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.
Success crown your labor of love in the kingdom and patience of
Jesus.
May sectarianism totter and fall to its very base, and glory and
unity fill God's kingdom of peace and righteousness.
God grant that the trumpet of salvation may continue to sound its
certain blasts, until Babylon be overthrown by the power of God and
truth.
Mrs. L. L. and Eld. J. M.
God bless you abundantly. Amen. My heart is with you to do the
whole will of God, regardless of great or small men, bigots, or
devils.
T. F. D.
I have received two numbers of the Trumpet; the sentiments therein
taught are mine and have been for fifteen years. My wife stands
with me. Let the Trumpet continue to sound louder and louder, until
the walls of sectarian Jericho fall.
J. C. A.
The more I deepen in Christ, the better I understand the doctrine
Brother Warner advocates; and the more I understand the doctrine
advocated and acquaint myself with the early history of the
Friends, the greater similarity I find between the two. He does not
insist upon entire separation from the world in every form stronger
than they did.
F. W.
God bless you and yours and the great and glorious work in which
you are engaged. Would like to help you scatter pure gospel truth
without isms or man-made walls. The Lord hasten on the day when
they shall all fall to rise no more. Glory to God! Yours saved,
J. L. K.
In the issue of Jan. 16, 1882, Brother Warner answers a number of
criticisms by contemporary editors.