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

can turn you out of a church! The only way to do that will be to steal Jacob’s ladder, climb up to
heaven, purloin the Lamb’s Book of Life and cancel your name from its shining columns. Good
Lord, give sense as well as religion, so we will not be bamboozled by Satan’s demagogues calling
themselves preachers. Remember, all who leave this world members of the Church of God are sure
of heaven, and none others. So you must hurry up and settle this problem of your church
membership. If you belong to the grandest church in America, and are not truly regenerated and
sanctified, instead of going to heaven when you die, devils will drag you into hell. Can regenerated
people go to hell? No. Though regeneration of itself, without a preacher, a drop of water or an
official board, makes you a bona fide member of God’s Church, yet it only adapts you to a state of
probation which is confined to this world. “Without the sanctification no one can see the Lord”
(R.V., Hebrews 12:14). You can not keep regenerated unless you seek holiness according to your
light. In case of delinquency, you forfeit regeneration and fall into a backslider’s hell. If, seeking
holiness according to your light, you have not received entire sanctification till God calls you away,
He, in mercy, takes the will for the deed. Like the infant, you pass out under the blood, which
cleanses you from all unrighteousness, giving you the full benefits of the atonement. As the old
theologians say, you are sanctified “in articulo mortis,” i.e., “in the article of death.” Thus, while
regeneration makes you a bona fide member of the Church on earth, it does not qualify you for the
heavenly state; since membership in the Church militant is compatible with the depravity incurred
by the Fall (which, even in regeneration, is kept subjugated): the heavenly state requires entire
sanctification (Hebrews 12:14). Hence, regeneration constitutes you a bona fide member (not an
officer) of the Church militant on earth; while entire sanctification alone qualifies you for
membership in the Church triumphant in heaven. Water baptism, eucharist and church register are
simple visible signs of your membership in the family of God. The signs are all right in their place,
but in no way essential to the reality, which frequently exists in blessed reality without them.