Gateway Church's Podcast
Mark Rutland
I want to share tonight the Pastor Morris sent me a letter and just ask if I would consider the possibility of speaking toward the issue of the Holy Spirit. And for me, of course, that's just like waving a red flag at a bull. So my son, you know, I don't know how many of you get absolutely no respect from your children, but my son who used to travel with me a great deal, he always used to say, "Dad, which version of the Holy Spirit sermon are you going to preach tonight?" So I was delighted to do so. Let me begin by saying this to you. I was not raised in a particularly religious home. My parents came to full faith after I was grown and actually in high school, but I was raised in a very odd family, very unusual. I see a lot of young people here tonight. I think that you will find the older you get, you realize how really odd your family was. I was raised by nomads. We just moved constantly. We were sort of a band of eccentric vagabonds. Have any of you seen Little Miss Sunshine? Anybody ever seen that? Okay. Actually, I was raised in that van. I identified with that family at a really tragic level actually. And my parents were now in their 80s and they were very interesting people. My mother particularly, I know my mother has this high and native IQ as anyone I've ever met. In her 80s, she has a mind like a steel trap. She can walk through a field of wildflowers and tell you their Latin names. She is a voracious reader. She has a vocabulary that would make William F. Buckley jealous. But she's a ninth grade dropout. My mother never finished the ninth grade and she believed in education in the purest sense of the word. That is not actually going to school but learning things. And above all things, my mother was devoted to vocabulary. She believed that it was a sin against the cosmos to use a word wrongly. And she just pounded it on us. I was homeschooled more or less by default before the phrase was ever invented. We just never lived anywhere long enough to really get a consistent education. And so my mother took it on herself. We didn't have a family Bible. We didn't have devotions in the evening. But we had a family dictionary. And at night, my mother would pop up in the Webster's Collegiate. And like a racing form, she would just put her finger in. And whatever word she landed on, we had to learn its derivation. We had to learn if it was a verb, how to conjugate it, how to use it in a sentence, synonyms, antonyms. I deeply resented these interminable dictionary devotionals. I was like a lot of children that are taken a great deal to church when they're, you know, they're Sunday school and church and night church and Wednesday night service and vacation, Bible school. And a lot of times they say to themselves, all right, when I'm grown, I'm never going to church anymore. And then, of course, what happens is as soon as they are grown, they drag their children to every service. When I was sitting there through those things, you know, where we're discussing the German derivation of words, I remember thinking. When I'm grown, I'm going to become an illiterate. But it left me with a great appreciation for words, for the sanctity of words. We are living now in the 21st century in the age of the Mad Hatter. You remember the Hatter told Alice, when I use a word, it means what I want it to mean. And as a result, our vocabulary is shrinking, and that's actually tragic because as a society or a culture suffers the loss or corruption or diminution of its functional vocabulary, it loses to one extent or another its ability to think. Because we think in words, we do not think in pictures or concepts, we think in words. And words mean things, if we use the wrong word with which to think, we may actually think wrongly, simply because our vocabulary is twisted. Now words just mean anything. I was preaching in California recently, which is evidently where all human vocabulary begins to be corrupted. And I was speaking to a high school audience, and afterward, I was talking to some boys who were just very taken with the message, they were just swept up, and they came to me afterward to talk to me, and they said, "Dr. Rutland, the first boy said, 'You are one bad preacher.' Now when did bad come to mean good? The second boy said, 'You are not bad.' He said, 'You are the baddest preacher I've ever heard.' Baddest is not even a word in the English language. The third boy said, 'You are not bad,' he said, 'You are corrupt.' One can only sense my level of personal affirmation. I remember setting a life goal early on to become a really corrupt preacher. But the fourth boy, he was not content with these low-altitude compliments. He said, 'You are not bad.' He said, 'You are not corrupt.' He said, 'You are one sick dude.' I mean, I just came home floating on air. Words mean things, and gradually they can be twisted to where they mean totally different things, and this is a very youthful church, but I wonder if there's anybody here that remembers when gay actually meant happy. You young people, I have no idea what I'm talking about right now. But when I was a child, gay had nothing to do with homosexuality. Homosexual actually meant homosexual. As bizarre as that is. I used to go to a party, and I had this sort of ritual with my mom. I would call at midnight, and I would say, 'Mom, it's midnight. I know you said to leave at midnight, but the party is just great, and I was wondering if I could stay another hour.' She'd always say the same thing. Because you called me, she said, 'That means everything to me.' She'd say, 'Stay another hour. Leave it one.' Then she'd say, 'You're having a good time?' I'd say, 