ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN VIII: Moses
Having been called to a prophetic ministry when I was very young, I have become increasingly aware throughout the years that this is a very controversial area of ministry – and one which requires the utmost integrity.
There is a level of responsibility that goes with speaking, declaring or decreeing something “in the name of the Lord” as His representative and spokesman that goes beyond normal preaching and teaching. Those of us who walk and live in this realm have a higher standard to live by because if we speak falsely or declare something that the Holy Spirit has not actually said – or if we add to or take away from something He is saying – we effectively discredit His Word and create conditions that Satan uses to deafen people to hear the actual prophetic Word.
This is true also of evangelists, pastors and teachers to a lesser degree, but the one who speaks and says in essence, “Thus saith the Lord,” had better KNOW that the Lord is truly speaking that Word for that moment in time and that the fruit or evidence must follow. I’m saying this because I’m realizing that the Holy Spirit is really pulling us up short so that we are cautious and careful – and yet bold to speak no matter the consequences.
Thank God for the grace He has given throughout the years as I – and my fellow brothers and sisters who operate in this realm of ministry – grow and mature into the accuracy that must accompany us along with the personal integrity required! I have not always been accurate. In years gone by I have said things that obviously came out of a superheated imagination. They didn’t come to pass as I said. And each time that has taken place, there has been an “OUCH” inside because I missed God. His grace has covered my failures but He has used each failure to teach me.
I’ve said all that to say this. There is a sifting taking place in the prophetic “movement” (if I can use that descriptor) in this hour. There is a shaking taking place for the purpose of sorting out those who are truly anointed by the Holy Spirit and wear a prophetic mantle, and those who prophesy in the name of the Lord for personal gain and self-aggrandizement. There must be a separation that takes place so that as the apostle Paul wrote, “that they which are approved [by God] may be made manifest among you.”
That word “approved” in the Greek text is the word, dokimos. It is an ancient word that was commonly used among those who refined gold and silver for the purpose of creating coins with certain and fixed value, and it speaks of the smelting process – heating gold or silver in a crucible to the boiling point so that the impurities come to the surface and get scooped off. In the end, what remains is the pure gold or pure silver.
That’s exactly what the Holy Spirit is doing – and has been doing – among those who are called to declare, decree and speak forth in the onoma (name) – the character, the essence, the nature and makeup of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be proven in the fire, and the Word tested and tried in us. The Word that comes forth must be a proven and demonstrable Word.
Just as there have been a number of preachers, teachers and evangelists who have misused the truth of the message of prosperity for their own gain, there have been those in the prophetic realm who have likewise misused their anointing, pointing accusing fingers at certain individuals whose gifting, anointing and sharing has been misunderstood and as a result brought discredit to themselves and confusion in the Body of Christ. This sifting of the Holy Spirit, therefore, and separation between the “approved” and those who walk in error must, of necessity, take place.
A certain young lady named Shamir brought my attention to the fact that in my recent defense of some of the accused, I was doing the same thing as those who were pointing accusing fingers. It was a warning I both received and appreciated. When in our zeal to defend certain individuals or truths we strongly believe, we use the same tactics as those who speak in error and unbelief, we bring the same discredit to the Gospel. Naming names and pointing fingers at individuals, accusing them of heresy, is both unscriptural and in opposition to the command of the Lord (see I John 5:16).
Our responsibility is to minister forgiveness – not condemnation! Somehow we have to get past the place where we feel any necessity to defend the Lord or defend His Word. The Word of God defends itself and stands because of the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no need for our getting into doctrinal disputations.
For my part I am glad when the Holy Spirit brings correction and admonishment to me. After sixty-plus years of walking with the Lord in a very personal relationship I know that correction comes in His love and His purpose to bring me to the fulfillment of His destiny in and for me. We live in the declining seconds of an age that is rapidly drawing to a close, and it is critical that we all walk circumspectly with an increasing thirst for the manifested presence of the Lord in us.
‘Nuff said on that topic for now! Let’s get back to our discussions on Heaven and the important sharing that took place. What I’ve just shared is relevant to my discussions with Moses.
My conversation with Moses followed the succession of my conversations with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and indeed, with the exception of Joseph, all of my conversations followed in the chronological order of the lives of those individuals throughout the centuries. Because I was remembering so much of my experiences and conversations with David, I took him out of sequence in these Coffee Breaks.
Joseph was the one exception to the order of things. Other than a brief meeting with him on this first trip to Heaven, I did not have a real in-depth conversation with him until some two years later on my second trip to Heaven. In fact, he was the entire focus of my second trip, and it was a very different experience from this first one.
As previously noted, virtually everyone I met and spoke with appeared in the prime of life. It’s a funny thing, but I suppose because Moses didn’t even begin leading Israel until he was 80 years of age I somehow expected him to look like a stereotypical 80-year old. Wrong! He was strong, muscular and appearing vibrantly healthy – much, I would suppose – as he did when he fled from the courts and palace after Pharaoh found out who he was and how he had killed an Egyptian.
My questions to Moses centered briefly on his life as Pharaoh’s grandson, then his experiences with the burning bush and the voice of God, next his return to Egypt to face a Pharaoh he would likely have known as an heir to the throne before he fled into Midian, and finally the things he experienced with Israel as they were in the wilderness. I was curious about his responses to the Lord and how, after spending so much of his early life in Egyptian culture, he was able to respond to God. His answers were a bit of a surprise since there was nothing in my reading of Scripture that had indicated the picture he drew for me.
Our conversation began after my introduction to him like this: “Moses, I always thought you grew up in Pharaoh’s palace without any real awareness of God, and that He introduced Himself to you for the first time in the burning bush. What did you think when you first heard the Lord?”
