WORKS OF WILLIAM BAXTER GODBEY
HOLINESS CHURCHES
By William B. Godbey
ISBN: 9781621719533 (uPDF) Holiness Churches. By W.B. Godbey. First Fruits Press, © 2019 Digital version at https://place.asburyseminary.edu/godbey/31/ First Fruits Press is a digital imprint of the Asbury Theological Seminary, B.L. Fisher Library. Asbury Theological Seminary is the legal owner of the material previously published by the Pentecostal Publishing Co. and reserves the right to release new editions of this material as well as new material produced by Asbury Theological Seminary. Its publications are available for noncommercial and educational uses, such as research, teaching and private study. First Fruits Press has licensed the digital version of this work under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/. For all other uses, contact: First Fruits Press B.L. Fisher Library Asbury Theological Seminary 204 N. Lexington Ave. Wilmore, KY 40390 http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits Godbey, W. B. (William Baxter), 1833-1920. Holiness churches [electronic resource] / by W.B. Godbey. – Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, ©2019. 1 online resource (28 p. : port.) digital. Reprint. Previously published: Greensboro, North Carolina: Apostolic Messenger Office, [190-?] ISBN: 9781621719526 (paperback) ISBN: 9781621719533 (uPDF) ISBN: 9781621719540 (Mobi) OCLC: 1098034858 1. Holiness. 2. Holiness churches. I. Title.
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Holiness Churches By
W. B. Godbey
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HOLINESSCHURCHES Church is ecclesia, from ea, out, and kaleo, to call Ther.ef ore it simply Jlleans, the c.alled ou.t- peo)fl¡e. The Holy Ghost who has been in the world from the creative ages, calls every human soul to leave the wicked Satan dominated wodd, and come to God; identifying himself with the great Jehova,h for time and eternity. A$ Satan is on the throne of th,e world C2Cor. 4: 4) he lays under contribution, ~rth and hell to hold his own people; fighting his best for every soul; ingeniously manipulating to get up all sorts of troubles, anything in the world to lead people into sin and send them down to hell. While there is no hai'"mony in hell and none in the devil's kingdom as they are constantly at w~r either with the other.; yet_ hell and the devil's kingdom in all the earth, as well as the pandemonium, constitute a single unit of evil ; there being not one scintilla of good. Our Savior says that if Satan were divided against himself his kingdom would come to an end. While there is no division against itself nor its Satanic majesty; there are infinitesimal factions, grudges, clans and all sorts of diabolical combinations and antagonisms. War has been Satan's policy in ,all ages; stirring it up everywhere in view of getting all the people into hell, w}J.ere there is no getting out. Therefore infinite combinations everywhere co-operate to keep people from leaving the devil and entering the kingdom of God. Therefore ecclesia simply includes all the people who have left the devil, come out of this wicked world and identified themselves with God. In case of that kind He alWtays freely forgives them; the Holy Spirit proceeding at once to resurrect-them, i. e., create the divine life in the dead soul. Consequently all the members of God's church have been supernaturaly born. They constitute God's family,
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which can only.be entered by the supernatural birth as our Savior said to Nicodemus (John 3 7) : "You must be born from above," not as E. V. "again." While this is simply a-wrong translation of the original anoothen, which simply means, from above; the word palin, again, not appearing in this passage. This superatural birth brings you into the family of God and makes you a real bona fide church member. Church joining is a heresy which has done great harm, teaching and leading the people astray, so they settle down in the conclusion, that they are members of God's church simply because they have joined some denomination, which has nothing to do with membership in God's church ; as you have to be regenerated and born, in order to be a¡member of God's church. Regeneration, which brings you into God's church, conferring you membership in the primary department, i. e., infancy, where you are not competent to vote or have anything to do with the government because of your spiritual minority. Therefore unsanctified people are neither competent to hold office nor to preach the gospel. Heb. 5 6, pronounces them babes and exhorts them leave babyhood and be carried in to perfection. The Greek pheroometha having no meaning but, Let us be carried, i. e., the omnipotent Savior is standing by and ready in a moment to carry you into perf ection; despite the tardiness including in the E. V ., in the use of the word, Let us go on to perfection ; implying a great attainment a long way off and a long journey necessary to reach it. No such an idea even insinuated in the original, which is in hte present tense, imperative mood; fervently exhorting the people to leave spiritual babyhood and let the Lord carry them into perfection. We find the organization not only in Acts 6th chapter, but lucidly revealed in the Pauline epistles; explicitly giving
