Welcome

On behalf of the board, I want to give a hearty welcome to everyone who has come out to join us this evening for the second annual association meeting. Your presence here is a big encouragement to us.

A little over a year ago, Sword and Shield was born into the spiritually oppressive atmosphere in which the truth of the gospel was being silenced. On the pages of the magazine, the pure gospel of grace has been set free again. This new freedom of the truth that we now enjoy issue after issue is something most of us have not experienced in our lifetimes.

Reformed Believers Publishing and its magazine constitute a reformatory movement. The truth is again being openly set forth, and the lie is being unabashedly condemned, without regard to persons and institutions.

Tonight is a celebration of this fact.

Our purpose as the board of Reformed Believers Publishing with tonight’s program is to encourage one another and to thank God for what he is doing.

We love our magazine!

A reformation is underway.

Our adversaries may shout, “SCHISM!” at us.

Tonight we again say, “NO! REFORMATION!”

Prayer

Our Father, we thank thee that thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever and that thy promises are absolutely sure in Jesus Christ.

We confess that we are in ourselves dead in sins.

We thank thee for Jesus Christ and his obedience and that in him we have free forgiveness of our sins and a complete righteousness imputed to us that no one and nothing can take away from us. This is our lasting joy before thee.

Bless our meeting tonight, that it may be for our encouragement to go forward in our witness to the truth through the printed page in spite of fierce opposition.

We pray that Sword and Shield may continue as a powerful instrument to set forth, defend, and spread the gospel of pure grace and that it may give a sharp, antithetical witness against all error that militates against the truth. And our prayer is that the magazine will build up thy people in the truth wherever they are.

We thank thee especially for upholding and sustaining our editors in this past year in the very difficult circumstances in which they had to stand. Continue to give them hearts of lions and a burning zeal for the truth of thy absolute sovereign grace in Jesus Christ alone.

Deliver us all from the paralyzing fear of men and the temptation to silence the truth in its sharpness.

Give the board continued commitment to publish the truth and the needed means to do so.

We give thanks for the growing number of association members, supporters, and friends evident again tonight.

We thank thee for our speaker and for his many years of faithful instruction in our midst. Be with him again this evening, and grant him all that he stands in need of as he speaks to us.

Graciously blot out all our trespasses and sins for Christ’s sake.

Amen.

Introduction of the Speaker

We now come to the main part of our program this evening.

It is a great pleasure for me to introduce our speaker. He is going to speak to us on the subject as announced: “Reformation, Not Schism!”

As spiritual children of the sixteenth-century Reformation, this subject is of deep interest to us.

Our speaker was ordained into the ministry of the word and sacraments in 2007 in the Protestant Reformed Churches. He served the pastorate in Crete Protestant Reformed Church for fourteen years.

Rev. Nathan Langerak is currently serving the pastorate in Second Reformed Protestant Church in Dyer, Indiana.

He also is coeditor of Sword and Shield magazine.

He is the author of a two-volume set of commentaries on 1 Corinthians entitled Walking in the Way of Love: A Practical Commentary on 1 Corinthians for the Believer. And he is the author of a series of Bible story books entitled Tell His Wonders.

Join me in welcoming Rev. Nathan Langerak!