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