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

clandestinely or openly, set whole communities on the fires of hell, often deluging homes with blood.
“Haters of God.” Satan imparts his own nature to the people given up to him. So they actually loathe
and despise the God who made them and gives them the air they breathe. “Proud, haughty,
arrogant.” These words express different phases of that abominable Satanic delusion that makes the
beggar think he is a king, the fool think he is a philosopher, the debauchee think he is a gentleman,
and the hypocrite think he is a saint. “Practitioners of evil,” i.e., they are professional scoundrels,
ready to do anything that is bad and nothing that is good. If they pretentiously do good, it is only a
cloak for their meanness, that they may unsuspected perpetrate a blacker crime. “Disobedient to
parents.” How awfully dissolute the present age on parental discipline: children rushing headlong
to hell under the immediate eye of parents who make a profession of Christianity! In many so-called
Christian homes, the children are Incorrigible. In Georgia, an old-style Methodist forbade his
daughters to attend Satan’s dances, their silly, half-hearted mother encouraging them to go and catch
beaux so they could marry. One day the father comes into the family room, finding them all busy
making lustful ball-dresses, getting ready for Satan’s fandango. They could no longer hide the matter,
so they confess outright. He then picks up all of the goods, seventy dollars worth, and laid them into
the big, old-style wood fire, and looks at them till they all burn into ashes. Then turning he addresses
his wife and daughters: “If there is anything more of this, I will sell out [and he had a princely house]
and give all I have to the missionary cause, tramp for my living, and you shall all go to the wash-tub
for your bread.” He had an iron will, and they knew he would do it, so he had no more trouble to rule
his house. Good Lord, give us more like him!
31. “Incontinent.” This word means reckless in every sense, incorrigible, abandoned, awful in
the extreme. “Covenant breakers,” i.e., recreant to all obligation at home or abroad, all mooring
loosed, and utterly unreliable in every respect. “Without natural affections.” The poor heathens in
Africa are in this horrific state this day, as all the missionaries can testify. I heard them at Old
Orchard Camp-meeting last August testify as eye and ear witnesses to these horrors. E.g., All of their
doctors are diabolical wizards claiming to hold communication with the gods, (and true, with the
demons, the gods of the poor heathen). They impute all sickness to witchcraft, and simply practice
to find the witch. In that case the nearest relatives must set on them and kill them; otherwise they will
be implicated as accomplices and killed. Bishop Taylor witnessed the awful tragedy of a man killing
his own little daughter ten years old because the doctor said she had bewitched her sick mother. The
gospel is the only possible remedy for these horrors. “Incapable of mercy.” This indicates an
appalling depth of diabolism and cruelty beyond all hope.
32. “Who, knowing the righteousness of God that those who do such things are worthy of death,
not only do them but take pleasure in those who do them.” This is the darkest conceivable climax;
when people not only commit indiscriminately the most atrocious crimes, but take delight in those
who do these things; “birds of a feather flock together.” The very presence of the good is a withering
rebuke to the bad. Murderers love the company of murderers. Libertines, debauchers, harlots,
thieves, liars, blasphemers, swindlers, and obscene, vile reprobates all love the company of one
another. Carnal church people, both clerical and civic, love to lean to their own sect. If you ever
expect to get to heaven you would better see that you actually love the society of the most holy
people you can find. If this is not so, you are a long way from the pearly gates.