Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: 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] Speaker B: You have your Bibles. If you'll take those and turn if you will please to the Book of Acts.
Acts Chapter two. I want to speak tonight on what really happened at Pentecost. Acts chapter 2. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord, in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Upon each of them.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven. Now, when this was noised abroad. Pause a moment. That's an awkward turn of phrase, but it means when the word of this.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: Went through the streets of Jerusalem, people.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Began to hear about it, and they.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Rushed to the place where it was happening.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Now, when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded, because that every man heard heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? How hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born, Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus, in Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya, about Cyrenia, and the strangers of Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed and were in doubt, saying one to another, what meaneth this?
Others mocking said, these men are full of new wine. New wine meaning cheap wine, popsicle wine. But Peter, standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice and said unto them, ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, and be this known unto you, and hearken to my words, for these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day, the third hour of the day, as ancient Jews reckon time would be 9 in the morning.
So good old Practical Simon Peter. No highfalutin theology here. He says, look, it's 9am how would we have enough wine to get 120 people so stoned they can't talk plain by 9 in the morning?
There's not that much thunderbird in all of Jerusalem.
For these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.
But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.
And here, beginning with verse 17, Simon Peter quotes or more precisely paraphrases the second chapter of the prophecy of Joel.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit. And they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs in the earth beneath. Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness.
[00:03:52] Speaker C: And the moon into blood before that.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Great and notable day of the Lord come.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: And it shall come to pass that.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Whosoever shall call upon the name of.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: The Lord shall be saved.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Put your hands on your Bible, if.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: You will, and let's pray together.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Heavenly Father, with our hands upon the Word and our hearts and minds as.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Open as we know how to get them, we're asking you to do all the rest.
Come, Holy Spirit.
Brush aside every barrier to divine communication, cultural, linguistic, generational, everything that would stand between us and you and speak to us deep within.
We believe you for it. In the wonderful name of Jesus, the strong son of God.
Amen.
What really happened at Pentecost?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: It can be one of those things that we have read about so often, heard, preached upon, so often talked about, to which we make reference.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: But what actually happened there?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: And that's not as easy a question.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: As you think it is in any.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Given historical event, what actually happened? The ultimate reality of what happened may not equal the sum of all the parts of things that happened.
Now that I've got you confused, let me show you what I mean. Let's suppose that Pastor and I go over here to see a high school football game, and as we come out, we're met in the parking lot by somebody from some godforsaken foreign country, Michigan or something.
And he says, what was going on in there? I saw the lights and heard the noise. We say that was American football.
And he says, okay, I've never been. What Is it what happened in there? And I say, okay, what happened is that there were five men with striped shirts and bill caps and whistles around their necks on straps, and they got yellow flags in their back pocket. And they run up and down on a field that's defined as 100 yards by 50 yards and by sheer whim and vagary having nothing to do with anything that's actually happened on the field. They blow the whistle and throw the flag in the air. If you want to really understand football, buy you a whistle and a yellow flag, get out in your front yard, run up and down, and every time the fancy overtakes you, blow the whistle and throw the flag and you'll have football.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Pastor stares at me in amazement, and.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: He says to the guy, that's not what happened. He said, what happened was there were 12 beautiful young girls in short skirts that were jumping up, and we'll not pursue that any further. But both of those things happened. There are referees, right? There's the back judge, the land judge.
There are referees. But you cannot explain the essential nature of the contest in terms of the referees. In fact, were the referees to disappear, you might even have a more effective game.
You can't. Regardless of what the Dallas Cowboys would have us think, you can't understand the game in terms of the cheerleaders. There are cheerleaders. There's somebody selling hot dogs in the stands. There is a press box. There are referees. But if you add all those things together, you still can't understand football.
There are a lot of things that happened on the upper room.
A lot of things. I'm not telling you those things are going to happen in here tonight. However, I can't guarantee you that they won't.
But just suppose that right now, just as we sit here, all of a sudden, the sound of a tornado rips through the room. Just the sound. Not a hair on your head ruffled by a breeze, but the sound of a tornado just rips through the room. Wouldn't that be exciting? And might scare the liver out of you, but wouldn't it be exciting?
And no sooner is that gone than right up in the top, there is the boiling, tumultuous cloud of the Shekinah glory. And it whirls off into sections and little dancing flames, physical, visible flames of fire, come to rest over every head in the place. You say, wait a minute, I don't want one. I'm just visiting. Nope, you're here. You get one.
