BLJ: Continue reading the inspiring story by W.B. Godbey!
Meanwhile the Lord turned on us a glorious revival, characterized by deep conviction and powerful conversions. However, there was nothing said about sanctification, as no one in attendance (in 1868) had the experience or knew anything about it. We had some splendid local preachers, who were thought to be literally full of religion and overflowing, and it is certain that God signally blessed their labors, but they were utterly ignorant of sanctification. I had read about it in John Wesley's catechism when a little boy, and later in his other books, as, you know every young Methodist preacher is obliged to read them. I had found them full of Christian perfection, but being utterly ignorant of the matter experimentally, I contented myself with my own intellectual exegesis, arriving at the conclusion that uncle John's head was muddled on regeneration and sanctification, and that he actually mixed them up, using them interchangeably. However, I had been convicted for it all the nineteen years which had elapsed since my conversion, and incessantly seeking it in my blind way, like everybody else, I suppose, by works, thinking I would grow into it in due time.
At one of my churches I had met an old woman, utterly illiterate, who claimed the experience, and I believe had it. As she was incompetent to read the Bible, of course she could not expound it scripturally; yet the testimony of old Sister Baxter, whose house was the preacher's home when on duty in that neighborhood was so clear and her testimony so positive, corroborated by an unearthly radiance lingering in her face and flashing from her eyes, that it had an effect to convict me. Yet I soliloquized, "Here am I, a collegiate graduate, having read the Bible from my childhood, surely I ought to know more about it than this old sister who does not know her alphabet."
During the preceding collegiate vacation, I was travelling in the Louisville Conference and fell into a protracted meeting at Pleasant Run. There I found a glorious revival sweeping along; audience fine, altar well filled, and the meeting running all day, with basket dinner on the ground after the old style. The pastor put me up to preach. In those days I studied hard and made sermons, as I thought, adapted to all occasions. Therefore I selected a revival sermon, as I considered it, and delivered it to the best of my ability, feeling that I was really meeting all demands. I concluded with the usual invitation. The mourners were so convicted that they came as a matter of course till they got satisfied.
While the altar service was in progress and the saints were praying for the mourners and exhorting them, a very old woman, a mother in Israel, looking for the fiery chariot, got hold of the pastor's arm, pulled up and, as she was partially deaf, doubtless spoke louder than she thought, for I distinctly heard her sobbing utterances: "Oh, Brother Donaldson, please do not put up that little fop any more, lest you ruin our revival." It was to me a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. I went away and fell on the ground and wept bitterly, meanwhile soliloquizing:
"O Lord, is it possible, after preaching fifteen years and toiling through college, that after all I am nothing but a 'little fop'! O Lord, for Jesus sake, have mercy on me and give me the needed light and help me to walk in the same." Though nothing was said in that meeting about sanctification, the verdict of the dear mother in Israel, who called me a "little fop," broke my heart and I never survived it. She was like the mother in Israel who threw the stone on the head of Abimelech, when besieging the city with his army, and slew that great military chieftain.
The Holy Spirit used those two mothers in Israel to culminate the conviction which had been lingering in my heart for nineteen years, while I had resorted not only to immersion, but to a thousand other good works, only to be disappointed in my fond aspirations to satisfy my longing soul. Jesus was standing by me all the time offering me the panacea for all my woes, the elixir for all my griefs, His own precious blood shed on Calvary; but I thought I had to do something and did not realize that HE had done it all, and left me nothing to do but believe, shout and obey.
My revival was sweeping on; my local preachers. licensed exhorters, and bright members working heroically, none of them claiming anything but the regenerated experience and doubtless the most of them believing that is all. I preached on the rich man and Lazarus to a packed audience, with many who could not get into the house. When I opened the altar, it was crowded with seekers for conversion, as I invited no others, having never heard of sanctification, and never did till it reached myself.
After receiving the experience, the Lord wonderfully poured out His Spirit. I had spent hours that afternoon out in the woods crying to God to satisfy my longing soul and give me the full, glorious liberty for which I had been sighing those nineteen years, preaching fifteen of them, little dreaming that there was victory ahead, which would make preaching and everything else a delight instead of a duty. Strong was the cry of my heart for the great desideratum, which had been like the ignus fatus flitting before my mental vision all those many years; but like the school boy who ran himself out of breath to find the pot of gold at the rainbow's end, I learned by sad experience the essential difference between pursuit and possession. Such was the longing of my soul as to almost render me oblivious to the dozens and scores who had crowded the altar responsive to my invitation. That was a night I never can forget. God, in His mercy, sent us a landslide from the upper world; a Mississippi River inundated us all, which rapidly broadened into a mighty sea and disembogued into an ocean without bank or bottom. I have been basking in that ocean ever since. Oh, the incommunicable sweetness of perfect love!
"Oh, for this love let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break;
And all harmonious human tongues
Their Saviour's praises speak."
"Angels, assist our might joys,
Strike all your harps of gold,
But when you reach your highest notes,
His love can ne'er be told."
I cannot tell too much about the events of that memorable night. Quite a number of those who came to the altar shouted the victory. About eleven o'clock, I found my own soul flooded and filled beyond all anticipation. My good people, though exceedingly happy in their regenerated experience and heroically pressing the battle for God and souls, as they knew nothing about a higher experience, called everything conversion. Therefore they told me I had gotten conversion. I joyfully accepted the situation, and went on telling everybody I met that God had filled and flooded my soul, beyond all expectation, and I supposed that I had never before been converted all right, and now, in His condescending mercy, He had finished my conversion.
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