[00:00:03] Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the President of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website GlobalServants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] What a wonderful evening and what a great beginning for this revival season here at the Great Buford Church of God.
[00:00:36] On next Wednesday night, there'll be my final one in this fall series.
[00:00:44] And it's an important one.
[00:00:48] This whole series of Wednesday nights this fall semester has been about authentic spirit filled Christianity.
[00:00:56] What makes it real and not theoretical.
[00:01:00] And next Wednesday night, one of the defining characteristics of authentic Christianity, of authentic spirit filled Christianity. I hope you'll be here.
[00:01:11] Now let me just bring you up to speed where we are on on this night.
[00:01:18] So we've been talking about authentic spirit filled Christianity on last Wednesday night. I know there are a considerable number of people here that haven't been here for the series. It's all right, you haven't walked into the middle of a movie or but last Wednesday night we talked about the fact that there were even in the book of Acts forget histories since the close of the canon.
[00:01:43] But even in the book of Acts there were subsequent Pentecost experiences subsequent to the initial Pentecost experience in Acts Chapter two.
[00:01:54] So it wasn't a Acts Chapter two, wasn't a one and done.
[00:01:58] It wasn't that God just poured out the Holy Spirit in Acts Chapter two, never ever to do anything like that ever again.
[00:02:06] We talked about the fact that it was clearly the apostolic expectation that subsequent generations would be filled with the Holy Spirit from the very beginning.
[00:02:20] Simon Peter, when he preached on the day of Pentecost, he said, this blessing is to you and to your children, your children's children, and those as far away historically, chronologically and geographically.
[00:02:32] Then we talked about the fact that in Acts chapter four that the people who were filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter two were filled. Again, we talked about it Acts chapter eight that the Samaritans, when they received first a revival of salvation, that immediately all those people were saved. If we should assume that that the minute you're saved you're automatically filled with the Holy Spirit, then the next passage doesn't make any sense. Acts 8, 14, 17 says, and when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet, they were only men and women baptized in the name of Jesus. So they were born again when water baptized Christians. But the apostolic expectation was that they would have their own personal Pentecost experience.
[00:03:32] We see the same thing in Acts chapter 19, that as soon as Paul arrived at the Church in Acts chapter 19 in Ephesus, that his first question have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed?
[00:03:49] Now, if you. If you have your Bibles, that's sort of the back to where we are tonight. If you'll turn it to the Gospel as Luke records it in the 11th chapter, beginning with verse 14.
[00:04:10] Excuse me. Beginning with verse 9.
[00:04:14] If you'll notice, Jesus himself is speaking.
[00:04:18] And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you seek and you shall find.
[00:04:22] Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
[00:04:25] For everyone that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh, findeth. And to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.
[00:04:32] If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?
[00:04:38] Or if he asks for a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? If he asks for an egg, shall he offer him a scorpion?
[00:04:46] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
[00:04:58] Let's pray.
[00:05:01] Heavenly Father, I pray that in the next few moments that you would brush aside every barrier to divine communication, every weakness and frailty in speaker or hearer, every distraction, every impediment to communication, generational, linguistic, cultural.
[00:05:22] I believe you, Lord, that it is your property to commune with your children.
[00:05:28] And I submit myself to you as fully as I know how to do. But I'm believing that if you can't speak through me tonight, that you will speak in spite of me.
[00:05:37] And that when we leave here tonight, we will say one to another, now, surely the Lord has spoken unto us.
[00:05:45] I believe you for it. I thank you for it in advance. In the wonderful name Jesus, the strong Son of God.
[00:05:53] Amen.
[00:05:56] After theological and biblical teaching on the Holy Spirit, on the person, work and ministry of the Holy Spirit, when you've considered the gifts, when you have considered the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, when all of that. After all of that, what do we have left to say?
[00:06:17] Really, the only thing we have left to say is what God has done in our lives.
[00:06:22] When Simon Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost, he was the testimony of God.
[00:06:31] I would never, if I had been God. Now the whole world is happy. I'm not God. But if I had been God, and I never would have let Simon Peter preach the Pentecostal message.
[00:06:42] Pentecost was only 50 days after the crucifixion hit. The crucifixion. Simon Peter had not exactly been a hero, had been a craven, gutless little coward, denied Jesus didn't even go out to the cross. He didn't go to the cross. John went to the cross.
[00:07:00] If I had been God when I poured the Holy Spirit out in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, I would have said to Simon Peter, have a seat. Eat, sport.
[00:07:12] I would have said, john, you preach.
[00:07:15] You preach this great Pentecostal message. My mother's at your house.
[00:07:20] You preach.
[00:07:23] But God chose Simon Peter for a specific reason, to raise up a testimony unto himself.
[00:07:29] And so it is with each of us.
[00:07:33] Well, I can't give your testimonies.
[00:07:38] I was born again, saved as a teenager. I see a lot of young people. Anybody here start in the 10th grade? 15 about. Anybody? 10th graders? 15. Yes. Yes. I was exactly your age. It was the summer before I started the 10th grade.
[00:07:59] I was taken to a Methodist.
[00:08:04] Wasn't an official Methodist church, but all the churches that were there sent their youth groups were Methodist, but they didn't want to go to a Methodist camp. So it was a bunch of rogue Methodist churches and that had their own youth camp.