There's a flame of fire every then suddenly that goes and you suddenly find yourself standing up and proclaiming the glories of God in the tongues of men and of angels.
Now, what would happen is exactly what happened in the upper room.
Soon there would be cars parked from Dan to Beersheba. We wouldn't be able to get them in the parking lot. And somebody would rush in. And as you leave the building, somebody would say to you, what happened in there?
Be careful how you answer because how you answer may pervert or twist their understanding of what really happened in the room. They say, what happened in there? You say, wind. Oh, we heard the sound of wind in the room.
And they would say, oh, it's just a democratic political convention.
Or you say, fire.
We saw visible tongues of fire.
They might say, well, that is curious, but I don't believe I want any.
Or you might say, I preach the glories of God in the tongues of.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: Men and of angels.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: And they might say, that's good for.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: You, but it doesn't change my life.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: All of those things happened, but if you add all of them together, they.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Are not what really happened in the upper room.
So what really happened in the upper room?
[00:10:01] Speaker B: The first thing is this.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: The church was born at Pentecost.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Until that moment, something that had never been on the face of the earth occurred. The living, breathing, resurrected corporate body of Christ.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: The.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: The body of Christ had been the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He went into the grave. Unless a seed. He said, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bring forth a great harvest. But if it falls into the ground and dies, he himself, then it can raise up as the worldwide body of Christ. The Spirit breathed God anointed God created. God wrought. Body of Christ.
What happened at Pentecost? Primarily other things. But the number one thing that happened at Pentecost is that the church was created and breathed into existence by God Almighty. That means that when the church culprit, when the church visible moves away from Pentecost, we run the risk of redefining who we are.
We talk about a Spirit filled church. We use the term and everybody knows what we mean. But listen to me on this.
A church without the Holy Spirit is a perversion.
That's like a human being without breath.
Now, it may not always look the same. We can't define that culturally. People may not sing what we sing. They may not express themselves the way that we do. They may be cultural. But when the Holy Spirit is not present, it may be an organization. It may be a group of people that do good things. They may sponsor little League teams or whatever. But it is not the body of Christ. The body of Christ is defined by the breath of God. What happened at Pentecost was that the.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Church came into being.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: It is the Holy Spirit that defines us as who we are. And we do not have the right or the power to redefine ourselves absent the Holy Spirit. And when we do this is very, very important.
When the church corporate, when the church body decides to move back from the sanctifying and empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, what happens is we not only redefine ourselves, we redefine our morals, we redefine our character, we redefine our laws. We quit valuing the word of God when the Holy Spirit, when we move back from the Holy Spirit, everything that the Holy Spirit does in us and through us begins to drift. We begin to find the church moving further and further into things that have absolutely nothing to do with the New Testament body of Christ.
The word Pentecost itself, the fascinating word Pentecost is a is a Greek translation of a Hebrew word which was the name for a feast that was given to the Jewish people by Moses. It's the feast of weeks. It's called Shavuot.
But when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, they didn't know how to translate Shavuot.
So they took the feast of weeks.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: From.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Passover to Pentecost is 50 days. 7 times 7 is 49 plus 1. The day of Pentecost is 50. In Greek, anything that has a derivative of 5 uses the word penta. A pentathlete is somebody that competes in five different sports. Five different areas of track and field.
The pentagon, that's the five sided building in Washington D.C. that Pete Hegseth is.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Trying to straighten out.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: A pentagram that's a five sided design that's used in witchcraft.
Five meaning penta. So Pentecost is simply a renaming in Greek and now we use that word.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: In English of the Hebrew word Shavuot.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: So what does it mean?
[00:14:30] Speaker C: These people are Jews.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Everybody in the story is Jewish. Everybody in the church at Pentecost is Jewish. So they wake up. It's now been 50 days since Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead.
They, we, we have the Book of Acts.
They didn't have it.
Sometimes I think that we think that they woke up on the day of Pentecost and said, nine o', clock, he's coming.
They had no clue. They simply were 120 Jewish people who were going to celebrate together the same feast that they had celebrated every year. For all their lives, that their ancestors had celebrated all the way back to Moses, that they had absolutely no real clear understanding of what was going to happen.
Why would God choose Pentecost to pour.
[00:15:24] Speaker C: Out the Holy Spirit?
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Because he is saying, following the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, my son, now I want my body on earth to be the church filled with the Holy Spirit. And that's going to happen on the feast of celebration and harvest, Shavuot.
