It has been almost three years since the first issue of Sword and Shield hit mailboxes in June 2020.

In the chairman’s opening remarks at the recent annual meeting of Reformed Believers Publishing, I said that as one surveys the past issues of our magazine, he can see the ground that has been traveled and now recognize the recovery of the true Reformed line and confession that Sword and Shield has brought about. One sees too a devastation in the wake of that recovery of the truth.

You can see that now.

The clash of the battlefield when it moves forward across territory brings with it gruesome scenes of bodies, the scorched earth, and the all-out wreckage of war. That same reality happens in the war for the truth. There is a certain devastation because of that.

What do we now witness after almost three years of bitter fighting for the pure gospel of sovereign grace against the lie in our mother church, as that war has been waged on the pages of Sword and Shield?

When we gave again a vigorous witness to the gospel of God’s absolutely sovereign grace through our magazine, no one knew or could see where that would lead and what would be the outcome. With all our hearts we desired that this renewed witness to the truth would work reformation, a reviving, and a return to the pure gospel of sovereign grace within our beloved Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). This was our hope and longing. Our aim was simply to unleash the truth again after it had been held under for so long and even silenced in our mother church. We desired with all our hearts to have for ourselves again the full-throated confession of the gospel of sovereign, particular grace that we once enjoyed and that filled our hearts and to experience again the glory and joy of that gospel. We wanted to have back in our grip the fullness of our heritage in the truth that we always believed and confessed, to have that truth ring out once again, and to rally together in that glorious confession.

We were naïve.

We can see that now.

The PRC declared all-out war against us. They unleashed fury on us. They slandered us as fanatics, antinomians, hyper-Calvinists, schismatics, and whatnot else. Then they cast us and our testimony out of the synagogue and deposed faithful officebearers. This was only because of our determination to give a clear and unequivocal witness to God’s absolutely sovereign predestination; sovereign, particular grace; and God’s unconditional covenant of friendship with his elect, established and fully realized in Jesus Christ according to God’s eternal counsel. Only because we proclaimed that God is God and that salvation is only of the Lord, we were cast out.

Since then a fierce fight has ensued on the pages of Sword and Shield for the pure gospel of sovereign grace against the lie that had raised its head in our mother church. The clash has been pronounced and sharp.

What has been the outcome?

What is that devastation that we can see now on the swath of battle behind us?

The Protestant Reformed clergy and the majority of the membership have decisively rejected our testimony to the pure gospel of grace and our distinctively Protestant Reformed heritage, and they have refused to return to the old paths. For years the men in leadership in the PRC saw themselves and promoted themselves as staunch custodians of the faith and those who supremely maintained the true line of what was “Reformed” and who also boasted of being even PROTESTANT REFORMED. They wanted to be identified with the old, great reformers, especially the reformer of 1924, Herman Hoeksema; and they were proud to claim themselves as his spiritual sons.

In what is now their wholesale rejection of our witness to that very truth and heritage, they reveal themselves as apostates. It is now apparent that all their boasting and claims were the mere pretenses of the apostate, who built and garnished the tombs of the prophets and blessed their memory, while killing Christ afresh and reviling his people. By its defense and fight for the truth, Sword and Shield has exposed, for everyone to see, who the clergy in the PRC really are and what the Protestant Reformed denomination really is. Sword and Shield on its pages has thrown a light on a brood of quislings, who were hiding undercover for decades in the PRC. The leadership and clergy of the PRC are men who actually despise Herman Hoeksema and his theology in spite of their loud, public, high praise of him. For years they successfully camouflaged their hatred of him and his theology. Like beautiful, whited sepulchers full of dead men’s bones, these men covered their lies with a cloak of pious externals and vaunted, boasted claims of Protestant Reformed orthodoxy. They actually chafed and suffocated under Herman Hoeksema’s theology that gave all the glory to God and none to man. Sword and Shield has thrown a light on that and flushed them out of hiding and exposed their project that was designed slowly, piece by piece, and quietly to dismantle the whole system of truth for which that reformer of 1924 had witnessed and given his life. Sword and Shield is the strongman that gave these impostors the shove they needed to come out with it, to stop hesitating on their already-decided path, and to get on to where they have always wanted to go. Sword and Shield forced them to finish their project of a complete rejection of the theology of Herman Hoeksema that had been underway for decades.

