Books for your Valentine

It’s Valentine’s Day! It’s the day to buy your wife or girlfriend (or mom!) flowers and chocolates and a nice dinner, and…a book?

Hey, why not? Valentine’s Day is supposed to be all about love, and we’ve got books that speak about love from a biblical perspective.

And you don’t have to limit your gift to your significant other. Consider getting these titles for your teenage children. Help them to start their romantic relationships off on the right foot.

Family Visitation: Scriptural Basis and Spiritual Nature of Family Visiting

The Reformed Baptism Form: A History from Dordt to today

Throughout the history of the baptism form, there have always been officebearers who attempted to omit parts of the form. These omissions happened in different ways. First, book publishers printed the forms in any way which they saw fit and not according to synodical decisions. Second, ministers regularly skipped parts of the form during the sacrament so that later church printings followed suit (often by placing the “undesirable” section in parentheses and then deleting it altogether without approval). Third, the modern church world has approved a brand-new set of liturgical inventions that have not come from Dordt.

In his book, The Reformed Baptism Form: A Commentary, Bastiaan Wielenga lists several instances where the original form has not been followed. The examples show how violence has been inflicted upon the form.

February 15, 2020 Standard Bearer preview article

The covenant and Dordt (10)

Total depravity: Children incapable of fulfilling a condition

The Canons’ positive treatment of the Reformed doctrine of total depravity is straightforward and relatively brief. And yet, all nine articles of the Rejection of Errors condemn errors of the Remonstrants connected with total depravity. The reason for this is simple. The Canons set forth the Reformed truth over against the specific teaching of the Remonstrants. However, the Reformed doctrine of total depravity was explicitly set forth in the existing confessions, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession of Faith. The Remonstrants did not write what they really believed about fallen man. If they had, they would obviously contradict the confessions; it would indicate that their theology was not Reformed. Accordingly, their “third point,” on fallen man’s condition, though meandering, is something with which Reformed believers could agree, though most would want to state it clearer.

A book on marriage for “laypersons and preachers alike”

Marriage: The Mystery of Christ and the Church is a Reformed pastor’s instruction and exhortation to married couples, especially young married couples, with the purpose that they glorify God in their marriages and enjoy the bliss of this blessed communion of life.

Family Visitation (The History)

The twenty-third article of our church order states that one of the duties of the office of elder is “to visit the families of the congregation, in order particularly to comfort and instruct the members, and also to exhort others in respect to the Christian religion.” The original rendering of this was much more explicit. It read as follows:

“They (the elders) shall faithfully investigate whether they (the members of the church) manifest themselves uprightly in walk and conduct, in the duties of godliness, in the faithful instruction of their households in the matter of family prayers (morning and evening prayers) and such like matters; they shall admonish them to these duties with consideration; but also in all seriousness and according to conditions and circumstances; they shall admonish them to steadfastness, or strengthen them to patience, or spur them on to a serious minded fear of God; such as need comfort and admonition they shall comfort and admonish, and if need be they shall report a matter to their fellow elders, who together with them that are appointed to exercise discipline; and besides these matters they shall correct that which can be corrected according to the gravity of the sin committed; nor shall they neglect, each one in his own district, to encourage them to send their children to catechism.”