1997 Issue 9
Q. Peter, explain the meaning of the name of your missions organization, Frontline Fellowship.
A. Frontline Fellowship is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary this year. For the last fifteen years we have been serving the suffering and persecuted church in Africa. The name "Frontline Fellowship" came as a result of the desire for the origin of our group in a prayer group at an army base on the border in South Africa. We were involved in the war against the Communists in South Africa, Southwest Africa, and Angola, and against other Marxists in the area. Thus we were on the front lines.
"Everything is concentrated in our relation to Christ in whom God remits our sins and in whom He is a Father to His people. -- (According to Matthew 7:23) it is not in a man's appeal to Jesus, ('Lord, Lord') on his own authority, but in Christ's taking him into His fellowship, (knowing him), that we must find the explanation and the criterion of doing righteousness. Outside of this fellowship there is no obedience.... Only those who are known by Him in the sense of this fellowship will receive the grace of the doing of the Father's will." - Mat. 13:50.
Newspapers everywhere published a copy of the Constitution. Debates and discussions over the document dominated all other news. Reaction was mixed among the population. Some were angry and others approved, but all were shocked and startled by what had emerged from the convention. This was far from what they expected. This was no mere amendment of the Articles of Confederation! It appeared to be far beyond what had been requested by the states and was, for that reason, quite controversial.
Opponents quickly published their critiques and the friends of the Constitution answered. A series of articles defending the Constitution was begun in the papers of New York signed by Publius - these would become known as The Federalist Papers. They were widely read and hotly debated - not only by the leaders of communities but by farmers and milkmaids as well. The Federalists were answered by the Anti-Federalists who sought to show their arguments wrong-headed and dangerous. The entire country was in an uproar.
The most famous sentence ever said to have been uttered by a heathen oracle was this, "Know thyself." It well merited the distinction it received, for while self-knowledge brings many advantages, ignorance of ourselves is a fruitful source of folly, sin, and misery. Indeed, it is one of the greatest blots upon our nature. It is the parent of nearly all that is preposterous and ridiculous in human conduct. Nor is this its worst effect. It begets low ideas of sin, and of the love of God in Christ, and so breeds contempt of God's everlasting mercies.
Nor is this all. Not knowing our sins, we do not feel our wants, and so we restrain prayer before God. If we have not a proper view of our faults, pride fills the place of humility, and thus brings many a fall which covers us with disgrace. Did we clearly see our ill-desert we should not be unthankful and fretful, when we have more mercies and fewer trials than we have any right to expect. Our self-conceit will not listen to good counsel, just reproof, or wholesome restraint, and so we are untractable, self-willed, and peevish. Hypocrisy has its seat here, for men never attempt to impose on others, rill they have first deceived themselves. The flattery of others could not hurt us if we did not first flatter ourselves, and thus help to spread a net for our own feet.
Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology by R. C. Sproul.
What is reformed theology? The author answers this question by pointing the reader to God. Only by understanding God can one begin to have an understanding of reformed theology.
For God and the King by Marjorie Bowen.
In this the final volume in her enlightening, informative and entertaining trilogy on William and Mary, the author acquaints the reader with the great debt the West owes this Calvinist for his faithful stand for Protestantism.
