W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
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lucre alone can relax. Having paid them for it with the money so generously furnished by his king, throwing his<br />
arms around it with a bounding heart, he returned to Germany, after an absence of forty years, in which he had<br />
patiently and faithfully toiled hunting it.<br />
On arrival he submitted it to those shrewd chemists standing at the front of the scientific world.<br />
Chemistry, though the greatest of the sciences, is the youngest. Out of chemistry has originated all the<br />
machinery that now sends the world rushing into eternity at electrical speed. Then those chemists submitted the<br />
manuscript to their powerful alkaline solutions whose normal effect was to Timber up the great roll of sheepskins,<br />
till they could pick them off one by one with perfect security and spread them out like a great book.<br />
Another effect of the chemicals was to bring out the old writings of which hitherto no mortal eye could see a<br />
letter, such was the great antiquity of the writings. They looked, and behold it was all legible, and what as it? A<br />
complete copy of the New Testament, and dating back into the very blaze of the Apostolic Age. The venerable<br />
man of God who had spent his life hunting it took a big shout and went to Heaven, actually too happy to tarry<br />
longer in this tenement of clay. He was like good old Simeon who had spent his life looking for his Lord to<br />
appear, and died with the infant Savior in his arms.<br />
The Christian world knows not its indebtedness to the King of Germany who alone, at his own expense, kept<br />
Tischendorf and his laboring men in the Bible lands for forty years hunting everything that could throw light on<br />
the infallible Word, and finally culminating in the glorious discovery of this manuscript, where God had, in <strong>His</strong><br />
signal mercy, reserved it ever since the Apostolic Age, thus bridging the broad chasm of the Dark Ages and<br />
bringing the Christian world back into the resplendent glory of the Apostolic Age, when holy men of God<br />
actually spoke as the omniscient Spirit gave them utterance.<br />
“Brother <strong>Godbey</strong>, how do you know that this Sinaitic manuscript, which you have been reading these bug years<br />
and have recently translated, was actually written in the Apostolic Age?” I take pleasure in answering your<br />
question. There is no date in the manuscript, but it is written throughout in the old Uncial capitals, which were<br />
used by the Apostles, but superseded by the Cursives, which came into use in the third and fourth centuries. The<br />
Apostle John lived about thirty years of the second century. Hence the chirography of this manuscript<br />
incontestably identifies it with the Apostolic Age.<br />
N. B. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Juda for the Jews fifteen years after our Lord's ascension; Luke wrote his for<br />
the Greeks in Corinth as dictated by Paul, twenty-five years after the Lord's ascension; Mark wrote his in Rome<br />
for the Romans as dictated by Peter, thirty years after the Lord's ascension; John did all of his writings for the<br />
Christians in Ephesus, sixty-five years after the Lord's ascension.<br />
Each book in the Bible was written separately from all the balance, the compilement having taken place some<br />
time afterward.<br />
As this manuscript was written in the old Uncial, it must have been at least as early as the third century that they<br />
were compiled into a volume. All the fads involved really confirm the conclusion that this was the first<br />
compilement of the New Testament. We have these words in reference to it! “Codex Sinaiticus, omninum<br />
antiquissimus et solus integer.” “The Sinaitic manuscript, the most ancient of all and the only one entire.” Of all<br />
the old manuscripts which have been discovered, this is the only one that contains the whole of the New<br />
Testament and the ablest critics pronounce it the most ancient of all. Of others, the Vatican manuscript is the<br />
largest aside from the Sinaitic. The most of the manuscripts which, by vast and persevering researches, have<br />
been discovered, consisted only of a single book, e. g., the Gospel of Matthew, or the Epistle to the Romans, etc.<br />
We have a wonderful providence in the preservation of this manuscript through the long roll of the Dark Ages,<br />
while ignorance and superstition enveloped the whole earth in the sable mantle of an intellectual and spiritual<br />
night.<br />
You see the revelation of God's precious truth which survived in primitive purity in this manuscript. It had to<br />
await two great and wonderful inventions in order to be revealed to the world, I.e., the art of printing and the<br />
science of chemistry. Without the latter it would have been utterly impossible ever to have deciphered it, as it<br />
was so very ancient that it had utterly faded out into solid raven blackness. Without the former it would have<br />
been corrupted after its discovery, because it would have been subject to transcriptions in order to its perpetuity