Articles


This section contains a variety of articles that I feel are pertinent to our journey into Him, but perhaps do not make direct reference to the focus of this site.

Aldersgate Renewal 2001
This illustrated website extract gives a quick insider's view of today's Charismatic renewal within the United Methodist Church.  Che Ahn and the anointed Bishop Fisher are ministering.  (8 pages)



 John Wesley's Holiness Proverbs
These practical proverbs written by John Wesley over the years provide remarkable insights into how he thought and lived while conducting his remarkably sanctified ministry in a very dark time in England.  I just love these, they are so real, and true to life.  4 pages



 The Character of Pure Christianity
Adapted by Tom Kiser from John Wesley's “Character of a Methodist”  What is the Standard of Pure Christianity? What are the character qualities of a Perfect Christian? The Entire Sanctifying grace of God makes a Christian a burning and shining light. Read here for an in depth description of a Perfected
Christian.  14 pages


 The UMC and the Charismatic Movement
The United Methodist Church is home to a rather large number of Charismatic believers.  Do members of this church that was started by Wesley's appointees also enter His Rest?  A website extract from the UMC renewal magazine, Good News.  22 pages  


Features of Sanctification
Salvation and Sanctification are related works of grace, but they are entirely distinct from each other.  An excellent short summary on the nature of sanctification.  by I. E. Amaya   12 pages.



The Nature and Disposition of The Human Spirit

The detail and presentation of heritage understandings surrounding the "inbred sin" doctrine  are often inadequate.  The great emphasis upon evil is unhelpful since "inbred sin" is not sin itself, but the inward root cause of it. While sinful, it is something else than sin. It is the unearned consequence of the Fall.  It is inadequate when the topic is just left as a mysterious "dark lump that cannot be saved".  While it certainly is that, we need to understand it better than this.

 I hope you will find that this simple picture will help.  9 pages by Tom Plumb  



Marriage and Divorce Under God  
Many dwell under condemnation and confusion as a result of the widespread rending of married souls that is happening today.  Here is an authoritative and up to date document that will answer all your questions. It will also allow you to give those around you a better understanding than offered by today's popular but incomplete perspectives.

There is mercy here for every situation. A very thorough exegesis of every aspect of this controversial topic by L. S. Boardman.  27 page PDF  (Print Ready Version only)




God's Revivalist
 This commemoration of John Wesley's Tercentenary (1703-2003)  is by far the nicest PDF on this website. It is a real work of art just chock full of beautifully done graphics and photos.  "God’s Revivalist and Bible Advocate", the official organ of God’s Bible School, is a magazine founded by Martin Wells Knapp in July of 1888. These 24 pages weigh in at 1697 KB.

 Knapp's 11 page  testimony is on the testimonies page of this website: M. W. Knapp  Some of his valuable work may be found on the "Entry Directions" page:                     The Double Cure



Divine Healing 

By W. B. Godbey

(His old fashioned faith approach to gifts and healing is not too shabby!  TP)

"My experience along the line of bodily healing abundantly corroborates the great fact that God is the only Healer. He made the body as well as the soul, consequently He alone knows how to repair them both, when out of order. While He is the only Healer, it does not follow that physicians are not useful in their place. We need them for diagnosing, I.e., to tell us what the disease is. As they have made the human body their lifelong study, of course they have knowledge appertaining to this mysterious organism which those who have not the benefit of a medical education do not possess.

When I was seventy years old, I fell and broke my arm till it just turned back like a broken stick.

I immediately hastened to a physician who set it and braced it, putting no medicine on it whatever.

Then, at my suggestion, he gladly knelt with me in prayer and we turned it over to the Great Physician to heal it. I went on preaching, carrying it in a sling. At the expiration of six weeks I returned to him. He took the bandage off, which he had put on it, removed the braces, and behold, it was well, and not a scar surviving. He was delighted to see that it had grown together precisely right, not leaving a ridge nor any other mark to survive as a memento of the former breakage.

Without that medical attention, in view of my age, I would very likely have lost the use of it the balance of my life. Yet he applied no medicine to execute the healing, but left it with the Lord alone, therefore, you see I needed him to do a mechanical work, which my friends could not have done, as they would neither have known how to set it or brace it.