[00:08:20] Our youth pastor was a wonderful young man, went on to have a great ministry. Young man named Jack Taylor. And he.
[00:08:28] He was a student at Asbury College and he. He wanted me to go to this youth camp. I was a rowdy quarterback. I. I did not want. I had a vague and unsettling feeling that Jesus would disrupt a lot of things in my life.
[00:08:47] And I refused to go to the youth camp. I dug my heels in. My family weren't church people, so they didn't care. My parents weren't going to make me go.
[00:08:58] But about two weeks before the youth camp, another boy and I got arrested. And it wasn't some huge, horrible thing. I didn't live a life of crime. It was a friend of mine who did subsequently live a life of crime, but he is actually prison tonight as we speak.
[00:09:26] Dalton, if you're hearing this, I still love you.
[00:09:30] But he stole a car and came and picked me up.
[00:09:34] Well, I didn't know that the car was stolen and I wasn't in on the theft, but I also didn't ask any questions. And so we were just going to ride around town in the car and then let it go. There was no place to go. We weren't going to take off.
[00:09:51] But we got busted by a local constable. Well, thank God it wasn't a Florida highway patrol.
[00:09:56] And so my friend talked him into letting me go. I was going to play quarterback on the football team that year. He didn't want me to be troubled. So he said.
[00:10:05] He said, I'll release you, but you've got to have an adult come and pick you up. I was on foot, so I don't know about anybody. I was raised by a paratrooper, and I felt that calling my dad was going to be a tactical mistake.
[00:10:25] So for some reason, I called the youth pastor and I said, jack, I've been arrested. They're going to let me go. There's no charges. There's nothing. But I have to be signed out by an adult. Would you come? He said, absolutely.
[00:10:38] And he picked me up. And as we drove home, I said, jack, there's not any reason, really. What difference would it make for my parents to know this? He said, they don't have to know. No reason at all.
[00:10:49] He just reached over while he was driving and opened the glove compartment, and he pulled out an application form. He said, just fill that out for youth camp.
[00:11:01] And I said, are you going to blackmail me into going to youth camp? And he said, oh, it's such an ugly word.
[00:11:12] But there at that youth camp in camp out outside of Andalusia, Alabama, I'm not from a family that use language like born again.
[00:11:26] That night in one of the services, I gave my life to the Lord. And that night, I felt call to preach.
[00:11:36] So I struggled with it on and off, but the call to preach never really left me.
[00:11:44] After Allison and I were married, I didn't tell her until we were married, but I told her about that. And she was a far more dedicated and committed Christian than I, even as she is today.
[00:12:02] And she was thrilled over it. She wasn't upset, worried.
[00:12:08] So we finished undergraduate school and came here to Georgia. I had never lived in Georgia before, and we came here to attend the Methodist Seminary in Atlanta at Emory University Candler School of Theology, to do my master's degree.
[00:12:22] I was a blank slate.
[00:12:25] I knew I was saved. I knew that being born again was real.
[00:12:30] I never wanted to be some crazy liberal.
[00:12:34] I had my Old Testament professor, Hendrikus Boris. I'm not defaming him. If he was standing here, he would tell you the same thing. My Old Testament professor was an atheist, and I had professors who believed in, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff. Our mother, Father, God, and it was crazy, But I never bought into all that.
[00:12:57] I wanted to be a good Methodist preacher that believed in it, but I was a blank slate.
[00:13:04] I didn't know anything. I had no theological background, no training.
[00:13:09] I had gone to. I always joke around, people say, did you go to a Christian school? I said, no, I went to a state university and a Methodist school. I never got to go to a Christian school. But.
[00:13:25] But the theology of the Holy Spirit that I was taught deeply and profoundly impacted me in a way that was to stand between me and an effective and anointed ministry. For years I was taught a modified form of what's called cessationism, that the gifts of the Spirit ceased. Cessation ceased with the death of the last apostle.
[00:13:58] I was taught that an understanding of the Book of Acts that made it into a museum piece.
[00:14:06] You go to a museum, you see an artifact, a cup that Abraham Lincoln drank out of. It's labeled, ooh, as a cup. Abraham Lincoln drank out of it. But you don't expect to drink out of.
[00:14:21] Has no real effect in your life. That's how I was taught the Book of Acts, that God had to do that stuff then to get the church going.
[00:14:32] But we daren't expect those things anymore.
[00:14:37] Indeed, I was taught more than that, an adversarial relationship with the things of Pentecost.
[00:14:48] And I, I preached it in my ignorance, I preached it, I mocked it, and I. I didn't, I didn't believe in the things of the Spirit.
[00:15:03] So therefore the things that the Holy Spirit could have done in those early years of my ministry and in my life were left undone.
[00:15:15] I was struggling along with a kind of dedicated, bare bones Christianity. And I wanted to make it work. I wanted to do the ministry right, but there was not enough fuel.
[00:15:33] In addition to that, I had struggled from junior high school on and off with waves of depression.
[00:15:42] It had never overwhelmed me, but I would fight it off. And I covered it with energy and personality and sports and fun. It was like a.
