The rally of Reformed Believers Publishing (RBP) on October 15 was successful beyond our imagination. A capacity crowd filled the tent. Expectation, enthusiasm, and excitement filled the air as we anticipated a rousing speech entitled “A Believer’s Paper: the Freedom of Sword and Shield.”

The office of believer is marginalized and even despised in our day. An unbiblical separation between the office of believer and the special offices has crept in. The office of believer is often viewed as having a status below that of the special offices. In this way hierarchy intrudes into the church. This situation is evidenced in the minimizing and silencing of the ordinary members of the church. Access to documents being treated at our church assemblies is made difficult. Delegates to the assemblies openly discourage attendance by church members. Assemblies limit access to proceedings that should be open and public. Believers bringing proper protests to church assemblies are made to feel that they are troublers of Israel instead of being honored for exercising their Christ-given right to judge decisions of assemblies according to the word of God. Moreover, to top all this, we witness the shameful reality that believers who, in harmony with their God-given calling and right to witness to the truth, have formed a new Reformed publishing association and are publishing a new Reformed magazine are vilified and scorned in the churches.

This is why we are thrilled and excited for a newfound freedom for the office of believer through the establishing of Reformed Believers Publishing and its magazine, Sword and Shield. The members of Reformed Believers Publishing restored a glorious opportunity to give a distinctive witness to the truth. They are free from censorship and control by the church institute. It is our privilege to unleash the truth through the magazine that God has provided.

Reformed Believers Publishing gives thanks to God for giving us three editors, Rev. Nathan Langerak, Rev. Andy Lanning, and Rev. Martin VanderWal. We are delighted with their uncompromising and unflinching commitment to the truth of sovereign, particular grace and the unconditional covenant. We thank them for filling the pages of Sword and Shield with articles that are sharply antithetical and polemical and that rightly and distinctively divide the word.

Sword and Shield is stirring an entire denomination. Many are reading and discussing Sword and Shield and its content. It is awakening many out of spiritual slumber and giving them a deeper understanding and more vibrant confession of the truth, so that they are able to withstand the lie of our day.

Reformed Believers Publishing and Sword and Shield will pursue and promote true unity, which is a unity of confession of the truth. By founding a new Reformed organization and publishing a new magazine, we express our complete revulsion of a forced peace and unity through censorship and silencing of doctrinal discussion. We give witness to our rejection of the artificial peace and unity of ignorance. We are committed to having the office of believer function properly in the church again.

We believe and confess that the office of believer is a biblical and Reformed reality. By faith every believer is a partaker of the anointing of Christ. As such, they are all prophets, priests, and kings. We believe in the ability of the sanctified conscience of the believer to judge and know the truth. True peace and unity are manifested when the office of believer is allowed to give testimony and witness to that truth.

The rally of Reformed Believers Publishing was a celebration of the Reformation truth of the office of believer. In this regard I quote Abraham Kuyper: 

This official work of other organizations [such as Sunday school] is a product of the more common task which is locked up in the office of all believers, to wit, the obligation to exercise constant control in matters of confession, church rule, liturgy, and the activities of the other office bearers. Never may a believer acquiesce simply because the ministers of the church say so. This is Romish, not Reformed. In a Reformed church each believer must have spiritual judgment and must permit this judgment to operate, not out of pedantry or censoriousness, but out of spiritual obedience…Thus all that is confessed within the church, decided, and carried out, must have its constant support in the spiritual enlightening of the conscience of believers (“A Pamphlet Concerning the Reformation of the Church,” Standard Bearer 56, no. 20 [September 1, 1980]: 474–75).

“Why art thou called a Christian? Because I am a member of Christ by faith, and thus am partaker of His anointing” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 32).