The apocalyptic angel

Prefatory Note

This book is one of the many written by Dr. Godbey on his travels. Versed in the history, both sacred and secular, of the lands of the Old World, he is, Dr. Godbey has travelled with eyes that see and a mind that understands. We send it forth to you, its readers, believing that it will prove las instructive and interesting as any of its predecessors. Trusting that it will also help mightily in the purpose for which Dr. Godbey both travels and writes — namely, the upbuilding of God's kingdom in all the earth, we are

Faithfully yours,

THE PUBLISHERS.

The Apocalyptic Angels

CHAPTER I. Outward Bound

We sailed to Glasgow, Scotland, on the steamer '* California." We had some inclement weather, superinducing much seasickness. I never have it, although the Lord has permitted me to make these four tours, and to travel by sea about seventy-five thousand miles, as in 1905- '06, we traveled entirely around the world. I believe the secret of my glorious freedom from all seasickness is the fact that always, embarking, I ask Jesus, by faith, to keep it off. **As your faith is, so be it unto you." (Matt. 9:29.) This was the Lord's current maxim throughout His entire ministry, as pertinent to the body as to the soul. Throughout the voyage, I exhorted my comrades, and did my best to fortify them against seasickness, but they all suffered more or less, and one brother almost crossed the ocean on his back.

We repeated a couple of days, and were turned out of our course by immense reefs of floating ice dislodged from the coasts of Newfoundland. We entered Glasgow through the Gulf of Clyde River, the ship moving very slowly into her moorings, thereby fortuitously giving us a grand opportunity to inspect the dockyards, in conspicuous view on either side. They are pronounced the greatest and best in the world, thus giving dear old Scotland the banner of the nations in ship-building.

Peter the Great, the civilizer, champion and Chris^ tianizer of great Russia, an obscure, uncultured youth, tramped away to these dockyards and labored for wages till he learned how to build ships. Then, going home, he taught his people this great and valuable mechanism, as well as all the arts and sciences of Christian civilization. Thus he led those rude, barbaric nations — Goths, Huns, Vandals and Heruli — into the liberal arts and sciences, and united them into the great Russian nation, with her 325,000,000 of Russianized subjects, the greatest nationality on the globe.

Glasgow, with her 100,000 enterprising citizens, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

As we traveled through that lovely land of Scotland, we were charmed with the horticultural and agricultural perfection on all sides, adorning the beautiful, green hills and prolific vales. My heart praised the Lord for dear old Scotia's lovely island, and the Knoxes, Burnses, Bruces, Wallaces, and their noble comrades, whose names are in the Book of Life. Their monuments of heroism, patriotism, arts, sciences, and Christianity now flash the luster of their achievements around the world, girdling the globe with the just encomiums of lovely Scotland.

When Bloody Mary, the Roman Catholic queen, sat on the throne, and was burning the Covenanters (the Holiness people of Scotland), as fast as her soldiers and bloodhounds could catch them, John Knox, their redoubtable leader, walked into the royal palace and issued the thunderbolt of prophecy which God had given him. He, like a messenger from Heaven, denounced her wicked administration, and told her he was going to pray her down from that throne. Then he walked out with the heroic tread of Elijah from the presence of Jezebel and Ahab.

When she recovered from the shock, she charged her soldiers to go into Scotland and hunt that man with bloodhounds till they found him. She observed that she feared his prayers more than all the armies of Europe. Well she might, for he prayed her down from the throne till she dropped dead, and Elizabeth, the friend of Protestants, free grace and a free Bible, took her place, and, in the providence of God, laid the foundation of the British Empire, this day at the front of the world.

The reason we have missionaries in every land and wide-open doors for millions more, is because British gunboats thunder from every shore, and the Union

Jack floats beneath every sky, the auspicious precursor of King Jesus coming in a cloud to arrest the devil, take him out of the world, and fill the whole earth with the glory of God.

