The RFPA, the CPRC and the Spread of the Truth

(the substance of a speech by Rev. Angus Stewart at the Reformed Free Publishing Association Annual Meeting in Michigan, USA on 27 September, 2018)

Default Position

The typical professing evangelical Christian in our day, sadly, is a long way from being able to confess the Reformed faith as summed in our Three Forms of Unity and become a member in one of our Reformed churches.

In all likelihood, he (or she) holds some Arminian ideas. Even if he calls himself a Calvinist, he probably thinks that God loves everybody, that Christ died for all men head for head (at least in some sense) and that God earnestly desires to save everybody. Romans 9 does not come into it!

In eschatology, our representative evangelical is probably a dispensationalist.

With regard to the first Christian sacrament, he will likely be baptistic. Even many Paedobaptists in our day would dismiss the issue as relatively unimportant.

If you ask him about the covenant, he might respond, “What’s that?” Moreover, most of those who are covenantal believe that it is merely a contract and not a gracious bond of fellowship between Jehovah our Father and us, His beloved people.

All sorts of charismatic ideas are abroad: the baptism with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, ongoing prophecy, etc. Most evangelicals are charismatics or are open to their ideas or would not condemn them.

The truth that God alone determines how He is to be worshipped—the regulative principle of worship (Heidelberg Catechism, Q. & A. 96)—is largely unheard of.

If you speak about the church with an evangelical, the two of you may not even be referring to the same thing, because the truth that churches are to be evaluated according to their faithfulness in the preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments and the exercise of Christian discipline may well be new and strange to him (Belgic Confession 29). Even mentioning church discipline seems scary and even unchristian to many, despite I Corinthians 5.

If the catechetical instruction of the children of believers crops up, most evangelicals would respond, “Well our church doesn’t do that. I do not like the sound of it; it sure sounds like a lot of hard work!”

If the conversation turns to the subject of marriage, the typical evangelical thinks along these lines: “Since the state allows (easy) divorce and remarriage (while one’s spouse is living), well then, that should be fine with the church of Christ, too.” It is as if Mark 10:2-12 is not in the Bible!

If you mention the Reformed creeds, your evangelical interlocutor may well ask you, “How in the wide world do they fit with the authority of Scripture? Besides, all these old creeds are too deep and divisive!”

This is what the average professing evangelical in the twenty-first century believes regarding the ten things just mentioned: the doctrines of grace and the end times, baptism and the covenant, charismaticism and worship, the church and catechetical instruction, and marriage and the creeds.

To arrange all this slightly differently, the typical evangelical holds views which are “A” for Arminian, “B” for baptist, “C” for charismatic and “D” for dispensational. You could even, if you like, sum up more of his ideas in terms of sub-biblical and erroneous positions regarding the four “C”s—the church, the creeds, the covenant and catechism—as well as low and false notions of marriage and worship.

In the preceding decades and even the last few centuries, there has been a massive decline in Protestantism from biblical and Reformed teaching. Hosea put it like this: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (4:6).

What I have just been describing is what I refer to as the “default position,” the standard setting, as it were, for most evangelicals, that is, professing Christians who are not Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic or modernist. This is the default position or standard setting not only for most evangelicals in the USA but also in Canada, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, continental Europe, the Philippines and pretty much all around the world.

The default position was once that of the majority of those who have come from the outside as adults—myself included—to join the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church (CPRC) in Northern Ireland and the Limerick Reformed Fellowship (LRF), our mission work in the Republic of Ireland. If we were to exclude from our consideration the sisters who were raised in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) and have joined the CPRC or the LRF (mostly through marriage), the percentage of our members who joined us as adults and once held the default position is even higher.

The evangelical default position may sound strange to many who were born and bred in the PRC in N. America. It is a long way from where you are theologically. Yet all should recognize that there is a big gap, even a chasm, between evangelicalism in the twenty-first century and the Reformed faith of Holy Scripture summed in our confessions.

If we think in terms of the world of the prophet Hosea, our day is not even that of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Our day is that of the Northern Kingdom, in which the apostasy was even worse. Hosea 4 declares, “The Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land” (v. 1), yea, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (v. 6).

