In the Mosaic dispensation thirty was the majority and fifty maturity. In writing up my biography I have dated my young manhood from my sanctification in 1868, as it took that experience to bring into availability the gifts which God had conferred in creation but which still remained latent in my constitution, myself ignorant of their existence. Man is a trinity consisting of body, soul and spirit.
In this probationary existence the physical first predominates. It was so in my life as well as yours.
It took the new birth to supersede the body in the pre-eminence of the soul. While, in the good providence of God, and through the hallowed experience of a godly home, a preaching father and a Christian mother, God fortified me against the seductive vices and bewitching follies universally incident to childhood and youth, so that I never went into them, and by His providence and grace I retained from the cradle an unimpeachable moral character, my principal transgressions being selfward through sheer ignorance of hygienical laws: yet during my juvenile life, antecedently to my conversion at the age of sixteen, while the physical predominated over the intellectual and spiritual, I delighted in and excelled all of my comrades in the innocent recreations of foot racing, wrestling, ball playing and everything else which did not conflict with a good conscience, illuminated by the Word and Spirit of God. My conversion forever superseded all of these physical sports, yea, they at once went into total eclipse and I left them forever. Not that I was convicted that they were sinful, but I had received something so much better that I no longer had any appreciation of them. Thus in my pilgrimage I traveled on another long stadium in advance of them, leaving them utterly out of sight.
The glorious experience of regeneration thus having brought the physical into a total eclipse, at the same time it brought the intellectual into indisputable and irreversible pre-eminence. Then I moved out with all my might into the prosecution of my collegiate education, not only pursuing but preferring the hardest studies and actually delighting in the most arduous intellectual labor, i. e., the Latin and Greek languages, the higher mathematics and the natural sciences. In the providence of God, nineteen years elapsed during my regenerated experience, and during all of that time I was a most assiduous student.
Graduating from college at the expiration of the tenth year of that period, I at once became president of a college in which, with my assistant teacher, I taught the whole classical curriculum.
Thus I was given the most athletic intellectual gymnasium possible.
When the Lord sanctified me at the age of thirty-five, He brought the spiritual into decisive pre-eminence, thus enthroning the spirit, dominant in my being, and throwing the intellectual as well as the physical into eclipse. Then I became like John Wesley, homo unius libri, a man of one book, and of course that Book was the Bible. During the preceding nineteen years I had ransacked all the world for books and gathered up a library at the cost of a thousand dollars. After I passed this great and decisive epoch in my experience, I immediately began to give away my library, because I no
longer had time to utilize those great volumes which I had hitherto so highly esteemed. Therefore during the last thirty-eight years my time has been occupied in the spiritual realm, sin dying the deep things of God, profoundly realizing that I know nothing but what God has revealed to me in the realm of His providence, Word, and Spirit. I am infinitely delighted sitting like a little child at the feet of Jesus. Meanwhile the blessed Holy Spirit, the Author of the precious Word, is revealing to my spirit the deep things of God and the wonderful things of His kingdom, while the constant cry of my heart goes up, "Nearer, my God, to thee."
"To Thee and Thee alone The angels owe their bliss;
They circle round the blazing throne, And dwell where Jesus is.
"Thou art the sea of love, Where all my pleasures roll;
The circle where my passions move, And center of my soul.
"Not all the harps above Can make a heavenly place, If God His residence remove,
Or but conceal His face.
"To Thee my spirits fly With Infinite desire, And yet how far from Thee I lie!
O Jesus, raise me higher!"
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY of
William Baxter (W. B.) Godbey, A. M.
Section One THE COMMENTARIES
I must mention two whom God decisively used to develop a new epoch in my life. The one is Rev. M. W. Knapp, and the other Brother J. L. Hunton, a preaching layman of Hillsboro, Texas, and now at Orange, California. I must ever glorify God for using Brother Knapp to launch me into authorship and Brother Hunton to cut me loose from my native land and give to me the Old World in addition to the New for my field of labor. I do owe a debt of gratitude to these brethren as God's humble instruments in the development of this great and interesting epoch in my life, which I can never pay.
I had read the writings of Brother Knapp and he had read mine and we had corresponded, but never met till he migrated to Cincinnati in 1892, then of course we had him come over into Kentucky to preach for us in our Holiness Convention, when I, for the first time, looked into his inspiring face.
I was a little surprised to find him twenty years my junior, as his trenchant pen had impressed me with his seniority.