So we are the body of Christ, Spirit filled with.
The second thing that happened on the day of Pentecost is that God made.
[00:15:54] Speaker C: It clear from the very beginning that this was not simply an organization, that.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: It was supposed to be a supernaturally.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Empowered movement of the Holy Spirit.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Look at the things that happened right.
[00:16:08] Speaker C: From the very beginning.
The tornado, the sound of wind, the fire, the gifts of the Spirit.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: We are not simply an organization. This is not a political group.
This is something different. This has to do with the inbreathed power of the Holy Spirit, the miraculous.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: Presence of God, the gifts of the Spirit, the works of the Spirit healing.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: These things are the full expectation of the body of Christ.
We are expected to be not only.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: Spirit filled, but we are expected to live and move and have our being in the miraculous power of God.
Now, that's what happened on the day of Pentecost.
Now, is it still real?
[00:16:58] Speaker B: That's a critical question.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Is it still real?
[00:17:02] Speaker B: I mean, did it happen once, never.
[00:17:05] Speaker C: To be repeated again?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: In the footnotes of the scope of the Bible, which I was taught in seminary, a theology that is called cessationism.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: I want you to hear what it means.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Cessation from the word, to cease, to end.
Cessationism believes that with the death of the last apostle, the gifts of the Spirit stopped.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: That's what I was taught.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: That's what I preached for seven years.
I believed that when the last apostle died, that God removed the gifts of.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: The Spirit, that there was no more.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Speaking in tongues, no more signs, no more wonders, no more healing, no more gift of faith. That now we just sort of moved.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: And lived as the church in the world.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: That is a very barren and powerless kind of Christianity. In footnotes of the Scofield Bible, it says, since the day of Pentecost, no believer ever again needs to ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words, that when we get saved and we believe God, we join the church, that we're automatically filled with the Holy Spirit and we never need to ask again.
But imagine if there may be somebody that came tonight. You're faithful and loyal. And you came, you got here, but you got home late from work and you didn't get a chance to get supper. And you say to yourself, I'm so hungry. Could you hurry up? I'm hungry. And I said, oh, it's okay. Don't worry about a thing. We went out to eat before church.
And you say, no, no, you didn't understand, Dr. Ottley. I didn't say, I'm worried about your tummy.
I said, I'm worried about my tummy. I'm hungry. And I said to you, no, you're the one that doesn't understand because we ate before church. You should be satisfied. Now, that's an intellectually absurd idea to think that because 120 people were baptized with the Holy Spirit 2,000 years ago, that Nobod needs to ask again.
It's not enough that God fills Simon Peter with the Holy Spirit. It's not enough that he baptized the church in the beginning with the Holy Spirit.
Our son Travis is a wonderful preacher. A few Sundays ago, he said something I'll never forget. He said, people say all the time, you have to have the Holy Spirit to live in the 21st century. He said, you have to have the Holy Spirit to go to Walmart.
So is it real for today?
I didn't.
I didn't grow up believing that.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: I went through my education not believing.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: It, not being taught.
Finished my seminary.
I became a United Methodist pastor and I was pastoring a church in Georgia.
[00:19:56] Speaker C: But there was a sense of powerlessness, emptiness.
Nothing seemed to work.
It just felt year after year.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Seven years.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: Seven years.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: I know that you think sitting through a dead and unanointed sermon is one.
[00:20:15] Speaker C: Of the worst things in the world.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: No, it's not.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Preach one.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Preach one every Sunday.
Preach one Sunday after Sunday. Preach one for seven years. Seven years.
Seven years and nothing to show for it.
Well, that's not entirely true. We had a terrific men's softball team.
Every year we just beat the Baptist like a 2 year old at a Walmart.
But that's it.
That's it.
As a result of that, the dryness and the barrenness, the emptiness in me. And it began to show up in our marriage and in my mind. I began to struggle with dark depression. I'd struggled with depression since I was. Due to certain events, since I was in junior high school and now in my 20s, it began to swamp me.
I felt filled with darkness and anger.
And our marriage began to deeply suffer. We're struggling.
[00:21:19] Speaker C: It is.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: It's a Terrible thing to be an angry man. It's an awful thing to live with an angry man in our marriage. We've been married 58 years now, but we were relatively newlyweds at that time. And we're just trying to sort it out.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: And I was so angry and hurt.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: And filled with such a dark feeling of depression and emptiness and powerlessness.