In 1901, while preaching in Fresno, California, I lost my life by the inhalation of illuminating gas escaping in my room and was found dead the next morning at ten o'clock. As I am not in the habit of taking breakfast, they did not look for me at the table, but as I did not come downstairs, the lady of the house, feeling a little uneasy, at ten o'clock went up and rapped at my door, but received no response. Then opening she looked in and saw my shoes and knew I was there but instantly became affrighted because she could not make me speak. Felicitously I was enjoying the hospitality of Dr. Meux, a good holiness friend, who also believed in Divine Healing. Fortunately he was at home, when his good wife ran down the stairway and told him that I was speechless. He ran up instantly and meeting the gas suspected the trouble and upon examination found that all breathing had ceased and he had a dead man on his hands. Instantly he resorted to what physicians call artificial respiration, and after vigorous efforts within a very short time he saw me catch my breath, thus resuming the respiration.

I knew not my whereabouts till forty hours from the time of my retirement had elapsed. He said that without the mechanical operation, which he brought into availability, I certainly never would have breathed again. I am satisfied that I was out of my body.

My experience during the time reminds me of Paul in 2 Cor. 12, when at Lystra they stoned him to death, and God raised him up again to go on and finish his work. He said that he was caught up to the third heaven, (I. e., the heaven of saints and angels, the atmosphere being the first heaven and the astronomical spheres the second) where he saw and heard things impossible to tell, -- not unlawful, as the English Version has it, for there was no law against telling it. But it was impossible to tell, because we cannot reveal heavenly glories through the medium of mortal language. The most of our language here is metaphorical and symbolical, in order to reach us in these material tenements.

Not so in Heaven, where there is no material body but all is spirituality. There the language is all lightning, without taking time to thunder. I verily believe that I was out of the body, as when I found myself in it and again in this world, I deeply realized a mysterious alienation from transitory things.

I resorted at once to prayer, asking God to put His hand on me and re-adapt me to the work He still had for me to do in this world, as I felt that my congeniality for probationary (earthly, before judgement) life had been marred.

During the time of my alienation from the body, I heard and saw things which were utterly impossible for me to tell e. g., music most sweet and delicious, but I could tell nothing about it, and I especially had an unutterable sweetness in my own soul. I believe I was dead and God used that noble physician to raise me to life again. As a rule, the resurrections in the Bible took place very quickly after the expiration, the four days in the case of Lazarus being quite an exception.

God, in His wonderful mercy, has healed my body so frequently that time would fail me to tell you all about it. I will only give you a few salient, illustrative cases. His healing has been so prompt and speedy, that I have spent almost no time in my whole life on a sick bed.

Thirty-four years ago, (1867?) two eminent physicians, graduates of Cincinnati Medical College, gave me up to die of serious lung trouble, which had developed into congestion of the lungs by the inundation of the blood from the system, so flooding them as to stop respiration in the air cells, the breathing only continuing in the trachea bronchia and the larger air tubes. I was in a protracted meeting working hard and was suddenly attacked so severely that the friends called a physician and he became alarmed and sent for another to assist him in a case which he regarded as exceedingly critical. All pulsation had ceased in my members. They, assisted by a number of the brothers and sisters, labored six hours in the vain attempt by external friction and internal stimulants to stop the congestion, and restore the circulation. Then our family physician coming to me, notified me that I would be dead in two hours at most, and was liable to die at just any moment. Then both physicians and all the people quit their efforts to restore the circulation and just waited to see me die; meanwhile the papers reported that I was dead.

I had been in the sanctified experience four years, but my dear wife had not entered Beulah Land.

Though naturally timid, and having no experience in leading meetings, she at once took command of the crowd and observed, “These doctors have given my husband up to die, but I am not willing to let him go, and believe the Lord has much work for him to do yet, so get on your knees all of you and join me in prayer for his healing, that we may prevail with the Great Physician to come and take the case in hand, as I know He can heal him.” The dear woman had no light on Divine Healing except what the Holy Spirit gave her, as at that time there was nothing said about it. She kept them all on their knees, (and there was quite a crowd, as all of my members who had heard came at once,) exhorting them like a holiness evangelist conducting an altar service, to hold on, assuring them that the Lord would heal me. It is an obvious fact that the blessed Holy Spirit had imparted to her the gift of faith for my healing. The doctors said they knew no one to survive pulsation more than eight hours. Already when they ceased to minister for my healing and communicated to me the information of my speedy departure, six hours had elapsed since I had gone into the congestion.