'Yes, mom. Everybody here's gay.' She wasn't worried. We were just happy. It can happen in any discipline of life. But when it happens with our functional biblical vocabulary, when it happens with our theological vocabulary, the words with which we think about God, then it can change everything. I was preaching many years ago at the Minneapolis Soul Fest. It was an urban inner city outreach. We'd put up big portable platforms and crank up huge speakers and blast the music out at a level where the birds drop dead out of the sky. And then preach, I remember one night as I was preaching, the platform was taller, even than this one, and people who came forward would just come to the edge of the platform, and the workers would kneel along the front and deal with seekers at the front. One young girl came here just to the front and later forehead over on the platform, and no one seemed to see her. I just went and knelt down beside her, and I said, 'Young lady, would you like me to pray with you myself?' She said, 'Yes, please, but she never looked up.' I said, 'Do you want the Lord to come in your life?' She said, 'I really need it, mister.' I said, 'All right, I'm going to lead you in a prayer, I want you to pray after me.' I said, 'Just say the words I say, 'Heavenly Father, silence.' I said, 'Miss, I want to make sure you understand what I want. I want you to pray after me. I'm going to say the words, you repeat them, and Christ is going to come into your heart. Are you ready?' She said, 'Yes.' I said, 'All right, pray with me, Father in heaven.' She didn't say anything. I said, 'Mister, do we have a problem here?' At that moment, she looked up for the first time, and this eye was swollen, shut. She had obscene fingers of blue and green bruise marks running across her cheekbone, and her lip was split right there until I could see her little teeth. Tears streaming down her face, and she spread her hands out, and she said, 'You know, mister, I've got all the Father I can handle.' I realized that she had no opposition to who God is. She was having to warp her understanding of God around her misapprehension of fatherhood, that it was fatherhood that was the problem. We in this postmodern era, and I hear it all the time, postmodern, postmodern, postmodern, ad nauseum. I understand the issue of the shifting nature of vocabulary in the postmodern world, but the answer to a postmodern world is not a postmodern church. There are words here that mean things. They mean things, and we can't just simply abandon this vocabulary because someone has an awkward reaction to it. We must invest ourselves creatively in the words with which we talk and think about God because unless we understand them, how can we dare to expect the world to understand them? So there is this sort of clustered vocabulary, like a cluster of grapes around the central vine of the Holy Spirit. Words like power and grace, holiness, the spirit of holiness, Romans chapter 1 that raised Christ Jesus from the dead, the spirit of life, the spirit of light, the spirit of truth, the spirit of conviction, these words cluster around the Holy Spirit. When we begin to consider the person work and ministry of the Holy Spirit, these words are summoned forth and they speak to us of those things which he does and those characteristics of his own personality and ministry to us and in the world. When it comes, we narrow that vocabulary to yet another level down. What about those words that speak of the work of the Holy Spirit at the point of encounter, where I become subject to and indwelt by the Holy Spirit? There are three main words in Scripture which are used to describe that moment filled, baptized and receive. Luke 3, 16, John is speaking, John Baptist, not John the Apostle, John Baptist, comforts me no end to know that the first person to preach a baptism in the Holy Spirit was not a Pentecostal but a Baptist. John said not many days from now will come the Messiah and he shall baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost. From coming after me the legend of whose shoes I am not even worthy to loose and he shall baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost. Jesus himself in the opening verses of the book of Acts speaks of the same moment in terms of filling and in the second chapter of Acts it says and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 19 Paul the Apostle at Ephesus says have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed? So we have these three words to be baptized and to be filled and to receive. To be baptized has about it a sense of plunging, of immersion, of pouring however you want to envision the act of baptism. It means somehow or another that some extra personal substance is poured on you or immersed in it or it is thrown on you if your background is more liturgical somebody said well what about sprinkling okay fine or if it's pouring then fine or if it's immersion fine but somehow or another that there is some way in which the Holy Spirit it's an Old Testament view of the Holy Spirit coming upon pouring upon. It has about it the view of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament where it was referred to often as mantling. It's an unusual look of the Holy Spirit being poured out. You remember from the Old Testament where the seventy elders of Moses received the Spirit of prophecy but these two poor guys you know they just come out to watch these guys get the Spirit of prophecy and they just get too close. Do you remember that they just stand in there you know I think these guys are going to get the Spirit of prophecy you know let's watch this and it just like splashes on them. I mean it's a strange view we don't