W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

heroically that they even got the emperor gloriously converted and, through his influence, sent their flaming
heralds to the ends of the earth. God warns them that they shall suffer persecution ten days; that means ten
different great persecutionary epochs, which broke out afresh at the expiration of every thirty years in which the
reigning emperor always did his best for their extermination. But the more they killed them the more rapidly
they spread to the ends of the earth.
Pergamos represents the proud Imperial Church which followed the martyr age, which wound up with the
conversion of the emperor. The normal effect of this wonderful promotion to the royal palace, which ruled the
whole world, was to gradually bring the world into the Church; and meanwhile millions of pagans were only
nominally converted, responsive to the imperial edict, their priests turning Gospel ministers.
The Church of Thyatira symbolizes Roman Catholicism which followed the Constantinian age, actually
paganizing Christianity by bringing in the worship of angels, the Virgin Mary and the canonization of saints. We
see her reprimanded for tolerating that woman Jezebel who taught the people to eat things offered to idols and
commit fornication, which means spiritual deflection from God and departure from entire sanctification, which
brings us into the Bridehood, eternally discarding all earthly lovers.
Then we have the Church of Sardis, to which the Apostle positively says, “Thou hast a name to live but art
dead” This is the awful state of spiritual death in which Luther, Wycliffe, Zwingle, Melancthon and Erasmus
found the Church. However, John says that there are a few in it who have not defiled their garments and they
shall walk with Him in white.
The sixth is the Church of Philadelphia, which symbolizes the great Lutheran Reformation of the sixteenth
century, which brought a glorious sunburst on the black darkness which had filled the world a thousand years. If
you will examine the paragraph descriptive of this Church, you will find not a solitary allegation against her.
Last of all we have the Church of Laodicea, which symbolizes the fallen Protestant denominations of the present
day. God says to her, “Would that thou roast either cold or hot, but because thou art neither cold nor hot, but
lukewarm, therefore I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Thus you see lukewarm indifference is worse than
outbreaking wickedness, because it makes people harder to save and surer of Hell. That is the awful state of
things in the great Protestant churches this day. They are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, but indifferent;
therefore vastly harder to save than the poor victims of slumdom whose wretched condition has already given
them a prelude of Hell. Now where is the Holiness Movement? You find it in the words “Behold, I stand at the
door and knock ...,” Rev. 3:20.
God help us to knock our best.
(26.) ”MIGHTY TO SAVE” Isa. 62:1. Man has been denominated by philosophers, “The religious animal.”
When I traveled around the world I was profoundly impressed with the significant fact that all the heathen are, if
possible, more religious than the Christians and the same is true with the Mohammedans, (who are practically
heathen). They pray five times a day, even whenever they happened to be on ships packed with people, till it
seemed that they could not get room for genuflection, yet they always found room and time to pray, and were
utterly dead to all criticism.
The poor Hindus worship three hundred and thirty millions of gods. I found their temples and shrines
everywhere and saw them worshipping and plunging into the holy rivers and tanks to wash their sins away.
The heathen world is crowded with altars, shrines, temples and gods, but the trouble is that none of them can
save. Many heathens seem actually to entertain a correct idea of the one omnipotent God who created the world,
yet, amid all their superabounding religious ceremonies, shrines and temples, they have no god that actually
takes their sins away and saves them, but always their crushing burden of a guilty conscience haunts them night
and day. The most efficient preaching we can do among the heathen is faithfully to tell them that Jesus has
actually taken away our sins and we know it. We may tell them as much as we will about the Bible and our God
and the great truths of our religion, but they, as in India, have their bible, the Shastras, and their books, the
Vedas, but no realization that their burden of sin is taken away. They travel on long pilgrimages for the privilege
of baptism in the holy rivers, the Ganges and Jumna, but still have no consciousness of the burden removed, of a
new heart and actual salvation.