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 bringing his people "out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day" of Protestant sectism, and is restoring Zion as at first. It is not assumed that Brother Warner was right on every point of doctrine or in every application of a Scriptural text, but that the 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 the 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 than true Christianity possessed within the heart.
Thus its basis is as narrow as the New Testament on the one hand, and as broad as the New Testament on the other. May it ever go forward on this line in the spread of the truth to all the world.