Therefore all were watching the clock on the mantel which would soon tell the last moment the doctors said I could live. But when the two hours had flown, instantaneously the healing came. The congestion gave away and the blood began to flow from my heart out through the arteries into my members, and the veins resumed their office, carrying it back to the heart, and thus complete restoration of the circulatory organs at once supervened. I then spoke to our family physician, standing twenty feet away and looking on me, every moment expecting me to cease breathing, and said, “Doctor, I am healed.” He instantly leaped to my bedside, snatched up my arm and examined my pulse, responding, “That's so, you're healed. Your pulse is going all right and healthy. You are a well man.” In three days I mounted my horse and went away preaching and have been at it ever since: I have consulted physicians in reference to the congestion of the lungs. They all tell me it is very difficult to cure and when relieved nearly certain to come back. The Great Physician certainly did give me a miraculous cure on that occasion, as I have never had any lung trouble of any kind since. I have been preaching constantly these thirty-four years, and frequently four to six times a day.

I suppose I have done more speaking than any other man in the world in this time and never had any lung trouble.

It is pertinent here to say that when the doctor found I was healed, he fell on the floor and poured forth gushing tears of penitence, entreating the dear saints whose prayers had been answered in my healing at once to unite for his soul, that the Great Physician who had come and healed the body of his patient, should in condescending mercy save his soul. He was a church member, but, as he confessed, not saved.

There is no mistake about it, this wonderful Savior certainly healed my body.

As I was preaching in Texas twenty-two years ago, I was stricken down suddenly with an awful attack of rheumatism. In two minutes after it struck me I was utterly incompetent to stand on my feet or walk. I continued preaching, going on crutches. The Lord wonderfully healed me. Though I have never since enjoyed my full former activity, yet I have no rheumatic trouble and am considered an extraordinary example of pedestrian power and activity. After He healed me it was two or three years before the pain ceased to visit me ever and anon, apparently a mere souvenir of by-gone dominion.

When it would strike me, whether in the night suddenly waking me or in the day time instantaneously halting me in a peregrination, I made it a rule at once to put my hand on the place and turn it over to the Great Physician, asking Him to speak to it and bid it depart. As a rule it would go at least in two or three minutes. It has been many years since I have been troubled with the unwelcome visitor.

About a dozen years ago, a troublesome sore, which had come on my body under my clothing continued to get worse and being denuded gave me much annoyance by the friction of my clothing.

One day at the dinner table of Dr. Kelley, a cousin of mine, an eminent physician practicing in Portland, Oregon, I told him about it. He said, “Cousin Will, after dinner I will examine it.” Upon examination he said, “Cousin, that is a cancer and the thing for you to do is to go at once to Cincinnati, and have it cut out. We could do it here, but you are too far from home for a surgical operation.” Then he wrote me a letter to hand to the surgeons in Cincinnati (with whom he was well acquainted, as they had educated him) turning me over to them for the removal of the cancer. Then he proceeded to put a bandage on it for my comfort, preventing the friction of the clothing. Here you see how we still need physicians, mechanically as well as diagnostically and hygienically. He did not put any medicine on it nor insinuate that his treatment would cure it, but simply administered to my present comfort, by fortifying it against friction, which I had labored in vain to do. I had then a large round of appointments on the Pacific Coast, and through the great interior, which I had promised to serve before returning home. Therefore, instead of obeying the order of my dear cousin of the healing art, I went at once to the Great Physician, and turned over the cancer to Him. I realized my utter dependence on the Holy Ghost to inspire my faith for present healing, but He did it and I so realized.

I went on preaching in Oregon and let the bandage stay till it wore off, which was about a month.

Then I looked in vain for my cancer. It had disappeared, and left only the scar, which I carry today, the souvenir of my unwelcome visitor. I found quite a test of my faith in the healing of this cancer.

I actually had to heroically face the music and take the bit in my teeth, soliloquizing, “Jesus, I believe you were healed this cancer,” and there abide and refuse to doubt. Then I was enabled to appropriate His current axiom, during His ministry, Matt. 9:29, “As your faith is, so be it unto you.” There is no mistake as to the great Bible doctrine of bodily healing. You will find it in the commission which our Lord gave the twelve Apostles, and also in that of the seventy disciples. He commands them all to heal the sick, as well as to cast out demons.

