CHURCH OF GOD REFORMATION MOVEMENT

THE CHURCH OF GOD REFORMATION is a movement born into a greater holiness movement that was prominent in the late Nineteenth Century in North America. Its genesis and principal motivation was the labors of Daniel S. Warner through his holiness paper titled "The Gospel Trumpet." Through evangelism and the written word, this movement crossed the nation and circled the globe in a period of about twenty years.

The Church of God Reformation was truly a movement as opposed to a new church or denomination. Its growth and development were random and spontaneous. There was not a systematic proliferation of the movement's message, but in different places and among people from various church backgrounds many sincere Christians came out of the "Babylon" of denominational confusion to take their stand as the biblical Church of God.

The Reformation had a two-fold message. The first part of the message was holiness based upon the Wesleyan second blessing experience of entire sanctification. The second part of the message was the biblical truth of the church as the body of Christ and not the religious institutions of men. According to this message, God places people in the body of Christ, the church, at the time they are saved. The denominations only divide Christians people and unwittingly maintain low spiritual conditions that hold people back from living truly holy lives. Warner expressed the core of this message in a diary entry dated March 7, 1878:

On the 31st of last January the Lord showed me that holiness could never prosper upon sectarian soil encumbered by human creeds and party names, and he gave me a new commission to join holiness and all truth together and build up the apostolic church of the living God.

Along with this two-fold message, the Reformation espoused a unique interpretation of the Book of Revelation. The symbolic language of the Revelation was understood to be a prophetic description of the history of the Christian church from the Day of Pentecost to the end of time. It describes the pristine glory of the early church; an apostasy that culminated in the Roman Catholic Church; a gradual restoration of the vital gospel truths of justification (Luther), entire sanctification (Wesley) and the truth of the church as the unified body of Christ entered only through the experience of salvation.

Critics often point out that such Church-Historic interpretations of the Book of Revelation end up naming the proponents of a particular interpretation as the intended subject of the prophecy. This is certainly true of many people that have identified with the Church of God Reformation but it is not true of all. People that understand this interpretation properly plainly say that it is the restoration of the truth of the church that was prophesied, not them in particular, and it is their intention to live out that truth.

More than a century has passed since the birth of this Reformation. As is true with all endeavors of men, even in the great work of God, differences in opinion of doctrine and practice arose and various groups parted company over time. All the groups claim to be the legitimate heirs of the original reformers and there is a very real sense in which this is true. Today there is a spectrum of people identifying with the Church of God Reformation that ranges from moderately liberal to extremely conservative. There have been times when some groups practiced division in an attempt to maintain unity and never saw the contradiction. And while divisions will continue to exist among the Reformation, there are many sincere saints who understand the truths of the church, holiness, and spiritual unity and reach across those divisions to fellowship any and all who will do the same.

C. W. Naylor captured the true essence of the truth that underlies the Church of God Reformation in his hymn "The Church's Jubilee."

The light of eventide now shines the darkness to dispel,

The glories of fair Zion's state ten thousand voices tell;

For out of Babel God doth call his scattered saints in one,

Together all one church compose, the body of his Son.

The Bible is our rule of faith and Christ alone is Lord,

All we are equal in his sight when we obey his word;

No earthly master do we know, to man-rule will not bow,

But to each other and to God eternal trueness vow.

The day of sects and creeds for us forevermore is past,

Our brotherhood are all the saints upon the world so vast;

We reach our hands in fellowship to every blood-washed one,

While love entwines about each heart in which God's will is done.

Please visit the Gospel Trumpet section of our web site to view literature and music related to the Church of God Reformation. The book Birth of a Reformation is a biography of Daniel S. Warner and provides an interesting background to the emergence of the Church of God around the writings and ministry of this man and other sincere saints of God at the time. A good selection of Church of God Literature can be found at the Reformation Publishers web site.

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