John Knox, with his Holiness band, in his sequestered garden, was holding an all-night prayer-meeting, then in the dead of night, rising from his knees with a shout, he assured his comrades, ** Deliverance has come ! ' * No electrical appliances, no telephones then ; news came with tardy pace. But what was it? As nearly as they could tell later, it was at that very hour that Bloody Mary dropped dead. The solution is easy — John Knox had prayed the prevailing prayer which the Holy Ghost gave him (James 5), and the 3,nswer came. There was but one way, and that was to take Queen Mary out of the world.

The iron horse, after a race of fifty miles an hour, dumped us all in the world's metropolis, founded by Julius Caesar, the great Roman. It was called Londinium, now felicitously abbreviated London. She now has seven and a half millions of people, and an annual increase of a hundred thousand, pouring hither from the ends of the earth, as her great ocean steamers peregrinate the globe, gathering from 1,700,000,000 of all nationalities. London is not only almost double the size of any other city, but is the most rapidly growing in all the earth. The mind grows dizzy contemplating the possibilities of her coming magnitude.

As this was my fourth visit to the city in sixteen years, I immediatly favored my comrades with a trip to the most important sights.

While in the metropolis, the Third Centennial Anniversary of the King James ^ translation of the Bible was held. God has wonderfully made this translation a sunburst on the world. It was the best in its day, three hundred years ago, when there was so little light on the Bible compared with the present age. Superstition has always been used by Satan to hold

people in bondage to error, simply because of its antiquity. N. B. We can only be justified by walking in all the light God gives us. '(1 John 1:7.) The present generation has light superior to all our predecessors. We cannot be savecj. in the light of our fathers and mothers, from the simple fact that God requires us to walk in our own light. My preaching father and shouting Methodist mother both used tobacco and ordered me to use it, pursuant to the foolish advice of our neighbors, who said: '*Make that little runt chew tobacco and it will start him to growing. ' '

My happy conversion, under the preaching of my sainted mother, in her lap before she had taken off my baby costume, and my early Bible reading had given me a very tender heart, which I nearly broke when I disobeyed my parents. But this time I simply concluded to receive the flogging for disobedience, rather than to chew the disgustingly filthy weed. I am so glad I never used the narcotic nervines, which are so hard on the brain and mental faculties. If I were to use tobacco now, I would sin against light and knowledge, and Satan would get me. I know my father and mother are in Heaven, and I soon expect to

12 The Apocalyptic Axgel.

meet them there. They walked in all the light they had, which is all any person on the globe has to do to be saved, as people only lose their souls by rejecting light.

We have a magnitudinous responsibility, for the most copious and brightest light that has ever shone on the earth is now shed abroad. Therefore we should not only, like the Bereans, search the Scriptures diligently and walk in every ray of light we have, but do our best to carry the light to all others, as we will be responsible for our delinquency. If we do not, in the Judgment Day, millions of heathens, Mohammedans, Jews, Catholics and ignorant Protestants may go up to Heaven with a shout, and we be left out. Not that anybody will pass the pearly portals with sin in him or in her, but those walking in all the light they have will get cleansed from all sin (1 John 1:7), while those who have the brighter light, but fail to walk in it, will go down under condemnation.

N. B. The omnipotent grace of God in Christ is not only free for all, but sufficient for every emergency. So there is no apology for the damnation of a solitary soul, as they are only lost because of light rejected.

"We now hastened away to the British Museum, covering a great square of the city. There we saw the etymological and artistic world, i. e., all nations in their statuary, costumes, arts, inventions, and all sorts of implements of all by-gone ages, In that Museum you have access to the whole world, and receive the valuable information of a life time of study and world-wide traveling. Though those monuments, specimens and souvenirs have cost many millions of dollars, yet these wonderfully instructive sights are all free. This is due to the paradoxical benefaction of the British Government, the greatest colonizer, educator, civilizer, and evangelizer in all the world. You can go there and study gratuitously ad libitum.