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us the different offices and the duties, appertaining to the same. The pastor having charge of the spiritual interest (the same as bishop, which is Greek, pastor, Latin, and now the¡ English translation.) The deacon has charge of the temporal interest; meanwhile the board of elders have charge of the general interest. Whereas every true Christian is a come-outer, having come out from the world and the devil, choosing God for his portion forever and taking the lone way with Jesus ; yet as Satan counterfeits everything, he has counterfeited the church of God, and has people going around over the country claiming to represent it, and at the same time fighting the organization which God made, seriously to the detriment of their own souls, as well as the derailment of others, and the detriment of God's kingdom. As the preacher is the most important officer of God's kingdom, the conclusion legitimately follows that he must be an adult, as an infant is utterly incompetent to lead the embattled host against the enemy and to instruct the people in the deep things of God and the wonderful things of His kingdom. While none but the sanctified are competent to preach or hold offices in the church of God, which confers none of these grave responsibilities on baies; th us as God is no respecter of persons, we legitimately conclude that all sanctified people are competent and authorized to preach, which simply means to proclaim some thing i. e. none other than what God has done for their souls. No one can tell what he-does not possess. Therefore every one must have the experience of salvation before he is competent to go and preach it to others; and preaching 15 years before I was sanctified; thus losing the bloom of my youth, the brilliancy and h~roism of my youth man hood I preached the doctrine of sanctification because the old Methodist books are full and running
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ovet; myself having been born in their midst; btit sanctilication is not a doctrine it is an experience; which no one can preach till he receives it. Jesus in His va1edictdry prayer John 17th ch, settles the matter beyond the possibilities of controversy ; sweeping from the field Zinzendorfianism which teaches that you g~t it all in convers-ioti and we all know that it is and He there says positively: "I pray not for the an awful mistake, because Jesus can't be mistaken world but for those whom thou hast given me out of the world,'' showing most conclusively that you have to get out of the world in order to have eligibility for discipleship, which at once can qualify you for sanctification. You absolutely have to become a disciple before you can be sanctified. Nothing but the supernatural birth can possibly make you a disciple, as it is certain that they are all born from above. An awful parade is here made by Catholics, Campbellites and other heretics, roaring brass bands, beating drums, olowing horns and vociferating to everybody, come and join the church, receive water baptism and obey the commandments, as they tell them, and as in that case they will be disciples of the Lord. It is an awful broadside from Satan's gattling guns and heavy artillery, roaring up from the bottomless pit in order to deceive the people and so hallucinate them that they will fall in with the great crowd and take popular religion; Satan's slickest gangway down irtto the pitirom whence none return. Jesus settles it forever: "Ye must be born from above." (John 3: 7). Therefore all of this tin horn parade over discipleship is Satan's counterfeit, as it means nothing of that kind, but is simply a birth, wrought by the Holy Ghost alone; human manipulations having nothing to do with it-never did and never will.
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CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS A HOLINESS CHURCH?
As church simply means an assembly and may be either good or bad, it mtty be the¡ called out :₏tom God to the devil, as I see illustrated in Acts 19th ch. In that wonderful revival they had in Ephesus in which they spent two hours in the theater, a great multitude crying out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." That temple took two hundred years to build and was counted one of the seven wonders of the world. Here was a case of Satan's great church, multiplied thousands simultaneously shouting up ... roarously the praises of Diana~ representing the world's great popular church, actually black with the very turpitude of hell. The woman worship has always been exceedingly popular as it is really veneration of the vilest lust and darkest passions, that ever benighted the pandemonium. (a) Therefore. when we talk about a church, let us always know what kind, whether Satan's or God's. If you want the Latter, I can tell you now, they are few and far between. If you want the former, you will find them anywhere you go, from the simple fact that we are living in Satan's reign (2 Cor. 4: 4), and he girdles the world with his black pinions and enw:r:aps the globe with the malarious tornados of his pestilential breath. When the Catholic church held her great Ecumenical Council in Lyons, France, Carlina! Hugo, laconically said, at the .adjournment, that they had wrought a great reformation in the city since they came; where as they were only three baudy houses when they opened the Council now says he, there is only one; proceeding to observe, that this one extended from border to border, taking in the whole
