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

minority in Paul’s day had ever heard the verbal gospel. The same minority on earth as to the
auricular proclamation still obtains. The solution of the problem is the simple fact that the Holy
Ghost, who is the only real Preacher on the earth, men and women only serving as telephones, is
actually in every nation under heaven, having spoken to every responsible human being in every age
and race. Therefore, Paul says (Chapter 1:20) that even the heathens are left without excuse. While
human agency is God’s appointment and a glorious means of grace, yet the great Gospel Preacher
is everywhere speaking to every immortal soul and preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ.
19-21. Here Paul beautifully alludes to God’s merciful call of the Gentiles, simultaneously
bewailing the stupidity and perversity of the Jews. “I was found unto those who sought not after
me.” This is a vivid allusion to the call of the Gentiles, to them a universal surprise. Not only is this
true of the Gentile world, but millions of individuals have been saved speedily, and to their own
unutterable surprise, when they went seeking curiosity and fun, suddenly caught in the lasso of the
Holy Ghost and wonderfully saved. The proud, haughty ’squire in West Virginia took his wife and
daughter and went to a camp-meeting. The afternoon is wearing away, he and his wife are in the
carriage homeward bound. The daughter lingers unseen in the crowd till their patience flickers, and
the mother goes to hunt her up and bring her. Finding the proud, giddy girl all torn to pieces,
prostrate in the straw and crying for mercy, and, undertaking to get her away, she too is
thunderstruck, falling in the straw. The haughty ’squire, his patience all ebbed away, raging mad,
with bold threats, rushes into the red-hot altar to pull away his wife and daughter and take them
home. Meanwhile a strange weakness pervades his entire body so he can do nothing, and thinks only
of personal escape. Running ten steps, he falls prostrate on the ground, is carried back to the altar
and laid down with his wife and daughter to spend the ensuing night in mutual agony, crying to God
for the salvation which, with the glorious day-dawn, breaks in on them with a heavenly sunburst, so,
to their unutterable surprise, they all mount the carriage and go home, shouting happy in the kingdom
of God. Twenty-seven years ago a very intelligent wicked man came to my meeting, cursing me and
making fun of what he called my “converting machine.” That man got wonderfully saved and turned
preacher. Oh, the infinite mercy of God in thus surprising millions with the salvation which they
never sought till He caught them with the lasso of the thunderbolt of conviction.