Birth of a reformation; or, The life and labors of Daniel S. Warner

Preface

A quarter century has elapsed since the passing of D. S. Warner from the scenes of his earthly activity, and full forty years have gone since the beginning of the great reform of which his labors constituted so large a part. While there are many still living whose personal knowledge of him and his ministry will suffice to them for an encouraging testimony of Christian attainment and of God's marvelous use of human instrumentality when permitted to have his way, the time has come when the absence of any published account of this remarkable man begins to be felt. The rising generation and the generations that follow should have access to a study of such an example of Christian devotion and usefulness, as well as of God's faithfulness to one who will fully trust him. When it was announced that a biography was contemplated, the proposition at once met with hearty approval and encouragement.

That due to the lapse of years there should be some difficulty in securing the necessary data with reference to his early life is of course consequential. His brothers and sisters are all deceased. A nephew and a niece and some of his earlier acquaintances were interviewed, and correspondence was had with other relatives and acquaintances. The most valuable acquisition, however, was the use of his diaries, kindly granted by his son, D. Sidney Warner, now living in Canton, Ohio. These diaries do not cover all of his early ministerial career, but the quotations from them will reveal the Christian character of the man as well as show considerable of his itinerancy and of the facts of his life.

As to the source of information respecting the latter period of his ministry, when his work took the character of a reform, recourse has been had to the files of the

PREFACE 5

periodicals he edited and also to the personal recollections of some who were pioneers with him in the movement. Of these may be mentioned as giving particular information Mrs. Allie R. (Fisher) Allen, Lansing, Mich.; William N. Smith, North Star, Mich. ; David Leininger, Akron, Ind; Mr. and Mrs. J. N. Howard, Nappanee, Ind.; Mrs. Anna J. Slagle, Bucyrus, Ohio; Mr. and Mrs. B. E. Warren, Springfield, Ohio; and Mrs. Frankie Warner, Anderson, Ind.

It was my privilege to have a personal acquaintance with D. S. Warner and to be more or less closely associated with him during the last five years of his life. To one who never knew him personally no printed account can afford an adequate conception of what it was to come in contact with this wonderful ambassador of God, whose presence wrought conviction in the unregenerate, and inspired confidence and courage in the hearts of believers. The divine manifestations in his preaching, his prayers, and his ministrations can not be told. Many very striking instances of physical healing which we have not space to speak of attended his ministry ; but that these pages may reveal, if in no other light than the historical, that here is an example of true consecration, devotion, courage, diligence, humility, faith, patience, kindness, self-denial, and the Christian graces generally, that is worthy of being followed, is the earnest hope of

The Author.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION 11

A glance over Christian era — Early church divinely governed — Spiritual decline — A false church — Reformations — Sixteenth century reformation — Human rule — Characteristics of true church — A final reformation — Evil of sects — Protestantism in Revelation — Wondrous times upon us — God's call to his people — D. S. Warner a reformer — The correct attitude — Counterfeit movements.

Introduction

The life and labors of D. S. Warner are so closely associated with a religious movement that any attempt at his biography becomes in part necessarily a history of that movement. I have therefore chosen the terr:, Birth of a Reformation, as a part of the title of this book. Brother Warner (to use an appellation in keeping with the idea of universal Christian brotherhood) was doubtless chosen of God as an instrument for accomplishing a particular work. What that work was, why it may be called a reformation, and why, in particular, it may be considered the last reformation, a few words of explanation by way of introduction are offered the inquiring reader.

It will be necessary to take a brief glance over the Christian era and review some of the important events and conditions. We note the characteristics of the church in the days of the apostles, which, by reason of its recent founding and organization by the Holy Spirit, is naturally regarded as exemplary and ideal. It had no creed but the Scriptures and no government but that administered by the Holy Spirit, who *set the members in the body as it pleased him' — apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, pastors, etc. Thus subject to the Spirit, the early church was flexible, capable of expansion and of walking in all the truth and of adjusting itself to all conditions. It was in very essence the church, the whole, and not a section or part. The apostles and early believers did not restrict themselves and become a Jewish Christian sect or any other kind of sect. Peter's way of thinking would have thus limited him, for as a Jew he declined any particular interest in Gentile converts ; but the Lord through a vision changed his mind and advanced his understanding to include the universality of the Christian kingdom. The Holy Spirit in the heart was necessary, of course, to the successful government of the church by the Spirit, otherwise he could not have been understood. There were no dividing lines, for it was the will of the Lord particularly that there be "one fold and one shepherd." Jesus had prayed in behalf of the disciples "that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17: 21 ) . These conditions of being subject to the word and Spirit, of leaving an open door through which greater light and truth might enter as was necessary/and of possessing the love and unity of spirit that cemented the believers together and carried them through all their persecution, constituted the ideal and normal status of God's church on earth as he gave it beginning, of which it was ordained that there should be but one, only one, as long as the world should endure. "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling " (Eph. 4:4).

