Introduction

On May 28, 2021, God established a new Reformed denomination in North America: the Reformed Protestant Churches (RPC). At present the denomination is made up of two congregations: First Reformed Protestant Church in Jenison, Michigan, and Second Reformed Protestant Church, meeting for the time being in Calumet City, Illinois.

The federation of these two churches as a denomination took place at a meeting of the combined councils of these churches on May 28 in Hudsonville, Michigan, in a conference room rented for the occasion. Prior to the meeting, both councils and congregations had individually adopted a document entitled Act of Federation. That document is printed elsewhere in this issue for the reader’s inspection. The Act of Federation briefly lists the reasons that impelled the two congregations to federate together as a denomination. The Act of Federation also briefly declares the resolution of the two congregations to federate together on the basis of the word of God. When each congregation individually adopted the Act of Federation, the congregation declared by that adoption its intent to federate with the other congregation. It remained only for the two councils to meet as combined councils on May 28. By unanimous vote the combined councils adopted the Act of Federation, which established their denominational union as the Reformed Protestant Churches.

The formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches was the work of Jesus Christ to build his church (Matt. 16:18). Undoubtedly, the formation of this denomination must appear lowly and pathetic in the estimation of man. It is a denomination of only a few hundred souls. It is a denomination in its earliest fledgling stages that has hardly yet begun to stretch its wings. It has not even had its first classis meeting, which will take place on September 14, 2021, hosted by Second Reformed Protestant Church, the Lord willing. Indeed, there are many men who insist to anyone who will listen that the Reformed Protestant Churches are not truly a denomination at all, that its churches are not really churches, and that its officebearers are not really officebearers. In the estimation of these men, the denomination does not even exist, and the people of God who make up the Reformed Protestant Churches are only an unlawful mob. However, regardless of all that man thinks and speaks against the Reformed Protestant Churches, the formation of this denomination was the work of the Son of God to build his church. It is the joyful task of this editorial to examine several aspects of this work of the Lord in the formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches.

The Reformation of the Church

First, the formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches was a true reformation of the church of Jesus Christ. The denomination was born as the good fruit of a fierce doctrinal controversy within the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). The controversy in the PRC will be familiar to readers of Sword and Shield, which has devoted the greater portion of its articles to engaging in the controversy. The doctrinal controversy in the PRC has been whether or not a man’s obedience to God’s law obtains God’s covenant fellowship with that man. Is God’s covenant fellowship with man essentially conditional, so that a man’s obedience to God gains for that man a richer measure of covenant fellowship with God and a fuller experience of that covenant fellowship? Or is God’s covenant fellowship with man entirely unconditional, so that a man’s measure and experience of God’s covenant fellowship with him is entirely a gift of God’s grace through faith in Christ and not at all dependent on the measure of that man’s obedience to God’s law? The articles in Sword and Shield have insisted that God’s covenant fellowship with his people is strictly unconditional, over against the position taught, tolerated, defended, and promoted in the PRC to this day that

if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do…If a man with his household was to be saved and consciously enter into the kingdom, placing himself with his family under the rule of Christ as his Lord and Savior, he was called, he was required, to respond obediently to the call and command of the gospel—“Repent and believe, that thou mightiest [sic] be saved with thy house.” (Kenneth Koole, “What Must I Do…?” Standard Bearer 95, no. 1 [October 1, 2018]: 7–8)

The doctrinal controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches was as serious a controversy as a denomination could face. It was a controversy between the truth and the lie. It was the age-old battle between the lie, on the one hand, that man and his works account for man’s salvation (including his covenant fellowship with God) and the truth, on the other hand, that God’s sovereign grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone accounts for man’s salvation (including his covenant fellowship with God). At stake in the controversy was whether the PRC would teach and tolerate another gospel (Gal. 1:6–7) and another Jesus (2 Cor. 11:4). At stake in the controversy was whether Christ was dead in vain in the theology of the PRC (Gal. 2:21). At stake in the controversy was whether the PRC would remain a true church with the pure doctrine of the gospel preached therein and with church discipline exercised therein by the punishing of heresy (Belgic Confession 29) or whether the PRC would corrupt those marks and thus apostatize from the truth. There could be no more serious controversy for the PRC than this.