He smiled and then laughed. “I suppose a lot of folks think that’s the way it happened, but if you think back to the account in Exodus you’ll remember that my sister, Miriam, offered to get a nurse for me when Pharaoh’s daughter found me in the river. You’ll also remember that it was my mother who Miriam got as my nurse.
“Now think about it for a minute. I spent more of my early years with my real parents than I did in Pharaoh’s palace. My mother spent a great deal of time talking about the God of Israel and telling me about our heritage as descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I wasn’t unfamiliar with God. We’d just never met personally until that day on Mount Horeb.
“Yes, I spent a great deal of time with my adoptive Egyptian mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, and she made certain that I was treated as a possible heir to the throne of Egypt. Pharaoh never knew of my birth as a Hebrew. Had he known, he would easily have killed his own daughter – and me!”
“So you pretty much knew, then, that you were not an Egyptian during your growing-up years?” I asked. “Was it hard to keep the secret? Did you look enough like an Egyptian that no one asked?”
Moses just chuckled. “Egyptians and Jews look a lot alike. Dress an Egyptian in the clothing of a Hebrew shepherd and you’d never know. Put me in the typical garb of a member of the royal family and to all practical intents I was Egyptian. No one ever questioned that I was a prince.”
He continued. “I didn’t really spend a lot of time among Pharaoh’s family until after I was 12 years of age. They’d seen enough of me during my earlier years that I wasn’t a stranger, but you have to understand that children who were of the house of Pharaoh didn’t really have the run of Pharaoh’s palaces during their nursing years and even up until they were perhaps eight years of age. When they reached that age they were being schooled as members of the royal family. Pharaoh’s daughter eased me in stages into my preparation as a prince of Egypt.
“Those first years of my life with my parents teaching me about my heritage as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – being a Hebrew – became so instilled in me that when, as I grew older, I began to see the bondage and hard labor of the Jews under the hand of Pharaoh. An anger and rebellion began to grow inside of me at the treatment I was seeing. I wasn’t good at expressing myself verbally so my frustrations just grew greater and greater as they were pent up.
“Nearing the age of 40, everything exploded in me one day when I saw a taskmaster beating a young Hebrew who was under his charge. Rage took over and before I realized what had happened, I had killed that Egyptian. I dug out some sand and quickly buried him, unaware that my actions had been witnessed.
“Everything was still seething in me the next day when I saw a fight unfold between a couple of my fellow Hebrews. When I stepped in to intervene, the man who provoked the fight somehow knew that I was not a prince of Egypt but rather a Hebrew like him. When he angrily responded, ‘Who made you our prince and judge? Are you going to kill me like you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’ it shook me to realize that my identity as someone other than a prince of Egypt had been discovered. I knew that news would travel fast and eventually reach Pharaoh’s ears.
“It did! It wasn’t a matter of more than a few weeks and Pharaoh found out about the deception. From that moment there was an edict against me and my life was done in Egypt. There was nothing to do but run for my life.
“It took me many days of walking and running to cross what you would see as more than a hundred miles of desert and wilderness until I wound up spent and famished among the fields and herds of Jethro, the Midianite. You pretty much know the story. Jethro took me in; and after discovering that we were related to each other distantly through Abraham he gave me his daughter, Zipporah, as my wife.
“For most of the next forty years, I was a farmer and a shepherd – at first taking care of Jethro’s flocks and herds, and then having my own. Zipporah and I had a couple of sons whom we raised to likewise be farmers and shepherds.”
“So you lived a completely different life than you had in Egypt,” I said. “Wow! How hard was that? After the palace and royalty, now you are … well… like a regular person!”
“This was an important part of my life,” Moses responded. He was obviously amused at my analogy of his becoming “a regular person.”
“God had to take Egypt out of me,” he said. “For every year I had spent in Egyptian life, living both as a prince of Egypt, and also as a Hebrew seeing the hard bondage of travail of my people and being frustrated over not being able to do anything about it, the Lord had to completely re-educate me, year for year. My mindset had to change completely. I didn’t realize that the nomadic life of a shepherd and herdsman was preparation for my future leadership of Israel and the years that were going to be spent moving about like nomads in the wilderness.”
“So you were 80 years old – or almost 80 – when you first saw the burning bush,” I mused, thinking back to the Scriptures I had read. “What did you think when you first saw that bush?”
“It wasn’t just the bush that wouldn’t burn up, it was the appearance of the Angel of the Lord in the midst of it,” he responded. “At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and then to see the Angel in the midst of the fire…well…I’d heard stories about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and their experiences with the Angel of the Lord, but this was not just a story! I was seeing this with my eyes and hearing the Angel of the Lord with my ears! It stopped me in my tracks.
“It was the Lord God talking to me through this Angel! You can believe that when I heard him say, ‘Take your shoes off: you are standing on holy ground,’ I took my shoes off and dropped to the ground afraid to look.”
I interrupted him to ask, “What I don’t understand is why when The Lord told you that you were His chosen vessel to deliver Israel from the Egyptians – and especially after you had the two signs of the rod turning into a serpent and your hand becoming white with leprosy – you argued with Him, and continued to argue with Him, and told Him that you couldn’t speak and that they wouldn’t hear you! Why would you argue with God in the face of such power and authority?”
“That’s a good and honest question,” he answered. “Looking back in retrospect, I’d have to say that there was a place of fear that still existed in me. Despite having been out of Egypt for 40 years I was still contaminated with the some of its remnants. Everything about Egypt was fear. Pharaoh ruled by fear and intimidation. The people – both the Egyptian people and we as Hebrews – lived our lives in constant fear. A sword hung over the land continually.
“At that point in my life, I really had no personal experience of walking with God. Despite all the things I’d been told by my parents about the Lord and all the things I’d heard about God’s Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it was all second hand. None of it was personal for me. God was showing Himself to me in that moment and it should have been enough, but there was still enough residual fear in me to contaminate my trust in Him.”
