We have attempted to put into words what separating preaching is, and now we would like to trace from where this form of preaching comes. Throughout the history of the church has the preaching always been separating? Do we find separating preaching also in the Holy Scriptures? Do we find it with the church fathers, with the Reformers, with the men of the Nearer Reformation? Where do we find it at the present time? Do our creeds and confessions direct us to the necessity of it? There are far too many ques­tions to answer in the brief compass of a series of articles such as these. We will restrict our attention to only a few points.

In regard to the Holy Scriptures, we mentioned a few scriptural evidences in the previous articles. Later, when a few of the objections that are levelled against separating preaching will be considered, we hope to deal with the question of how the apostles addressed their congregations in their letters. How­ever, we still want to remind the reader how the prophets preached. Did they not separate? We have already drawn attention to the "woe" and the "well" which Isaiah, on God's behalf, had to proclaim to the wicked and the righteous (Isaiah 3:10-11). Everyone who is somewhat familiar with the prophets will have to agree that in their speaking they drew the great dividing line with seriousness and faithfulness. But they have done more. They were thoroughly aware of the different encampments in which Zion can dwell. On God's behalf they were enabled to encourage the broken reeds, those tossed with tempest and not comforted. On the other hand, they also thoroughly knew the different forms in which unbelief manifested itself among their hearers. We think that they very definitely have put both the "great" as well as the "nearer" separation, about which we wrote in the forego­ing articles, into their prophecies.

Christ Himself preached separatingly. He knew that there were two kinds among His hearers. He knew of the different encamp­ments of His children, and He addressed the unbelievers regarding the nets in which they were ensnared. We already pointed to the fact that He compared His church to ten virgins, of whom five were wise and five were foolish. Nevertheless, we do have to be careful here if we set the preaching of Christ as an example for that of His servants. His servants are missing something which He pos­sesses in a perfect manner, namely, the gift of knowing the hearts! Because He possessed this gift, in His preaching on earth He often turned Himself directly to one of His hearers in order to address him concerning the state in which he was for eternity. We miss the gift of omniscience, and for that reason the preaching of God's servants shall never be able to stand on one line with the preaching of their most high Prophet and Teacher.

In passing we must still point to one thing. More than once people have used the parable of the tares in the field as an argument against separating preaching. They then appeal to the well-known word of the householder, who replied to the question of his servants whether they must go and gather up the tares, "Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them" (Matthew 13:29). These persons then blame those "heavy" ministers that, with their separation, they continually run the danger of weeding the wheat instead of the tares. Just recently we came across such a train of thought in a church paper. However, then they miss Christ's meaning in this parable and the purpose of separating preaching. Christ's intention with this word is none other than to leave the final judgment up to Him, who will presently send the reapers. However, separating preaching does not determine (let it be said once again!) the judgment of individuals; even less is it the intention of separating preaching to pull out the tares and to burn them, but – with the Lord's blessing! ­to cause the tares to become wheat.

The reader will understand that we cannot give an extensive overview of preaching as it has been brought over the course of the centuries. Generally speaking, we can say that over the course of the centuries the sacrificial event of the mass began increasingly to take the place which belongs to preaching. Illustrative of this is the place which the pulpit still occupies in most Romish church buildings, namely, in a corner, while the altar has a central location. Although more was preached in the Middle Ages than we usually assume, it must still be said that the time was very dark for preaching. The preachers allowed themselves to be deluded into either barren and unfruitful theological splitting of hairs, to a vague unscriptural mysticism, or to a morality preaching in which man's free will was openly taught. That the preaching of that time lacked the rightly separating character needs no argument.

The great reversal began with the Reformation. Preaching was the chief means by which God was pleased to work the miracle of church refor­mation in Europe. It is difficult to conceive how much was preached during the time of the Reformation. People came to hear God's Word in church buildings, in secret places, in homes, in the open field, and in many more places. People often were willing to travel far and went through a lot of effort to listen to the sometimes lengthy sermons. In July 1566, for instance, field preacher Pieter Gabriel preached a four-hour long sermon to an audi­ence of approximately five thousand people! More than two thousand sermons of Luther have been preserved, and it is known that Calvin ascended the pulpit four times a week in Strasbourg, and twice each Sunday and once each work day every other week in Geneva. We hope to return later to the question whether Calvin separated in his sermons or not.

