Acts 20:31

“Watch, therefore, remembering that three years, night and day, I ceased not warning each one of you with tears.” Paul was a weeping prophet, his tears giving a force to the truth as nothing else could. I preached fifteen years with dry eyes. Then sanctification, breaking up the fountains of my tears, made me a weeping prophet, so I have preached thirty years, my eyes flowing like rivers. Rest assured the Holy Ghost can find the pent-up fountains of tears in the most arid soul. God help us to be personal like Paul, looking our beloved in the face and telling them the whole truth, as here you see he looks these Ephesian elders squarely in the physiognomy and tells them that some of them will turn Satan's wolves and lead off disciples after them. How signally true has this sad Pauline prophecy been verified in the merciless laceration of the Apostolic church into six thousand sectarian denominations, filling the world with confusion, i. e., Babylon. Entire sanctification, the only grace adequate to fortify us against human leadership and put us where we will follow Jesus only, has for this very reason been rejected and antagonized by the party leaders of all ages, from the simple fact that it renders the people unmanageable by human manipulators and puts them where God alone can lead them by His precious Word, instructing their minds, His sweet Holy Spirit illuminating their spirits, and His gracious providence determining their environments. Glory to God, for His wonderful triple leadership, actually infallible when duly appreciated. Sad will be the day for the present holiness movement when captured and manipulated by human leaders. As God's revivals in by- gone ages, the Church of God is ruled by the Holy Ghost alone, having no laws, no creed and no authority but God's Word. It is the very audacity of Satan to invade God's Church through the instrumentality of his preachers, i. e., the “grievous wolves” predicted by Paul. Oh, how they have scattered, torn and devoured God's flock in all ages! The word “heresy” means separation. Hence all separation from God and His Word is heresy. Such is the predominant influence of Satan in this awfully wicked world during these dark ages of Satanic triumph, that he actually perverts everything pertaining to truth and righteousness, calling evil good, and good evil. Hence the Lord's people, in all ages, have been anathematized and slaughtered under charge of heresy. It was true, they had separated from the devil and his people, and were heretics from their standpoint. So it is, this day, very difficult to walk with God in the beauty of holiness and the clear light of His Word, the fullness and freedom of His Spirit, without constant collision, ostracism and persecution by the great human ecclesiasticisms, antagonistical to God's Word and Spirit, and claiming a right to domineer human conscience, which is the prerogative of God alone. Hence we live amid the awful fulfillment of the Pauline prediction of these “grievous wolves,” i. e., carnal men, “speaking perverse things, in order to draw off disciples after them.”