W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

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