W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

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