Spring is underway, summer is fast approaching, and another issue of Sword and Shield has found its way into your hands. This issue marks the end of the fourth volume year of Sword and Shield and is another witness to the faithfulness of Christ to this cause of pub-lishing the truth. The magazine began in June 2020, and behold what God has wrought! What wonders he has worked! And our hearts rejoice and are glad. Christ has given to Sword and Shield its place in the world, and Christ advances his cause with every issue. It is amazing to read in the previous issues and to see how the lie has progressed. The things that are being preached and written now in the Protestant Reformed Churches are shocking in their bold denials and displacements of Jesus Christ. And Sword and Shield has played its part in that ongoing controversy and, the Lord willing, plans to continue to do so.

In this issue you will find our regular writers. Reverend Ophoff begins an exchange in Understanding the Times in the form of fictional letters in the mode of C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. Reverend Bomers finishes his informa-tive series on what happened in Zion Reformed Protestant Church. What happened in short was that those who did not love the truth were formed into a church; and when the truth came to them, they forsook it and will be scattered to the ecclesiastical winds. The prophet said that in reformation there is always a rotten element mixed with God’s elect remnant (Isa. 6:13), and this has certainly proved true in the reformation of 2021. It had been better for those who forsook the truth that they had never begun than having begun to turn back. Having begun, they showed that they understood the issues; and having turned back, they show that they did not love the truth that was at stake and that was recovered in the reformation.

Also in this issue, Mr. Garrett Varner continues his series on the beatitudes of our Lord. Mr. Lee Wiltjer Jr. and Mr. Andy Birkett co-author a brief article to accom-pany the publication of the Act of Separation and Ref-ormation that they wrote against the wicked actions of the consistory of Crete Protestant Reformed Church to remove Christ from her pulpit and to kill Christ in her assembly. The consistory betrayed Christ, having first kissed him.

May the Lord judge. Mr. Elijah Roberts fills this month’s Running Footmen rubric with an article titled “The Antithesis in the Reformed Creeds,” a very necessary subject in this age of unrighteous toleration. Included are two letters: an informative letter from the board of Reformed Believers Publishing and another from the committee that is planning the Reformed Protestant family conference to be held in August 2024. The event promises to be an edifying time of fellowship in the truth. May the Lord bless the writing in this issue to your hearts and through it also bring down the lie.