Holiness Clergy Bureau

WORKS OF WILLIAM BAXTER GODBEY

HOLINESS CLERGY BUREAU

By William B. Godbey

ISBN: 9781621719564 (uPDF)

Holiness Clergy Bureau .

By W.B. Godbey.

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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 clergy bureau [electronic resource] / by W.B. Godbey. – Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, ©2019.

1 online resource (35 p. : port.) digital.

Reprint. Previously published: Greensboro, N.C.: Apostolic Messenger Office, [190-?]

ISBN: 9781621719557 (paperback) ISBN: 9781621719564 (uPDF) ISBN: 9781621719571 (Mobi) OCLC: 1098034823 1. Holiness. 2. Holiness churches. I. Title.

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Holiness Clergy Bureau By W. B. Godbey

AUTHOR OF "New Testament Commentaries." "New Testament Translation, '' and a great uumber of other books and booklets.

PUBLISHED

APOSTOLIC 900

BY

MESSENGER SILVER

GREENSBORO.

OFFICE

RUN

AVE. N.

C.

Holiness Clergy Bureau As the divine economy is the salvation of the whole world through the Gospel, which has but one definition in all the Bible: (Rom. 1: 16), "The dynamite of God unto salvation unto every one that believes it." Dynamite is the greatest mechanical power in all the world, the only thing that can blow the devil and everything he put in us, out of us and save us from a devil's hell. Christ was made manifest to destroy the works of the devil. ( 1 John 3 : 8.)

While angels would be delighted to preach this Gospel, God in His infinite wisdom has committed it to the people whom it has already saved, as none others are competent to preach it. To preach means to proclaim. When it is simply a verbal statement, anyone who has the physicaPand vocal ability, can serve. as the King's herald; go out and proclaim His message to His subjects.

The Bible was never printed until A. D. 1551. During the roll of the ages from Adam down through the centuries, wherever people were dwelling on the face of the earth, heralds were seen ever and anon going round proclaiming the message of their boss, i. e., their king; as in all ages there has been more or less social organization.

A company now going a way to explore mountains and deserts, always organizes chooses a leader and follows him.

2500 years ago, while Artaxerxes was king of Persia and monarch of the world, his younger brother Cyrus, revolted against him to get the throne, their mother being in sympathy with him and feeling that he ought to have it, because he had been born into the kingdom, i. e., after their father Darius had become king, whereas his elder brother, the incumbent had been born before his father became king. As the Greeks were so much braver soldiers and effi-

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cient in battle than any others in all the world; he conceived the idea of rendezvousing a Grecian army and marching against his brother, in order to dethrone him that he might rule the world. He went on all right, secured the army and marched two thousand miles over land, seeing no sign of an enem,y to intercept him and congratulating himself that his brother was not going to fight him, but make terms of fraternal amity with him. As he never heard from him, (no mail routes in that day), finally went to Cunaxa. They immediately found themselves surrounded by a tremendous army. An awful battle ensues, which was cut short by the fall of Cyrus on the field; when all the Persians (and they were the big end of the army of Cyrus) at once surrendered to Artaxerxes, thus winding up the war, so far as Persia was concerned¡; but what about the ten thousand Greeks, two thousand miles from home, in the heart of the enemy's country? To surrender means life-long slavery for them and their children. Not to surrender means to be surrounded by soldiers, doing their best to kill them and force them to surrender.

Yet they choose the latter; forming themselves into a hollow square, so they could fight on every side, they begin that memorable retreat, under the leadership of Zenophon, a noble soldier whom they choose for their leader, who not only performed his office but wrote a history of it as he was a native Greek scholar.

Through wonderful perils and dreary months of toil and suffering, they finally reach the Euxine Sea, bordering on their own country, lonely, heroic, and immortal Greece.

We are here in the enemy's country. They are all around us and shooting at us, night and day. We neetl army leaders nnd are depende1~t on our own people, as our Great Captain has gone on before

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and is sitting on the right hand of His Father interceding for us; while the Holy Ghost is our Advocate at this end of th(; line ~nd pleading with us tH be reconciled to God. Sinn.ltaneously with the ph~ading of Jesus Vlith Hi8 Father to be reconciled to us.

Therefore we have the two Advocates at either end of the line; both of them omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; literally encompassing every soul with omnipotent resources of His salvation and leaving him without the shadow of an apology in the case of his wreckage and damnation. As God willeth not the death of any but desires the salvation of every soul; the very omnipotent resources of heaven being commandable and available in every case, so that even the heathen are left without excuse, as well as the Mohammedan, Catholic and Protestant; as none have anything to do but walk in the light God gives, and in that case the Blood already shed by His Son, perfectly and eternally satisfying the divine law, is applied by the Holy Ghost to the expurgation of all evil; giving every one not only a clear acquittal in heaven; but a clean heart, the victory within and without, to be triumphant over the world, the flesh and the devil. (1 John 1: 7.)