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city; of course giving it as humorous witticism, turning it on them as a ludicrous burlesque, putting it off as a funny joke, whose transparent turpitude and black debauchery read between the lines would put the路 blush on the pandemonium and fill hell with Jubilee. 路 (b) Now let us see what a Holiness church is. It means an organization of God's children for mutual security, edification and efficiency in the great work of 路saving a lost world. Every member having been supernaturally born and enjoying the witness of the Spirit, that he is passed from death unto life and from the power of sin and Satan unto God and remission of sins, and an inheritance among them which are sanctified by fiaith in Christ (Acts 26: 22) This Holiness church has none but sanctified officers and preachers and in case any of them backslide from their sanctification路 and do not seek reclamation without delay, the license will not be renewed. Now we have quite ia diversity of organizations, Free Methodists, Wesleyan Methodists, N azarenes and Apostolics, all distinctly understood as Holiness organizations, with no compromise under any environments. We also have Holiness organizations in the great Methodist Episcopal bodies, North and South, true, straight and uncompromising. As I have traveled throughout the continent over and over, I am acquainted with them and send them appointments as freely as these current Holiness organizations above mentioned. (c) We also have quite a sprinkle of Holiness Baptist churches, especialy in the south~ These Holiness churches I visit regularly in my extensive peregrinations and find them all right; straight, clean and orthodox, and, of course, deserving recognition in the great and growing }loliness constellation. We find very few Presbyterian churches and they are usually of the Cumberland
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order, also de~erving recognition in this grand lrea venly unity. We also have a w~ry few New Light churches, heroically moving along with us .a.ndtrav-· eling -~othe full salvation drum. beat; especially one, n0ar Ray's Crossing on the P.R. R.~under the shadow of Shelbyvill~, Indiana, where we have some no-· b1e people, true to the blood-~tained ban;rier of our glorious King, who won the victory for us all on the bloody heights of Calvary . .(d) While Satan sits on the throne of the world,. which he is certain to do till Jesus comes and de,.. thrones him. His glorious a,.ppearing is assuredly very nigh, as abundantly 1adumbrated QY all the chronologies; the Lunar, measuring time by the revolutions of the moon around the earth, &nd u~e.d by the patriarchs and prophets in Asia and Africa, as well as our Savior and His apostles, making the Rapture of the saints overdue 68 .y-ears; meanwhile the calendar c.hronology used in Europe- and measured by the revolutions of the planets around the sun; making the rapture of the saints overdue 26 years; meanwhile the solar chronology used .1nAmererica measuri_ng time by the r~volutions of the earth around the sun, makes the gle:rious rapture due in 192S. While God is not ti~d to the chronologies, they are especially for our instructi<;>Jl,~11:d. we rµI) an awful risk to depreciate them and expose ourselves to the fearful liability of that 1awful embarassment our Savior enunciates (Matt. 25), the bridegroom coming at midnight, when deepest sleep cometh on the people and naught is heard, but the thunder of the midnight train, the lashing of the ocean waves against ·the rockbound shore, and the barking of the sleepless watch dog, when they are awakened by the midnight cry, "Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him." Oh, what a panic as they cry aloud to the wise virgins, "Give us of your oil, because our lamps are going out," not out,
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as E. V., but still have some oil and some fire and are burning¡ low, but so imperatively need a supply of ofl. We never have any religion to spare. The best we can do is to send them to those who have it, i.e., to Jesus and the Holy Ghost; not an implication that they could not get it; but they were too late because the bridegroom had come and those who were ready had entered into the marriage supper of the Lamb; and the foolish virgins (so pronounced because they thought one work of grace sufficient a.nd stopped with lighting their lamps, i. e.,regeneration, neglecting to go on and get their vessels filled with oil, i. e., their hearts not only emptied of inbred sin, but filled with the Holy Ghost.) (e) Here we see our Savior pronounces all who went for the second work of grace and received it, wise, for that thoughtful and judicious fortification against coming emergencies. In that day His coming was a long way off ; in ours it is very nigh. Thinking over the matter they said, "We know not how long our Lord will tarry; neither how treacherous the mountains, yawning the chasms, frightful the precipices, c:vaggy the stepps, flooded the rivers and fiery the deserts, over which we have to pass in our pilgrimage to meet the bridegroom." Therefore heedthey proceed to lay in a supply of oil, getting their vessels filled, i. e., their hearts filled with the Holy Ghost.