What is needed is a change in doctrine or belief and, flowing from that, in life or practice. There must be growth in the knowledge of Scripture and in true theology. The accumulated rubbish of years and decades of false doctrine for many people must be cleared away by the Word and Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is necessary for the typical evangelical, never mind those from the cults, from humanism, from Roman Catholicism or from paganism.

Role of the RFPA

At this stage, you are probably already sensing that there is a role in this for the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA). Of course, the RFPA has many roles and helps many parties. But here we are focusing on “The RFPA, the CPRC and the Spread of the Truth.” More particularly, our concern is with the spread of the truth especially to those outside, such as the typical professing evangelical in the default position or to those who are closer to the Reformed faith of Scripture, as well as the politically-correct pagans who rule our decadent Western world.

So how does the RFPA aid the CPRC in spreading God’s truth? First, as well as helping many of our people become members in the church in the first place, the RFPA also assists those who are in membership. Most of us subscribe to the Standard Bearer and some also pass it on to others. Some in the CPRC are members of the RFPA Book Club and those who are not also buy many of your fine books. Two of the classes in our congregation are studying RFPA works: the men are working through Mark Hoeksema’s Studies in Acts and the ladies are discussing Saved by Grace by Prof. Ron Cammenga and Rev. Ron Hanko, because this year is the 400th anniversary of the Synod of Dordt.

RFPA literature is important to me as the minister of the congregation because it reinforces the church’s preaching and teaching. In any group, there are always some people who particularly benefit from reading, not only from hearing. The two means together strengthen each other. Our members need the conviction that the Reformed faith which we hold dear is both true and important. This builds up both individuals and their families, and it encourages and equips them to be effective witnesses.

The RFPA helps us greatly as regards the CPRC Bookstore for the vast majority of our books come from you. The RFPA provides us with an excellent and growing range of commentaries, both on biblical books and our creeds; doctrinal and devotional works; books of church history and biography; books for children and educational materials.

The RFPA publishes the works of our missionary, Rev. Martyn McGeown. Called to Watch for Christ’s Return was his first title. Grace and Assurance: The Message of the Canons of Dordt has recently been produced. Lord willing, the next RFPA publication will be Pastor McGeown’s sermonic exposition of Micah, which proclaims the incomparability of our glorious God.

Our Bookstore’s bestselling RFPA title is Rev. Hanko’s Doctrine According to Godliness, which consists chiefly of Covenant Reformed News articles that he wrote when in Northern Ireland as the CPRC’s previous pastor. Readers like its short but substantive chapters with their helpful application. For similar reasons, Doctrine According to Godliness is also our most translated book, with all or parts of it in thirteen languages.

Numbers two and three on the CPRC’s RFPA bestseller list are both by Prof. David Engelsma: Prosperous Wicked and Plagued Saints (a perennial concern for the people of God) and Federal Vision: Heresy at the Root (exposing a wicked doctrine assaulting Reformed and Presbyterian churches).

Our bookstore also stocks other Protestant Reformed works, such as, Don Doezema’s three-volume Upon This Rock; Christ’s Spiritual Kingdom, published by the congregation in Redlands, California; and The Confessions and Church Order of the PRCA.

The CPRC Bookstore sells the seven British Reformed Fellowship (BRF) books that were written by Protestant Reformed men (Profs. Hanko and Engelsma, and Rev. Andy Lanning). The RFPA helps us with these by negotiating a good price for us with an American publisher, by distributing the books to churches and evangelism committees that pre-order them, and by storing the CPRC’s copies for us to transport to Northern Ireland later.

Other fine titles in our bookstore include sermons by John Calvin and works by the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Australia.

Besides books, the CPRC Bookstore stocks Protestant Reformed pamphlets on many subjects. These are shorter and simpler items that we give out free to people who are interested in learning the truth. Those who want a longer and deeper treatment often turn to a book, which is where the RFPA material comes in. Before their transportation to Northern Ireland, the RFPA graciously stores these pamphlets for us.

Our church produces sermon series, Belgic Confession classes and conference addresses in DVD and CD box sets. Thus we have a range of materials in different formats: written, audio and video.