We then hastened away to the great Zoological and Botanical Museum, in which you see all the animals that have ever lived on the earth, both terrestrial and oceanic in all ages and nations, including all the feathered tribes. You will also see there specimens of the entire botanical world, from the smallest to the greatest. It is exceedingly instructive to see every creature God has ever made to inhabit the whole earth by land and sea. This vast and edifying Museum is like that of all the nations' arts and inventions, free to all the world; the great benefaction of tha British Government, now standing at the front of the world. If the Lord lets you go to London, do not forget to visit these and other sights of valuable erudition.

Next we went to the Art Gallery, where we saw the master spirits of the British Empire as depicted in the' most beautiful paintings, Yevy large and conspicuous. "We saw John and Charles Wesley, Dr. Clarke, Fletchei* Whitefield, and many others whose books we have read.

Then we all mounted a great electric omnibus, and dashed seven miles to City Road Church, built in years long gone by. I climbed up in the old-style stairway pulpit, and, standing in the footprints of Father Wesley, preached the everlasting. Gospel. AVe all retired to his tomb, and that of Dr. Clarke and their comrade saints now in glory. We united in prayer and felt that we were truly treadin/j on holy ground.

During my three preceding visits I had much enjoyed Westminster Abbey, the sepulchre of the great among the Anglo-Saxon people. There are buried the magnates of church and state, kings, queens, heroes, poets, orators, philosophers, saints and martyrs. There lies Bloody Mary, the Roman Catholic queen who burnt the Protestants till John Knox, of Scotland, prayed her from the throne, and she suddenly died and was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, the friend and protector of the Protestants. Thus, by the change of administration, God radically and permanently revolutionized the government. This is tnanifested by the interment of Mary and Elizabeth in the same sepulchre, the latter above the former.

Oliver Cromwell, the Holiness man (Puritan), who had revolutionized the kingdom, superseding the monarchy by the Protectorate, had been buried in royal splendor. After the Restoration they disinterred him, tried and condemned him as- a criminal. They hung his body, cut his head off, and cast the rest of the body into a yawning abyss.

When going around looking at all the tombs, we saw busts of John and Charles Wesley there among the kings, queens and magnates of the British Empire.

David Livingstone, the great apostle of Africa, >vho lived in the heart of Africa alone and preached to the savages for a third of a century, died among^ them. His body was then carried two thousand miles to Zanzibar, where a British ship took it and its sable porters and carried them all the way to London. There the people spent quite awhile carrying them through the streets, and finally buried Lijvingstone 's body among the kings in Westminster Abbey. You will find his tomb near the center of the nave. It is said that the world's metropolis made greater adoo over this humble pilgrim of the Lord than over any of the crowned heads lying all around him. I was sorry the place was closed while we were there, and my comrades were deprived of the many interesting souvenirs there to be seen.

We visited the Tower of London, where the city was founded. It now covers thirteen acres of ground which are crowded with places of profound historical interest. Here William the Conqueror founded the British nationality 850 years ago. He was a Norman, i. e., a North man, a Scandinavian.

About nine hundred years ago, those Northmen were the greatest navigators in the world. Without compass or chart, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and are believed by the best authorities to have discovered America and made many visits to it, calling it *' Vineland.'' If that is a fact, however, the Indians must have exterminated them all, as the site of the place was lost, and for many centuries no one had crossed the ocean till Columbus carjie in 1492. It is certain that those Northmen excelled all others in nautical skill and heroism.

** Fierce, hardy, proud,

In conspicuous freedom bold;

Those stormy seats

The warrior Druses ' home.

From Norman blood

Their lofty line they trace.

