Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. WarnerByers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Religion
Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner
Byers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Church of God (Anderson, Ind.) -- History; Warner, D. S. (Daniel Sidney), 1842-1895
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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