Moses stopped his explanation momentarily and pointed his finger at me. “Let me tell you something, young man! The Lord has given you this experience, just as He has already given you many other experiences with Him and with angels to establish a baseline of trust and confidence in Him. You’re going to need it! We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you didn’t have some very important purpose in His Kingdom economy in the years to come.
“Satan will try to fill you with fear. He will make every effort to contaminate you just like I was. In the years to come you will have many contrary experiences. You will probably blunder just like I did and make decisions and choices you’d like to undo. Don’t let your regrets and missed opportunities deter you. Don’t forget, God is a God of second chances. If you miss it the first time, He’ll give you another opportunity.
“Your ability to trust the Lord completely no matter what you see and no matter what experiences you have that seem totally contrary to His Word and His commands to you. Your life will depend on your ability to trust Him and have confident faith that whatever He tells you to do, you CAN do, and you MUST do knowing that He most certainly will fulfill His Word to you. Speak His Word no matter the people and no matter the circumstances. He will back you up just like He backed me up.”
Those words registered in my being in that moment and just as Moses had indicated, in the years to come I would get sidetracked and contaminated by fear. I had no idea just how much the Enemy was going to try and sabotage the Word in me and prevent me from fulfilling God’s commission in me.
Obviously I’m not going to have time today to talk about Moses’ leadership and his experiences in dealing with Israel and bringing them out of Egypt, not to mention his frustration with them in the wilderness. We’ll save that for our next discussion.
Next: HEAVEN: Moses & Israel.
2011 is a year of great change, great stirring among the people of God! The call to purity and cleanliness before God has gone forth – and is going forth! This is also a year of God’s recompense on behalf of His people – a year of God’s Justice!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are now available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
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CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN VII: David's Tabernacle
ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: Heaven VII: David’s Tabernacle
CHANGE!!!
If ever there was a word that describes our ongoing walk with the Lord, that’s it! If we are to ever reach our destiny in Him, we must continually be changing, conforming to His Will and His Word and the development of His character in us. More than that, we must be ever willing to lay aside our plans and our visions – even when those visions have been given to us by the Lord – so that He can implement His purposes for the Kingdom AND His timing with us.
That said, before I get on with today’s continued sharing of my experiences in Heaven let me say that we are in the midst of even greater change and transition. A series of events has unfolded which I need to share.
I’m sharing this out of sequence in my trip to Heaven, but one of the last things that Jesus said to me before we stepped back through the gate and I was returned to Earth was this: “I’m going to pour out my Spirit across the state of Alaska, and you’re going to be an integral part of it.”
When you hear something like that you naturally think it’s going to take place soon. Of course we saw some dramatic things take place throughout the years. Growing up with parents who were pioneers and missionaries (apostles to the arctic) provided me with a faith environment in which a steady stream of miracles was the norm. Nevertheless, we never saw anything approaching the outpouring that the Lord had promised and shown me.
In early 1953, following a period in which my folks had been asking God concerning our next move (we’d been in Nome for 9 years) and Dad had taken a reconnaissance trip to Barrow, he was in prayer one day when he heard the audible voice of God speak the following Word from Psalm 2:8, “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
It was a clear indicator for Dad, and we began the process of making the move to Barrow. Dad did ask the Lord, and we saw the fruit from it in an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1956 and 1957 that eventually stretched across the arctic into Canada and Greenland. Yet neither Dad or Mom – or me – saw the enormous move of God we expected.
When Dad was preparing to change addresses in 1986 (he spent the last few months of his life in our home) he apologized to me several times that “I don’t have a good inheritance to leave you.” He was, of course, referring to Proverbs 13:22. My answer to him was, “Dad, you have no need to apologize. I have received an inheritance in God from you that money can’t buy.”
This last Monday night as we were participating in and streaming a gathering with Steven Shelley, Paul Keith Davis and Paul Cain, the Lord reminded me of His Word to Dad and he said, “I am passing the inheritance that I gave your father on to you. Ask of me…”
Over the past few months we have seen a number of families depart from River Worship Center – some of them moving away from the area completely – and have been asking God what His next move is for us, or if we are to stand fast and expect things to rebuild. Della and I have been increasingly sensing that our next move is to assemble a team (or teams) for ministry and begin traveling throughout Alaska – particularly the native villages scattered across the arctic, western Alaska and the Aleutian chain – to share with them the prophetic Word of the Lord that is coming forth now.
If ever there was a period in time when people need to be awakened to the urgency of this hour and the need to embrace the fire of the Holy Spirit for cleansing and purification, that period is NOW! People desperately need to understand what it means to live in, pour forth and exhibit the presence – the Parousia – of the Lord Jesus Christ for the world around them to witness. That is the burden that Della and I share.
For that reason and because of the diminished need for River Worship Center to operate as a church fellowship, we are suspending its operations for the present time, effectively giving it and the vision that accompanies it back to the Lord for His orchestration, implementation and timing. Capener Ministries – the parent organization and overall covering – will continue to operate; and the prophetic and apostolic ministries that this organization fosters will go forth in organic teamwork (as opposed to “organizational” teamwork) to fulfill the command of the Lord.
These Coffee Breaks will continue to be published (although they may be less frequent at times) but the heading, Another Coffee Break, will likely undergo change or revision of some kind. That said; let’s continue with today’s discussion.
This sharing is out of sequence a bit since I should have included my discussions with David concerning the Tabernacle he set up on Mount Moriah before getting to the Temple.
My questions to David about the Tabernacle centered on several areas: (1) What prompted him to set up a separate tabernacle apart from the Tabernacle of Moses that was situated in Gibeah; (2) What was the principle of 24 hours of praise, worship, prayer and intercession he instituted with his tabernacle, and what did he expect to accomplish with it; (3) How did he happen to choose the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun; and finally (4) Why did he alter their function apart from the rest of the praisers and musicians so that they basically became musical prophets.
