Pine Hill & Early Church

 

About 1888, Brother W.W. Bradley and Brother Sammy Bozeman began preaching Holiness in the Spring Hill Community, just a few miles south of Meridian, Miss.  There was only one church in the community, and soon all those who believed in the holiness doctrine were ordered from the church.  The little group worked hard and built a small frame house for worship.  About 1890, Brother D.S. Warner, Brother B.E. Warren and his wife, and Sister Frankie Miller came to the area, preaching holiness and living free from sin.  A. L. Byers later joined them.  Immediately, the enemy began to cause trouble.  People would throw rocks into the wagons as members left the church; they would cut down trees and pull them across the road, and hindered every way they could.  One night while Brother Warner was preaching, someone shot a slingshot full of buckshot, which missed his face only by inches.  The buckshot was deeply imbedded into the wall behind him.  He continued his sermon as if nothing had happened.  The troupe was staying in the home of my great-grandfather James M. Smith.  My dad was about 12 years old, and his parents were among the first in the community to embrace this holiness movement.  A mob of 75 to 100 men armed with guns and rifles came to the Smith home, but Brother Warner escaped into some woods, which surrounded the house, and the mob left.  The second night they came, Brother Warner and Brother Warren hid under the house while my great-grandfather Smith talked with the men…his neighbors…at the gate.  He would not allow them to enter his yard, and they soon left.  A testimonial recorded on page 438 of Brother Byers’ book, “The Birth Of A Reformation: is written by my great-aunt, Damaris Smith Vance.  She states, “He and his company were in our house when the angry mob came after him; but the Lord took care of him.”  When the people who were turned out of the denominational church in the Spring Hill community built the new building, they did not get a deed to the property.  After a few years, the man who owned the land took it from them.  They moved a few miles toward Meridian and built a small building, called Pine Grove Church of God.  My grandmother, Sarah Smith McDonald and her husband, Charles J. McDonald, were among the early pioneers in the building the Church of God in these areas.  My father, Wiley A. McDonald grew up in the Church of God, and reared his family in it.  His influence, along with my mother’s, is felt with the establishment of the First Church of God in Meridian after he moved from the rural community into the city of Meridian.  A cherished family keepsake was a Bible, which Brother Warner left with my great-grandmother when he left his home.  I finally fell heir to it, and felt that I should pass it on to a great-great-great-grandson, Charles R. Shumate, who is the only one of the descendants to become a minister.  I gave it to Charles on December 24, 1989.

 

 

 

Pine Grove Church

 

 

 

  

 

L-R:  Billy Skelton, G.A. Valentine, Rev. C.E. Griffin, Gus Taylor, Rev. C. E. Wellborn and daughter, Rev. Bob Owens, Evangelist, Mrs. Hattie Jones, Miss Livonia Shepherd, Demaris Vance, Martha Hill, Mollie Skelton, Manthie McDonald, Albert Johnson, Minnie Johnson, Sarah Smith McDonald, Lizzie Knight, Lamar Knight, Mamie Knight, Rosie White, C.J. McDonald, and George White.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

D.S. Warner & his “Company”             James M. & Ellen Smith

 

 

      

  Sarah & Demaris Smith                                  James M. Smith Home

 

 

 

 

                                    James M. Smith Home

 

 

 

     Charles J. McDonald & Sarah M. Smith

 

The account of the Crusade In Meridian, Mississippi, by the D.S. Warner group—they were housed in the homes of James M. (Jim Smith) and C.J. McDonald and his wife Sarah M. Smith the daughter of James M. Smith.  This material is taken from Birth of a Reformation or the Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner. 

 

