Readers, remember to keep your submissions coming! Our eagle-eyed and sharp-eared readers continue to send in interesting and edifying material. We try to publish that as soon as space in our usually full magazine allows. We believe that readers’ contributions are an important part of our magazine. And we want the believer, whose paper it is, to have a voice in the paper through material that he or she finds important to publish. Sword and Shield is a believer’s paper, and we hope that with this issue, as with every issue, that the truly Reformed believer is informed and edified, being built up and established in the true doctrine, and that the believer is armed to contend against the lie. 

We have informative and insightful contributions from a member of Cornerstone Reformed Protestant Church, Karissa Crich. Reverend Bomers continues his analysis of what happened in Zion, the now-disbanded Reformed Protestant congregation in southern California. It seems that there were many who came to the Reformed Protestant denomination who wanted something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ and its calling that Israel shall dwell in safety alone. Our Running Footmen rubric is filled in this issue by Braylon Mingerink, a member of First Reformed Protestant Church and a student at Grace Reformed Protestant School. It is very encouraging to see the zeal for the truth in the young men and women of the churches, and Braylon shows that zeal for the truth in his article. The rest of the crew you are familiar with. 

Sword and Shield is now approaching its third anniversary. We have seen much fruit on this labor that the Lord has begun and which he continues to prosper. Sword and Shield was forged in the furnace of doctrinal controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches over the issue of whether there is that which man must do to experience and possess his salvation: Is man, with his Spirit-wrought works, first, so that God may not and will not bless unless and until man first acts? The Protestant Reformed denomination has succumbed to the deadly lie that there is that which man must do to be saved. The doctrinal division and hatred for the truth that was exposed in the Protestant Reformed Churches by the appearance of Sword and Shield have only grown. 

The editorial this month answers the Protestant Reformed lie as it was put forward again in a recent speech by Prof. David Engelsma. He has shown himself to be an enemy of the reformation that gave rise to the Reformed Protestant Churches and a leader in the public opposition to the doctrine of the Reformed Protestant Churches. His recent speech shows nothing different. In that speech he shows that there is a massive and widening gulf between the Protestant Reformed corruption of the gospel and the Reformed Protestant truth that a man is justified by faith alone without works. We continue to be thankful for such speeches that confirm us in the truth that reformation was absolutely necessary. We also give thanks to God that he has delivered us from such doctrinal rot that destroys consciences and souls and that he gives us a platform to combat those lies.