His answers were more than enlightening and revelatory.
“During the entire 20 years that Saul ruled as King of Israel and the first seven years of my rule over Judah, the Ark of the Covenant was either in the hands of the Philistines or at Kirjathjearim, and not in the Tabernacle of Moses. For those 27 years the priests and Levites had no access to it. They couldn’t go in and present the sins of the people and pour blood on the Mercy Seat, and there was no representation of the Holiness of the Lord anywhere in the nation. In the past, the Tabernacle of Moses with its Outer Court, Holy Place and Holy of Holies represented both the presence of the Lord and the place where Israel could meet with Him.
“There was, of course, Samuel the Prophet who spoke for the Lord, but that was different. He was a unique individual all by himself, and the fact that God had him for His voice in the nation was critical during that era. There was no one like him – but he still didn’t replace the Ark.
"Because of what I’d seen in my visions and what the Lord had shown me about Himself, retrieving the Ark and putting it – all by itself – on public display in an enclosure of its own where Israel could easily and readily see it was paramount in my spirit and in my thoughts. I’d begun to realize just how significant the Ark was, and how it demonstrated our Covenant with the Lord God. We were supposed to be married to him – if I can use Isaiah’s metaphor – and the Ark signified our marriage Covenant. Israel HAD to see it! We were a nation out of touch with Him! We had violated our vows to the Lord!”
As David was talking I was beginning to grasp the picture, but I still hadn’t gotten an understanding of why he had the praise and worship families appointed, or how that fit the picture he was seeking to create and demonstrate before the nation. He saw my thoughts and picked it up right away. “You remember the furnishings in Moses’ Tabernacle, don’t you?” he asked.
I nodded my head. “The altar of sacrifice, the laver, the altar of incense, the table of showbread and the golden candlestick,” I replied.
“Each one of those things has great significance concerning our relationship to the Lord, but it was the golden candlestick I wanted to focus attention to,” he said. In that moment a golden candlestick appeared before us and he began to describe it in detail.
“You see the bowls on each of the arms that project from the center? You’ll remember that they were filled with a special oil – an oil that came from a pretty severe crushing process. The flame that burns from each bowl is never supposed to go out.
“The bowls are a picture of us as a people passionately in love with the Lord. The oil represents the anointing that comes as a result of our allowing our flesh to be crushed, subduing it and bringing it into submission to His will and desire and His purpose for us. The flame that burns as it is fed by that oil is a picture of our flame of passion and love for the Lord Jesus Christ.”
David paused in his description. I immediately began to see the picture. The families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun became a living golden candlestick. Their lives, the lives of their children and their generations to follow throughout the centuries were a constant picture of the crushing process. At different times throughout Israel’s history, they were defamed, robbed, cheated, deprived of homes and possessions and dishonored in ways that none of their Levite brethren were. Yet they were always ready to offer praise and worship to the Lord. Even when the ministry of praise and worship was disbanded at different times by wicked kings who neither understood nor wanted the presence of the Lord, and treated this ministry as an unnecessary and excessive expense to the royal treasury, the descendant families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun were always sensitive to the Lord and ready to resume.
David laughed as he saw the expression on my face and the growing recognition of the prophetic significance of his appointment of these families.
“I instructed the chief among the Levites to select from among them those who would most appropriately serve in this ministry of praise, worship, prayer and intercession. Asaph (his name certainly described him) was a collector of Psalms and hymns. He had already assembled a number of the Psalms and the prayers that I had written down, and he was a ready and noisy praiser. Asaph was a natural leader who had the ability to get people to work together.
“Heman, of course, was Samuel the Prophet’s grandson. The prophetic mantle of his grandfather had passed to him, and he was skilled musically. He was steady, firm and faithful in every respect and he was a wonderful choice to become part of this continuous stream of praise and worship and adoration to the Lord.
“Jeduthun – he was more known in Levitical circles as Ethan – knew how to worship in ways that his brothers had never learned. More than that, he had the ability to persevere through hardness and difficulty – and he was going to need it. Like Asaph, Jeduthun was a natural leader and his brethren respected him and his sense of authority.
“With these families rotating in shifts and ministering before the simple tent housing the Ark of the Covenant on a continuous basis, day and night, Israel was provided with a constant reminder of our Covenant relationship with God. God honored that kind of ministry to Him and we saw the benefits as a nation. Israel prospered as it had never prospered as a nation and God gave us victory over all of our enemies.
“Throughout the years the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun grew and their children and grandchildren took on the same responsibilities for ministry to the Lord. Before I handed the reins of leadership over to Solomon the Spirit of the Lord prompted me to make a change in their focus. Under the leadership of Chenaniah, who was both a musical genius and knew how to train others, the families had become not only unusually skilled as musicians and singers, they had developed a sensitivity to the heart and Spirit of God like no one else.
“With that spiritual sensitivity it was only natural to commission them as prophetic musicians so that when they began to sing and to praise and to worship, decrees and declarations came forth that would affect the whole of the life of the nation. They would prophesy the heart of the Lord and create peace, prosperity and blessing through their prophetic singing and playing. This was the legacy and heritage I wanted to leave for Solomon so that by the time the Temple was finished and ready for use, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, their families and the greatly enlarged assembly of praisers, worshipers and intercessors would have effectively prepared the proper spiritual environment over the nation.”
In the years since, I have thought back many times to my reading of I Chronicles 25 and the picture in the Word of this enlarged contingent of singers and musicians and realized that they indeed fulfilled the assignment given to them by David. Even saying it that way makes me realize that it was the Spirit of the Lord that directed David to do this.
