August 26 Today in OPC History

On this day in 1955, Chaplain John W. Betzold, appointed by the Twenty-second (1955) General Assembly as the OPC fraternal delegate, spoke at the meeting of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in Holland, convening at Leeuwarden, Holland. Mr. Betzold summarized his remarks to the Synod in a report to the Twenty-third (1956) General Assembly. Betzold said:

Fathers and Brethren: The 1955 General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church - the Church of Machen and Stonehouse - has given me the profound privilege of conveying prayerful greetings from one member of the Christian family of churches to her sister-church in the Lord: The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. I have heard of the Gereformeede Kerken Nederland for most of my life. I have met many of her ministers in America, Scotland, and Germany. But this is the first time I have had the pleasure of knowing something of the Church on her home grounds. Once, I read that the parents of Abraham Kuyper were very worried because the head of their newborn child was enormously large. Their fears vanished when an eminent specialist said to them: ‘You need not worry; it’s all brains!’ I wish to testify that I have found your Church to have a great heart as well as great brains. And this is as it should be in a truly Reformed Church. It is to this ideal that we in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church strive together with you. And under our common and blessed Lord and Saviour, we shall be humbled, purified, and enlarged unto God’s glory and the good of mankind, as together we say: 'Thine, 0 Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, 0 Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all’ (I Chron. 29: 11).

Picture: OPC chaplain John Betzold (left) sharing gospel material with soldiers during the Korean Conflict.