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

whole earth, when Abraham’s family will girdle the globe, verifying God’s promise that he shall
inherit the world. What a memorable transaction, when God revealed to Abraham his family
enveloping the whole earth and possessing it without a rival! The Jews and Mohammedans,
uncompromising rivals either to other, have fought, bled and died to appropriate the blessings of the
Abrahamic covenant, which never were restricted to any race or church, but were always universal
as the mercies of God covenanted in Christ, reaching every faithful soul in all ages and nations,
regardless of creed, race, or color.
18. “Who against hope believed, pursuant to hope that he should be the father of many nations
according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be.
19. “And not being weak in faith, he considered not his own body already dead, being a hundred
years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb:
20. “And he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was filled up with
dynamite through faith, giving glory to God,
21. “Truly being fully assured that God is able to perform that which he has promised.” Of
course the whole plan of salvation must be ratified by the incarnation of Christ, and this covenant
sealed by His precious blood, without which the scheme of redemption must collapse forever.
Consequently the grand salient fact in the Abrahamic covenant is the Messianic incarnation and the
progenitorship of Christ in his family. At this point all natural possibilities take their everlasting
flight, permanently superseded by the supernatural, in view of the physical impossibilities of natural
posterity, arising from the fact that both Abraham and Sarah had long passed the age of fertility. This
fact clearly illustrates the supernaturalism indispensable to all genuine saving faith; as none but the
children of Abraham have part in the covenant of redemption. Hence it is only the faith
supernaturally inspired by the Holy Ghost that can make you a son of Abraham and an heir of the
promised redemption. That is the reason why true faith has always been a scarce article in this
wicked world.
“Moreover then the Son of man having come, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke
18:8).
The answer is in the negative. The faithful people having been taken up in the rapture, when the
Lord comes in His awful pre-millennial judgments on a wicked world and fallen church, He will not
find true faith in all the earth. This is the grand salient point in the plan of salvation, faith being the
great fundamental grace underlying the superstructure and appropriating the benefits of the
redemptive scheme involved in the Abrahamic covenant. Oh, how Satan counterfeits human faith,
eliminating the supernatural and leaving it a loathsome old corpse (James 2:26). Unless the Holy
Ghost inspire in the soul this supernatural faith such as Abraham had, you never can be one of his
children, a participant of the redemption in Christ (Galatians 3:29). Without this inspired
supernatural faith you will always be “staggering” at the promises of God. Now, remember that, if
you would be saved, you must walk in the steps of Abraham (5:12), who not only “staggered not at
the promises of God through unbelief, but was filled up with dynamite through faith.” The
peculiarity of natural faith, which is Satan’s counterfeit, is its destitution of the dynamite which the