Although he was the vessel through which the Lord accomplished His desires, it really was the work of the Holy Spirit to elevate Israel in the eyes of the world as God’s chosen people and to demonstrate to them what could be available if they would join in this Covenant of love.
It was more than 35 years ago that the Holy Spirit brought this vision of the Tabernacle of David back to me and enlarged my understanding of how much this realm of ministry was needed in this generation. Even in the years since, bits and pieces of my conversations with David have come back to me as further revelation has unfolded.
The truth of David’s Tabernacle has emerged as a real force in the Body of Christ within the past 15 – 20 years. The emergence of Rick Joyner and Morningstar Ministries, along with Mike Bickle and the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, not to mention numerous others who’ve followed their lead, has been a real blessing to me. There’ve been a number of personal efforts to establish this kind of ministry on a 24-hour basis as David did including a period of time in Fairbanks, Alaska some 30 years ago.
It was in the spring of 1983 that the Lord sent a woman from South Carolina to see me at my office at CBN-Alaska, Inc. I didn’t know her, and in fact had never met her. She had a message for me, the essence of which was, “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it shall surely come, it will not tarry.” It was a quotation from Habakkuk 2:3.
Then she said, “Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” With that she turned and walked out of my office. I never saw or heard from her again. Indeed, I’ve often wondered if in fact she was an Angel sent from God in human form.
Five years passed and another abortive effort to recreate a modern Tabernacle of David ministry took place. With that failure, the Holy Spirit reminded me that I had not yet written the vision. I immediately wrote and self-published an in-depth piece titled, A VISION FOR PRAISE. It was widely distributed – to anyone who take a copy.
A couple more efforts to create a 24-hour ministry of praise and worship took place – neither of which succeeded to the degree I’d expected – but in 2005, Della and I were in Washington, DC for a conference when we ran into a young man with a satchel over his shoulder bearing the imprint of the U.S. Supreme Court. I stopped him and asked him if he clerked for one of the justices. He said that he did not but rather that he was part of a gathering of people who met daily on the steps of the Supreme Court to pray over the justices and the various courts of the land.
When I asked how all of this had started he told me that his pastor had been sent a copy of an article titled A VISION FOR PRAISE, and that this ministry had grown up as a byproduct of that article. When I began to share with him how the Lord had instructed me to write that article, he reached out to shake my hand and said to me, “I am a product of that article and your obedience to the Lord.”
I have to admit I was pretty overwhelmed. It was the first time in many years that I began to realize just how far reaching that typewritten article had spread. Though we’ve had marginal success throughout the years in trying to establish a pattern among believers for the concept of the Tabernacle of David – and there have been some rather spectacular experiences along the way – the impact of the article which grew out of my personal conversations with David in Heaven and the renewed vision the Lord gave to me while at Long Beach Christian Center have been more far-reaching than I could have imagined.
My conversations with David actually consumed a fair amount of my time in Heaven relative to my other visits with others among the patriarchs, prophets and apostles, and I have really only skimmed the highlights of those conversations thus far. Nevertheless, we need to move along in this sharing. I’ve yet to talk about my discussions with Moses – and that’s where we’ll take this up again in our next Coffee Break.
Next: HEAVEN: Moses.
2011 is a year of great change, great stirring among the people of God! The call to purity and cleanliness before God has gone forth – and is going forth! This is also a year of God’s recompense on behalf of His people – a year of God’s Justice!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are now available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
CHANGE!!!
If ever there was a word that describes our ongoing walk with the Lord, that’s it! If we are to ever reach our destiny in Him, we must continually be changing, conforming to His Will and His Word and the development of His character in us. More than that, we must be ever willing to lay aside our plans and our visions – even when those visions have been given to us by the Lord – so that He can implement His purposes for the Kingdom AND His timing with us.
That said, before I get on with today’s continued sharing of my experiences in Heaven let me say that we are in the midst of even greater change and transition. A series of events has unfolded which I need to share.
I’m sharing this out of sequence in my trip to Heaven, but one of the last things that Jesus said to me before we stepped back through the gate and I was returned to Earth was this: “I’m going to pour out my Spirit across the state of Alaska, and you’re going to be an integral part of it.”
When you hear something like that you naturally think it’s going to take place soon. Of course we saw some dramatic things take place throughout the years. Growing up with parents who were pioneers and missionaries (apostles to the arctic) provided me with a faith environment in which a steady stream of miracles was the norm. Nevertheless, we never saw anything approaching the outpouring that the Lord had promised and shown me.
In early 1953, following a period in which my folks had been asking God concerning our next move (we’d been in Nome for 9 years) and Dad had taken a reconnaissance trip to Barrow, he was in prayer one day when he heard the audible voice of God speak the following Word from Psalm 2:8, “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
It was a clear indicator for Dad, and we began the process of making the move to Barrow. Dad did ask the Lord, and we saw the fruit from it in an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1956 and 1957 that eventually stretched across the arctic into Canada and Greenland. Yet neither Dad or Mom – or me – saw the enormous move of God we expected.
When Dad was preparing to change addresses in 1986 (he spent the last few months of his life in our home) he apologized to me several times that “I don’t have a good inheritance to leave you.” He was, of course, referring to Proverbs 13:22. My answer to him was, “Dad, you have no need to apologize. I have received an inheritance in God from you that money can’t buy.”
This last Monday night as we were participating in and streaming a gathering with Steven Shelley, Paul Keith Davis and Paul Cain, the Lord reminded me of His Word to Dad and he said, “I am passing the inheritance that I gave your father on to you. Ask of me…”
Over the past few months we have seen a number of families depart from River Worship Center – some of them moving away from the area completely – and have been asking God what His next move is for us, or if we are to stand fast and expect things to rebuild. Della and I have been increasingly sensing that our next move is to assemble a team (or teams) for ministry and begin traveling throughout Alaska – particularly the native villages scattered across the arctic, western Alaska and the Aleutian chain – to share with them the prophetic Word of the Lord that is coming forth now.
