W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
them preach; whereas precisely the opposite is true. Before I was sanctified I was scarcely known outside of my<br />
own Conference. Now I have not only America throwing before me wide open doors from the Atlantic to the<br />
Pacific, but Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. I preached for three months in India night and day, nobody<br />
recognizing me as a feeble old man. Oh, how delightful it would be for me to go back to India and preach till the<br />
angels come for me. You get truly sanctified, lose your self in Jesus, sinking out of self into the sweet will of<br />
God and you will have more open doors than you know what to do with. Here I am at the end of fifty three<br />
years' ministry, and literally bewildered whither to turn because I have grand open doors, not only in the<br />
homeland, but girdling the globe.<br />
Satan tells you that if you get sanctified your Conference will stick you off into a starvation appointment,<br />
therefore he terrifies you with the rattle of dry bones and tells you this will be your fate – you wilt starve to<br />
death. Do you know that if you get filled with the sweet, perfect will of God, you will want that very starvation<br />
appointment? This perfect love casts out the fear of starvation, unpopularity, persecution, and everything else.<br />
When the Lord gave me this experience, I asked my presiding elder to request the Bishop to give me the<br />
poorest, hardest, and roughest appointment in the Conference. There were always many petitions in the Bishops<br />
Cabinet; but in the opposite direction, racing after the rich appointments. When the presiding elder presented my<br />
request, (as the report reached me), the Bishop said: “Tell me what kind of a brother this is who sends in a<br />
request like this, such as I have never heard before.” My presiding elder responded: “Bishop, a great change has<br />
recently come over this brother and he is now so flooded with love for everybody and so delighted with Jesus<br />
that he would gladly go to the North Pole and freeze to death, or to the equatorial deserts and burn to death, or to<br />
the swamps and die of malaria, or to the mountains and starve, all for Jesus' sake.” A tear came into the old<br />
Bishop's eye and he said: “Brethren, here you see you have a preacher on your hands who will not provide for<br />
himself; therefore it is incumbent on us to provide for him.” What was the result? Why, I can say to the credit of<br />
my Conference that they never did give me an appointment that did not give us a great deal more living than we<br />
knew what to do with, thus preparing us to help all the poor we met. The preachers are all scared worse than<br />
they are hurt. Oh, how fond Satan is of playing the bluff game on them! If they only could see the glorious<br />
liberty and unutterable brightness flooding life with constant sunshine; if they would only come over the<br />
swelling Jordan to the land where the flowers never fade and the fruit never fails, where corn and wine abound<br />
and milk and honey flow, and the sorrows of the past go into glorious eclipse, they would all expedite their<br />
flight from the howling wilderness.<br />
I was a member of two honorable lodges in which they complimented me with the office of chaplain. To these I<br />
never did return a single time after that memorable epoch when the Lord baptized my soul with the Holy Ghost<br />
and fire. Truly I never had time to go back; I was too busy preaching the Gospel. The same fires that cremated<br />
the Free Mason, the Odd Fellow, the collegiate president and the big preacher, not only burned up Methodism,<br />
but creedism of every form and phase; leaving me nothing but God and <strong>His</strong> precious Word, which from that day<br />
have been my joy and song. The mighty men of the Holiness Movement, Inskip, McDonald, Wood, Keene,<br />
Updegraff, Dodge, Janell, Dunlap, Fillman, Knapp, and others whose names are in the Book of Life, have gone<br />
to Glory. I am now one of the oldest men in the Movement. I will soon exchange the battlefield for the Mount of<br />
Victory, joining my triumphant predecessors. I am jealous for the cause of God and Holiness; it is everything to<br />
me.<br />
Hydrolatry, pyrolatry and ecclesiolatry, and other devices of Satan are now prominent in the formidable batteries<br />
which Hell is turning against us. These specious forms of idolatry, along with eucharolatry, augment the<br />
formidable columns of ritualism and legalism, which on all sides are shoving out greased planks, with all the<br />
plausibility which the sophistry of heretics and fallen preachers can bring to bear, to decoy the eye from<br />
contemplating the glorious Sun of righteousness.<br />
This is our only security against the refrigerating atmosphere of that dead legalism which, like a ghost from the<br />
eternal world, has crept into the churches and breathed on them the pestilential spiritual malaria. It has proven a<br />
withering sirocco, blighting every blooming flower, blasting all the fruits and throwing a dark shadow over the<br />
once resplendent rainbow spanning the firmament and lighting up the atmosphere with the beauty of holiness.<br />
Truly it behooves us to ring the alarm bell and blow the trump of warning all along the embattled line, if we do<br />
not want our Samsons to lose their locks on the laps of the world's Delilahs.