When it comes to displaying our Reformed resources, the attractive RFPA books are of great help. There are many RFPA titles in the cabinet in the narthex of our church building. We place these books and our other materials on tables after all our lectures or conferences in Ballymena, S. Wales or elsewhere. We want the attendees to leave with something in their hand that will reinforce the truth that was taught.

The CPRC uses various other means to promote RFPA literature. Our main website contains a large section on our books which can be ordered on-line. Lord willing, when my long-suffering wife completes the massive job of revamping our current website, it will have a completely new appearance. Then our on-line articles and pamphlets will automatically display a link to pamphlets or books on the same subject.

When we send out the Covenant Reformed News, a short monthly paper that Prof. Hanko and I write, we include a flyer advertising our RFPA books. The RFPA mails us several hundred copies of the RFPA Update which is also inserted into the envelope with the Covenant Reformed News.

We advertise and link to RFPA books on the CPRC Facebook page, and sell some this way too.

The RFPA assists us when we fulfil our orders and post them out, for we send colour RFPA catalogues with the books which we often wrap inside an old Standard Bearer. This has even gotten some Standard Bearer subscriptions! When they send the cheque back for their order, people will often say, “That is a great magazine. I really liked this or that article.”

Financially speaking, we are very pleased with the discount and the good credit that we receive. The RFPA even helps us by taking credit card payments from some of our foreign customers (and subtracting it from the CPRC Bookstore’s bill with the RFPA), because we do not sell enough to justify the cost of our installing credit card facilities. The RFPA staff go the second mile!

Translations

A number of people ask about the translations that are on the CPRC website, so let me tell you first how this foreign language witness started.

The translations began in part as a response to criticism. It was said, scurrilously, that our congregation in Northern Ireland was merely Dutch or merely American, as if God’s truth were nationalistic and not heavenly! So we decided to demonstrate the catholicity of our apostolic faith and spread the Word further.

A key person in this is Felipe Sabino, a brother from Brazil, who for many years has translated a lot of Reformed material into Portuguese, including Protestant Reformed literature. Here is a quote that he thought may be useful for the RFPA Annual Meeting:

Since I have come to know the Reformed faith, books have been a very important means by which I have grown in the knowledge of the Word of God. Knowing how much material there was in English, I started translating into Portuguese so that as many people as possible would be able to benefit from the excellent books that I was reading. Those written by Prof. Herman C. Hanko are the first ones to come to my mind. I have translated a great deal of the RFPA’s materials and they are all available on my website, which, by God’s grace, has become one of the most accessed websites of Reformed theology in Portuguese. This work has grown into a publishing house and we have already had the opportunity to publish at least one RFPA book in Portuguese and we hope to do more. My prayer is that God may be glorified through it. Making good theology available has been fundamental in the work of Reformation in Brazil. We pray to God to keep blessing our efforts, as well as those of our brothers in the RFPA.

The CPRC translations webpage started with Portuguese translations by Felipe Sabino, plus Protestant Reformed translations which were on www.prca.org and other websites that I located through search engines. Then we added on-line versions of our creeds in different languages: the ecumenical creeds and the Three Forms of Unity (the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dordt). From these very humble and small beginnings, we are now approaching 2,600 translations in about 130 languages.

So how does the RFPA help with this translation work? First, it contributes some of the materials that are translated: excerpts from the RFPA’s books and Standard Bearers. Other translated Protestant Reformed materials include pamphlets, essays from the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, articles from the Beacon Lights, Reformed Witness Hour sermons, our catechism books, our Reformed forms for baptism and the Lord’s Supper, etc., and even some reading sermons! Our translation webpage also includes Covenant Reformed News articles, pieces from the British Reformed Journal, BRF books and so on.

Second, the RFPA assists us by providing some of the books that we mail as a thank-you to our translators. Sometimes when we post the books to a translator, especially if he or she is in North America or South America, I will ask Paula Kamps to mail the books directly from the RFPA.

Accuracy of Our Translations

A very natural question and one I often hear is, How do we know that these translations are accurate? My answer comes in many parts.