When I was embarking from New York for my around the world tour, I was advised to carry a little cholera medicine, as it is so common in the countries I contemplated visiting. The Lord had given me wonderful health till I reached Rangoon, Burma, a country celebrated for the prevalence of that terrible destroyer. Two of my young men had suffered with it in India. Sure enough it struck me suddenly and unexpectedly. I at once took the medicine, but am satisfied it did not stay in my stomach a minute, as the eructation was such that it was utterly impossible to receive anything internally. I need not attempt to describe the sufferings characteristic of cholera. Therefore I will leave you to your own imagination, and advise you to ask the Lord to save you from an attack.

When it seemed to me that I was certainly face to face with the King of Terrors, (who had no terror for me), the Texas boys took hold of me and cried to God for my healing. As they held on, one of them spoke out and said that he had heard from Heaven that I was healed, and the other two soon joined him in their testimony. Cholera does its work quickly, and there was no time to hunt a physician. Eleven days subsequently, when I was convalescing quite slowly, much impeded by the climate, as I was not only in the torrid zone, but had by this time reached the Equator, where the heat was almost killing me in the terribly prostrate condition in which cholera had left me, God made Dr.West, presiding elder at Singapore, a great blessing to my feeble body. Well can I say, “In Thee we live, and move, and have our being.” As I am now seventy-three years old, my bodily organs are failing, and if He did not keep His hand on this frail tenement night and day, I would break down and die. Oh, how wonderfully He keeps me, and enables me to do more work than almost any young man. I am a continual astonishment to myself: but it is all His keeping power.

During all of my ministry, especially since the Lord sanctified me thirty-eight years ago, I have constantly served Him in the ministry of bodily healing, as well as soul saving. Throughout the South I have preached much in the malarial regions, where distressing fevers of every kind abound. The Lord has everywhere used me in the ministry of healing. In countless instances I have prayed for the people burning with fever, and it abated at once, and they got up and came to meeting.

I was called to hold a protracted meeting in Central Georgia. When I began I found a goodly number beautifully clear in regeneration, but not sanctified. I began at once to preach that glorious doctrine, corroborating it by my testimony to the experience, when the pastor spoke out in the presence of all the people, boldly antagonizing me. Of course I did not strive with him a moment, as I had to respect his office and authority; but I inwardly turned him over to God and cried, though inaudibly, to God to put His hand on him and help me out of the difficulty. I realized my audience in Heaven and entered into inward rest, feeling assured that God would manage the man and conserve His own cause. In twenty-four hours we missed him out of the meetings, and the news came that he was sick. I went to see him. He saluted me kindly and said, “Bro. Godbey, I am attacked with this bad fever and will not likely be with you any more in the meetings.” I said, “My dear brother, Jesus is here today and ready to rebuke your fever as He did that which burnt Peter's mother-in-law.” I fell on my knees and putting my hand on him turned him over to the blessed Omnipotent Healer. While I was praying I felt the abatement of the fever, as his body began to cool off and the perspiration to come out.

I went away to the meeting and had only passed through the introductory songs and prayers when he arrived and took the meeting out of my hand, electrifying the congregation with his thrilling testimony to bodily healing, (which was little known in that country), telling them of how he was burning, as if in a furnace, and I had prayed for him and told him how to trust Jesus for healing, and his fever was gone, and the perspiration was on his body, which in that region is regarded as prima facie evidence that the fever is gone to stay. Then suddenly running to the altar he shouted as he went, “Now, Brother Godbey, I want that other thing you have been talking about.” His congregation followed him as the flock follows the shepherd. He and many others got gloriously sanctified, and he is a leader in the Movement today.

You will always find bodily healing a powerful auxiliary of soul saving. In all of your peregrinations, never fail to visit the sick and pray for their healing. In that way you will reach many wicked people, otherwise utterly out of your reach.

When I was conducting the Free Methodist Campmeeting at Emporia, Kansas, among the people who received bodily healing was a dumb woman who had not spoken in two and a half years, dear Sister Jones, the wife of a Free Methodist preacher. While I was laboring with the seekers at the altar, who had come on the invitation for bodily healing, and they had all risen with bright faces and some of them even shouting testimonies, this one sister continued at the altar. I did not at that time identify her as the dumb one, but then the presiding elder in an undertone notified me, as I appealed to her and received no answer, that she was the dumb sister and he had never heard her voice, and she was seeking the healing of her dumbness. Then I appealed to her straight: “Believe, my sister, that Jesus now heals your dumbness and gives you back your speech which you lost two and a half years ago. John Wesley says, 'We are to believe that He doeth it.' “ Then she became exceedingly energized, evidently exercising all her spiritual powers of abandonment, supplication and faith, at the same time falling back on the carpet and turning her face Heavenward, the movement of her mouth indicating the prayer of her heart. Then I saw a light flash over her face, and her eyes sparkle with preternatural brilliancy; when suddenly she leaped to her feet and shouted louder than I could and running up and down the aisle continued to shout aloud. All the people present knew her and were so excited that they shouted aloud with her.

