Part 32

We occupied a very large hall for two weeks and had it well filled with hearers. Multitudes were under deep conviction, but were unwilling to pay the price of real salvation. Several, however, were saved by the power and grace of God, converted and sanctified, and a few made their escape fully out of Babylon and were wonderfully blessed of the Lord. Were it not for shoddy holiness and stagnant pools of sectish religion in the way of God's salvation, a great harvest of souls could be brought to Jesus. But the corrupt preachers in this place will have to answer for the awful influence that is damning multitudes of poor sinners, both in and out of their sect enclosures. On the last two nights of our meeting, there was also meeting in the Methodist house in the town. Some of that sect were greatly convicted to escape out of her; but we could feel the influence of those meetings as sensibly as if the Holy Spirit were incarnate and were being literally crucified in the town, as the Spirit and Word were killed "in the streets of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt" (Rev. 11:8). Oh, how sensibly we felt the "fellowship of the suffering" of Jesus Christ! While the sweet peace of God flows a deep, everlasting undercurrent in our souls, we often feel the slaughter of immortal spirits in the streets of Babylon until our heart sickens and we long to leave this world and be with Jesus. But like the apostle, we always conclude that "for us to live is Christ"; and the rescue of perishing souls from the brink of hell fires us with a willingness to expose our soul to the hatred and jeers, violence and murder in hearts that are drunk on the wine of beast religion. The United Brethren preacher at this place, whom Satan used with such diligence against the work when we were here last year, was much tormented by our return. "The wine of the wrath of her fornication" so foamed in his heart that, we were told by good authority, he said that he wished we were stripped, tarred and feathered, and then set on fire, and added that he would like to touch the match himself. And this wretched priest of Baal professes sanctification, and frequently leads the Babylon holiness band's meetings. Today we were told that he regretted much that his words came to our ears. That is like the thief that repented bitterly, not of his theft, but that he was caught in the deed.

A sister came in from the country and received full salvation. There being a union meeting-house in the community, she and others desired us to come there and preach the gospel. We agreed to do so on Sabbath evening if the house could be obtained. She thought there would be no difficulty. But as soon as the matter became known, a Methodist local preacher of the vicinity began to rage. He came to Walkerton on Saturday and, "foaming out his shame" before the people, declared that if we attempted to enter that pulpit he would "break our head," "break our neck," "kill us," etc.

Bishop Foster speaks of his M. E. sect as follows: "Oh, how changed! A hireling ministry will be a feeble, a timid, a truckling, a time-serving ministry, without faith, endurance, and holy power." Through this corrupt ministry "worldly socials, festivals, concerts, and such like, have taken the place of the religious gatherings, revival meetings, class- and prayer-meetings of the past. Oh, how changed!" Yes, saith the prophet, "How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards" (Isa. 1:21-23).

Surely we have come to the last days. For, "this know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

Yea, "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."

Oh, the rottenness, fierce hatred, and soul-murdering wickedness of sect Babylon! If there were only one hundred professors of Christ in the United States, and they all holy men and women of God, filled with faith and the Holy Spirit, walking unto all pleasing before God and exemplifying the pure life of Christ before men, and this generation had never known any other kind of professors of Christ, the masses of the people could be rapidly reached by the gospel of Jesus and saved from sin. But the devil has the world piled up with corrupt, proud, filthy, sectish religionists, 'professing that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate' (Tit. 1:16).

And because God has given us an honest heart to confess the sins of the professed Christendom and show the people that Christ is not the author of this mass of spiritual whoredom and abominable wickedness, which has filled hell with lost souls and covered the earth with blackness and infidelity, the devil howls and rages in his sectish priests, who are ready to murder us as the Jews did Christ, Stephen, and thousands of other martyrs who testified against them and their evil deeds.

As we shall have to meet the people of Walkerton and surroundings face to face in the day of judgment, God holds us responsible to tell them that the greatest obstruction to the salvation of souls is their shoddy, sectish holiness and their abominable, worldly religion.

Up to the summer of 1887 the evangelistic efforts of Brother Warner and his company were confined to the States of the Middle West. But now came a more extensive tour, that should take them as far West as Denver, Colo. On June 24 they left the Office and after a few meetings in LaGrange and Jay Counties, Ind., departed for the West. They stopped at Gilman and Onarga, Ill., and Hayesville, Iowa. From Keokuk, Iowa, they traveled by steamboat to St. Louis, where the following report was written:

"Oh, praise the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!" We have just landed here from the steamboat Sidney, having had a very delightful trip down the Mississippi from Keokuk. We made the trip of two hundred miles in twenty hours. The river being very low at this time, much caution was necessary to avoid running aground. Doubtless one hundred miles were traveled in passing from one side of the river to the other to keep the deepest channel.