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CHAPTEER TWO SATANIC CHURCHES
As he is on the throne of the world, he, has filled it and literally flooded it with churches, inorder to satisfy his people and keep them out of God's church which would blight all his hopes and blast every prospect forever. As carnality is devil nature, you can easily identify them. They are run on carnal policy and by carnal officers and preachers in contradistinction to the pure spirituality, which everywhere characterizes God's churches, regardless of cognomens or shiboleths. A few days ago, under 'the shadow of this city, I preached in a Holiness church, whose pastor had resigned responsively to the wishes of his people. Why did they want him to resign? Because he had accepted a clerkship in a store of general merchandise, principally groceries, and had to sell tobacco, and as they thought, some other things perhaps a little worse. As he is a brilliant and promising young man I became much interested. in him, diagnosing his physiognomy and reading out lines of a valuable preacher, more needed on the earth than anything else. As he had no appointment to preach and fearing the strategy of Satan who makes all empty heads his work shop, and feeling anxious for him to preach some where I told him to ¡go and preach for the Methodists, who would give him an open door and say nothing about his selling tobacco. Speaking to a brother, stirring him up to help me hold him for a preacher, and making allusion to his preaching for the Methodists, he responded that they would not let him preach unless he would go off to college and get a better education. (f) While collegiate education is all right in its place, it has nothing to do with preaching and never
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did. There is but one ,qualification for preaching in the blessed Book and that is the pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost and five, a sine qua non in every case, as you see Jesus positively forbade His own apostles to go and preach under the pentecostal dispensation, till they had received the blessing, commanding them positively and specifically to tarry at Jerusalem until they received His baptism; so emphatioolly and persistently thundered out by the hermit prophet, "He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire." When He wanted preachers, He went to the fishing boats around the Galilean Sea and took the "unlearned ·and ignorant men," (Acts 4: 12) The Grek is agramatai, from allpha, not, and gramma, a letter, consequently the meaning of it is illiterate and very strong, even without a knowledge of their letters. · The other word is idotai, and it is now our English word idiot. Hnce ,we see the expression is very strong, illiterates and idiots; showing up the :fact that they were utterly uneducated; except those wonderful three years which J esus gave them in person, amid great difficulties, as His enemies were after Him constantly to kill Him, and His friends to· crown Ilim king; in which case the Romans would have killed Him; yet He moved on heroically those three years ; teaching them as they journeyed from place to place ,and wherever they halted gathered around Him in a circle and He taught them the deep things of God and the wonderfttl things of the kingdom. A. glorious example for us to be either constantly_ sitting at IUs feet taught by a senior in the kingdom or diligently dispensing to our juniors the woriderf ul truths of His precious Word, by which we are saved, sah~tified, fed,' pan~ oplied and will be j uqged in the great day. (g) When He wanted a teacher, He put His hand on the most competent man in the world, though His greatest enemy, Saul of Tarsus, at the very time he
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was at the acme of his great enterprise, to exterm.inate all the Nazarenes ; believing as he did in harmony with the higher clergy, that they would rutn the good old church of the patriarchs and prophets in which they had been born and spent their lives, and he begrudged it as the only hope of the world. Having enjoyed grand路 success at Jerusalem ;-martyring and running away the disciples of Jesus, till he can afford to carry his iconoclastic campaigns into foreign cities. Now with authority from the heirarchy to arrest all he found and bring them to Jerusalem for prosecution; when the Lord gets ready to use him, He touches him with His little finger and says, "Wheel into line as I have work for you." He turns on his heel and raises the shout, "You路 may have the world,. but give me Jesus," and kept it up without a jarring note till he lost his head at Nero's block; practically becoming the reincarnation of the despised Nazarene to finish His work on the earth; honored to write the most of the New Testament and actually come to the pre-eminence of all the Bible characters from Abel down to the translated apostle John. You see very plainly that if He had so willed,. He might have filled up the apostolic ministry with Pauline characters, eminent for their learning, as he was a double graduate, having first completed the curriculum in the Greek colleges of Tarsus, and afterward in the Hebrew seminaries of Jerusalem. Why did our Savior take those ignorant men into the apostolic ministry? It :was to remo-v1ea million stumblingb1ocks from the world's evangelization, a work so ma;gnitudinous that it could not have been done then, neither can it now, restricting the ministry to a classical education. 路 路 (h) I shall always believe I would have preached, in all probability as efficiently if I had never seen a college; llut I never would have girdled the world
