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

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER XI.
PETER’S REPORT AT JERUSALEM.
1-13. Immediately after Peter’s glorious revival at Cæsarea he goes straight to Jerusalem,
accompanied by the six Joppa brethren who had witnessed the new departure and the mighty work
of God at the house of Cornelius. The news is already flown on the wings of the wind to Jerusalem,
stirring apostles, prophets, elders and brethren with the momentum of an earthquake. This departure
from the time-honored institutions of their fathers, so sudden, radical, decisive and significant, must
receive summary attention at headquarters and be settled at once and forever. So bold Peter faces the
grave council in the mother church at Jerusalem, rehearses to them his vision at Joppa, and testifies
to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the Gentiles at Cæsarea, proving it all by those six faithful
witnesses who had accompanied him throughout and now stand by his side in presence of all the
apostles. Of course no trouble whatever arises from this radical, downright and outright revolution,
though undreamed of hitherto; and why? Simply because all of the apostles and primitive saints fully
recognized the leadership of the Holy Ghost. They are acquainted with Him. He dwelt in them, and
they knew His voice and His works. For this reason there never was a schism in the Apostolic
church, so long as they were true to Pentecostal experience and the Holy Ghost. When former
generations went up to heaven and others succeeded who knew not God, then they founded human
ecclesiasticisms and established church government to suit themselves, ignoring the sole right of the
Holy Ghost to rule the church, and relegating Him back to the Apostolic age, and congratulating
themselves that the days of miracles were past and they can make laws and manage the church to suit
themselves. Right here is where human and Satanic usurpation of the divine right to rule the church
came in, with the roll of ages developing into all the complicated machinery of priestcraft, prelacy
and popery.
THE BAPTISM WITH THE HOLY GHOST FOR JEWS AND GENTILES ALIKE IN
ALL AGES.
14-18. “Who shall speak words unto you by which you and all your house shall be saved.” Does
not this look like they were yet to be saved? Justification is primary salvation; sanctification, full
salvation; and glorification, final salvation. Hence, so long as we are in this world, we are in the
kingdom of grace, subject to the saving power and operation of the Holy Spirit, liable to temptation,
defection, defeat and ruin. Never is the problem of salvation settled beyond defalcation till we reach
glorification, pass the pearly portal and take our place among the redeemed. A very specious and
exceedingly dangerous heresy is now extensively preached from popular pulpits, audaciously
restricting the baptism of the Holy Ghost to the apostles alone, and utterly abnegating the possibility
of its reception by any one else, however true and saintly.
17. “If therefore God gave unto them the like gift as even unto us. . .” This declaration of Peter,
with many other parallels, settles the question beyond the possibility of cavil that the Gentiles at the
house of Cornelius received precisely what the apostles did on the day of Pentecost. They were
Gentiles, representative of the whole Gentile world down to the end of time. Hence you see that the