When the noise somewhat abated, a fine looking man arose and asked permission to speak, which was freely granted. He proceeded to state that he was that woman's physician, and had done everything in his power to restore her voice, even taking her off to cities and having her treated by specialists, and he just wanted to testify that her healing was a miracle of the Lord. Oh, how that miraculous case of healing did stir the city and boom the campmeeting! It is a great mistake of the Lord's people to neglect bodily healing.

Some of our beloved holiness people tell us that healing is not for sinners, but only for Christians.

This is a mistake, as you see in the case of the ten lepers whom our Savior healed, only the one who turned back and shouted out his joyous testimony being saved. In case of sinners, we should always give the preference to the salvation of their souls, and never encourage them to seek healing and leave out the salvation, because it may be that God needs the temporal affliction to bring them to repentance, and save them from Hell. We should never fail to visit the sick and pray for their healing, but in case of the unconverted, we should show them the infinite value of their souls above their bodies, and exhort them to repent and seek the pardoning mercy of God and bodily healing, too, assuring them of His abounding love in using the disease to bring them to repentance and make it an auxiliary to their salvation. If God did not heal the wicked, they would soon all be dead, because He is the only Healer, and all mortals are full of diseases, of which sickness is simply their development. Oh, how amiable the attitude of a Gospel preacher coming with the panacea of all human woe, healing not only the soul but the body. While Satan is the author of all physical ailments, of every form and phase, the transcendent victory of Christ is gloriously illustrated in the sanctification of all diseases and physical ailments and disabilities to our spiritual good. If everybody were to enjoy perfect health to the end of life and drop dead suddenly with no time to repent, very few would be saved. Such is the awful power of sin, the dominion of Satan and the alarming potency of temptation, that we need aches, pains, fevers, chills, wounds and bruises to keep us constantly reminded of our mortality, on the lookout for death and therefore robed and ready every minute to meet the Lord.

All of these sufferings, with the misfortunes and apparent calamities of this transitory life, are included in the “all things” that work together for good to them that love God with divine love. The same is true of Satan and all his minions. Surely God makes them a blessing to His true people.

This probation is full of mysteries, which we will never comprehend in this dark valley of sin and sorrow, but will perfectly understand when we reach the glorious Beyond.

I here give you the key to this great problem of Divine Healing. Rom. 8:11, “And if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead will also create life n your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwelleth in you.” As above observed, this is the key that unlocks the mystery and solves the problem of Divine Healing. The normal attitude of bodily healing is with the sanctified who have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them. As the soul is the man proper, and the body only the tenement, therefore the normal economy of grace first administers full salvation to the soul and afterward heals the body so long as God willeth our abiding in it. The bodily healing of the unsanctified is His superabounding mercy. “This is my will, even your sanctification.” I Thess. 4:3. Therefore the normal economy is to save and sanctify all who will humbly and appreciatively reciprocate the gracious interventions of the Holy Ghost, now, through the intercession of the glorified Christ, freely given to all as a Convictor of the wicked, Regenerator of the penitent and Sanctifier of the believer, and an indwelling Comforter of the sanctified; e. g., you are living in a house in Cincinnati, a break appears in the roof, and you have it repaired, then you find another in the wall and calling in the mechanics you have it repaired at your own expense; the chimney falls down, and You have it rebuilt, and so you keep on repairing your house. But the time will come when your house is really out of kilter and every passer-by recognizes that it needs repairing again, and still you are not doing it, though the dilapidation is getting worse all the time. Then what do your neighbors think about it? Why, they have entirely quit talking about it, because they have all settled down in the conclusion that you are not going to repair it any more, but take it down and build a new one.

