In one of his recent letters, Prof. David Engelsma joined those who have hurled stones to kill us. Later I will deal with the main content of his recent shameful letters. Now I note only that he wrote the following about me and my unjust suspension from office:

What is of fundamental importance, neither did he submit, under protest, either to the decision of his consistory that he not edit the new magazine or to the decision of suspension from office.¹

He is a liar. Below is my protest that I submitted to my consistory at Crete Protestant Reformed Church.

I also submitted to the consistory a protest regarding an announcement read to the Crete congregation about First Reformed Protestant Church’s Act of Separation. And I wrote and submitted a protest to the June 2021 Protestant Reformed Synod about Rev. A. Lanning’s deposition. Perhaps at a later date I will publish these protests.

The answer to my protests was suspension.

I note also that Professor Engelsma wrote in the same letter the following about Reverend Lanning and me:

They were not disciplined for the sake of the gospel of grace. The grounds of their discipline had nothing to do with the gospel. The attempt to portray themselves as martyrs for the truth’s sake is sheer, unadulterated posturing and falsity.

Professor Engelsma cleverly mentioned the grounds of our discipline. There was not a stitch of truth in the grounds of our discipline or in the men who came up with them or in those who voted to adopt them. We have contended from the beginning that the grounds were a concoction sucked out of the thumbs of those who were intent on getting rid of us in order studiously to avoid the issue of our doctrine. The grounds were the same kinds of grounds as were used by those who stoned Naboth to death, murdered his children, and stole his inheritance. The issue is not the grounds but whether the truth was at stake at that moment in the Protestant Reformed Churches and whether our deposition and suspension were motivated by hatred for that truth and its condemnation of the lie. I included in my protest dialogue and quotes. These were submitted to the consistory, and the men whom I quoted admitted that that is what they had said. I will let the reader decide after he reads my protest about the involvement of the gospel and the truth in my suspension.

Protest to the Consistory of Crete Protestant Reformed Church in re Decision to Require Me to Resign as Editor of Sword and Shield

Dear Consistory of Crete Protestant Reformed Church,

With this document I protest the decision taken at the consistory meeting on February 11, 2021 in article 12 to require me to resign as editor of Sword and Shield and to discontinue writing for and promoting the publication.

Article 12 from the Consistory Minutes of February 11, 2021 reads as follows:

Motion made and supported to require Rev. Langerak to resign as a contributing editor of the Sword & Shield and discontinue writing for and promoting the publication.

Grounds:

a. Rev. Langerak continues writing in and promoting the Sword & Shield as a co-editor with Andy Lanning, a deposed minister of the PRC who continues to live in the sin of schism.

b. Rev. Langerak’s participation has caused, and continues to cause unrest and division in our congregation.

Motion made and supported to elide ground b and replace it with “For the sake of the effectiveness of the preaching in our congregation.” Motion to elide fails.

Motion as originally moved carries. Andy Birkett records a negative vote.

By this decision I am aggrieved.

I. I protest the disorderly and uncharitable way in which the motion was brought to consistory.

A. Christ requires in 1 Corinthians 14:40 “Let all things be done decently and in order.” He also requires in 1 Corinthians 16:14 “Let all your things be done with charity.”

B. The item to discuss my editorship of Sword and Shield was not on the agenda of the consistory meeting. It has not been on the agenda and has not been a subject of discussion by the consistory. The matter of my involvement with and writing for Sword and Shield had not come up in the consistory in any discussion in many months.

C. The decision contradicts previous decisions of the consistory without interacting with them at all.

1. The consistory previously made a decision that the magazine was non-ecclesiastical and thus rejected charges of sin from the three editors of the Standard Bearer against their minister.

2. Regarding my involvement in Sword and Shield the consistory made the decision involving a letter to the congregation in which they did not charge that my involvement is divisive, but in which letter the consistory stated that it has always encouraged its ministers to write and that my writing in Sword and Shield was no different from this and in which they encouraged the congregation to read all things with discernment, also Sword and Shield.

