Transcript of a published conference session by David Fuller, transcribed from YouTube. An attributed primary source — not Acts 2:38 Life doctrine text.
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Summary
Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.
He thanks the house and reads his two texts
- The cut opens with the host introducing him — "my dear brother and friend brother David Fuller from Atlanta" — and seating the usher's-office announcements; that head segment is attribution and furniture, seamed out of the text (packet.md). Fuller's own first words, after the long pause that follows the introduction, tie the sermon to the year: "89 words for 89 — that's what the spirit gave us just a little while ago" (the line stands as captioned; see packet.md). He thanks the "Pasteur's Mangan" committee of Because of the Times (as captioned) and "mother Huntley" — "don't ever lose that fresh sweetness of genuineness" upon her ministry — and begins: "I'm reading today from the 20th chapter of the book of John. I want to preach more pure" than he has ever preached in his life.
- His spoken direction of the reading is garbled in the captions (it stands verbatim in the texts; see packet.md), but what he reads is plain: Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came; the other disciples said, "we have seen the Lord"; but Thomas said, "except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe."
- Then the second text: "then Paul, writing to the church at Galatia — Galatians chapter 6 verse 17 — said: from henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ." And he announces his subject: "I'm preaching today the marks of the Cross." You may be seated.
Scriptures: John 20:24-25; Galatians 6:17
The world stands in the vestibule demanding to see the marks
- Modern lepers are still being told they need not be dipped in a fountain drawn from Emmanuel's veins — "but without the cross there is no church; without the cross we are not Christians; without the cross we have no hope of the future." What the world calls foolishness is, on no less authority than God's word, "the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth" (the wording is voiced without a citation; see packet.md).
- Thomas demanded to see the marks of the cross before he would believe, before he would give any credence to the resurrection — "and today the world stands in the vestibule of the church and demands to see those same marks" of those who claim they have been to a cross and had their flesh crucified. "Nothing will convince men of the authenticity, nothing will convince men of the identification of the church, like the marks of the Cross." When they went to the tomb — Luke records it, he says — "but him they saw not; and that's the tragedy of the world today: they come among us and they see us, and they see our Pentecostalism, and they see our program, and they see what we have — but they don't see him," the one they need to see. "Do they see him in our services? Do they see him in our lives?"
- "The biggest problem of the church today is uncuff ID flesh" (as captioned; see packet.md): advertised places among advertised people proclaim "we have him, we have the truth, we have the name, we have the power, we have the miraculous — but do we really have it? Do we bear the marks of the cross? What are the marks of the cross? What is it that brands and identifies a man?"
Scriptures: Luke (book-only, as spoken)
Stigmata: everything leaves its mark
- "The word that Paul used there of marks comes from the Greek word stigmata, which we get the English word stigma." The marks of the cross placed a stigma on a man: it branded him, left him with an identification, "a reputation to live down," a stigma so impregnated and prominent "that the world could not but help notice the stigma."
- Everything leaves its mark as it passes through the world. Animals do: the tracks tell their size, their habits, where they feed and drink; the bear rips the log and flips rocks for grubs and leaves the telltale signs; the fleck of hair caught on the barbed-wire fence where the deer crawled through tells that it passed this way. "Modern crime detection is based on the fact that everything leaves its mark" — lint, a bit of hair, a fingerprint, a fleck of blood. A home leaves its identification mark on a life; prayer leaves its identification mark on a life; "the cross stigmatized a life." Something on the outside of us tells our habits, our loves, our drives, our motives, our purposes, our ideals. An artist is known by his style.
- "God is known by his mark: when he passed by, the men said, did our hearts not burn within us as we walked in the way?" (the wording is voiced without a citation; see packet.md). But carnality has a stigma, prayerlessness has a stigma, burn-less hearts and careless ministry have their own brand. "I have come to Because of the Times because I am an ordinary man… and I need the stigma — I need burned in my soul, in my heart, and my conscience, in my ideals — the stigma of the cross of Jesus Christ. You cannot extemporize prayer; you cannot pretend in worship."
The brand of the criminal, the slave, the sheep, and the sailor
- The stigma Paul talked about was the mark placed on a criminal: no matter how many years ago the crime, or the contrition of his heart, the mark was there — "like the mark on Cain," visible on the face, not to be covered by hair brushed down or the growth of a beard; everywhere he walked, men knew that in his past there had been something that marked him (the Cain account is told, never cited; see packet.md).
- It was the stigma that branded a slave who came to the year of Jubilee, whose ear was bored through with an awl at the doorpost — a man whose life had been stigmatized to say "I don't want to be free from the slavery" (the account is told, never cited; see packet.md). "But brother Anthony — go to the mirror — and I don't see that in me. I don't see that mark. I don't see where I have sold out everything to him and it's left its mark on my life."
- It is the brand put on cattle, "the clip of the ear, the way the shepherd marks his sheep, that says: that's my brand, that's my sheep — they are the sheep of my pasture; they are known by that mark, that I am the shepherd." It was the tattoo the sailor wore on his arm and chest that branded him a mariner. It is something you can't wash off, doesn't wear away, doesn't get old — "you're going to bed with it, you get up with it, you live with it." "Paul said: I wear the badge of honor. He said: Galatians, criticize all you want… try to lead me back to the big early elements of the flesh (as captioned)… but you don't trouble me anymore. I've been stigmatized. I've been branded. The cross — the cross — the cross has impregnated my life."
Commitment's stigma — and the mark that will be checked at the gate
- Some here today can point to a time and a circumstance "that branded you forever" — the stigma of commitment, of consecration; and there are those who left the stigma of pretense, hypocrisy, and sham profession, "and it died in Peru; they died in lost soul; they died in a cause — and you were stigmatized forever with genuineness and with purity and with reality and with hunger."
