Perspective—The 1880 Evening Light Reformation
Part 1
“To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil.” (Romans 2:7-9)
These verses present us with an understanding of the two paths that lie before every human being. One is the path of patient continuance in well doing (obedience to all that one understands is right; walking in the light of God as it shines upon one’s understanding), while the other path is contentious and does not obey the truth. The dictionary defines contentious as argumentative and quarrelsome. We observe from these scriptures, and we have observed from experience, that those who are contentious do not prosper spiritually. They do not bear fruit. Dear reader, if you can be accurately described as contentious, argumentative, and quarrelsome, then we must sorrowfully tell you that we cannot help you. We wish we could. But all of the efforts of the Word of God and the Spirit of God Himself will be distorted by the prism of contentiousness and disobedience that you have chosen to have on hand, and you will only see more grist for strife.
On the other hand, if you have a heart disposition for obedience to what you are really convinced is truth from heaven, and you have been patiently weighing out and investigating things with a firm decision to obey as soon as you are persuaded, then we can joyfully tell you that God Himself has left everything necessary for life and godliness available for your examination. God loves to satisfy honest questions, and we marvel and take great delight in how He has everything supplied that will answer your concerns. (See the case of Nathaniel as related in John 1:45-49.) We want to see the children of God following the path of “patient continuance in well doing.” We would not have dominion over your joy, nor do we have any desire to be a lord to God’s children. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5)
With these thoughts and principles firmly in hand, let us ponder some of the errors of prominent brethren in the time of the 1880 Evening Light Reformation.
One of D. S. Warner’s Mistakes
“Lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me. And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.” (2 Corinthians 12:6-7)
“And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.” (1 Corinthians 4:6)
God knows it is dangerous to a man to be used mightily of Him. He knows that there is a strong, inherent desire in mankind towards hero worship, and He deals with His chosen vessels in such a way as to check and restrain that tendency towards hero worship. If God did not do so, men would take the earthen vessels of God’s choosing and make them kings. They would exalt the Giver’s gift instead of the Giver Himself. Such is the nature of mankind.
The Bible is full of examples along this line. We see Elijah greatly used of God, but, lo! At the very moment of greatest triumph of true religion over the false worship of Baal, the mighty prophet of God caves in to fear, depression, and discouragement; and Elijah, the man of God, runs away on a suicide trip. He tells God, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” (1 Kings 19:4) Brother James, speaking of this greatly used, wonderfully inspired prophet, said, “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are.” (James 5:17) So he was, and the earthiness of the earthly vessel is plainly revealed by his failure. It is worth noting here, in passing, that the cause of God was not damaged by the prophet’s failure, serious as it was, and we readily observe that “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” (1 John 3:20) Nor did Elijah’s failure keep God from taking him in a fiery chariot from this life, nor did the Lord remove the prominence from the earthen vessel’s life that caused him to be a type and shadow of John the Baptist or as a significant factor in certain of the prophecies of Revelations. We might add to this list that Elijah was one of two saints from the Glory World who were privileged to meet with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. We see then that God allowed His servant to fall into profound discouragement in order to balance our understanding of how a man is still a man, fallible and weak in himself—still just an earthen vessel (the graces within are not his, but belong to God). When God has finished beating the mountains small with a worm, then that worm is still a worm—a worm used of God. As one brother put it: “When the work of the Lord is done right, there is no room for the flesh to glory” (see 1 Corinthians 1:29).
Just as it was not good for Israel to be delivered by too many men of war (Judges 7:2), so it is not good for men of God to be allowed to make no blunders or to fail to show that they are men of like passions as the rest of us that are not so prominent. “And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.” (Judges 7:2) We get the wrong idea about the ones that God has used if God doesn’t allow them to come to grief at times.
There are a handful of much-used-of-God men in the Bible who escaped having some less-than-magnificent experience associated with their name. Joseph, son of Jacob, comes to mind. The record left for us to read seems to show him suffering his humiliation at the beginning of his walk with God, and nothing is said in the Bible of a reproachful nature after he was exalted by God to his position of honor and responsibility. The same could be said of Daniel. We are left with a sense of their need from the start, and divine wisdom would appear to deem this insight enough for us to know of these brethren.
In spite of this restraint, given by God, for our tendency to exalt anyone who is used of God, people ignore the “like passions” of those they exalt. We suspect that men exalt other men because there is a susceptibility to exaltation in themselves. Men live out their pride through the achievements of others. This is why grown men admire athletes and heros of the sports arena. Sitting on a couch, out of shape physically, they live the life of a sports hero vicariously by proxy, as it were. Women relive their youth by watching movie stars, etc. The Bible speaks of this trait as “having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.” (Jude 1:16) It is possible for the less-than-spiritual to experience the (imagined) feelings of the truly spiritual without paying the price to actually possess the walk with God so vital and crucial to each soul. God has something so much better for us than vicarious living—He has the real thing. Here is a Bible picture of the real thing: “But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” (Obadiah 1:17)
Brother D. S. Warner was one of those brothers who yielded himself totally to God, as all the sanctified have done since the new and living way was made for us by our Older Brother. If he had lived in a different age, the same skills and abilities that God blessed and nurtured in him would have been used in a less prominent way. For example, if Brother Warner had been born in the age when the church of God fled into the wilderness from the persecuting power of the first great beast of Revelation 13:1-2, he would have been the same humble, inspired brother that he was in a later age, but the nature of his times would have not called for the prominence of the “Come out of her, my people,” message that was such an outstanding feature of the Evening Light Reformation. God’s people were not scattered among the daughters of the great whore (Revelation 17:1-6) when the church of God fled into the wilderness, as they were after the Protestant Reformation of 1530. We might accurately say that Brother Paul would not have been used as prominently if he had been born in a different period of time of church history, for the great adversary of the church of God in, say, the Dark Ages, was not Judaism, but the man of sin and all associated with that.