You can see this now.

Sword and Shield has uncovered what in my mind is at the heart of the doctrinal rot and apostasy of the PRC. The Protestant Reformed Churches were given the fullest development of the truth of God’s covenant in the history of the church on earth, and the PRC had the clearest manifestation of the Reformed truth and faith ever given to a denomination by God. Sword and Shield has now exposed the PRC’s apostasy from that truth.

Just one poignant illustration will suffice to demonstrate this sad but astounding reality: the April 2022 issue of Sword and Shield. This very significant issue demonstrated an apostasy like none other before it in the PRC. That Sword and Shield issue gave an extensive treatment to an official Protestant Reformed document regarding the heresy trial of the PRC’s heretic Rev. Hubert De Wolf, who was finally condemned officially by the Protestant Reformed Churches in 1953.¹ Sword and Shield also gave careful, detailed documentation that the current writings and sermons by Protestant Reformed theologians, professors, and ministers and recent synodical decisions by the PRC are the very same heresy as that of Rev. Hubert De Wolf, who overthrew the gospel in the Protestant Reformed Churches and worked to destroy these churches by leading a majority of the members back to the Christian Reformed Church. 

The response of every professor, minister, elder, and member of the Protestant Reformed Churches to Sword and Shield’s utterly damning and irrefutable exposure of gross apostasy has been only silence! Deafening silence. The stench of that rot does not bother or affect them. They do not care. The theology of Protestant Reformed professors and ministers is the very same damnable heresy of the schismatics of 1953.

This matter itself is whoredom for the PRC. It demonstrates that the denomination has consciously and deliberately forsaken her glorious privilege of the distinctively Protestant Reformed heritage given to her in 1924 and graciously restored to her in 1953. Demonstrated to everyone who cares to see is that the Protestant Reformed Churches are spiritually bankrupt. The once glorious and queenly denomination no longer has even the right of a separate existence in the Reformed church world. She ingloriously and shamefacedly has to submit to her former foes and give up all her treasures and join with them.

Even though for almost three years, through a clear witness and testimony, Sword and Shield has called for reformation and a return to the old paths, the response by the majority of Protestant Reformed clergy and membership is an astounding cold disinterest and an unwillingness to return to the distinctively Reformed confession of their fathers. The Protestant Reformed denomination is shown in all this to be the proverbial sow that was washed and has gone back to wallow in the mire.

You can see that stunning devastation now.

The Protestant Reformed denomination has refused instruction, rebuke, and the call to reformation by Sword and Shield. Instead, her response has been a whore’s forehead. She refuses to blush and repent. She has become hardened. She hates the right way. She wants lovers elsewhere. In the total rejection of the witness of Sword and Shield, the Protestant Reformed house is left desolate (Matt 23:38).

Manifest is God’s severest judgment of the Protestant Reformed denomination. She had the fullest development of the Reformed truth. She despised it. She turned away from it. This was hidden and covered up for years. It was secret. God knew it. He has now split it wide open for all to see. “Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle”
(1 Sam. 3:11). There has been a turning away from God and his truth—at first in secret, for a long time undercover and hidden from the eyes of men, but now openly and in a hardened refusal to repent when God sent them prophets and clear testimony against their departure. Against this testimony they respond by mocking in vengeful hate the truth witnessed to them and reviling those who give that testimony. It is impossible to renew unto repentance those who had the purest revelation of God and his truth and who harden themselves and turn away from it. This is the New Testament teaching of Hebrews 6:4–6. In the New Testament dispensation, this applies not only to individuals but to denominations as well. Reformation is no longer possible now for the PRC. There will not be another reformation in the PRC. It is urgent for God’s saints still lingering in that institution, and they must understand this. They must not look to any of the Protestant Reformed theologians, ministers, or leaders. The PRC have rejected the leaders and prophets whom God raised up to testify to the truth and to work reformation. In judgment God will not give the PRC any more reformers. God already gave them, and the PRC cast them out.