D. Suddenly, without warning, contrary to its previous decisions, and without any prior discussion about the issue, the consistory by fiat declares without any grounds that my participation in Sword and Shield has caused, and continues to cause unrest and division in our congregation. This is disorderly in the extreme and is an example not of charity but ecclesiastical brutality.

II. I protest that the decision and grounds are a violation of the 9th commandment, bearing false witness against the minister and his writing in Sword and Shield, misrepresenting the majority of the discussion and the false witness against the minister and his preaching in that discussion.

A. The minister has never had anything unorthodox alleged against his writings, nor has there been any allegation of unorthodoxy in Sword and Shield as a whole.

1. The minister’s writing has stood for the truth of God’s sovereign grace against corruptions of that truth that appeared and are appearing in the Protestant Reformed Churches. While the truth always divides, it is unlawful to lay the blame for that division on the truth. To charge the whole venture with divisiveness is to lie against the truth.

2. James 3:14-15, “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, and devilish.”

B. This decision and grounds do not reflect honestly the discussion that was had in the consistory room when the motion was proposed and afterward when the motion was discussed.

1. The motion was made when the consistory was treating the agenda item discussion of the preaching and spiritual health of the congregation.

2. The motion was made in the middle of a sustained attack on the character and preaching of the minister. For years the consistory has approved my preaching and has brought no accusations against my conduct in office. With the installation of three new elders that situation changed. At the January meeting already the attacks on the preaching began. Those attacks continued at the February meeting with angry and vehement denunciations of the preaching.

3. Some of the statements that were made from my notes of the meeting and the discussion are as follows:

a. “He preaches angry.” In response to the question of when this anger manifested itself, the response was that, “he has been preaching angry for years.”

b. “His preaching is discouraging.”

c. “His preaching does not feed the sheep.”

d. “His preaching does damage to the sheep.”

e. Referencing an article by Herman Hoeksema from the Standard Bearer, “He uses the pulpit to spit out his personal gall.”

f. “If he keeps preaching this way, then he better be ready that I will not shake his hand.”

g. “He gives the same sermon every Sunday, he only hangs it on a different text.”

h. “We keep hearing about grace and not by works.” This was a complaint and in the context of the complaint that the preaching is discouraging, does not feed the sheep, and does damage to the sheep.

i. After the motion to remove me from Sword and Shield was on the floor and after some discussion about my involvement with the magazine along with more expressions of dissatisfaction with the preaching the statement was made, “I do not know why we are even talking about Sword and Shield. This is not about Sword and Shield. That is just a magazine. This is about the preaching that comes off our pulpit. That kind of preaching has to stop. We must do something about it tonight.” The “something” that had to be done tonight, was the removal of me from the pulpit.

j. This was all sprinkled with specious and gratuitous ad hominem arguments about the perception and character of the minister.

k. When the elders were pressed for specifics about what was wrong with the preaching nothing was forth coming. They avoided addressing the issue of the orthodoxy of the preaching. None of this was carried on with charity, but by denunciation, with much emotion and rhetoric.

4. I have taken the quotes above from my notes of the meeting.

a. There were many things said. God knows what was said, for he is with us in the judgment.

b. “And said to the judges, take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for the LORD, who is with you in the judgment” (2 Chronicles 19:6).

5. I have been preaching in Crete Protestant Reformed Church since December 7, 2007 and my preaching has been orthodox, Reformed, Protestant Reformed preaching, being the faithful and sober exegesis of the text and application in general as well [as] in particular.

a. This is my duty according to the Form for Ordination, “That they faithfully explain to their flock the Word of the Lord, revealed by the writings of the prophets and the apostle[s]; and apply the same as well in general as in particular to the edification of the hearers; instructing, admonishing, comforting, and reproving, according to everyone’s need.”

b. This evaluation is according to the testimony of the consistory at its many meetings over 14 years in which the subject of my preaching has come up. I have ever preached Christ Jesus, our Lord, to you as the heart of every sermon as the consistory has repeatedly testified and so Christ came in that and spoke [to] you.

