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

former and long-standing animosities either to other. How signally is the same prophecy fulfilled today
in the reconciliation and co-operation of the hitherto warring sects, forgetting all their bitter
hatred either to other, and uniting against the holiness movement! Amid the implacable animosities
of church and state combined against the poor Nazarenes and determined to exterminate them and
even obliterate the very memory of their leader from the memory of the world, there is much fear
on the unsanctified young converts. Hence they need another Pentecost to bring down the baptism
of the Holy Ghost and fire, consuming all their cowardice and filling them with the perfect love,
casting out fear. Therefore they all fall on their knees, unite their hearts and cry to God for the
sanctifying power. Behold! the place is shaken and another Pentecost comes down from heaven,
gloriously filling and flooding them, sanctifying all the fear out of the young converts and weak
believers, so that “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and continued to speak the word of God
with boldness.” This glorious second Pentecost gave a wonderful new impetus to the revival Niagara
already shaking the metropolis with a spiritual earthquake. This second Pentecost gloriously
sanctifies the converts of the first, raising up hundreds of new preachers to herald the living Word,
thus broadening the revival into paradoxical dimensions, till it rolls its mighty inundating wave out
from Jerusalem into all of the surrounding country, not only inundating all Palestine, but sweeping
over Samaria like an avalanche and rolling out its irresistible tide into heathen Syria.
THE UNIFICATION OF GOD’S PEOPLE.
32. “Of the multitude of those who believed there was one heart and soul.” The power of God’s
salvation to literally unify all its recipients, regardless of race, color, sect or nationality, has been the
puzzle of wicked people and counterfeit professors in all ages. God made religion, which is the same
in all hearts, in every land, beneath every sky, whether the sable children of Ham with unshod feet
treading the burning sands of Africa, or the brown sons and daughters of Shem, populating the timehonored
empires of the Orient, or the beautiful children of Japheth thronging the mighty cities of
Europe and spreading over the virgin soils of America. While the grace of God is uniform in every
nation, church and people, the devil’s counterfeit religion, which is sectarianism, is heterogeneous,
contradictory and false, bringing to its votaries only disappointment, ruin and damnation. Man is a
trinity, consisting of body, mind and spirit. False religions all recognize man as a duality consisting
of but the two elements, thus eliminating the third story of humanity, depriving him of his immortal
spirit, which is homogeneous to God, and the element on which the Holy Spirit operates, through
the human spirit reaching the mind and body. False theologies identify mind and spirit, thus
eliminating the latter and substituting mentalities for spiritualities, and thus ignoring the absolute
necessity of supernatural intervention in the plan of salvation. Since man is a trinity, consisting of
body, mind and spirit, and none but his spirit suffered total ruin in the Fall, a residuum of mentality
and materiality survived the catastrophe of Satan’s victory in Eden. Therefore men and devils in all
ages have been building up systems of counterfeit religion on this residuum of mind and body which
survived the Fall; such religion being destitute of true spirituality, and of course independent of the
Holy Ghost. Such are the great popular religions of the world today, whether Pagan, Moslem, Papal
or Protestant. Their stock consists in fine edifices, pomp and ceremony, intellectual culture and
eloquent sermons. All this is a superstructure built on the residuum of mind and matter which
survived the Fall. Since it is destitute of true spirituality, it is independent of the Holy Ghost, and
always ready to wage an exterminating war against the true religion, which comes only through the
supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is clear on total depravity, everywhere recognizing