In First Peter 1 : 2, the senior apostle tells us that while we are out proclaiming to the people the wonderful plan of salvat~on and pleading with them to avail themselves of the same, the angels are looking down on them with complacency, while we preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. These angels would so gladly take our place or come and stand by our side and enjoy this commission with us, but God, in infallible wisdom, has honored rescued humanity with this invaluable heavenly treasure, in these frail earthen vessels. It is our glorious prerogative to bear this treasure to the perishing millions, by whom we are

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environed whose cries are ringing in our ears, "Bread, bread! Oh, give me bread for I am starving to death!

Water! water! Oh, give me a drink or I die!"

Satan who counterfeits everything, is all the time running in his false prophets, who cry, "Peace! peace!" and there is no peace; running all sorts of hoaxes and delusions on the poor hallucinated rabble; beguiling them with splendid edifices, brilliant them by the enchantments of popery, prelacy and ritual services, alluring pomposities ; palmmed off on priest-craft; arousing their sensibilities, playing on their emotions, running them into wild fanaticism, whence they fall into gross sin, groveling debaucheries, settling down in degospelized, despiritualized, eviscerated and excarcerated, lifeless formalities and gross hypocrisies. Their religion only a burden financial, physical, social and intellectual; ay ! intolerable spiritual slavery. They just have to go directly to the devil for all the happine~s they get in this life to relieve the intolerable burdens, heavy drudgery and galling slavery. They actually have dance halls in connection with their magnitudinous church edifices, whither they go and wheel in the mazy gy-, rations of their giddy reels; thus arousing their diabolical lusts and preparing them for boda houses, saloons, billiard halls, race tracks and the pandemonium.

Chapter I. THE MINISTRY The Holiness Movement has now a hundred thousand members and seven or eight thousand preachers. The end for which we give you this booklet; is to so bring the layity and clergy into contact' either with the other, in order that this great Movement, girdling the globe and raised up by our omnipotent Savior, to get the Bride ready for His glorious appearing which is so very near, may all bring into availability all their resources, given us, so that we will not only all sing our song, "I am in this way to stay, To go every step of the way, To hold my ground and wear a crown And play on a harp some day; And when the war is over; The victories all are won ; The saints shall meet on the golden street And rest by and by."

Of course we are all singing the song, but the grand

end in view is to verify the same, and consequently receive the crown which will never fade away; having held our ground instead of backsliding and come up with a shout of victory in the great day. When the battles are all fought, and the laurels won and the saints of all nationalities; white, black, yellow, red and brown, from every land and clime will meet on the bright golden shore and sing and shout; our troubles eternally over.

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I am the oldest active man in the Movement since General Booth went to heaven; having made these four journeys around the world historic and paganistic; across this continent from ocean to ocean, immemmorially preaching night and day. Meanwhile this is the 132nd book of my humble authorship, every one telling the people the plain, sure way to heaven, and fortifying them against the dangerous heresies, sweeping every land and nation like withering siroccoes and pestilential simoons, rolling the burning volumes of their desolating breath in pestiferous cyclones over every land and nation, mowing down the Lord's people and leaving their bones to bleach beneath every sky and dragging their souls by the admantine chains of fallen Lucifer, down into the dismal doom of the damned, the horrific backslider's hell, into which all the fallen angels and the countless victims of Satanic delusions in all ages have been hurled to await the Judgment Day, when Hell will give up her dead. (Rev. 20 ch.) They will re-enter their bodies, the victims of their own ruin, soul and body stand before the great white throne and receive their final doom in outer darkness, i. e., the darkness, so far beyond the circle of the illuminated uni verse, that the combined illumination of 118 millions of glowing suns, have never reached it with a cheering ray; this earth having been regenerated in her glorious millennial blessing (Matt. 19: 28) and after shouting on the regeneration plain a full thousand. years; wonderfully sanctified by the baptism, the Lord will fill her with the Holy Ghost and fire in fulfillment of His wonderful promise: (Matt. 5: 5), "The meek shall inherit the earth."

This glorious pro,mise will be fulfilled when the Lord shall baptize the earth with the Holy Ghost and fire; burning up everything the devil has put in it or on it; even Gog and Magog, Satan's gleaning 1

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h_aving survived his great and wonderful harvest¡ the most magnitudinous in all the ages, the Arma: geddon. The devil will be finally let out of hell, that he may get his own gleaning, as there is no place to put it but hell, which is God's penitentiary, into which He will cast all the people who will not let Him save them. His mercy endureth forever; and He does save all that let Him, but cannot save those who will not let Him. Therefore He must have some place to dispose of them. This place is hell, His penitentiary, for the incarceration of all who will not let Him save them, so they never can trouble the citizens of His glorious heavenly universe, in all the flight of eternal ages. You see (Rev. 20: 9) that the fires, which in the last day of the Millennial dispensation will sanctify the earth ; Gog and Magog, those old royal dynasties as Gog means king and Magog means the kingly people, who are all Satan will capture in his grand post-millennial campaign; doing his best to get the whole world to revolt against the Lord Jesus Christ, sitting on the throne of David in Jerusalem and ruliag over the house of Jacob. You see Satan only gets Gog and Magog to follow him among the teeming millions populating poor lost earth. The fires which God will rain down from heaven to sanctify the whole earth and consummate His restoration back to the Edenic state, in which Satan found it.

