W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

(22.) ”CARNALITY” This word is synonymous with depravity and means the old man of sin; the Satanic
nature in the heart transmitted from the fall. The same is Ishmael whom God commanded Abraham to take away
that he might not be an heir with Isaac in the patriarchal patrimony. The same is also Agag, the king of the
Amalekites, who fought against Israel forty years to keep them out of the Promised Land. When God
commanded Saul, in his royal representation of all Israel, to go and exterminate them, and he spared Agag and
the best of the sheep and cattle that he might offer fat sacrifices to God, then He utterly cast him away, no longer
answering him either in dreams or visions, nor by Urim and Thummim. Saul there drifted away and turned
spiritualist, finally winding up his miserable life by suicide. Thus appallingly is illustrated the sad fate of every
Christian who does not have Agag slain, I. e., old Adam crucified and the body of sin utterly exterminated.
Compromise with sin anywhere means ultimate damnation.
Saul had had a bright conversion. The Word positively says that “when he met the Lord's prophets God gave
him another heart.” He reigned over Israel forty years, making them a good king, both wise in counsel and
valiant on the battlefield. In his case carnality took the form of self-will and never would fully let up; you see his
awful end, dying on Mount Gilboa amid terrible and signal defeat and going down to a backslider's Hell. Let
every one take warning and adopt the maxim of Cato, the great Roman statesman, with which he wound up
every powerful speech, delivered in the Senate Oral Chamber, “Carthage delenda est,” “Carthage must be
destroyed.” Let us make a slight change in the phraseology and ring out now, and never compromise, “Carnality
must be destroyed.” You will find this booklet a blessing to you as the Holy Spirit will use it as a heart-searcher.
(23.) ”JOHN THE BAPTIST AND THE APOSTLE PAUL” These were the two greatest preachers the world
ever saw, except the Conqueror? Of Mount Calvary. They tower in their intellectual majesty, the lights of both
dispensations. Though John lived and died in the Old, he proleptically enjoyed the Pentecostal experience of the
New, being filled with the Holy Ghost from the womb of his mother, I. e., sanctified wholly. Paul unfortunately
backslid from his infantile justification, Rom. 7:9, (I was alive at one time without law, but the commandment
having come, sin revived and I died, and the commandment which is unto me for life the same was unto death,
for sin having taken occasion through the commandment deceived me and by it slew me.” Here we see that
Paul, like every other son and daughter of Adam's fallen race, enjoyed justification through the normal grace of
Christ till he got old enough to know right from wrong, then his hereditary depravity rising up antagonized the
law, causing him to become a transgressor and fall under condemnation.
He was reared up in a godly home and with the greatest possible educational facilities in the world of his day,
not only graduating in the Greek College of Tarsus, but in the Hebrew Academies of Jerusalem. He became a
great theologian, his extraordinary intellect and transcendent culture giving him a place in the Sanhedrin and at
the front of the theocracy. But evidently all this time he was under the condemnation which supervened upon the
forfeiture of his infantile justification above mentioned and thus preaching ahead in a backslidden state, till the
lightning flashing from the glorified person of Jesus sent thunderbolts of conviction to his guilty soul, and
prostrated him an importunate mourner in the house of Judas, till gloriously converted under the ministry of
Ananias.
While preaching with all his might he soon realized the need of the second work and, going away into Arabia,
where Moses sought it forty years and received it at the burning bush, he agonized in the burning sand three
years, trying to get it by the law, until, giving up in utter desperation, he turned the body of sin over to Christ
and immediately shouted the victory, Rom. 7:24. Then and there he was transformed into a cyclone of fire,
flashing and flaming over Asia and Europe, till he lost his head at Nero's block, sweeping up to Heaven in a
chariot of fire.
Oh, what worlds of spiritual detriment supervened to that mighty man because he lost his infantile justification!
How signally contrastive was the experience of John the Baptist, who, instead of backsliding from his infantile
justification, added to it the glorious experience of proleptical sanctification, actually entering into the
Pentecostal power in anticipation, thus the greatest preacher the world has ever seen, his thrilling eloquence,
stentorian oratory and fiery pathos literally magnetizing all who came within the sound of his trumpet voice, till
he actually emptied the cities and populated the wilderness with the thronging multitudes, the rich on their
camels, the middle classes on their donkeys, and the poor trudging along the dusty way on foot, from dewy