W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

When they threatened to kill me, I simply told them in kindness that, if they did, some one else would kill them.
I have frequently had mobs arise against me. On one occasion I had scarcely pronounced the benediction when a
dozen sanctified me rushed to me saying, “Get ready at once, we have sent to the livery for a conveyance to haul
you away as there is no train till morning.” The Holy Spirit, quick as lightning said to me, “I do not want you to
go tonight, but abide in my will,” consequently I said to the brethren, “I can't go with you; send the conveyance
back.” But they said, “You must go, for there is a great mob, too many for us, now ready to take you, and we
want to slip you away before they get their hands on you.” I persisted in my refusal to go. They then lit on a plan
to guard me through the night and for this purpose accompanied me to my lodging. Having arrived in my room,
I called all to prayer, lifting my voice, “O Lord, these good brethren have come to guard me through the night.
My body is weary of toil and needs rest. I fear that if they guard me I will not get my needed sleep. Now I
beseech Thee, for Thy name's glory, dismiss their fears, send them home and refresh them with peaceful
slumber. Amen.” Then they looked at each other somewhat bewildered a minute or two. When the oldest in the
group came to me and, reaching out his hand, said, “Brother Godbey, I do not know what better we can do than
to answer your prayer. Good-night.” They all did likewise and went away; I retired and slept.
I have been stoned a few times, and beaten with prairie dirt, when they could not find rocks, and with frozen
potatoes, when there was a deep snow on the ground hiding all of the rocks, and often threatened with
immediate death. It was a common thing for the brethren to walk on either side of me, especially in the night, to
keep them from doing me violence, and many a time I have known that stepping aside alone after night-fall
would cost me my life. Of course there is nothing of that now, because I no longer have the physical ability to
preach the Sinai Gospel, which is the only kind that raises the devil. He knows that his exposition will cause his
people to get dissatisfied and forsake him. He never gives them up without a fight. He retreats only from the
point of the bayonet.
I have been in very dangerous railroad wrecks, but never seriously injured. When I crossed the Atlantic the
second time, an awful storm struck us five hundred miles this side of Gibraltar and was on us for two thousand
miles in mid-ocean, lasting five days, during which we never saw a glimpse of sun, moon or stars, and could not
discriminate between midnight and noonday. Mountain seas rolled over our ship, burying her in the ocean. She
often climbed the mountain to its summit and then, with quivering shock, pitched down to the bottom of a deep
valley, with awful crash like thunder peals, impressing us all that she was breaking in two in the middle. Every
door was closed water tight and we could only look out through the port holes, which were all the time closed
tight, and see the mighty mountains rolling, climbing the skies, and the billows leaping and, in the bold language
of Homer, the grand old poet, “lashing the stars.” As the mighty rolling seas on all sides were white with foam,
this gave us the only light we had.
Our ship was German, consequently all the sailors spoke that language. As we had sailed from Italy, the most of
the passengers were Italians, speaking that language. There were but few English speaking people on board
whom I could understand. They were all crying to God, “O Lord, just let me put my foot on land once more and
I'll never sail again.” They asked me why I did not join them in that prayer. I told them because I did not know
but He might want me to sail again, and if so I certainly would.
I was exceedingly happy during those memorable five days. I never before nor since realized so profound an
apprehension of the Divine presence, as when looked through the portholes and saw the mountain billows white
as snow chasing each other. It seemed the great ocean was plowed to the bottom, and that I could actually
realize the presence of the Almighty on His chariot of foam, drawn by cyclone steeds, commanding the great
ocean to rise and fall, roll, heave and swell at His bidding.
The boundless ocean is to me the grandest symbol of His incomprehensible Divinity I have ever contemplated.
That ship was a great German Lloyd with thirty-six boilers. When I sailed again four and one-half years
afterward, I found that she had been soon after that voyage condemned by the Board of Admiralty as
unseaworthy and laid aside, and this was one of the last runs she ever made. When she cracked so frightfully
loud as thunder-claps, terrifying the people with the impression that she was breaking to pieces, if the sound had
been verified by the fact, how quickly would we all have gone to the bottom of the great ocean, there to await
the Judgment trump, “When the sea shall give up her dead,” and the old ocean, responsive to the arch angel's