That our Reformed fathers attached great value to the right preaching is evident from the fact that passages about preaching appear in most of the acts of the old synods of the sixteenth century. One can trace for himself in the Kerkelijk Handboekje how they spoke about preaching at Embden in 1571, at Dordrecht in 1574, at Dordrecht in 1578, at Middelburg in 1581, at The Hague in 1586, and especially at Dordrecht in 1618-1619. At these synods they dealt especially with issues such as the allowed length of a sermon (determined to be no longer than an hour, in Wezel, 1568, and Dordrecht, 1574), the subject matter for the sermon, and questions regarding the lawful ordination of the ministers of the Word.

Do our confessions also deal with the question of how the ministers should preach? Even though our confessions do not provide homileti­cal lectures, we may, indeed, observe that preaching is mentioned a few times. We can point to Lord's Day 31, where upon the question: "How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the holy gospel?" the answer is given:

Thus: when according to the command of Christ, it is declared and publicly testified to all and every believer, that, whenever they receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them of God, for the sake of Christ's merits; and on the contrary, when it is declared and testified to all unbe­lievers, and such as do not sincerely repent, that they stand exposed to the wrath of God, and eternal condem­nation, so long as they are unconverted: according to which testimony of the gospel, God will judge them, both in this, and in the life to come.

Two things in this answer attract our attention. In the first place, the authors of our Catechism acknowledged that the great line of division between believers and unbelievers, of which we spoke earlier, runs right through the congregations. They were evidently not of the opinion (and this in distinction to many in our time) that a preacher has to consider his congregation as consisting purely of God's children! In the second place, the fact must immediately strike us that Ursinus and Olevianus made a further separation between "unbelievers" and "such as do not sincerely repent." According to the explanation of the Catechism by Ursinus, by the latter are meant deceivers and hypocrites. According to the authors of our Catechism, these people obviously had to be addressed in the preaching and had to be excluded by this key of the kingdom of heaven "so long as they are unconverted."

On this basis it does not seem too bold to posit that the authors of the Catechism were of the opinion that preaching has to be separating in the sense meant by us, and that also the so-called nearer separation must be brought into preaching. Guido de Bres speaks in similar fashion in the Belgic Confession of Faith when he speaks of "hypocrites, who are mixed in the Church with the good, yet are not of the Church, though externally in it" (Article 29). When he speaks a moment later about the pure preach­ing as the first mark of the true Church, he certainly had in mind that this pure preaching must also have in view the necessity of uncovering those hypocrites, and thus must be separating.

Our Canons of Dordt state about preaching that by the ministry of messengers men "are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified" (I,3). Moreover, they say that the promise of the gospel "together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel" (II,5). Our fathers say in the Five Articles as well that as many as are called by the gospel are unfeignedly called, and that the fault of man's impenitence may never be sought in the gospel, nor in Christ who is offered in the gospel, nor in God who calls by the gospel, but in those who are called (III, IV, 8, 9). It is striking to read how our fathers then proceed to separate among those who are not converted: "Some of whom when called, regardless of their danger, reject the word of life; others, though they receive it, suffer it not to make a lasting impression on their heart; therefore, their joy, arising only from a temporary faith, soon vanishes, and they fall away; while others choke the seed of the word by perplexing cares, and the pleasures of this world, and produce no fruit…" (III, IV, 9). Indeed, they knew how to separate among the unregenerate. Likewise they knew how to separate, on the other hand, among God's children! If we want to read about the standings in the life of grace, we only need to preview the Canons of Dordt. For example, we read that the elect, in due time, "though in various degrees and in different measures," attain assurance (I, 12), and whoever delves into the sixteenth article of the first head of doctrine will notice how fittingly our fathers knew how to separate according to the state and standing of the souls!

Thus we have attempted to show briefly that separating preaching, as we sketched it earlier, is according to Scripture and Confession! That is where its roots are!