The most dangerous man to the Roman Catholic Church stood alone. It was the morning of July 6, 1415. Everyone who was anyone—the highest ranking Catholic clergy and even Emperor Sigismund himself—gathered in the towering German cathedral, the site of the Council of Constance. Their goal was finally to rid the Catholic church of the […]

John Wycliffe was born into a “dry and thirsty land, where no water is” (Ps. 63:1). England, as well as all of Europe, was very much in the “Dark Ages” in the early fourteenth century of Wycliffe’s childhood. During his lifetime, he watched as one-third of Europe’s population died of the Black Death. He saw […]

By the early 800s, the Roman Catholic Church had become a corrupted institution and was constantly moving further from God’s word. Corruption among the leaders of the church was already rampant and would continue to worsen in the centuries following. Most significantly, the doctrine of salvation was false. Although it was not yet the church’s […]

Many scholars consider Jacques LeFèvre (Jacob Faber) a pre-reformer. In fact, he was not, as will become plain.   Who was he? LeFèvre was a Frenchman, born in Etaples, in the province of Picardy, about 1455. So he was in fact born before the Reformation began. Significant is that he was a humanist. Humanists were […]

In head 1, article 17 of the Canons of Dordt, we confess that “godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleaseth God to call out of their life in their infancy.” The question that arises from this statement is, “What does this mean?” Do we […]

Note: In May of 2019, Mr. Kleyn was asked to give a chapel speech at Covenant Christian High School about how and why he moved to the US and joined the PRC. The following is a condensed version of that speech.   I was born and raised in Tasmania, a small island state south of […]

In March of 2002, my former colleague Mr. Cal Kalsbeek was approached by a member of the Standard Bearer editorial committee to write a column for their magazine aimed at evaluating current events in our world. The end result, forty-plus articles later, was not only a regular series for subscribers of the Standard Bearer to […]

This editorial marks the beginning of a new chapter in the life of Beacon Lights. As noted in the Issue at Hand prior to this article, there has been a significant turnover in the magazine staff over the past few months. A new editor and two new contributing writer correspondents have taken up their roles […]

“God’s Vine” is a sermon by the late Rev. Marinus Schipper preached in 1978.* He preached it with special thought for “our covenant young people.” The message is timeless, the homiletics masterful, and the doctrine distinctively Protestant Reformed. Every reader would do well to listen to it. The sermon takes as its text John 15:1-2. […]

“Each succeeding generation, at thy mighty word appears; Thou dost count in times duration, one day as a thousand years. Death with swift and sudden warning, calls us from life’s dream away. Like the grass green in the morning, withered ere the close of day.”   Such is the reality of human existence. Is it […]