I had written my "Baptism," "Sanctification," "Christian Perfection," "Victory" and "Holiness or Hell," all of which had received a wonderful circulation and appreciation, infinitely beyond my anticipation, and God had used them as pioneers of the Movement, especially throughout the great South, whither its coming was a score of years more tardy than in the vast North. Those books are all distinguished for their brevity, perspicuity, vivacity and Biblical orthodoxy; meanwhile the didactic phase of them is of infinite value to the Biblical student, at they teach the great truths of regeneration and entire sanctification, so tersely, clearly, experimentally and demonstratively that the blessed Holy Spirit has used them in leading multitudes into the happy experience of full salvation. Besides, they are all pre-eminently characteristic of multum in parvo, much in little, and consequently are well adapted to the busy millions of Christians who are hungry for this delectable full salvation and, like myself, are seeking it blindly, as I did for nineteen years because I did not know how to get it. If either of the above books had reached me I would have entered Beulah Land in my blooming youth, instead of waiting till life's meridian. Brother Knapp had read and circulated all of those books. I simply wrote them in order that they might help me preach this great salvation and reach multitudes whom I would never have the opportunity to meet face to face and dispense the living Word.
I also wrote them especially to leave with the people to whom God, in His providence, had permitted me to preach the Gospel, in order to establish them in the faith, so that their experiences would not evanesce through the chicanery of the intriguing foe. I have seen wonderful fruitfulness which, in the good providence of God, has supervened through the media of these straight, clear, scriptural and irrefutable presentations of God's blessed, saving truth, revelatory of the glorious privileges and invaluable inheritance which He hath bequeathed to His humble, faithful and teachable children.
The holiness people had been exceedingly clamorous a full dozen years for me to write commentaries expository of the New Testament. This conception had originated from my constant habit of teaching the Scriptures during my evangelistic meetings, utilizing the day time in the instruction of the Lord's people and preaching in connection with my evangelistic meetings at night.
For the last thirty years I have been constantly using the inspired Greek in my ministry, reading and expounding it freely in the Bible School department of the meetings which God has permitted me to hold in my extensive peregrinations. This clamor for the Commentaries on the part of the holiness people had become general and was growing more and more importunate. Through shrinking from the weighty responsibility, I continued to postpone the arduous work, yet I dared not refuse lest I grieve the Holy Ghost, as I had quite a credulity for the trite maxim, "Vox populi, vox Dei," the voice of the people is the voice of God. This maxim is reliable as a rule, when they are God's people, but of course utterly unreliable in case of Satan's people.
While others had done their best to shove me into the work of writing commentaries, somehow they had never succeeded. Though Brother Knapp in his wonderful suaviter in modo, sweetness in manner, reminded me of an angel instead of a man, yet he had a power over the human will which was absolutely indescribable and apparently irresistible. When he undertook to put me out in this great work, I realized that I had come in contact with an irresistible force. Consequently I acquiesced without a murmur, promising him to begin the work so soon as I could make a tour in the Holy Land, recognizing the ostensible fact that the Land and the Book are so intimately associated that no one is prepared to write up the latter without a personal acquaintance with the former. Therefore I was at a standstill, committed to begin the Commentaries so soon as I could make that tour.
While thus hesitating to enter upon the work, for the above reasons, I was delivering a Bible reading to an audience of about five hundred at 8 A. M. during Waco, Texas, Campmeeting, when a man roared out from the audience, "Why do you not write those Commentaries? I am afraid you will die and we will never get them." I responded, "I am waiting to make a tour through the Holy Land, after which I am under promise to begin at once." Then he said, "Why don't you go?" My answer was simple and easy -- "I have not the money." Resuming the Greek lesson, I proceeded, thinking no more about it.
When the hour closed and we adjourned for the next service, Brother J. S. Hunton came to me and said, "Brother Godbey, I have fifteen hundred dollars lying in the bank which I do not especially need, and the Lord tells me to send you to the Holy Land." Of course you see God, in His providence, raised up that noble saint to cut the gordian knot and send me to that far off land, which I had all my life longed to see, and to put my unworthy feet down on the very ground hallowed by the tread of my condescending Lord, who came all the way from Heaven and sojourned there thirty-three years, that He might bleed and die for me. Therefore God used Brother Hunton in the enlargement of my field of labor, which hitherto had been confined to this continent.
