‘Praise
the Lord’. Psalms 146 and 147 began and ended with these words. Now, we
find the same beginning and ending in each of these three Psalms -
‘Praise the Lord’. Our personal song of praise to God - ‘Praise be to
the Lord my Rock... I will sing a new song to You, O God... I will exalt
You, my God the King; I will praise Your Name for ever and ever; Every
day I will praise You... My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord... I
will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long
as I live’ (Psalm 144:1,9; Psalm 145:1-2,21; Psalm 146:2) - is just a
small part of something so much richer and fuller - ‘Let everything that
has breath praise the Lord’ (Psalm 150:6). May these great Psalms of
praise inspire us to praise the Lord more truly and more fully.
A response to a comment by G. R. Osborne on Berkouwer’s understanding of the doctrine of final perseverance
In his contribution to Clark Pinnock (editor), Grace Unlimited (1975), G. R. Osborne states that Berkouwer, in Faith and Perseverance, pp. 9-10, “speaks of the time less ness of the doctrine of final perseverance, founded on ‘the richness and abidingness of salvation” (p. 188, emphasis mine). This single-sentence comment on Berkouwer’s view hardly gives a fair indication of the type of thinking found in Chapter 1 of Berkouwer’s Faith and Perseverance - “Time li ness and Relevance” (pp. 9-14, emphasis mine). Berkouwer insists that “the living preaching of the Scriptures, which offer no metaphysical and theoretical views about … ‘permanency’ as an independent theme in itself, does nothing to encourage ‘a continuity which is … opposed in any way to the living nature of faith” (p. 13). Berkouwer stresses that “The perseverance of the saints is not primarily a theoretical problem but a confession of faith” (p. 14) and that “The perseverance of the saints is unbreakably connected wi...
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