I felt like I was pushing a boulder uphill every day, every Sunday. And that if my foot slipped one minute that it would roll back on.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Me and crush me.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: One Sunday morning, Pastor Little church wasn't this big. It was maybe half the size of.
[00:22:00] Speaker C: One of these sections of pews.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: We had a visitor one Sunday morning, very nice looking guy in a smart looking suit. I saw his car out in the.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: Parking lot, said, man, this is the.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Kind of visitor we want.
And everything was fine until we came to the Doxology. We're singing the Doxology. I don't know if you remember the Doxology. 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 Fairly praiseworthy little song. We begin to drone through it with our usual bovine enthusiasm.
Praise God from whom. And I looked out there and this visitor was standing there with his hands up in the air.
And he's got his hands up in the air in my church.
Got his hands up.
I'm sending him telepathic messages from the pulpit. Put your hands down.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: And he was oblivious, man, he was.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: So the sermon was over. I went to the back door to shake hands with people as they left. And I was just waiting on that visitor to straighten him out. I said, yeah, go home. Buy, buy. Get some chicken. Bye. And I was waiting on that visitor. And when he came, I grabbed his hand and I said, now, sir, I just want to say visitors are always welcome and you're welcome here, but we don't do that kind of stuff in this church. You're gonna. He didn't do anything but put his hands up.
I said, we don't have that in this kind of church. I'm sure there are churches where they want that kind of nonsense, but we don't do that.
And he looked at me. He didn't get angry. He didn't yell at me, he didn't act. Anyway, he put his hands on my shoulders and he smiled and he said, pastor, do you have the joy of.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: The Lord God Angry fury?
[00:23:46] Speaker B: I thought if I could get my thumbs around your larynx, you'd think, joy of the Lord God was so angry, it made me so furious. The next Sunday, I announced, I'm going to preach a seven week series on joy.
It's an astonishing thing to watch a really angry man preach on joy.
So we're going to have joy in this church if I have to kill somebody.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: Finally, what had been happening gradually happened.
Everything fell through.
I realized our marriage was hanging by a thread. Both of us were just waiting for the other one to say divorce.
The depression took hold of me.
I made two very serious suicide attempts.
One was on Thanksgiving afternoon, 1975.
I pulled the trigger on a loaded gun and it didn't go off.
It was an out and out miracle of God.
I would have shot my head across Taylor County, Georgia.
And instead of feeling grateful and blessed by it, I was so frustrated I just fell. I said, I can't even do this.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: I can't even do this.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: And I told my wife, I said, baby, I've made a mistake. The Methodist church has made a mistake.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: God's made a mistake.
[00:25:19] Speaker C: Something.
I'm not cut out for the ministry.
And I said, I'm resigning the church.
That was the week after Thanksgiving. Two days after Thanksgiving.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: She said, mark, annual conference is in June.
Just serve the church until then.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: And if nothing happens, then we'll tell the bishop and we'll leave the ministry. We got to save our marriage.
Sometimes God will take a little thing.
She said, if nothing happens, I think God took hold of that.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: A couple of weeks later, I was.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: Actually required to attend a conference called the Conference on Power for Ministry. Today my superintendent forced me to go. I didn't want to go.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: I was angry at being made to go. It was a conference to hear about the Holy Spirit and I did not.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Want to be there.
I just knew it was going to be full of nutcases and idiots. And I just didn't want to go.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: And you know how you do when you don't want to go somewhere, you go late.
And I got there late. No laymen were allowed to attend.
[00:26:29] Speaker C: It was only methodist preachers.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: And 150 people had registered for it. And somebody had set up 150 chairs.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: For 150 people registered.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: So by the time I got there, there was only one empty chair on the front row.
I sat down on the front row as a little man beside me I didn't recognize, had glasses on, his Bible open on his lap. And he patted my arm. He said, we're going to have a great conference, son. I said, we sang two or three songs and a man gave a simple testimony about people praying for him and he had an improvement in his eyesight.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: That was it.
That's all they did. Two or three songs and a simple little testimony.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: And then they said, now our first.
[00:27:18] Speaker C: Speaker is going to speak, said Dr.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: David Siemens from the First Methodist Church in Wilmore, Kentucky, connected to Asbury College.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: And we're asking him to come.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: And then a little man beside me on the front row patted my arm and he said, now, you pray for me, son. And he got up and came up.
[00:27:34] Speaker C: To the platform and I realized God was moving in on me.
