Calvin Synod Herald, 2003 (104. évfolyam, 3-12. szám)

2003-03-01 / 3-4. szám

6

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD

Christ! 0 Christ Jesus!” To saying “I’m abandoned of God and of men!” He would say, “Do not leave me. Send somebody to be with me, It is hell to die alone.”

My friends, I think of all of the thousands of people that read Voltaire’s work and were turned from the faith. I wish they could have tiptoed into that death chamber and seen the greatest of all of the skeptics when he came to look into the face, the hollowed eyes and lank-jawed skull of death itself, the King of Terrors.

Do You Fear Death? - How is it with you? Is death something that you fear and dread, or have you been delivered from death? The Bible tells us that Satan has kept the whole world in bondage throughout all of their lives through the fear of death. Is that fear in your heart? Can you actually think of death without terror? Can you think of it as a glorious graduation and coronation day? Is it something that you can look forward to with anticipation, or is it a forbidding and foreboding evil that you cringe at the very thought of and will not let yourself think about it?

Trust Christ! - Has he accomplished that victory in your heart? Have you received Him as Saviour and Lord? Why is it that conscience makes cowards of us all? It is because every one of us is conscious of the fact that he or she has sinned in the eyes of an a holy God who is of purer eyer than even to look upon iniquity, and who has sworn that He will punish our transgressions with the rod. Therefore, we feel guilty and we face death and we know not what lies beyond that dark shadow. But Christ, by His Cross, took away our guilt and sin. By His resurrection he took away that black question mark and opened the glories of paradise to all of those who will trust in Him.

There is no other religion that has a hymn Eke “Blessed Assurance,” because no other religion has blessed assurance. “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! 0 what a foretaste of glory divine!” Can you sing that from your heart in truth? Do you have that blessed assurance, or do you have that fearful dread of what lies beyond the curtain of death?

Christ wants you to have that joy. He wants you to have that certainty. He wants to dispel the fear. Over and over again he said, “Fear not.” “Fear not... Be not afraid. It is I.” But it means nothing at all unless we receive that victory as our own, unless we invite Him to come and set up that Cross in our own hearts, to be our Saviour, our Lord, our God, our King, the Conqueror of the grave.

Prayer: Blessed Redeemer, only Saviour. Thou who alone hath died for the sins of the world, Thou who alone hath risen from the grave and brought life and immortality to fight, Thou alone who desires to give that gift to a that will come to Thee, I pray that by thy mighty and sovereign Holy Spirit, that Thou would right now draw unto Thyself some whom Thou hath chosen to receive eternal life - that thy may say, “Lord Jesus Christ, I come to Thee. I believe that it was for me that Thou hast anguished and agonized upon the Cross, that it was for my sins that Thou hast died. I accept you as my Lord and Savior and Master. I repent of my sins and henceforth desire to follow Thee until that day, when clothed in immortality I shall see thee face to face. In Thy holy name I pray. Amen. ”

Dr. D. James Kennedy is a Presbyterian pastor, television preacher, and Associate Editor of the Christian Observer.

Introduction Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)

The Confession of Faith produced by the Westminster divines has undoubtedly been one of the most influential documents of the post-Reformation period of the Christian church. A carefully worded, exposition of seventeenth-century Reformed theology, the calmness of its sentences largely hides the tempestuousness of the political backcloth against which it was written.

The Westminster Assembly was convened in 1643 after years of tension between Charles I and his increasingly Puritan Parliament. Meeting under the chairmanship of the learned William Twisse against the King’s express wishes, its original vision was to effect closer uniformity of faith and practice throughout his realm. The original task of the delegates was to revise the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, but following the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, this developed into the more specific and exacting task of framing theological and ecclesiastical formulas that would bring the Church of England into conformity with the doctrine and practice of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Ministerial delegates from the Kird (who declined to become members of the Assembly) were the great ecclesiastical statesman Alexander Henderson, the high Calvinistic theologian and exponent of Reformed piety Samuel Rutherford, the extraordinarily gifted young George Gillepie, and the fascinating Robert Baillie (in whose Letters and Journals we find snapshots of the Assembly’s activities and personalities). The Scots insisted on also sending ruling elders as representatives, thus illustrating their commitment to the government of the church by both teaching and ruling elders.

For all practical purposes these Scottish delegates consisted the most powerful group among those who gathered in the Chapel of Henry VII and later in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey, London, during the years of discussion and debate. While the majority of the delegates seem to have been of varying degrees of Presbyterian persuasion, Episcopalians and Independents were also represented, the latter group (which included Thomas Goodwin and Jeremiah Burrough) at times exasperating the Scots.

The various documents composed by the Assembly proceeded through a process of committee work in the afternoons, followed by plenary discussion on the floor of the Assembly in the mornings, with regular additional gatherings for worship, fast days, and the like. Despite disagreements, the divines produced one of the truly monumental documents of church history, which has instructed, directed, and profoundly influenced Presbyterian churches worldwide ever since. The Confession of Faith, alongside the Shorter Catechism, has influenced Presbyterianism even more profoundly than Calvin’s Institutes.

The Westminster Confession of Faith represents a high point in the development of federal theology, and its inner dynamic is powerfully covenantal. Divided into thirty-three chapters, it carefully covers the whole range of Christian doctrine, beginning with Scripture as the source of knowledge of divine things (following the First and Second Helvetic Confessions, the Formula of Concord, and the Irish Articles). It continues with an exposition of God and His decrees, creation, providence, and the fall (II-VI) before turning to expound the covenant of grace, the work of Christ, and, at length, the application of redemption (X-XVIII). While criticism is sometimes voiced that the confession is a deeply scholastic document (e.g., it has no separate chapter on the Holy Spirit), it now increasingly noted that it is the first confession in the history of Christianity to have a separate chapter on adoption (Xll)-perhaps the least scholastic of all doctrines. Careful attention of law and liberty, as well as to the doctrine of the church and sacraments (XXV-XXIX) and the last things (XXXII-XXXIII.)

While the confession was composed by disciplined theological minds, it also displays the influence of men with deep pastoral and preaching experience. It is an outstanding expression of classical Reformed theology framed for the needs of the people of God.

Dr. Joel Beeke