Thus cut loose from beloved America, He has permitted me to prosecute the third tour in the Old World, preaching the Gospel in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. While I never can repay Brother Hunton the debt of gratitude I owe him for thus enlarging my evangelistic field, and giving me the Old in addition to the New World, my one regret is that this notable epoch in my history did not supervene twenty years sooner, as in that case I might have preached so much in the great heathen
fields which girdle the globe. With the acquaintance I have now in the other grand divisions of the earth, if I were young enough I would continue my peregrinations in these heathen lands so long as I had the physical ability. But as I am now seventy-three (1906), with deep regret that I did not get an earlier start, I have to accept the situation and content myself to encourage the work of pagan evangelization by my prayers, speech and pen and my limited financial ability, during the little time I shall abide in this tabernacle.
Having, through the generosity of Brother Hunton, visited the Holy Land, I at once entered upon the great and arduous work of writing the Commentaries. I never became a literary recluse, in order to do any of my writing. You who read them will certify me that they all smell of gunpowder, having been born amid the tempest of war and the thunder of battle. They have been written in all parts of the United States, whithersoever He has led me in my toiling peregrinations. I constantly made it a rule to dictate to an amanuensis in the morning, teach the Bible in the afternoon, and preach in the evangelistic meetings at night. I am so thankful to God that He has let me do so much work for Him, which certainly is the highest privilege this side of Heaven. The Commentaries written by your humble servant differ widely from all their predecessors in the following respects.
(1.) They are rigidly exegetical, i. e., they explain the precious Word so plainly that the reader understands it so clearly that he can explain it to others.
(2.) They are lucidly experimental, i. e., bearing constantly on Christian experience, which is so pre-eminently important. If you would pass through the pearly gates, the Bible must go through your heart and shine out in your life. Our preaching should be constantly, earnestly and explicitly experimental, as otherwise it is intangible, impracticable and of no substantial availability. The whole Bible is rigidly experimental and our preaching must be its veritable facsimile. These Commentaries are the very thing to feed your own soul and make you he efficient dispenser of soul pabulum to others.
(3.) They are also strictly practical, bringing the precious and infallible Word into constant availability so we can utilize its heavenly wisdom in our daily living. The Bible is really every man's guide-book, the infallible director of the pilgrim prosecuting his toiling march along the King's highway of holiness in this world of sin and sorrow, to the glorious and eternal rest which awaits the faithful probationer beyond the range of tempest and sorrow "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
"Oh! 'tis sweet to think, hereafter When the spirit leaves this sphere, Love with deathless wings shall waft her, To those she long hath mourned for here.
"Hearts from which 'twas death to sever, Eyes this world can ne'er restore, There as warm, as bright as ever, Shall greet us and be lost no more."
(4.) They are not critical. I have kept close company with all of the prominent critics of Christendom from the Apostolic Fathers down to the present, who day and night, like my predecessors, have written critically, but the Lord did not so lead me. He used some of my scholarly holiness brethren to advise me to leave out the critical phase, which is the most prominent in all of the older commentaries. They start out and tell you what this critic says, what another says, etc. The reader goes ahead and reads the expositions of the different critics, gets bewildered, and actually reaches nothing tangible and utilizable. These Commentaries, instead of perplexing you with criticisms, explain the Word in a plain style so that you can feed on it in your own soul and dispense it to the hungry around you.
(5.) They are non-sectarian. I do not believe any really candid person can read them and locate the author with any of the sects or denominations. Where does the non-sectarian and undenominational part come in? From the simple fact that the Bible is positively free from sectarianism and denominationality. Of course we have all come into the world and grown up under some sectarian influences, but it is a conceded fact that real sanctification saves us from carnality in all its forms and phases, and that includes sectarianism.
