George H. Warnock — Soteriology
b1 — The Feast of Tabernacles
Progressive Soteriology: Three Feasts as the Redemptive Model
Warnock grounds his soteriology in Israel’s three annual feasts as successive stages of experience for the church:
“These three Feasts, moreover, consisted of seven major events… I The Feast of the Passover… II The Feast of Pentecost… III The Feast of Tabernacles.”
(Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles, ch. 1)
The sequence is binding: Passover → Pentecost → Tabernacles, and no stage may be skipped:
“Let us not stop at the Passover; but let us go on to enjoy the fruits for which Christ died, even the glories of Pentecost. And let us not stop at this partial restoration of Pentecost, but let us go on to enjoy the fulness of the Pentecostal experience… And even then, let us not stop at the fulness of Pentecost, but let us go on to appropriate and experience the glories of the Feast of Tabernacles.”
(Warnock, ch. 5)
Interpretation: This scheme implies that the ordo salutis does not terminate at justification, but advances progressively toward eschatological sanctification.
Justification (Passover)
The Passover typifies justification through the blood of Christ:
“An experiential appropriation of the Passover produces pardon and justification from all our sins. But that is really a negative experience: the old is taken away, sins are forgiven, the past life is forgotten, and the sinner is left with a clean record before God and ready to start a new life.”
(Warnock, ch. 5)
“In justification he is pardoned; in this new experience [Pentecost] he is empowered for service.”
(Warnock, ch. 5)
Warnock explicitly defends the necessity of blood atonement:
“For there is positively no acceptance for any man before God except by the shedding of the precious blood of Christ. It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul, and ‘without shedding of blood is no remission.’ (Heb. 9:22).”
(Warnock, ch. 2)
He rejects Modernism that denies the crucified Christ:
“Modernism will accept the Lamb of God as He teaches in the temple, lives a life of righteousness and purity… But they will have nothing to do with the Lamb who was crucified for their sins. And therefore the door of salvation is closed to them.”
(Warnock, ch. 2)
Justification is personal appropriation by faith, not universal:
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation (Mercy Seat) through faith in his blood… that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Rom. 3:25, 26).”
(Warnock, ch. 2)
On salvation apart from the works of the law:
“He is not saved by works, and it is entirely unscriptural to teach holiness as the means of salvation… by the works of the law there shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight. (See Rom. 3:9-31).”
(Warnock, ch. 2)
Regeneration (New Birth)
Regeneration occurs through the Spirit, compared to Christ’s breathing in John 20:22:
“The original Greek of the word ‘receive ye’ proves conclusively that right there and then the Spirit of God entered into the disciples—and that imparted life brought them into the experience which we call regeneration or new birth. Just as truly as God in the beginning breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and man ‘became a living soul,‘—so now the Last Adam… breathed into the disciples the breath of spiritual life, and they passed experientially from death unto life.”
(Warnock, ch. 5)
Warnock describes regeneration as genuine but immature:
“Our new birth, by the Spirit, genuine as it is, has not developed into maturity. We have been reproduced after God’s likeness like the seed which is produced by the flower, or the egg that is produced by the bird… But the full glory and the potentialities of that new life lie dormant within the seed or the egg.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
Interpretation: For Warnock, regeneration is a real beginning but not an endpoint; the full maturation of new birth (complete sanctification) remains ahead.
Sanctification and Complete Sanctification (Day of Atonement)
The Day of Atonement (seventh month) represents the experimental cleansing of the church as a body:
“That full and complete Atonement was made for the whole human race by Jesus Christ on the Cross, there is no doubt whatsoever. But it is only too evident… that we have never really appropriated any real measure of the great atoning work of the Cross. And it is this experimental appropriation of the Atonement that the Church must now enter into.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
Warnock argues the church has historically never attained complete sanctification:
“Real victory over sin and the carnal nature is still ahead for the Church of God.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
He rejects holiness claims that fall short of the standard of 1John 3:6-9:
“‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.’ (1John 3:9)… The only scriptural explanation of this verse is that we are not ‘born again’ in the fulness of this regenerating experience.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
Complete sanctification comes not by fleshly striving but through the Ephesians 4 ministries:
“God has another plan—a far more glorious plan… ‘And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints… Till we all come… unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ (Eph. 4:11-13).”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
“God is hastening the day and hour of Christian perfection. We do not have it, nor have we seen it in any person anywhere at any time.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
Glorification: The Manifestation of the Sons of God
Warnock describes a future ‘manifestation of the sons of God’ as the soteriological climax of Tabernacles:
“There is no question as to the fact that one day ‘the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,’ and the saints shall be caught away to be with Him for ever. (1Thess. 4:16.)… This is the final victory for the Church, when mortality is clothed upon with immortality.”
(Warnock, ch. 14)
He also speaks of a ‘resurrection now’ for overcomers, prior to the final resurrection:
“Before this cherished rapture or resurrection takes place, there is to arise a group of overcomers who shall appropriate even here and now their heritage of Resurrection Life in Jesus Christ.”
(Warnock, ch. 14)
Overcomers (Elite Soteriology)
Warnock introduces a distinction between ordinary believers and ‘overcomers’:
“Thank God, however, for the assurance that some are going to possess the land! God is not going to close this dispensation until some really enter in and possess their heritage in Christ Jesus. Paul declared, ‘Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein.’ (Heb. 4:6).”
(Warnock, ch. 1)
“He that overcometh according to the Bible enters into the very victory and triumph of Christ—a victory which can never be lost or forfeited.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
Interpretation: Warnock employs a soteriological distinction whereby not all believers attain the full redemptive reality (Tabernacles); the ‘overcomers’ constitute a separate eschatological segment within the church.
Rejection of Pre-Tribulation Rapture
“The Church of Christ is literally filled with carnal, earthly-minded Christians who sit back in ease and self-complacency and await a rapture that will translate them out of the midst of earth’s Great Tribulation… It is not true.”
(Warnock, ch. 6)
“The rapture of the Church [is not] the plan of God for the perfecting of the saints, and their deliverance from sin and carnality.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
Scope of the Atonement
Warnock affirms that Christ made atonement for the whole human race but emphasizes appropriation by faith:
“That full and complete Atonement was made for the whole human race by Jesus Christ on the Cross, there is no doubt whatsoever.”
(Warnock, ch. 7)
He also cites John 12:24 in the context that Christ’s death would bear ‘much fruit’ and minister ‘to all men’:
“If and when His death was accomplished, then He would be able to minister life to all men, irrespective of race or nationality, in the great harvest that would follow His resurrection.”
(Warnock, ch. 4)
[TENSION: Warnock asserts the atonement was made ‘for the whole human race’ (objective scope) while also insisting that justification requires personal appropriation by faith. He does not draw explicitly universalist conclusions.]
Assurance of Salvation
Warnock warns that believers may ‘remain in the wilderness’ and never enter Canaan:
“The first generation that came out of Egypt by Moses failed to enter in because of unbelief, and God decreed that they would die in the wilderness.”
(Warnock, ch. 1)
Interpretation: Warnock appears to accept security at the level of justification (‘God is satisfied with the work of Calvary’) but makes the full redemptive reality contingent on ongoing faith-progression.