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

LAST DAYS.
15-18. Peter proves by Joel the fulfillment of the latter-day prophecies on that notable occasion.
The Edenic dispensation has come and gone, winding up with the terrible calamity of the Fall. The
Antediluvian dispensation ran its race and went into the dark eclipse of Noah’s flood. The Patriarchal
culminated in Egyptian slavery, the awful plagues and the destruction in the Red Sea. The Mosaic
launched from Sinai is now tottering like a drunken man and hastening to its awful slaughter by the
Roman armies. Even the dispensation of our Savior’s ministry, a wicked world and a fallen church
united to obliterate in the bloody tragedy of Calvary. On this notable day, as Peter proves by Joel,
the last dispensation is inaugurated. It is the climacteric glory of all, since the plan of salvation
emanated from Eden under the preaching of Jehovah, i.e., the Excarnate Christ. The effulgent glory
of this dispensation shines out in the faces of Spirit-filled saints. Man enjoyed the indwelling God
before sin entered. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil (John 3:8). Hence, humanity must
get back to the Edenic glory of the indwelling God. Christ must be incarnated an as expiatory
Sufferer under the law, before the Holy Ghost can be incarnated as an indwelling Sanctifier. Hence
the descension and incarnation of the Holy Ghost is confirmatory proof of the validity of Christ’s
atonement, the perfect satisfaction of the violated law and the coronation of Christ, Mediatorial King
in heaven. While in the former dispensation a prophet here and there succeeds in looking through
the dim lights of type and prophecy, and by a mighty supernatural faith bounding forward into the
anticipatory Pentecostal experience, now the types and symbols have all gone into the eclipse of
glorious fulfillment. Not only our illiterate boys and girls, but even our servants, both male and
female, are to receive the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire, be filled with the Holy Ghost and
thus become burning incarnations of the Holy Ghost, before whose martyr heroism and seraphic
light, princes and potentates pale and retreat and platoons of devils stampede. Aunt Amanda Smith
comes from Southern slavery, by way of the wash-tub, to the front of the gospel ministry, where the
princes of America, Europe, Asia and Africa learn wisdom at her feet. Bob Burkes, without a
knowledge of the alphabet, gets sanctified, and edifies the multitudes, preaching alternate sermons
with Dr. Carradine. Here we see that the Lord still speaks to His saints in dreams and visions; but
these simple media of communication are even more prominent than in the former dispensation. In
the latter all barriers are swept away. It is the glorious privilege of all God’s children to become the
incarnations of the Holy Ghost, thus spiritually entering the glorious millennial theocracy and living
anticipatively in the triumphs of the coming kingdom. We are well assured that we are not only
living in the last days, which began at Pentecost, but we are in the time of the end. John said he was
in the last hour; then we must be in the last moment. Totton and Dimbleby, the greatest chronologists
of the age, expire the “Gentile times” with the vernal equinox of 1898. According to Lunar
Chronology, used by the Jews and Mohammedans, the “Gentile times” expired seven years ago. The
Calendar Chronology, generally used in Europe, runs them out in thirty-five years, and the Solar
Chronology, used generally in America, runs them out in seventy years. Daniel’s period of the
Tribulation (last chapter) is forty-five years. The Rapture of the Bride takes place before the
Tribulation. Hence you see three out of four of these chronologies give us the Rapture overdue.
Besides, the world is literally flooded with fulfillments of the latter-day prophecies.