BLJ: We conclude our study of W.B. Godbey today. Enjoy and be inspired!
Falling in with a very able Methodist theologian, I told him about my wonderful experience, saying that I supposed it was just a completion of my conversion, which hitherto had only been in a progressive attitude. Then he freely took it on himself to correct me, saying: "Godbey, if you had not been converted, none of us have. So do not tell that any more. It is that old Methodist experience of sanctification! or Christian perfection, which, by the grace of God, you have entered." Though he believed in it as taught in our books, he did not enjoy the experience, yet the blessed Holy Spirit made him a great blessing to me in the way of Biblical exegesis, from an experimental standpoint. I also met another very old Methodist preacher, who assured me it was the great second work of grace, called Christian perfection or sanctification, which the Methodists sought and possessed when he was a boy.
Then I proceeded to read the books of Wesley and Fletcher on Christian perfection, as well as my Bible, with new light in a glorious sunburst bespangling the inspired pages. Whereas I had concluded that Wesley was muddled, actually mixing up the two works of grace and referring to them interchangeably, ever after the light fell on me on that memorable occasion, while reading the works of the Methodist fathers, I have seen regeneration and sanctification standing out as conspicuously distinct as the Alleghenies and the Rockies, with the great Mississippi valley rolling between.
Sanctification is a most notable epoch in my experience, marking a radical revolution in my life, and soon taking me out of the school where I had taught eighteen years, and where I thought I was for life. So did my friends, as the signal blessing of God was resting upon my labors and they felt they could not excuse me from the educational work. A notable phenomenon at once supervened in my ministry, and it was thus everywhere I preached; the Holy Ghost fell on the people and a revival broke out in my school. He fell on the students and just about all of them yielded and got converted. When I went to Conference and my name was called and, pursuant to the rules, I left the house, while my character underwent examination, from the lobby I heard the clear, strong voice of my presiding elder, as he told the Conference that a great change had come over me during the year and four hundred people had been converted under my ministry. That was strikingly phenomenal in that Conference, which Campbellism had flooded with an Arctic river for a whole generation and about frozen out all of the old Methodist fire that used to make sinners cry and Christians shout. They had so long preached against Holy Ghost religion ridiculing it unmercifully, denouncing and abusing the mourner's bench, that the Methodist preachers, rank and file, had given up the altar and contented themselves to take in members as seekers of salvation, baptizing them and, after the abolishment of a Probation in the Southern Methodist Church, which took place about that time, admitting them to bona fide membership, though unsaved, and even promoting them to offices. The result was that the Methodist Church was in an exceedingly low condition; clear and bright conversions, attested by the Holy Spirit and witnessed to in the love feasts, having almost evanesced and become simply a matter of bygone history.
As above specified, sanctification radically revolutionized my whole subsequent life. I had grand air-castles, building big boarding houses and contemplating more. When the fires of the Holy Ghost fell on me in sanctification they burned up all my air-castles, and I have never seen them since they went down into ashes.
I became a Free Mason at the age of twenty one. I would have joined sooner, but all have to reach majority before they will admit them into that order. I thought it was all right, because the prominent Methodist preachers, as well as those of other churches, were all in it. They had honored me with the chaplaincy, and I was a regular attendant of the lodge. I had also for similar reasons joined the Odd Fellows and was serving them in the chaplaincy. I also had my life insured, feeling no conscientious scruples about these things. Therefore, when the fires of the Holy Ghost fell on me, filling and flooding my soul and transforming me into a cyclone, those hallowed flames burned up the Free Mason, the Odd Fellow, the collegiate president, the big preacher, and life insurance; thus leaving me quite an ash-pile in that howling wilderness where I had roamed nineteen years, fifteen of which I was preaching the gospel.