6. Christ received such a beating at the meeting as to make one’s heart tremble.

a. Such an attitude and attack on the preaching is not against me, but against Christ and God according to Christ’s own words, “He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me” (Mat. 10:40).

b. The Form for the Ordination of Ministers exhorts the congregation and by implication the elders to take the lead in this, “Receive this your minister in the Lord with all gladness, “and hold such in reputation,” Remember that God himself through him speaketh unto and beseecheth you. Receive the Word, which he, according to the Scripture, shall preach unto you, “not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God.” Let the feet of those that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things be beautiful and pleasant unto you.”

c. My preaching has ever been “according to the Scripture,” and none has alleged otherwise, and it is Christ’s word.

7. None of the calling toward the preaching exhorted on the elders in the Form for Ordination was in evidence in the meeting.

a. While several attacked the preaching, others sat by mute while it happened. There were some who stood and said they disagreed and could not let such an assessment pass.

b. The men who made the false accusations against the preaching cannot lead the congregation in carrying out their calling to receive the word of God among them and count the feet of them that bring it beautiful: they themselves will not receive it and condemn the one who brings it.

c. The elders who so attacked the preaching without ground or evidence, who studiously avoided the question of the orthodoxy of the preaching, who refused to give concrete examples of their assertions, and who by baseless name-calling condemned the preaching, must be required by the consistory to retract their unfounded accusations against the preaching and turn from their disgraceful attitude toward the minister and the ministry of the gospel in their midst, or to prove by specific protest and charges against the minister that their accusations have merit.

III. I protest that the decision to require me to resign from Sword and Shield and cease writing and promoting the magazine is contrary to my calling to confess Christ before men.

A. Christ calls all believers and office bearers to confess him with boldness before men.

1. “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Mat. 10:32-33).

2. “Also, I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8-9).

3. This is the chief calling of the believer in all his life and the chief calling of the minister in all his work. This calling does not depend on the permission of a consistory but on Christ himself. I carry out this calling in Sword and Shield.

4. Confessing myself to be more in dread of Christ, than of you, or any other men, I will not resign as editor of Sword and Shield, will not stop writing for the magazine, and will not stop promoting it. Indeed, seeing that its witness to the truth of God’s sovereign grace, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and the unconditionality of God’s covenant, and the continuing total depravity of the regenerated believer by nature is maligned by baseless accusation and name-calling, rejected, and hated, I will write and promote this truth all the more vigorously to the glory of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom alone belongs the glory for our salvation and upon whom our salvation alone depends.

B. It must be clear to the consistory that though the Protestant Reformed Churches have officially rejected false doctrine and heresy that compromised the unconditional covenant, justification by faith alone, and the perfect sufficiency of Christ’s merits alone for fellowship with God by faith alone and without works, these decisions have not been received.

1. This is clear because there has been precious little explanation of the decisions, almost no explanation of the subtle ways in which the truth has been undermined, introduction of new language into preaching and writing that is supposed to prompt godliness but undermines the gospel, teaching that there is something that man must do to be saved, and a determined effort evidenced in preaching and writing to bring in again the doctrine that was condemned. The writings in the Standard Bearer are making this plain. Conditional covenant theologians are being recommended to the people. Confusion is being spread.

2. We are in the middle, then, of an unsettled doctrinal controversy of the greatest importance involving the doctrines of the standing and falling church. The issue is simply this: faith and obedience is not the way to the Father; faith and obedience is not the way to fellowship with the Father; faith and obedience is not the way God realizes his covenant promise in us. This is federal vision thinking and language and it is being dressed up in new garb and being presented as the truth. To teach that faith and obedience are the way to the Father, faith and obedience are the way to fellowship with the Father, and faith and obedience are the way God realizes his covenant denies justification by faith alone, the unconditional covenant, and the perfect sufficiency of Christ’s merits.

3. Now we can add to that the idea that the regenerated believer is not totally depraved according to his flesh, that the works of believers obtain the possession of salvation, that the works of believers are of value for their relationship with God, that the believer wills good of his own accord and thus also must do good of his own accord, and that believers obey and then they receive God’s blessing. All of these are extensions of the doctrinal controversy that was faced by the PRC.