The application is easy. The Holy Ghost is dwelling with me in my tenement of clay. It has often been seriously out of kilter and He has repaired it. Thirty-four years ago physicians gave it up and took hands off, leaving it to die of lung trouble in its worst form. He repaired it so perfectly that I have never had a vestige of that ailment since. Sciatic rheumatism twenty-two years ago disqualified me to walk a step without a crutch. He, so far as I can tell, perfectly repaired my body, so I am entirely free from rheumatism. Twelve years ago the physicians pronounced a troublesome sore on my body a cancer, and told me I must have it cut out as quickly as possible. I turned it over to the Great Physician, who took it away, leaving only the scar as a souvenir of His mighty work. I have, in cases innumerable, been so afflicted that I was utterly disqualified for work, and He healed me suddenly. When conducting a Free Methodist Campmeeting, ten years ago and surrounded by the presiding elder and all of his pastors, they had me teaching the Bible morning and afternoon, and preaching every night, leaving them for the street preaching and the altar work. I got up in the morning and found my body so violently attacked that it would have been impossible for me to have attended any of the meetings. I had a good old Free Methodist preacher get down by me, put his hands on me and pray for my healing; which came, so far as I could tell, at the very moment, at least the ailment left me and returned no more and I went along in the three meetings that day.

God has so wonderfully healed me and done it so quickly that I have lost less time from His work, perhaps, than any other person you can find. In the above instances of healing, I stopped longer in the case of that lung trouble than any other, and that was only five days. While my heart is full of praises for His miraculous healing, which is not speaking extravagantly, as He is a God of miracles, and they have not ceased, as some say, I am assured that if He does not soon appear and translate me, as I am constantly watching and waiting, the time will come when this body will be out of kilter in some way, and perhaps in many, and He will not heal it. Why? Because the house will be no longer worth repairing and my work will be done, the battle over and the victory won, then I will know Heaven is nigh and begin to shout the approaching triumph.

“Some morning fair I am going away,
And not get back till millennial day,”

For I know I have another building not made with hands.

You see the danger of running the doctrine of Divine Healing into fanaticism. I have known good holiness people to make this serious mistake. They pray for the sick, anointing them with oil, laying hands on them, and because they do not get well, they so vehemently labor to get them to believe for healing that they actually reflect on their faith to their spiritual detriment, and almost make them believe that they are backsliders, because they do not get healed.

N. B. We are saved and sanctified by the grace of faith, Eph. 2:8; Acts 26:8; but we are healed by the gift of faith, I Cor. 12:9. Now remember these extraordinary spiritual gifts, which you find in the Pauline catalogue, I Cor. 12:8-11, are not necessary to salvation, as we are saved by grace and not by gifts. The normal attitude of these gifts contemplates our efficiency in the salvation of others.

Therefore when your work is done and God is going to take you to Heaven you will have no faith for your healing. The promise of your faith, “so be it unto you,” Matt. 9:29, is just as true of the body as the soul. The grace by which we are saved is constant and abides forever; while the gifts are bestowed for the immediate emergency, pursuant to the sovereign discriminating grace of God.

Hence you see the perfect harmony of Divine Healing with the fact that we do not always get healed, for if we did we would never get to Heaven. When God is ready for us to go to Heaven, the Holy Spirit, the Custodian of His own gifts, will no longer impart to us the gift of healing. Therefore we will have no faith for healing. When the Lord healed me of lung congestion, rheumatism, cancer, cholera and other incidental ailments too numerous to mention, I had faith for healing and He did it according to my faith. Matt. 9:29. But if He tarrieth the time is near when I will have physical trouble again and no faith for healing. Then I will begin to shout, because I will know Heaven is nigh and I am fast approaching the sacramental millions beyond.

“My latest sun is sinking fast,
My race is nearly run;
My strongest trials now are past;
My triumph is begun.
CHORUS
“Oh, come, angel bands,
And bear me away
On your snowy wings
To my immortal home.
“I know I am nearing the holy ranks
Of friends and kindred dear,
I have brushed the dews of Jordan's banks,
The crossing must be near.
“Oh, bear my longing heart to Him,
Who bled and died for me,
Whose blood now cleanseth from all sin,
And gives me victory.
“I know I am nearing my Heavenly home;
My spirit loudly sings,
The holy ones, behold they come,
I hear the noise of wings.

When you find the saints are no longer competent to exercise faith for their healing, instead of discouraging them you ought to shout with them. They have no faith for healing because God is going to give them Heaven this time instead of health, which is infinitely better. Therefore, it is a time of rejoicing.