I just flinched.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: He said, I know you invited me.
[00:27:45] Speaker C: Here to preach on the Holy Spirit, but I'm not going to do that.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: I said, great.
He said, instead, I feel like the Lord is telling me to preach on.
[00:27:55] Speaker C: Sin in the ministry. Oh, God.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Pastor, you ever have people say to you after you preach, you really stepped on my toes? You ever had. You stepped on my toes? Let me tell you something. That little man whooped me with a bicycle chain.
[00:28:12] Speaker C: It was awful.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: It was just awful. I don't know if you've ever been under conviction in a meeting, but you think everybody else knows you're under conviction. You think he's pointing. This is the guy right here in the front row. This the man I'm talking about. It was awful.
But he didn't give an altar call.
And when he was finished, I hit that door at a dead run.
I didn't even go to the hotel room that my boss had paid for.
I went to my car and drove all the way home. When I got home, Allison said, what are you doing home? I said, oh, baby, it was crazy down there, just crazy. I said, they can call themselves Methodists if they want to. They're nothing but a bunch of Jack leg Pentecostals. All of them crazy. I said, they're. And all we did sung three songs, had a testimony and a sermon on holiness.
And I said, oh, it was awful. It was embarrassing even to be there.
I said, beyond that, I couldn't go tomorrow even if I wanted to.
I've got to mow the lawn.
The first Saturday in December.
I got up at 8 o' clock the next morning. It was so cold I could see my breath. The blades of grass had frost on them.
I crank the mower up, I'm walking. 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? Come here, Margaret. He's gone over the edge.
I tried to mow for a while and I Realized there was no grass.
[00:29:38] Speaker C: Blowing out of the blower.
And I said, this is crazy.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: I have an earned PhD.
I have a four credit A at the postgraduate level in pneumatology. I know about the Holy Spirit.
I'm not going to be intimidated about the Holy Spirit. I went in and showered, put my suit on, took my Bible and started out of the house.
Here's what I don't understand about women. Why won't they leave it alone?
Started out of the house and my wife stepped out of the kitchen and said, decide to go back. God, I was so angry I could hardly think.
I drove over there, drove up in the parking lot of that hotel. I knew I'd missed the morning session. I got out, I said, I hope.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: Somebody just says Holy Spirit to me.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: I hope they just say it.
I went in. Just as I got into the ballroom.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: The conference room where the meeting was.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: The morning session was taught not by Dr. Siemens from Kentucky, it was taught by Ralph Wilkerson from California. I was terrified of this guy.
In the first place, he wore white shoes in December.
Now listen to me. You cannot do that.
You cannot wear white shoes after Labor Day.
Write it down.
The second thing was he named his church Melodyland.
In the Methodist church, you can't name a church Melody Land. First Methodist, Second Avenue Methodist, Calvary, Methodist, some. But Melody, you can't name a church Melody Land.
So I was terrified of him.
He spoke in the morning session and I was glad I missed it. When I opened the door, the morning session ended and there were guys in there.
Some of them were on the floor. They were. Some were weeping. They were praying with each other.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: I said, what in the world?
[00:31:42] Speaker B: It's all Methodist preachers.
[00:31:43] Speaker C: Listen to what I'm telling you.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: It's all Methodist preachers. I said, what in the world has happened in here? And I found this very straight, conservative Methodist preacher and I went to him. His name also happened to be Mark, by the way. And I went to him and I.
[00:31:59] Speaker C: Said, mark, what in the world happened in here?
[00:32:01] Speaker B: And this very straight conservative Methodist preacher grabbed me by my lapels and he yelled in my face. He said, oh, Mark. He said, that man from California just prayed for me and I've been healed and I've been filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: I felt it was time for my seminary voice.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: I said, now, Mark, when you say God has healed you, I mean, how.
[00:32:26] Speaker C: Do I connect with that?
[00:32:32] Speaker B: When you say God has healed you, I mean, what are you trying to communicate?
[00:32:36] Speaker C: How do I plug in?
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Oh, you laugh. There are People that listen to that every Sunday.
He stared at me like I was speaking Hebrew.
He said, you know, I'm deaf in my left ear.
I knew that because he had had a surgery because of an infection when he was a child and all the bones in his inner ear were removed. You don't hear with what's on the outside. You hear with what's on the inside. And he had no apparatus for hearing.
He said, that man from California just prayed for me. I can hear in my left ear.