First, some of the translations on our website are (lawful) copies of the standard on-line versions of the ecumenical creeds, the Three Forms of Unity and our Reformed forms. This takes care of about 400 of our translations.

Second, other materials on our website have been overseen by or obtained through various Protestant Reformed bodies. The RFPA itself has provided us with Russian translations of Doctrine According to Godliness, The Voice of Our Fathers and Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel (the latter is on-going), and the Slovakian of Marriage, the Mystery of Christ and the Church. We have several pamphlets in Spanish produced under the auspices of the evangelism committee of Holland PRC. We gained some Korean translations of Standard Bearer pieces through brethren who are friends of Prof. Ron Cammenga and Rev. Bill Langerak. We reckon that this warrants our confidence in the accuracy of a few more score of our translations.

Third, many of our translations have been produced by members of our own churches or sister churches. Our webpage contains many translations in Dutch and Spanish by members of the PRC. Saints in the CPRC and the LRF have produced translations in Albanian, French, German, Greek, Irish and Italian. We can stand over these. The Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church (CERC) in Singapore has produced Chinese translations which they have sent to us electronically. Members in the Protestant Reformed Churches in the Philippines (PRCP) have helped us with Tagalog translations.

Fourth, we have translations on our website from brethren in other bodies which have close links with us. We have some German translations from saints in the BERG, a congregation in Gießen, that is pastored by Dr. Jürgen Klautke, who has spoken for the PRC and who is in touch with the Contact Committee. We have over fifty articles and over a hundred audios by Rev. Titus in Burmese. Pastor Titus was trained by Rev. Jason Kortering, and he and his congregation in Myanmar have been visited over many years by delegations from Michigan’s Hope PRC. Last time I saw John VanBaren, one of Hope’s elders, he gave me a memory stick containing many more translations and audios by Rev. Titus. Once our whole website is revamped, my wife, Mary, plans to add these to our Burmese page.

Fifth, I have met other translators personally, either in Northern Ireland or at BRF conferences or in their own country. I am thinking here of translators who have rendered our works into Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, both from Portugal and Brazil.

Sixth, there are other trustworthy men and women with whom I have had on-line contact for several years, including saints in South Africa (Afrikaans) and a sister in the Philippines who has sent us a number of Hiligaynon translations.

Seventh, there are other languages in which we have two or more people who can check each other’s work. This holds for our translations, for example, in German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and even Swahili! To give a more concrete example, a brother in Germany translated the Belgic Confession into Armenian, the first time, I believe, it had been rendered into that language. I sent the opening articles of the translation to a Christian lady in Northern Ireland who is from Armenia, so that she could look over it. She said it was a good translation, though she did recommend a few improvements, which the brother implemented.

Eighth, our translations are self-correcting to some degree. Maybe it is a bit like Wikipedia in this regard, although Wikipedia has a lot more pages and readers than we have! There have been people who have notified us of mistakes in the translations and we have made the corrections. This even happens with our English articles for typos are hard to eliminate in any language! I also recall an instance when I removed a translation (in Swahili) at the recommendation of a man whom I judged dependable. The brother from Kenya informed me that the quality of the translation was too low.

There is one final and highly significant factor. We do not give our translators money. If we did, we would run the risk of someone doing sloppy work merely for the cash. Instead, we give our translators books, including RFPA books. What use are our books to those who have no interest in the truth or who disagree with us theologically?

It would take a very high degree of malice and duplicity for someone to take the time deliberately to mistranslate, say, a Standard Bearer article in order to deceive people who would read it on our website. We believe in total depravity but most people also operate according to a degree of self-interest. Besides, the corrupted translation would have to be in a language that we could not check beforehand. Even if such a translation did make it onto our website, eventually someone would probably notify us of its errors and we would remove it.

Apart from God’s Word, there is nothing in our fallen world that is infallible. We are content that we are taking reasonable precautions and that these translations are a blessing to saints all around the world in many languages. This piece, “Translating for the CPRC Website: Questions and Answers,” provides more details on how it all works.

Translators

In addition to those already referred to, let me tell you a little about some of our other translators so that you can appreciate why we believe them to be trustworthy. Let me begin with some of our European helpers.