If ever there was a period in time when people need to be awakened to the urgency of this hour and the need to embrace the fire of the Holy Spirit for cleansing and purification, that period is NOW! People desperately need to understand what it means to live in, pour forth and exhibit the presence – the Parousia – of the Lord Jesus Christ for the world around them to witness. That is the burden that Della and I share.
For that reason and because of the diminished need for River Worship Center to operate as a church fellowship, we are suspending its operations for the present time, effectively giving it and the vision that accompanies it back to the Lord for His orchestration, implementation and timing. Capener Ministries – the parent organization and overall covering – will continue to operate; and the prophetic and apostolic ministries that this organization fosters will go forth in organic teamwork (as opposed to “organizational” teamwork) to fulfill the command of the Lord.
These Coffee Breaks will continue to be published (although they may be less frequent at times) but the heading, Another Coffee Break, will likely undergo change or revision of some kind. That said; let’s continue with today’s discussion.
This sharing is out of sequence a bit since I should have included my discussions with David concerning the Tabernacle he set up on Mount Moriah before getting to the Temple.
My questions to David about the Tabernacle centered on several areas: (1) What prompted him to set up a separate tabernacle apart from the Tabernacle of Moses that was situated in Gibeah; (2) What was the principle of 24 hours of praise, worship, prayer and intercession he instituted with his tabernacle, and what did he expect to accomplish with it; (3) How did he happen to choose the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun; and finally (4) Why did he alter their function apart from the rest of the praisers and musicians so that they basically became musical prophets.
His answers were more than enlightening and revelatory.
“During the entire 20 years that Saul ruled as King of Israel and the first seven years of my rule over Judah, the Ark of the Covenant was either in the hands of the Philistines or at Kirjathjearim, and not in the Tabernacle of Moses. For those 27 years the priests and Levites had no access to it. They couldn’t go in and present the sins of the people and pour blood on the Mercy Seat, and there was no representation of the Holiness of the Lord anywhere in the nation. In the past, the Tabernacle of Moses with its Outer Court, Holy Place and Holy of Holies represented both the presence of the Lord and the place where Israel could meet with Him.
“There was, of course, Samuel the Prophet who spoke for the Lord, but that was different. He was a unique individual all by himself, and the fact that God had him for His voice in the nation was critical during that era. There was no one like him – but he still didn’t replace the Ark.
"Because of what I’d seen in my visions and what the Lord had shown me about Himself, retrieving the Ark and putting it – all by itself – on public display in an enclosure of its own where Israel could easily and readily see it was paramount in my spirit and in my thoughts. I’d begun to realize just how significant the Ark was, and how it demonstrated our Covenant with the Lord God. We were supposed to be married to him – if I can use Isaiah’s metaphor – and the Ark signified our marriage Covenant. Israel HAD to see it! We were a nation out of touch with Him! We had violated our vows to the Lord!”
As David was talking I was beginning to grasp the picture, but I still hadn’t gotten an understanding of why he had the praise and worship families appointed, or how that fit the picture he was seeking to create and demonstrate before the nation. He saw my thoughts and picked it up right away. “You remember the furnishings in Moses’ Tabernacle, don’t you?” he asked.
I nodded my head. “The altar of sacrifice, the laver, the altar of incense, the table of showbread and the golden candlestick,” I replied.
“Each one of those things has great significance concerning our relationship to the Lord, but it was the golden candlestick I wanted to focus attention to,” he said. In that moment a golden candlestick appeared before us and he began to describe it in detail.
“You see the bowls on each of the arms that project from the center? You’ll remember that they were filled with a special oil – an oil that came from a pretty severe crushing process. The flame that burns from each bowl is never supposed to go out.
“The bowls are a picture of us as a people passionately in love with the Lord. The oil represents the anointing that comes as a result of our allowing our flesh to be crushed, subduing it and bringing it into submission to His will and desire and His purpose for us. The flame that burns as it is fed by that oil is a picture of our flame of passion and love for the Lord Jesus Christ.”
David paused in his description. I immediately began to see the picture. The families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun became a living golden candlestick. Their lives, the lives of their children and their generations to follow throughout the centuries were a constant picture of the crushing process. At different times throughout Israel’s history, they were defamed, robbed, cheated, deprived of homes and possessions and dishonored in ways that none of their Levite brethren were. Yet they were always ready to offer praise and worship to the Lord. Even when the ministry of praise and worship was disbanded at different times by wicked kings who neither understood nor wanted the presence of the Lord, and treated this ministry as an unnecessary and excessive expense to the royal treasury, the descendant families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun were always sensitive to the Lord and ready to resume.
David laughed as he saw the expression on my face and the growing recognition of the prophetic significance of his appointment of these families.
“I instructed the chief among the Levites to select from among them those who would most appropriately serve in this ministry of praise, worship, prayer and intercession. Asaph (his name certainly described him) was a collector of Psalms and hymns. He had already assembled a number of the Psalms and the prayers that I had written down, and he was a ready and noisy praiser. Asaph was a natural leader who had the ability to get people to work together.
“Heman, of course, was Samuel the Prophet’s grandson. The prophetic mantle of his grandfather had passed to him, and he was skilled musically. He was steady, firm and faithful in every respect and he was a wonderful choice to become part of this continuous stream of praise and worship and adoration to the Lord.
“Jeduthun – he was more known in Levitical circles as Ethan – knew how to worship in ways that his brothers had never learned. More than that, he had the ability to persevere through hardness and difficulty – and he was going to need it. Like Asaph, Jeduthun was a natural leader and his brethren respected him and his sense of authority.
