June 10, 2020

Editors of the Sword and Shield,

Your invitation to write a letter or submit a comment concerning the Sword and Shield is the stimulus and purpose for writing this letter.

I was not surprised to receive the letter because I had heard of the intended publication.

At the time I heard of it I was of the opinion that something of this form was not necessary in the Protestant Reformed Church.

It is wrong at this time for ministers of the Word in the Protestant Reformed Churches to announce themselves and be used as members of Reformed Believers Publishers and necessary contributors to the publication of the Sword and Shield. Whether the SS is merely an addition to the Standard Bearer or a replacement for the faithful SB, now one hundred years old, is unwise and errant. The Standard Bearer, a necessary periodical produced since 1924 by the Reformed Free Publishing Association, is not regulated by the Synod like the Banner in the CRC. The SB not without errors has since October, 1924, become the periodical needed by the PRC.

Disagreement or dissension that requires correction can be attempted through Reformed church political ways.

The Reformed Believers Publishing (PBP) is permitted legally to publish the Sword and Shield because the US Constitution Bill of Rights permits freedom of the press.  Reformed writers have always been permitted to exercise this liberty.

The editorial states that you love the Protestant Reformed Churches and this love will be the root of fighting for the truth’s sake.  Such fighting must not be slanderous or divisive.

Fighting for the truths sake does not make the Sword and Shield necessary.  The Standard Bearer certainly does publish for the truth’s sake.

I may not always want to but I will read the Sword and Shield and read it with discernment not because I support it but because it exists. 

My allegiance and support is with the Standard Bearer. I look forward to receiving the SB that is usually published two times a month.  It’s been a messenger of the truth since 1924.  May God through the writers keep the SB as a messenger of the truth.

The challenge for the Sword and Shield is that it will be a messenger of the truth. 

“If any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ , and to the doctrine which is according to godliness he is proud, knowing nothing, and doting about questions and strife of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmising.” I Timothy 6:3–4.

In Christ,

Agatha Lubbers

RESPONSE

Your promise to read Sword and Shield warms our hearts, especially because it is a promise made at no small cost to yourself. Even though you may not want to read Sword and Shield; even though you do not support it; even though your opinion is that it is unnecessary; even though you fear rivalries and division; even though you judge it to be wrong, unwise, and errant; even though your only reason for reading it is that it exists; yet you will read it. Yet you will read it! Music to our ears! May your example inspire others who also have their doubts and objections to say likewise, “I will read Sword and Shield.” And upon reading it, you may just find, to your joy and ours, that you also come to support it as a messenger of the truth that teaches “wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “the doctrine which is according to godliness” (1 Tim. 6:3–4).

The Editors