think of it that way in New Testament terms but they're just standing there watching the deal and you know the Holy Spirit is poured out on the elders of Moses and it kind of like splashes on these guys and they start prophesying. There is that sense of it and it has an adventure some feel to it. I believe that in the latter part of the 20th century at the tail end of the charismatic renewal movement and in the early part of the 21st century we have to a certain extent gutted the experience of the Holy Spirit of its nature of adventure. There is a kind of breathtaking moment you know where baptism if you use the sense of baptism by immersion where somebody takes you and you know plunges you under the water in that moment you are in a sense dead and if he's stronger than you it could be an ongoing experience. And that's a kind of it's a kind of breathtaking thing I don't think you ought to hold I teach at the university when I teach on baptism I don't think you ought to hold people under until they're fighting you but I do think they ought to come up really happy you know. And I think that the I think that one of the characteristics of the personal experience of the Holy Spirit is that sense of plunging in of it being poured in some way in which it that breathtaking moment you know when the Holy Spirit comes upon then there is the second experience the the sense of being filled. That speaks to the human condition of emptiness. Emptiness is not simply the absence of substance it is an emotional and psychological and spiritual experience which is defined inside of us as hollow and shallow and emptiness is a horrifying feeling. If you've never dealt with emptiness where you ache for anything for something life drugs alcohol sex something fill me fill me you've never struggled with the deep sense of emptiness and the fullness of the Holy Spirit is that is that sense of the Holy Spirit coming with himself and all of his graces and all of his wonder and all of his power to meet the emptiness of my life then there is the third to receive the Holy Spirit that that now turns the whole thing slightly don't you see to be filled somebody can do that without you participating to be baptized but to receive to receive now speaks of some attitude in yourself to receive a guest to welcome to accept to to go forward in that kind of openness where the the Holy Spirit comes in if the Holy Spirit is the breath of God and both the Old Testament and the New Testament say that he is ruach the wind breath spirit and in the New Testament numma that is the Greek word we still use that and if you have pneumonia it is a disease of your breath a pneumatic drill works on the power of compressed air so if the Holy Spirit is the breath of God the wind that brooded over the face of the abyss there is some sense in which we may envision the receiving of the Holy Spirit as the in draw of breath that I welcome him that I breathe him into myself John Wesley said that life in the spirit is the exchange of breath with God Almighty we breathe out our fetid air and he breathes in from his own divine lungs the power of his presence so there is in receiving the Holy Spirit away in which we welcome him into us in 1975 as I look across the congregation which was before most of you were born I finished a I finished theological seminary just at the end of the civil war and went on into ministry I was a united Methodist minister at that time I had had an adolescent experience with Christ I wanted to live for God I wanted to be an evangelical preacher I wanted to pastor in a Methodist church my wife and I Allison and I were went to seminary in Atlanta at Emory University at Candler School of Theology I began pastoring a small country church there but there was there was a sense a deep and abiding sense of emptiness it created in me a kind of a kind of adversarial relationship with the gospel that I was preaching I talked about hope but I had no hope I talked about faith I couldn't find faith I would preach on joy I couldn't experience joy and it created a sense of disconnect and a deep sense of personal fraudulency began to set in and I struggled with a lot of sense of lack of self-worth a lack of ability fear of the ministry fear of the gospel fear of failing fear of succeeding all of those things in in 19 in the early 1970s we moved to Atlanta and became I became the senior associate at a large United Methodist church there in the Atlanta area that sense of emptiness and that sense of powerlessness and anger I became explosively angry explosively my wife lived her terrified little life walking on eggshells around me I would explode and anger yelling anger is unpredictable at that level unpredictable uncontrollable and it manifests itself out of a life that is deeply empty and deeply disturbed I was angry that this wasn't working for me I was angry with God angry at myself angry at the world angry at childhood just I was an explosive person I remember one night I had a flat tire in the parking lot of the of the Kmart and when I pop the boot of my car open the spare was also flat and and I just I wigged out I lost it I jerked a tire iron out of the car out of the boot of my car and I did hundreds of dollars worth of damage to my car before I could stop before I could control myself just cracked the windscreen and hit and knocked out the headlamps and just dented the cars just screaming yelling and when I sort of came to myself is this crowd of people standing there my wife is weeping tears flowing out between her fingers she's shivering you know in fear watching this and here's the Methodist preacher beating the living daylights out of his car and your poor little wife just you