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with books. You are now reading the 128th of my authorship. They all came out of my collegiate education; simple exegeses of the precious Word, revealed in the Greek of the New and Hebrew of the Old Testament. I seriously doubt whether I ever would have written a book if I had not received a classical education; yet I would have preached all the same as I did before I ever saw a college or entered classic halls and sat at the feet of cult.l;lred exegetes. Satan's policy is to restrict the ministry to the learned, as in that way he would with a single sweep peel off the great and efficient wing of the evangelistic army. .You need but one qualification to preach and that is the wonderful baptism Jesus himself gives you of the Holy Ghost and fire. This conclusion is irresistible from our Savior's own administration; actually forbidding His own apostles whom He had taught those three years, to go and preach without it. (i) Therefore you see the Holiness churches, while restricting the ministry to the sanctified; require that sine qua non¡ in every case. Hence it is very plain and unmistakable; every boy and girl has nothing¡ to do but seek till they find the Lord and know by the clear witness of the Holy Spirit, that their sins are forgiven and the yare supernaturally born; then go for sanctification night and day till you get it and know it. Then preach to everybody you meet remembering our great Exemplar, who preached to the lonely Nicodemus, that wonderful birth sermon, that has been shaking the nations from that day to this. Oh, you say, He could afford to preach to him as he was a great man, Doctor of Divinity and a member of the Sanhedrin. What about H1s next sermon? Only one auditor, a lonely woman, fallen down to the bottom.of slumdom, so low the cu1tured clergy would not look at her. She is wonderfully saved, so forgetting her waterpot and the water
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sparkling deep down in Jacob's well, she came a mile to carry back with her to her home, she dashes away at racehorse speed; runs all over the city, preaching and shouting on the streets, till the rabble rise up pell mell, hang spell bound on her eloquent lips and ask her the cause of the paradoxical change, and when she responds, "Go with me, and I will show you the prophet of the Lord, who hath wrought these mighty works; verily He must be the Shiloh of God, the long expected Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel, the Savior of the world." (g) Oh, how they troop after her as she wends her way back to Jacob's well, where the find her words more than true and linger round the paradoxical Seer two solid days, and many believe on Him. Hence you see the simplicity of God's ministry; no pro:.. found curriculum of classic lore on which to toil your life aWiay, burning the midnight oil, till the gray dawn gilds the Orient and the rosy fingers of the beautiful aurora heralds the approaching day. (k) All the churches in the world today were launched in primitive simplicity; but captured by the god of this world ias the centuries come and go. The nine hundred millions today holding membership in Satan's paganistic churches, are the succession of the patriarchal in which Abel and the martyrs bled and fled away to heaven escorted by angelic convoys. The three hundred millions of Mohammedans and seventy millions of Jews, accepting the Old Testament and rejecting the New, are the organic successors of Moses and the prophets, the Old Testament martyrs and the Hebrew children. The four hundred and fifty millions of Catholics, inundating the nations are the organic succession of Peter, Paul, their apostolic comrades and a hundred million martyrs who fell under the pagan persecutions. The great and distressingly wicked Lutheran church, seventy millions, are the organic successors
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of th~ Augustine monk, who said to his interceding friends, "I will enter Worms if there are as many devils as tiles on the roofs." (1) Thither summoned by the enraged pope, who had excommunicated him for preaching against th~ idolatrous usurpations, falsifications and tyranny played off on them by popery, prelacy and .priestcraft. When the pope had done his best to stop his mouth with gold and signally failed, as he could not be bribed. Then sending him his bull of excommunication, pronouncing him an outlaw and e~posing him to martyrdom immediately. On reception he says to the bystanders, "This looks like a burn ... ing business, therefore we will begin at this end of the line." . Taking the bull of excommunication with him out on -the square, kindling a fire he lays it on it and burns it up. This defiant act of contempt of the