W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
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After waiting long, the Lord opened the way for me, responsive to the pastor's call, to go to Whitesburg, Texas.<br />
There we met some noble C- P- holiness people, who gathered from the surrounding country from far and near,<br />
delighted with the prospect of a holiness meeting. With that heroic working band, we could have had a<br />
wonderful revival, which the pastor so much desired. But after about a week of hard work, laying the foundation<br />
for a great Pentecostal blessing on the people, the carnal element of the Methodist Church unfortunately having<br />
the pre-eminence and hating good, humble, spiritual people, complained that they had come in and taken the<br />
meeting out of their hands, which was not true. God had sent these good people, as that town imperatively<br />
needed a working force to defeat the devil and pray down a revival and lead the people to the Lord. But the<br />
enemy forced the pastor peremptorily to close the meeting; thus signally defeating the revival which was so<br />
much needed.<br />
I knew that he grieved the Holy Spirit in obeying his carnal members instead of God. When shortly after that I<br />
heard that he had died, I was deeply impressed that God took him out of the world for that signal act of<br />
maladministration, by which he made Hell rejoice and Heaven weep.<br />
A similar case once occurred in Kentucky, where I went to hold a holiness meeting in the Methodist Church, by<br />
invitation. The pastor of another church, an able and highly educated man, having heard of my appointment,<br />
published that he would preach in his church the first Sunday morning of our meeting, aiming to forestall and<br />
defeat our meeting by proving to the people the falsity of our position; utterly refuting and annihilating the<br />
doctrine and experience of entire sanctification. Sure enough there was a great meeting in his church that very<br />
Sunday morning, but it was to attend his funeral, as he had suddenly and unexpectedly to all dropped dead in his<br />
tracks, the preceding Thursday. As he was a leading Free Mason, they had postponed his funeral till Sunday, so<br />
as to give ample advertisement and enjoy the leisure day for the grand convocation of the fraternity.<br />
We had a similar corroboration in case of one of the greatest theologians ever in America, who, early in the<br />
Holiness Movement, prepared a series of able lectures in which he claimed to utterly refute the doctrine and<br />
experience. After Inskip, MacDonald, and a few others who were then preaching it, had visited the city and,<br />
with the blessing of God, had led some of the people into the experience, the anti-holiness people sent for Dr.<br />
H____ to come and dig it out by the roots.<br />
In a New Jersey city, where God had sanctified a band of people, Dr. H_____ had an appointment to deliver his<br />
lecture and demolish the “fanaticism” -- meanwhile the holiness people wrote to all of the leading preachers in<br />
the Movement (few in number at that time), to unite with them in prayer to God to defeat the contemplated<br />
assault against <strong>His</strong> work, and to protect it for <strong>His</strong> own sake.<br />
Dr. H____ came and had delivered one lecture, which was introductory, getting the people ready for that<br />
important work of demolishing their fanaticism; then he took sick and met the audience no more, but soon died,<br />
and was carried away in his coffin.<br />
I also had a parallel case in a Colorado city, whither I was called for a revival. I found a splendid church edifice,<br />
a large, wealthy membership and a vigorous, able preacher; everything encouraging except the spiritual interest,<br />
which was constantly at a very low ebb. However, about a dozen good holiness people gathered in to enjoy the<br />
Feast of the Tabernacles and lend a helping hand to push forward the salvation wagon. I quickly saw that my<br />
deep digging with the sanctification mattock was going awfully hard with the pastor. I began on Monday and<br />
went on till Friday, when he just seemed to be in agony. Therefore, taking me aside, with flowing tears, he said,<br />
“Brother <strong>Godbey</strong>, as I called you here, I am very sorry to have to send you away, but I cannot help it. Your<br />
preaching is actually killing us all; my wife is one of the best women in the world, and you have got her so<br />
awfully upset that she has not slept in three nights. I thought I could stand it better but I have not slept in two<br />
nights; and, to tell you the truth, my leading members are walking the streets like crazy men, actually incapable<br />
of attending to their business. If I do not send you away, we will all die. I have a good church here of noble<br />
Christians, but you are tearing it all to pieces. I called you that we might have a revival and get the sinners<br />
converted, but instead of that your awful preaching is actually upsetting and smashing all my members and<br />
making them, and me, too, feel like we have no religion.” I said, “All right, brother, I bid you a loving adieu.” I<br />
never saw him afterward. He weighed one hundred and eighty, and was in the vigor of his manhood, but he died<br />
that year. He said to people who told me, “I will die before I will take what that man is preaching.” When I