SPIRITUAL DECLINE

It was possible, of course, for the church to decline from her state of purity and thereby to forfeit her standing as the church. So long as her conflict with paganism lasted and the various forms of persecution tended to bring into exercise those principles and qualities which distinguished her from the world, she practically kept her first estate. When, however, the tide turned, persecutions ceased and Christianity came into favor and to be made the state religion of the Roman Empire, there were presented conditions favorable to every form of spiritual decline. Christians, instead of being longer persecuted, were protected, and to profess Christianity became popular and easy. The divine features of the church, by which she had been known for more than two hundred years, were lost. Every form of corruption came in. Human rule supplanted the divine, Holy Spirit, rule almost universally, both in the East and the West. The bishop of Rome, in particular, rose in prominence until he was made supreme head — pope — of the Holy Roman church. The reader of church history knows of the long eclipse of Christianity that followed, of the darkness and ignorance that reigned and gave to that period the name, Dark Ages. The true church, impossible of representation by such a colossal counterfeit as then appeared in her place and became in turn a persecuting power, could continue only in fragmentary form, in obscure places in the wilderness of the Roman Empire. She could not be manifest in her evangelizing capacity, but was persecuted. Millions of God's people, who refused allegiance to this false system of Christianity, were slain as heretics during this period. Thus, in the historical foreground we see, not the pure woman representing the church of God, but we see an apostate woman seated "upon a scarlet-colored beast," the Roman state.

"And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication : and upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery* Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (Rev. 17: 4-6).

The Word and the Spirit, the two divine authorities, were set aside. In the place of the former were the traditions of the Roman Church, and for the latter was substituted human rule and authority. These two divine witnesses prophesied in sackcloth during those long centuries, until such time as they should again function in their proper sphere in the church — I say until such time : for we are not to assume that in the design of God this state of affairs should always continue. True Christianity was not to perish from the earth. The book of Daniel prophesies of the papacy, "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time" (Dan. 7: 25). (See the time-periods of the various epochs of the Christian era in our chapter A Prophetic Time. ) For this vast agency of unrighteousness the time should come when the cup of iniquity should be full and the judgments of God should be executed and his people delivered. When Christ comes, his bride will have made herself ready, which implies that God's people will have been gathered out of spiritual captivity and brought again to Zion. Light and truth and the Holy Spirit rule will have been restored as at the beginning.

REFORMATIONS

Now the rise out of apostasy was expressed by a series of reformations, not by gradual ascent corresponding to the decline. The "mystery of iniquity," which crystallized in the blasphemous "man of sin," had already begun to Tvork in Paul's day, and the drift into spiritual darkness on the part of the professing church was without specific opposition. But, on the other hand, to break away from conditions apostate always means war with infernal powers. The wrong is endured until a rising sentiment of protest breaks out with stern denunciation. God raises up instruments for this purpose. John Wyclif, in the fourteenth century, denounced the errors of the so-called church and the conduct of the monks and also had sufficient light to see the papacy as the "man of sin" foretold by the apostle Paul. His reform efforts, however, centered mostly in the translation of the Bible into English, which work, in spite of the attempt by Rome to destroy it, God graciously caused to be preserved.

John Huss, a little later, took Wyclif's attitude against the corruptions of the church and was burned at the stake as a heretic. His martyrdom furnished the occasion for him to utter this prophecy: "You are now going to burn a goose [Huss meaning goose in the Bohemian language] , but in one hundred years there will arise a swan whom you can neither roast nor boil." True to this prophecy, in one hundred years came the intrepid Luther, under whose leadership history records the great reformation of the sixteenth century. Church and state were at this time united, which gave this reformation a political prominence, as it resulted in the change to Protestantism of two strong nations, Germany and England. What the sixteenth century reformation accomplished spiritually was, among other things, the bringing to light of the Scriptural doctrine of justification by faith in Christ instead of by priestly absolution.

