While The Bridegroom Tarries Kuiper, R. B. cover image

Product Details
  • Cover Type:
  • 160 Pages
  • Publisher: Banner of Truth
  • Publication Date: March 2010
  • ISBN: SKUIPERBWHILETHEBRIDEGROOMTA9781848710672

While The Bridegroom Tarries

Kuiper, R. B.

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$11.70
$13.00 MSRP

Living in the light of Christ’s return is the duty of every generation of Christians. But, as Christ’s parable in Matthew 25:1-13 warns us, all face the danger of falling asleep on watch: ‘While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept’ (Matt. 25:5). For that reason, everything calculated to keep us spiritually awake should be prized. R. B. Kuiper’s sermons reprinted in this volume were intended to help Christians live in readiness for Christ’s coming. Preached just after the First World War, at a time of considerable optimism for human progress, as well as intense speculation about the ‘signs of the times’, they bear strong and forthright testimony against the dangers of theological modernism and other anti-christian ideas, and for the supernaturalism of faith. They are a call for the preaching of the gospel to all nations and an eloquent appeal for Christian activity ‘while the bridegroom tarries’.

Kuiper was concerned lest speculative millenarian ideas should obscure the great theme of Christ’s return, but even those who differ from him in their understanding of biblical prophecy will benefit from his clear call to Christian readiness. Here is a timely reminder that wars and disasters here below point to the onward match of the purposes of God and bring us ever nearer to the great consummation of all Christian hopes.

About the Author

Rienk Bouke Kuiper was born in January 1886 in Garrelsweer in the Netherlands. His family moved to Grand Haven, Michigan in 1891 when his father accepted a call to be minister of the Christian Reformed congregation there. He was educated at the University of Chicago (A.B., 1907), Indiana University (A.M., 1908), Calvin Theological Seminary (diploma, 1911), and Princeton Theological Seminary (Th.B., 1912).

Kuiper married Marie Janssen in 1911; they had three children – Marietta, Klaudius and Kathryn, who died at the age of two. After graduating from Princeton, Kuiper served five western Michigan congregations (in the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America) over the next seventeen years, before becoming one of the founding faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (1929-30), as Professor of Systematic Theology.

The Synod of the Christian Reformed Church then persuaded him to accept the presidency of Calvin College in 1930, in which capacity he served until being called back to Westminster in 1933 as Professor of Practical Theology. Retiring from Westminster in 1952, he returned to Grand Rapids and then accepted the presidency of Calvin Theological Seminary for four years.

He passed away in April 1966, at the age of 80. One of his alumni, Edmund P. Clowney, said of him, at his funeral,

"He taught men to preach only Scripture and Scripture in its entirety. The labour of his life exalted the Bible as the infallible Word of God. His lectures were filled with Scripture and his sermons opened the Word with reverence and simplicity. In this single-minded task he found no restraints, no confinement. Rather he found in Scripture the inexhaustible fountain of the whole counsel of God centring in Jesus Christ the Lord."

Kuiper’s books include the following, published by the Trust: God-Centred Evangelism, The Glorious Body of Christ and While the Bridegroom Tarries.

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Living in the light of Christ’s return is the duty of every generation of Christians. But, as Christ’s parable in Matthew 25:1-13 warns us, all face the danger of falling asleep on watch: ‘While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept’ (Matt. 25:5). For that reason, everything calculated to keep us spiritually awake should be prized. R. B. Kuiper’s sermons reprinted in this volume were intended to help Christians live in readiness for Christ’s coming. Preached just after the First World War, at a time of considerable optimism for human progress, as well as intense speculation about the ‘signs of the times’, they bear strong and forthright testimony against the dangers of theological modernism and other anti-christian ideas, and for the supernaturalism of faith. They are a call for the preaching of the gospel to all nations and an eloquent appeal for Christian activity ‘while the bridegroom tarries’.

Kuiper was concerned lest speculative millenarian ideas should obscure the great theme of Christ’s return, but even those who differ from him in their understanding of biblical prophecy will benefit from his clear call to Christian readiness. Here is a timely reminder that wars and disasters here below point to the onward match of the purposes of God and bring us ever nearer to the great consummation of all Christian hopes.

About the Author

Rienk Bouke Kuiper was born in January 1886 in Garrelsweer in the Netherlands. His family moved to Grand Haven, Michigan in 1891 when his father accepted a call to be minister of the Christian Reformed congregation there. He was educated at the University of Chicago (A.B., 1907), Indiana University (A.M., 1908), Calvin Theological Seminary (diploma, 1911), and Princeton Theological Seminary (Th.B., 1912).

Kuiper married Marie Janssen in 1911; they had three children – Marietta, Klaudius and Kathryn, who died at the age of two. After graduating from Princeton, Kuiper served five western Michigan congregations (in the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America) over the next seventeen years, before becoming one of the founding faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (1929-30), as Professor of Systematic Theology.

The Synod of the Christian Reformed Church then persuaded him to accept the presidency of Calvin College in 1930, in which capacity he served until being called back to Westminster in 1933 as Professor of Practical Theology. Retiring from Westminster in 1952, he returned to Grand Rapids and then accepted the presidency of Calvin Theological Seminary for four years.

He passed away in April 1966, at the age of 80. One of his alumni, Edmund P. Clowney, said of him, at his funeral,

"He taught men to preach only Scripture and Scripture in its entirety. The labour of his life exalted the Bible as the infallible Word of God. His lectures were filled with Scripture and his sermons opened the Word with reverence and simplicity. In this single-minded task he found no restraints, no confinement. Rather he found in Scripture the inexhaustible fountain of the whole counsel of God centring in Jesus Christ the Lord."

Kuiper’s books include the following, published by the Trust: God-Centred Evangelism, The Glorious Body of Christ and While the Bridegroom Tarries.

  • Cover Type:
  • 160 Pages
  • Publisher: Banner of Truth
  • Publication Date: March 2010
  • ISBN: SKUIPERBWHILETHEBRIDEGROOMTA9781848710672