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August 1999 New Horizons

66th General Assembly

 
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The Sixty-sixth General Assembly

The General Assembly of the OPC meets yearly to conduct business on behalf of the whole denomination. Since the founding of the denomination in 1936, there has been a general gathering of the OPC every year (and twice in two early years). This year the Sixty-sixth General Assembly met in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from June 2 to June 8 on the lovely new campus of Reformed Bible College. Presbyterian Government We read in Acts 15 of the first recorded general gathering of the apostles and elders of the burgeoning New Covenant church. Such apostle/elder rule was not new in the church. To be sure, the church in the Old Testament did not have the office of apostle, but it did have an office of blessing and proclamation: the Levitical priesthood. And it was the Levitical priests who joined together with elders of the people in governing the assembly of God's people. There is a New Testament analogy to this Old Testament governance. After the extraordinary office of apostle gave way to the ordinary office ... Read more

"Why Do You Complain against Him?" (Job 33:13)

As the boat moved slowly away from the island, everyone in it, including Louis XIV's coconspirator, heard it. Above the splashing of the oars, it fell on them from high on the prison wall—the agonizing and plaintive cry of the man in the iron mask, a cry of "Why, why, why?" heard thrice over. This is television's attempt to portray one of the scenes from Alexandre Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask. In this scene, the hapless older brother of a set of royal twins is secreted away by his younger brother, who has usurped the throne. To be sure, few of us have ever had to endure such an extremity, but everyone has been overtaken by those occasions—some serious, some not so serious—when he could not help but wonder why. Why did the car have to break down at this time? Why did it have to rain today of all days? Why was I born on this side of the tracks? Why does this have to happen to me? And sometimes in desperation we may even cry aloud as our Lord did from the cross, "Why have you forsaken ... Read more

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