Their lion courage

Proves their genero'us race.*'

The Tower of London was long the seat of government and the residence of the king. It has great notoriety as a prison, in which martyrs and many others were incarcerated. We were on the spot occupied by the scaffold on which so many good and noble people were beheaded ; e. g., the wives of Henry the Eighth, Lady Jane Grey, and other historic notables. Rev. John Fisher had his Greek Testament, his precious companion, in the prison with him, when they suddenly opened the door, led him out and cut his head off. He fortuitously opened the Book with these words: *'0 Lord, give me a Scripture that shall comfort me in this trying hour." Then his eyes rested on 1 John 4:18: *' Perfect love easteth out fear." Closing the Book, he said: '* Quite enough, Lord, for time and eternity," then the cruel ax severed his head from his body.

Again, we were in the prison where the pilgrims and martyrs were kept till their execution, the time of which was never known to them till the executioner opened the door. The first notification Lady Jane Grey received of her o\^n immediate destiny was the presentation of the headless body of Lord Dudley, her noble husband.

In this Tower we saw the warriors of by-gone centuries, invested from top to toe in shining steel and mounted on their horses, which were protected in a similar manner. As they had no firearms, the cavalier thus panoplied, defensively and offensively, could ride into an army, cutting them down on all sides with comparative impunity.

From London we crossed the English Channel to France. Fortunately we went by New Haven and Dieppe instead of Dover and Callais, as we had hitherto gone the latter way with terrible storms and awful seasickness. I recommended the other route, as it was calm and delightful.

Paris, with her three millions of population, built stellate, i. e., in the shape of a star, radiating out from the center, has been pronounced the beauty of the whole earth. We peregrinated the city spellbound by her beauty, and with great interest visited Napoleon's tomb. In 1899 I visited his Panorama, with much edification. "We saw his battles moving around us in impressive reality, actually seeing the fire of the guns and imagining that we could hear their jroar and smell the powder, and men and horses were falling in piles all around. As the Panorama has been moved out of the city, we did not have time to go to it.

Reaching France the first of April, we found the season far in advance of the same latitude in America. This is owing to the Gulf Stream, a river in the Atlantic Ocean two hundred miles wide, flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico, between Cuba and Florida, then turning north to Newfoundland, thence east across the'

ocean, and impinging against the coast of France. It so moderates the temperature there as to make the winters exceedingly mild, and to cause the vine and semi-tropical fruits to abound throughout that delightful country.

On the long run of 960 miles from Paris to Rome, we were all much edified. As we approached the great Alpine range, we passed through many tunnels, the one under the center of the Alps, twelve miles long, said to be the longest in the world. Napoleon, Caesar, and other great warriors, left the world most romantic histories by crossing those great mountains. The change between then and now is wonderful, as now the iron horse gallops through at fifty miles an hour.

Thus we passed that long tunnel, and suddenly found ourselves on the sunny side, in the lovely land of Italy, so long the seat of the great iron empire of prophecy.

The great Alpine range on the north border of Italy all the way so protects it from the north winds as to superinduce spring and autumn the year round. The sea breezes on fifteen hundred miles of Mediterranean coast so mitigate the summer heat as to verify the song which the happy inhabitants sing : ' ' Oh, happy land! where flowers never fade and fruits never fail, winter never comes and summer ever lasts."

Just before we reached Rome, we ran through an exceedingly fertile, delightful and fruitful plain, by the ancient poets denominated ^'Elysian fields." Suddenly the glittering dome of St. Peter^s Cathedral anri other lofty towers burst upon our vision, and the iron

Outward Round. 19

horse soon halted for rest and recuperation in great Rome, the illustrious capital of the renowned iron kingdom of prophecy.

As in my former visits, we stopped at the Capitol Hotel, under the immediate shadow of the state capitol and in full view of the Victor Emmanuel monument, erected at the cost of eleven millions of dollars. They were working on it when I was there sixteen years ago, and it is not yet complete. It commemorates the man who shook the Pope down from his temporal throne, A. D. 1866. While this is towering in full view of the Vatican palace, when the "Holy Father" (as the Pope is called), mortified by the sight, seeks relief in looking the other way, his tearful eye can but behold the monument of Garibaldi, who defeated the French army sent to reinstate the Pope.