[00:16:01] It was like a dark and terrible monster that you keep locked up in the closet and you think you got it, but it's always there.
[00:16:12] So the ministry, whether you know this or not, the ministry is not a great place to try to get well.
[00:16:22] And so the monster was rattling the door the whole time.
[00:16:28] I was transferred from my first church to be the associate pastor of a large Methodist church in Decatur, Georgia.
[00:16:41] And I realized deep inside that I was off the rails.
[00:16:49] But it's very difficult it's excruciating to look into the mirror of your life and say, this is wrong.
[00:16:59] Something's missing, something's wrong here. Instead, what happens is you become one. Not you. One becomes more and more defensive about it. So anybody that touched that nerve in me, I got angry and I got angrier and angrier.
[00:17:19] Our marriage began to suffer from that anger and that depression.
[00:17:27] My wife had an attraction to the things of the spirit.
[00:17:33] She wanted to know more about what the Holy Spirit was and what he did and who he was and those kinds of things. I was terrified of it and resistant, so we couldn't even talk about it.
[00:17:51] Life with a really angry and depressed preacher is just not a bowl of cherries.
[00:17:58] And so I filled my life up with work, everything. I was full time minister at a church. I was coaching a football team. I was refereeing three nights a week. Just everything to everything to fill my life up. So I didn't have a quiet moment to be confronted by the beast in the closet or by me.
[00:18:21] I came in late one night and my wife was in the living room weeping.
[00:18:26] And I said, what are you crying about?
[00:18:29] And she said, I've been reading this book about the Holy Spirit.
[00:18:34] I said, who wrote it? She said, pat Boone. I said, oh, my God, baby, Pat Boone.
[00:18:42] God, he's baptizing movie stars in his swimming pool. He's nuts.
[00:18:47] And I grabbed the little paperback book out of her hand and I just. I threw it like a Frisbee across the living room.
[00:18:56] And I said. I said, I don't ever want you to mention that to me ever again.
[00:19:01] I said, I'm just not spending my career in the Methodist church known as the guy whose wife talks in tongues.
[00:19:08] So I said, that's over with.
[00:19:13] So the pastor at the church, I was the associate pastor, the lead pastor, had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and had become a group, part of a group of Methodist pastors that were interested in the charismatic renewal movement.
[00:19:30] The charismatic movement was hitting the Methodist Church like a tidal wave.
[00:19:34] And we, all of us who were against the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we didn't know what to do with it. We had charismatics in our churches, like termites. We didn't know what tried to. I ran. I ran a lot of them out.
[00:19:50] When I came into Pentecost, they were, oh, Dr. Rutland, you've come.
[00:19:58] So immediately when the issue of the Holy Spirit came up, then the senior pastor, Dr. Charles Boland, and I, we were at daggers drawn.
[00:20:07] We couldn't exchange a civil word because it Was this fundamental issue of the baptism of the Holy Spirit was between us.
[00:20:20] The little church that I pastored before I went to Decatur, I wanted to do it right. That's what you have to get in your head.
[00:20:32] I wanted to do it right. I wanted to do it the way they taught me. I did the whole deal. I wore the robe. I preached every Sunday in an ankle length Geneva gown, you know, stole, and everything. I taught acolytes, I taught them to light the candles, you know, and come in and everything.
[00:20:51] I wasn't a rebel in that sense. I wanted to do it right.
[00:20:57] Little worship services were just dead as a mackerel. And I know that what layman, I don't know how many. There's only three or four pastors in the room tonight. But laymen think the worst thing in the world is to sit through a dead, unanointed sermon.
[00:21:18] Well, it's not.
[00:21:20] Preach one.
[00:21:24] He said, preach one every Sunday, Sunday after Sunday.
[00:21:29] Preach one for seven years.
[00:21:32] At the end of it, you just feel like there isn't anything in this. There is anything to this.
[00:21:42] The ministry was making me miserable, and the thought of leaving it was making me miserable.
[00:21:48] And one Sunday morning, we had a visitor in the little church.
[00:21:52] It's a little tiny church. A visitor, you know, was huge, and he was well dressed, driving a luxury car. I mean, great.
[00:22:01] We were going through the service and we sang the doxology, you know, the docs. Praise God from whom all blessings flow Praise him all creatures here below Praise him above ye heavenly hosts Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost It's a fairly praiseworthy song.
[00:22:16] And this visitor threw his hands up in the air and it stunned me.
[00:22:23] And I.
[00:22:24] I was shooting him telepathic messages from the pulpit.
[00:22:29] But you're.
[00:22:30] Hands down.
[00:22:33] But he was. He wasn't hearing it, man. He was gone.
[00:22:38] So I knew I.
[00:22:40] There are things. There are things in leadership. If you don't nip it in the bud early, it'll get away from you. So I was at the door shaking hands with people as they left the Methodist tradition. And I, you know, I was waiting on that visitor. Yeah, go. Go to. Go to lunch, get some chicken. Bye. Bye. Bye.
[00:22:57] I was waiting on that visitor.
[00:22:59] And when he came, I grabbed his hand. I said, now, friend, you're always welcome here. You're a visitor. I'm delighted you're here. You're always welcome. But I gotta tell you something. We need to deal with it. We don't do that kind of thing in this church.
