W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

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used by the Apostles, but superseded by the Cursives, which came into use in the third and fourth centuries.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