"We have a number of people who enjoy holiness, men and women, old and young, who do not belong to any sect. They have the presence of the Holy Spirit with them in a much richer and more powerful way than the friends in the churches. This seems to indicate that the Lord will raise up an army to do his work, and perfect love will be the uniting power that will keep them one."
It is not at all to be wondered at that those who have obeyed God and come out of all human sects should have a superior degree of God's grace and Spirit with them, who are free from the oppression and interdiction that we hear so much of in all our holiness papers. Yes, God is now raising up that holy army who stand free in Christ, bound only by the truth and the love of God. From the above, we see, as well as from the testimony of hundreds in this country, that the assertion that coming out of sectism results in spiritual death is a groundless falsehood. The result is always the opposite, unless it be in some instances where souls have been overwhelmed with the hellish rage and deceitful, persecuting spirit of the sects, which has induced a superindignation.
Brother Warner's separation from the Northern Indiana Eldership was the subject of comment by his contemporary editors and others. His reply to a letter on the subject of his leaving the church is here given.
A dear brother writes to us as follows: "I think you have erred in leaving the Church of God, and yet God is blessing you and the Trumpet."...
To talk about "leaving the church of God and yet receiving the blessing of God," is Babylon confusion. There is absolutely no way given under heaven and among men whereby we can leave the church of God but by ceasing to live by faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ, or falling into and continuing in sin; in which case God does not and can not continue his blessings upon that soul as before. Therefore, when certain preachers in Ohio published that I had left the church (which was false, for they themselves cast me out of their synagog for the crime of preaching real experimental holiness), they declared the fact that what they worship in the name of the "Church of God" is only a "creature" of men, to which they invite members and report "accessions" through a different process than that of regeneration, which is the only means of accession to God's church. And when people talk of our having left the church, because we withdrew last fall from a human corporation called the "Northern Indiana Eldership of the Church of God," they simply show that the devil's counterfeits still pass current with them; they call that the church which does not answer the Bible description of the church. Oh, how hard it is to get rid of the marks of the beast, and the number of his name!
The Bible speaks of churches of God in Galatia, in Achaia, in Asia, etc., but we do not read of any northern, southern, eastern or western Galatian, Achaian, or Asiatic Elderships of the church of God. You see this thing—Northern Indiana Eldership of the Church of God—is too long for any use, so we just take the broad-ax of God's Word and chop it in two between "of" and "the" and throw the first part to the moles and bats, according to the sayings of the prophet. Then we have the church of God left, which is the body of Christ, "the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Glory to God and the Lamb, "we are complete in him"!
If some more would suffer the excision of this useless appendage, there would be quite a vacuum made for the reception of this "fulness." The term "Eldership" as used in this case, is both contradictory in itself and a perversion of God's Word. Where the apostle Paul speaks of "laying on of the hands of the presbytery," the Bible Union and some other versions render "hands of the eldership," and I think correctly, too. So I accept the word "eldership" as a Biblical term. But what is its obvious meaning? Simply the elders of the church in one locality, or in a district, or country, as the case may be. To apply it therefore to an organized corporation is a misapplication, a perversion of one of the words of God's Holy Book. It is contradictory, and asserts a falsehood, because the corporate "body" to which it is applied is not composed of elders, but of brothers and sisters, a few elders, and without doubt some sinners and backsliders; so this use of the word changes the truth of God into a lie. Like every other body that is not identical with the body of Christ, this "new Eldership," as it is often called, is a rival of the body of Christ, and is used by the devil to generate party spirit and sectish bigotry. Nothing is more natural than the disposition of carnality to want to get up something besides the glorious church of the Firstborn.
The reason is obvious. Christ built his own church, adds the members, and spews out the unworthy; 'He is head over all to his body, the church,' the only real ruling power, except as he chooses to execute his will through some of the members. Hence this gives no place to aspirants who wish to work up something that men can build, so as to receive the glory, and become lords over the work of their hands. As Sister M'Creery says in her history of the origin of the Free Methodists—during the six years that they were contented to work with a single eye, and let God build up his own church, and receive all the glory, the Spirit was with them in mighty power to save souls, because they had no craft to look after; but after they set up the Free Methodist idol, it was all, "He 'o he, go up Free Methodism!" And ceasing to work exclusively for God's kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, and founding another sect, that they call "Our Church," they necessarily became double-eyed, and lost the real power of God. So after our meeting last fall we heard the call to rally up the party spirit; and to apologize for the addition of this sect corporation to the several hundred already in the mazes of Babylon, it was called the "Northern Indiana Eldership of the Church of God, opposed to Secret Societies." Just as though the church that Christ himself founded did not oppose secret societies, therefore it is necessary to form another "body" for that purpose. Thus every sect on earth is an insult to God; even their formation implies that we are not complete in Christ, hence the "necessity," as B. T. Roberts said, of our organizing another sect.
The Trumpet's New Year's greeting, at the dawn of its second year, has an interesting tone.