[00:23:11] I said, you just need to know that he didn't get mad, nothing. He put his hand on my shoulder and he smiled and he said, pastor, do you have the joy of the Lord?
[00:23:27] Fury.
[00:23:28] Fury with rage.
[00:23:32] I thought if I could get my thumbs around your larynx, you'd find out about the joy of the Lord.
[00:23:39] But it got on me so much, I decided to preach. I preached a six week series on joy.
[00:23:46] It's an amazing thing to watch a really angry man preach on joy.
[00:23:51] We're going to have joy in this church if I have to kill some people.
[00:24:01] So all of that is going on inside of me and our marriage has fallen to pieces.
[00:24:10] And I moved to this great appointment, a big church. It was a great appointment for a young guy. And what do I get there and find out? The lead pastors are charismatic. I mean, just feel like the roof is falling in on me.
[00:24:23] So he, the lead pastor, organized a conference first week of December, 1975. I know for the young people here it sounds like I'm talking about the Crimean War, but it was called Power for Ministry today. And nobody was allowed to attend except United Methodist ministers.
[00:24:46] And he wanted me to go. And I said, well, I'm not going.
[00:24:49] And he said, oh yeah, you're going.
[00:24:52] He said, I pay your salary and you're going. He said, the church will pay for your room and all your expenses, but you are going.
[00:25:01] So you know how you do when you, when you go somewhere angry and you show up late.
[00:25:13] I didn't want to be there.
[00:25:15] I was angry.
[00:25:18] The chairs were awful when I got there.
[00:25:23] What idiot sets up exactly the number of chairs of the people who register?
[00:25:32] So there was one empty chair, it was on the front row.
[00:25:39] So I came in depressed, angry, my marriage in ruins.
[00:25:49] Incidences in my life that were eaten at me that night.
[00:25:54] I came in and sat down on the front row and little man next to me with his bible on his lap, little wire rimmed glasses and he pats me on the arm. We're going to have a great conference.
[00:26:07] And that night it was so simple. They sang. They sang two Methodist songs, just two Methodist songs.
[00:26:17] A minister stood up and told about one time that people had prayed for him and his eyes got better, was it?
[00:26:26] And then they said, our guest speaker tonight is Dr. David Seamans from the First United Methodist Church in Wilmore, Kentucky.
[00:26:33] So on the campus with Asbury College.
[00:26:35] And he said, we'd like to ask Dr. Seamans if he'll come now and preach. So the little man sitting next to me said, now you pray for Me, son. And he got up and just those moments where you can feel that breath of God on the back of your neck.
[00:26:55] And so I braced myself and he said, well, I know you brought me here to this conference to preach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But he said, I feel led of the Lord not to do that tonight.
[00:27:07] Yes, he said, instead, I. I want to preach on sin in the ministry.
[00:27:15] Do you ever have people, Pastor Joy? You ever have people? I say, oh, you stepped on my toes. You ever have that? Oh, you stepped on that little man whooped me with a bicycle chain. He I don't know if. Have you ever been under conviction in a meeting and you think everybody else knows what you're feeling. It's like, this is the guy I'm talking about right here in the front row.
[00:27:41] When he got finished, he didn't give an altar call.
[00:27:46] And I hit the door at a dead run. I went to my car and never even went to the room that my church had paid for.
[00:27:54] I drove all the way home.
[00:27:56] My wife said, what are you doing home? I said, oh, God, baby, it was crazy.
[00:28:01] It was crazy.
[00:28:02] This is what we do, isn't it? We sang two Methodist hymns, heard a testimony and a sermon on holiness. And I said, oh, it's crazy, crazy stuff.
[00:28:12] I said, they call themselves Methodists if they want to. It was a bunch of Jack leg Pentecostals, all of them nuts.
[00:28:19] And I said I couldn't go tomorrow even if I wanted to.
[00:28:24] I've got to mow the lawn.
[00:28:28] It was December in Atlanta, 1975, one of the coldest Decembers on record in the state of Georgia.
[00:28:37] I got up the next morning to go out and mow the lawn. There was frost on the grass.
[00:28:45] Put on a coat and gloves. I could my breath.
[00:28:48] I'm walking up and down the front yard. At that time I had a Catholic neighbor on one side and a Baptist on the other. Don't you know they hit the windows?
[00:28:55] Come here, Margaret. He's gone over the edge.
[00:29:00] And I realized that no grass was thrown out of the blower.
[00:29:05] And I thought, this is crazy.
[00:29:09] I have a doctorate.
[00:29:11] I have a 4 credit A at the postgraduate level in pneumatology. I think I understand the person working ministry of the Holy Spirit.
[00:29:22] I'm not going to be intimidated about this.
[00:29:25] I went inside, got my shower, got dressed, started out of the house and look, here's the thing I don't understand about women. What? Why won't they leave it alone?
[00:29:38] So I started out of my house and my Wife steps out of the kitchen, and she said, decide to go back.
[00:29:49] I drove across town, screeched up in the parking lot of the hotel, put my Bible under my arm. I said, I just. I hope somebody says Holy Spirit to me. I just hope they say it.
[00:30:02] And I went in. Of course, by that time, the morning session was over.