It could not have been expected that all the Scriptural truths and principles should at any time or by any one reformer be recovered from the rubbish under which they had been buried for a thousand years. There have been numerous reforms, bringing out various truths that had been obscured by the apostasy. Thus Truth in her progress upward to the Scriptural level, has arisen only by successive steps, God having to use human instrumentalities that were limited by the prevailing tendencies and beliefs of the times. Each reformer naturally dealt with conditions that were most conspicuous from his view-point and was exercised in questions of truth that applied only to such conditions. His reform work was not final in character, inasmuch as it left some errors still uncorrected. Hence the progress upward was by a succession of reforms, each, as a general thing, springing from a higher level of truth and spiritual attainment than those preceding. With the great decline into apostasy now in the past, the church of God was disposed to rise out of confusion, her destiny being the attainment of her original standing, when it could be said that her sun should "no more go down."

HUMAN RULE INSTEAD OF DIVINE

The apostasy of the church, as one writer has expressed it, came by "ecclesiastical ambition and degeneracy." The human element got in the way where there should have been only the divine. There is necessarily the human element in the work of God, for Christian work is God and man working together; but in the true relation man is God's instrumentality and is altogether in subjection to the divine Head, who rules over all. When the human element supplants, gets in the way of, or acts in the place of, the divine, we have a fundamental error that always results in apostasy. This human ecclesiasticism, always more or less intolerant, reached its autocratic perfection in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and constituted the "man of sin" who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped ; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2Thess. 2:3, 4).

The spirit of human government in church affairs has shown itself in, or has followed in the wake of, every reform movement of the past. The Spirit of God worked in the movement to accomplish good, but was always checked by this baleful element. Luther meant well but was himself dogmatic and intolerant. He held to many doctrines of Catholicism whose wrongs he could not see. He did not make proper allowance that others besides himself might be right, or at least have some truth. Neither did he or his associates or followers leave the way open for God to lead into more truth, much less the whole truth. Thus the reformation of the sixteenth century, while it recovered from the debris of apostasy the doctrine of justification by faith, became the occasion for Protestant sects, human-ruled institutions, and these were succeeded by other sects. Some of these have been as intolerant, inflexible, and as unlike primitive Christianity as the Roman Catholic Church itself.

Church government, as humanized in the sects, has taken forms other than the hierarchic. We have the episcopal, or rule by bishops; the presbyterian, or rule by presbyters; the congregational, or rule by the local brotherhood. Our object here is, not to discuss which of these forms most nearly resembles or is most different from the Scriptural, but merely to show that man rule has manifested itself in various ways.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE CHURCH

The true church of God, comprising all Christians, has in her normal state under her divine head certain essential characteristics which make her exclusively the church, the whole and not a part. These might be expressed as follows:

1. Possession of divine spiritual life. If the church does not possess this she is not Christ's body and therefore not the church. She must know the Spirit of God.

2. Disposition to obey all Scripture and to let the Spirit have his way and rule. This constitutes her safety in matters of doctrine and government.

3. An attitude receptive to any further truth and light. This safeguards against dogmatism and a spirit of infallibility and intolerance, against interpreting Christianity in the light of traditions and old ideas.

4. Acknowledgment of good wherever found and the placing of no barrier that would exclude any who might be Christians. This makes salvation, a holy life, and a Christian spirit the only test of fellowship, and disapproves all human standards of church membership and fellowship.

We repeat that these constitute the Scriptural standard of the church and characterize her in her unity and integrity. It is by lacking in one or more of these essentials that a sect is a sect. In the rise of the church out of apostasy any reformation that does not develop to the full the essentials that characterize the church in her wholeness and completeness must necessarily fall short of being the final reformation and must leave a cause for further reformation. This is the explanation of the existence of the so-called Christian sects, viewing them in the most charitable light. The Wesleys and their early associates sought for deeper personal spirituality as well as better spiritual association than was afforded in the state church of England. They brought to light and gave particular prominence to the doctrine of sanctification by faith and the witness of the Holy Spirit. Their work was a reform ; but as in that day the question of division among Christians was not prominent, nor was the question of the one true church understood or appreciated, their work took definite form in a body humanly organized and called Methodist. The Campbells had considerable light on the unity of the church, and proposed the Scriptures alone as a basis on which all Christians could unite. But they blindly shut themselves in on a point of doctrine by associating entrance into the kingdom or church with the act of immersion in such manner as to make a wall between them and other Christians who should give evidence of having received salvation and therefore church membership, otherwise than through baptism. Thus they made themselves a sect. John Winebrenner had the correct idea of the church as comprising all the saved, and his work was on an unsectarian basis. Lacking, however, in the quality of letting the Spirit of God rule, eldership organizations were soon set up, a man rule came in, and they also became a sect. Inflexible as to doctrine, they closed the door of progress on themselves, rejected the truth on holiness, and became one of the most narrow of sects, though bearing the Scriptural name, Church of God.