“With these families rotating in shifts and ministering before the simple tent housing the Ark of the Covenant on a continuous basis, day and night, Israel was provided with a constant reminder of our Covenant relationship with God. God honored that kind of ministry to Him and we saw the benefits as a nation. Israel prospered as it had never prospered as a nation and God gave us victory over all of our enemies.
“Throughout the years the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun grew and their children and grandchildren took on the same responsibilities for ministry to the Lord. Before I handed the reins of leadership over to Solomon the Spirit of the Lord prompted me to make a change in their focus. Under the leadership of Chenaniah, who was both a musical genius and knew how to train others, the families had become not only unusually skilled as musicians and singers, they had developed a sensitivity to the heart and Spirit of God like no one else.
“With that spiritual sensitivity it was only natural to commission them as prophetic musicians so that when they began to sing and to praise and to worship, decrees and declarations came forth that would affect the whole of the life of the nation. They would prophesy the heart of the Lord and create peace, prosperity and blessing through their prophetic singing and playing. This was the legacy and heritage I wanted to leave for Solomon so that by the time the Temple was finished and ready for use, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, their families and the greatly enlarged assembly of praisers, worshipers and intercessors would have effectively prepared the proper spiritual environment over the nation.”
In the years since, I have thought back many times to my reading of I Chronicles 25 and the picture in the Word of this enlarged contingent of singers and musicians and realized that they indeed fulfilled the assignment given to them by David. Even saying it that way makes me realize that it was the Spirit of the Lord that directed David to do this.
Although he was the vessel through which the Lord accomplished His desires, it really was the work of the Holy Spirit to elevate Israel in the eyes of the world as God’s chosen people and to demonstrate to them what could be available if they would join in this Covenant of love.
It was more than 35 years ago that the Holy Spirit brought this vision of the Tabernacle of David back to me and enlarged my understanding of how much this realm of ministry was needed in this generation. Even in the years since, bits and pieces of my conversations with David have come back to me as further revelation has unfolded.
The truth of David’s Tabernacle has emerged as a real force in the Body of Christ within the past 15 – 20 years. The emergence of Rick Joyner and Morningstar Ministries, along with Mike Bickle and the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, not to mention numerous others who’ve followed their lead, has been a real blessing to me. There’ve been a number of personal efforts to establish this kind of ministry on a 24-hour basis as David did including a period of time in Fairbanks, Alaska some 30 years ago.
It was in the spring of 1983 that the Lord sent a woman from South Carolina to see me at my office at CBN-Alaska, Inc. I didn’t know her, and in fact had never met her. She had a message for me, the essence of which was, “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it shall surely come, it will not tarry.” It was a quotation from Habakkuk 2:3.
Then she said, “Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” With that she turned and walked out of my office. I never saw or heard from her again. Indeed, I’ve often wondered if in fact she was an Angel sent from God in human form.
Five years passed and another abortive effort to recreate a modern Tabernacle of David ministry took place. With that failure, the Holy Spirit reminded me that I had not yet written the vision. I immediately wrote and self-published an in-depth piece titled, A VISION FOR PRAISE. It was widely distributed – to anyone who take a copy.
A couple more efforts to create a 24-hour ministry of praise and worship took place – neither of which succeeded to the degree I’d expected – but in 2005, Della and I were in Washington, DC for a conference when we ran into a young man with a satchel over his shoulder bearing the imprint of the U.S. Supreme Court. I stopped him and asked him if he clerked for one of the justices. He said that he did not but rather that he was part of a gathering of people who met daily on the steps of the Supreme Court to pray over the justices and the various courts of the land.
When I asked how all of this had started he told me that his pastor had been sent a copy of an article titled A VISION FOR PRAISE, and that this ministry had grown up as a byproduct of that article. When I began to share with him how the Lord had instructed me to write that article, he reached out to shake my hand and said to me, “I am a product of that article and your obedience to the Lord.”
I have to admit I was pretty overwhelmed. It was the first time in many years that I began to realize just how far reaching that typewritten article had spread. Though we’ve had marginal success throughout the years in trying to establish a pattern among believers for the concept of the Tabernacle of David – and there have been some rather spectacular experiences along the way – the impact of the article which grew out of my personal conversations with David in Heaven and the renewed vision the Lord gave to me while at Long Beach Christian Center have been more far-reaching than I could have imagined.
My conversations with David actually consumed a fair amount of my time in Heaven relative to my other visits with others among the patriarchs, prophets and apostles, and I have really only skimmed the highlights of those conversations thus far. Nevertheless, we need to move along in this sharing. I’ve yet to talk about my discussions with Moses – and that’s where we’ll take this up again in our next Coffee Break.
Next: HEAVEN: Moses.
2011 is a year of great change, great stirring among the people of God! The call to purity and cleanliness before God has gone forth – and is going forth! This is also a year of God’s recompense on behalf of His people – a year of God’s Justice!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are now available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN VI: King David
ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN VI: King David
Happy New Year Everyone!
Today’s edition of Another Coffee Break kicks off our 7th year of publication! We actually published a couple of Coffee Breaks in December of 2004 as a trial balloon to see how they would be received, but our actual first year of publication began in January of 2005. I haven’t actually counted the total number published thus far, but I believe we have sent out somewhere between 600 and 700 posts. Of nearly 600,000 readers worldwide, we still have somewhere between 30 – 40,000 readers who have stayed with me since early 2005. My thanks to all of you for your support and continued readership. My sincere hope is that these articles will not only be a blessing to you but that you will be drawn closer to the Lord as a result.