In the prosecution of our great dispensational work, i. e., to get the Bride ready for the glorious coming of her divine spouse, (Acts 15 ch.) we need all our forces in every land and clime. In my peregrinations more extensive perhaps than any other living man, as He has permitted me to superabound in labor, both by speech and pen ;I find many Holiness Churches without a pastor, and multitudes of Holiness preachers with ample leisure to supply all

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of these churches; meanwhile the Lord's tithes from these churches, which they have to pay in order to keep their experience, "hold this ground and win their crown," therefore all these preachers are fmperatively needed and in order to their spiritual prosperity, they need work to do, to develop their gifts and graces, as a sanctified man is on a bicycle and must move forward or fall down.

In my travels so extensive, I find many churcp.es and preachers who are moving forward with heaven in view, and heaven in their souls, pressing the battle for God and environed by grand encouragement. We also find many churches like sheep without a shepherd; not only suffering for the necessary soul pabulum, but invaded by Satan's wolves, devouring them without mercy and scattering them to the ends of the earth.

This follows as a normal sequence, from the fact that none but sanctified preachers can feed the sanctified people. In our Savior's ministry, He weeps over Israel because they were, "sheep without a shepherd," fleeced and deserted, i. e., their preachers had gotten all the money they could and then deserted them, to be ea ten up by the wolves.

So Jesus weeps over them, pronouncing- them sheep without a shepherd. It was not because they did not hold membership in the Jewish synagogues all over that country, four hundred in Jerusalem and environments, but it does mean that they had no efficiency as spiritual guides. See Ezekiel 44th ch. how he withers and blisters the shepherds of Israel for their awful delinquencies, feeding on the fat and clothing themselves with the wool and drinking the milk of the flock and eating the butter; revelling in their tents, lounging and sleeping, while the sheep are ¡scattered on every high hill, dispersed in every valley, devoured by the wild beasts, spoli-

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ated by robbers, thus going to ruin with lamentable expedition on all sides.

Oh, how we need all of our preachers and why can we _not utilize the~?

I am eighty-one years 'old, havmg preached sixty-one years-of course physically worn out, but have wide open doors enough for a thousand men. If I could now undergo metamorphism and come out a thousand instead of one, I would find plenty of work to do, to employ the thousand. We have the sons and daughters of the great Holiness Movement teeming round us and the same time wide open doors and Macedonian cries coming up from all parts of fair Columbia, "Come over and help us." Besides all this, the teeming millions in the foreign fields are lifting up Macedonian cries and reaching out Ethiopian hands, crying loud for help. Now the question looks us in the face; how can we meet these demands, supply these deficiencies and conserve these interests of the Lord's kingdom, utilizing all our preachers and supplying all of our churches with pastors and reserving an ample evangelistic force to push the work into the regions beyond, enlarging the borders of Zion, lifting up our stakes, carrying them out into broader dimensions and extending our tents to the occupancy of new territory on all sides. ¡ As I have been crossing the continent ever and anon more than a score of years, and always had to run two or three days and nights across the great American desert, without stopping to preach ; on my late tour from which I have just returned, I found a new order of things: Holiness Churches intercepting and clamoring for my service, so I only spent one night without preaching.

What is the solution of this phenomenon?

Why, HoHness churches are springing up everywhere like mushrooms in the night and clamoring for the word of life. At one place 1

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in Idaho, I had to wait four hours for a train; people who knew me telephoned and gave me a meeting in a private house. I found them anxious for a Holiness church and I encouraged them and doubt not but they really have it by this time (and that only three months ago.) I found that the Holiness Mov~ ment had wonderfully spread in the great and lovely state of Idaho, as well as throughout the pacific coast in the United States and British Columbia. It is really rolling like an ocean wave over the great Rocky Mountain states, and though we have been running through them, thinking they were too rough and sterile for habitation, they are increasing in population with paradoxical rapidity and it seems that Holiness churches are in demand everywhere, in contradistinction to the dead sectarian organizations.

There is a world-wide awakening to the fact that we have to have Holiness churches; from the simple fact that they alone give the people a thorough ticket to heaven. Conversion is all the great denominations offer them, and at the same time the churches so dead that there are nine chances out of every ten to get a counterfeit instead of a genuine conversion; especially if they get it in a popular revival ; because the standard of popular evangelism is below an evangelical conviction, much less a real Holy Ghost conversion. One reason why the standard is so low is to rally all the churches into these great union meetings; in which they take in Campbellites, Mormons and all sorts of. backsliders, thus laying the gap so low that every hog has nothing to do but just step in and the mongrel is so ferocious that the Lord's sheep retreat with a fright, lest they be devoured, blood-raw. How they have their grand parade and run a brass band meeting on a plain so low that if any one gets a Holy

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Ghost conviction, it will be a miracle of grace; whereas a sky-blue conversion would actually stampede the audience. This I have seen with my own eyes.

Forty years ago I was called to hold a meeting in a church of eight hundred members. As it was a Methodist church, of course they nominally endorsed the grand curriculum of Wesleyan doctrine, which afrighted the nations and schools of the world a hundred and fifty years ago. Therefore they all with unanimity acquiesced in a union of prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that He might convict sinners, reclaim backsliders, regenerate penitents, sanctify believers, revive the Church, defeat Satan and build up the kingdom of God in that city of a hundred thousand people. We rallied around the altar, laid hold the horns, held on, crying to God: Come thou traveler unknown, whom still I hold but cannot see, My company before me is gone and I am left alone with Thee.

