Posted: 04/17/2005 at 3:33pm | IP Logged

A Review of George Warnock’s Who Are You?

By Steve Eastman

Warnock argues in Who Are You? that God can use the works of satan against satan.  How fitting the author uses a demon’s question to seven Jewish exorcists to wake the church out of its Laodicean sleep!  The sons of a chief priest named Sceva, had their formula right (“We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches [Acts 19:13b, NKJV].”), but were sadly lacking in a relationship with the savior.  Today much of the church has its facts and confessions right, but lacks interest in an intimate relationship with Him.

Warnock begins with a look at the “armies of heaven” from Revelation 19 that accompany Him Who is Faithful and True.  He says that these people “… not only profess to have faith and truth;  but faithfulness and truth have been wrought into their very being, as they have learned obedience through the things they have suffered, and have followed the Lord in all His ways.”  Typically for him, Warnock effectively uses many Old Testament examples to illustrate the pattern of New Testament truth.  “Right now we are almost ashamed to admit that we are part of the ‘Church’ when we see ourselves like Samson: bound by the world systems of the Philistines, grinding out the corn for the enemies of God, and so blinded in our hearts that we think we are victorious and triumphant in the midst of it all.”  Warnock argues that just as Samson slew more in his death than he had slain throughout his whole life, so the church becomes more effective when “…she is finally prepared to lay down her life, if so be she might know the power of the risen Christ working within her.”

The author spends a chapter considering the origin of evil.  He turns to the hypothetical example of a man who wants to be independent of the electric company.  “But one day I decide in my heart, ‘I do not want to live in this kind of dependence … I will have my own light … I will cut those power lines.’ Suddenly my home is in darkness.”  The significance of this illustration is that it proves there can be no middle ground.  God is light.  If we kick him out, we have darkness, not a gray area.  Warnock returns to this theme in a later chapter.  “At this present time there are three classes of people in the church: Those who are given over to Christ, those who are given over to their own ways … and those who live on the little Island of Neutrality.”  He goes on to say, “But this little Island of Neutrality is built of sinking sand; and when the storms of the Day of the Lord begin to break upon us, it is going to dissolve.  The people of the world and of the Church are going to be pressured into one camp or the other.”

At the time Warnock wrote, in 1985, there was well-meaning criticism of what people like him were trying to achieve.  “Often the people of God who desire to walk in truth are accused of neglecting the simple message of the gospel, encumbering it with needless deeper truths, and forgetting about the needs of the world about us.”  That criticism has not diminished over the years.  Warnock replies, “In vain are we going to simplify the gospel by portraying it vividly with musical talent, or by drama, or by puppeteering, or with the art of rhetoric ….   Scales have to be removed from blinded eyes ….”  Warnock turns to the example of Jesus, who walked in total union with God, “…saying only what the Father gave Him to speak, doing only what the Father gave Him to do.”  The author reminds us, “The intention of the gospel is to bind in Heaven those forces that are loose in the earth, and must be bound before men can see and hear.  The intention of the gospel is to loose in Heaven those forces of the Kingdom that need to be loosed on the earth.”

        For Warnock, it all boils down to this, “Satan does not fear our humanly devised schemes of evangelism, our programs that are designed to bring in the people and entertain them … but he trembles when he sees a people beginning to walk in the way of the cross.”  It’s up to us to answer the question, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”

archive.openheaven.com