W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

laid down in Hedge's Logic, which we had adopted, permits an opponent to call down a speaker if he gets out of
order. Then the umpire had me to sit down and called up Elder Briney to state his point of order. This point was
that I was sending his people to Hell and I had no right to do it. Then the umpire called me up to defend myself
against the accusation. I simply denied the charge, certifying that I was on the opposite side and doing my
utmost to keep them out of Hell, by telling them God's plain way of salvation; while, to my deep sorrow, I knew
they were going to Hell if they did not get experimental Holy Ghost regeneration and sanctification, which their
false doctrines, which I was doing my best to refute and take out of their way, never could do. Then the umpire
and the moderators told me to go on with my speech.
The result was that I used my time perfectly freely, preaching experimental religion to the spellbound audience
with all my might till the close of the eight days' debate. The Lord gave me a glorious open door to preach His
blessed saving truth to vast multitudes who had never heard it, as the Campbellites had been giving them
nothing but a water Gospel for fifty years, which we know, to our sorrow, is “weak as water.” All they could ask
of me as an honorable contestant in the debate was to answer all their arguments. This I had no trouble to do in
half of my allotted time, fully elucidating and expounding to them the precious Word of God, and showing
clearly their utter perversion and misapplication by those dear people with whom I was reared, and whom I
loved enough to die for them.
The Jews drifted away from the glorious experimental truth which saved the patriarchs and prophets and
enabled their fathers and mothers to die shouting and winging their flight to glory. They became worldly, lost
their hold on God, idolized the ordinances of the Church, and drifted into dead legalism, depending on their
good works to save them, precisely like the Campbellites, as well as millions in other churches, are doing today.
After Paul, having long preached this dead legalism, thinking it would save people, and having even defended it
by persecuting the spiritual Nazarenes unto blood, got so awfully convicted when Jesus met him on the road
near Damascus, and after three days and nights agonizing as a mourner before God, without eating or sleeping,
got so wonderfully converted under the ministry of Ananias; and three years afterward was so powerfully
sanctified in Arabia (Gal. 1st chap.; Rom. 7th chap.), and subsequently to the end of his life was flooded with
the clear light of full salvation; we do not wonder that he was willing to become crucified, as Christ had been to
save the people of his consanguinity. (Rom. 9:1-3.) So during all my debates with the Campbellites I had the
perfect love for them which prepared me for martyrdom. If it had been God's will, I would gladly have laid
down my life to save them.
Their ancestors had been members of the orthodox churches, brought up in the light of the true spiritual Gospel,
that saves people instead of deceiving, coaxing and cheating them out of their souls, which is the normal effect
of this awful Campbellite heresy of baptismal regeneration, which they and the Mormons boldly and
unequivocally preach and defend with a heroism that certainly deserves a better cause. I give them credit for
their honesty, but know they are deceived and deceiving others.
I was bound to preach the true Gospel with all the power of the body, soul and spirit which God gave me. In so
doing from the time He sanctified me in 1868, the Spirit always fell on the people in mighty conviction, moving
them to crowd the altar and seek the Lord till they found Him. Many members of the Campbellite Church, along
with unsaved Methodists, Baptists, and outside sinners, crowded the altar, prayed through to God, and got
gloriously saved, which forever disqualified them to stay in the Church where they not only could get no soul
pabulum, but heard their religion discounted, ridiculed and abused; consequently when they got gloriously
converted, they invariably joined the Baptists or Methodists.
This so stirred up the Campbellite preachers that they hounded me night and day with challenges written to me
in letters and publicly proclaimed from their pulpits. As I wanted to devote all of my time to preaching and not
stop to debate, I retreated from them as long as I could. They hemmed me up and forced me to fight or take
down my colors. The latter I could not do, as I had no colors but the blood-stained banner and was preaching
nothing but Jesus, omnipotent to save every one that will give Him a chance, and that without a Campbellite
preacher or a Mormon prophet to help Him by immersing them in water. I was truly like Nehemiah building the
walls of Jerusalem, when he had to carry the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other and have all of his
people to do likewise, as Sanballat had stirred up the surrounding nations to fight them and keep them from