With Thee all night I mean to stay, and wrestle till the break of day!

In vain Thou strugglest to get free, I never will unloose my hold !

Art Thou the man who died for me, the secret of Thy love unfold."

Thus we held on day after day; meanwhile taking Mt. Sinai for my pulpit, I said, "Now my blessed and awful God, in whose name I stand on this holy mounttain, where Thou didst give Thy law; give me the Jightning shafts, thunder bolts and earthquakes, as in the days of Moses and by Thy omnipotent grace I will hurl them from the tips of my fingers, the best I can." He took me at my word. The days

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'and njgbts come and go and I still hold my Sinai pulpit; preaching the la,v, sin, its awful consequences, doom, damnation, eternity. Sure enough prayer was answered and Hfl poured on us the Holy Ghost in Pentecostal affusion till the people fell as on the battlefield, mown down by the winged artillery.

What became of my members? Many of them were then at home hiding from the shot and shell; having already, one by one, retreated from the fire.

Now when He pours on us the glorious Pentecost, the members of the church who said they wanted the Holy Ghost revival and covenanted to pray for it, fled in dismay, reporting the preacher was crazy and was running the Church into wild fanaticism.

The excitement was great and the pastor who had endorsed me all the time, though gently did his best to put the brakes on me ; told me he would have to send me away, as the only preventative of a division in his church. Of course I acquiesced and was preparing to leave when a leading officer who had received the glorious baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, when He thus fell on us in the pentecostal flood, accompanied by quite a lot of others and the pastor comes to me and says, "Quit packing your trunk for you cannot go; the fight is on us and must go through at every cost." The pastor reports sick and goes to bed, [it was heart sickness] ; the revival moves on. Great is the excitem~nt and the conflict terrible. I will never forget the ensuing night. The walls of Jericho fell down flat and Joshua's army possessed the city. A hundred people crowd the altar. After this we hear no more of the opposition.

It seemed that everybody wanted salvation and everything the Lord had for them. The pastor comes back and goes heroically into the fight, which runs sixs weeks and by all pronounced the greatest and best revival they had ever seen.

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I mentioned this as a little souvenir of my work forty years ago. Of course I am utterly incompetent physically to do that work now. Yet God is not changed, He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. We need our young people in the vigor of phy~ sical and intellectual power, with their stentorian voices, stalwart mental enduements and hearts inundated with the Holy Ghost, to take up the sword and rally to the batteries and push the battle to the gate of the enemy.

In the Franco-Russian War, in the great battle of Borodin 0, under the shadow of Moscow, the cradle of that great northern empire; one of the bloodiest battles that ever deluged the earth was fought, lasting three days; meanwhile the earth was heaped with the slain and deluged with blood. Three times all the men at the Russian batteries were slain and others promptly took their places and continued the fire. Finally there was an awful cavalry charge, like roaring thunder. It is Napoleon's old guard, on which he always relied and had brought him his brightest victories in all parts of the earth, led on by those wonderful generals, who had conquered the world. Marshall was the bravest of them all. The batteries are stormed and taken and the imperial army signally defeated and the ancient capital committed to the flames.

If such heroism could be displayed in Satan's wars we ought to 'blush for shame if we cannot show up parallel heroism in this terrible conflict with the combined powers of hell to save our contemporary lost brothers and sisters.

The maxim goes, "Old men for counsel and young men for war." He still lets me hold my place in the counsel chamber, though no longer enjoying the brilliancy of my youth nor the vigor of manhood ; I must not despise the day of small things, but with

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a glad heart do all I can. Perhaps the earnest appeals of these pages may, in the grand review, show up more fruit than my most encouraging revivals in the days of my strength.

Aesop gives us a fable, in which he describes the capture of a man in time of bloody and destructive war, when they were very cruel and killed every one they took on either side: characteristic of the dark blood¡ centuries, now numbered with ¡the years before the flood and awaiting the Judgment Day to reveal the appalling tragedies with which Satan blackened the world and populated hell. When the man was. hr.ought to the barracks and they proceeded to kill him, he said, "Oh no, don't kill me, for I never hurt anybody." They saw him hiding something under his loose garment and forced him to bring it out. Lifting up a trumpet he said, "You see it is nothing but a trumpet and does not hurt anybody. I have neither sword, spear, nor battle axe. Therefore of course you will not kill me, as I am innocent." Then they respond, "We will surely kill you, though you do not kill anybody, you blow that trumpet, and rally_ to the battle thousands of people who do kill us ; therefore you are the worst of all." That is what I am doing now, preaching by speech and pen and doing my utmost to rally all who have not survived the belligerent age, to the battlefield to press the war against the world, the flesh and the devil. I have, in the providence of God, sailed much on seas and oceans; always making it a rule when I boughta embarkation ticket, also to purchase the landing ticket, as I did not want to spend the remnant of my life sailing over the ocean.