C. In the face of that subtle and terrible threat that will destroy souls and churches the minister of the gospel not only, but every office-bearer and believer, is called to oppose it with all his might.

1. He must oppose the specific threat.

2. As Martin Luther taught, “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

3. Sword and Shield has done that. It has stood for the truth valiantly and has been maliciously and publicly slandered unheard and without evidence. The consistory now engages in this same disreputable attack by calling my involvement in the magazine’s defense of the truth divisive. It is not merely that it is divisive because one of the editor’s has been deposed, but, going back on its own previous assessment, that it has been divisive.

D. The message of the magazine is the same message that I have preached publicly in my ministry.

1. Sword and Shield belongs to my confessing of Christ as a believer in a non-ecclesiastical setting and before the world of men. My preaching constitutes my official confession of Christ.

2. If my witness to Christ as a believer is attacked and slandered and arbitrarily and without ground called divisive, then that must continue to my witness of Christ in my preaching, which can also then likewise without ground and arbitrarily be called divisive. It has already begun and was carried out by elders while others sat idly by while it happened or encouraged those that were doing it.

3. The elder said it best who said that this matter of my resignation from Sword and Shield is not the issue, but my preaching is the issue and “it has to stop” and “tonight.”

4. Not wanting my witness in Sword and Shield, it must necessarily follow that my witness in the preaching must come under condemnation, for they are one and the same: they are a testimony and confession of Christ as the only way of salvation by faith in his name over against the false doctrine of faith and obedience as the way of salvation in the Protestant Reformed Churches that is showing itself by declaring the truth antinomian and by adding works to faith as the way to fellowship with God.

5. It would be unfaithfulness to Christ to flee any part of the battlefield. I fear him more who can kill the body and soul in hell, rather than those who can merely kill the body.

IV. I protest the decision as an infringement on my liberty to confess Christ as a believer and an effort to bind my conscience and bring me into bondage to man’s opinions, wisdom, and perceptions.

A. The Apostle Paul defended the gospel by exactly such a defense of his liberty.

1. “But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. And that because [of] false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you” (Gal. 2:3-5).

2. Paul did not reject circumcision as a thing damnable in itself. For he was circumcised and so he also circumcised Timothy. To be circumcised or not was his liberty in the gospel.

3. He rejected circumcision for righteousness and thus those who declared the salvation of Titus in jeopardy if he was not circumcised and who thus made it a sin for him not to be circumcised.

B. The same is my defense of my involvement in Sword and Shield.

1. To write or not write in Sword and Shield is a thing indifferent in itself. If someone attaches sin to my writing the truth in a magazine that has stood for the truth, and about which the consistory previously said there was nothing wrong with my writing in it, then I cannot give it up without giving up the gospel that gave me that liberty.

2. The consistory has done precisely that by declaring that my involvement has and continues to be divisive, a baseless assertion without ground or evidence, that I must reject.

3. I have in Christ Jesus the liberty to write or not to write in a magazine. But now that you have declared it sinful by declaring it divisive, I cannot, without compromise of the gospel of grace and the liberty that it gives to me, give place to you, not for one hour.

C. This in accordance with the Apostle’s exhortation, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).

1. The consistory would take away my liberty and declare it to be sin.

2. The consistory would entangle me with their declarations of sin (divisiveness), entangle me in the wisdom of men, in the perceptions and opinions of men, and in the fear of man, which is a snare.

V. I protest the decision because by it the consistory declares the truth of God and the gospel to be divisive, which charge I must reject as an attack on the truth.

A. It cannot be denied by anyone that Sword and Shield has written and promoted anything other than the Reformed, Protestant Reformed truth, and that over against false doctrine that makes works part of the way to fellowship with God, and so compromises justification by faith alone, the unconditionality of the covenant, and the perfect sufficiency of Christ as the only way to the Father (John 14:6).

B. The ministers who are writing in the magazine have shown themselves to be faithful ministers of Christ and his truth and opponents of the lie that militates against it. Not one word has been alleged against their doctrine.