We see that God, in His great house, reaches for the earthen vessel which best serves His purpose at the time. And with that conception of the Word of God, we realize that the focus is on what God does with the vessel, rather than the capability of the vessel. This is the only true and right way to understand the work of the Lord. If, instead, we exalt the vessel, we are not looking at it as God does. Furthermore, if we exalt the vessel, we open ourselves and become vulnerable to the spirit of exaltation, for we are holding men’s person in admiration because of advantage.
Those who look more to the vessel than is healthy or good might well say, “But Paul was immensely talented. I think that he would have risen to prominence in any age of church history.” This seems quite reasonable to those whose eyes are more on the vessel than the User of the vessel. It ignores a basic truth. Brother Paul said it himself when dealing with people at Corinth who were under this very influence of holding men’s persons in admiration. “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28)
Now this scripture does not tell us that God does not use talented people; it says He does not use many wise men after the flesh. (Notice how directly opposite this is to human reasoning.) Furthermore, God deliberately chooses foolish, weak, base things that are despised by men for His purposes. Stammering tongues. Young men and maidens, greatly lacking in experience. Old men, greatly lacking in energy and strength. Even the mouths of babes. When God does use talented, skilled men (after the flesh), He is careful how He does it. “Lest Israel vaunt themselves.”
The year before Brother Warner died (1895), he wrote a booklet which was first published the following year. The title was The Age to Come and Millenium Doctrine Refuted. In this writing, Brother Warner taught that the apostate ministry that replaced the New Testament ministry of the early morning church bound the devil with chains of darkness. This was an attempted explanation of Revelation 20:1-3. Among other things, Brother Warner stated,
A star falls from heaven [a ministry falls from holiness]1; to him was given the same key to the bottomless pit. He opens the same, and dense darkness comes forth, concealing the light of the sun. That darkness is the chain spoken of in the other record. It is all the same in effect, whether the dark clouds of error and superstition arise from the pit of error like smoke from a great furnace, and darken the earth, so that scarcely any salvation work was found on earth, and Satan was bound by the existing darkness, i.e., deprived of his own wanted work of deceiving and destroying spiritual souls; or whether he was cast into the same bottomless pit, and bound there. In either case, the fallen ministry brought into the world such a flood of darkness, that it grew monotonous for the devil. There was nothing that he could do, in the way of destroying immortal souls. It is an undeniable fact that darkness constitutes the chains that bind Satan in hell. There being nothing good for him to mar. And this being undeniable, it follows that the darkness of hell that so generally spread over the earth for a thousand years, would also bind Satan here.
[1]:
[Bracketed text included in source.]
[Daniel S. Warner; The Age to Come, “8th. The Binding and Loosing of Satan”; emphasis added]
These are incredible statements. Who brings about apostate ministries? Satan. So here, we find a precious man of God asserting, in effect, that Satan is bound by Satan. Bound by the darkness of a fallen ministry, no longer teaching by the Spirit’s light, opening a bottomless pit of every conceivable error, filling the earth with an utter night of confusion and abominable superstition. Furthermore this dear brother asserts that this false, apostate ministry “deprived [Satan] of his own wanted work of deceiving and destroying spiritual souls.” The brother states that the situation of darkness brought about by the apostasy “grew monotonous for the devil. There was nothing that he could do, in the way of destroying immortal souls.”
The reality of the matter is that as paganism was losing its ability to hold and attract men, because of the genuine testimony of the martyrs who loved not their lives unto the death, the devil saw that he had better come up with something to replace his discredited system of paganism. And he did. He produced the first beast of Revelation, the apostate church, which he proclaimed to be a continuation of the one true church (a great lie, indeed), and this great “Christian” imposter persecuted and slew more of God’s children than the entire power of the pagan dragon before it. The devil was bored? He found the situation monotonous? There was nothing that he could do, in the way of destroying immortal souls? If this be spiritual binding for the devil, then he accomplished more from his prison cell, so to speak, than he did when unbound. But of course, the devil was behind the development of the apostate ministry, just as he was the moving force behind the exaltation of the man of sin. And when there was a reformation (the Protestant Reformation of the 1500’s), he was not discouraged by the increase of light in the dark and cloudy day, and tirelessly labored at dividing God’s little children into hundreds of divisions from each other.
Now surely Brother Warner believed the words of Jesus, “And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.” (Mark 3:24-26) We agree that the Catholic age of deception saw a great decrease in souls saved. We would also state that it saw a great increase in souls damaged, ruined, and damned. Satan himself was not bound. But one of his great tools for wrecking mankind was bound. That was “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Revelation 12:9) In Revelation 20:2, it is stated that “the dragon… is the Devil, and Satan.” It is this aspect of Satan that was bound, not the devil who was behind the rise and prevailing of popery.
See also: Part 2