Calvin Synod Herald, 1995 (95. évfolyam, 1-5. szám)
1995-05-01 / 3. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD- 4 -AMERIKAI MAGYAR REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA iplp ^rom Our Centrat cWatcfitcrwer iJM by The Rev. Aladár Komjáthy "I am the bright morning star..." Revelations 22:16b The Star leads the three kings of Orient, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, to the child in Bethlehem. And the star is our point of contact with reality and scientific truth. The unbelieving world may dismiss the entire Christmas story as a beautiful fairy tale without any scientific evidence. But they cannot deny the star which was seen all over the earth, that is how we can fairly and accurately date the birth of Jesus Christ. The most sophisticated scientists today are the people involved in astrophysics. The wise men of the East were dealing with astrophysics. The physics of the stars. ASTER is the Greek word for star. My old professor in Princeton, Dr. James McCord, who was your guest at the Calvin Synod dinner in 1986, always wished to have a special in theology and astrophysics. Today, there is such a chair named after him. True science is not the enemy of faith. Superstition and ignorance are. Last year, our star was restored into its original glory on the top of our steeple in Pittsburgh. It has a very interesting message. The first ten years there was no star on top of our steeple. There was a rooster. Many of our churches in the old country still have that rooster. The Habsburg Emperor forbade our forefathers to display the sign of the cross and only permitted the rooster. It had a useful purpose as a weather-cock. But mainly it was to humiliate the Protestants. Slowly the star took the place of the rooster The late Rev. Kaiassay commented, "We took off the ugly rooster" which spoiled the sight of our beautiful steeple, and replaced it with the bright morning star. The cross is the symbol of the death of Christ. The star was announcing the birth of Christ. And the resurrected Jesus Christ referred to Himself: "I am the bright morning star..." He is the light of the world, He is the hope of the world...The late pastor and his elders knew what they were doing: replaced the symbol of humiliation and defeat with the star, which proclaimed the hope and the future of our Lord and His people. We are the people of hope and future amidst of a decaying world. And we shall overcome, the bright morning star leads us to an even greater glory. EDITOR'S NOTE: In our motherland, our Calvinistic ancestors placed the rooster on the church steeples In honor of John Calvin, who was a Frenchman (Gallic nationalistic sign). In France, the rooster is on the steeples of Catholic churches, and the cross is on the steeple of the Calvinistic churches. Two significant prayer requests in this year's MISSION PRAYER YEARBOOK MARCH 31 cJct us join in prater Jor: Hungary Both the nation of Hungary and the church in that former East-bloc country are exploring what it means to live in a post-communist era. In May of 1994, Hungarian voters gave 209 of 386 seats in parliament to the Hungarian Socialist Party, former communists who pledged to implement economic reforms that some Hungarians said reminded them more of Margaret Thatcher than Karl Marx. Many Christians fear that the new government will be less supportive of the churches as they try to regain their old prominence in Hungarian society. APRIL 1 us join in prater Jor: Romania Romania continues to struggle, as it will for years, with the legacy of the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed in 1989. As a nation, Romania is now emerging from the closed, intolerant atmosphere of those years, when freedom to explore ideas and beliefs was virtually non-existent. Forthat reason, a primary mode of PC (USA) mission in Romania is through the PC (USA) English language program, which was founded in 1991 by Mission co-workers Christina and Harry Caldwell. The Caldwells have written about their students' personal responses to a poem about war. "One said: 'Well need generations to repair what a few decades have done wrong.' Another said 'How passive we are. Buy why? I think because of the era of Ceausescu, when we were treated like some machines, not like sane human beings with feelings.'Finally, the words of one ninthgrader may explain a lot about the Romanian Christians' current situation (including more than two million Hungarians) "I can't change the past, but I hope and think I can change the future."
