With this issue we have come to the end of another volume year of Sword and Shield. Those who would like a bound volume of all twelve issues are encouraged to contact the business office.

The closing of the fifth volume year brings a time of reflection on the existence of Sword and Shield. In its brief lifetime the magazine has been witness to and has witnessed against many departures from the truth. The business office receives monthly cancellation requests from those who no longer want and no longer read Sword and Shield. This is sad. One would think that a free magazine promoting the Reformed truth would be welcomed by all who confess to be Reformed and to have an interest in the Reformed truth. But what these cancellations show is that many who claim to be Reformed are that only in name. The Reformed faith purely and clearly explained has no savor to them. They cannot be bothered even to open the magazine. The Lord sends a strong delusion that many believe a lie. I, for one, believe that the trend will not change. We writers of Sword and Shield and board members at Reformed Believers Publishing submit to the Lord’s will in that. The truth is not only a savor of life unto life but also a savor of death unto death. We are not the masters of the effect of the truth proclaimed and the truth written. That effect was decided by our sovereign God before the foundation of the world. What we are convinced of is that we are writing the truth. What we are committed to is writing that truth whether the majority receive it or not. We, of course, pray that Sword and Shield will find its way into the hands of God’s people everywhere and that they will be edified by it. But we are all too aware that the opposite happens as well. So we pray too that Sword and Shield may testify polemically to the wholesale departure from the Reformed faith that characterizes our present age and be a witness in this evil age of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come” (Acts 24:25). We are but servants and instruments in the hands of the living Lord of the church, who loved her and gave his life for her and who also slays with the sword that proceeds out of his mouth. We are but servants of the truth, and our commitment is to write it as long as God gives us opportunity.

In this issue Reverend Pascual in his rubric, Dry Morsel, writes against the scurrilous charge of the disgraceful Rev. John Flores and First Reformed Church of Bulacan that First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church, Bulacan, is not a church but a group. The readership must know that the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) had a long involvement in the Philippines prior to the formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches (RPC), and Reverend Flores was part of the Protestant Reformed Churches in the Philippines. When the RPC was formed from the PRC, then Flores became Reformed Protestant too, so we thought. Later we learned that he does not even believe in the authority of the Reformed creeds. He is not Reformed at all. Some members of Reverend Flores’ church in Bulacan left and formed First Orthodox, and Rev. Jeremiah Pascual was ordained to be her minister. Now Flores attacks First Orthodox with the charge that she is not a church. This charge, of course, is not unique with him. He is simply parroting the line of many in the PRC in America about the RPC. Reverend Flores is a crook and a huckster. He was happy to take Reformed Protestant money while it suited him, and it did not bother him a bit how the RPC had started. Now he has a bee in his bonnet about how First Orthodox started? The way that First Orthodox in the Philippines started is not much different from the way that Second Reformed Protestant Church started, and that never was an issue with Flores because the checks were being sent to him. With whom is he trying to curry favor now? What is notably absent from Reverend Flores is any discussion about doctrine. Perhaps that is to be expected from the man who could not answer the simple question that was put to him when he was invited to speak at the Reformed Protestant Churches Family Conference in August 2022: Why did you leave the PRC? We all knew why we had left. He did not and could not answer the question.

For the rest there is the usual cast of characters. The editor has his meditation and continues his series on the benefits of union with Christ. Reverend Bomers writes more on the offerings of the old dispensation. This time he writes on the so-called meat offering. And the seminarian of the RPC, who is on his residency in Cornerstone Reformed Protestant Church, reflects on the covering of our sins as that is pictured in the snow. There was a lot of snow in Canada this year! So snow was an apt thing for a theologian to reflect on as he sat in his study, surrounded by the drifts.

May the Lord bless the contents of this issue to the hearts of his people!