We were a day and a night at Keokuk, waiting the coming of the boat. The Gem City was to have reached Keokuk the first day and then return down the river; but being late she turned around at Quincy and started back, leaving us to wait until the next day. Praise God, we confessed his all-wise hand in the matter and thanked him for the prolonged wait, believing it was all ordered of him. This morning about daybreak we passed the Gem City, she having stuck fast in the sand. So the Lord was good to his little ones and gave us a safe and very joyful voyage. Oh, the goodness and wisdom of God our heavenly Father for placing the great rivers and lakes in the earth as a beautiful means of travel! It is so much more pleasant than by railroad. Though the speed is not more than half so great, we can very pleasantly improve the time reading and writing. However, this trip was so wonderfully enjoyed by us that we could do no more than feast upon the beauties of nature and praise the Lord. The river abounds in beautiful green islands, and all her verdant banks are delightful. Just below the mouth of the Illinois river, for a few miles, the hand of God has skilfully carved out of the high rocky shore very beautiful scallops and great piers and towers, and even some appearances of partly ruined mansions and rustic stone buildings.

* * * * *

No one else on board the vessel seemed to be delighted with these vast and beautiful works as were our company, because unacquainted with our dear Father, whose hand of love has formed them all. Oh, how blessed the pure in heart who see God all along the voyage of life! What a vastly different aspect everything wears when looked at in the light of God! Oh, how poor and meager the pleasures of the children of this world! How utterly tasteless and empty their thoughts and conversation! No place on earth serves better to call out the glories of a life hid with Christ in God in its striking contrast with the dark minds and almost senseless twaddle of the aliens than the deck of a steamboat. Even the more elevated seldom have a worthy thought on immortal mind; while every object our eyes lighted upon in the passing panorama of nature inspired our souls with joyful acknowledgments of God, and moved our hearts and lips to praise his name. Oh, what a rapturous and heavenly kingdom we live in, all flashing with glory and yet hidden from the blinded sinners! Having lost our lives for Christ's sake we are raised to the heavenly joys of the life of God in us, a life of bliss, that already transcends the sinner's loftiest ideal of heaven itself. Oh, the beauties of holiness! "Out of Zion the perfection of beauty, God hath shined." Never in all past experience has our heart flowed out more in gratitude to God for the inexpressible bliss of a pure conscience, a pure heart through the blood of Christ, an innocent life through grace divine, a conversation in heaven flowing from a good treasure in the heart, and, above all, a soul illuminated and inspired to see and enjoy God in every bright sunbeam that gleams on earth and sparkles in the silvery stream and every object upon the footstool of God.

God is love; the angels know That Father dearly loves us so. But, oh, the ransomed feel within The burning love we try to sing!

This evening we start for St. James, Mo., the Lord willing, where we expect to meet once more our dear Bro. J. Cole, and many others dear to our hearts by the fellowship of the Spirit whose faces we have never seen. And best of all, we are expecting a glorious harvest of souls turned to righteousness by the mighty power and love of God.

The next report was written from St. James, Crawford County, one hundred miles west of St. Louis. Bro. B. E. Warren says that after buying their tickets for St. James they had but seven cents left, and that after arriving at the latter place Brother Warner went to the post-office and received a letter containing five dollars from S. L. Speck, who felt led of the Lord to send that amount. Brother Warner's account of their reception in St. James, as follows, is interesting:

The night following our last report, which was from St. Louis, Mo., we landed at St. James, at 12:30 A. M. The Lord directed us to a friendly inn, where we rested until the morning. As we sat at the breakfast-table our grateful hearts flowed out in our sweet little table thanksgiving song. The Lord wonderfully blessed that sweet offering of praise. It rang out and greeted the ears of all in hearing as the music of heaven. After meal, requests soon came in for songs. The Holy Spirit gloriously inspired our voices to sing his praises. Many people soon collected in front of the room and some came in. After a few hymns, we had family worship. We invited all that would come to come in and bow with us in prayer. Some did so. The Lord blessed our souls. Soon Bro. J. H. Morrison came into town, and seeing the throng in front of the hotel he asked the cause, and was told that "your people have come to town." He came into the waiting-room and introduced himself, and the Spirit of God gave us a joyful meeting. Sinners looked on with wonder and amazement, and were led to say, "These are truly the real children of God, and this is the right way," according to the words of our Savior, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one for another." Many seemed quite serious. Had we tried to respond to the requests of the people we should have kept singing all day without cessation.