And yet throughout the controversy, the leadership in the denomination incessantly told the membership that there was no real division in the churches. Immediately after Synod 2018, the Standard Bearer informed the members of the PRC that

the Protestant Reformed Churches are well grounded on the doctrines of sovereign grace and the unconditional covenant. Coming to synod were not two groups of elder and minister delegates with opposing theologies. No one may imagine that in the PRC one group wants to have works contribute to salvation, and another group does not. It is not that one group has leanings toward Federal Vision theology, and another group opposes it. It is not that one group teaches justification by faith alone and another justification by faith and works. It is not that some want an unconditional covenant, while others want to make room for conditions in the covenant. All the delegates of synod, representing the churches well from a theological point of view, were and are committed to the theology of justification by faith alone and an unconditional covenant, rejecting Federal Vision and all such like heresies. (Russell J. Dykstra, “Synod 2018: Obedience and Covenant Fellowship,” Standard Bearer 94, no. 18 [July 1, 2018]: 414)

When Sword and Shield was first published in the summer of 2020 and turned its attention to the doctrinal controversy in the PRC, many Protestant Reformed consistories informed their congregations that there was no controversy in the denomination. The letter from Hudsonville Protestant Reformed Church is representative:

We are also concerned that the magazine is stating that there is a controversy between a “works principle” and a “grace principle” doctrine. They contend that the controversy has “been between an error out of hell, and God’s own truth from heaven” (July 2020 issue). They state that the magazine’s desire is to engage in this doctrinal controversy. Our consistory does not believe there is a controversy that exists between these two principles in our churches. Our consistory believes that only the grace principle is preached in our churches and is part of our doctrine. (Letter from Hudsonville PR Church consistory, July 20, 2020)

If there were no “opposing theologies” in the PRC and if there were no “controversy that exists between these two principles in our churches,” then what is to explain the past six years of conflict in the churches? To this day in the PRC, a popular explanation for the controversy is that it was due only to hypercritical people who ungraciously found fault with sermons where there was no fault. These people, so the thinking goes, behaved schismatically by daring to discuss sermons and, in their discussions, to test the orthodoxy of those sermons against the word of God. 

The same ministers who throughout the controversy have stubbornly refused to call heresy by its name blame the controversy on God’s sheep who will not tolerate the conditional theology that has been fed to them. When a prominent Protestant Reformed minister explicitly and unmistakably preached that covenant communion with God is conditional, God’s people alerted each other to that sermon and, in a legitimate exercise of their office of believer, discussed the error of that sermon together. How did a professor in the Protestant Reformed seminary respond? Not with horror at the damnable sermon and the hellish theology of the sermon, but with horror that God’s people would talk about that sermon with each other. In an email distributed to all the ministers of the PRC and later published in material in Classis West, the professor slandered God’s people who hated the lie in that sermon as being merely bitter radicals.

And, by the way, this is how some are listening to sermons Sunday after Sunday. They are coming to determine whether the minister said everything exactly according to their extra-confessional formula. They are not being edified. And their bitterness rises week by week. And yet they claim THEY are standing for GOD’S TRUTH.

…But to be suspicious of your fellow ministers because they say something in a different way is wrong. It feeds the radicals in the churches; it promotes party spirit and division. (Russell J. Dykstra, email dated July 1, 2019)

In a recent issue of the Standard Bearer, this same slander against God’s people was continued:

The church as such, and believers individually, failed to walk in those works that are required of them. She might talk theology and search high and low if her pastor is using the right words in his sermon, but is she listening to the sermon to hear what the Spirit is saying regarding her faith and walk?

…I am saddened when there are many today who listen to sermons, not to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church, but to find fault with the angels of the church. This is not so much about correct theology, but a spirit of pride. (Audred Spriensma, “Sardis: Dead Orthodoxy,” Standard Bearer 97, no. 15 [May 1, 2021]: 353)

As if the doctrine of God’s unconditional covenant fellowship is extra-confessional! As if that doctrine is merely a matter of the use of a right word or not! As if the whole controversy were not about correct, orthodox, Reformed theology but word games! With such misguided leadership, the churches could not vanquish the lie of conditional fellowship, and the churches would not repent of their compromise of the gospel. How could they? They were being told that there was no controversy. And they were being told that whatever controversy did exist was someone else’s fault.

And yet God’s people spent many years toiling in the churches through protests and appeals to the assemblies. These protestants and appellants received little to no help from the assemblies. Oftentimes the assemblies simply dismissed the protests as illegal through the most insufferably pedantic application of the rules. Even when an assembly would uphold a protestant, it was done only begrudgingly and always stopping far short of the full implications of the protest. All the while these protests were being made, the leadership in the Protestant Reformed Churches was in the background insisting to the members that there was no real doctrinal problem in the denomination and that they had best beware of the trouble-making radicals. All this time these churches were also industriously persecuting those officebearers who did seek to stand with God’s people for the truth.

When the Protestant Reformed Churches made it clear that they would not reform but that they would continue on in the teaching and toleration of their false doctrine, the only possibility of reform that remained to her members was to separate from the denomination and to institute the church anew. On January 21, 2021, the saints who would become known as First Reformed Protestant Church signed the Act of Separation. On May 5, 2021, the saints who would become known as Second Reformed Protestant Church signed the Act of Separation and Reformation. Both of these documents are printed elsewhere in this issue for the reader’s inspection. By the signing of their respective Acts, these saints separated from their apostatizing mother and were constituted as individual congregations.

Reform of the church through separation when the church apostatizes is a legitimate form of church reformation. Separation is a form of church reformation called for in scripture.

30. A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land;

31. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

1. O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Bethhaccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction. (Jer. 5:30–6:1)

2. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

4. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

5. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. (Rev. 18:2, 4–5)

Separation is a form of church reformation called for in the Reformed confessions.

And that this may be the more effectually observed, it is the duty of all believers, according to the Word of God, to separate themselves from all those who do not belong to the church, and to join themselves to this congregation wheresoever God hath established it, even though the magistrates and edicts of princes be against it, yea, though they should suffer death or any other corporal punishment. Therefore all those who separate themselves from the same, or do not join themselves to it, act contrary to the ordinance of God. (Belgic Confession 28, in Confessions and Church Order, 61)

The reference in article 28 to “all those who do not belong to the church” is to all those whose membership remains in an apostatizing or apostate church. For example, in 1561, when the Belgic Confession was first published, there were many people who belonged to a church institute—the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, even though they belonged to a church institute, the Belgic Confession refers to them as “all those who do not belong to the church.” So also today, when a church institute sets itself on a course away from God’s word, it is essentially and in principle no longer the true church. The Lord will save his elect in her yet, but he also comes quickly to remove her candlestick. Those who remain in her do not belong to a true church institute but to an apostatizing church institute. They may be God’s people, but they are “all those who do not belong to the church” but to an apostatizing church. The calling of God’s people who find themselves in such a church is “to separate themselves from all those who do not belong to the church” by taking their church membership out of that church institute.

Separation is the form of church reformation practiced in the church throughout history, including the reformers’ separation from the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, the Afscheiding’s secession from the Dutch Reformed Church of the Netherlands in 1834, the Christian Reformed Church’s removing from the Reformed Church in America in 1857, and the Protestant Reformed Churches’ expulsion from the Christian Reformed Church in 1924.

Separation is the form of church reformation called for by Homer Hoeksema in his speech, “Reformation: Option or Mandate?”:

The second form of reformation is that of secession. When the carnal element begins to dominate; when the institute itself becomes corrupt; when the word is adulterated, the sacraments are profaned, false teachers tolerated, Christian discipline not exercised, or perverted; and when your protests are not heard but are futile, for you are persecuted on account of them; then your church is manifesting the marks of the false church, and then reformation through secession becomes mandatory. In obedience to the word, when it becomes a question of denying the word of God or leaving a certain institute, the question of a certain institute or preserving the true church—no believer, beloved, may hesitate. In obedience to the word, you must either seek affiliation where the marks of the true church are already manifest, or you must act to institute the church anew. (https://oldpathsrecordings.com/?wpfc_sermon=lectures)

In harmony with scripture, the confessions, the history of reformation in Christ’s church, and their spiritual forefathers, the saints who would become the members of First and Second Reformed Protestant churches reformed the church through separation from their apostatizing mother.

As the work of Jesus Christ in reforming his church, the Reformed Protestant Churches do not exist by the will of man but by the will of God. The denomination was born as the good fruit of a controversy regarding the doctrine of covenant fellowship. Without the controversy over God’s covenant fellowship, the denomination would never have come into the world. When Protestant Reformed sermons and articles and neglect of discipline made God’s covenant fellowship conditional upon the obedience of man, the people who would make up the Reformed Protestant Churches no longer had a place with mother. It was the truth of God’s gracious, unconditional covenant fellowship that carried the denomination into the world and gave it its existence. Therefore, the doctrine of gracious, unconditional covenant fellowship is the reason for Christ’s work of reforming his church in the Reformed Protestant denomination. Through this reformation the Lord Jesus Christ has brought his people to understand the truth of the unconditional covenant in a fuller development. This also means that the denomination stands over against any doctrine of conditional fellowship with God. These are the hallmarks of her existence in the world: her confession of the truth of God’s sovereign, gracious, unconditional fellowship with his people in Jesus Christ and her repudiation of the lie that man’s obedient working is that which in any way obtains God’s fellowship.

Manifestation of the Unity of Christ’s Body

The federation of the Reformed Protestant churches is also a manifestation of the unity of the body of Christ. The unity of the body of Christ is a precious gift of the Lord to his church. It is a spiritual unity, created by the Spirit of Christ, in which the members of Christ’s body are united in true faith. The foundation of this unity is Jesus Christ himself as he is revealed and known in the truth of his word. Therefore, the unity of the church is not a unity of personalities, similar earthly interests, geographical location, or other earthly things. Rather, the unity of the church is a unity in Christ and his truth.

19. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; 

20. And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;

21. In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

22. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. (Eph. 2:19–22)

The Reformed confessions also speak of this unity of the church in the faith of Christ.

We believe and profess one catholic or universal church, which is a holy congregation of true Christian believers, all expecting their salvation in Jesus Christ, being washed by His blood, sanctified and sealed by the Holy Ghost.

…Furthermore, this holy church is not confined, bound, or limited to a certain place or to certain persons, but is spread and dispersed over the whole world; and yet is joined and united with heart and will, by the power of faith, in one and the same Spirit. (Belgic Confession 27, in Confessions and Church Order, 58–60)

By their Act of Federation, the congregations of First and Second Reformed Protestant churches manifested this unity by the formation of a denomination, “agreeing in true faith” (Heidelberg Catechism, A 54, in Confessions and Church Order, 104).

That the unity of the body of Christ is universal was powerfully demonstrated by the Lord in his reformation of the church in the Philippines at the same time that he was forming the RPC. On May 16, 2021, the First Reformed Church in Bulacan, the mission fellowship in Leyte, and the two mission stations in Laguna, Manila, separated from the Protestant Reformed Churches in the Philippines (PRCP). The church in Bulacan, which also oversees the mission fellowship and the mission stations, is now known as the First Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan. This congregation is currently in communication with the RPC in North America to discuss the possibility of forming a sister-church relationship. Yes, indeed, “we believe and profess one catholic or universal church” (Belgic Confession 27, in Confessions and Church Order, 58).

