W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
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We have holiness churches now in controversy about ordinances. It would be pertinent that they should<br />
remember Paul, (Col. 1:20), “If you are dead along with Christ front the elements of the world, why are you<br />
subject to ordinances as living in the world?” Entire sanctification nails old Adam to the cross and with him all<br />
of the ordinances. These ordinances symbolize the law from which Jesus has made us as free as angels, not only<br />
having kept it for us in <strong>His</strong> life, but paid the penalty for us in <strong>His</strong> death. Our old man was crucified with Him,<br />
(Rom. 6:6), that the body of sin might be destroyed; therefore old Adam was nailed to the cross and with him<br />
the ordinances of the ritual, which symbolizes the law; which our Savior pertinently and eternally satisfies. In<br />
reference to these ordinances and churchisms of every kind, we, like Paul, should be all things to all men, that<br />
we may save some; remembering that the man of God is not to strive. Therefore you cannot indulge in<br />
controversy without disobeying God and grieving the Holy Spirit, consequently suffering experimental<br />
detriment.<br />
After circumcision was effete [powerless, incapacitated – DVM] and defunct, Paul took Timothy and<br />
circumcised him, on account of the Jews in that country, as they all knew that his father was a Greek. Paul did it<br />
simply to render Timothy's ministry more acceptable to the Jews. For the same reason, pursuant to their request,<br />
I immersed the “Texas boys” in the river Jordan. While sanctified people are gloriously saved from legalism in<br />
all its forms and phases, and rise so far above them that they have really gone into eternal eclipse, yet we are to<br />
be careful not to put a stumbling-block in the way of our brother, consequently carefully and prayerfully<br />
abstaining from all controversy. We are to recognize the perfect, glorious spiritual freedom of every brother,<br />
letting them walk in all the light God gives them, remembering the Pauline rebuke, “Who art thou that judgest<br />
another man's servant.<br />
To his own master he standeth or falleth.”<br />
Sanctified people, if true to their experiences, can live together and in perfect brotherly love labor together for<br />
the salvation of souls; though some have the triune immersion of Doweyism, others the single immersion of the<br />
Baptists, others the single effusion of the Presbyterians, others the triune effusion of the Lutherans, which I<br />
witnessed administered to about one hundred by their native pastor in the greatest leper asylum in the world,<br />
after I had preached to them on the baptism which Jesus gives to <strong>His</strong> people.<br />
Some holiness churches are non-ritualistic, as the Friends, who have never received water baptism in any way<br />
nor been convicted for it.<br />
Thus I have mentioned for you a model holiness church, whose members are gloriously saved from ordinances,<br />
as all truly sanctified people are. These ordinances we wear as a loose garment, ready to drop them off the<br />
moment they conflict with the glory of God and the interest of <strong>His</strong> kingdom, to which we gladly and cheerfully<br />
subordinate them.<br />
During all of my boyhood life, the Campbellites were constantly preaching all over that country immersion in<br />
order for the remission of sins, and clamorously mocking all effusion baptisms, pronouncing them farcical and<br />
worthless, and boldly preaching everybody to Hell who had not received immersion for remission of sins. At the<br />
same time they denied the personality of the Holy Ghost, identifying Him with the Word and preaching that the<br />
literal Word is the Spirit, burlesquing and ridiculing the very existence of the Holy Ghost.<br />
One of the greatest leaders they ever had in that section of the country, who stood at the front of their Church for<br />
many years and was editor of their paper, “Apostolic Times,” on one occasion, when preaching to a great<br />
audience at Kirkville, Madison Co., came down out of the pulpit, and stooping down looked under the benches<br />
and said, “Please excuse me, I am looking for that little man called the Holy Ghost.” Then he followed with one<br />
of his powerful sermons against the Holy Ghost, denying <strong>His</strong> personality altogether. They actually united all<br />
their forces in a constant and persistent effort to eliminate from the popular mind the very existence of God in<br />
the person of the Holy Ghost.<br />
You cannot conceive of the awful detriment which supervened to the popular mind through that predominant<br />
influence perpetrated solidly for a few generations. The normal result is the development of a great crop of<br />
infidels, who at the same time boldly claim themselves to be the only Christians in the world, incessantly<br />
repudiating the claims of all others even to the use of the name, and arrogating it to themselves in an exclusive