know wracked you know shivering in fear because a guy that a guy that'll take a tire iron and destroy his own car that guy you don't know who he's gonna hit with that tire iron that's a very scary moment for a woman if for anybody and that you know people there at that moment what do you say I mean your demons are on your sleeve at that point I mean what do you say boy there was a bug on there somewhere I don't know and our marriage became deeply wounded at a profound level all of my dis-ease psychologically and emotionally and spiritually I took out on her and on myself any dime store psychologist will tell you anger first expresses itself outwardly and then it turns inward and inward anger is called depression self-loathing deep sense of self-disappointment and that quickly brings you to the point of self-medication nothing is helping me nothing is helping me I am depressed I'm angry I'm falling to pieces I'm empty Sunday after Sunday after Sunday I got up from the pulpit chair to make my way to the to the pulpit and and saying to myself the whole way as I walk today I'm gonna tell him I quit today I'm gonna tell him today I'm gonna get out of the ministry and get a real job you know and by the time I would get to the pulpit it would dissolve and I was going through the motions an empty depressed angry man preaching an empty and depressed gospel to empty and depressed churches I remember one Sunday before I moved into the city of Atlanta in the country church I was pastoring just a little tiny church about the size of this little group right here we had a visitor you know I mean this is a big event and I had on a nice looking suit and everything you know I realized that this one man from this suit had the capacity to double my Sunday morning offerings and I was very excited about this whole thing and tell everything was fine until we we came to the doxology you know the doxology you know 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 pretty praise worthy little song actually but we were you know praise God from and I looked down in the congregation his visitor had his hands up you know standing singing at the top of his lungs with his hands up in my church in my church and I'm shooting him telepathic messages from the pulpit get your hands down he was oblivious he was oblivious he was in a zone you know so after the at the service I was always my habit to shake hands at the door and and the people come out and I do only one to talk to this man so people yeah good bye go get some chicken you know go go and so this guy came you know and put his hand out with a big smile I grabbed his hand and I said now listen I just need to make something clear to you I said just want to make something clear I said you're welcome in this church I love to have you here we always welcome visitors I said I just need you to hear something we don't do that kind of stuff in this church I said do you want to do that you know all that hand raising everything on I said there are other churches that welcome that that's not welcome here he didn't get angry he didn't blow up anything like that he just reached out and put his hands on my shoulders like that and he said pastor do you have the joy of the Lord God I'm I'm telling you fury fury rage I mean I remember thinking where is that tire iron I thought if I could get my thumbs around your learnings you think joy of the Lord it made me so angry it made me so angry that I preached a six week series on joy it is it is a remarkable thing to watch a really angry man preach on joy we're gonna have joy in this church if I have to kill somebody by the middle of 1974 all of that that had been happening and been happening slowly began to happen rapidly and then I stepped into the elevator shaft and and and the floor went out from under me I began to go back to an alcohol habit that I had had in high school and I began secret drinking private drinking drinking alone drinking myself to sleep to three nights a week horrific nightmares nightmares beyond anything I can describe to you that terrified me at such a level I would wake up night after night screaming in a pool of sweat just screaming and my poor little wife in the bed beside me should say mark we you got to see somebody this is not right this is wrong you all not to be having these dreams like this this is not right and I can remember screaming at her not right not right is not right I'm cracking up I would say of course it's not right so what do you think I said I'm cracking up here it got horrible God's marriage was just a hanging by thread I would go into liquor store now the part of town praying contrary prayers at the same time oh God don't let anybody see me oh God maybe if I meet an elder and it's exposed and be over with you know and this all this all of this cognitive dissonance is going on inside of you and it's it's very conflicting and and really really y'all a terrible experience deep depression set in at a level that I can't even express to you until by by 1975 on November of 1975 alcohol and the wickedness and the depression all caved in Thanksgiving after noon 1975 I left the Thanksgiving table with my extended family and went to my brother's house which was next door to my dad's house I grew up around guns and my brother always had guns in his house and I went in there and took a desert eagle 357 magnum and put it in my coat and went into the woods behind my dad's house and on Thanksgiving afternoon in 1975 I put a desert eagle 357 magnum in my mouth tell I was choking on the barrel and pulled the trigger and God jammed that gun I don't know if you know anything about guns I want to tell you something you can jam a nine just by