A FINAL REFORMATION

It must follow, and the assumption is already established, that a reformation which takes in full the characteristics defining the church in her wholeness must thereby reach the New Testament standard and therefore be the last, or final, reformation. No reformation can make good such claim if it does not proceed on whole-church lines or principles. If a reform does progress on those universal principles, we need look no farther for, nor await future years to reveal, the final reformation resulting in the restoration of all things to the Scriptural ideal.

The errors of the religious world are, and have been, the failure to so preach salvation truth that people may obtain and enjoy full deliverance from sin; failure to conform to the divine standard on all lines ; the human ecclesiastical system, which hinders Holy Spirit organization and government; and separation of God's people into parties, thus making true church relation impossible. A movement that comprehends a correction of all these, and meets the Scriptural standard, must therefore fill the measure of reform.

Reader, it is claimed for the movement represented in the teaching and labors of D. S. Warner, that it possesses these elements of finality, that by it God is bring-

:o e:rth :f a refcpinlation

ing his people "out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day" of Protestant seclism, and is restoring Zion as at first. It is not assumed mat Brother Warner was right on every point of doctrine or in every application of a Scriptural text, but that die movement, in addition to being based on correct Scriptural principles otherwise, possesses that flexibility and spirit of progress by which it adjusts itself as God gives light

1. It teaches the Scriptural process of salvation, by which people may obtain a real deliverance from sin and have the Holy Spirit as a witness to their salvation.

2. The truth only, and obedience thereto, is its motto; and it recognizes the rule of the Holy Spirit in the organization and government of the church.

3. It does not assume to possess all the truth, but stands committed thereto, holding an open door to die entrance of any further light and truth.

4. The spirit of the movement is to acknowledge good wherever found and to regard no door into the church other than salvation and no test of fellowship other man true Christianity possessed within the heart.

Thus its basis is as narrow as the New Testament on the one hand, and as broad as die New Testament on the other. May it ever go forward on mis line in the spread of the truth to all me world

ANOTHER VIEW OF SECTS

In tr.e r.rs: r'_ = :e. 5r::f .v/e ::r.:::y.7Z :/. :---:. •••/-.:'. e necessarily bad as factions, they are associated more or less with good. Many of them in their origin followed reform movements which apparently had divine sanction and were progressive in Christianity, and many of them have upheld truth which when preached was productive of good and brought salvation results. But here it should be noted, that whatever of salvation work has been accomplished has been directly by the Spirit of God in individuals, quite apart from any sectarian agency. It must be said, too, that whatever has resulted from Christian endeavor or influence and expenditure of means, whether in home or foreign lands, would have been in greater degree had the church back of these efforts been one spiritual whole instead of many sectarian divisions. So, when we come to apply analysis to this question of sects, we find that they are in no sense good. That they are called churches is but the part of confusion, for in the popular mind and in actual practise it tends to identify sects with the divine church, whereas in Scripture church always means something other than sects. Bodies that are differentiated by the isms of men are not, and never can be, Scripturally churches, for except in the local geographical sense the church takes no plural form. There is a distinction between the true people of God as constituting the divine church and the human institutions called churches that have divided them and placed them in unnatural and unscriptural relations. The true church of God, by virtue of comprising all the saved and therefore being a unit, places sects in comparison only as false churches. A commentator truthfully remarks, "False Christendom divided into very many sects is truly Babylon, that is, confusion.*' (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary.) Thus sects, because they are a hindrance to proper Christian activity and because they present a spectacle of religious confusion, professing to be churches when they can only be false, are bad.

This is no disparagement of the many noble men and women of God who have been connected with sects and have gone on to their heavenly reward, whose accomplished good was from the divine source and not from the sectarian. They may have honestly loved their sect, but in this they were honestly misplacing their love. It was the religious association with their fellow Christians that they loved, and this, had they only known it, was not enhanced but rather hindered by the sectarian distinction. They will not find these distinctions in heaven. If they really loved the sect, they had to leave that love behind, for it could not be included with such Christian excellence as entitled them to heaven. Thus our good parents and grandparents and the long line of reformers and Christian worthies receive their heavenly reward quite independent of the sectarian institutions that divided them here.

