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

ATTITUDE OF THE HEATHENS.
18. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men holding down the truth in unrighteousness,
19. “Because the knowledge of God is manifest in them: for God revealed it unto them.” The
Holy Spirit, the light of nature and human conscience, are universal regardless of age, race or
condition, revealing to every human being light and knowledge sufficient to save them, if they would
only walk in it. The trouble is these divine lights are obscured by ten thousand devices, for human
damnation manipulated by Satan and his myrmidons.
20. “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being known
by the things which are made, both His eternal power and divinity, so that they are left without
excuse.” God-head in E.V. is wrong, the Greek being theiotees, which means divinity, instead of
theotees, which means God-head; the words being so much alike, transcribers and translators
mistook the one for the other. The truth of the matter is, while God is revealed to all the heathens by
the light of nature, conscience and the universally present Holy Spirit, it is a matter of fact that the
different Persons of the Trinity are not thus revealed. Hence, though the heathens can know God and
be saved without the revealed Word, in the absence of the latter, they never would be able to
recognize three Persons of the Trinity. You see Paul positively affirms the gracious possibility of
universal salvation, otherwise they would not all be left “without excuse.” Hence you see from this
positive statement that no one in the judgment day can give an apology for his disqualification to
meet the Lord and enter heaven. The untutored savage in his primeval wilds sees God in the clouds
and hears him in the winds:
“Whose soul proud science never taught to stray,
Far as the solar walk, the milky way.”
Captain John Smith, a cultured Episcopalian, during his captivity with the Indians, after the old
chief had adopted him as his son and successor, was left in charge of him and his old wife and little
grandson, while all the balance went off to war. During a terrible wintry storm, when a great sleet
everywhere covered the deep snow, the loud roar of whose breaking beneath the feet entirely
disqualified him to get in gunshot of the wild animals on which they were all dependent for their
daily food, day after day the young Englishman returns at nightfall from a laborious all-day walk
over the ice fields, crushing beneath his feet and letting him down into the deep snow, weary and
forlorn, faint with hunger and fatigue. Every evening the venerable chief lying flat on his back on
his bear-skin, prostrate with rheumatism, delivers his adopted son a profitable exhortation on the
patience and humiliation requisite to qualify a soul at life’s end to ascend above the snow clouds,
and dwell in the glorified presence of the Great Spirit forever. Finally John concludes that they are
all going to starve to death in a pile. Consequently, with much regret in his own heart to leave those
people to die alone, he set out apparently as usual on a hunting excursion, but with his mind made
up to escape and make his way back to Jamestown. While thus trudging along, seeing a herd of
buffaloes at a great distance, taking position in concealment, he prays God to send them within gunshot,
as he had had nothing to eat for a week but some broth made from the bones of a wild-cat,
which the vultures had picked, and they had recovered from beneath the snow. Sure enough, his