papistical authority, threw all the fat in the fire. The Vatican thunders. ::ind the demons of persecution roar till the earth trembles. They summon him to meet them all in the city of Worms, Germany, everybody believing that he would be burnt as John Huss of Bohemia, recently for preaching the same glorious truth. Despite all their efforts to keep him away he mounts his mule and goes at once to meet them. In the dQbate he proves more than a match for them all; actually knowing more about the Bible than all of them put together; they become excited, the tide rises high. All know the volcano is going to explode. (m) Soon enough it comes and breaks up the whole council in a row, stampede, skedaddle and uproar. In the heterogenous rush and stampede, he is caught up in the arms of strong me, whom he did not know (his friends whom he knew afraid they could not manage him). They get him in a vehicI, and run away, escaping from the excited crowd and carrying him off out of the city, his enemies think-
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ing that he was killed in the fracas; rejoicing over him and even celebrating his death at Rome by bonfires and illuminations. Meanwhile¡ they carry¡ him away into the wild woods to a lonely mountain, up which they climb to a glorious venerable castle on its brow; down into a deep dungeon through a long winding stairway, they descend with him and there put him in prison and keep him ..a whole year, feeding him and caring for him all right; himself thinking they were his enemies and¡ wondering what they would do with him, meanwhile they were his friends and had him there to save his life. During this memorable year he received a much needed rest and did a great important work, i. e., translated the New Testament into German, which brought a sunburst on the world, as so very few could read. The popular Bible was the Latin Vulgate which not one in forty could read. During this year God blessed the seed he had sown and a great crop sprang up, ripened unto harvest. The awakening so prevailing among the people, that the princes of Germany called a convention at Augsburg and repudiated the papistical authority; thus founding the Protestant church,-a glorious sunburst on all christendom after the long dreary night, known in history as the Dark Ages ; meanwhile not one man in a thousand nor one woman in twenty thousand could read or write, and popery, prelacy and priestcraft had every thing in their grip; dismal and superstitious sacerdotalism domineering everything with a rod of iron. Meanwhile the priest that could invent most ceremonies and start most new institutions and think of more oddities, tirvialities, frivolities and jokosities was considered the smartest. (n) So with every other ecclesiasticism which has ever been launched in the world, beginning al right in "Holiness to the Lord," eventually the good ones :marching their pilgrimage through, die and go to
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heaven ; their children and others taking their Place with de:p:ravity in their hearts, normal to every humran soul ; never succeeding in getting rid of it. As generations come and go the lights grow dimmer and the campfires die out for the warit of fuel ; the· good ones going away to heaven and their suec·essors failing to get a glorious full salvation., In this way the leaka,;e begins and continues until the vessel isempty and falls to sta.ves. If you don't want a barrel to leak you must keep it under the spout all thetime. When the leakage once begins it will go on. increasing as the staves are exposed to the sun and the weather, and so continue until it falls to pieces. Hence you see the Holiness churches clandestinely leak out, lose their grip on God, imbibe the depravity which fills the air, imparted by the evil spirits thronging on every side, till 0arnal people will get control of the church. Then the devil's got it, because carnality is· simply devil nature. It makes no difference how pure and holy the doctrine and the general rules of a church may be, when it falls into: the hands of carnal men, they will run it in the interests of Satan's kingdom and gradually it will get lower, darker and more worldly, till it actually becomes the persecutor of God's church as has been verified in all ages. CHAPTER
'DHREE
WHY DO WE NEED HOLINESS CHURCHES?
The answer is very obvious, because they alone can give the people a through ticket to heaven; the best the others offer you is conversion, which is all right and inidspens.able, yet it is only a start on the pilgrimage for the Celestial City. When Christian was on his way, -he met people ever and anon whom
