Doctor Brewer Prescribes A Remedy
A voice is heard in Ramah— but it is not Rachel weeping for her children. It is Doctor Brewer mourning for his premillennial friends. And he would not be comforted. In the Gospel Advocate of recent date, he prescribes the remedy for the "sick preacher" who makes all of the members sick by making a hobby of preaching against certain things. He does not say so, but his descriptions clearly show that he means some of us who have exposed the teachers of premillennialism and other isms. Having already called this editor names that sound like serious diseases, it is not hard to discern by reading between the lines who he thinks the sick preacher is.
In a letter which was recently published, by his permission in a paper which he admitted was indecent, Doctor Brewer diagnosed the diseases of the editor of the Bible Banner by calling him a "Megalomaniac." We all know now who the "sick preacher" is and what he has! He is some kind of a maniac, according to Doctor Brewer.
Then what is the remedy? Doctor Brewer says it is isolation. Avoid him, isolate him, he says. That means that somebody must be headed for the penthouse. But is this advice consistent on the part of the Doctor? Not so long ago he carried on a discussion with Hugo McCord, and in other articles, in the Gospel Advocate, in which he argued that Paul's admonition to "mark them that are causing the divisions ... contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned" does not apply to Boll and Jorgenson and others of the premillennial party. So when he says avoid him, isolate him, he does not mean R. H. Boll nor E. L. Jorgenson. It is an outstanding fact that not once in the Doctor's writings has he prescribed a course of action against the men of that movement. In his Abilene address, he was reported by those who were present to have advised the churches to use both Boll and Jorgenson in meetings as a remedy for the division, and voiced confidence that they would not teach their theories! So he cannot mean them when he prescribes isolation.
Doctor Brewer disclaims being a premillennialist. He even preaches, at times and in places, against premillennialism and proves to the brethren that he is not one. Yet no body has accused him of being a premillennialist. He is charged with the attitude toward the promoters of premillennialism that he cannot deny— and this is the point he invariably evades. He is an appeaser of premillennialists. He will neither avoid nor isolate them. But he would do both to us. But—is it not strange that he would propose to print a letter of endorsement in his proposed book from an editor who is "such a Megalomaniac" and that ought to be avoided and isolated. Those "some fifty preachers" who received his letters asking them to help him sell his proposed book will wonder about this. There is something wrong with this Doctor, friends, you had better not risk his prescription. -F. E. W.