• A Danish pastor who had to leave the state Lutheran church because of the truth. He greatly loves RFPA material.
• A blogger in northern France who is seeking to counteract heresies concerning justification from the New Perspective on Paul and John Piper circles.
• A Hungarian doctor of law whose many translations include a number on God’s uncommon grace.
• A brother in extremely secular Sweden who translated articles on the family and the church.
• A minister in the Czech Republic, who used to be a liberal and who hated the Reformed faith. However, his job required him to work with Scripture and, by irresistible grace, he came to see that Reformed teaching faithfully explains God’s Word. He ordered Herman Hoeksema’s Reformed Dogmatics and has sent us a dozen translations in Czech.
• A saint in Malta who e-mailed us six of our ecumenical and Reformed creeds in Maltese.
• A Ukrainian lady in England who was struggling at the time with thyroid cancer. She translated over a dozen pieces, including several on faith and Prof. Robert Decker’s pamphlet, “God’s Sovereign Love, Our Comfort.”
• A brother who works for the German civil government. According to his contract, if he has completed all the work that is laid on his desk, he is free to do whatever he chooses. So he can, while being paid by the German state, translate Protestant Reformed material for our website. This is wonderful!
• A Russian couple in Belgium who are part way through translating Be Ye Holy by Profs. Engelsma and Hanko into their mother tongue to counteract false views of sanctification and help God’s people.
• A Slovenian history teacher whose translations include “God So Loved the World …” by Prof. H. C. Hoeksema.
• A brother on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia who has translated material on sovereign grace, Pentecostalism and other subjects into Italian.
• A PhD student in the Republic of Ireland, who is learning the Reformed faith in the Limerick Reformed Fellowship, has rendered materials into her native Albanian and Greek, including Rev. Carl Haak’s pamphlet “Our Only Comfort,” which is available on-line in both languages.
• Three of our translators moved from continental Europe to Northern Ireland to join the CPRC. Sadly, one of them left the Reformed faith for house-churchism. Another married a young man in the LRF and so lives in the Republic of Ireland. One is marrying a young woman in the PRC and moving to America.

Here are some of the saints from the continent of Africa who have provided us with translations.

• An elder from South Africa has translated scores of Covenant Reformed News articles into Afrikaans, because they are both short and meaty.
• A brother in Malawi translated a piece against homosexuality for his own people, as a preservative from the filth promoted from our sick Western world.
• A South African Reformed website worker has started sending me electronic versions of our Three Forms of Unity in several African languages.
• However, there is also the sad story of a lady from South Africa, in need of much personal comfort in the midst of her many struggles. She was over half way through translating Rev. Gerrit Vos’ book, O Taste and See into Afrikaans. I asked her several times to send me the chapters she had already translated. But she insisted that she would e-mail it all to me when she was completely finished. Then she did not respond to my e-mails or even the letter that I posted to her. I do not know if the lady died or if the cares of this world finally dragged her down, and I have no other avenues for contacting her.

Here are a few of our Spanish translators.

• A brother in Texas, who loves the unconditional covenant of friendship, especially likes to translate material on this subject.
• A theological student from Chile translated articles on key doctrines into Spanish and was used by God to convert his Brazilian theological professor to sovereign particular grace, rejecting common grace. He is now back in his homeland as a pastor.
• A mother from the Canadian province of Québec whose translations include Prof. Hanko’s pamphlet, “The Building of a Home.”
• Doner Bartolon of the PRC has translated fifteen of Rev. Rodney Kleyn’s Reformed Witness Hour sermons on eschatology and also made them into YouTube videos, in order to strengthen saints in his native Mexico and other Hisanophones or Spanish speakers.

Now let us turn to a few of our other helpers.