shooting too fast but you can't you can't jam a 357 magnum I could throw one out there on that floor and it'd probably go off when it hit the floor if that one had gone off it would have shot my head across Taylor County Georgia but instead of feeling rescued I remember dropping down to my knees in the pine straw there and thinking I can't even do this how can you put a gun in your mouth and miss I attempted it again two nights later in an automobile blacked out in an attempt to drive my car into a bridge piling and when I came to I was on the side of the road I don't know what happened my car safely pulled to the side of the road the emergency flashes were on the emergency break was set a few nights later a few days later the first week of December 1975 there was a conference in Atlanta Georgia called the conference for power for ministry today for Methodist preachers to try to understand the charismatic renewal movement we had charismatic in our churches like like insects and they're just they're like termites you know they just get in you can't get them out and they were there and and the worst and they multiply is they get into woodwork and breed and it's just it was awful so somebody you know said why don't we have this combo wheel and try to understand the charismatic movement I did not want to go to this conference it was actually sponsored by charismatic Methodist preachers in the North Georgia conference and they were notorious we all knew who they were and they were the ones who sponsored this conference and I refused to go the senior pastor at the church where I was the associate he made me go he said something's wrong with you he said I don't know if this thing can help you or not but you're going I was furious I was absolutely beyond fury when I got there I was so angry and I got when you go to things you know that you don't want to go to you you go late and I got there late there were 150 Methodist preachers in the in the ballroom at the Romada Hotel and somebody had set up a hundred and fifty chairs so every chair was filled except for one the only empty chair in the house was on the front row and so I'm going to sat down on the front row and then a little man sitting next to me I didn't recognize I had very conservative looking at a man wire rim glasses at his Bible on his lap he said I think we're going to have a great time in the Lord I think he he he you know he's saying a couple of saying a couple of hymns and had a prayer nothing you know no no funny business it was just pretty straight Methodist meeting and then the speaker said well our first speaker tonight is one of the great spokesman of the holiness movement pastor at first Methodist church in Wilmore Kentucky and author of books that have sold in the millions and millions and so we'd like to ask Dr. David Siemens if he will come to the platform little man sitting next to me patting me on the arm and he said now you pray for me and you could he got up and came up here and I realized you know I was sitting next to the speaker and you can feel God moving in on you he said I know that you invited me here tonight to preach on the Holy Spirit but he said I just don't feel led to do that I said thank you God he said instead he said I'd like to preach on sin in the ministry I don't know if you've ever been in a meeting where you're under conviction but you feel like everybody in the house is looking at you and that man read out aloud everything that was going on in my secret life and it was it's like he's saying it's this guy right here in the front you know this is the one I'm it was horrible it was horrible you ever hear pastor you ever hear people say boy you really stepped on my toes do you ever hear that that little man whooped me with a bicycle chain you know you you you run into some into some theological argument to hide you know and he pops out of the closet and hits you right across the face you know it was awful when he got finished I made a straight line for my car and I drove all the way home I didn't even go into the hotel room that my church had paid for and I got home and my wife was still awake I ran it and raved I stormed all over the house these people are crazy they can call themselves Methodist if they want to and nothing but a bunch of jack leg Pentecostals on screaming and yelling nothing had happened nothing had happened we sang three hymns had a prayer and a man preached on holiness and I was I was in a zone I was so angry anyway I said I couldn't go in the morning if I wanted to I would go back but I can't go in the morning because I've got to mow the lawn this is the first week of December in Atlanta I got up the next morning I had on a coat and gloves you know and cranked and cranked the lawn and went out at that time I had a Catholic neighbor on one side and a Baptist on the says don't you know they hit the windows come here Margaret he's gone over the edge I'm out there mowing the lawn and I realize in no grass is kicking out of the blower and I thought you know I've got a four credit A in the book of Acts in the postgraduate level I'm not going to be intimidated about the Holy Spirit I think I understand the theology of the Holy Spirit I mean I've got a four credit A at the postgraduate level in pneumatology I hope somebody says Holy Spirit to me now I'm going back got dressed got started out of the house I decided I'd go over there and here's what I never understand about women why won't they just leave it alone started out of the house and my wife leans out of the kitchen and said decide to go back I showed up at that conference in a rage I took my Bible I still and I said man I hope somebody look I just hope they say Holy