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