W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

hundred members and the many unsaved in their families had come. Then turning to the pastor, in my presence
they said to him, “Dear Brother, you cannot send this man off till the war is over and victory won. Hold us
responsible for his continuing the meeting.”
All this time the good pastor was weeping bitterly, and he said to me that it seemed that he was bound to see a
permanent division in his church. There he was between two fires, the irreligious people in his church urging
him to send me away, and the godly element protesting positively against my departure and saying
unequivocally that I could not leave till the devil was defeated. Such was the burden of the conflict on the heart
of the pastor that he went to bed the next night instead of coming to meeting. That suited me precisely, because
he kept his hand heavy on me when there. As he was absent I was free as Gabriel. Truly if ever I did my best, it
was then, as I knew it was my God-sent opportunity to storm Satan's batteries and break his ranks. That was one
of the memorable occasions of my life. I had preached for three weeks and there was awful conviction on the
people.
It was like a dam holding a great, heavy, pent-up, swelling tide till, no longer competent to bear the pressure, it
had to break and let the flood sweep on.
When I made my appeal a hundred mourners came to the altar. Truly the walls of Jericho fell down flat that very
night. Then all of the opposition evanesced and we went on for three weeks longer and saw the mighty works of
God.
The pastor, having survived his heart sickness, returned to the battlefield, girded for the conflict.
The results of the campaign were really glorious; two to three hundred professing conversion and reclamation
and, though sanctification was so new to them, before we got away from that country many were testifying to
the experience
Our next meeting was at Hawesville the next county seat up the river There the Lord gave us one hundred and
three bright conversions a glorious revival of the membership and a goodly number claiming the sanctified
experience. It was in every respect a glorious victory for the cause of God.
The dear saints of Owensboro chartered steamboat and faithfully attended the meeting, giving us glorious help.
We also went from there up to Clover Port the next county-seat on the very bank, where the Lord also gave us a
glorious revival with one hundred professions of conversion and a blessed work of sanctification; Those were
days of signal victories, marking my pilgrimage with delectable souvenirs of God's mighty works.
That was the last year of my identity with my dear old Conference in which I was born and reared.
This year the presiding elder had relieved me, filling m place with another man Who was not a members of the
Conference; and consequently received no appointment but desired one. At the close of this year, when the
brethren of my Conference requested Bishop McTieyre to confine me to the Kentucky conference; and he
requested me to read my report which I had prepared, when he heard the mighty works which God had been
doing through my humble instrumentality, he utterly refused to assume the responsibility to confine me to my
own Conference or any other; but heroically pulling the bridle off; turned me loose in the whole connection.
Thus the Lord has been enlarging my field of labor. I now realize, as John Wesley so often said, and we see it
superscribed over his bust in Westminister Abbey, “The world is my parish.” I have never been ail Irregular
evangelist, but always in harmony with the appointing power of the Church in which, God by His providence,
gave me birth, both physical and spiritual and gloriously sanctified me. Thus in His mercy, He has permitted me
already to transcend my three score years and ten.
In the providence of God, in 1884 I was called to Paris, Tenn., where I found an old, aristocratic, pro-slavery
church of four or five hundred members, full of factions, each one wanting the pre-eminence, and the Holy
Spirit grieved away, till there had been no revival in a generation. It so happened that the pastor was a transfer
from old Virginia, and a noble old-style Wesleyan in doctrine. Though solidly orthodox on sanctification as
taught by the Methodist fathers, he did not enjoy the experience, but was of course a nominal lifelong seeker of
Christian perfection.
Southern people from time immemorial have been noted for their hospitality. This day there is a decisive