Spirit to me I opened the door the morning session had just ended and when I opened the door they came boiling out boiling out some were weeping some were laughing some were down on their knees on the floor praying with each other it's what meaneth this it's just bizarre and then I identified one of the guys I knew you know not one of these charismatic nuts he was a nice safe guy that I'd known for years and so I'm coming up to Allen I said what in the world has happened here in this nice safe straight Methodist preacher grabbed me by my lapels and screamed in my face he said Jesus has healed me and fill me with the Holy Spirit I felt the only defense was my seminary voice I said now when you say Jesus has healed me when you say how exactly do I connect with that I mean what what do you mean where do I plug in to Jesus has healed me what what's the meaning of that or you laugh you laugh there are people that listen to sermons like that or every Sunday he stared at me like I was speaking Russian he said don't you understand healed he said I'm deaf in my left ear I knew that he had no bones in his interior had an infection and childhood you don't hear with what's on the outside you hear with what's on the inside he said a man from California just prayed for me in there and he said I can put my hand over my good ear and I can hear you he said furthermore I've hated my father since I was five years old and God has filled me with love and forgiveness he said I'm healed I'm healed and I'm filled he said let's go to lunch so we went downstairs to the restaurant in the hotel and I sat with my friend he's still just careening off of the walls you know it looks like a ping pong ball and a room full of mouse traps and four chairs at this table David Siemens the speaker from the night before came he said can I sit here with you guys if you won't talk about sin you know just eat your soup the other speaker came in a guy from California he just gave me the absolute he be jeebies in the first place he's wearing white shoes in December what's up with that the second place the name is church melody land melody land you came to melody land you can't name a church melody land first Methodist I understand that Calvary assembly of God Antioch Baptist those are they mean things what is melody land start with melody land next thing you know you're naming things like gateway and stuff you know this once you open the door once you open the door then there's no end to it Dr. Ralph Wilkerson who was the other speaker from melody land he came and said at the table with us there so Dr. Siemens said to my friend there he said why don't you have prayer I don't know how you pray in restaurants I don't know how you pray in restaurants you ever pinch the bridge of your nose so people think you got a headache oh God Jesus not Marcus he jumps to his feet he says oh God we thank you for this food people came out of the kitchen for ministry it was it was humiliating I wanted to stand up and tell everybody in the restaurant I don't know these people I'm a Baptist they have kidnapped me I'm we went back up for the afternoon session and Dr. Wilkerson spoke he preached for about 20 minutes he didn't say one single thing that I could theologically argue with flipped his Bible shut he said well that's enough of that and said that's enough of that that's enough you can't end a method is sermon that that's enough of that said he hadn't even read his poem yet you can't you that's enough of that and he said he said we've been talking about the Holy Spirit he said the Holy Spirit never allows himself to be discussed in a vacuum he said the Holy Spirit is here right now I just want to tell you the temperature in that room escalated twenty or twenty five degrees in a in seconds the air conditioning couldn't deal with what was happening we were sweating it was Wilkerson prayed and begin to minister with people it was it was so powerful it was it sucked the oxygen out of the air I felt like I couldn't breathe I tried to leave I I was I felt trapped it was it was breathtaking and it was frightening and and I could sense something was happening finally Wilkerson said he said the Lord tells me that somebody here is going to give a word of prophecy I had never heard the phrase word of prophecy used in a functional sentence I had studied one Corinthians I knew it you know in scripturally but I never heard anybody actually use it in a sentence I remember thinking does he think that the prophet Isaiah is going to just drop through the roof what can he even be talking about he said God's going to give somebody a word of prophecy and I want him to stand up and give it right now a guy on the front row that I had known for years he was so liberal this guy I didn't even know if he believed in God now you know you laugh I mean this guy was way left and he stood up and turned around his faceless white as a sheet his hands were shaken he said well boys it's me he said the weird thing is I don't think I even believe in this he said I was just sitting here and the thought came in my mind in a moment that man's going to call for a word of prophecy stand up and open your mouth I'll fill it he began to speak I'm going to do a great thing says the Lord and it's beginning now in this room when he said that the Holy Spirit fell on that room the Holy Spirit fell on me I fell in the floor the middle of the floor collapsed I began to weep not nice you know but I mean old horrible sobbing running nose you know laying in the floor and then I saw a panorama of all the nasty things I'd ever done like a technicolor movie and I thought that God was showing me the reason that he was going to slay me that I'd