W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

minds the mastery of the situation which is indispensably essential to that independence of thought and
utterance which is the concomitant of the glorious spiritual freedom everywhere necessary to the successful
enforcement of the message enunciated qualify His disciples for the great and responsible work of launching the
Gospel Church.
For this reason He had to prolong His ministry three whole years, meanwhile He was a constant fugitive for His
life, incessantly flying from His enemies, who were thirsting for His blood and plotting to kill Him, or from His
friends who were enthusiastic to crown Him King, in which case the Romans would have killed Him as a rival
of Caesar. When Jesus wanted preachers He chose “unlearned and ignorant men,” (Acts 4:12). They were
stalwart men, though, hardened by the rough and tumble life of Galilean fishermen, accustomed to toil all night
as the better time to catch fish and take chances to snatch up a little sleep on the sand during the day at intervals
of domestic labor, and then be ready for the ensuing night of sleepless toil. He has never changed His economy.
He is still calling the illiterate millions to go and tell their lost contemporaries the glad tidings of salvation, rich,
sweet, full and free.
When He wanted a teacher, He put His hand on Paul, the greatest scholar in the world and the most competent
exegete of the glorious plan of salvation. Though His greatest enemy, He had no trouble to put him just where
He wanted him and use him to reveal the major part of the New Testament, at the same time so ably and lucidly
expounding the deep things of God as to make him a glorious sunburst on the precious, revealed Word, lighting
it up to all coming generations.
This grand army of evangelists, whom God is raising up in every nation under Heaven, has no time to perplex
their minds with scholastic theologies. They want the simple nonsectarian explanation of the Bible so that they
can preach it to others. The theologians have even muddled the very word “preach,” leading the popular mind to
the conclusion that it means to study hard, manufacture a sermon mechanically and roar it out to the people with
certain rhetorical intonations, inflections and nicely rounded cadences. The word enaggells, from en, good, and
oggells, to proclaim, simply means to tell the good news in the plainest and most simple phraseology, so that
people will be sure to understand it, because it is verily to them the message of life and salvation.
In these Commentaries you not only have the truth explained just as you would want to preach it to the people,
but you are constantly fortified against the dangerous errors which undermine the glorious plan of salvation,
actually vitiating and even ignoring the vicarious substitutionary atonement which our Lord made for the
redemption of the whole world, which is to be received and appropriated by simple faith. These pestilential
heresies, which are freighted with Hell's heaviest artillery, are directed against the very vital truth of the Gospel,
I. e., the glorious redemption wrought by the Son of God with His own dying agonies and flowing blood,
crimsoning the cruel cross of Calvary, and the great and mighty works of the Holy Ghost in conviction,
regeneration, sanctification and glorification. These heresies are not only boldly proclaimed from pulpits, but are
advocated in great volumes of learned books, actually undermining the stupendous work of the Son and Spirit
and bringing back the paganistic idea of God in nature, in contradistinction to the stupendous revealed truths of
God in grace, the climactic glory of Biblical revelation in all of its transcendent beauties and resplendent
victories, flashing over the inspired pages from the Alpha of Genesis to the Omega of Revelation. This great
double heresy against the Son and Spirit, so ably and extensively propagated by Unitarians in the East and
Campbellites in the West, has infected the American atmosphere with a fatal soul-poison which we find
clandestinely creeping in on all sides, like the vampire at midnight gently fanning his victim with his wings, thus
lulling him into still profounder slumber while he sucks the life blood away. These myriads of lay preachers
must have straight, clear, orthodox teaching in order to qualify them to understand the Word in its simplicity,
beauty, force and victory, at the same time heroically fortifying them against Satan's heresies, which are
sweeping over every land like the withering sirocco over Lybia's burning marl, blighting and blasting every
green herb and blooming flower. These Commentaries are a God-send to the millions who have no facilities of
classical education, and whom nevertheless God is calling and ready to honor their ministry with blood-bought
souls, already caught in Satan's Hell-traps and on the brink of irretrievable woe, lingering and waiting for “the
beautiful feet” swiftly running with the evangelistic message of life eternal and salvation non-forfeitable.