The people desired Brother Morrison to keep us right there and have a meeting that night in town, saying they would see that all our expenses there should be paid. The landlady and family were also very anxious we should stay, and treated us with much kindness. The Lord reward them. The Methodist preacher also came to see what this Pentecost fire was that had come to town. When asked if we could have their meeting-house that night he replied that he was going to "begin a protracted meeting tonight." Suddenly the preacher concluded a protracted meeting was needed in his charge. Whoever heard of a Methodist minister commencing a protracted meeting in the month of July in the latitude of central Missouri, especially since that sect has gone spiritually to the frigid zone where, as their oldest living bishop says, "spirituality is frozen to death"? Quite a capacious hall was procured and well filled, and we enjoyed preaching the precious gospel to the people. About all received the word. The M. E. meeting consisted of three or four women, and was not further protracted.

The day of our arrival here came also dear Bro. C. C. Knight, from Fulton, Ill., with tent and equipment to accompany us on our Western campaign. He is full of faith and the Holy Ghost and is a good help in the work.

The next day we moved out to the camp-ground, which is about ten miles from St. James and near the Merrimac River. Here we met our dearly beloved Brother Cole, who spent a year with us in Michigan a few years ago; also his sister Mary, a chosen and anointed instrument of God to preach and testify the gospel of the grace of God.

At this camp-meeting the little company were to encounter a new problem. As soon as they arrived at the place of meeting they were accorded a strange reception. Those who were supposed to be saints at that place came to meet them, some dancing on one leg, some rolling their eyes in their head, others gibbering in tongues, or jerking, or falling stiff, etc. At first they did not know what to make of the strange performance. At this place also was another attempt by a mob to capture Brother Warner. His report continues:

We met also a much larger host of saints than we had expected to find in this country. Praise God for this! But oh, how soon we saw and felt that Satan, the deceiver, had passed a dreadful network of deception over them, or nearly all of them! Unseemly and even hideous operations and contortions were carried on and called the manifestations of the Spirit and power of God. We began at once to rebuke it in the name of the Lord Jesus. God gloriously blessed our souls in preaching his word and assured us that he had much people there who were honest and sincere at heart and who would be delivered by the presentation of his word. The supposed gift of tongues was alarmingly increasing. Indian war-dances, etc., had turned the church of God into something quite different, a disgusting maze of confusion. We were helped of God in teaching them "how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God."

A terrible nervous jerking had seized upon many in the meetings, which in some cases resembled much St. Vitus' dance. We speak of these things in order to give the saints of God everywhere the benefit of what these precious souls have learned in the dear school of experience. We had never seen such manifestation except in persons possessed with devils, and yet the Spirit of God showed us these were not so possessed, but were, for the most part, still owned of the Lord. We read 1 Cor. 12, 13, 14, and showed the beautiful harmony of the church under the control of the Spirit of God; that 'love does not behave itself unseemly'; that the gift of tongues was not of general usefulness, and was a sign to the Jews, not generally edifying to the church; that other gifts should be sought in preference, and unless he or some one else interpret, the person having the gift should keep silent or speak to himself; that 'five words with the understanding is better than ten thousand in an unknown tongue'; that spasmodic jerking is not mentioned in the Bible as a manifestation of God's Spirit, but is ascribed to a malignant spirit.

We renounced that working as of the devil. It seems that one brother who had been powerfully charged by the Holy Spirit had become puffed up, which gave place to this satanic working. Then Satan made it the standard of being filled with the Spirit and power of God; therefore many earnestly prayed for it. They forgot that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us only according to the will of God, and whatsoever one prays for outside the will of God must be suggested by some other spirit. And as God has not promised to answer such a prayer, the devil steps in and answers it. And now, since delivered, the dear saints see and confess that the incoming of this power dimmed their faith, joy, and peace. It was nothing less than Satan touching and playing upon their nerves and upon their imaginations. Their motives having been good, namely, to seek the real power of God, their consciences were not defiled--at least, with most of them. But some were much blinded and puffed up of the devil. Satan had free access to their minds under the cloak of the Spirit of God. Those who were not affected by the foolish jerking of the devil were judged by the devil and made to believe they did not have the Spirit of God because they did not jerk. Thus all were under depression and more or less bewildered. Oh, how our souls were saddened at the sight! O dear saints of God everywhere, do not ascribe to the Spirit of God ludicrous and unbecoming conduct, such as chattering like a coon or barking like a dog, and all hideous looks!