The unity of the church is not the work of man but of the Spirit of Christ. The federation of the Reformed Protestant churches is a powerful testimony that the unity of the church is not the work of men. This point is especially significant because the members of the RPC have often been slandered as merely following men, whether this or that minister or elder. But when one considers what has happened in the space of a few short months—the establishment of a congregation in Michigan; the establishment of a congregation in Illinois; the gathering of a fellowship in Iowa; the establishment of a congregation in Bulacan, the Philippines, along with her mission fields and stations; the federation of two congregations into a denomination; and the initiation of talks toward a sister-church relationship, just to name a few—then it becomes abundantly obvious that the formation of the RPC is not the work of man but of God. There is not a man alive, nor a whole group of men, who could accomplish what God has accomplished in these few months. Jesus Christ, by his word and Spirit, has gone forth and accomplished what no man ever could. In many cases, while we men scratched our heads and wondered what we should do, God went ahead of us and built his church. Many times we were like those who dream, astonished as we witnessed God return the captivity of Zion (see Ps. 126). It has been the Lord’s doing to make the stone that the builders refused the head stone of the corner, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The Lord powerfully demonstrated that the unity of the church is his work and not the work of man through the grievous illness of Rev. Nathan Langerak. With Second Reformed Protestant Church newly founded and the Act of Federation meeting looming, God laid upon Rev. Langerak a heart affliction that left him hospitalized in critical condition. We thank God for preserving our brother and for the measure of restoration that he has been given. But the Lord was pleased to afflict Rev. Langerak right at the time that, from a human point of view, we might think that we most needed men. By this, God powerfully illustrated to all within and to all without that he alone builds his church and that he alone creates her unity, not us mere men. I suppose it would be too much to ask those outside to stop slandering us as being followers of men, but at least let everyone inside lay it to heart.

The federation of the Reformed Protestant churches also demonstrates that the denomination is not schismatic. The RPC love unity and seek it. True, we are not interested in a merely formal and external unity of name without the truth, which is no unity at all. But we love true unity as that is found in the word of God.

This is especially significant because the Reformed Protestant churches in North America and in the Philippines have been subjected to constant charges of schism for their separation from the PRC and the PRCP. The charge itself is wrong, for the separation of the members of these churches from the PRC and the PRCP was not the sin of schism on their part. Their separation was certainly a separation. It was certainly division. The members of the Reformed Protestant Churches have removed from the Protestant Reformed Churches and no longer have church membership there. But such division is the work of Jesus Christ himself, who came not to send peace on earth but a sword, and who came to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother, so that a man’s foes shall be they of his own household (Matt. 10:34–37). When the Lord Jesus Christ works such division by his word, those who are divided off from an apostatizing institution are not guilty of the sin of schism. Invariably, the denomination from which they depart will level the charge of schism against them. Thus it was for Luther, for De Cock, and for Hoeksema, who were all labeled as schismatics for their defense of the truth. But the charge is false and slanderous. The reality is that separation from an apostatizing denomination is not sinful schism but holy reformation. Let all who think that separation and division are schism remember the words of our Lord: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” (v. 34).

The federation of the First and Second Reformed Protestant churches into a denomination reveals that these churches are not inveterate schismatics but that these churches love unity and federation in the truth and seek it. One only has to read the Act of Federation to see this desire to manifest true unity in the truth. One only has to behold the fact that these churches are united in the common cause of the truth to see this desire for unity.

The federation of the First and Second Reformed Protestant churches also stands as a constant invitation to all those who are likeminded to join with these churches in their witness to the truth and their opposition to the lie. For all those who feel isolated in their churches because the lie is tolerated there or because one must search with a lantern to find the truth; for all those who desire to enjoy the unity and fellowship of the gospel; for all those who would confess the pure gospel without the admixture of error; for all those who would condemn the lie without equivocation; and for all those who know they must separate from their church and seek affiliation with another, there is a place for you to go with your church membership. There is a denomination for you to join. No thanks to man, who would most certainly spoil the whole thing if it belonged to him. But thanks only to God, who has reformed his church.