- He takes up a hard saying in his own stigma terms (its wording stands garbled in the captions; see packet.md): the right hand that offends is to be stigmatized off, better to go into eternity maimed than fall into hell without the sting. "They'll stand the signal at that gate that will mark every man, every woman that comes through that gate — and if they don't bear the sting of the nails, of crucified flesh, of crucified ambition, of crucified goals, of crucified wants — they don't bear the mark, they won't pass through."
- Somebody has got to come to the cause of the times and say: "right here, God — you mark my ministry; you stigmatize my goals." "Paul said: you're wasting your time. I've come to Because of the Times to get free of the things that I've let charge me and buy me and hold me… I want to walk out of this place God's man forever. I want to walk out of this place stigmatized forever."
Harvey Davis, a living cross
- "I got a phone call not so long ago that nearly broke my heart." A man who taught him so much about being a Christian was about to be operated on: "Harvey Davis is a living cross. He went to Liberia, Africa, a long time before missionaries enjoyed what they enjoy today" — and thank God for every amenity we can give a missionary, for the souls weigh on him enough without squalid conditions, "without having to worry about his children and his family being kept like a person who's loved ought to be kept." But he went under very impoverished conditions; he contracted amoebic dysentery that devastated and wasted his body; his wife caught it; they came back to the States in the fifties, broken people, their health gone; they landed in California and started building a church in Southern California, and they have poured out their lives — sick, suffering, bodies broken — "but they won't give up and they won't quit." When Fuller called him in intensive care, moments before the surgeons rolled him in for open-heart surgery again, "he was talking about the work of God… about having to come back from surgery and go back to the church, because there was a revival in the church. Oh God — that something like that, something of that kind of character and quality, will impregnate my life. He's a walking cross. He's a face of many sermons."
A week alone asking for the cross — Joseph, David, and the child Jesus
- "Recently I went and spent a week with Jesus — just me and Jesus — and I said: Jesus, I'm not coming for a blessing, and I'm not asking you for an anointing… I'm asking you, God, before I leave you this week: will you bury a cross in my soul? Will you stigmatize me? Will you mark me with something that attends my days for the rest of my days?"
- Take the things that marked Joseph — the misunderstanding, the hatred, the seduction, the temptation, the prison — out of his life, "you've got an effeminate little daddy's boy that's been doted on by love"; it was wrestling with the wounds and pains that marked him and made him the prince. Take the lion, the bear, the giant, Ziklag and Adullam away from David, "you just have a nice little songwriter with a harp — he's not a king"; put them back, and you are stigmatizing. "God is stigmatizing a man before he can use him."
- Take the manger in Bethlehem, peasant parents, being chased out of his native land at three and not coming back until nearly in his teen years, the obscurity of a carpenter's shop with a kingdom burning in his soul — "but you take it out, and there's no church, there's no power; but the stigma of the cross cries out his memorial 2,000 years later."
- "You can take my blessings… you can take every conference ever preached away from me… you can take my fellowship card away from me — but you can't have the cross. Because every place that is wounded, every place that is stigmatized, the grotesque place, the twisted place, the place where I limp — that's what saved me; that's what's made the difference; that is what's changed me. Don't rush to me to try to take the sword out of my wounds. Don't rush to me and try to heal me. Leave the sword in my heart — just help me keep it clean… don't let bitterness get in, don't let ambition get in."
The orchardist's axe — and the trademark of genuineness
- The wise orchardist walks his orchard with the sharpened axe; when he finds a young tree given to wood, to branches regal and majestic, to a profusion of leaves, he buries the axe into the meat of the tree, twists it, opens the ugly wound, and walks away. The tree bends and doubles toward the ugly scar; it may take two years, five years to heal — "but one thing: that tree's forgotten wood, it's forgotten branches, it's forgotten leaves. He knows if he can stop the ambition to put on wood… because of the wound, he has put on fruitfulness. Where God has wounded my bigness, he has taken away my barrenness; where God has marked me, where God has cut me, where God has wounded me, he has taken away the young fruit, the unprofitable, the barren — he has left me stigmatized."
- "The trademark says it's genuine. The trademark says you can pay full price for it. The trademark says you're not going to be cheated… it proves it's genuine; it's protected; it's patented; it's authentic; it's the real thing." There's nothing wrong with our holiness — but "I'm afraid the world is paying too big a price for what they're really getting out of the church."
- "No, sister Megan (as captioned) — it's not in suffering; that's not the stigma" — and he voices two of Paul's wordings without naming their sources (see packet.md): giving the body to be burned is not it; it is not in vision; a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him is not it. "But do I look like the master? Do I bear his heart?… his tolerance… his kindness… the tender, caring, caressing way that he touches hurting, wounded, broken, destitute, hopeless people?"
Paul's hunger to know him — the body tells the story
- "Now, I don't have any business preaching this. No, I don't glow in his pulpit, because there's no marks here. I can't say what Paul said; I can't tell you, don't trouble me anymore — because I don't have a life: it's hid with God in Christ" (the wording is voiced without a citation; see packet.md). Paul wasn't concerned about going to heaven, streets of gold, a crown, a sea of glass: "Paul was concerned that I might know him. The driving hunger of his soul: I've got to know him — he counts everything, that he might win Christ. Oh, that I might know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his dead" (the phrases stand as captioned — the count-everything wording is garbled at the same place; the passage is voiced without a citation; see packet.md). "I gotta know him. I've got to meet Jesus. I gotta meet him somewhere."
