Excerpts from a Message by D.S. Warner c.1879
A church that has no voice to shake sinners and professors, no voice that “[turns] the world upside down,” that makes not the wicked flee, the devil howl, and persecution rage–that church may have “gods many,” but has not the true God dwelling in her. A church that has the great and Holy One in her midst always produces a commotion in the world.
Preachers invite sinners into their folds without requiring a particle of saving grace, and even flatter them that they are already pretty good and need but join the church. But as the Lord liveth, He is going to clear away this ecclesiastical rubbish.
I am compelled in the fear of God to speak of the evil of sectarianism. This is the most destructive bane that God has ever suffered the devil to sow in His kingdom. It is the very mildew of hell, that spreads its blasting curse over nearly all the precious fruit of the Lord’s vineyard. Is it right for the church to be divided into a plurality of sects or denominations, with their respective human creeds and party names? In the light of truth, we are compelled to answer, No. They are not of divine origin. Christ is the source of all true union among His disciples, while the devil is the instigation of divisions in the church.
Sects and holiness are antagonistic to each other. The fire of true holiness burns up all the fences that Satan has placed between the saints. It is a solemn fact that adherence in different denominations is the devil’s wedge, whereby the unity of the Spirit, so perfectly procured in the grace of perfect love, is again destroyed. Membership in a fragmentary church takes more souls off of God’s altar than does everything else together.
The division of the church into parties is the greatest impediment to the conversion of the world. Oh, the thousands of souls that are being lost to all eternity through the selfish, wicked, and carnal spirit of churchism! God is dishonored, and infidelity stalks abroad–the result of a divided house.
Though the heaps of sectarian chaff have reached the magnitude of mountains, God has some wheat scattered through them, and He will have it separated for His garner.
The great holiness movement is shaking harder than ever. We have allied ourselves to the Power that does the shaking, and feel a kind of holy joy at the falling walls, reeling Babels and ecclesiastical fortifications that cannot stand the grand holiness shock. In anticipation, we enjoy the grand smash-up of things semi-religious–this kind of fashionable moral froth, too often called “religion.”
Amen. Let the conflict come. God will have a pure church. He will shake the chaffy works of the devil, though all hell be moved in rage; though Gog and Magog surround the camp of the saints.
Dear reader, I am aware that I have here written things that will be unwelcome to many, truths that will assail and stir up many prejudices; but in doing so I have determined to cast from me the fear of man, and clear my conscience in the sight of God.
I am aware that this will elicit storms of persecution, but in the name of the Lord it must come. God will be glorified in the escape of His holy children from all human enclosures into the “one” and identical “fold of Jesus Christ.”
