Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ound and round among the churches and getting them sanctified and established. John Wesley said
only one in three in his day stood, for the want of establishing grace. He also said: “It is more to
retain the grace of God than to receive it.” Oh, how we all need stirring up along this line!
MINISTRY AND SANCTIFICATION OF APOLLOS.
Alexandria, Egypt, under the patronage of that celebrated literary and enterprising monarch,
Ptolemy Philadelphus, became the greatest literary emporium on the globe during the centuries
preceding Grecian pre-eminence, at the same time under the generous philanthropy of this monarch
having become the rendezvous of a vast number of Jews, for whose especial benefit, calling a
convention of the seventy most learned Jews of the age, he had them translate the Old Testament out
of Hebrew into Greek, thus giving a grand impetus both to Greek literature and the Jewish religion
in his kingdom. Amid these auspicious environments the gifted Apollo was brought up at
Alexandria, Egypt, excelling in learning and preeminent in native eloquence, becoming not only the
sensation but the wonder of the age. In the days of John the Baptist, having come from Africa to
Palestine, he enjoyed the ministry of that wonderful prophet, becoming one of his brightest converts;
responsive to the call of God, became a powerful preacher of the gospel under the Johanic
dispensation. Gloriously regenerated and baptized under the preaching of fiery John, the greatest of
all the prophets.
25. “He was instructed in the way of the Lord, and, boiling over in spirit, he continued to speak
and teach clearly the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John.” God’s salvation
has been identical in all ages and under all dispensations, notwithstanding the didactic diversities
characteristic of the progressive stages in the school of Christ from the unlettered simplicity of the
Antediluvian, then the divine interventions of the Patriarchal, the glowing symbolism of the Mosaic,
the burning pathos of the Johanic, the inimitable parabolic teaching of Jesus, followed by the fiery
baptisms and universal evangelism of the Pentecostal, all destined to the glorious eclipse under the
brilliancy, majesty, splendor and ineffable glory destined to inundate the world amid the transcendent
millennial theocracy. While the gracious economy has thus exhibited a progressive panorama as to
its didactic phases during the progressive ages, experimental religion, experienced in the heart by
the Holy Ghost, is identical in all ages.
26. While Apollos, the most eloquent preacher in the world, having come from Africa by way of
the Mediterranean to Ephesus, the metropolis of Western Asia, is holding the multitude spell-bound
by his inimitable oratory, Aquila and Priscilla, an humble layman and his wife, having been
wonderfully sanctified while associated with Paul in tent-making and evangelistic work in Corinth,
perceive by spiritual discernment (1 Corinthians 12:10) [reading the preacher like a book] that he
is yet alien to the glorious experience of Christian perfection. Therefore taking him home with them
they “expounded unto him the way more perfectly,” thus honored by the Holy Ghost to lead this
humble brother, so wonderfully enriched with the rare gift of native eloquence, into the glorious
experience of entire sanctification, thus leading him forward out of the Johanic into the Pentecostal
dispensation of grace, and thus congenializing him to the grand open field of the Pauline churches.