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he had known in his native land, the city of Destruction; who had gone off on the¡ pilgrimage and traveled extensively along the King's highway and finally given up in despair and were traveling back to their native land where they had been born and reared. When he had pass¡ed through the wicket gate and the Slough of Despond and gotten over on the other side, Evangelist (Christ) met him and gave him a parchment roll, in which his name was written, to read for his comfort on his journey and finally to be presented at the Celestial gate. .A.fter he had passed through Vanity Fair, suffering awful persecution, his traveling companion Faithful being burnt at the stake and leaving him alone for his journey, Hopeful having risen up from the ashes of Faithful, became his traveling companion the remnant of his journey. They came to a great hill, Difficulty. Climbing over it, they are quite weary and see a lovely arbor beside the highway, very close to it, and Hope:ful suggests that they stop and take a rest. Meanwhile they fall asleep and time slips away from them unconsciously. Now awaking they resume their journey, ascending the hill, Difficulty till they reach the summit, when two men meet them running back with all their might. Their names were Timorus and Mistrust. Christian had known them both in his former life in the city of Destruction. They are much a.ffrighted. Christian recognizes them both and calls them by name and with difficulty halts them for a moment to give an account of themselves and tell hini why they are going the wrong way. (p) With great excitment and broken utterances, they ejaculate, "Oh, we hard so many alarms about the awful doom of our native city, we after long delay finally got off on a pilgrimage for the Celestial City, but we found so many difficulties, our way obstructed by craggy steeps, !:rightful precipices,
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yawning chasms, roaring monsters, howling demons, stalking spectres,. horrible giants and hobgoblins, and just over the brow of this mountain we saw two monster lions on the road ready to eat us up. They roared on us, shaking the mountain and made at us. Therefore we were forced to give up the journey all together and go back to our native land and content ourselves the remnant of our lives, as we have done our best and demonstrated the utter. impossibility for any one to make the journey through to the Celestial City. Christian is much frightened, but Hopeful cheers hjm up to go on. Now running his hands in his pockets he misses the parchment roll which Evangelist had given him, after he passed the Slough of Despond. Therefore in great distress they run back to the arbor on the hill side where they had slept and fortunately find it in the straw. (When you lose your hold on God, backslide, forfeit the witness of the Spirit, the thing to do is to go right back to the place where you lost it and there you will find it; because God never changes, and you will always find Him precisely where you left Him, waiting for you to come back). Christian is so glad that he has found his roll; but what shall they do as those two great lions are on the road and ready to eat them up. They travel on heroically till they reach the summit and looking over behold a shining palace burst on their vision ; angels in their snowy 'White robes promenading the lofty porticos, and shouting the praises of God, singing immortal anthems symphonically with the ineffably sweet melodies ringing out from their golden harps ; praising the Lord of the palace. A man, whose name was Interpreter shouts aloud to them, "Come on all pilgrims and take ia rest with us as I know you are ¡weary," and they shout back, "We see two big lions on the road ready to devour us." "Oh," says he, "be not afraid; the Lord of the hill
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put them there to test the true and drive back the counterfeit." Now taking courage they come ahead. The lions roar terrifically and make toward them, so they tremble and quake and almost faint under the panic, when they get near by they see that the lions are chained and not on the highway; neither will the chains permit them to come thither. Terrific is the ordeal, as they have to pass so close to them, their mouths wide open, their roar shaking the mountain, and making at them with all their might. Now they reach the Interpreter's palace. Who is the Interpreter? The Holy Ghost. He receive~ them cordially and with great delight, escorting .them round and round gives them many lessons replete with edification, letting them down into the deep things of God. Among those lessons, escorting them¡ into a room they see a fire burning so exceedingly brilliantly, while a black man is coming every few moments with a bucket of water and pouring on it; normally to its utter extermination, but instead of putting it. out, it sems to intensify it so the flame mounts high-¡ er and the heat is more intense than ever before. The pilgrims cannot understand it. He leads them round a wall. On the other side they see a man standing with a can of oil, from a hidden retreat pouring it on the fire. (r) Water is a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen; the latter the most combustible element in all the world, and the former the great supporter of combustion. Therefore when the heat is sufficiently intense to decompose it, water is the best fuel you can get. Therefore this black man (the devil) tho doing his best to put the fire out, was simply serving as a fuel porter, working incessantly to keep the fire well supplied with the most convenient combustible in the world. Reader, of course, you profit by this lesson which the Holy Ghost gave the pilgrims ..
