W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

The very fact that people don't talk like the Bible and do it with a glad and free heart makes it evident that they
are not in harmony with it. It seems to me that I am certainly the happiest old man in the world. Why? Because I
shout over everything I read in the Bible without a single exception.
How do you account for that? Because the blessed Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, who made the
Bible, dwells in the tenement of cumbrous clay which I and He will soon evacuate unless Jesus comes to take
away His Bride, in which case He will transfigure me in the “twinkling of an eye,” I Cor. 15:51. I shall then fly
away to meet the Lord in the air. If you are going up to live in Heaven, you must have heaven in your heart and
in your life. You can never do that till you swallow the whole Bible by faith alone, contented to digest it
afterward, like the goose swallowing corn.
Praise the Lord, I have done that very thing. I do not know much about it, but, glory to God, I believe it all and
the blessed Holy Spirit who made it is teaching me most wonderfully, letting me down deeper into God's
glorious Divinity; leading me out into broader latitudes and progressively onward into grander longitudes;
permitting me to climb up into loftier altitudes, and quickening my intellect into more capacious apprehensions
of God's wonderful, incomprehensible and immunicable attributes. Omniscience and Omnipotence are thus
flooding my soul with glory ineffable.
We are past the blood and fire era in our discussion of baptism. The Holy Ghost in His mighty work, and the
glorious and the wonderful efficacy of the sinner's prayer for the pardoning mercy of God in Christ, received
and appropriated by faith alone, as the poor sinner is still in bondage to the devil till his glorious emancipation
by the omnipotent arm of the wonderful Christ, who came from Heaven to redeem him from sin, death and Hell,
alone bring salvation. If the sinner does ever so much good work before he gets out of the devil's kingdom in
answer to his own prayers, those good works would belong to Satan forever. If you build a golden house like
that of the emperor Nero on your neighbor's lot, you cannot hold it to save your life; the laws of every nation
under heaven will turn it over to the proprietor of the land. Therefore you see the diabolical “hotch potch” of the
salvation by works with which Campbellite preachers gull and deceive poor sinners; positively forbidding them
to pray for God's pardoning mercy and telling them that if they do so He will not hear them.
You see all along the lines of spirituality that we wade through blood, amid flames of fire and mountains of the
slain. But now as we cross swords on the mere question of mode, you will see neither fire flash nor blood flow,
as it is not in any sense a vital issue. There is but one point to guard and that is to fight off all the alien gods. If
we can keep them out of the ranks of the holiness people, and settle forever the great problem of Christ crowned
within, sceptered and enthroned Lord of all forever, reigning in the heart and life without a rival, the shout of
victory will never cease to ring along the embattled line. Col. 2:9, “In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.” Here you see that when you have Jesus crowned within you really have the glorious Trinity, I.
e., the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as the latter is the executive of the Trinity and the revelator of Christ, whose
province it is not only to reveal to the human spirit, but to crown Him in the heart, glorious and eternal Prophet,
Priest and King. Therefore if you are not true to the Holy Ghost, you will never so much as get acquainted with
Christ, who is everything to the Christian.
“If you are dead along with Christ from the elements of the world, why are you subject to ordinances as living in
the world?” Col. 2:20. In the old dispensation we were subject to ordinances, because they were necessary to
symbolize Christ and His mighty works. But since Christ has come and has done His work, wrought the great
vicarious, substitutionary atonement, and redeemed the whole world from sin, death, and Hell, we are no longer
subject to ordinances, as they are in no way essentially identified with the gracious economy. They are mere
souvenirs, beautiful in their situations; reminding us of the mighty works already wrought by the great Antitype,
at whose coming all the types and shadows, symbols and ordinances, fled away. Therefore the truly sanctified
are no longer subject to them, but they are subject to us, as we in Christ have the victory over all of those things
which put a yoke on the neck of the Hebrew fathers, “which they were not able to bear.” They broke down under
that burden, symbolizing the failure of the body of Christ after that night of toil and suffering to bear His cross
up Mount Calvary. We need a thousand glittering swords constantly unsheathed to fortify our holiness people
against the encroachment of alien gods, which have actually captured all of the old ecclesiasticisms. Oh, how
they are crowding on all of the Protestant Churches!