(6.) They are pre-eminently adapted to all who feel called of God directly or indirectly to dispense the glorious Gospel of His once humiliated but now glorified Son. That Son is now enthroned at His right hand, coronated, sceptered and interceding for a lost world, which He, in His wonderful condescending mercy, by His vicarious substitutionary atonement redeemed forever from sin, death and Hell, having so triumphantly conquered all of our enemies as to eternally preclude the faintest apology for the damnation of a solitary soul. Most transcendently important, interesting and delightful is the glorious privilege of dispensing this message of life and salvation to the lost millions now thronging the broad and frequented road down to a devil's hell. They are manipulated, deluded, hoaxed and bamboozled by millions of excarnate demons thronging the air and incarnate devils, in the form of counterfeit preachers and false prophets, literally inundating every land and clime in these latter days of the Pentecostal dispensation. This world is now flooded with a population of sixteen hundred millions of immortal souls, one thousand millions of whom are sitting in heathen darkness, and enveloped in the thralldom of death. Human longevity has been cut down from a thousand years in the antediluvian ages and a hundred years in the post-diluvian, to the fleeting span of only twenty-four in India and but little more in other heathen lands. Thus we have now a thousand incentives playing on every intelligently and victoriously saved soul to rally to the rescue of his perishing comrades, who by millions on all sides are precipitating themselves into Hell at race horse speed. Since the glorious Gospel, with which the blessed Bible is flooded from Alpha to Omega, is God's predestined medium of rescue for every fallen son and daughter of Adam's ruined race, we are no longer excusable for folding our arms and sitting in the easy chair of carnal security, while we sing, "I am bound for the Promised Land." It is high time that we all arise, take our Gospel trumpet and begin to blow the shrill bugle blasts which hush the seraphim and cherubim to listen to the sweetest music that ever thrilled immortal ears, while contemplative angels bending over the heavenly battlements stoop to listen to the welcome notes of Gospel grace d Peter 1:12). And here on earth the old, the young, the great, the small, the rich and the poor, the cultured and the rustic, stand and tell the lost multitudes about the dying Saviour and the beautiful home in Heaven He has purchased for the homeless millions. Oh, how they will bless you through all eternity, while they all
the angels that God used you as an humble instrument to "pluck them as brands from the eternal burning."
In this greatest soul harvest the ages have ever known, -- is it possible you are going to lie supine?
Arise, arise, oh, sluggard, shake off thy slumbers and awake to an opportunity to which the angels would gladly speed their flight, vacating Heaven and leaving their golden harps, ethereal paeans and celestial trumpets, to take your place in the slums and preach this delectable Gospel and rescue the perishing multitudes, whom Jesus has redeemed with His own precious blood. Will you not hasten to the rescue, and lend a helping hand lest some Oriental coolie in the Judgment Day shall take your crown?
(7.) Those Commentaries are alone in the fact that they have been written exegetically, experimentally and practically, whereas their predecessors are all written critically, e. g., Clark, the prince of commentators, starts off on an exegesis basis, instead of telling you what it means in direct, plain terms, so you will understand it and can intelligently dispense it to others. He proceeds to tell you what the critics say about it, quoting the exposition of this one, that one and the other, till he gets you bewildered among the critics and there leaves you incompetent to settle on any clear exegesis of the passage. You really have no time to spend in learning criticism, which I could have given you, but I did not feel that the Lord wanted me to perplex your mind in that way. I felt led by the blessed Holy Spirit, the infallible Author of this precious message of life and godliness, in a plain, simple way to give you the explanation which you need to feed your own soul and dispense truth to the perishing millions who throng your pathway through this world of sin, sorrow, wretchedness, disappointment and wreckage of human hopes and aspirations.
All the commentaries by my predecessors were written for the learned clergy. The Lord told me to write mine for the rank and file of His dear people, who had never enjoyed the opportunity of a collegiate education, but who have much to do in winning souls, in view of the inimitable extent of the harvest enveloping the globe with its crowded fields white for the sickle. There is a paucity of reapers, inadequate to the glorious work of garnering the golden grain which is wasting by wholesale, the antipodian pagans having but one missionary to every million souls or more.
Therefore it is actually homicidal longer to depend on the collegiate clergy to evangelize the world.
We just have to use aides from the people, bless them in their labors of love and go off and leave them.
John Wesley's great holiness movement solved the problem of saving the world not through the classical clergy, but the uncultured laity. For this grand achievement, i. e., the evangelization of the world by the rank and file of God's faithful people, I wrote those Commentaries which any men and women who have never seen the inside of a college, but who have an ordinary English education, can read, and thus qualify themselves to preach the Gospel to the illiterate millions who crowd this Babel world. These lay preachers do better work and we find their humble labors more fruitful of souls than that of the theologians, from the ostensible fact that their language is more easily understood by the ignorant denizens of slumdom, whom the learned preachers habitually overshoot, i. e., make the sad mistake of putting the fodder too high for the sheep, so that they starve to death with an abundance of food in full view, -- a torture intolerable to contemplate. God is wonderfully