From that place we came to Spring Hill, several miles east…were a few pure children of God, whom we found yoked up with a majority who were professing salvation and yet “walking after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness.”  In our lifting the standard of God’s Word against such inconsistencies, the wicked spirits were stirred in the baser sort, so that many threats of violence were blown about in the neighborhood.  But the hand of God being over us, we suffered no harm…  Oh, how our soul longs to be excused of the most unpleasant task of lifting the Gospel standard of holiness where profession has been countenanced in lives of filth and idolatry!  The preacher that simply tells the people he could not use tobacco, and even earnestly admonishes men to quit, and yet receives the testimonies of men who use it, sets at naught the Word of God, pampers men in their sins, and prepares a storm of persecution to fall on the head of the man who comes after him showing the real Bible line between the works of God and the works of the devil, between real holiness of heart, soul, spirit, and body on the one side, and all filthiness of the flesh and spirit on the other.  If holiness-teachers, on going into a new field where people know nothing about the doctrine and experience, would faithfully tell them at once that entire sanctification, the second work of grace, cleanses out of man all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, which includes all unholy tempers and appetites, that it can be obtained only by abandoning every sinful and unclean habit and giving the whole man—soul, body, and spirit—up to God for perfect purity of life and being, no person is prepared to contradict him, and such as conclude to see that grave will expect to pay the full price…  But when men are allowed to profess holiness without contradiction and yet practice the sin of tobacco-using or anything else contrary to godliness, they, in imagining themselves holy while living unholiness, as well as sinners in general, learn to associate holiness and filth, and the difficulties in rooting out the abomination are many times increased.  Men, by getting a degree of blessing of God upon their souls in consequence of abandoning some evils, or at least imagining themselves blessed, take the same as an endorsement from God upon the filth they yet continue in.  The longer they continue in their delusion the more they are confirmed in it and the more they will fight for their idols.  And their practice justifying the lust of the wicked, these are ready to assault and abuse God’s ministers, who must declare the whole counsel of God.  And so a lax preacher gives place for the devil and wrath of men to assault the faithful herald of God that follows him.  So by the fruits of the devotees of rehashed Methodism in the Fort Scott creed, which has cursed the South and filled hearts with bitter hatred toward all who follow Christ, and by their strife and contentions having brought a general contempt upon the name of holiness, and also by their lack of radical ness against sin in every form, our work here is beset with dark mountains which God alone can remove, but which, thank His holy Name, have been much obliterated in all places where we have labored.  Later, at Spring Hill, the mob element was further encountered.  Here, as was always the case where a mob gathered to do violence to Bro. Warner, the chief instigators were sectarian preachers and professors who were incensed by the preaching of the truth that condemned them.  From Spring Hill meeting-house, where we last wrote, we went about seven miles to the southeast through a wild and almost mountainous woods, to the house of Brother and Sister Irby in whose dwelling we remained and held meetings for about one week… a goodly number of hearers came out through the wet weather, and the dear Lord was pleased to pour his Spirit upon us gloriously.  It seemed that God had taken us upon the Delectable Mountains.  The leaps in our souls were too high for the height of the room, as the house had a ceiling, whereas nearly all the country houses here have nothing overhead but the roof, and never has a whitewash brush touched the outside of the country houses.  Scarcely one out of ten of the houses in the country have a pane of glass in it.  The sisters talked with some of the women who did not know what a carpet was.  We have seen no such thing here.  The people of the South seem contented with fewer domestic comforts than any people we ever have met before.  As one sister remarked the other day, “They take it out in tobacco.”  There is much truth in this statement.  The weed deprives them of nearly all comforts and many actual necessities of life.  Of course, there in not the same need of carpeted floors here as in the North; but how people can live for years in a house without a window is a mystery.  Well, out stay at Brother and Sister Irby’s seemed to my soul like Brother Elijah’s hiding place in the wilderness, where he dined on food brought by angels.  We also feasted on heavenly manna, and shall never forget it.  Some came to the altar, and a few cast away their filthy idol; but we hope the Day of Judgment will reveal much more good done that was manifest.  Some of God’s little ones came over from Spring Hill, who informed us that some were anxious for our return to that place.  Now, at that place is where Satan’s seat is.  Before we left there, we were much impressed that the mob spirit was at work, and one night when the rain prevented our going to the place, a disguised crowd was seen going there.  But now, hearing that some souls were hungry for salvation, we ventured back in the name of Jesus.  When reaching the neighborhood, we were joyfully surprised by the arrival of our dear young brother Andrew L. Byers, from Illinois, who has come to join our little company.  Having had a great deal of trouble and several days’ ramble before he found us, he was reminded of Stanley in search of Livingstone.  