The following review was written by Kevin Huizinga on the book Here We Stand: 500th Anniversary of the Reformation by various authors, edited by Prof. Ron Cammenga (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing, 2018). This review was originally published in the October 2023 issue of The Grandville Gleaner.
"Here We Stand," a variation on Martin Luther's powerful concluding statement from his speech at the Diet of Worms, is an appropriate title for this book and theme for the event it summarizes. In October of 2017, a conference was held to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the great Reformation. Spread over two days, it included six different speeches which were then adapted by the speakers into written form. Each section highlights a different aspect of one of the most significant events of Christ's church on this earth.
The reformation of the church is God’s work. God loves His church with an everlasting, unquenchable love. God’s eternal counsel with regard to His church includes not only the selection of every member, but also the entire history of the church through time and eternity. That earthly history includes times of reformation in His church. In His perfect wisdom, God determines a process of apostasy, that is, that the church that once maintained the teaching and practices of the Bible, over a period of time, departs from biblical standards. Such departure always involves doctrinal apostasy, setting aside the truth for the lie. It spreads into worship, defiling the worship with idolatrous practices. The corruption spreads to the church’s government, which often takes on the form of a hierarchy that oppresses those who criticize the church for her errors and godless living. And finally, the apostasy manifests itself in the lives of the members, who learn to transgress with the approval of the church.Read More
Here We Stand consists of a series of essays commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation changed the entire landscape of Europe, even from a political, social, and economic point of view. But more than that, the Reformation was a religious event that changed conditions in the church institute for the good of the church universal—something we can give thanks for even five hundred years later.Read More