EVIL OF SECTS IN POSITIVE LIGHT

We have shown why sects are bad in rather a negative light, as being confusion and therefore a hindrance to proper Christian representation in the world. They are evil in a more positive sense, and it was because of this that God prompted Brother Warner and others in the reform to utter such sharp judgment against them. Any body of Christian people that arises and fails to qualify on all principles that mark the church of God as a whole, that proceeds to human organization and rule instead of recognizing only Holy Spirit organization and government, at once limits itself and becomes thereby a sect, a false representation of the church. As a false church it is soon a corrupt institution in which human pride and every element contrary to God may exist and become active. The human will, intended for the rule of our bodies and things terrestrial, things which belong to man's province.

becomes sadly out of place when exercised in any sphere or capacity that belongs to God. In such sphere it becomes a rival of God, a monster evil of great proportions, a distinctive satanic spirit, always opposing the true work of God.

BEASTLY CHARACTER IN PROPHECY

This man rule in a province to which God alone has rightful claim (for indeed it exercises the prerogative of God when it presumes to direct God's work and people) has characterized all Protestant sectism just as it did Roman Catholicism, only in milder aspect. Man rule is represented in prophetic symbols by beastly character, whether it applies to political or ecclesiastical government. Thus in the 7th chapter of Daniel we have the symbols of four great beasts, representing in their respective order four universal kingdoms, as follows: Babylonia, Medo- Persia, Greece, and Rome. These were temporal powers that ruled the world. When a mere temporal power is indicated the prophetic symbol used is a dumb beast. If a beast or any part of such symbol is represented as speaking or exercising human propensities, then the thing indicated is also an ecclesiastical power. Thus the fourth beast in Daniel 7, which represents the Roman Empire, exercises first as a dumb animal ; but directly a particular horn appears among the horns of this beast, and is given eyes to see and a mouth to speak great things, which indicates ecclesiastical exercise, so that we have here Rome first as a heathen power, and then as a so-called Christian power speaking great things, making war against the saints, etc.

In Revelation 13 we find this same Roman Catholic power represented by a beast to whom was given "a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies** and power "to make war with the saints and to overcome them.*'

These anthropomorphic qualities given to a beast indicate man rule in ecclesiastical matters, a thing which is at once blasphemy in God's sight, utterly obnoxious and foreign to him.

PROTESTANTISM IN REVELATION 13

Beginning with the 11th verse of Revelations 13, directly after the prophecy of the Roman Catholic hierarchic power, we have the spectacle of a second beast, having two horns like a lamb but speaking as a dragon. The fact that he speaks gives him the quality of ecclesiastical rule. In this beast we have man rule in the form of Protestantism. He has a lamb-like aspect instead of the vicious, threatening character of Rome in the days of her power; but he has the voice of a dragon, which betrays his diabolical spirit. He exercises as much power in the world as Roman Catholicism did before him. He deceives by doing "great wonders," displaying spiritual manifestations. He causes people to worship the first beast (Catholicism) by copying its standards and doing reverence to a human ecclesiastical system; and an image to the first beast is made whenever a sect is organized. He causes the image to "speak" (exercise man rule) and to persecute those who, instead of bowing to the sect image, are disposed to exercise in their spiritual freedom and give allegiance alone to God.

Thus we see so-called Protestantism as a particular form of beast religion, a distinctive spirit that animates and dominates the sectarian system. The beast element is the man rule. We are not speaking merely of human instrumentality, which God certainly uses in his church when the will is wholly submitted to him and susceptible to his Spirit, but of that exercise and dominance in ecclesiastical matters which, as apart from God, is distinctly human. Such prevails more or less as a system in all sects, gives occasion for jealousy, pride, and emulation, wants to be let alone, and opposes any reform that threatens it. This is the element which naturally becomes disturbed at the preaching of the truth that exposes it, and which became a persecuting power against Brother Warner and all who executed the divine judgment against false religion. In this deceptive form of evil covering almost four hundred years Satan has had his seat. When the present reformation shall have resulted in bringing God's people out of sectarian divisions and placing them on the whole-church basis, Satan, driven to some new project, will muster the Gog and Magog forces in a last conflict against the saints, which shall end with the utter destruction of those forces by the judgment fires.