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

above mentioned heresy flatly contradicts Peter and the Holy Ghost. It is a subtle trick of the devil
to keep people from receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost, so he will get them.
18. “And hearing these things they glorified God saying, Then has God granted unto the Gentiles
repentance unto life.” The reason why there is much spurious repentance is because it is man’s work,
the true repentance being the fruit of the Holy Spirit; He alone can give it. When God gives
repentance, salvation invariably supervenes.
THE GENTILE GOSPEL PREACHED IN PHŒNICIA, CILICIA AND SYRIA BEFORE
PETER PREACHED IT AT THE HOUSE OF CORNELIUS.
19-24. While the above is true, yet it was necessary for Peter, responsive to his heavenly vision
and the call of the Holy Ghost, to go to Cæsarea and there, in the home of a prominent Roman
officer, to actually unfurl the banner and throw wide open the door of free gospel grace to the Roman
Empire, then embracing the known world, and represented by Cornelius, thus positively and finally
ignoring the restrictions of Jewish exclusiveness as well as the circuitous route of Israelitish
proselytism, thus authenticating, in the very action of the same senior apostle, who had inaugurated
the Pentecostal dispensation to the Jews, also the equal rights and privileges of the Gentiles.
However, we see that these Cyprian and Cyrenean men had, some years previously, been preaching
the gospel to the Greeks, i.e., the Gentiles in these north countries.
21. “The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number, believing, turned to the Lord.”
These were Gentiles in the Syrian Empire, some time before Peter, by his apostolical ipse dixit, had
unfurled the Gentile banner at Cæsarea.
22. Here we see that the apostles at Jerusalem, having heard of the progress of the gospel among
the Syrian Gentiles, sent away that good preacher Barnabas, beloved by the apostles and saints, to
go even to Antioch, the Syrian metropolis, and investigate the strange phenomenon.
23. “Who, arriving and seeing the grace of God, rejoiced, and continued to exhort them all with
steadfastness of heart to abide with the Lord,
24. “Because he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and faith.” Here we see confirmed
the significant fact that the apostles and primitive saints all recognized the Holy Ghost as the
sovereign Arbiter in every matter of doubt and controversy, and that they dared not put their hand
on the ark of God. Here we see that Barnabas unhesitatingly acquiesces in a downright innovation.
While the grace of God, in Judaism, had always been free to the Gentiles, yet they must receive it
by way of proselytism into the Mosaic church. Now Barnabas sees an institution which had stood
fifteen hundred years unimpeached, literally ignored and relegated to oblivion. That looked like
smashing up all the honored and sacred institutions of his fathers, yet we hear Barnabas shouting an
uproarious “Amen!” and pronouncing his blessings on the whole procedure, importunately exhorting
them to abide in the way they had started out. Why was this? Simply because “Barnabas was a good
man, full of the Holy Ghost and faith”; consequently he had the inward light of the Spirit to
discriminate the hand of God and recognize His work wherever he saw it. Knowing well that all the