[00:30:06] I arrived at the auditorium, little ballroom, seated about one hundred and fifty people. And just as the morning session ended, I actually opened the door as it ended. And it was something I never expected to see.
[00:30:22] There were men weeping, they were praying with each other. It was. I never.
[00:30:28] What in the world.
[00:30:32] So a Methodist preacher came out, a guy that I knew whose name was Marcus.
[00:30:36] Nice, safe, dependable Methodist preacher in my tribe.
[00:30:41] So I went to him and I said, marcus, what in the world has happened in here? And this nice, safe Methodist preacher grabbed me by my lapels and basically screamed in my face.
[00:30:53] He said, jesus has healed me and filled me with the Holy Spirit.
[00:31:00] So I felt it was time for my seminary voice. And I said, now, Marcus, when you say Jesus has healed me, I mean, when you say Jesus has healed me, what are you trying to communicate?
[00:31:15] How do I plug into that?
[00:31:18] How should I connect?
[00:31:20] When you say Jesus has healed me, I mean, what does that really mean?
[00:31:27] Oh, you laugh. There are preachers that do that every Sunday.
[00:31:32] He stared at me like I was speaking Russian.
[00:31:35] He said, you know, not the guy that spoke last night, but the guy from California.
[00:31:40] He just prayed for me. He said, I'm deaf in my left ear.
[00:31:44] And he said he just prayed for me and I can hear.
[00:31:47] And he said, I've hated my father's guts since I was 10 years old, and God has filled me with the Holy Spirit and I've forgiven my dad.
[00:31:59] He said, look, let's go eat lunch together.
[00:32:03] So we went down to the little restaurant in the hotel there.
[00:32:06] And of course, everybody else had beat us down there. It was packed.
[00:32:10] The one table with two people there, and they said, come over here, come over here.
[00:32:16] So it was the two guest speakers, and my friend, he was just. He was still careening off of the walls.
[00:32:26] So the one speaker spoke last night, terrified me.
[00:32:31] And the other guy was Dr. Ralph Wilkerson, pastor of Melodyland Christian center in Anaheim.
[00:32:38] I mean, look, I'm a Methodist preacher. You can't name your church Melodyland.
[00:32:45] No, you can't do that.
[00:32:48] First Methodist. I understand that.
[00:32:51] Asbury Methodist doesn't make sense. Melody Land. No.
[00:32:55] Also, Wilkerson had on white shoes in December.
[00:33:01] Now, listen to me. You cannot Wear white shoes after Labor Day. Learn something.
[00:33:12] So lunch was just horrible for me.
[00:33:16] When we got up for the afternoon session, I got there early. I got in the back row, and Wilkerson got up to preach. And I thought, I'll watch him.
[00:33:26] I'll just watch him.
[00:33:29] He preached about 20 minutes, and he did not say one thing about the Holy Spirit at a theological or theoretical level that I disagreed with.
[00:33:39] Not one thing.
[00:33:42] Been speaking about 20 minutes and closed his Bible. And he said, well, that's enough of that.
[00:33:47] I said, that's enough of that.
[00:33:51] You can't end a Methodist sermon. That's enough of that. I said, he hadn't even read his poem yet. You gotta, he said.
[00:34:06] He said, I don't believe we ought to seek the presence of the Holy Spirit in a vacuum.
[00:34:13] He just opened his hands up and prayed, oh, Lord, fill this room with the Holy Spirit.
[00:34:23] And the palpable sense of the awesome presence of God filled the room.
[00:34:31] Was. It was terrifying. It was wonderful. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced.
[00:34:37] He began to pray with people for healings. Physical, physical healings in the room that I watched, I saw, and I knew exactly what to do.
[00:34:49] I hit the door at a dead run.
[00:34:52] I went down to my car.
[00:34:54] I came back into the hallway, went down to the car again, got in the car, came all the way back. I thought, this is crazy. This is crazy.
[00:35:03] Finally, I came back in, and just as I came in the third time and sat on the back row, Wilkerson said, somebody here is going to give us a word of prophecy. Now, Look, I took 1 and 2 Corinthians at the graduate level, and I'd never heard the phrase word of prophecy used in a functional sentence.
[00:35:27] I thought, what is he talking about?
[00:35:30] I said, God has told me somebody here has a word of prophecy. I want you to stand up and give it.
[00:35:37] A man on the front row, one of the most liberal ministers in the conference.
[00:35:43] I don't know if he even believed in the Resurrection. He was a liberal.
[00:35:48] And he stood up, his face was as white as a sheet, and he turned to us and he said, well, boys, it's me.
[00:35:59] He said, the crazy thing is I don't even believe in this.
[00:36:07] But he said, I was just sitting there on the front row, and the thought came in my head, in a moment, that man's going to call for a word of prophecy. Stand up and open your mouth and I'll fill it.
[00:36:18] That man raised his hand and he said, thus saith the Lord, I'm going to do A great thing, and it begins now.
[00:36:29] And when he said that, men began to weep.
[00:36:34] The power of God fell in the room. I fell out of my chair, down on my knees, weeping, crying.
[00:36:43] Wilkerson, God bless his heart, he came out and got down in the floor with me.