He said, furthermore, I've hated my dad's guts since I was 10 years old. And he just prayed with me for.
[00:33:17] Speaker C: The baptism of the Holy Spirit.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: And now I forgive my dad and I'm going out to the pay phone and call him.
When we went back for the next session, I got there early.
I got in the back row.
[00:33:30] Speaker C: Wilkerson was speaking and he said he.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Was going to preach. He said he was going to preach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
[00:33:38] Speaker C: He preached for about 20 minutes.
I sat there with my Bible.
I said, let's just see.
I'll see where he's wrong.
I'll catch him.
He didn't say one single thing I didn't agree with.
He closed his Bible and he said, that's enough of that.
That's enough of that.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: You can't end the Methodist sermon.
[00:34:07] Speaker C: That's enough of that.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: I said, he hadn't even read his poem yet.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: He said, I don't want to just talk about the Holy Spirit.
I want to pray and receive his presence.
And Ralph, who later became my dear friend and mentor and teacher to me, Ralph began to pray and welcome the Holy Spirit.
And the power of God came in the room in a way that I have seldom, only occasionally in the rest of my life experienced it. Once in West Africa, the power of the Holy Spirit filled the room.
It became so intense, people began to literally weep, just begin to weep.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Wilkerson said, God's going to give us.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: A word of prophecy.
I've got a four credit course in 1 Corinthians at the graduate level, and I'd never heard the phrase word of prophecy before.
I said, what?
What can he mean?
He said, there's somebody here that God has given a word of prophecy to, and I want him to stand up and give it.
And a guy in the front row, one of the most liberal men in our conference. I'm not sure if he even believed in the Resurrection.
He was a notorious liberal.
He stood up, his face was as white as a sheet, and he said, boys, it's me.
He said, the crazy thing is I don't even know if I believe in this.
But he said, I was sitting right there and it came in my heart. In a moment that man's going to call for a word of prophecy. You stand up and open your mouth and I'll fill was a classic case of Balaam's donkey, I'm telling you.
He stood up and he raised his hands and he said, thus saith the Lord, I'm going to do a great thing.
And it begins now.
And when he said that, people began to weep.
I fell out of my chair on the floor.
Everything I'd ever done, all my thoughts, all my suicidal tendencies, all my depression.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: All my hurt and anger, all of.
[00:36:36] Speaker C: It just filled me and I began weeping and weeping.
Ralph Wilkerson, God bless his heart, he came out and got in the floor with me.
He kind of picked me up like that.
If he'd have said anything to me but what he said, I could have resisted him.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: He didn't say, all right brother, now we're going to shake tongues out of you.
You know what he said?
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Brother Pastor, I love you.
I said, if you knew me, you wouldn't love me.
I said, mister, I'm a wreck.
I tried to shoot myself on Thanksgiving.
I said, I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it.
He said, don't you want to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
And I opened my mouth to say, no, no, I don't believe in that.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: No, I don't believe in a second work of grace. I don't believe in the gifts of the Spirit. I open my mouth to say, you stay away from me. And I heard my own mouth say, yes, yes, that's what I want.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: I was stunned.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: I realized for once in my life my spirit had cried out and not my over educated intellect.
[00:37:53] Speaker C: He said, all right, pray with me.
He led me in a simple little prayer.
Lord, I give you my life, I give you my future, my past, all my hurts and wounds, my depression, I give it to you.
I'm asking you to fill me with the Holy Spirit.
That's all it was.
Then he said, now I'm going to lay hands on you. And I said, oh man, here it comes. I knew I had been taught that.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Pentecostal preachers had hidden buzzers in, in.
[00:38:30] Speaker C: The palm of their hands.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: And the people came and they put buzzers on them and knock them down.
He said, all right, I'm going to lay hands on you. I said, oh God, he's going to buzz me. I know he's going to buzz me now.
[00:38:51] Speaker C: I just braced myself and he just reached over and he put his fingertips on my forehead and he said, okay, young man.
In the name of Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit.
I don't know what happened to any other Methodist preacher in that room. I don't give other people's testimonies, but.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: I'm going to tell you.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: At four o' clock in the afternoon on December 5, 1975, a sad, defeated, suicidal wreck of a Methodist preacher fell on the floor of the Ramada Hotel in Atlanta.
And I came up filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Pentecost is real and it's real for today.
It's real.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Two weeks later, my wife received the baptism. Holy Spirit.
I can't tell you that there's never been another dark moment.