- "The body is the tale of the soul. The body bears witness to the man; it tells the story; it doesn't lie; it doesn't cover up." The hands of real labor are hard, calloused, worn, scarred, marked by the scabs of hard work — strong, masculine, powerful; that cannot be faked. Here is a man or woman with weathered hands, shoulders stooped toward the grave, "a body that bears all the marks of child-rearing," of caring, of years of toil and weariness and giving. "And look at the baby's hands, and look at the baby's face: there's no marks; the skin is clear and beautiful and unmarked… because there's been no life lived there; there's no experience there; there's no stigma of life, there's no stigma of mark." If you don't want a man's twist, his ugliness, "then you don't want the power of this ministry."
Character in literature: every author has his style
- "You know my vice is: I read. I love to read. I have read everything that the pen of Harold Bell Wright has written" — best known for The Shepherd of the Hills, "but it is by far not his best"; among them the ones he names as captioned — "the mine with the open door," "Helen of the whole house" — "but my favorite of all is when a man is a man. There's something about the way Harold Bell Wright paints character," the way he introduces temptation into a life, "the courage, choice in youth, unpracticed, unexperienced."
- Louis L'Amour: "I've stood straddled the town street, my hand hung at my side… my gun has cleared the leather a split second before my enemy, and I've watched the bullet strike its match." The hunting writer he names as "Jean Hill" (as captioned): "he could set you in a duck blind, just being there — put the crisp cold morning on your cheek" (one phrase stands as captioned, "the Chris Cole morning"; see packet.md), the wind cutting at your ears, the glint of sunlight on the shotgun barrel — "you gather up your decoys, no birds in the sack, but that ain't no big deal: just being there is all that really matters." McManus and his good clean humor — you can almost see him in the deadfall dug for some eminent beast of the forest, and his friend's father fell in with a skunk. And Eugenia Price (as captioned, "Eugenia prices"), the St. Simons trilogy — Beloved Invader, New Moon Rising, Lighthouse — Fort Frederica, the Dodge family, the Wesley boys, the building of the church on the American continent. "So it is, every author has their style; they have their way."
Lives he authored — and the furnace
- So it is with Bible lives. Some "offered themselves the absolutes" and "wrote ruin, and wreck, and prostitution across promise — the prodigal, who threw away, who sinned, who wasted so much; they wrote their own tale, and you can tell it's their story because they're the main thing in the whole story." But other lives — "lives that he authored": something about the style, the content, the way the story unfolds, "you always find the orchardist with the axe; you always find the sword piercing heart; you always find him taking a man where the rubber meets the road and distilling him there, boiling him down till there is nothing left but pure God and pure love and pure zeal."
- "I am told that if you take wood from the forest and you put it in a vacuum furnace and you fire it at six thousand degrees and leave it in there for ten minutes, when you open the vacuum furnace and pick it out, all you will have left is pure carbon — and that's what the Son put in" there; everything born of earth burned away, only what the Son put in lasting. "Somehow, God, take me to your furnace. Son — call Jesus — take me in this meeting and stigmatize me. Stigmatize me."
- Here the sermon is interrupted in the recording: a second voice — acting, by his own words, at the general superintendent's direction — stops the preaching to announce that cars parked at the VFW lot across the bayou are being towed, and leads a prayer to bring the congregation back to the setting the preaching had created. The interruption is seamed out of this record's text (packet.md); the sermon resumes with Lincoln.
Lincoln's letters: the marks were placed in obscurity
- "The White House years of Lincoln would be totally obscure to us had he not written letters to his mother, and in them he poured out his soul" — the poverty, the years of obscurity, the loss, the disappointments, the many defeats, the things that wounded his character and conscience. In the years when the nation was torn, "a man that had marks, a man who was disfigured, a man who was marked because of his ugliness" — the things that gave him the character, the constitution, shepherded this nation through its darkest hours, "and they were placed in him in the cabins of Kentucky… in the defeated political races of Illinois. He would have never been the revered man that he was had he not bear the stigmas of obscurity and the marks of pain." When he was born in 1809, a dictator was sweeping Europe like a prairie fire, Napoleon the talk of the times — "but in Hardin County, Kentucky, in a log cabin, to an arterial farmer" (as captioned), a man was born "who was destined to change the course of the face of the nation. Hallelujah."
- "And it's those same things, preacher… it's times of poverty, it's times of disunity, it's times of pain in your ministry — but God is building you for a destiny much bigger… it is those things that are stigmatizing your dreams… your desires… your honesty — that's going to make the difference when it really counts." Too many men got to the throne without any marks, without cuts, without limps — "and when they got there, they prostituted the opportunity that they had. Unless we bear his marks…"
"Give me the pen": letting God write the story
- "How many of you have had your children bring the little scratchy things that they have put together — poems that they wrote that didn't make any sense, pictures that you couldn't no more tell what it was — but in there, the flow of their heart, there was such love, but there were childish attempts to tell it… and then when they told you, you said: oh, sure — how dumb of me; I should have saw that; I should have understood that; I should have known that." So he has come to God with great dreams of revival and ministry, and seen the perplexed look for a time, "as God was trying to make out the run-on sentences, all the grammatical structure out of place."
- And then God says: "here, son — give me the pen. If you'll let me write the story, if you'll let me tell the tale, if you'll let me make your ministry what I want it to be and not what you want it to be — if you'll preach it with a limp, if you'll carry it with a cross, if you'll struggle and you walk with a grotesque ugliness — I will make you. I will make you. I won't give you anything, but I will make you all things."