[00:36:51] He kind of picked my head up like this, and I braced myself.
[00:36:58] You know what he said?
[00:37:00] He said, brother Pastor, I love you.
[00:37:04] He didn't say, all right, now we're going to shake tongues out of you.
[00:37:09] I think I could have resisted anything but what he said.
[00:37:13] He said, I love you.
[00:37:16] I said, if you knew me, you wouldn't love me.
[00:37:19] I said, my ministry is bankrupt. My marriage is finished.
[00:37:23] I said, I tried to kill myself on Thanksgiving afternoon.
[00:37:28] I put a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger. And it didn't go off.
[00:37:32] I said, I'm dying, friend.
[00:37:34] I'm dying.
[00:37:38] He said, don't you want to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
[00:37:42] I opened my mouth to say, no, I don't believe in that. I don't believe in a second work of grace. I don't believe Pentecost is for today. No.
[00:37:53] I opened my mouth to say that, and I heard my own mouth say, yes, please, that's what I want.
[00:38:08] And I realized for once that my spirit and not my intellect had answered.
[00:38:19] Wilkerson led me in a simple prayer, very simple, excuse me, excuse me.
[00:38:27] Lord, I give you my life, everything I am, everything I have, my ministry, my marriage, everything, it's all yours. It was a prayer of just a prayer of surrender, Lordship, if you will.
[00:38:39] He said, now I'm gonna lay hands on you.
[00:38:41] And I just braced myself again.
[00:38:46] You'll laugh, but I had actually been told that Pentecostal preachers carried a buzzer in the palm of their hand, hidden, and that they would go down and hit people with a buzzer.
[00:39:04] He said, I'm going to lay hands on you. And I said, oh, God, he's going to buzz me. I know he's.
[00:39:15] He just placed his fingertips against my forehead and he said, okay, Son, in the name of Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit.
[00:39:24] I don't know what happened to anybody else in that room. I don't give other people's testimonies.
[00:39:31] But at four o' clock in the afternoon on December 5, 1975, suicidal, depressed, bankrupt Methodist preacher fell on the floor of a hotel room and came up filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:39:56] For me, for me in that moment, for me in that moment, it was no longer theoretical.
[00:40:07] There's no debate, there's no theology, cessationism is finished.
[00:40:14] That's finished.
[00:40:16] You spend seven years. Imagine you're a paleontologist and you spend seven years traveling around telling people that there's no such thing as dinosaurs. All the dinosaurs are gone. The dinosaurs are finished. And you come home and in your living room there's a Tyrannosaurus rex.
[00:40:33] Well, there's no debate. There's no theology that's done.
[00:40:39] Of course, subsequently to that, I began to actually, like, read the Bible. That that helped a lot.
[00:40:47] And I realized that it's not intellectually defensible, it's not biblically honest, and it was experientially now transformed.
[00:41:02] So I went home and told Allison.
[00:41:07] About a week later, Allison received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. She wanted it. She was longing for it.
[00:41:14] I think she struggled a little bit with the fact that she'd been begging for it. And God rammed it down my throat and she.
[00:41:26] So that happened on Saturday. I was afraid. This will show you how people think, isn't it? I knew I would wake up the next morning and it would be gone. That it was just pop joy, you know, I didn't. I didn't want to just shoot up on Jesus. I wanted.
[00:41:45] So I just was terrified of it. I woke up the next morning. When I woke up, I knew it was real.
[00:41:52] I opened my eyes.
[00:41:55] So I told Allison, I said, I'm not going to drive to church today. I'm going to walk. She said, you're going to walk? I said, I just want to walk to church.
[00:42:04] I walked to church. And it was this overwhelming sense of joy, just joy.
[00:42:16] I almost felt an irrepressible urge to giggle.
[00:42:22] And when I got to church, Dr. Bolan and I, the lead pastor and I were in the.
[00:42:30] In the vestry getting our robes on and everything like that. And I just felt, this is with me. It's with me.
[00:42:40] So I was the liturgist for that Sunday morning. Dr. Bolan was to preach, and I was at the liturgy. You know, stand up here, turn to this page in your hymnbook and that kind of thing.
[00:42:50] Everything was fine until we came to the Apostles Creed.
[00:42:56] We kept the Apostles Creed taped on the pulpit here, just as you know, not that we didn't know the Apostles Creed. You just want to stumble.
[00:43:04] So I said, let us stand and unite our hearts together in this historic confession of the Christian faith. And a thousand Methodists stood up and began to drone through the Apostles Creed with our usual bovine enthusiasm.
[00:43:19] I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ. His only son, our Lord, conceived by the Holy Spirit. Da, yada, yada.
[00:43:28] My eye went down the page and I saw the line where the train wreck was gonna happen.
[00:43:37] The tension building inside of me. We came to that, and for the first time, I know you Pentecostals laugh at this. The first time in my life, I raised my hands in church and I said, I believe in the Holy Ghost.
[00:44:04] The Apostles Creed ended. It stopped everybody.
[00:44:10] Nobody had raised their voice in that church in 50 years. They couldn't.
[00:44:15] Associate pastor standing there with his hands up. Now, I remember thinking, what?
[00:44:19] Cat's out of the bag.
