W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

what he does not know. The Gospel is not a speech to be delivered, but “it is the power (dynamite) of God unto
salvation, to every one that believeth.” (Rom. 1:16.) Power is something to be known and felt experimentally.
People who have no experience of personal salvation are utterly ignorant of the Gospel.
That whole country was inundated with that awful infidelity, its adherents clamoring vociferously for the
isolated legalistic dogma, “Immersion for Remission,” and actually fighting with all their might the whole
curriculum of Gospel truth, even denying its very existence. So long had they overrun that country with this
uncompromising belligerent preaching, denunciatory and condemnatory of the great spiritual experimental truth,
which really constitutes Bible theology, and ever warding off opposition by constant bantering and challenging,
that they actually captured the ignorant (spiritually) people and took them to the water in platoons. They
required nothing in the way of antecedent preparation, except the confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God;
then they immersed them for the remission of their sins and warned them to have nothing to do with
experimental religion.
You can see plainly that their work meant recruiting souls for Satan, because this church-joining and baptism,
with their actual admonitions against the Holy Ghost, were calculated to harden their hearts and stiffen their
necks, “that they might believe a lie and be damned;” thus leaving folks in infinitely worse spiritual plight than
when they found them. While “Holy Ghost” and “Holy Spirit” are precisely synonymous, there being but one
phrase in the original, to hagion pneuma; it is perfectly optionary with the translator to render the “Holy Ghost”
or “Holy Spirit,” as he may prefer), in their baptisms they never said “Holy Ghost,” but “Holy Spirit,” simply
meaning the Word, as they utterly denied the person.
The Campbellites boasted over their good confession, (Acts 8:37), that of the eunuch before Philip baptized
him. Alexander Campbell fought all of the human creeds all of his life, and boasted that he took the Bible alone;
therefore he adopted this one question as the solitary requirement of people seeking admission into his church.
At present no scholar believes the eunuch's confession ever was in the Bible. Erasmus, a noble, godly preacher,
contemporary with Martin Luther, while transcribing the New Testament, studying over the baptism of the
eunuch, concluded that there ought to be a confession preceding the administration. Therefore, supposing that
some careless transcriber had left it out, he composed it according to his own judgment and put it in. Afterwards
many old manuscripts were discovered and as none of them contained it, of course, it became a known fact that
it had never been in the Bible. If Campbell had known that, he would not have used it, as he was so
stickleristical for the Word, which I confess to his honor.
I also endorse all of his arguments against human creeds. We certainly, as he earnestly contended, need no creed
nor authority but the New Testament which is plain on everything important in the way of doctrine,
organization, church government and discipline. While he was a great intellectualist and very learned, his
writings constantly show deficiency in spirituality. The dear man actually went into fanaticism on baptism,
making it everything in the gracious economy, while the Bible makes it nothing but the outward sign of inward
grace which is as real and available without the sign, as with it. A physician has a perfect right to put up his sign;
yet he is just as good and efficient in curing the sick without it as with it. Meanwhile the various quacks, who,
instead of cure, can use as brilliant a sign as the best doctor in the world. Hence we see the silly nonsense of
attaching saving efficacy to the mere outward sign. It is like hanging the doctor's sign over the sick bed instead
of taking the panacea. A fanatic is a person who permits a theory or dogma to lead him away from God's Word.
So long as you rigidly follow the precious Word, you will never go into fanaticism.
The Campbellites utterly deny that there is such a thing as our Savior's baptism, which He administers with the
Holy Ghost and fire, now on the earth. They unanimously tell us and stoutly contend that it ceased when the
apostles all left the world. As a rule they limit it to the day of Pentecost. In this they flatly contradict the Word of
God. Therefore we know they are wrong. Acts 2:39, “For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to
all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” Peter is here talking about the identical
baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire which they had received that very morning; therefore it is absolutely
undeniable and inevitable. When people flatly contradict God's Word, always know that they are clearly gone
into wild fanaticism. Those people constantly denounce the orthodox Christians of the different denominations
who profess experimental religion, as fanatics; at the same time boasting vociferously that they are the Bible