50 years!
50 years, why that’s older than some of our parents.
50 years! What a blessing! What a multitude of blessings!
50 years! How faithful! A totally unmerited faithfulness. God has certainly been faithful to us who are entirely, totally depraved. Of ourselves, rotten to the core and yet so proud as if we deserve what we have. If we would just stop and think that just one, of our sins, that’s right, just one of our sins is enough to send us to hell for an eternity. It is only when we see and understand how dead we are in sins and miseries, that we can begin to see how great a salvation we have.
But we the elect, in the line of continued generations, through God’s grace are saved! What a gracious, faithful, covenant God we have! Let us indeed be grateful, continually grateful to God for His many, many blessings.
Is not this enough reason to celebrate and be joyful? Add to this thankfulness 50 years. The Protestant Reformed Churches, by God’s grace have been in existence for 50 years. At this milestone let us truly thank our heavenly Father for our past and pray for continued blessing in the future that we may continue to be true to His word.
On this occasion, the Beacon Lights, the Lord willing, would like to present a series of articles. These articles will deal with five different time segments in our history as Prot. Ref. Churches. The first-time segment is dealt with in this issue. It concerns the time around 1924. The Beacon Lights is asking men, who were young people during their respective time segment, to write some of their thoughts on how things were then and how those things affected them, their families, and/or their church. We are asking two men to write for each time segment. The five time segments are, the time around 1924, the Depression, World War II, the split of 1953, and the Prot. Ref. Churches today. The last of the time segments we plan on having in a special July issue, along with the winners of our poetry and essay contest, and a pre-convention report.
Mr. Dick Kooienga of Hope, Walker, Church and Mr. John M. Faber, an associate editor of Beacon Lights, of First Church have consented to write for the first-time segment.