From the Editor — July 2025

The school year is finished, and summer is in full swing. Take your copy of Sword and Shield to the beach, on your vacation, or to a comfortable spot in the shade of your backyard. Wherever you find yourself reading the magazine this summer, we pray that you may be informed, edified, and refreshed by the contents of each issue.

Remember Sword and Shield and Reformed Believers Publishing in your giving. The truth, of course, provides its own support, and we pray that the truth moves you to support this organization’s worthy endeavors to publish the pure, Reformed truth in this age where that truth purely proclaimed is an increasing rarity.

In this issue Rev. Luke Bomers continues his ground-breaking work on the sacrifices of the old dispensation. How often do we not read through the Old Testament laws and read over the laws of the sacrifices without much thought? Yet each sacrifice was ordered by God as an old dispensational type of his saving work in and for his people in the new dispensational reality that came by Jesus Christ. Hopefully after reading Reverend Bomers’ articles, we can read the Old Testament scriptures with more knowledge and see in them the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

The Running Footmen article by Mr. Aaron Cleveland is a timely reminder about the nearness of the end of the world and of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in light of the falling away of many from the truth of the gospel as apostasy comes into the world and makes manifest the people of God and the children of the world. Let those who read Sword and Shield try the spirits of the preaching that they are hearing and see whether it is truth or lie.

In that light also there is a contribution to the Insights rubric from Mr. Michael Vermeer, who—having witnessed the naked partisanship in the Protestant Reformed Churches from those who comfort themselves with the false hope that the truth is still being preached in at least some congregations of that denomination—exposes that even among those who have a name and reputation for orthodoxy in the denomination, the same lies characterize their preaching as characterize the denomination as a whole. Specifically, Mr. Vermeer points to the theology of Rev. Daniel Kleyn in Doon Protestant Reformed Church. The members of Doon church had the gospel at one time, and they loved it. They have the gospel no more, and they are perishing in a wasteland from the worst famine of all, a famine of the word.

In addition there are the usual articles from the editor. He will be taking some time off from editing Sword and Shield next month. The editorial will be written by Reverend Bomers, while the other regular writers take the rest of the various rubrics.

May the Lord speed the contents of the issue to your hearts.