While preaching in India, when running away from Bombay, the largest city in central India, to Madras, the metropolis of South India, on the great train, longer than our freight trains, can--ying thou-

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sands of people; we were all halted and ordered out of the car. [In that country the cars are open on both sides. Consequently two thousand people embark and disembark in less time than two hundred in this country. We Yankees ought to go over there and learn wisdom from the British who run all the railroads.]

Therefore we find ourselves all standing abreast in a large column. I say to a man by my side, "What does this mean ?" He responds, "Plague inspection." "Why?" "Because the province of Bombay is infested with the plague, which will strike you and kill you in a minute. If you live five minutes it is an extraordinary case." When I was preaching there the daily papers all gave the death roll, cut down by the plague in that million city.

"Brother Godbey, what is the cause?" All efforts to ~nswer this question have proved a failure.

Consequently remedies have all proved a failure.

In India human life is only twenty-four years on an average, against the forty-four in England. The plague is almost confined to the natives and evidently has been superinduced by their unhygienical lives~ especially inf an tile marriage; nothing uncommon for a middle aged man to marry a baby in the cradle, whom he takes to house-wifery at the age of seven or eight; she becomes a mother at ten and a grandmother at twenty; thus transmitting to the people immature and debilitated constitutions. If the exegesis is not ethnical and due to domestic peculiarities, why does not the plague reach foreigners and natives indiscriminately.

Then physicians come along and examine us all, discharging some and retaining others ; myself among the latter. Consequently we re-e~barked and went on our journey to Madras, which with her province was quarantined against all Bombay and

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its province. N. B. Just as Madras was quarantined against Bombay, on account of the plague, so heaven is all quarantined against every inch of this plague-smitten world. While Justification gives us a ticket to heaven, and permits us to make the run, on arrival we will find swords crossed over the pearly gates, in the hands of guardian angels, requiring a health certificate of every one coming thither for admittance, through the pearly portals into the New Jerusalem. The reason is very obvious. Every atom of human blood is contaminated with the taint of spiritual leprosy. Satan imparted it to Adam, from whom we have all received it by heredity; never in all the ages a solitary exception. John the Baptist, who had been filled with the Holy Ghost from. the womb of his mother, was no exception.

Consequently he said to Jesus, "I have need to be baptized of Thee."

Baptism in the Bible has no meaning but purification; simply meaning to take out of you the depravity, i. e., the devil nature, which we received by heredity through fallen Adam. The humanity of Christ is the only exception, as He had no earthly father; the Holy Ghost having begotten His humanity (Luke 1: 33) when Gabriel announced his conception. Mary said, "How can this be as I know not a man?" He responds, "The Holy Ghost will come upon thee and the power of the Highest will overshadow thee; therefore that Holy thing which is begotten in thee will be of the Holy Ghost."

Heredity is paternal and not maternal, i. e. of the f a_ther and not the mother ; the latter only serving as the receptacle of the progeny and performing the office of gestation, till it so develops as to be competent to exist in the open air.

Therefore you see that every human being which has ever come into existence, except the humanity

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of Christ, has inherited devil nature through fallen Adam; thus contaminating and disqualifying for heavenly society, as God is pure and holy and all the angels, and He has decreed (Heb. 12: 14) that no one shall see His face, without the same purity as the proclamation rings through both Testaments: "Be ye holy for I am holy."

In the wonderful plan of salvation, God, through His omnipotent agent,. the Holy Ghost, takes out of us all the evil the devil put in us, thoroughly purifying us and thus preparing us to live with Him for ever in the pure and holy heaven. Therefore everyone has to have the health certificate which will be demanded by the guardian angels with swords crossed over the gate, and without which no one will be admitted. This constitutes the reason why we have Holiness Churches, from the simple fact that no one can afford to hold membership in a church that does not give him a through ticket to heaven.

It does¡ not follow that he has to be a member of some regular Holiness organization, as we have Holi .. ness churches, few and far between, scattered about over the face of the earth; e. g., M. E. Church North and South; distinctly and avowedly on the Holiness line; pressing the battle with all their might, and refusing to receive an anti-holiness p1¡eacher, and determined to be true to God and Holiness, church or no church. In my peregrinations, I serve Holiness Baptist churches, especially in the Carolinas and Georgia, distinctly on the Holiness line and ready to make any sacrifice, pertinent to their unflinching¡ loyalty to the cause of Holiness. We also have a few New Light Churches, radically and uncondi-tionally committed to Holiness.

Then we have the Free Methodist Church, now fifty years old; girdling the whole world with her

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briarean arms, giving the trumpet no uncertain sound ; really the great spinal column of the Movement, to which we are all indebted for holding up the banner of Holiness unto the Lord and carrying it over the collapse of great Methodism, with shouts of victory, till God in His providence raised up the Wesleyan Methodist Church, now very extensive, growing and multiplying in all the earth, as much like the Free Church as twin sisters.

