W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

two solid hours before we could even have a song. Meanwhile there were many centers of the work round about
and all moving independently of each other; e. g., while some were up shouting, others were down praying with
seekers and others preaching to sinners with all their might and exhorting the weak believers to plunge beneath
the crimson flood that washes whiter than the snow, and then to
“Rise to walk In Heaven's own light
Above the world of sin;
With heart made pure and garments white;
And Christ enthroned within.”
After this stalwart man had prayed importunately for about fifty minutes, I saw an amber haze begin to gather
on his countenance; it continued to increase, growing brighter and brighter till his whole physiognomy was
literally illuminated with preternatural splendor and his eyes flashed with an unearthly brilliancy. Then,
springing to his feet, he clapped his hands like roaring thunder. I was impressed that he must have been a
blacksmith, his hands were so heavy and brawny and his entire physique so muscular. Oh, how his roaring
shouts made the welkin [atmosphere, air – DVM] ring! About this time he caught sight of me, having hitherto
labored in vain to get his attention. Then he leaped and snatched me up, tossing me as if I had been a baby,
alarming me seriously, lest he let me fall and hurt me. While tossing me, he shouted out, “I am the man who
cursed you last Sunday, calling you the stumbling-block of this meeting, and saying if you had stayed away, we
might have had a respectable camp; that your coming had disturbed everything and made the people mad. It is
true you were the stumbling-block, and I stumbled over you on my way to Hell. Now I have gotten turned
around and am running at race horse speed the other way, and expect to never let up till I leap through the pearly
gates and shout the victory.”
Though the campmeeting was scheduled to close that night, there was no chance, for it would run by its own
momentum. I had to leave the ensuing morning for another engagement, but the work moved on. Afterward I
heard of many souls saved and sanctified.
Reader, it is your privilege to enjoy all of those nine gifts of the Holy Ghost, which you see catalogued in I Cor.
12:8-11. They are all indispensable in their place. In this important emergency, the gift of spiritual discernment
was especially utilized.
In 1883; the pastor of my old church, where I held my membership when a little boy, and where my father had
been reared, saved, and called to preach, and his five brothers had also entered the ministry, called me
repeatedly to come and help him in his work. Pressure of engagements detained me a long time. This pastor, J.
H. Williams, was a Gospel son of mine and always peculiar for his low estimation of his own ability and
consequently inclined to despondency. As the church was in a somewhat backslidden state, his faithful efforts to
stir them up had produced reaction against him and conduced somewhat to his depreciation among them. My
long postponement and the great difficulties which confronted him in his work, and which his diffidence
conduced to magnify, had all conspired to a degree of discouragement which had collapsed his energies.
Therefore, somewhat yielding to the tempter, he had concluded to give up the work, quit the ministry forever
and return to his father's farm. When I arrived, he met me and told me he had no appointment for me, that I had
waited so long that he had concluded to give up the work, quit the ministry forever and go home. I remonstrated
against the unhappy verdict he had given, as I felt it to be for his own detriment for time and eternity. Then I
asked him to let me preach anyhow; to this he responded that of course he would not prevent me, but when I
did, it would be entirely upon my own responsibility, as he had made up his mind not only to leave this work but
to abandon it forever. However I constrained him to go with me to the place and attend the meetings in which I
would do all the preaching a well as conducting them. As we had no announcement beforehand, the audiences at
the beginning were quite small, but gradually increased until they became really splendid, eventually crowding
the house and filling all the environments. That meeting proved phenomenal in the extreme. Such was the
wonderful power of the Spirit in conviction that the people fell and lost the power to stand on their feet, lying
prostrate, and unable to rise and walk, till the Holy Spirit administered to them the resurrection power. People
would fall under the power during the morning service, and lie there till the afternoon or until night. Sometimes
during the night meetings, which generally occupied about six hours, this knock down power would come on
the people, disqualifying them to stand or to walk, and they would have to stay all night. As it was in the