I'm not telling you that the baptism of the Holy Spirit makes life perfect from that moment on.
What I'm telling you is that it gives you the power to live life.
It replaces all the darkness and loneliness and self loathing, all of the fear.
Let me, let me bring this to a conclusion. You've been very patient.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Just suppose now, this is not real.
[00:40:31] Speaker C: Okay, what I'm going to say now, but suppose we announced tonight, underneath one of these chairs, there's a number taped on the bottom. And if that number's on your chair, you win a brand new Mercedes Benz.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: I saw three people drop down and start looking. I'm telling you it's not real.
[00:40:53] Speaker C: But suppose we said that and suppose.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: What's your name, friend?
[00:41:00] Speaker C: What is it?
[00:41:01] Speaker B: David.
[00:41:02] Speaker C: Suppose it's on David's chair and we called David up. We say, here's the keys and the title.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: It's all yours. Top of the line Mercedes Benz.
[00:41:14] Speaker C: It's yours.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: And we'd all pretend to be happy.
[00:41:18] Speaker C: For him, Good for David, you know.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: And I don't see him for a year.
I come back a year later and I see him and he's a wreck.
He's got bags under his eyes, his hands are all scratched up.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: His clothes are a wreck.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: I say, david, what in the world happened to you? Oh, he said, Dr. Olan, it's that car.
He said, that car has made me miserable.
I said, david, that's one of the most expensive automobiles in the world. He said, I value it.
I value it as a gift in my life, but it is not making me happy.
I don't understand. He said, well, I can't explain to you. I got to get to work.
[00:42:03] Speaker C: It takes me Three hours.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: I said, well, where do you work?
[00:42:06] Speaker C: He said, two miles from here.
And he, I watch him.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: He goes out to the parking lot.
[00:42:12] Speaker C: He gets down on his knees behind the Mercedes and he starts pushing it.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Struggling, sweat pouring down and pushing and pushing. And then his foot slips and he falls down and the Mercedes rolls back over.
[00:42:25] Speaker C: Boom, boom, boom, boom.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: And I go over there and I.
[00:42:29] Speaker C: Say, david, you idiot.
I get inside and put the key in and turn it, put it in gear and I start driving. And David looks, got tire tracks right across his face.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: And he looks up and he says, oh, oh, you mean you have to turn it on.
[00:42:55] Speaker C: Now?
[00:42:55] Speaker B: I'm telling you something.
There are many, many people that have.
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Just enough Christianity to make them miserable.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: They live their whole lives. I'm not saying they're not going to.
[00:43:05] Speaker C: Heaven when they die.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: I'm not saying that you're born again, you're going to heaven.
[00:43:10] Speaker C: But the sooner the better.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: They just live life, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. This year I'll push this car if it kills me.
The only problem is what? It'll kill you.
That kind of defeated, broken, bound up, miserable, angry Christianity is what I lived for seven years.
And it is not God's plan for your life.
It is not God's plan for your life. Not for anybody.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not just for anointing. For preachers, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not just for signs and wonders, miracles, it's for all those things, but not just for that.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is for day to day Christianity to come alive with power and joy, to replace bondage. And that's what God promises.
So finally, does God promise it?
I mean it's fine, but does God promise it?
Jesus says, Luke 11:13.
[00:44:26] Speaker C: Jesus is speaking now.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: It's not St. Paul, it's not Mark Rutland, this is Jesus of Nazareth.
[00:44:33] Speaker C: If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him, God, isn't that wonderful.
Not to them that deserve it.
Not to them that are going to the ministry, to them that ask him.
All that broken, Sad, suicidally depressed, 28 year old Methodist preacher had to do was ask.
Just ask.
I'm not asking if you're a Christian.
I'm not asking if you die now, you'd go to heaven. I'm not asking.
I'm asking you one thing.
Have you, since you first believed, received the Holy Spirit, have you received the Holy Spirit lately?
Are you running on empty?
Have you asked God to fill you with the Holy Spirit?
[00:45:40] Speaker B: You can push.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: The car you can push just won't make you happy, will give you joy. You'll never have peace and it can roll back on you.
Or you can just do what Jesus said. He said, ask.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: If you then, being evil, know how.
[00:46:02] Speaker C: To give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask.
Well, then.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Ask.
[00:46:15] Speaker C: I mean.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: Ask him.
[00:46:20] Speaker C: How simple can I mean, ask him.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x@dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, drmarkrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