When people have their friends and relatives cremated, they generally carefully urn the ashes and keep them. I was just in too big a hurry to cross the Jordan to urn the ashes of my old friends. Therefore, leaving them in the wilderness, I dashed away at race-horse speed, walked between the clefted waves of Jordan's swelling tide, and soon marched around the walls of Jericho and shouted till they fell. Then, responsive to the bugle call, I marched with Joshua's army into the great interior, stood on the battlefield of Bethhoron, where, responsive to the mandate of Joshua, the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon, prolonging the day till he could end his battle in the signal defeat of all the southern armies and the decapitation of thirty-one kings. Then I followed him into the great north, with incessant battles and constant victories, till we confronted the combined power of the northern armies under command of the king of Hazor, on the battlefield of Merom. There they all went down in blood, giving Joshua the land, which he divided among the tribes assembled at Shiloh.
While Moses represented the law, and had to die in the wilderness, lest somebody conclude that sanctification is by good works, i. e, keeping the law, Aaron the high priest, had also to die in the wilderness, lest people should believe that they could be sanctified by baptism, sacrament and church rites. Miriam, the fire-baptized evangelist, must die in the wilderness, too, lest people should look to the sanctified preachers for the blessing. But Joshua is a Hebrew word which means Jesus, whom he gloriously symbolized. Therefore he alone could lead through the Jordan into the land flowing with milk and honey and abounding in corn and wine. N. B. All I have here imputed to Joshua simply means that Jesus does it.
Sanctification, by the grace of God, is infinitely more to me than I can possibly tell you. When I received the Holy Ghost, He gave me His wonderful freedom. 2 Cor. 5:17, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Sanctified people enjoy the very freedom of God Himself, who is free to do everything good and nothing bad. The sweetness and blessedness of this freedom is heaven on earth. Well do we sing, "Prisons would palaces prove, if Jesus would dwell with me there." I can neither by speech nor pen approximate the absolute, ineffable felicity of this freedom. It puts all transitory things into final and total eclipse.
Before I got sanctified I carried, oh, so many crushing burdens. Since that notable hour, I have been light as a bird of Paradise, not encumbered with a solitary burden. Not that I have none, for I have a lost world on my heart, with all the grand and absorbing interest of God's kingdom, but Jesus carries all of my burdens and me, too. He gives me sweet blessedness and perfect rest in His arms, and a glorious balloon ride, soaring above every cloud, through the bright impereon where is the Sun of righteousness, who knows no eclipse; where no storm clouds ever rise to hide my Savior from my eyes.
I am so sorry for my dear brethren in the ministry, crushed with burdens and worn with toils till they are prematurely gray and go into superannuation at the very time they ought to be doing the best preaching of their lives. I just know not what to do for them. If they had any idea what Jesus has for them, they would cut off their right hands and pluck out right eyes, gladly and unhesitatingly, to get it.
The Lord, in His great mercy, gave me this experience in 1868, fifteen years before the Holiness Movement crossed the Ohio River. During that time I had a very little sympathy appertaining to the experience in my own Conference. The preachers much appreciated the revivals which everywhere attended my ministry, but many of them pronounced me crazy on sanctification.
Sanctification takes old Adam out of you and leaves Jesus without a rival in the heart and life. In that case we do as He would do under similar circumstances. I do not insinuate in this that it frees us from the liability of mistakes, because the mind is not made perfect until this mortal puts on immortality. Therefore intellect, memory and judgment will make mistakes. This perfection is simply that of the heart, which in the superabounding grace of Christ and through the efficacy of His precious blood, is made perfect while the mind and body are still encumbered with infirmities, which are only eliminated by the great work of the Holy Ghost in glorification, when this mortal puts on immortality.
When I met Brother Donaldson, the pastor of the meeting where the mother in Israel begged him not to let that "little fop" preach any more, lest he ruin the revival, in the Conference, he came to me and threw his arms around me and said, "Are you not W. B. Godbey?" (there are many Godbeys preaching). I responded in the affirmative. Then he said, "I have been reading your revival reports all the year with unutterable astonishment, to see that four hundred people have been converted under your preaching. I got bewildered as I thought the signature was that of the another who preached for me at Pleasant Run, and how such preaching ever converted so many people I could not understand." Says I, "Brother, the man you heard at Pleasant Run is dead and gone. He lives no more. You now meet a new preacher, who retains the old name, W. B. Godbey." This illustrates the radical revolution which sanctification develops.
Source: Autobiography of Rev. W. B. Godbey
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