Poking at a dead man — and no raw recruit
- "What's going to have to happen to us?… Somewhere in this meeting, somewhere in our lifetimes, we're gonna have to have an authentic interview with the master. He's gonna have to touch us; he's gonna have to stigmatize us; he's gonna have to mark us here; you're gonna have to carry the disfigurement that says you're a slave. You can't hide it."
- Paul said: the things you laugh about in me, poke me about — being super-spiritual, caring too much — "you're poking the dead man; you're poking at a dead man's eye; you're kicking at a dead man. None of these things move me" (the wording is voiced without a citation, woven through his paraphrase of Paul; see packet.md). "They don't bother me anymore. Mark — can't you see it right there? I'm a slave. I don't matter anymore; I don't count anymore. I'm crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live — oh wait a minute, that's a misstatement: not I, not I, but Christ — Christ, Christ, Christ liveth in me. Shut up." (The Galatians wording is voiced entire here, without a citation; see packet.md.)
- "Let me hasten to a close. Paul said: I'm no raw recruit. I know no seasoned, untrained person that can fool me… oh no — I have seen the conflict; I know what it is to have the sword." The greatest day in his life, he says, was when he quit asking God to spare him his battles, quit asking God to do something about those saints, "and started doing something about myself — the day I accepted those infirmities and I bought those marks and those challenges, and said: God, I'll take the blood holding the sword; I'll fight the battle; I'll do anything, if you just mark me with your likeness — if I just get out of the battle and I look a little more like you, I walk a little more like you, I respond and react with your mastery. That's all that matters; it's what I'm here for."
- "I got to come back from the battle. I got to go home in a wheelchair with mankind. I got to go home from this meeting crippled" (as captioned in part; see packet.md) — "my people have got to say: what's happened to you? My God — I got crucified." "Dear pastor, let me help that ugly wound" — "no, don't touch it. Don't touch it. Let it be. Let it be. He's trying to pick a barrenness away from me; he's trying to take my barrenness for me. Oh God."
The king's marked trees — the final appeal
- "It is said: when the English came to America, they marked the king's trees with a broad arrow" (the phrase stands as captioned — "the Curt trees with a broad hair"; see packet.md). When the settlers came, it said: don't touch those trees when you clear this plot of ground; don't touch those — "they're marked; they're stigmatized; they belong to the king. There are some things that are so totally owned by the master that they're not owned by anything else."
- A word in all kindness: "I need authority today. I cannot submit myself to Bayou… The day I cannot submit myself to elders and leaders, the day that men who are my elders — that I do not entreat them as fathers — is the day that I have set the course, the path, tomorrow night" (the sentence stands fragmented as captioned; the summary leans on nothing in it beyond the elders point). "The United Pentecostal Church: we've got to get big enough that we don't have to control men so much that they cannot belong totally to him — totally, totally to him."
- "Thomas said: I won't believe… till I see" his hands (the line stands garbled as captioned). "Peter easily gave up his nets and boats, but it took him three years to give up himself. It's not that we just don't do certain things — but does Jesus live here, really? Does he express himself through my spirit, through my heart, through my purpose, through my ideals, through my goals? Do I look like a corpse? Is there any evidence of an open tomb in me? Not my convictions, not my cleverness, not my character — but is there any marks?"
- He turns the appeal on the world's Christ: "Master, Master — you who walked our world… you walked into the temple; you fingered two preachers who kept walking by on the other side and said: that's our problem. You, who didn't cast any stones at an adulteress… but you who pointed your finger to preachers and said: your problem is passing by on the other side. The United Pentecostal Church has been on the wrong side of the road in many cases; too often passed by burdens… and have missed the marks of the pastor" (the temple accounts are told, never cited; see packet.md).
- "This better be the last conference that David Fuller comes to and leaves without being stigmatized for the rest of his life. This better be the last convention that I leave with my pettiness and with my jealousies and with my ego and with my manhood. If this boy doesn't die in 89 — if I don't have 89 reasons to do something about this boy in 89 — I'll never get it all together. It's time that we repent. It's time that we go to the cross and find our cross, and let him mark us and stigmatize us. Could we reach to him right now?" The capture ends on that appeal, three seconds before the video's end.
Scripture index: John 20:24-25; Galatians 6:17; Luke (book-only, as spoken).
