The dispensations of God are in their beginning often insignificant and despised in man's eyes. God chooses things that are not, to bring to naught things that are. The fact that Brother Warner's work was done in comparative obscurity counts for nothing against its being the work of God. It is quality that counts. Brother Warner had the right spiritual quality, the secret of which was letting God have his way. His entire abandonment to God in a complete consecration, together with his adaptable temperament and gifts, made him suitable for God's use in this great work, and God chose him. The time was at hand. Others, contemporary with him and leaders in the holiness movement, saw the evils of sects and deplored them, but when it came to renouncing their sectarian affiliations and coming out of the spiritual Babylon in obedience to God's call, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues," they drew back. This point of leaving the sects, abiding in Christ alone and allowing God to reestablish his church on the primitive basis, was the real test. They longed for the time when God's people should all be one, but chose to believe that the time was not yet. And so they have been believing for forty years, and are today in the greater confusion. They lacked the spiritual equipment. One of Brother Warner's special endowments was that of considerable light on the prophecies. He saw that the sectarian denominations were of the true spiritual Babylon in which God's people were being held captive. He also had in the Spirit the prospective vision of the pure church unruled by man. His contemporary leaders who opposed him were too blind spiritually to have such a vision; or, if they had it, were disobedient to it.
But there were those, the humble ones, who were willing to let God have his way. At the sound of the trumpet, which God was giving through Brother Warner, thousands have rallied to the standard of truth, and through them the truth has been and is being vindicated. If God has his way all Christians will be led out of sects, all justified believers will be led into sanctification, the church will be perfectly organized and governed by the Holy Spirit, the whole truth will be preached uncompromisingly, full salvation will be held out to the world, and all will be led to cooperate and do their part. This is the full measure of Christianity today, and is God's design with his people. Here is true Christian unity. Such unity can come only by absolute abandonment to God, for he must be the one-making agent. Men may attempt a unity through some Interchurch World Movement or other plan, but no plan can represent the true Scriptural unity unless God does the work himself. He must have the full right of way in human hearts.
Brother Warner's mission was strictly that of a reformer. It was his part to venture boldly with the truth God had given him, with a willingness to run the gauntlet of persecutions that were sure to greet him on the right and left. His severe denunciation of all things sectarian was consistent with his pioneer position. There first had to be an awakening, a breaking up of old conditions, particularly of the recognition (into which the minds of people generally had settled) of the sects as being the church of God. His work was the initial, or birth, stage of the reform.
Following the initial stage has come the constructive, which comprehends the reformation in the local sense, the sense in which the Christian life and true ideal of the church must be exemplified in the community as something more than theory, something that will appeal as being better than what is represented in the sects. The constructive stage calls not so much for continual denunciation of sects as for manifesting those essential principles that characterize the church in her unity and entirety. The responsibility is to make good the claim, and this means much. Any tendency to establish traditions, or to regard a past course as giving direction in all respects for the future, or to become self-centered and manifest a "we are it" spirit and bar the door of progress against the entrance of further light and truth, or in any way to refuse fellowship with any others who may be Christians, would itself be sectarian, altogether unlike the true reformation, which, if it be final, must necessarily be a restoration and possess universal characteristics.
For proper representation everything depends upon the understanding of, and the attitude toward, this great movement. For any body of people to hold that the reformation is entrusted to them, or that they have become the standard for the world, is a self-centered attitude, vastly different from that which regards the reformation as something prophetically due, as having come independent of man, and as being greater than the people who have been favored with its light, and that it is their part to conform to it in principle, doctrine, and everything. The great movement is in the world, and any attempt to "corner" it or to limit it to a particular body of people could only result in making that body a sect, or faction, while the movement itself would proceed independently.
The true spirit of the reformation will be, however, with those who measure to its standard, whether they be few or many, and God will manifest himself accordingly. Satan has tried to becloud and defeat the movement by counterfeit factions—bodies of people who profess to be on the reformation line, but who misrepresent the truth by denying some part of it, as, for instance, the doctrine of entire sanctification in this life, or of the Christian ordinances, or who misrepresent it by advancing erroneous doctrine, such as the continuation of the Old Testmental law and Sabbath, or the speaking in tongues as a necessary evidence of having received the Holy Ghost. Many are the counterfeit movements today. One must ignore every influence of man and then rely on the witness of both the Word and the Spirit in order to be guided aright.
Brother Warner was a remarkable example of a man possessing the Christian spirit and the Christian graces wonderfully developed. While he could rebuke evil and deceptive influences in the strongest terms, he was one of the meekest and kindest of men. Christ-like, he loved all men, even his persecutors. As a husband, father, Christian brother and friend his love and respect were genuine and reached to the very soul. And yet the responsibility of his calling as a Christian and as a minister of God's truth as it applied to his time, he held more dear than all else, and to it he was wholly devoted. Not with any object of exalting the man, but to illustrate what God can accomplish in and through one who is so devoted, we introduce him to our readers.