The Nazarene Church, the youngest of all and the most growthy in the history of Christendom ; even transcending the Apostolic Church; is the .aggressive phase of the Movement; going everywhere to the ends of the earth; springing up like mushrooms in the night. It is wonderful how it has spread all over the Pacific Coast, from Mexico up into British America and sweeping through the great Rocky Mountain states, like a fiery deluge. It has wonderfully spread over Idaho-a great growing state, abounding ill' romantic mountains and fertile valleys, all exceedingly fruitful, the grandest apple country I ever knew. It is spreading all over the great new state of Oklahoma and wonderfully spreading over Arkansas and rolling its pentecostal billows over great Texas and flashing out its lovely radiance over Louisiana. In the providence of God it is the great growing organization of the Movement.

Many have said to me that the Nazarenes lower the standard and cool off the fire. My travels are perhaps more extensive than those of any other person, whereas this may be true in some localities; as a rule it is not correct.

I was present in a great Nazarene Church in Spokane, Washington, when the pastor received fifteen members into the church and read to them their general rules, which include everything John

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Wesley and the Free Methodist's put in their discipline-lodges, tobacco, dress, and all sorts of worldly a?lu~ements and had them all obligate themselves to hve m conformity to the high standard of primitive Methodism and modern Free Methodist.

In Louisiana we have a whole Conference of Protestant Methodist, who knocked for admission during the general assembly in Nashville, and they required them to eliminate lodgery, tobacco, jewelry and needless ormamentation, and conform to the Bible rigidly, and because they did not acquiesce, they declined to receive them. Since that time they have been rapidly building up among them; everywhere enforcing those restrictions.

As they are the aggressive phase of the Movement.

We should all by our prayers and counsel do our utmost to save that organization from the temptation to drop down the standard and rigidly hold them in the Movement, as we cannot afford to lose anything out of this great universal revival the palladium of the Church and the hope of the world.

The Apostolic Holiness Church, centralizing on the Mount of Blessings in Cincinnati, in the providence of God launched by our glorified Bro. M. W. Knapp and perpetuated by his wife and son and their comrades, Brother and Sister Standley in the great Bible School on this sacred mountain. Another in Greensboro, North Carolina, and another in ,:Los Angeles, California; thus belting the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and extending from the lake down to the gulf states, is a great and growing organization, rapidly spreading throughout the continent and sending missionaries, as all the other Holiness organizations, over the seas to the antipodean world, to light all the dark places of the earth.

Chapter II. HOLINESS UNION As in union there is strength, we should all do our utmost to unify in Jesus, in order to utilize the resources by His merciful providence committed to us; thus doing our utmost to spread scriptural Holiness ¡over the whole earth, call and equip the Bride for the near coming of her Divine spouse.

The only feasible basis of this union is harmony on essentials and charity on non-essentials.

What are the essentials? The supernatural birth for every sinner, sky-blue and unmistakable, witnessed by the Holy Spirit. On this we cannot make any compromise, as it would simply mean damnation. We must hold up the standard, beggaring all gain saying and thus present a bold and unequivocal escutcheon to the whole world, so as to silence all criticism as to our Biblical orthodoxy, on that grand fundamental truth, "You must be born from above." (John 3 : 7.) Never under any circumstance lowering the standard an iota; but everywhere earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints; so as to silence all cavil, and put quibbles to everlasting quietness, zealously guarding the door lest unconverted people get into the Church; heroically keeping it guarded against the ingress of the uncircumcised. We can all unite cordially on this great fundamental truth, of one accord, holding it pertinaceous, so all the world can see and know that we are not a mongrel society of saints and sinners, but an organization of God's family to spread scriptural Holiness over the whole earth.

While a genuine conversion is the foundation of all human hope for glory and immortality, the Bible

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plainly reveals that it is a failure without sanctification. Consequently we must, as John Wesley says, "Preach Christian perfection to believers constantly, urgently and explicitly." ÂŁf we ever relax our grip on this part, the glory will depart and Ichabod be written on our escutcheon. Consequently we must with an eagle eye, watch every heresy and press the battle to the gate of the enemy. Zinzendorfi.anism is the most dangerous heresy against sanctification, because they profess it out-right and claim to be Holiness people, wben they do not have it, and instead of being Holiness people they are the most formidable enemies; verifying the affirmation of William Brambel, John Wesley's right hand man, who pronounced it "The devil's great gun." They all claim to have received it in conversion; whereas we know they did not and are laboring under a mistake which we can not under any circumstance tolerate. How do we know they did not get it in conversion when they positively say they did? .Because the Word of Jesus settles everything.

We are all liable to be mistaken and with Satan constantly utilizing all his chichanery to deceive us, even transforming himself into an angel of light and actually playing God on us ; if we do not heroically walk in the light of His Word, never taking a step without a "thus saith the Lord/' he is sure to deceive us. In this case Jesus in His memorable valedictory prayer, the very night of His betrayal and prosecution, settles the matter, beyond the possibility of cavil, so that we can all know that nobody gets sanctification in conversion and everybody who says he got it there is mistaken.

(John 17 ch.) Here in praying to His Father to sanctify all His disciples then on the earth and all who ever would, through the flight of the ages, by His providence and grace become His disciples, He

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says: "I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me out of the world." No one can be a disciple unless he leaves the devil and comes out of the world and in that case gets born from above.