When I was in Rome sixteen years ago, we had no street-cars. Now she is pretty well supplied. During the Papal reign, this city, longer than any other in all by-gone ages, remained the capital and metropolis of the wliole world. Bhe had a population of four millions in her palmy days, but dropped down to a hundred and fifty thousand. However, she has been constantly growing since the Pope's dethronement, and now has five hundred thousand of a population.

We first ran away to St. Peter's Cathedral. It is built on what was the Campus Martins, where the apostle was crucified with his head downward, at his own request, because he had denied his Lord.

In the center of this wonderful superstructure — which is 835 feet long, 330 feet wide, and 448 feet high, and built of the finest marble, much of it transported from Africa at the cost of $200,000,000 and two hundred years of constant labor — you find what is said to be Peter's sepulchre. It is illuminated night and day, and contains his remains in a golden coffin. His bronze statue stands nearby, for the convenience of all the pilgrims who come to kiss the feet. In this way the toes of the statue have been almost worn off.

. Within the Cathedral, the finest statuary everywhere abounds. It is a universally recognized fact that the Catholic Church is the greatest conservator of the fine arts on the globe to-day, and all the apostles and many other saints of that church are shown up in this cathedral in gigantic statuary.

One there sees St. Dominique, the founder of the Inquisition, exhibited, and a mad dog standing by him with a bundle of flaming fagots in his mouth. This manifests his awful rage against the people called heretics, he being ready to hunt them with mad dogs and burn them with fire.

The **Holy Dooi" of the cathedral is only used by the Pope once in twenty-five years. Then he breaks it open with a silver hammer, walks out, and standing on the veranda, prays for all the people in the world, and claims to forgive their sins. So if you are twenty-five years old, the Pope has forgiven you once.

On the veranda you see the great bronze statue of Charlemagne, the king of France who, in the ninth century, founded the Holy Roman Empire, i. e., the dominion of the Pope over the whole world. This the Pope will audaciously assert when the Great Tribulation sets in, and lie will be the antichrist of prophecy. As Charlemagne was a great warrior, his statue exhibits him mounted on his war horse.

High up in the interior corridors, we see, in letters nine feet long, Matthew 16:18, in Latin: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven."

^This Scripture is the pillar of popery, prelacy and priestcraft, assuming that Peter was the first pope, which is utterly untrue, as there never was a pope in all the world till A. D. 607, when Procas, king of Italy, crowned Boniface HI., bishop of Rome, supreme pontiff of all the churches, and he became the first pope. Peter had played on his golden harp five hundred years before there ever was a pope. They grossly misconstrue the above Scripture.

"Petros" (Peter), as Jesus cognomened him, calling him "rock" on account of his firmness, means a broken rock, such as you everywhere see in buildings, whereas "petree," this rock, is feminine gender, and means the great, unbroken stratum underlying the continents and oceans and constituting the foundation of the world. Throughout the Bible God calls Himself the Rock (Sermon on the Mount). The simple meaning of this Scripture is the fact that the Lord gave Peter and his comrades the keys of the Kingdom, i. e., the precious Word by which they and their successors to this day unlock the door and throw it wide for all who will leave their sins to come in and enjoy bona fide citizenship forever. Meanwhile, against the contemptuous rejecter the key is turned, excluding him eternally from the kingdom of grace and glory.

(a) We left the cathedral and went away to the Coliseum, the largest theater the world ever saw — 1,800 feet in circumference, 160 feet high of solid walls up to the eaves, and with a seating capacity for 100,000 spectators. It was built by captive Jews, led thither by Titus after the destruction of Jerusalem. The order was to sell into slavery all the Jews who survived the sword, pestilence and famine. During the seven years' siege, a million perished, and at the conclusion of the devastation ninety thousand were sold into slaverj^. There wag left on hand a vast host they eould not sell, as the market was supplied, thus verifying the awful prophecies of Ezekiel and Isaiah : ' ' They will sell you and no one will buy."