C. The consistory calls my participation in this divisive.

1. By that I understand sinfully schismatic for that is the only divisiveness that can be condemned. For the truth always causes unrest and division.

2. Passages could be cited almost without number showing that. For instance, Christ says that when he comes he brings a sword: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword (Mat. 10:34).

3. It is ever true that when the Word of God, the truth of God, which is Christ, comes that there is unrest and divisions. Only the preaching of the truth can do that. Through that Christ keeps his sheep. When the Word of God, the pure gospel of salvation by grace alone comes there are divisions, but the consistory means that those divisions are caused by my mere involvement in Sword and Shield and that thus I am causing schism. Not merely after the deposition, but from its inception the magazine and my participation has been branded as divisive.

4. This I reject. The truth however and wherever it comes does not cause schism. Schism is division from Christ, to separate from Christ, the only head. The truth never does that. The truth ever gathers Christ’s sheep, it ever feeds them, and it ever unites his sheep to Christ, though it cut off the whole world in the process and though all men rail against it and hate it. My writing in Sword and Shield has been the truth and will continue to be the truth.

5. It is evil to lay the blame for the divisions on Christ and his truth. This may never be done and I cannot acquiesce in such a decision that so boldly does exactly that.

D. The consistory’s calling is not merely to point out that there is division, for when the truth comes, there always is division.

1. The consistory’s calling is not merely to decry the division. But the consistory’s calling is to analyze division properly. This the consistory did not do, but simply laid the blame for division on me and on a magazine that proclaims the truth, and that without any evidence, but by baseless assertion.

2. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:18-19 does not only point out divisions, but the cause of them and thus where the blame lies: “For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.”

3. He notes that there was division. This division is the reason that the church came together for the worse.

4. The blame for division is not laid at the feet of the truth, or those that taught the truth, but at the feet of heresy, a word to be understood in its broadest meaning as the bad doctrine itself and the lack of faith and love for the truth that leads to heresy and the rejection of the truth.

5. That the truth has come clearly and pointed the lie out clearly is not the cause of division, but the rejection of that word from a lack of faith and love of the truth. Division was and is being caused in the PRC by false doctrine that is abounding. At the feet of that false doctrine and those that teach and defend it, the blame for division must be laid.

VI. I protest the decision because it infringes on my calling as a minister of the word by preaching and writing to declare the truth and refute the error.

A. This calling of the minister is laid out in Scripture.

1. “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto [you] of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jud 1:3).

2. Paul and the other Apostles along with the prophets not only preached against false doctrine and false teachers, but wrote against them as well, which writings are our Bible, and also including other letters that are mentioned in the Bible (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9, 11; Col. 4:16).

B. The calling is easily proved from history and from our forms.

1. All the great Church Fathers and Reformers were avid and able preachers and writers against the lie.

2. The origin of our churches is tied with the formation of the RFPA and the Standard Bearer and the writing against false doctrine.

3. Our consistory has gone on record that they encourage their ministers to write and this has a distinguished history in our church.

4. It is implied in the Formula of Subscription that ministers write when it says “by preaching or writing.”

5. The Form for the Ordination of the Ministers says, “That they faithfully explain to their flock the Word of the Lord, revealed by the writings of the prophets and the apostles; and apply the same as well in general as in particular to the edification of the hearers…and refuting with the Holy Scriptures all schisms and heresies which are repugnant to the pure doctrine.”

C. To this task the minister, and your minister in particular, has bound himself with an oath not only at his ordination, but his vow taken when he signed the Formula of Subscription:

1. “We promise therefore diligently to teach and faithfully to defend the aforesaid doctrine, without either directly or indirectly contradicting the same, by our public preaching or writing…”

2. “We declare, moreover, that we not only reject all errors that militate against this doctrine, and particularly those which were condemned by the above mentioned synod, but that we are disposed to refute and contradict these, and to exert ourselves in keeping the church free from such errors.”