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It is verified (Rom. g: 28) "God worketh to,:,eth.er f~ -good, .all t,hings ,to titem. who k>ve God with divitll! ¡iov.e.'' We could not have all things a:ndleavethe devil out, as he is not only a thing, but one pf the biggest in all the world. If you a-re true to God, neither Satan nor his myrmidons can do axtvthing
which He will not make a blessing to you. Consequently yon have nothing to do but shout and be true. . ' -(s) We must have Holiness churches everywher~, because they alone can giv.e you a through ticket to heaven; the best the others can do only starting you on the road. We do not want to start if we .cannot g.et there, as the Bible reveals the backsliders hell the most awful in the dismal doom of the damned. "It would have been better for them not to have known the way of the Lord, than having known it and turned away from the holy commandment given unto them." The great commandment to all Christians is, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," ringing through both Testaments. The Lord has let me make the four journeys around the paganistic and historic world, sailing over the great oceans, all of them except the Arctic and Anarctic, encircling the poles. In these pilgrimages I have always bought not only a ticket for embarkation but disembarkation, as I was not willing to turn seaman and spend the remnant of my days, plowing the dark hued deep. Scottsville, Texas, Campmeeting was the alma mater of great Dixie Land. About a dozen years ago when the country w.as panic stricken by the outbreak of Yellow fever in New Orleans, Brother Ruth and myself were preaching in that camp. Midway in' the session, while it is running with a heavenly boom, our attention is arrested by a group of men in patrician costume, walking down the center aisle, mounting the rostrum, normal to preachers
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only, in the name r4.the county medical board, tak-ing possession of. the campmeeting, a<ljol.Ring it sine die, lest it might spread the epidemie. 'ltMir leadeF, the chairman of th.e board, r~ll.ested the preacher to pronounce the benediction. Oh what a sk-edaddlement ! Ruth and myself make for the North as we could do nothing on the Gulf Coast. We take the precaution to undergo examination a:n4 receive health certificates. Soon we are aboa~d the train. The conductor comes along and is satisfiecl with our R. R tickets. Soon another man in uniform comes through demanding health certificates. Fortunately we have them, and he is satisfied. The train was packed with fugitives of whom many had no health certificates. The man orders them off. They keep their seats, observing, "We have paid for our run and w..eare going to make it." A few hours come and go; we are amid great forests, a dismal swamp, a howling wilderness. We look out and see armed m,en mounted in military uniforms, bearing weapons of d.eath ; looking like the old bloody war has come back. The train is halted remote from any station. Soldiers in their panoply walk through it from end to end, demanding heaUh certificates, and indiscriminately disembarking all, who do not possess them. Why? Because we have reached a state line, where there is a quarantine against all Texas and the Gulf Coast. In justification you get a through ticket to heaven, for the sake of God's only well beloved Son who came all the way from heaven to take our place, bleed and die, pouring out His life's blood to redeem us all from sin, death and hell, and thus proclaim the great and glorious vicarious substitutionary atonement, which perfectly satisfies the divine law; eternally sweeping away the vaguest apology for the damnation of a solitary soul,leaving the vilest sinner this side of the pandemooium nothing to do but give back to the devil all
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his meanness, tip his hat to him, bid him an eternal' farewell, mount the King~s highway, which. Jesus. built with His own bleeding, toiling hands, every step from the city of Destruction to the New J erusalem; no lion on it; no ravenous beast, nor toll gate; perfectly free for all; leaving nothing for the vilest reprobate to do but to tip his hat to the devil, giving him back all his meanness, as he got it all from him, and dash off at race horse speed, sweeping on with ever accelerating speed, till leaping through the pearly gate he receives a starry crown which will never fiade away, but accumulate lustre through the flight of eternal ages. (v) Yet when he reaches the end of his journey, he will find guardian angels with swords crossed over the gate, demanding a health certificate, from from the fact that all heaven is quarantined against this earth from sun to sun and pole to pole. (Heb. 12 :14) Therefore we must have holiness churches, ev-¡ erywhere, as they alone can give us not only a thru ticket but a health certificate, which we get under' the blood, the only elixir of purgation, the Holy Ghost, the executive of the Trinity, its only custodian and administrator, whose exclusive prerogative¡ is its application to every atom, fiber and baccilus of the spiritual organism. This mighty work witnessed by himself is your health certificate and is always honored by those angel porters, waving their spears and shouting you welcome home!
WILLIAM BAXTER GODBEY (June 3, 1833September 12, 1920) was raised a Methodist in Pulaski County, Kentucky, who experienced his moment of conversion at a Baptist revival in November of 1849. Godbey became a licensed preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in the Kentucky Conference in 1853. After graduating from Georgetown College with a bachelor’s degree in 1859, he served as President of Harmonia College in Perryville, Kentucky while also preaching on the Perryville Circuit from 1859-1869. He married America Emma Durham (1839-1915) in 1860. Of their eight children, only one daughter, Effie Orpha (1873-1906) survived to adulthood. In December of 1868, Godbey experienced entire sanctification and began to preach holiness revivals. From the 1860s through the 1880s, Godbey preached the doctrine of holiness throughout the South. He wrote over 200 books and pamphlets on topics of holiness theology and even taught for a while at God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1878 he converted Alma Birdwell White, future founder and bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. He eventually returned to the Kentucky Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was buried in Perryville, Kentucky.