There are only two classes of people on the earth: the World and the Church. The word all the time used for Church is ecclesia, from ek, out and kaboo,' to call; therefore it means the called out people. The Holy Ghost calls all to leave the devil and wicked world, come to Jesus and get saved. Only those who respond to the call and¡ come out of the world, leaving the devil forever, come to Jesus and get saved, become members of God's Church; they are His disciples and none others. Sanctification is for none but disciples. You have to get converted in order to be a disciple. Therefore no one gets it in conversion.

You get discipleship, which makes you elegible to sanctification, as none but disciples are. Therefore this Zinzendorftan heresy, professing to get sanctified in conversion is the greatest enemy of the exPerience, because it drives it out of the world. It has already ruined the Methodist Church, so we never can know whether they are Methodists or Zinzendorfians. The former is true to Holiness and the latter is Satan's counterfeit.

We must guard the door against every her~sy; compromising with nobody and nothing, ringing out the vanguard battle cry, "Radical on Holiness and neutral in nothing."

While on essentials, i. e., the supernatural birth for the sinner and entire sanctification after conversion for the Christian; we make no compromise under any circumstance whatever. On non-essentials, i. e., ordinances, ceremonies, church rites and government; we extend all liberty; giving the people all the water they want and at the same time

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emphasizing the grand truth that nothing but Jesusi has anything to do with their salvation and zealous~y fortifying them against idolatry, i. e., Campbelhsm, Mormonism, Catholicism and dead church isms in every form and phase, lest they get sidetrack, derailed, ditched, stranded and wrecked for ever. Admitting dry land Quakers, with no water baptism, without discount or depersuasion. If they want the Methodist itineracy or the congregational government, electing the pastor and officers, as the Quaker government, leaving it all to the Holy Ghost; let them have it. If people will get religion all right, go on to perfection, keep the shine and shout, the leap and the victory, all right, bid them welcome to full fellowship, elegible to all the offices, with every right and privilege. I give this as the basis of the great union, which the Holiness people so much need.

We need it not only in order to utilize all our resources, conserve all of our churches and bring in to availability the gifts and graces of all our people, throwing a million doors wide open to all our preachers, but we need it to abate local friction, which is now exceedingly detrimental to the progress of Holiness in many localities, to my personal knowledge.

Only a few days ago I preached in two Holiness churches successively in a stones throw of each other; so at lagerheads that they would not come to the meetings in the other church; thus exposing to the world their disharmony, and bringing the cause--into contempt.

John Fletcher says that "perfect love is an angel so bright, sweet and charming, that the devil can't get his hell-hounds to chase her till he throws a bear skin over her, so they will think she is a bear and run off after her with their ferocious teeth."

Here these two little Holiness churches in disharmony either with the other, are utilized by the devil to cover sanctification with a

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bear skin, so people will run from it and set the dogs on it, instead of seeking it with all their heart.

I preached in both of these churches and labored hard to break Satan's grip; but did not see victory for which I fought. This was in Indiana. In Idaho I had a parallel case and actually preached six times on Sunday in order to fill all the appointments in both of the churches; the audiences going with me from one to the other ; showers of blessings falling on us and much encouragement, an omen of speedy relief from all the troubles and perfect and perpetual reconcilement of the two organizations. Not only do we need a great union in order to prevent this local friction but we need it to economize the Lord's ammunition.

Take these cases, you see if united they would only need one preacher; thus liberating the other to go to a destitute field. All the Holiness people throughout the world should pray night and day for this union. We can not get to heaven without the experience which really unifies us in heart, life and spirit. Then why cannot we have organic union?

I am personally confident of the fact that all of our Holiness churches can, without detriment to any, be brought into this union, because they already have the same doctrines and experiences; as much alike as two black-eyed peas, so I never could tell where I am by anything I see or hear. I go with all indiscriminately: Methodist, Free, Wesleyan Protestant, M. E. and M. E. South, Holiness Baptist, New Light, Apostolic and Nazarene and can actually discern no difference among them. God has made no two things alike in every respect; infinitesimal minority everywhere characterizing His handywork.

But the differences among Holiness people which are absolutely infiant appertain not to the organization, but the individuals.

Go where you will, and

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you will find some more spiritual than others. But rest assured there is actually no difference in the. o~ganizations.

A Free Methodist preacher is all right for a Nazarene church et vice versa and the reverse. A Wesleyan Methodist is all right for a Holiness Baptist church and indiscriminately, you will actually find no difference between them. There- fore the Holy Spirit is grieved when we make a difference.

Many of our Holiness preachers could not get license in the popular churches on account of their¡ educational deficiency; having never passed through the collegiate course. My father preached sixty years in the Methodist Church and went to heaven thirty years ago. If he were living now they would not give him license nor ordain him. I~,have often heard him say he never went to school but nine days in his life. With those meager opportunities he learned to read the English language and became an exceedingly efficient preacher of the Gospel. We now have platoons of preachers male_ and female in the Holiness Movement who would have no trouble to blow if depended on the ipse dixit of the churches.