[00:44:24] So I told him, I said, Look, Dr. Boland is preaching this morning, but I'm preaching tonight with night service. I said, I'm preaching tonight.
[00:44:34] Something has happened in my life, something huge, and I'm going to tell about it tonight. If you don't want to hear it, don't come.
[00:44:43] But I'm going to tell about it tonight. When I got to the service at night, it was packed.
[00:44:48] We'd had the balcony roped off for five years. The balcony was full.
[00:44:52] It was packed.
[00:44:53] The precious lady that was the choir director, she had a Cokesbury hymnal. Her hand, she said, oh, what? What should we sing? What should we sing? I said, have a seat, sister.
[00:45:06] There's nothing to sing.
[00:45:09] And I just stood up and I quoted Luke 11:13, with which we began, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them? That ask him.
[00:45:25] And I said, yesterday, the associate pastor at this church, who happens to be me, I asked the biblical question that I was invited to ask, and I received the biblical answer that I was promised.
[00:45:40] And I went back and told them everything, told them everything.
[00:45:47] When I got finished, you could hear a pin drop in the place.
[00:45:51] And I said, now you have to make a choice.
[00:45:56] Do you want to ask and receive, or would you rather leave?
[00:46:02] So I said, here's what I'm going to do. I've never given an altar call in my life.
[00:46:07] I said, I'm going to give you permission to leave if you want to leave, leave. If you want what I've asked, then you come forward.
[00:46:14] And I said, I'm just going to put my head over on the pulpit and pray until everybody leaves that wants to leave.
[00:46:21] So I did that. And I could hear the people leaving. I could hear the walking, walking, walking. I said, oh, God, they're all leaving.
[00:46:29] And when I looked up, they hadn't left. They came forward, hundreds Hundreds of good, sweet Methodist people that have been starving in their pews, longing.
[00:46:47] I could see them there with their hands up, tears streaming down their face.
[00:46:51] God, do it to me.
[00:46:53] Give me what you gave him.
[00:46:57] I knew two things right there. I knew I could never go back again.
[00:47:03] I had crossed some kind of a Rubicon in ministry, that I could never go back again.
[00:47:10] The other thing I knew was I didn't know what to do with these people.
[00:47:18] It never crossed my mind anybody would come forward. And I realized I didn't know what to do.
[00:47:24] And I looked up, and right about.
[00:47:26] Right about where you're sitting there on the aisle side, there was a retired insurance salesman back there that had been trying to get me to go with him to a full gospel businessman's meeting for two years.
[00:47:39] I thought he was certifiable. I mean, what, I would have voted to have him Baker act. He was nuts. And it was as if the whole congregation went away and Harry was the only person I could see.
[00:47:52] I had a body pack microphone on. I said, every head bowed and every eye closed and I turned it off and I just went up the aisle.
[00:48:01] Harry never looked up. I went up the aisle. I put my hand on his arm and he said, you don't know what to do, do you?
[00:48:13] I said, oh, Harry, Harry, I need you. I need you.
[00:48:18] Come. Come and help me.
[00:48:19] So he came up and he said, tell everybody that wants to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to go into the fellowship hall and everybody else is released. Took all his people, it was packed.
[00:48:31] And he said, now just come with me and let's minister to him. And that layman, not a seminary professor, not a pastor, a Methodist layman, an insurance salesman, retired.
[00:48:44] He said, lead this one in prayer now reach over. He said, lay your hands on him in the Methodist Church.
[00:48:52] That's a huge thing, you know, the bishop lays hands on you for ordination. Take thou the authority to preach the gospel. And he said, lay your hands on. I said, oh, Harry, I don't know if I have the authority for this. He said, in the name of Jesus.
[00:49:12] So I just began to move through crowd, you know. In the name of Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit.
[00:49:21] In a few minutes, I looked up and Harry had left the room.
[00:49:26] You remember when your dad taught you to ride a bicycle?
[00:49:29] And he'd run along behind you holding the seat. You remember this? And then at some point, you look up and he's standing back at the end of the cul de sac.
[00:49:37] That's what?
[00:49:39] The person really that brought me into the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a California charismatic wearing white shoes.
[00:49:48] And the person that led me into ministering the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a retired insurance salesman.
[00:49:55] And I realized it has absolutely nothing to do with all the stuff that I thought was so important.
[00:50:04] And it has everything to do with one simple question.
[00:50:11] Is this for today?
[00:50:15] That's the whole thing.
[00:50:19] Is this for today?
[00:50:25] So I ask you this question. This is the one Wilkerson asked me.
[00:50:31] Have you asked for the baptism of the Holy Spirit since you first believed there may be some here that would say this is biblical? Acts chapter four?
[00:50:42] Yes, I asked.
[00:50:43] I received.
[00:50:45] But I've come to a place in my life where I need.
[00:50:49] I need more.
[00:50:50] The people that received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter four, only two chapters earlier were the initial veterans of Pentecost.
[00:51:01] The finest tractor on the best farm in the wealthiest country in the world occasionally needs fresh oil.
[00:51:10] There's no shame to that.
[00:51:12] Said, look, I need. I need a fresh anointing.
[00:51:17] That's an Acts chapter 4 request. God, fill me again.