This vast captive train was led to Rome and turned over as the crown slaves of the emperor. The Coliseum was one of the first public works they performed. This day in America it would cost fifty million dollars. It cost the Romans nothing, as the work was all done by the captives, among whom the greatest mechanics and most skilful artificers did abound.

In A. D. 68 came the great conflagration of Rome, for six days and seven nights wrapping the city in an ocean of flame. At that time Nero, the demonized emperor, sat upon a lofty tower (it is still standing — 1 have seen it), played his fiddle, and sang of the destr action of Troy. Thus he treated that awful calamity so levitously as to superinduce the popular conclusion that he had ordered the conflagration. To rid himself of this appalling criminality, he laid it on the Christians, condemning them all to die for high treason. Thus he lifted the floodgates and inundated the world with martyrs' blood, which thereafter flowed unobstructed for 253 years, or until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, A. D. 321. As Rome was an absolute monarchy, the Christianization of the emperor produced a universal reaction in behalf of our Lord's disciples.

But the emperors, during the long period preceding this, had done their best to exterminate Christianity from the globe, under the double crimination of high treason against the government and heresy against all the gods, which they thought had given them the whole world. During this long, bloody age, the most lucrative entertainment in the Coliseum was feeding the Christians to the wild beasts, for which they had made lairs in the mountains upon which the city is built. I have often gazed on the old, subterranean tunnels through which they brought in the beasts to the Coliseum, purposely so starved that they would come roaring for their prey.

They called the north gate of the Coliseum the *'Gate of Life," because people were brought in to the arena through it alive; and the south gate the '*Gate of Death," because through it their bones were carried out.

In the last sixteen years, God has permitted me four times to visit Rome and stand in the arena of the Coliseum, central in the building for the convenience of all; this is simultudinous to the vast edifice having two foci, giving the building the properties of a whispering gallery, so that the ordinary voice was distinctly audible throughout that assembly of 100,000. Walking over that sacred dust, I always felt that I was treading on holy ground.

Paul, in his Roman letter, sends greetings to Caesar's household. "While Caesar is the cognomen of Roman kings, Julia is that of the queens. A beautiful damsel, through whose veins coursed the royal blood, was brought into the Coliseum to feed the wild beasts. A heathen priest walked in by her side with a censer in his hand, on which he claimed holy fire was burning, and said to her: **Now, Julia, just drop incense on this censer one time, and you are free, for we love you and do not want to hurt you, but must be true to the Roman gods who have given us the whole world. ' ' To her prompt refusal, he says : * ' Do you not hear the lions roaring? They will be on you in a minute.'' She responds: ''I do, but I hear the angels calling and see the chariot lowering. I shall soon mount aboard and fly away to Jesus, who is now bidding me come."

The Coliseum was pronounced one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I trow you want to know the other six. Here they are: ^1) The Temple of Jupiter Olympus, at Athens. It was 400 feet long, 125 feet wide, and 90 feet high up to the eaves, supported by fluted, cylindrical marble columns. (2)

The walls of Babylon, 350 feet high, 87 feet broad, and fifteen miles square, encompassing the city — with its gardens, a million acres. (3) The Colossus at Ehodes. This was the wonderful work of Phineas the sculptor, and exhibited a human giant so altitudinous that the ships passed in and out between its feet. (4) The Temple of Diana, at Ephesus. It was two hundred years in building, and was finally burned down by Erostratus, who confessed under the gallows that he did it for sheer notoriety, that his name might go into history. (5) The Pyramids of Egypt, those stupen dous wonders of ante-diluvian enterprise; and the Sphinx in their midst, the figure with the body of a lion 120 feet long and 60 feet high, the head of a man and the face of a virgin. This showed up to all the world that the Egyptians worshiped a god having the strength and courage of a lion, the intelligence of a man, and the purity of a virgin. And (6) the wonderfully beautiful monolithic red marble temple in which the pyramid builders worshiped the Sphinx.