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