Transcript
89 words for 89 that's what the spirit gave us just a little while ago a lot of reasons of what we need to have from humanity man Pasteur's Mangan committee of because of the times thank you for giving us a contemporary look at Philadelphian church mother Huntley don't ever lose that fresh sweetness of genuineness appoints your ministry I'm reading today from the 20th chapter of the book of John I want to preach more pure but not have ever preached in all of my life today Jesus John 20 and Galatians 6 verse 24 of John 20 but Thomas one of the twelve called didymus was not with them when Jesus came the other disciples therefore said unto Him we have seen the Lord but he said unto them except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and thrust my hand into his side I will not believe then Paul writing to the church at Galatians chapter 6 verse 17 said from henceforth let no man trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ I'm preaching today the marks of the Cross you may be seated modern lepers are still being told that abandoned far for as good as Jordan the leprous name ins need not be dipped in a fountain drawn from Emmanuel's veins but without the cross there is no church without the cross we are not Christians without the cross we have no hope of the future because the benchmark of what the world calls foolishness no less authority than God's Word says it it and it alone is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth Thomas demanded to see the marks of the Cross before he would believe before he would
give any credence before he would give any credibility to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and today the world stands in the vestibule of the church and demands to see those same marks of those who have claimed that they have been to a cross and have had their flesh crucified and they bear witness of an all-city resurrection in their life nothing will convince men of the authenticity nothing will convince men of the identification of the church like the marks of the Cross when they went to the tomb the Bible says that Luke records it but him they saw not and that's the tragedy of the world today they come among us and they see us and they see our Pentecostalism and they see our program and they see what we have but they don't see him the most magnetic personality the one that is needed most the heel the Savior the lover the compassionate one the one they need to see the one they need to know him they see not do they see him in our services do they see him in our lives the biggest problem of the church today is uncuff ID flesh because in advertised places among advertised people that proclaims we have him we have the truth we have the name we have the power we have the miraculous that you think we advertise it but do we really have it do we bear the marks of the cross what are the marks of the cross what is it that brands and identifies a man the word that Paul used there of marks comes from the Greek word stigmata which we get the English word stigma the marks of the Cross placed a stigma on a man it branded him it left him with an identification it left him with a reputation to live down it left him with a stigma to walk with because that stigma was so impregnated it was so prominent in his life but the world could not but help notice the stigma everything leaves its mark everything tends to leave its mark as it passes through the world animals do where the track of animals have trod through the forest you can find the tracks that are left behind that tell us much about their lifestyle that tell us much about their habits where they feed where they drink the places they rendezvous the places that they go the things that are attractive and alluring to the animals the bear that rips the log and with this powerful forearms flips rocks sticking for grubs and mice leave the telltale signs that he has passed by here and he leaves his mark in passing the hair of the Fleck of hair that's caught on the barbed wire fence the deer crawls through it underneath it escaping the cunning gun of the hunter the deer and the animals that crossed there at the Bob wire fence leave the pale pale signs that they have passed this way and their tracks tell a lot about them their size their habits the kinds of things that drive them the kinds of things that move them modern crime detection is based on the fact that everything leaves its mark everybody leaves some trace behind that they have passed this way lint from the clothes a bit of hair a fingerprint a Fleck of blood some sign of footprint that they have passed this way a home leaves its identification mark on a life prayer leaves its identification mark on a life the cross stigmatized as life there's something about us there's something on the outside of us that tells so much about us that brands us that stigmatizes us that tells a lot about our habits our loves our drives our motives our purposes our ideals an artist is known by his style the color by which he paints the way he visits the canvas the symmetry with which he sets things on the canvas he's known by that God is known by his mark when he passed by the men said did our hearts not burn within us as we walked in the way but carnality has a stigma prayerlessness has a stigma burn less hearts careless
ministry has its own stigma it has its own brand I have come to because of the times because I am an ordinary man that's living in an or our and I need the stigma I need burned in my soul in my heart and my conscience in my ideals the stigma of the cross of Jesus Christ you cannot extemporize prayer you cannot you cannot pretend in worship there is something so off indicating there is something about the style there's something about the footprint they leave behind there's something about the thumbprint that they leave on the soul and they leave on the spirit and you can accessorize it it has got to have passed through your life through ministry to leave its mark yes it does the mark the stigma that Paul talked about was the mark that was placed on a criminal it didn't matter how many years ago the crime was it didn't matter the contrition of his heart but there was place the stigma the mark like the mark on Cain that everywhere he went it was there visible on the face it couldn't be covered up with a piece of a piece of hair brushed down on the forehead it couldn't be covered with the growth of a beard but it was a stigma that branded him for the criminal that where he was and everywhere he walked men knew that in his past there had been something that marked him there had been an era there had been an indiscretion and he carried that with him all the days of his life the stigma that Paul was talking about was the stigma that branded a slave a slave who came to the year of Jubilee and when the scripture says his ear was bored through with it all it was talking about a man that had been taken to the doorpost and his life had been stigmatized that says I don't want to be free from the slavery but brother Anthony go to the mirror and I don't see that in me I don't see that mark I don't see where I have sold out everything to him and it's left its mark on my life it is the brand that's put on a can a cat cattle that's a stigma it's the clip of the year the way the shepherd marks his sheep that says that's my brand that's my sheep they are the Sheep of my pasture they are known by that mark that I am the shepherd yes a stigma Paul wrote about it it was the tattoo that the Sailor wore on his arm the tattoo that he wore on his chest that branded him as a mariner a rough uncouth cursing man a man of the Seas a man of the wharfs a man alone a man with the elements it was a stigma that he wore and it branded him it marked him it was something you can't wash off it's something that doesn't wear away it's something that doesn't get old but it was with you and Harsha you're going to bed with it you get up with it you live with it it's a stinger it marked you it brand you impregnate you Paul said I wear the badge of honor he said Galatians criticized all you want to criticize Galatians do what you want to do try to lead me back to the big early elements of the flesh try to take me out of the realm of the spirit try to take the passion and drive a vase out of my heart but you don't trouble me anymore I've been stigmatized I've been Bray the cross the cross the cross has impregnated my life some of you here today can point to a time and to a circumstance into a situation that branded you forever as he is that left the stigma of commitment that left the stigma of consecration that left the stigma of pretense then left the stigma of hypocrisy they left the stigma of sang profession and it died in Peru they died in lost soul they died in a cause and you were stigmatized forever with genuineness and
