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

by A. L. Byers

To all who may read this Trumpet, and especially to all who love the truth, we send you our brotherly greeting, a "Happy New Year," and a heartfelt "God bless you." Our heart overflows with love and gratitude to God, and all his loving saints, for all the benefits and mercies that filled the expiring year. Dearly beloved friends and patrons of the Trumpet, and lovers of its hated truth, we are happy to report from this watch-tower of Zion that we see nothing but success, victory, and glory. A beloved father in Israel in New York on first seeing the Trumpet recently wrote us of his inexpressible gratitude, and he remarked that he had tried to have one established in Chicago, but says he, "There was no one interested in the truth, that seemed to have sufficient means to undertake the project." Well, glory to God. He has chosen the weak things, and the moneyless, to carry on a work which to all human appearances, in this sect-loving and idolatrous age, could not be accomplished without considerable capital, and on a free basis—the wonderful work of God. How has he "surprized the hypocrites," and confounded the prophets of Babylon! G. D. Watson but uttered the predictions and carnal prayers of thousands when he said through an antichrist sheet in this place, "Brother Warner can not succeed in that line." What is this but a thrust at Jesus Christ! It virtually says to the Son of God: "In the prosperity of our churches, there can be nothing but failure in the attempt to build up 'God's Church.'" Oh, these devotees of Babylon would blot out of existence, if they could, the church that Christ founded over eighteen hundred years ago, to augment the glory of our "great Methodist Church" founded less than a hundred and fifty years ago!

Well, Brother Warner may have failed in many respects; but no man that reads the Trumpet can deny the fact that God and truth have most gloriously triumphed. And the Trumpet, too, through the God-approved truth it holds forth, has proved a glorious success, notwithstanding the different measures Satan has devised to hedge up its way. One poor whited sepulcher had the impudence to say with a satanic chuckle, "We will crush the Trumpet" and "take all Brother Warner's subscribers." A gentleman in this city when asked to take the chaff, and baby-soap, sheet, remarked, "If you succeed with this paper will it not break down the Trumpet?" and received the following reply: "That's just what we want to do." He told a brother this, and said he did not think there was much holiness in that, and did not want the paper. Yet one, M. L. Haney, who was canonized at the Jacksonville convention as "the Patriarch of Holiness in the West" and everywhere else, is so blind that he has twice presumed to intimate that that enterprise might be of God, saying "If your paper is of God." Nearly all the professed holiness periodicals have been hauling barrels of water and pouring on the altar of God's truth and filling up the trench round about; but God is all the more glorified in this test between the Trumpet and the prophets of sects. Praise his name!

The Gospel Trumpet has proved Satan false in more than one way. In all love, we suggest to all those papers and preachers that have been in the habit of telling the people that "separation from the sects invariably results in spiritual death" to read the Trumpet, then shut their mouths, and cease their lying against the truth. There is not a sect-endorsing paper in the land that presents as strong array of testimony to clear definite holiness, Holy Ghost power, wonder-working faith, and fruitful lives. And we have abundance of live, glowing reports and experiences that we have not had space to use, and nearly all have spared us the necessity of telling you that the writers are without the camp of creed factions. We have published numerous expressions of appreciation, because, by their strong relish for the truths of the Trumpet coupled with their vigorous spiritual health and usefulness in Christ, they condemn all who reject the food we issue, as perverted and spiritually diseased. To the former class the Trumpet is heavenly music; but to the latter, it is an annoying sound, because their hearts and ears are not sufficiently circumcised to endure sound doctrine. The Trumpet has demonstrated the fact that God is able to carry a war against the devil in his strongest, last, and most desperate fortress.