While I dictate these pages, our camp-meeting is winning here on the Mt. of Blessings, attended by a regiment of preachers. Among them, Bud Robinson and John Hatfield. These preachers represent the world; not only almost every state in the union but the mission field beyond the seas. Among them you will find almost every variety appertaining to intellectual and educational culture. If you should draw a line between the scholarly and the illiterate, it would be difficult to determine which class are the most efficient in the great work to which our Lord has called us. With the latter we must recognize Bud and John, who never enjoyed any of the privileges which crown the glory of collegiate cul-

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ture, the former born and reared in a saloon ; his father and four brothers and three brothers-in-law all drunkards and himself a born epileptic, stammering so he could not speak without great difficulty and could not have prosecuted an education if ever so wide a door had opened to him. Consequently he is on the negative side of the boasted literary curriculum. While Brother John was not environed by the awful flood rolled over the world by¡ the whiskey demon; he enjoyed no educational opportunities, beyond the mere rudiments of the common school. Therefore these men, with not a few others on this holy mountain, are included with the apostles in Acts 1 : 12, there recognized as unlearned and ignorant men. While this is true we dare not depreciate a collegiate education. It is the gift of God's providence for our equipment, to do efficiently the work He has given us ; yet as Holiness people, we must keep our eyes on the old land marks; looking to Jesus only for leadership, the Holy Ghost for guidance and the precious Word for authority.

When our Savior wanted preachers, He went to the sea of Galilee and called those illiterate fishermen. The Greek here is much stronger than the English; agrammatai, from alpha, not and gramma a letter.

Consequently it means illiterate. ldiootai is idiot.

Hence we see that they are called illiterate idiots.

Yet Jesus took those very men to preach the Gospel; having Himself taught them three years, in order to qualify them for their work. They were utterly blank, unencumbered with philosophies, creeds and dogmatisms to unlearn, in order to make room for His instructions.

When He wanted a teacher to succeed Him in the revelation of His wonderful plan of salvation, He put His hand on the strongest and most influential enemy He had in the world, enjoying the highest culture, a double graduate; having grad-

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uated in the Greek colleges of Tarsus and the Hebrew Seminaries of Jerusalem, a member of the Sanhedrin, Doctor of Divinity and commissioned by the_hierarchy to utterly destroy the Nazarene heresy, which threatened the ruin of the good old patriarchal church, in which he was born and reared. When He got ready to use him, you see He managed him just as easily as those illiterate idiotic fishermen.

I am satisfied I would have been about as efficient a preacher if I had never seen a college; but I never, would have girdled the world with books [this is the 134th], all telling the sure way to heaven; as they are all simple teachers of the Bible in the original languages which I read readily and rapidly as you do the English. Therefore in the providence of God He has utilized my collegiate education to preach the Gospel round the world, which I never could have done without it; yet I would have preached my whole life through if I had never received a classical education.

If I were to start out to hunt the tip top preachers of the age, I would just take these two as well as others not a few, whose names are in the book of life. Hence you see when the Lord wanted teachers He took the learned, but when He wanted preachers He went down to the bottom of society and took the utterly uncultured.

The united effort on the part of the popular churches to confine the Gospel ministry to a collegiate education, must be diligently watched and discouraged. It is a trick of Satan to keep multitudes of blood-washed and fire-baptized disciples from this great and important work, preaching the everlasting Gospel to the lost millions all around us, thro~ging the broad way to an 3:wful hell. Our S~v1or only restricted the Gospel numstry to the sanctified, as you see in case of the apostles, He utterly forbade them to go preaching till they received the

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Pentecostal baptism, purifying their hearts and fiU. ing them with the Holy Ghost. He is our only example. When He speaks we must all be silent. In order to bring all our preachers in contact with all ¡our people, they should register their names in all our papers published throughout the continent, so the people could see and call them to the ma~y churches now without a pastor and great- evangelistic fields, with harvests ripe for the sickle; lovingly obedient to our great Captain who has commanded us : "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that He may send forth more laborers for the harvest is great and the laborers-are few." In view of His near proximity, we should all be shouting as we encircle the world: "Here am I, send me." (Isa. 6: 2.)

It is all right to receive education but never wait for it as Jesus only commands us to wait until we get sanctified and then prosecute our education as we peregrinate the earth and blow the silver trumpet.

If you think Bud and John have no education, you are :awfully mistaken. They have been assiduous ever since the Lord saved them and are now highly cultured in the deep things of God; infinitely better than all the glittering diplomas going out from colleges and universities.

Inspired Paul says to his son Timothy (2 Tim. 2: 15) : "Study to shew thyself approved of God, a workman not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." If you will go round to the camps and listen to Bud and John, you will find them full and running over with the ¡blessed truths of God; ¡though never permitted to receive a college education. Therefore without a classical education; we are to take the Gospel trumpet and give it no uncertain sound, studying night and day so far as we have opportunity and especially like little Samuel, whom God called to preach the Gospel at the early age of six years, we are to

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sit at the feet of Jesus, responsive to His omnific mandate: "Speak Lord, thy servant heareth."

Reader, be sure you hear His voice; sit at His feet and learn of Him; simultaneously going and teaching others everything you have learned, thus ringing the proclamation, "Mighty to save and strong to deliver," till we girdle the globe with salvation arid holiness to the Lord; bestudding it with church•es, supplied with preachers.

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.