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

had need.” Should all Christendom practice the community of goods? It would certainly be very
pertinent as well as altogether probable amid the circumstances which peculiarize the Pentecostians.
But remember God makes the circumstances; they are His providences, and we have no right to
make them.
HOUSEHOLD PREACHING.
46. “And they were daily persevering with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from
house to house; they received their food with gladness and purity of heart, praising God and having
grace toward all the people.” Here we find that the hundred and twenty, augmented by the mighty
force of the three thousand converts, turned loose on the metropolis and the surrounding country,
preaching from house to house. This explains the reason why five thousand more were speedily
converted, at once swelling the Pentecostal church to eight thousand. The great delinquency of the
present age is this original policy of preaching to people in their homes. Here we see that they
entered family circles indiscriminately, preaching and praying till they convert them to the
Christhood of Jesus, the great salient truth and fact of apostolic preaching, then they seal their
profession of discipleship by baptism and confirm them by the eucharist. This is the grand open field
for the holiness people to win a crown of glory, evangelize the world and bring back our King. So
let us go preaching from house to house as they did at Pentecost. When I was sanctified thirty years
ago I at once became an indefatigable household preacher. I ran all over my circuit regardless of
membership in my church or any other, entering every house and preaching the living Word. My
conference soon fell into the habit of sending me to the hardest and deadest appointments in all the
land. While I ran into every house, prayed and preached in every home, prevailing on them to come
to my meeting, which I kept running the whole year, God came down, shook the whole country with
the tread of a spiritual earthquake, mighty revivals swept like cyclones, and while all the churches
in my boundary were signally blessed and received many additions to their membership, I used to
go up to my annual conference at the end of the year and report in my own pastorate three times as
many members as I began with. Sad to say, the apostolic household preaching in the church of the
present day is a lost art. The preacher goes round calling on his own members only, talks to them a
few minutes about “Vanity Fair” and does not so much as pray for them. He would better stay at
home. Such pastoral visiting is an insult to the common salvation and a grief to the Holy Ghost.
CHURCH—JOINING.
47. “And the Lord was adding daily unto them those being saved.” You all see the R.V., in
harmony with the Greek, leaves church out of this passage. Doubtless the word was added by some
of the ecclesiastical conservators of the Dark Ages. A considerable amount of the interpolations
which have been added during the intervening centuries have an ecclesiastical signification, plainly
illustrating the indisputable fact that they were put in by the clergy to augment and sustain their
authority. The Greek Testament gives not a solitary instance of the modern church-joining. It simply
says, “The Lord added unto them,” i.e., unto the apostles, the visible representatives of God’s
spiritual kingdom, without the slightest intimation of church-joining. “Such as should be saved,”
in E.V., is incorrect. The true reading is, “Those being saved,” i.e., the people who are in the process
of salvation, the Holy Ghost having them in hand and moving forward His work of their personal
salvation. Regeneration is primary salvation; sanctification is full salvation; while glorification