W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

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