I saw this vividly illustrated about ten years ago, when arriving at Scottsville Campmeeting, Texas, and finding Pastor Lively, who had been sanctified in my first meeting in the state in 1884, prostrate with that stubborn malarial fever. Gathering around him his wife and daughter and other saints, we prayed for his healing; myself and sister receiving faith for him and telling him so. He had settled down under the conclusion that he had to lie there and go through a routine of medicine, break down and go through disease, spending a month on his bed, as was usual. I exhorted him with all my might to exercise present faith for his healing, assuring him that it was his privilege to have it now. Then leaving him alone with the Lord and still holding on to God to inspire his faith and heal him, I ran away to the bedside of Father Scott, nearly eighty years old, and prayed for his healing, but received no faith. When I was about bidding him good-bye, be said to me, “Brother Godbey, tell the Campmeeting people to pray for my soul, but not for my body; for my good wife died this year, and, if God will, I prefer not to be healed, but to go on and join her in the bright upper world where I will never suffer again.”

I hastened back to the parsonage, as my faith for Brother Lively's healing was actually booming.

On arrival I looked on the vacated bed. He had been healed and jumped off with a shout and ran out to the Campground, where, as usual, he stood in the front of the battle during the ensuing campaign.

Of course Father Scott went to Heaven and I never saw him afterward. You cannot be too diligent and indefatigable in your visitation of the sick. That is God's auspicious time to make you a blessing both to their souls and their bodies. It is better to obey the Word in the use of the olive oil, anointing them, although the oil has nothing to do with healing them; it says “the prayer of faith shall save the sick.” The utility of the oil is to symbolize the Holy Ghost, who imparts the gift of faith for healing.

The oil in bodily healing is precisely what the water is in salvation. Both oil and water are symbols of the Holy Ghost, the former in bodily healing and the latter in the salvation of the soul. Thus you should invariably visit the sick and obey the Scriptures, putting hands on them, anointing them, and praying for their healing, assured that God will answer your prayer and give them either health or Heaven. Therefore do not think your prayer is in vain if they are not healed, for Heaven is infinitely more desirable than health. Of course when you do not happen to have the oil, never make it an excuse for not helping the sick, as it has no more to do with the healing than water baptism has to do with salvation.

As Christian workers, you not only need the gift of healing for the sick, but all of the nine gifts, recorded in I Cor. 12:8-11, as the other eight all appertain to spiritual salvation. How can I procure these gifts? Get in position to receive them and then, in utter abandonment to God, all the time receive by faith the very one you need at that moment. Radical repentance and perfect consecration put you in position to receive all of these gifts, pursuant to the sovereign discriminating wisdom of the Holy Ghost. These nine gifts constitute the Christian soldier's panoply. The Holy Ghost is our omnipotent Armor-bearer. He goes with us to the battlefield every time and carries all of our arms, leaving us perfectly unencumbered and light as birds of paradise, just ready for Him to use us freely in the terrible battle with the world, the flesh and the devil. He imparts each gift the very moment you need it. V. 11, “All these work in you one and the same Spirit, dispensing unto each one severally as He willeth.”

When you have performed the ministry of healing, by simple faith receive from Him the gift of bodily healing. At one moment you specially need the gift of the kingdom you may know how to proceed in the emergency. At another moment you especially need the gift of knowledge, which is insight into divine truth. While faith is the hand by which we receive everything from God, in that sense it is the grace of faith. You see it is also laid down in the catalogue of the gifts. In that sense it means the power to believe God's promises and to perfectly confide in Him. The fifth gift is the workings of dynamite. The Gospel is all dynamite. Rom. 1:16, “The Gospel is the dynamite of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” The Sinai Gospel is the dynamite of conviction, Calvary that of conversion, Pentecost that of sanctification, and the Transfiguration that of translation. The gift of prophecy is preaching in all its forms and phases, to an individual or a multitude. Discernment of spirits enables you to tell what Gospel to preach wherever you are, whether Sinai for conviction, Calvary for conversion, Pentecost for sanctification, the coming of the Lord to get the people ready for translation, or Divine Healing for the benefit of the sick.