God has in a remarkable manner heard and answered our prayers; not always however in the way we expected, but far better than we imagined. Last spring we prayed the Lord for a more speedy press, but the furnace of trial through which he brought us was better for our soul than a hundred presses and ten thousand subscribers. Glory to the God of Daniel, and the Hebrews! Oh, what lessons we have learned in the salt and fire school of Christ! We would gladly pull the lever of the Lord's good old hand-press for forty years to come, rather than have missed those furnace-wrought visions of God, of his church, and of the great sect abomination. To all the patrons of the Trumpet, we would return many thanks for the means you have furnished the Lord's cause, and the many appreciated contributions you have sent us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. You have largely made the paper what it is, and by your continued labor of love and sacrifice for Christ's sake you will continue to improve and enlarge the paper and extend its sphere of usefulness. We regard the real testing-point in the Trumpet as past; God has established the work of our hands. Our circulation is steadily increasing; we have been printing sixteen hundred papers each issue, sixteen fifty this time, and we do not have fifty papers left when we get through mailing. The demand for canvassing and sample copies continually increases.

To Babylon and all her concomitants, we promise nothing but fire, sword and hammer, and confounding blasts from the armory of God's Word. We have scarcely begun the bombardment of the wicked harlot city. By the grace of God, we expect to deal with sin and sinners as we never yet have done. Some have intimated to us that we have been too personal in rebuking Church sinners: but, before God, we are ashamed of and repent for our mildness and want of personality in the past. And now we give fair warning to hypocrites, and all whose walk has not been upright before God, that if you don't repent and publish your confession of sin, the Lord has made it our duty, so far as we know, to expose and rebuke you before all. We know no man after the flesh, and we seek to please no man. If God can not carry on the paper by us seeking only to please Him, the Trumpet will surely be discontinued. But God is our sufficiency. "I shall not want." "For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded; therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed" (Isa. 50:7).

While it is our duty to reprove all outward sin, we must keep the fact prominent that all reform must begin at the heart, which God only can change; inward transformation is only upon the condition of faith, and, therefore, must be definitely presented in the Scriptural order of pardon and adoption to the sinner, and entire sanctification to the believer. We regret that some attempt to beat down the ice-mountain of sect by the hammer of the Word, without the melting fire of the Holy Spirit. Getting people out of the sects any other way than by leading them to Christ for heart purity and the reception of the Comforter, which leads the soul from all sects and into all truth, is but enlisting men into carnal crusade against Babylon, and can result in little good, and has, in some instances, hedged up the way and turned back the tide of God's truth more than it will be able to advance it. Because the Bible experience of entire sanctification is the true objective of Christ's atonement and shed blood, and because thorough holiness destroys sects and denominations, as frost would disappear under the beams of the June sun, and as the promotion of true holiness is the only remedy for schisms and every other form of sin in the body of professed Christians, therefore the Gospel Trumpet shall continue to "praise the beauty of holiness" and proclaim the power of the blood of Christ on the gospel line of definite holiness and perfect heart-purity. We ask the cooperation and prayers of all true saints of God, who love the freedom of Christ Jesus our Savior.

The truths of the reformation were disseminated largely by the Gospel Trumpet, and in many parts of the country there were those with whom its teachings found a hearty welcome. A few bits of correspondence addressed to Brother Warner and taken from the Trumpet of early in 1882 are here presented.

I like the Trumpet very well; hope it may sound out long, loud, and clear to call the people back to the old paths, the good way. Yes, truly it is the good way, the strait and narrow way, the new and living way, and the high and holy way. You may count me a subscriber as long as the Trumpet sticks to the Bible. Your brother purified and being tried,E. B. B.

He keeps them that put their trust in him. I pray God the time may soon come when Christians shall be united as one in Christ Jesus, the living Head, and throw away all divisions, taking Christ for their head and having their names enrolled on God's book in heaven. May the Lord bless all the saints. May God bless you, Sister Warner, in giving up part of your house in order that the Gospel Trumpet may still be printed. Oh, we can't give up the Trumpet! Oh, that I could do something! I will do what I can to help you. The Trumpet must go on. Enclosed find the widow's mite.L. B.

We are strangers, never have seen each other, yet we know each other by the Spirit that is given us. I am glad you have grace enough to run the Gospel Trumpet without any visible means. They that overcome inherit all things. The Lord will not forsake you in the work. He will help you to carry it through. I gladly send you one dollar and would gladly send you more if I could at present. I have no love for sects in my soul.L. M.