D. Regarding my writing:

1. I have been shut out of the Standard Bearer and am forbidden to write either letter or article by editorial fiat until such a time as I confess the sin of breaking the ninth commandment of which they have accused me, a charge that they for over a year now have held against me but neither pursued with me nor with my consistory.

2. Sword and Shield is a platform given to me by the Lord to carry out this work particularly as to writing in the midst of an unsettled controversy over the unconditional covenant, justification by faith alone, and the perfect sufficiency of Christ’s merits alone for fellowship with God, a fellowship entered by faith alone.

E. Regarding my preaching:

1. The discussion at the consistory when this motion was taken made perfectly plain that my testimony in Sword and Shield as it also comes in the preaching is also unwanted. The very analysis that there is a controversy and how that is to be dealt with was called into question.

2. If the consistory wants to sit back in the midst of this contest, that is unfaithfulness on their part, for their vows are the same as mine, but then to hinder a man who will, is worse.

3. The consistory is forbidding me to carry out my calling and be faithful to my vow as it pertains to Sword and Shield and at the very meeting where this was passed it was also made plain that the preaching needs to change too.

F. Preaching and writing are obviously connected and thus I cannot resign, such would be unfaithfulness to my calling and my vow.

1. The works are in essence one: proclaim the truth and militate against the lie.

2. To abandon one is ultimately to abandon the other. It is flight and disgrace.

3. It is doing the work of the Lord deceitfully: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the LORD deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood” (Jer. 48:10). I am unwilling to bring myself under this curse of the Lord either by resigning from Sword and Shield, or by tailoring my preaching to the delicate sensibilities of those that do not want to hear sound doctrine and refutation of the lie, but want to hear peace, peace and smooth things, “Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits” (Isa. 30:8-10).

VII. I protest that by this decision the consistory lords it over their minister and engages in an unholy censorship of the truth.

A. Article 84 of the church order, which is one of the most important articles in the church order, says, “No church shall in any way lord it over other churches, no minister over other ministers, no elder or deacon over other elders and deacons.”

1. Lording is a sin in Christ’s church because he is the sole lord and all the members are brethren. Lording is to assume authority where one has none and to dominate in the church by one’s opinions rather than by the word of God.

2. Particularly regarding my witness and confession of Christ in Sword and Shield, a paper that is nonecclesiastical by its own declaration and acknowledged to be such by the consistory’s own decision, my right to give a witness does not rest on consistorial approval or disapproval, but rests on the command of Christ alone, “Confess me before men.”

3. It also belongs to my office of believer to give that witness and confession not first of all to my office of minister. It rests on my anointing that I have received from Christ to be a prophet to him and confess his name.

4. It belongs to my freedom of conscience and liberty in the gospel to give that testimony before men.

5. By demanding that I resign, the consistory has assumed the position of lord over my liberty, my conscience, and seeks to take away my right to confess Christ as a believer in this magazine. I will make this very plain. If I tell you that I am going to buy a car, a Ford, and you as a consistory take a decision that I must buy a Chevrolet, and further declare that since the whole congregation likes Chevrolet, that buying a Ford is and would be divisive, then you have made yourselves lords and assumed authority where you have none, and are ruling by opinion, and not the word of God. The consistory has simply asserted based on majority vote with no demonstration from the word of God that participation in Sword and Shield is and has been divisive, by which I understand sinfully dividing in Christ’s church. The consistory has declared by majority vote something free to be sinful. This is by definition lording.

6. By including in its grounds the charge of divisiveness (schism) the consistory further lords it by making charges of sin against a righteous endeavor and against the truth, which I have only ever written, and which no one has otherwise alleged. The lords—not God, Christ, and Word of God—have now determined that writing in Sword and Shield is divisive and thus is sin.

B. Involved in the lording is unholy censorship and that of the truth in direct violation of your calling and my calling in Article 55 of the church order that says, “To ward off false doctrines and errors that multiply exceedingly through heretical writings, the ministers and elders shall use the means of teaching, of refutation or warning, and of admonition, as well in the ministry of the word as in Christian teaching and family-visiting.”