The gift of tongues, I.e., language, is simply the utterance of the Holy Spirit, keeping you always supplied with words so you do not run out. The gift of interpretation is the illumination of the Holy Ghost on the words you hear and read, giving you the understanding you need. Of course in the missionary fields where you have to learn a language and serve as interpreter, these gifts, I. e., language and interpretation, have a broader and deeper signification and become very precious and exceedingly valuable. It is a common thing for the missionaries, to their own surprise, to find themselves preaching in the native tongue before they have given it much attention, thus magnifying the gift of the Holy Ghost. You should be perfectly familiar with my books “Spiritual Gifts and Graces,” “Works of the Holy Spirit” and “Incarnation of the Holy Ghost.” These three directly devoted to the elucidation of His mighty works should be substantially committed to memory.

You should add to these “Demonology,” which will post you on the devil's side of the battlefield. A war history which does not describe both sides is radically deficient. You cannot successfully study the mighty works of the Holy Ghost and leave out those of Satan, His inveterate foe. As Christian soldiers, it is utterly impossible for you to prove a success without the grand panoply of these nine gifts, which the Holy Ghost freely bestows on every true warrior in Immanuel's army. While a classical education, when utilized by the Holy Ghost, is a powerful auxiliary, it is in no way essential to real efficiency. Regardless of the amount of learning possessed by any person, these gifts really solve the problem of soul saying efficiency, if the holiness people would duly appreciate and utilize these gifts, they would all be successful preachers of the glorious Gospel, for which the millions are perishing. Human learning has much to do with ecclesiastical position and when fully consecrated to God and used by the Holy Ghost it truly augments our efficiency for good. But from the simple fact that the people who have it are apt to depend on it, we often realize an actual detraction, rather than augmentation, of the normal efficiency. Before I received a collegiate education I do believe my preaching to the slaves was more evangelical than after I graduated in college, till God, in His great mercy, sanctified me and gave me the Holy Ghost, thirty-eight years ago. Before that notable epoch, in 1868, I preached by the power of my intellect and education, using them as vain substitutes for the Holy Ghost. Since that happy experience I have preached “with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven,” I Peter 1:12, which, of course, I could not do before I received Him.

While we exhort you to avail yourselves of all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, pursuant to the positive mandate of God, Eph. 6:1, “Put on the whole armour of God that you may be enabled to stand against the methods of the devil,” we would not minify a single one of these immortal nine. As this section is on Divine Healing, I give you a few concluding remarks. Do not fight the doctors, as we need them in three ways, diagnostically, I. e., to tell us what is the matter with the patient; mechanically, I. e., to set and bandage broken limbs, and do other things which they alone understand, and hygienically, I. e., to tell us how to live conservatively of the laws appertaining to health. I have consulted the ablest physicians of the age in reference to their claim to heal the sick and they have uniformly told me they have made no such claim, but were only humble helpers of nature, recognizing with me that God alone can heal the sick.

Fighting the doctors instead of diseases is like fighting churches instead of devils. While we must be true to God and holiness, church or no church, we have no time to fight the churches, because we have all we can do to preach the Gospel and get souls saved. Satan is very anxious to get the holiness people to fight the churches so that he can effectually obstruct their access to those people, whereas God has sent us to all. Therefore we should be all things to all men, like Paul, that we may save some. If you will be content to do nothing but the work which God has given you, with a full heart flooded with divine love, preach the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, sparing sin nowhere, but thundering against it like a messenger from Heaven; having no time to fight anything but sin and devils; constantly discriminating widely between sin and sinners, doing your utmost to destroy the former and save the latter, I will go your security that you will find more open doors in churches and elsewhere than you know what to do with. This war on churches is the trickery of Satan to turn your efforts away from him and to make you fire on something else. God has sent us to save the church people as well as outsiders. All the while you hate sin with all your power of soul, mind and spirit, so you will die in your tracks before you will make the slightest compromise with it, whether in church or out, you love sinners with the everlasting love which brought Jesus down from Heaven to die for them. Therefore you are constantly ready for martyrdom."
from: "Autobiography of William Baxter (W. B.) Godbey A. M."  P.159


                                        
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We Are Here For You
We have been walking in this rare state of grace for over twenty years now.  We have stood the test and are seasoned in guiding others into His Rest -each in his own way.  But we can only answer questions that make sense.  For that reason you must do a fair amount of reading on the website before asking for help. Please be aware that our time is valuable.                 Tom Plumb: website owner and librarian. 

Most of your questions are already answered on the FAQ, "Introduction" and "Central Idea" pages.  Also see the prepared question lists in "Pure Love" and "Objections Answered" on the "Entry" page.

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