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

wilderness bloom”; “Springs of water shall break out in the wilderness and streams in the desert.”
Hence the millions of acres of valuable lands in Asia, Africa and America, now desert-wastes for
the want of irrigation, will have ample supplies of water and flourish as the very gardens of the Lord,
abounding in perennial fruits and flowers. I believe it inspired Peter and all of his apostolical
comrades and saints that our Lord is coming back and will “restore all things” as spoken by the
prophets. This wonderful sentence (including vs. 19-21) reveals succinctly, lucidly and
comprehensively the gracious economy of full salvation, and in the same breath the return of the
Lord to the earth. “What God hath joined together, let no man separate.” Woe unto the audacious
hand that dares to divorce what God has married! Then let us go to the ends of the earth preaching
this wonderful salvation, and at the same time the most potent of all inspirations to a holy experience
and life, i.e., our Lord’s return to the earth on the throne of His glory, visiting awful retributionary
judgment on the wicked, and crowning His faithful, expectant Bride to sit with Him on His throne.
While holiness to the Lord is the grand trunk line of the heaven-bound railway running up to the
New Jerusalem, yet we must not depreciate the great tributaries, and especially that potent and
inspiring incentive to entire sanctification, i.e., the constant outlook for our coming King.
22. “Indeed Moses said that our Lord God will raise up unto you a prophet from your brethren
like unto me; him you will hear as to all things so many as he may speak unto you.” This prophet
is none other than Jesus. Moses is the brightest type of the Mediatorial Christ, himself the honored
mediator of the old dispensation, symbolizing so potently our Lord in His glorious mediatorial office
in the new dispensation.
TRIBULATION.
23. “And it shall come to pass that whosoever may not hear that prophet will be cut off from the
people.” “May hear” in this verse is in the subjunctive mood, revealing contingency, which is
peculiar to man alone, as there are no contingencies with God. While we all fully recognize human
free agency, yet the present dispensation, like all of her predecessors, is fast hardening into infidelity,
grieving the Holy Spirit away, passing the dead line and ripening for destruction. God knows every
person who will hear His Son when He comes in His glorious kingdom. He equally well knows
every one who will reject Him. During the great tribulation, when the Ancient of Days shall descend
on the throne of His righteous retributive judgments (Daniel 7:9), He will hackle out of the world
everything that will not do for the coming kingdom; so that when the Son rides down on the throne
of His millennial glory, He will find none but the elect, i.e., saved and savable people, on the earth.
The first work of the transfigured saints will be the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to all the
survivors of the tribulation on the whole face of the earth (Acts 15:17). Then shall be verified that
notable prophecy, “A nation shall be born in a day.” This verse is clear and unequivocal that the nonelect,
i.e., the people who have crossed the dead-line and are unsavable, shall all be cut off during
the tribulation.
24. “And all the prophets from Samuel and successively so many as spoke also proclaimed these
days.” How significantly true! The second coming of Christ is a most prominent thing with all the
prophets in all dispensations. Even Enoch, in antediluvian times, was a powerful preacher of the
Lord’s second coming (Jude 14, 15). Read it and you will find a most vivid description of the great