From the Editor — August 2025

This issue our editor, Rev. Nathan Langerak, has been provided a much-needed break from his usual writing. With few exceptions over the past two years, Reverend Langerak has written three of this magazine’s rubrics every month in addition to his normal duties as editor. May the Lord bless the countless hours spent for the production of and contribution to this magazine’s witness to the pure, Reformed truth. “The sower bearing precious seed / May weep as in his toil he grieves, / But he shall come again with joy / In harvest time with golden sheaves.”¹

Before we get into the contents of this issue, let me remind the reader to order your bound copy of Sword and Shield volume 5. If you have not done so already, gather up the stack of last year’s issues that sits in the basket beside your living room couch and go hunting for that missing issue hiding somewhere in the house…or maybe it is in the seatback pocket of the car? Even if you end up with one or two issues short, Reformed Believers Publishing will supply what is missing. Just make a note on your magazine stack of what issues are missing and either bring them to the office of Reformed Believers Publishing or hand them over to a board member. Otherwise, you can request a bound volume of new issues by an email to office@reformedbelieverspub.org. The cost is $35 and $45, respectively; and Reformed Believers Publishing would gladly receive any additional monetary support for publication of Sword and Shield with your order.

In this issue seminarian Earl Kamps takes up the meditation. Earl has just completed a six-month internship at Cornerstone Reformed Protestant Church in Teeswater, Ontario, Canada. The Lord willing, he will be examined by the September classis of the Reformed Protestant Churches with a view to declaring him eligible for a call to the gospel ministry.

This issue also contains the edited versions of two speeches.

First, in the editorial the undersigned has published a speech that he delivered on behalf of the evangelism committee of Faith Reformed Protestant Church in Loveland, Colorado. This speech, teaching the truth of man’s happiness and wherein that happiness consists, also charged the former minister and current minister of Loveland Protestant Reformed Church with corrupting the truth of justification by faith alone, using as proof multiple quotes from the sermons of these two ministers. A more serious charge could not be made, for the doctrine of justification was the hinge of the Reformation and that by which a church either stands or falls. But since the time that this speech was delivered on May 27, 2025, the undersigned has not personally received any response from any member of Loveland church—or, for that matter, from any member of the Protestant Reformed Churches—as to whether his charge is true or not. Will Loveland church keep silent? Is there not any zeal in her midst to contend for the truth?

Second, Reverend Ophoff has published a timely speech in Understanding the Times that he delivered to First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan, Philippines (FORPCB), on the occasion of her third anniversary celebration. This speech examines the doctrine of the church according to her antithetical existence in the world, applies this doctrine to the slanderous accusations brought against FORPCB by unholy and ungodly men who despise the true doctrine of the church, and teaches God’s glorious purpose that the church’s antithetical existence in the world serves.

As for the rest, Travis Kamps continues a discussion on the doctrine of the antithesis in Running Footmen, drawing important conclusions for us today from the controversy over covenantal theology in the early 1950s between the Protestant Reformed Churches and the Reformed Churches (liberated). 

You have in your hands a full issue for good reading when you must retreat to the air-conditioned indoors to escape these remaining dog days of summer. May the Lord bless the contents of the issue to your hearts and refresh you in your souls.