1. The history of the article is that it was originally about censorship. That was what Rome did to the Reformation. That was what was brought into the Reformed Churches. That article was thankfully changed in 1905. Censorship is not the way to control unwanted writings, but refutation is the way to handle them. Open exposure and condemnation. That is biblical and Reformed. That is what is necessary especially today in the doctrinal climate we are in.

2. Censorship is what is going on. I am very familiar with censorship. My writings were censored in the Standard Bearer repeatedly until tiring of even the censorship the editors and staff unceremoniously removed me from a rubric. This motion also constitutes censorship. That was what the Roman Catholic hierarchy was very good at to make sure the truth did not get out.

3. Sword and Shield has only proclaimed the truth. The consistory has declared that divisive and demanded I remove myself from it. I cannot agree with that attitude and action toward the truth. I believe that it is an attempt to censor the truth and its free expression.

C. Still more, Sword and Shield, has defended the truth by refutation, the very requirement of Article 55, and has exposed error and false doctrine.

1. Sword and Shield is an instrument to do what Article 55 requires of all of you and the motion and grounds condemns the whole venture as sinful. Not merely that it is now that one of the editors is deposed, but that it has been.

2. I cannot agree with that. The consistory should urge the congregation to read Sword and Shield and their pastor’s writings in it and not cater to the whims of men.

VIII. As a rather minor point, the consistory’s ground one is merely an assertion and does not give a reason why it is a ground for requiring me to resign and stop writing or promoting the magazine. The reasoning behind it can only be guessed at.

A. In answer to it, and refuting it, the ground makes the consistory guilty of hypocrisy.

1. If ministers cannot work with other ministers or associate with other ministers who are charged with sin by our churches, certainly a position that I can go along with, that by implication would apply to the elders too.

2. I wonder out loud if the elders hold themselves to this standard in their associations?

B. Further, our ministers, including those under your oversight, are/were members of associations with men who hold to false doctrine, are divorced and remarried, and caused schism in their own denominations.

1. We not only work with them, and stand with them on associations, but also send our prospective professors to their seminaries to be educated, and have them at our seminary for conferences.

2. I again wonder out loud if the consistory justly applies this standard they set?

C. Further, the consistory seems not to reckon with the reality that the charge against the deposed minister and all the accusations against him are open for protest, and that if I believe that they conflict with the word of God I may not hold them as settled and binding in my conscience or life without obeying God rather than men.

1. If you charge a man with sin and I do not believe he is guilty of sin, and then you excommunicate him, and I still do not believe he is guilty of sin, not only am I going to protest that unjust and evil application of discipline, but I will associate with the man you cast out as well.

2. I firmly believe, and have so informed the synod by way of protest, that the decision to deposed Rev. Lanning was sinful, and that for it, the churches will be judged by Christ Jesus.

3. Christ did just that with the blind man healed by Christ that the rulers cast out of the church for confessing Christ. John 9:34-35 “They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?”

4. What a lovely action by Christ to associate with a man that the church sinfully cast out.

I request that the consistory rescind its decision and declare it to be in error.

Since the whole motion to require me to resign is based on the action of [the] denomination to depose Rev. A Lanning, I request that the consistory have a discussion of the decision and grounds for his deposition to see that those grounds are fallacious and the action was sinful and that discussion be had on the consistory protesting that decision to depose. Still more, urgently, that discussion be had in the consistory to see that the false doctrine that was condemned is in fact rearing its head again in the churches. If this doctrine gains the upper hand, then we will lose the gospel to the destruction of the churches, our generations, and souls. Herein lies my greatest concern and the main reason I will not resign. The truth is at stake at present in the PRC. This I regard as the most important point. I must continue the battle.

I request that the consistory require retraction and apology on the part of the elders who assailed the preaching, or, if they maintain their charges against the preaching, that they be required to file formal charges against the minister’s preaching with the consistory to prove their charges.

Cordially in Christ,

Rev. Nathan J. Langerak

The answer to my protest was suspension. Crete Protestant Reformed Church was finished with contending earnestly for the faith and with the gospel.