with purity and with reality and with hunger stigmatized he said if your right-hand Affinia stigmatize it because it would be better for you to go into eternity me then fall into hell without the sting I'm gonna tell you they'll stand the signal at that gate that will mark every man every woman that comes through that gate and if they don't bear the sting of the nails of crucified flesh of crucified ambition of crucified goals of crucified wants they don't bear the mark they won't pass through places where you whipped in the carpet and said God kill me but I won't carry this berries in the heart God ended all right here this is the stopping place I die here but I get right here it's gonna be right from this moment it's gonna die right here somebody has got to come to the cause of the times that says right here God I hear God you mark my ministry you stigmatize my goals Paul said you're wasting your time I've come to because of the times to get free of my brethren I've come to because of the times to get free of the things that I've let charge me and buy me and hold me from being here I want to walk out of this place God's man forever I want to walk out of this place stigmatized forever I want a pair I want to bear oh I got a phone call mother so ago nearly broke my heart a man who taught me so much about being a Christian a man that oughta pay love lives in was being operated on in a couple hours of the time it came to me Harvey Davis is a living cross he went to Liberia Africa a long time before missionaries and joy what they enjoyed a day and thank God for every amenity and every embellishment and everything that we can do for a missionary to help him in his burn there's enough of souls that weigh on him without having to worry about squalid conditions without having to worry about his children and his family being kept like a person who's loved ought to be kept but he went under very impoverished conditions he contracted amoebic dysentery it devastated and wasted his body his wife caught it they came back to the states in the 50s broken people their health was gone they landed in California and started building a city on the jewel of the rest of Southern California and they have poured their lives they have been sick they have suffered their bodies are broken but they won't give up and they won't quit when I called him in the intensive care just moments before the surgeons was going to roll him in for open-heart surgery again open his head and clean out the arteries going to his brains he was talking about the work of God he was talking about having to come back from surgery and go back to the church because there was a revival in the church Oh God that's something like that something of that kind of character and quality will impregnate my life he's a walking cross he's a face of many sermons recently I went and spent a week with Jesus just me
and Jesus and I said Jesus I'm not coming for a blessing and I'm not asking you for an anointing and I'm not asking you to use me I'm not asking you to do anything for me I'm asking you God before I leave you this week will you bury a cross in my soul will you sting me ties me will you mark me with something that it tends my days for the rest of my days if you take the things that burn Josef's life if you take the misunderstanding if you take the hatred out if you take the subterfuge into seed out if you take the lies in the seduction out if you take the temptation and the prison out you've got an effeminate little daddy's boy that's been doted on by love and they'll never amount to anything but the thing that stigmatized him the bitterness is he wrestle with the wounds and pains and marked him as one may him the prince you take the lion out of David's life and the bear and the Giant and so if you take Ziklag and a deulim away from David you just have a nice little songwriter with a harp he's not a king but you put those things back in his life and you're stigmatizing and you let him wonder is that the king a madman solving groveling does that look like God's anointed yes it's God's anointed God is stigmatizing a man before he can use him if you take the manger in Bethlehem peasant parents if you take the ugliness of being chased out of your native land at 3 not coming back until you barely almost in your teen years suffering in the obscurity of a carpenter's shop when there's a kingdom burning in your soul when there's healing in your hands when there's love in your heart and nobody's giving it and you got it to give but then there's the misunderstanding there's the Pharisees and the Sadducees there's the rulers of Israel and there's the rulers of Rome there's thick-headed dumb disciples that just can't get their ambitions and their petty wants out of the way long enough to understand what he's all about and then amid all of that I guess M&E a whip a cross but you take it out and there's no church there's no power but the stigma of the cross cries out his memorial 2,000 years later yes yes Paul paulien had never been identified the way you're identified if you didn't bear the stigma of the cross yeah the cross is where part of me that the cross is where part of me was taken away you can take my blessings you can take every conference ever priest away from me better manga you can take the camp meetings away from me you can take my fellowship card away from me but you can't have the cross because every place that is wounded every place that if stigmatize the grotesque place the twisted place the place where I limp the place where I've been stigmatized that that's what saved me that that's what's made the difference that is what's changed me you can have anything but the adversities you can have anything where I've been stigmatized don't rushed me to try to take the sword out of my wounds don't rush to me and try to heal me leave the sword in my heart just help me keep it clean by the tinnie don't let bitterness get in don't let ambition get in just help me keep the wound clean because where that scar will be wear that ugly grotesque disfigurement will be something will that he manliest don't take away my sticker the wise orchardist when he walks to the orchard carries with him the sharpen axe he looks for young trees in the process
of growing he looks for them in the process of development when he finds one given to Woollett when he finds one given to branches regal and majestic lifting massive arms to the sky when he sees the profusion and profession of leaves he takes his axe and wickedly in vanity he buries it into the meat of the tree he twisted it opens the ugly wound and he turns and walks away and the tree bends and the tree twists and the tree doubles up toward the ugly ass toward the ugly star the place that the orchard is tested and when he comes back maybe two years it takes to heal maybe five years it takes to heal but one thing that trees forgotten it's forgotten wood it's forgotten branches it's forgotten leaves he knows if he can stop the ambition to put on wood of the tree that because of the wound he has put on fruitfulness where God that's wounded my bigness he has taken away my Berenice where God has marked me where God has cut me where God is wounded me he has taken away the young fruit for the unprofitable the barren he has left me stigmatized the trademark says it's genuine the trademark says you can pay full price for it the trademark says you're not going to be cheated the trademark says you're not going to pray pay the price for one thing get another there's nothing wrong with our holiness but I'm afraid the world is paying too big a price for what they're really getting out of the church the trademark it proves it's genuine it's protected its patented it's authentic it's the real thing no sister Megan it's not in suffering that's not the stigma though I give my body to be burned no it's not envisioned it's not how far you can see lest I be exalted above measure a messenger of Satan might be sent to buff it me but do I look like the master do i bear is black to up bare his heart to her bare spirit do i barest tolerance to up barest kindness to a pair the tender caring caressing way that he touches hurting wounded broken destitute hopeless people now I don't have any business prejudice I really don't because I don't fine but to him for me I still have a difference difficult times to govern I still have problems loving people that just aren't like me don't see it the way I see it I don't have enough tolerance for me and who grovel in mediocrity I've never loved him enough to try to help him find a vision of excellence to reach to order no no I don't have any Pistons preaching this no I don't glow in his pulpit because there's no marks here I can't say what Paul said I can't tell you don't trouble me anymore because I don't I don't have a life it's hid with God in Christ I tell you this Paul wasn't concerned about going to heaven there Paul wasn't sir concerned about streets of gold Paul wasn't concerned about a crown he wasn't concerned about a sea of glass Paul was concerned that I might know him the driving hunger of his soul I've got to know him I count everything but do that I might win Christ oh that I might know him and the power of his
resurrection in the Fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his dead I got it now II I gotta know him I've got to meet Jesus I gotta meet him somewhere the body is the tale of the soul the body bears witness to the man it tells the story it doesn't lie it doesn't cover-up it doesn't it doesn't add adverbs to hide the ugly adjectives no the body is the tale of the saw and it tells the real story the hands of the real labor they are hard and they are calloused and they are worn they are scarred and they are marked by the scabs were the hard work in the labor they are strong they are masculine and they are vera and they are powerful that cannot be faked the hands of the calloused and the hands of the laborer tell the story and here's a man or woman with wydad hair and cautious tipped hands that are weathered and warm shoulders that are stooped toward the grave a body that bears all the marks of child-rearing the bodies that bear all the marks of caring the bodies that bear all the years of toil and weariness and giving and caring and look at the baby's hands and look at the baby's face there's no marks the skin is clear and it's beautiful and it's unmarked and the hands are kinder and they're lovely and they're soft because there's been no life lived there there's no experience there there's no stigma of life there's no stigma of mark if you don't want a man's twist if you don't want is ugliness then you don't want the power of this ministry you know what the blessings of this wall was God if you're not willing to the tale of the Marx and your soul yeah you know my vice is a read I love to read I love to read I have read everything that the pen of Harold Bell Wright has written there he's known most for the classic Shepherd of the hills but it is by far not his best merely his best work among them the mine with the open door Helen of the whole house but my favor of all is when a man is a man there's something away about the way Harold Bell rights where he paints character the way that he introduces the subtle slime of temptation into a life to see the courage choice in youth unpracticed unexperienced there is none that can place a life in the arena of challenge of character the way Harold Bell Wright can put it there's no writer I can rival here Louis L'Amour I've stood straddled the town street my hand is hung at my side I've stood there was second i flexed my fingers my gun has cleared the leather a split second before my enemy and I've watched the bullet strike its match and I cuff little Killian area my walk away I've met my match again I've seen the church Sun chin itself on the eastern horizon yeah there's something about the way Lily told it and made it colorful and put you there you loved it then there's Jean Hill he could set you in a duck blind just being there he could put the Chris Cole morning on your cheek he could put the wind cutting at your ears pulling and tugging at your warm insulated clothing you can see the glint of sunlight down on the end of your shotgun barrel you could feel the lump in your throat the sweat in your
palms your decoys were set just right you can hear in the distance the answer and report of shotguns as they failed Canadian geese on their migratory journey you set there a couple hours later you gather up you two quois no birds in the sack but that ain't no big deal just being there is all that really matters just being there the way he tells it McManus you can hold your sides you can laugh with good clean humor you can almost you can almost see the conditions that he gets himself into you can almost see him in the deadfall that was dug for some the eminent beast of the forest and his friend's father fell in with a skunk and was well-well-well bad past and all of the humor the whippings and the aftermath of the story you're there he can tell him he could paint it there's some authors who write with such sensuality and lest there's others who write with such greed of gain there's others who write with such mystery in subterfuge and thrillers there are Eugenia prices the trilogy of Saint Simon and the Marshall Plan beloved invader new moon rising lighthouse the way she told the story of fort Frederica of the dodge family of the Wesley boys the building of the church in American continent there's something about the way she tells it the storyline the content the way she develops the main characters the way she brings the story to its final chapter conclusion and and so it is every author has their style they have their way so it is with Bible being lives that offered themselves the absolutes who wrote ruin in wreck in prostitution across promise the prodigal who throw away who sinned who wasted so much they wrote their own tale and you can tell it's their story because they're the main thing and the whole story but then there are other lives lives that he authored something about the style something about the content something away the story unfolds you always find the orchardist with the axe you always find the sword piercing heart you always find him taking a man where the rubber meets the road in distilling him there and boiling him down till there is nothing left but pure God and pure love and pure zeal I am told that if you take wood from the forest and you put it in a vacuum furnace and you fire it at six thousand degrees and leave it in there for ten minutes when you open the vacuum furnace and pick it out all you will have left is pure carbon and that's what the Sun put in the one everything that come out of Earth everything that was born of Earth has been burned away and only what the Sun put in there is lasting ring somehow God take me to your furnace son Cal Jesus take me in this meeting and stigmatize me stigmatize me we do everything that this man is preaching
the White House years of Lincoln would be totally obscure to us had he not Rutten letters to his mother and in them he poured out his soul the things that were put in there from the poverty in the years of obscurity the years of loss the disappointments the many defeats the things that wounded his character and his conscience as he ground he poured those things out in his soul in a letter but in the years when the nation was torn and when bigotry was tearing America apart a man that it had Marx a man who was disfigured a man who was marked because of his ugliness the things that give him the character the things that give him the Constitution the things were in his soul that Shepherd this nation to its darkest hours were placed in him and the cabins of Kentucky they were placed into him and the defeated political races of Illinois he would have never been the revered man that he was had he not bar the stigmas of obscurity and the marks of pain when he was born in 1809 and in a minute of dictator was sweeping Europe like a prairie fire kingdoms were falling in his wake and Napoleon was the talk of the times but in Hardin County Kentucky in a log cabin to an arterial farmer there was a man born who was destined to change the course of the face of the nation hallelujah and it's those same things preacher it's those same things in obscurity it's separating that church so it's times of poverty so it's times of disunity to the times of pain in your ministry but God is building you for a destiny much bigger and it is those things that are stigmatizing your dreams it is those things that are stigmatizing your desires it is those things that are distinctive that are stigmatizing your honesty there's going to make the difference when it really counts when it really counts it really cares to many men like so hard by past the line in the bear and got to the throne without any marks got to the throne without any cuts got in it to the throne without any limps got to the throne without any go test the store had twists and when they got there they prostituted the opportunity that they had unless we bare his marks how many of you have had your children brain the little scratchy things that they have put together poems that they wrote that didn't make any sense pictures that you couldn't no more tell what it was but in there the flow of their heart there was such love but there was childish attempts to tell it to somehow express the story and then when they told you said oh sure how dumb of me I should have saw that I should have understood that I should have known that and how many times I've come to him with these great dreams of revival and these great dreams of ministry and I've seen the perplexed look on his face for the tinny as God was trying to make out the run sentences together all the grammatical structure out of place of character and reality and a and I'm genuineness then God say here son give me the pen if you'll let me write the story if you'll let me tell the tale
if you let me make your ministry what I want it to be and not what you want it to be if you'll preach it with a limp if you'll carry it with a cross if your struggle and you walk with a girl cast ugliness I will make you I will make you I won't give you anything but I will make you all things can I ask you what's going to have to happen to us what needs to happen in your heart and mind it's bigger than what I can do today it's bigger than whatever preacher that'll march across this platform and doing this conference in doing this meeting somewhere we're gonna have to meet Jesus somewhere in this meeting somewhere in our last times we're gonna have to have an authentic interview with the master he's gonna have to touch us he's gonna have to stigmatize us he's gonna have to mark to here he's gonna have to brain the cell you're gonna have to carry the disfigurement it says you're a slave you can't hide it you can't stand like this most of the time the government happened Paul said the things you laugh about in me the things you poked me about the things you make fun of me the sincerity the things that you poked me about being super spiritual the things that you poked me about about caring too much nobody cares that much nobody's really that real the things you put me about you're poking the dead man you're poking at a dead man's eye you're kicking at a dead man none of these things move me they don't bother me anymore mark can't you see it right there I'm a slave I don't matter anymore I don't count anymore I'm crucified with Christ nevertheless I live oh wait a minute that's a misstatement not I not but Christ Christ Christ Christ liveth in me shut up let me hasten to a close Paul said I'm no raw recruit I know one seasoned untrained person that I can be fooled and I can be scintillated and I can be abated oh no I have seen the conflict I know what it is to have the sword the greatest day in my life is when I can't that quit asking God to spare me of my battles and I quit asking God to take my conflicts away and I quit asking God to take my trials and my challenges as a pastor away and I quit asking God to do something about those Saints and started doing something about myself the day I accepted those infirmities and I bought those marks and those challenges and said God I'll take the blood holding the sword I'll fight the battle I'll do anything if you just mark me with your likeness if I just get out of the battle and I look a little more like you I walk a little more like you I respond and react with your mastery that's all that matters it's what I'm here for God somehow I got to come back from the battle I got to go home in a wheelchair with mankind I got to go home from this meeting crach my people have got to say what's happened to you my god i got crucified dear pastor let me help that ugly wound no don't touch it don't touch it let it be let it be he's trying to pick a Baroness away from me he's trying to take my Baroness for me Oh God Oh what I
have to say really does it it is said when the English came to America they marked the Curt trees with a broad hair when the settlers came it said don't touch those trees when you clear this plata ground don't touch those they're marked they're stigmatized they belong to the king there are some things that are so totally owned by the master that they're not owned by anything else I want to say this in all kindness I don't mean anything about it by it I need Authority today I can't submit myself to by the ocean the day I cannot submit myself to elders and leaders the day that men or my elders that I do not in treat them as fathers is the day that I have set the course the path tomorrow night the United Pentecostal church we've got to get big enough that we don't have to control men so much that they cannot belong totally to him totally totally to him I don't mean anything by that Thomas said I won't believe I just leave till I see his arse Peter easily gave up his nets and boats but it took him three years to give up himself it's not that we just don't do certain things but does Jesus live here really does Jesus does he express himself through my spirit through my heart through my purpose through my ideals through my goals do I look like a corpse is there any evidence of an open tomb in me not my convictions not my cleverness not my character but is there any marks master master you who walked our world it was so sorted in soiled you walked into the temple you fingered two preachers who kept walking by on the other side and said that's our problem you who didn't cast any stones and an adulteress you the magnifying Republicans prayer but you who pointed your finger to preachers instead your problem is passing by on the other side the United Pentecostal church has been on the wrong side of the road in many cases too often passed by burdens yes I the main thing and have missed the marks of the pastor this better be the last conference the David fuller comes to and leaves without being stigmatized for the rest of his life this better be the last convention that I leave with my pettiness and with my jealousies and with my ego and with my manhood if this boy doesn't die in 89 if I don't have 89 reasons to do something about this boy in 18 hand I'll never get it all together it's time that we repent it's time that we go to the cross and find our cross and let him Marcus and stigmatizes could we reach to him right now
Scripture references as spoken: John 20:24-25; Galatians 6:17; Luke (book-only, as spoken).