Truly our hearts were mutually refreshed by his arrival.  (These meetings in the vicinity of Spring Hill were almost the author’s first experience in Gospel work.  I was asked to join the company to supply a missing part in song, Mother Smith having dropped out.  After arriving at Meridian it was some time before I could locate Brother Warner.  The first night of meeting three souls came to the altar, two consecrated for entire sanctification and one was gloriously pardoned.  The next night the fierce powers of hell were fully awakened from their brief slumber occasioned by our absence.  A couple of lead balls called buckshot were thrown through the open window by means of a rubber concern that we are told is even dangerous to life.  These wicked wretches also threw stones with slings at some of God’s saints on their way home that night, even regardless of women and children in the crowd.  One woman was hit.  That was the lowest and most cowardly work we have ever met with.  The next day four of Satan’s chief servants rode out in four directions five and seven miles to enlist by his lies and slanders such as were base enough in a great mob to assault us that night.  During the day we learned all about the movement, and at a meeting at a Brother’s house we recalled the meeting for that night, seeing no possible chance of doing good.  Hear O Heavens, and be ashamed O Babylon, when we tell you that one of the four spirits that went forth together Gog and Magog was of the Fort Scott creed, or the Good Way sect, and the Father of the only family of that sect in the neighborhood.  And at his cotton gin was the appointed place for the mob to meet.  Some five miles away he called on some young men who are reputed pretty wicked and invited them to join the mob, telling them base lies.  But they, having more principle than he, said they would have nothing to do with it.  They also came and informed some friends of the Lord all about the plot.  These told the Fort Scott man to his face what he was guilty of, and he said that he did not dent it….We expected to meet that creed with the Word of God and had hopes of seeing some saved.  But they shun Scripture investigation as a wolf shuns the daylight.  Brother Bradley invited the editor and two of the leading preachers to meet him in discussion but they have failed to do so; and now we have discovered their tactics.  They seem to regard slandering and mobbing as better calculated to sub serve their cause than would honest discussion.  While we are happy to think that most of them in person would not condescend to mobbing, it is only too true that many of them have given their tongues to slander whereby the other measures have been infused in the baser sort.  May God forgive them for Christ’s sake?  There was no meeting at which the mob could assault us; they beset the house where we stayed until twelve o’clock at night.  They reported their number was between seventy-five and one hundred.  They were armed with guns and revolvers.  There were in the crowd a Methodist preacher, a class-leader with his axe, many old gray haired sectarians, men recently out of jail; the basest men in the county mixed up with a majority of sectites—so we were informed by brethren that knew the majority that came up to the house, for a part kept in reserve with most of the guns.  They stated that their object was only to give us orders to leave the country the next day.  A brave army, about a hundred strong, gathered from several miles around just to tell us to leave the next day, after that we had made known that we were going at that time!  There were a few fearless souls present who told them to their face that they were actuated to their dark work by the lies of Satan and the wickedness of their hearts, and shamed the Babylon professors there mixed up in common cause with base outlaws.  The mob hung around until about midnight, clamoring for us to come out, stating that they would not harm us, etc… But when men are low down enough to fling buckshot into a congregation and rocks into a promiscuous crowd, you might as well tell us that wolves and hyenas do not care for meat as to say that such did not want to hurt us.  Doubtless some in the crowd did not, and for what we know such as said so did not; but judging the mob by what we have seen in the past, we had good sense enough to avoid such beasts…  After all had left the house, not a great way off, they fired off their weapons, which, for a few seconds mimicked the den of war.  We were quartered at the house of Brother James M. Smith (Laverne McDonald’s great-grandfather.  When the mob first came, Brother Warner asked if I wished to join him in his escape from the house.  I then accompanied him to the pinewoods some distance from the dwelling and we remained there until we could hear that the mob had left.  Brother B.E. Warren had found a hiding place under the house.  The first company of men that came proved to be only a detachment and the other mob came in greater force.  This second time, I remained in the house with the women folks, while Brother Warner and Warren hid under the house.  The men wanted Brother Warner and lingered at the gate for sometime talking to Brother Smith, who would not allow them within the gate except to see for themselves that Brother Warner was not in the house.  Finally, after learning that I was present, they asked to see me, whereupon I went out and talked with them from the porch.  They asked a number of questions and then left.  May God ever bless and keep pure children of God in that wicked region; and may He reward their kindness to us and also that the few non-professors whom we shall soon forget and for whom we shall pray that God shall bless and reward them with his great salvation.  The Church at Spring Hill community evolved to the Pine Grove Church.  Pine Grove Church then grew and became what we know today as Jones’s Chapel Church of God.