The issue in your hands is the beginning of Sword and Shield’s fifth volume year. Many changes have happened at the magazine since it was first published in June 2020. What has not changed is the content of the magazine. It is Reformed. It is polemical. It is the truth. Because it is these things, the magazine is edifying to the people of God. In this issue and in this volume year, we hope, by the grace of God, to continue to publish the pure Reformed truth written polemically against the lie. Sword and Shield came into the world fighting, and it remains a fighting paper. This offends many because the spirit of the age is one of unrighteous toleration. Sword and Shield stands against that spirit and contends earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. If it ever comes about that Sword and Shield is not a fighting paper, then it should be shut down quickly, and another fighting paper should be formed in its place.

In this issue we introduce a new regular contributor to the magazine, Rev. Jeremiah Pascual. He is the minister of First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church in Bulacan, the Philippines. He will be writing monthly in the new rubric Dry Morsel. The reference is from Proverbs 17:1: “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.” Yes, we certainly experienced the truth of that proverb in the years before the reformation of 2021: a denomination full of religion that was as dead as the people; a denomination grown fat on the Lord’s gifts; a house of feasting and nothing but a house full of strife, a strife that finally cast out Christ. But to be small and to have the truth and with it the peace of God is better. We hope that this new rubric serves to better acquaint the American churches with the doctrine of the Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church and that we also can be encouraged in our mutual faith. Reverend Pascual makes his appearance in Sword and Shield in this issue with an article about what it means to be Reformed Protestant.

You will notice that our regular contributors for Our Doctrine and Understanding the Times have a break this month. We had to make space in the magazine for Reverend Pascual’s article. Besides, we are paring down the page count of the magazine for the summer months. We have been producing forty-page issues regularly. The smaller issues will give everyone—copy editors and writers—a little break for the summer months. This month we are publishing Lee Wiltjer’s contribution, in which he takes on Reverend McGeown’s Arminian doctrine of faith. Next month Garrett Varner will continue his series on the beatitudes with an article on the blessedness of the pure in heart, and Ashley Cleveland will fill the Running Footmen rubric.

I again put a plug in for submissions to the magazine. We love to have our readers send in material, whether it be a snippet that they believe is worth publishing or a contribution on some relevant theological subject.

We hope that the Lord blesses the content of the magazine to your hearts, both in this issue and in the volume year to come.