Now manifested is a most dreadful judgment of God upon the PRC. Sword and Shield has exposed that the extent of the apostasy of the PRC is nothing less than the total corruption of sheer Arminianism that now manifests itself. This is the fateful, ultimate idolatry that makes man God. This then also explains, in light of Romans 1:18–32, the further judgment of God of a rampant, gross sexual perversion of every sort let loose and shown in the top ranks of Protestant Reformed clergy and eldership and pervading the entire denomination to its membership. All of this perversion, which was hidden for years, is now providentially split wide open for all to see. In this is revealed the stunning and awesome judgment of God that he gives over to vile affections and moral atrocities men who had and knew the truth but held it under and turned away from it.

You can see that now.

The Protestant Reformed denomination, her clergy, and her membership are now exposed to themselves. They now should see that they are not what they claimed to be. The outcome after three years of controversy is that the Protestant Reformed clergy and membership are exposed to themselves as apostates from the Protestant Reformed truth that was given to them. Sword and Shield has uncovered that they are not truly Protestant Reformed at all. Rather, the glorious truth that God gave to them through Herman Hoeksema has been rejected and is now lost to them. History repeats itself here. The schismatics of 1953 believed that they were the ones who were truly Protestant Reformed and that they represented what was Protestant Reformed. After a long and fierce battle for God’s covenant at that time, it was revealed to the schismatics who they really were. They were finally compelled to admit that. They were in actuality Christian Reformed. They had to make a sorry and shameful trek back to the Christian Reformed Church.

You can see that connection now for the present PRC.

Since the beginning of Reformed Believers Publishing, Sword and Shield has been marching forward and onward as a juggernaut in the battle for God’s covenant and the pure gospel of grace, destroying the lie and bringing God’s saints freedom from its tyranny and oppression. The Lord has privileged Reformed Believers Publishing and its Sword and Shield to maintain his truth that has been cast away by the PRC and to maintain it vigorously against all assaults. We have that truth now. It is seen that we are the continuation of what is truly Protestant Reformed. We are not ashamed to say that. We boast in that. We confess it is all by God’s grace to us. In spite of all the slander against us, God has vindicated us and our movement and Sword and Shield as reformation and as a return to his truth, once delivered to the saints. It was and has been reformation. It was not schism. God has shown it.

There was a liberation too in the battle for the truth. You have seen photos of the happy faces of those beleaguered and oppressed people in the aftermath of war, weeping for joy at their liberation by the army that came to set their country free again. In Sword and Shield we experience too this same joy of liberation and the excitement of solid spiritual food and its enrichment. Reading its pages, the gold tumbles out issue after issue. We stuff our pockets with the regained booty of gospel truth that was taken away from us by our mother church. The magazine has become priceless to us. Truly, because of our magazine we enjoy a remarkable awareness of spiritual reviving and refreshment. We recall what life was like before Sword and Shield, and we cannot imagine life without it. We shudder even to think of having to go back to the life of spiritual exile and the wasteland that became our lot in the PRC.

You can see this now.

Sword and Shield has faithfully done its work. It has brought to many liberation from the lie and great freedom and rejoicing in the truth once again.

Christ commands his people still lingering in Babylon to come out and to stand with us in the heritage of the truth of his absolutely sovereign grace and his unconditional covenant with all the elect.

And he leaves a fearful warning to those who refuse: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4).

As friend, you see it now.

As foe, you must admit that now.

Our boast is in the Lord. Our confession is that the witness we have is of pure grace to us. We are privileged to maintain God’s glorious truth and to persevere in that truth.

Praise God.