• Two Indonesian saints who sit side by side at their desks doing IT work. They have translated over 130 pieces, including articles on alcohol because this is an issue in their Islamic land since Muslims believe that alcohol is per se sinful. After one of the men married, he read Protestant Reformed material on marriage and translated some of it into Indonesian. When he and his wife had their first child, he translated articles on child-rearing, including Rev. Allen Brummel’s pamphlet, “Bringing Forth Children in an Age of Selfishness.”
• A couple from Michigan put us in contact with their friends in SE Asia, who sent us a number of translations, including the Nepali Heidelberg Catechism.
• A Brazilian brother, who migrated (legally) to Australia, translated some articles into Portuguese as a parting gift to his brethren in the land he left behind.
• A French-speaking lady from Quebec, who loves the truth of sovereign grace, translated all of the chapters of The Five Points of Calvinism (1976), written by Profs. Herman Hanko and Homer Hoeksema, and Rev. Gise VanBaren.
• A brother from India is translating Protestant Reformed literature into Hindi. He has already finished pamphlets by Rev. Steven Houck (“Knowing the True God”) and Prof. Engelsma (“Try the Spirits: A Reformed Look at Pentecostalism”).

Many others have helped us or are still helping us or are about to help us by sending us translations of our creeds or of Protestant Reformed materials. However, space forbids mentioning many of them here.

Portuguese is probably the language in which we have had most translators. These are the words of one of them, Thiago McHertt, a Brazilian pastor and the director of Veritas Biblioteca Reformada:

I can still remember the first time that I accessed the CPRC website and saw that we were not the only ones willing to make good theology available in other languages. We had just started a translation project in order to make sound theology available in Portuguese and we came across www.cprc.co.uk. Since then we have translated more than 1,000 pages of RFPA materials, from entire books, especially Portraits of Faithful Saints [by Prof. Hanko], to chapters and articles. We are not the only ones to have been blessed by these materials for our church also benefits directly from our work, as do many others who have the opportunity to learn Reformed theology in their own tongue. Many thanks to God for using the RFPA and the CPRC to make that possible. As in God’s providence, the printing press was fundamental to the spread of the Protestant Reformation, now the internet is the great medium by which people all around the globe can come to know the truth.

Remember the “default position,” the standard setting, as it were, for the typical professing evangelical: “A” for Arminian, “B” for baptistic, “C” for charismatic, “D” for dispensationalist, with low views of the four “C”s (church, creeds, covenant and catechism), as well as sub-biblical ideas regarding marriage and worship? Well, that is the situation in most of the English-speaking world. It is even worse in most other languages. Clearly, there is an urgent need in other lands too for English Reformed materials for those who can read it and for translations to help those who cannot.

Conclusion

I could say a lot more about the value of, and need for, RFPA and Protestant Reformed literature. My wife, Mary copied and pasted some sixteen pages of excellent quotes from saints all around the world, in case they could be included in my speech or this article. But I ran out of time and space, and so, sadly, I was not able to use any of them.

Mary typed up another four pages consisting of an interview I had with a licentiate minister from Hungary, who is one of our translators. He explained in great detail how RFPA materials are of immense help to him. I must also forego quoting his encouraging words.

There is especially one question that is asked by those brought to the knowledge of the Reformed faith through our witness that I will pass on: “Why did the Lord wait so long before bringing me into this blessed knowledge of the truth? I have wasted so much time and so much space on my bookshelves with rubbish when I could have been reading something of this quality!” Some of them have also said, “I used to be caught up in Arminianism and Pentecostalism. Now I’ve lost all my children!” Hosea 4:6 speaks of this awful situation: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge … I will … forget thy children.”

I would like to add a word of appreciation regarding the RFPA’s service. We have always found the staff to be very helpful, swift to fulfil orders and friendly. This applies to Tim Pipe and Ev Langerak, who recently retired, as well as the current RFPA staff of Alex Kalsbeek, Paula Kamps and Miriam Koerner.

Finally, what would the CPRC like to say to the RFPA with regard to its future work? We would say that we are not at all upset if the RFPA publishes an extra book or two in a year. That is fine by us. What would trouble us and our translators, however, is if you started to print bland, broadly evangelical material. Christian book stores and the internet are already full of such stuff. Instead, keep on publishing rich, comforting, distinctive, Reformed doctrine. Continue sending forth God’s pure, biblical, confessional and health-giving truth!

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The video of this speech is available on-line.