From the Editor

From the Editor — February 2025

Volume 5 | Issue 9
Rev. Nathan J. Langerak

The beginning of the new year has come and gone, and we are well into 2025. With the passing of time and with the vicissitudes that come to us from the Lord as we pass along with time, we experience the Lord’s unchanging mercy and faithfulness to his promise. It is the unchanging goodness of God, the sovereignty of his grace in the salvation of his chosen people, and his immutable promise to bring his people to heavenly glory that we celebrate in Sword and Shield. The Lord has been faithful to us, and we have a little proof of that in the continued existence of Sword and Shield. If the Lord had not been on our side when proud and angry men sought the destruction of our cause, we would have been swallowed up alive. The magazine is committed, and by God’s grace will remain committed, to writing and so promoting the God-glorifying truth of the Reformed faith, particularly as the Lord has given us to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and to see a little farther into the unfathomable reaches of his truth.

Along with that commitment to publish the truth, there is an equally strong commitment to defend the truth and to attack the lie. The truth cannot be long promoted without the defense of the truth and the relentless attack against the lie. God has separated a people to himself from eternity; and with God’s calling of his people into his covenant, he has separated them from all that is of the world, the devil, and their flesh. There is an antithesis! Enmity and warfare come with the antithesis. There is no cessation of these hostilities. There can be no détente or rapprochement between the truth and the lie, just as there is no peace between Christ and Belial. And so there are not any quiet relationships and easy getting along between the seed of Christ and the seed of the devil! Sword and Shield must play the part that God gave to it at this point in history in the epic and history-long struggle between the truth and the lie.

In that light I note that Reverend Ophoff is beginning a series of articles on the truth of the antithesis in his rubric Understanding the Times. We hope that his writing will enlighten the readers on this subject. It is a hated subject. It is a maligned subject. But to the child of God, it is a subject as lovely as God’s own revelation of himself as the God who is light and in whom is no darkness at all. The antithesis is simply a part of the revelation of who God is; and when God makes us of his party in the world, then the antithesis also characterizes our whole lives.

For the rest Reverend Bomers continues his informative series on the sacrifices of the Old Testament. Reverend Pascual begins a series on the knowledge of man with an article on walking with God in paradise. Garrett Varner continues his treatment of the minor creeds. The Reformed church is a creedal church, and we have a rich heritage of creeds, as we see in his treatment of the Nicene Creed. Ashley Cleveland fills the Running Footmen rubric this month. This rubric is always an exciting part of each issue for me, as it highlights the work of the office of all believer in Sword and Shield by the writing of both men and women who love and are valiant for the truth. The editorial this month continues the series on the truth of the elect child of God’s union with Christ and thus of all the riches of salvation that become his in that union. Because the subject of the editorial is the saving call and because part of the apostasy of the Protestant Reformed Churches is departure from the truth of the calling taught by Herman Hoeksema, we include for the meditation a comforting exposition of Christ’s word of rest given to the weary. Hoeksema did not describe the calling as a work or condition that man must perform. But he described Christ’s call as a sovereign call to his elect alone that takes away their weariness and gives them rest.

To God alone be the glory!

—NJL

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by Rev. Herman Hoeksema
Volume 5 | Issue 9