Well, praise God, the word of God was received. Some at first resented, but God soon convicted them and they became teachable. Nearly all the foolish stuff was rid out of the camp after one discourse explaining and renouncing it. Intelligent sinners respected the truth of God that exposed the devil's counterfeit, and some who loved the true church wept for joy to see the abomination put away. From that time God led one after another to confess that spiritual joy and true faith began to depart out of their hearts from the time of receiving the jerks. Many came bowing at the altar, and the glorious work of cleansing went forward.

The truth of God was published against all the works of the devil by the power of the Holy Spirit. Some sect preachers, filled with the beast spirit and the very devil himself, were very much enraged against the word of the Lord, which had laid open the rottenness of their hearts. Hence they spewed out their shame and foamed exceedingly. On Tuesday night, after meeting, we all lay down to rest, being wearied with the arduous labors of the day. A masked mob aroused us from our much-needed sleep and ordered all to pack up and leave the grounds in half an hour. They were armed with staves and rocks. Well, the saints arose and packed up, praising God for peace and comfort in their souls, not fearing the poor set of sinners who knew not that they were persecuting the Savior. They made diligent inquiry for us all about the camp. We were doubtless the special victim marked by their rankling hatred; but the Lord delivered us out of their hands. Oh, praise the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together!

The next morning early some saints drove back to the ground to get some things that had been left, and there came the preachers who had been howling with torment and sorrow because of the sword of the Lord, and even gnawing their tongues for pain, and who were generally believed to have been in the clan the night before, and one of them even recognized. They asked with much affected surprize what had happened, and began to declare and even to swear in the presence of God that they knew nothing of the movement and were not in it, though one of them confessed he was glad of it. This they did without having been accused. One brother said, "A guilty conscience needs no accuser; you plead guilty before accused."...

Well, praise God, the next morning, after a few hours' sleep, we were called up to join some little ones in asking God to heal a child that was suffering with the croup. The good Lord instantly did the work. Others followed, some for healing, others for complete deliverance from every taint of the devil. God himself gathered the saints at that place, and the day was devoted to salvation work. Probably twenty-five or thirty souls were delivered from all the works of the devil and filled with the Spirit of God. Oh, what a mighty change has taken place here! Instead of gloomy and hideous looks, now shines the glory and beauties of holiness, upon the joyful faces of the redeemed, and clear, ringing shouts of praises are pleasing to God.

No meeting was announced for the next day, but the Lord gathered quite a number together again, and salvation work was resumed. On both days God so filled and possessed the meetings that there was not time for the slightest allusion to the mob workers of the devil. A stranger might have sat in the meeting the whole day and not received the faintest information of what had happened two nights ago. Praise God, these two days after driven out of camp were the most glorious and fruitful of all that we spent in these wild thickets. In spite of all that poor, pitiable ruffians could do, hissed on by wicked Babylonians, we are filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

We are now holding meetings a few days in the village of St. James. A large hall is crowded with attentive hearers, and the truth is mightily prevailing. Let all the saints of God pray for us. We will continue to preach the whole truth and rebuke the works of the devil, even if this tour should end in heaven. Halleluiah!

Of these strange manifestations Bro. T. E. Ellis, who was one of those living in the vicinity and affected by the peculiar power that possessed the saints there, says:

We were under an influence similar to what the modern tongues people are under. We had different manifestations. Some would jerk spasmodically, some would fall and become stiff, some would dance, some would seem to have a kind of trance and a vision. Healing was claimed and the work seemed to be done. We had what we called the "unknown tongue" and an interpreter. A few talked similarly to the way modern tongues people talk nowadays.

From St. James the company continued their tour to Carthage, in the southwestern part of the State. They also held meetings at a number of different points in southern Kansas and in southeastern Nebraska, The first paragraph of his report from Chanute, Kans., was written while he was sick. We quote the first two paragraphs: