<TITLE>06. Par 20-22</TITLE>L-20 And it isn't the size of my text tonight; it's not the value of the paper that it's written on; it's what it is that's wrote on the paper. It's the Word of the living God, an offer of pardon. A pardon... It's a pardoning. The Word is pardoning to every man, or woman, or boy, or girl that will receive It.

L-21 Some years ago in the civil war, or the revolutionary, one, it was... I believe it was the time of Abraham Lincoln; it was, that there was a soldier that had done a violence. And he had run away in time of battle, shirked his line of duty. And they caught the man. And they tried him before the courts and found him guilty. And the sentence was to be shot by a firing squad.
And there was a man who had thought so much of this young fellow; he was a nervous, upset boy. And when the old muskets and cannons begin to fire, he just run, because he was scared to death. But he had shirked his duty, and he was going to be killed. In a certain day his execution was set.
And a friend of his went to the president of the United States, the gracious Abraham Lincoln. And good, old Abe, as he was entering into a hotel room, this friend run to him and he said, "Mr. Lincoln." And he said, "I know you to be a Christian man. You're the commander and chief of the army. And this certain man is guilty of what they've tried him for. But his conditions, he was scared. He's a good man. And I know you don't believe in taking a man's life. With your word on a piece of paper, his life will be spared. Even if he has to stay in federal prison, don't let him be killed. He was a good boy. I knowed him; raised up in the neighborhood with him."

L-22 Good, old Abe got him a piece of paper and wrote just a couple of words across there, "Pardon this man, Abraham Lincoln."
Oh, the boy rushed back to the prison cells and he showed his friend. He said, "You are freely pardoned."
He said, "Don't make fun of me, knowing I'm to die in the morning."
He said, "Here is the president of the United States, the commander and chief. He signed your pardon."
And the boy looked at it, said, "That's just a piece of paper. There's nothing to it. You're trying to make my death more miserable than it ever was intended for it to be. I will not receive it."
And he walked back and behind the cell and refused to look at the paper any more, because he said, "If Mr. Lincoln would've signed my pardon, it would've had the--the all the--the letterhead and so forth and his seal upon it and so forth. So, therefore, I will not receive it because it's only a mockery."
The next morning the man died before a firing squad. Now, what's going to happen? There's a commander and chief of the army says that this man is pardoned, and now he's shot by a firing squad. Now, what are we going to do? It was tried in the federal courts of our nation, and here was the verdict of the Supreme Court or the federal court. It said, "A pardon is not a pardon, unless it be received as a pardon."


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