[00:51:23] Tell me again. Do you think God is. Do you think God is thinking, no. Now I gave you. That irritates me for you even to ask, no, that's not your God. That's your mother in law. That's not so.
[00:51:45] Some here would say, yes, I.
[00:51:47] I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit some time ago, some months ago, years ago, decades ago.
[00:51:55] But I'm.
[00:51:57] I'm dry.
[00:51:58] I'm empty.
[00:52:02] Paul's question in Acts chapter 19. Have you received and gone on receiving the Holy Spirit since you believed others that would say, insofar as anything I can identify as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I haven't.
[00:52:22] I haven't received that experience of Pentecost for power, for transformation, for grace and for fullness and for. For joy.
[00:52:38] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them? That ask him now, I know it's a little later, but just stay with me for a moment.
[00:52:55] So here's the question now.
[00:52:58] Were you to leave from where you are and come here tonight and ask for the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
[00:53:06] Yes. God is going to fill you with the Spirit. Yes, Let every man be a liar. But God is true.
[00:53:15] But the question is, what might it feel like?
[00:53:21] What would you experience?
[00:53:23] What's going to happen to you if you come forward?
[00:53:27] And see, here's the thing.
[00:53:30] I don't know I don't know.
[00:53:37] Surrendering to God is writing Jesus a blank check.
[00:53:43] God, what I'm asking you for is the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
[00:53:49] That him, the Holy Spirit himself, fill me with the Holy Spirit.
[00:53:56] What that feels like or what I experience or concomitant other things, I let. I leave that to you, and I leave it to you. In everybody else's life, why can't we let the Holy Ghost be as wonderfully unique in everyone else as he is in us?
[00:54:14] Let God vary the level of the experience.
[00:54:21] I've seen every thousand.
[00:54:23] I've seen people weep. My wife just bowed her sweet little head and she said, oh, thank you, God.
[00:54:30] Thank you.
[00:54:32] I wept.
[00:54:34] I wept.
[00:54:35] All the anger and the hurt and the depression and the fear and the loneliness and the failure. I just wept and wept and wept out of me.
[00:54:44] My wife just said, thank you, Lord.
[00:54:48] I said, that's it.
[00:54:53] Not gonna cry. She said, I'm just so grateful.
[00:54:58] I remember the first time I ever saw anybody laugh.
[00:55:01] I never forget that. First Methodist church in Douglasville, Georgia, I preached. An elderly lady came forward, knelt at the communion rail, you know, in a Methodist church.
[00:55:11] I went over to her. I said, sister, do you want to receive the Holy Spirit? She said, yes.
[00:55:18] I laid my hand on her little gray head and said, art, in the name of Jesus, receive the Holy Ghost. And she put her head back and began to laugh, just laugh. And I was so offended.
[00:55:32] I was.
[00:55:34] Oh, I left and went up. I said, lord, look at that silly old woman laughing.
[00:55:44] Look at her.
[00:55:47] And the Lord spoke to me. He said, what's the matter with you?
[00:55:50] She has lived her whole life like a clenched fist, and I've just given her my joy.
[00:55:59] And I looked at her again, and it looked like Jesus was kneeling down beside of her.
[00:56:04] And it looked to me like he was laughing.
[00:56:09] And it looked like he was laughing at me. And I remember the first time I ever saw anybody fall down.
[00:56:24] You have to remember, I didn't grow up with this.
[00:56:29] I went to preach in a little tiny church in the mountains of northeast Mexico.
[00:56:36] And I preached on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And a big lady came. La Gorda Mucha. I mean, a big woman came.
[00:56:44] She came forward, and when I touched, I just touched her forehead. And she fell backward from her heels like a domino on a bare concrete floor. And her head bounced like a basketball.
[00:56:59] And I thought I'd never seen. Never heard of it.
[00:57:03] I thought that she had come forward with secret sin in her life and God had killed her.
[00:57:12] I was shaken it shook me, literally. I went, I said, oh, my God.
[00:57:20] I sat down on the edge of the platform and the little Pentecostal missionary, he's got this Methodist preacher on his head.
[00:57:29] He came up and put his arm around me. He said, that frightened you, didn't? I said, yes. And he said, it's all right. She's just been slain in the spirit. And I said, oh, God. I thought so.
[00:57:43] Slain in the spirit is a very militant turn of phrase.
[00:57:48] I didn't even know he was armed. I didn't.
[00:57:56] So here's one of the problems for cultural Pentecostals, and here it is, is that you can, you can spend so much of your life in an environment that feels spirit filled and is perhaps even spear filled in a cultural and experiential and worshipful atmosphere that's spirit filled so much of your life until you think it, until you think it's in you.
[00:58:42] Then that's the scariest thing for Pentecostal teenagers.
[00:58:47] To me, in some ways, it's easier to say something to somebody who's never heard it than it is to say, I know what you've seen, I know what you've grown up with, I know what you've heard talked about.
[00:59:02] But is it real in your life?
[00:59:09] So one last time we come to this question.
[00:59:15] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
[00:59:26] So here's my question.
[00:59:29] Have you asked him?
[00:59:32] And have you asked him lately?
[00:59:41] You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on
[email protected] or visit his website, Dr.markrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
