Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner

by A. L. Byers

"Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:12). Who would accept as a gift a few bushels of wheat scattered through a great heap of chaff and dirt? And think you that God will accept the church in her present condition? No, indeed; the gold must first be separated from the dross. The bride must dissolve her unholy friendship with the world, in which she is guilty of spiritual adultery in the sight of God (Jas. 4:4). She must put away all her rival gods, and adorn herself in robes of spotless white, before prepared as a bride for her husband. The Bible most assuredly teaches that God will separate the chaff from the wheat before he comes to garner home his church. To accomplish this he is converting Jacob from an open machine to a separator....

When the "rushing mighty wind" from heaven strikes the gathered heaps of stubble and chaff and begins to "scatter them," people think the church is being ruined; but this fan is in the hand of the Lord Jesus, and it will not carry a grain of wheat off his floor, and why fret about that which is not meet for the Master's use? "What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." Let the wind from heaven drive it, and the fire consume it, "and thou [even in this scatterment] shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel."

In the prophet Micah, chapter 4, and verses 1, 2, we have the mountain of the house of the Lord (the church) established, and the law going "forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." In the 10th verse we have recorded the captivity, or "falling away" of the church—"Thou shalt go even to Babylon." And, in order to restore her purity, the Lord commands the following severe measures in verse thirteen: "Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people: and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth."

Threshing and separating, purging and consuming is the order of God, in the day of the Refiner. Many think we must so temper the gospel as to preserve peace in the church, notwithstanding her sin and idols. But, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth [peace with sin]? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." So answers the Lord. His "fan is in his hand," and he would rather blow the church to atoms and secure a little clean wheat by itself than see it prosper in peace and multitudes and under mortgage to Satan, and bearing his brand mark, i. e., spots of sin. For this purpose, says Jesus, "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straightened till it be accomplished!" (Luke 12:49,50). Jesus intimates that the work of refining the church with the Holy Ghost fire could not begin until he himself had passed through the ordeal of suffering and death.

"For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many" (Isa. 66:15,16). Here is the fire, sword, and division that Christ came to send on earth. Its shaking and purifying power was first manifest on the day of Pentecost. This light makes Israel see her condition and cry out, "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" "Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea." "When thus it shall be in the midst of the land among the people, there shall be as a shaking of an olive-tree, and as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done" (Isa. 24:15,13). "And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit" (v. 18). There is no escape from the sweeping fire of holiness but into the pit of sin; and all that can not "abide his coming" are "like chaff, which the wind driveth away."

But nowhere in the Bible is the line more clearly drawn between the wheat and the chaff, the gold and the dross, than in our key-note text to this entire subject. What shall remain after the "once more" shaking? Nothing but the divine elements of the "kingdom, which can not be moved," and which Paul represents as "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" (Rom. 14:17). These only remain in the heart that has passed through the crisis. Halleluiah! But what is thereby removed? Answer: All "things that are shaken" and that "are made." By the first class we understand everything that flinches and shakes before the searching light and sin-exterminating gospel of Christ; every vein of our nature, every motion "flesh and spirit," every temper of the mind and habit in life that does not perfectly harmonize with the "righteousness of God revealed" in the Bible, will naturally shake beneath the voice of the Holy One, and must, therefore, be removed. The second class—all "things that are made"—denotes every thing that is not original: every phase of our moral being that is not implanted by the hand of God. Or, in other words, everything adhering to us that was produced by Satan, sin, or the perversion of our moral being. As the Lord says, "Every plant that my Father has not planted, shall be rooted up." This includes inbred sin. We have all along assumed the existence of this besetting foe. Yet we are aware that a very few deny the fact. But we think David settles this matter in the 51st Psalm, where he declares that, as fallen creatures, our very being is "conceived" and "shapen" in the mold of sin and iniquity. Paul also avers that we are "by nature the children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3); and that we are "cut out of the olive-tree [Adamic root] which is wild by nature" (Rom. 11:24).

But why multiply texts? Observation must necessarily teach everybody that children are possessed with a perverse nature long before the knowledge of right and wrong is developed. Justified Christians almost uniformly confess this same inward trouble. The remaining question is, Can we get rid of it in this life? To decide this, we have but to ascertain whether it is original, or the result of the fall. That it formed no part of the likeness of God in the soul, is very certain. It is therefore the "works of the devil," and just what Christ "came to destroy." It shakes, flashes out and roils up when pierced by the sword of the Lord, and must, therefore, be removed from the soul.

But the words of Paul apply to the church, as well as to the individual. It is designed to assay and remove the dross of the whole body of Christ. Before the great holiness reform had shed its benign influence upon the Christian world, and to some extent raised the church out of the narrow rut of churchism into a deeper and broader loyalty to God and unselfish love for humanity, the idea of getting saved from "your church" would have been regarded as blasphemy. But, thanks to the Lord! a purer light and higher standard of truth now compel the trumpeters of God all along the line of holiness to insist on salvation from all "our churches." But it may be asked, What is it that we must be saved from in "our churches"? Surely there must be some way to discriminate between that which is pernicious and that which is of God. Now, I know of no corner from which to run off this line but the one that Paul points out: "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid," and, "This word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made." God has founded one body—one church, fold, or kingdom. In it he has placed every element that is essential to its work, its prosperity, and its perpetuity. His wisdom has adapted it to all ages of time and conditions of men. Its faith was delivered to the saints once for all. Its principles and precepts are the last testament, the final and immutable will of the eternal God. This divine organization is invested with such absolute symmetry and perfection that to attempt the slightest modification of its divine unity or polity is wicked presumption in the sight of its divine Founder, and incurs the curses and forfeits all the blessings of God's Holy Book. Now, since the work of entire sanctification is designed to elevate the church to her normal and perfect condition in the sight of God, it must shake out and purge away every existing element that was not originally implanted by the hand of the Lord. This test, I think, is one in which all true Christians agree. Indeed, if we were to untie from this moorage we should soon be driven to sea without compass or chart; we should virtually open the door for every tradition of Rome and invention of error.

Starting, then, from this corner-stone of divine truth, established at Jerusalem nearly nineteen hundred years ago, and with the Bible as our compass and field notes, let us run off a line.

1. Between the true and false spirits in the church—let us "try the spirits whether they are of God." "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." But the party spirit, so prevalent in the churches, is not of Christ, hence must be removed, purged out of the heart. A zeal that springs from anything but pure, unmixed love for God and humanity, a spirit that would even promote holiness, or the conversion of sinners, partly to build up "our church," is badly mixed, is soon shaken and can not survive the Refiner's fire. It is only when the "eye is single" that the "whole body is full of light"—wholly sanctified.