come into his presence and he was revealing the indictment and it terrified me so bad I begin to cry out you know you don't kill me don't kill me you know I you want to part a room full of preachers like the Red Sea you know I'm laying in the floor rolling around crying don't kill me don't kill those guys were backing up this and Wilkerson God bless his heart came out left the platform and came out and got down in the floor with me and put his hands under my shoulders like that and lifted me up against him like a baby and I just braced myself just I just braced myself I know he's gonna try to do if he just said anything to me but what he said if he said all right now you're gonna talk in tongues or whatever anything I'd have been okay instead he whispered in my ear and he said my dear brother pastor I love you you know maybe if we'd love more people who were trying to shake tongues out of him somebody might get the Holy Ghost he said my dear brother pastor I love you and it broke me I said if you knew me you wouldn't love me if you knew me you wouldn't love me I'm living in sin I've got a serious alcohol problem and I said mister I tried to commit suicide in the last three weeks twice I said I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make it to New Year's I'm not gonna make it he said don't you want to receive the Holy Spirit don't you want to receive the Holy Spirit see there was that verb received the Holy Spirit I believed in the Holy Spirit I knew there was a Holy Spirit I understood the Holy Spirit brooded over the face of the abyss but what did me receive the Holy Spirit that indicated that there was something I was supposed to do some attitude or posture some don't you want to receive the Holy Spirit I opened my mouth to say no no I don't believe in that I don't want that there's no second work of grace I when I got saved I got it all I opened and I heard my own mouth say oh yes please that's what I want he said alright pray with me I'm gonna lead you in a simple little prayer God I give you my life everything I am everything I have all my future my past my sins my weakness my will everything and I'm asking you to fill me with the Holy Spirit this is second I'm asking you to fill me with the Holy Spirit he said alright now I'm gonna lay hands on you and God's gonna baptize you with the Holy Spirit do you want to receive the Holy Spirit God fill me with the Holy Spirit now God's gonna baptize you with the Holy Spirit he reached his hand out toward me and I just I just cringed although oh no I had been taught in seminary that Pentecostal evangelist had buzzers in the palms of their hands and that they would and I said oh God he's gonna buzz me I know he's gonna buzz me he said alright I'm gonna lay hands on you and God's gonna baptize you with the Holy Spirit he just reached his hands out placed his hands on my head nothing weird nothing forceful he said alright son in the name of Jesus of Nazareth and in the authority of that name only receive the Holy Spirit I don't know what happened in 149 other Methodist preachers on December the 5th 1975 I only know that I knelt on the floor sad broken empty wounded used up suicidally depressed and bound up Methodist preacher God fill me with the Holy Spirit my life changed our marriage changed the ministry changed all of those words the cluster like grapes around the central vine of the Holy Spirit became precious and real and wonderful in my life I'm not saying that they were distilled at any particularly wonderful level in my life I'm not saying that everything that needed to get done got done but what I am saying is that that was an immediate and wonderful and miraculous turnaround where there was emptiness fullness came where there was darkness and depression joy unspeakable and full of glory where there had been a ministry that was useless where there had been a ministry that was useless entirely useless God began a fresh work in my life people ask me about the difference the Holy Spirit made it may not seem like much to you I wouldn't tell you about miracles though I've seen them or the hundreds of thousands of people that I've seen since 1975 saved or filled with the Holy Spirit I wouldn't even mention it if you ask me what difference the Holy Spirit made in my life I'd say I'm a happy man I'm a happy man and that may not seem like much to you but if you've ever lived in darkness and emptiness and fear and anger and depression and to feel it lifted to realize that from that moment from that moment never once ever another nightmare never once ever never another drop of alcohol to realize then that happiness is not simply a state or condition subject to outside realities is an inner work of the living spirit of God now I want to ask you this question have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed I'm not asking if you're a Methodist or a Baptist or a Pentecostal God can make Pentecostals out of the chairs you sit on I'm asking have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed a lot of people attend spirit filled churches and the worship is spirit filled and the atmosphere is spirit filled and you know that question can just get lost for them personally I'm not asking if you attend this wonderful spirit filled church and hear this beautiful music and put your hands up and feel the joy I'm asking have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed have you been filled have you allowed him to take you by the nape of your neck and in that breathtaking moment plunge you beneath the surface he shall baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost have you received have you received have you received this precious Holy Spirit you.