaspers refused to identify truth with the Bible but made it a relative and changing development in human experience—And so Calvin Professor Holtrop could say at the Ontario conference, “Truth is something that happens.” Thus, we see in a variety of ways the recurrence of the question the devil raised in paradise, “Has God said?”

In accepting the notorious “Report 44,” the speaker saw our churches “laying the first tile crooked.” The “problem” it faced did not arise from our churches, but came to us through the Reformed Ecumenical Synod from the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands who had been influenced by the German theologians such as Barth and Brunner. The question of Report 44 (about the nature and extent of the Bible’s authority) arises out of a false view of the Bible and of truth—really out of unbelief. Although the report said many good things, its question is contrary to God’s Word and Covenant. If we receive the Bible as God’s Word, who may interrupt and say that we need to appoint a committee to study the nature and extent of its authority? Doing this embodies the false assumption that the church may judge the Scriptures, treating it merely as a human book. In the cases of Kromminga, Stek, De Boer, Verhey, Dekker and Boer we have seen only a beginning of the resulting troubles. When the Bible is subjected to such questioning we get a new “pope” in the “expert” and a return to Luther’s “Babylonian Captivity of the Church.”

We are on a train rapidly going in the wrong direction, and face the question, “When shall we get off?” The speaker recalled a conversation in which he asked someone whether he could “be comfortable” with having women deacons. “Yes.” With women elders? “Probably.” With women preachers? “Probably.” With homosexual preachers? If matters went that far he guessed he’d stop going to church. That has been the sequence in the Dutch churches—the approval of homosexuality—the “blood theology” (of the atonement) came from the bloody Canaanites—God can’t be sovereign if He permitted a “holocaust.” We are on a train running on the same line. What will happen to our children and grandchildren if we, as a denomination, don’t get off? If we stay on, we have no reason to believe that our children will hear the gospel at all. We have to get off and do so quickly. Especially fellow-pastors, elders and deacons need to listen to the warning of Ezekiel 33, that God will require the blood of the casualties of us if we fail to sound His warning. Can we excuse ourselves to God, saying that “we don’t want to rock the boat,” “be controversial,” or endanger “getting a call?” In a church discussion when someone ventured the suggestion that it might take 40 years to correct the church’s course, a young mother retorted, “I haven’t got 40 years and I have 4 small children!”

In the ensuing discussion the speaker explained that the Lynwood consistory, becoming aware of the urgency of the matter, had properly addressed the “highest” church assemblies, the consistories. (Synods and classes are only short-lived representative assemblies). A next appropriate step might be a suggested conference of the over 120 consistories who had expressed general agreement with Lynwood’s concern.

Questioned about his own early change of views, the speaker expressed gratitude for a good mentor and fellow-pastors who, along with helpful reading, had been means the Lord had provided for his guidance. In our time, when, as in the past, people “perish for lack of knowledge,” as many neither know nor care about what is happening, it is time for us to turn off the TV and pray for revival. We need to be guided again by the “Thus saith the Lord,” not by “sharing” our collective ignorance.

PDJ

Tapes of the address are available from Mid–America Reformed Seminary, Box 163, Orange City, Iowa 51041 , for $4.00.