Rev. M. Heerschap (1911-1993)

On Monday morning, December 6, Rev. M. Heerschap passed away in the hospital at Coaldale, Alberta, at the age of 82 years. It was not unexpected, nor was it an unprepared death-bed. For several years already our brother was under the care of doctors for a serious illness. God’s Word has been fulfilled, “Man goeth to his long home.”

Then it is the great question for each person where our long home, our eternal home, shall be. By God’s grace he was privileged to speak in the assurance of faith about that well-founded hope in a Triune God. Especially since the death of his wife, there was a strong desire to depart and to be with Christ. The word of the psalmist now has become true, “His heart’s desire receiving.”

We think of the mourning family and hope that the Lord will remember them, and that eternal profit may be born from the death of their father and grandfather.

In giving a brief account of the life of our brother and spiritual father, who has now been relieved of his post, we must testify that free grace has been so clearly glorified in his life. Born in Ouddorp, on the Dutch island of Flakkee, he grew up with little religion. He has at times told us that he had never been in church before the age of seventeen years. When he came in contact with his wife-to-be, this changed entirely. The Lord has been pleased to use those simple means, so that he became a poor sinner before the Lord.

While he was at work in the field as a seventeen year old boy, God placed him in very deed actually before the judgment; he had to die and meet God. He has related how that someone advised the farmer for whom he was working to fire that hired man, for he lay so often in a dry ditch, not knowing that this hired man wept his heart empty before the Lord on account of his debt, which reached unto heaven. The farmer did understand what was going on, and never followed that advice.

In his prior years, he had never read the Bible. He bought a book, thinking it was a Bible, but it was Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. Then a child of God who had heard about the change, came to his door. He said to the man that he had bought a Bible, but was informed that it was not a Bible. Then, he received one from the man.

The first time he went to church was in Dirksland under Rev. A. de Blois. He was sitting in the last pew in the back of the church, and there was only one unconverted person in church. All others were converted, he thought, and he was the unconverted one. That minister was for him an angel from heaven. He had understood absolutely nothing of the sermon, but said, “That is the truth, and I am missing it.”

Later he moved with his wife to “the other side,” as it was called in Flakkee, meaning off the island and to the mainland of Holland. Under the preaching of Rev. P. Honkoop, Sr., he received much instruction from heaven, as well as at the conventicles (religious gatherings) in The Hague. At those gatherings of God’s people he began to tell something of what the Lord had done to his soul. When he left them, the old people said, “Heerschap, if you receive a firm handshake from God’s people, you should not think that you belong to them.” That is the way he was sent home; they gave him work to do. At some of the gatherings, they sent him away, and said, “You had better ask if God will convert you.”

And then you must know very well what has happened! He received a time that he began to improve himself, just as did the rich young ruler. Do this, and leave that undone. He did everything to try to live perfectly before God. Not that those efforts were bad, but he sought his ground in them. Then in the middle of the night God cut him off from all his works. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight.” That was lost, forever lost! His bed shook from the strife.

The next day he fled away, and fell back into the world for fourteen days. But God intervened. When he stood ready to put an end to his life, it pleased God to disclose a way of deliverance in Christ. The Person, in whom deliverance is found, was declared to his soul under the preaching of the old Rev. Ligtenberg. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” He took his hat from his head and waved it around. New life, new life! The blades of grass and the birds of heaven sang the praise of the Lord.

The Lord also bound the need of his fellow-travelers to eternity upon his heart. “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He thought that it was solved when he became deacon, but the matter remained. After a year he was chosen as elder, but still the matter was not solved. When he was privileged to lose it before God, he received his sending, “I AM hath sent me unto you.” Although it seemed impossible for him that such a one had to become a minister, he still had to go and declare his calling, and he received an attest. In the final year of the war he was accepted and began his studies in Rotterdam.

In 1948 he was declared eligible for a call, and he accepted the call to Wageningen. However, before he came there, he had to go overboard with everything, and the Lord came to deliver his soul. Once in Wageningen, the Lord proceeded to confirm the matter with the truth, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” By the justice of God he was cut off and solved in God, and he received the liberty in his soul in the conscious application.

In 1954 came the call to Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, where he served only two years. Then there came a “Come over and help us” from Borssele, the Netherlands. Four years later he had to cross the ocean once again and served the congregation of Peoples Park, New Jersey (now joined with Franklin Lakes). From there he moved in 1967 to St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, where he served six years. His last congregation was Lethbridge for a second time, 1973 to 1989. Then, after a serious heart attack, he became emeritus.

Even after this he still preached a few times, but this became well nigh impossible after his throat surgery. However, he remained a praying support, also when there were reading services or another minister led the service. Then he would say, “I am pulling on the big bell for you.”

His preaching bore this stamp, “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” He came up from the eternal good pleasure of God, in which nothing of man counts. He had experienced this in his own life. He did not give rest in feelings or frames, but always pointed to that only Name unto salvation. “Grant me Jesus for my portion, or I perish hopelessly; for without Him, death is certain, endless then my misery.”

The Lord has been pleased to use his preaching in all the congregations which he has served. When he was given to display the fulness in Christ and how the Church is taught those ways, then you could hear that it was practice. He was a preacher of Christ in the true sense of the word.

Especially in the last years the Lord supported him remarkably in ways of care, sorrow, and afflictions. The loss of his wife at the beginning of this year was heavy for him, but the Lord made it well. For his own life he has been privileged to see and taste something of what is laid up for the Church of the Lord. At the last Holy Supper in Lethbridge, he was for a moment above the dust and had communion with the Church triumphant.

That has now become reality. He has been delivered from the body of death, and, upon the basis of Christ’s merits, he has heard, “Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

An empty place on earth, but again a place filled above until the spiritual house of God shall be finished.

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