After receiving an encouraging email from Shalini Patras a couple of weeks ago it dawned on me that one of the most important discussions with David I neglected to include in the last Coffee Break was on the 23rd Psalm. Let me quote from Shalini’s email:
“I remember a few days back when I was praying, among some other things the Lord said, “The Lord is your Shepherd and you shall not want. These are words from heaven that David heard and personalized for himself and so he wrote.” When I read in your mailer about David talking about his songs originating in heaven long before he came on the scene, I almost screamed and jumped. I remembered about what the Lord had said and understood it better.”
That said, let me take you back to the event I shared in the last Coffee Break where we were sitting on a hillside. You’ll recall that I heard him sing the 8th Psalm, declaring the glory and riches of the Lord with accompanying visions of creation unfolding.
The 23rd Psalm is probably the most quoted chapter worldwide in the Bible. It is also one of the most misunderstood and misquoted. I can’t tell you how many funerals I’ve been to where the preacher read from the 23rd Psalm emphasizing the phrase, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” as though that phrase somehow had relevance to the funeral or the “preaching” that accompanied it.
Even today when I hear preachers and evangelists use this passage of scripture, I wince at some of their illustrations because they are so far afield of what David experienced and saw. As our conversation unfolded on that hillside David related how the Lord had made it applicable to him and his life.
“When I first heard the words of this Psalm,” he said, “There was a vision that began to unfold before me. In 15 separate phrases I saw my life unfold. What you refer to as the 23rd Psalm is only the 23rd because that’s how it was compiled when King Hezekiah began to assemble for the Levites the songs, the hymns and the prayers that God had given to me as well as to Moses. It has mostly remained in that order ever since. The 150 Psalms you have assembled together in your copies of the Scripture represent a cross-section of all that the Lord gave to me, to Moses, to Asaph, Heman & Jeduthun – but there were many more written that you don’t have.”
David paused and then swept his arm across the horizon as he continued, “When the first words of that Psalm first entered my spirit, it was a “YES” in my being. My whole mind and spirit agreed. I was a shepherd. I led my flocks and provided for them everything they could ever need. The parallel picture fit! It was perfect! The Lord was indeed MY Shepherd, and in Him – with Him – I had no need of anything.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that those words were going to apply at different stages of my life. As various crises unfolded and challenges faced me, I was going to be confronted with my commitment to allow the Lord to continue to be my Shepherd and not take things into my own hands.”
He smiled a bit wryly. It was as though he was looking back in time for a minute, and he said, “I did, you know. I did take things into my own hands more than once, and it cost me! I only have to remind you of Uriah the Hittite and the time when I numbered the armies of Israel as a couple of ready examples.”
The scene changed before us and for the first time I saw David dressed in kingly robes. They were simple yet elegant. He continued his tale.
“That shepherd’s Psalm became the hallmark of my years on the throne of Judah and then Israel. It had become very personal to me during the years I was on the run for my life from Saul, but it took on new meaning. I saw the provision of the Lord continually. When I fought battles against the Philistines, when I hid from Saul in the hills and in the caves, the Lord set a table before me continually. That table was spread with provisions for me and the families who stood with me. It was spread with supernatural defenses against the enemies who continually surrounded us and threatened us.
“As I’ve already said, the words of the 23rd Psalm were given to me prophetically along with visions as I sat on the hillsides tending my father’s sheep. I don’t think I could have ever imagined the vision of the table and the cup running over as being so prophetic of Jesus and the covenant He restored to all of us with His ministry, His being the Word of Life, His suffering and death, and His resurrection. When I first began to sing those words, I couldn’t have imagined the depth of the prophecy that was hidden in them.”
Once again the scene changed before us and we were obviously in a totally different part of Heaven. For the first time I began to realize what David saw as King of Israel when the Holy Spirit began to give to him a vision for the Temple. This part of Heaven was laid out just like the design of the Temple that David gave to Solomon – except on a huge scale. There were the area divisions into what became (in David’s Temple) the Outer Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. There were the Treasuries – great rooms with wealth beyond the scope of human understanding or comprehension. I didn’t realize it at the time and didn’t learn about it until years later, but one of those Treasury rooms contains body parts for folks in need of healing or restoration.
Stop and think about that for just a minute! Do you realize that when we pray and petition the Lord for the healing of an individual who has lost an arm or leg or who has organs in their body that are failing or have failed, there are replacements that await them in Heaven in a specific Treasury room. If people could only see and realize what stupendous provision God has made for those who believe and act in faith, it would change things in the body of Christ dramatically!
During most of our childhood years my Dad drilled my brother and I in Scripture memorization. We were required to memorize at least one verse of Scripture every single day. One of the first things we memorized (and had to be able to quote verbatim from beginning to end) was the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 & 7).
One of the things Jesus says in Matthew 6:19-21 is this: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Every time we tithe, every time we sow seed, every time we give to missions, every time we give or minister to the poor and needy, every time we give to ministries that are producing fruit for the Kingdom of God, we are laying up treasure in the storehouses, the Treasuries of Heaven. More than that, every time we lay hands on the sick, every time we intercede for people in crisis situations, every time we pray, declare and decree the Will of God over our friends, our family members and over those the Holy Spirit directs us to, we are laying up treasure in those Treasury rooms.
What is so phenomenal about that is that there is a huge multiplication factor that takes place with every tithe and every gift, every prayer and every act given or done in faith. Our problem here on Earth is that we neither understand God’s multiplication nor even visualize what He does with it. Furthermore, we don’t even begin to comprehend how to draw on those Treasuries for the multiplication and growth of the Kingdom of God here on Earth (in the natural realm) or the growth of the Kingdom in us as earthen vessels.
Sorry to take a bit of a side-trip there but Matthew’s record of what Jesus said really leaped to life as I took in the sight of the Treasuries and saw what David saw as the Holy Spirit poured into him the vision of the Temple.
The place that would have been represented in the Temple by the Holy of Holies was a Cloud of Glory that literally filled the place. It radiated that same sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ that I felt the first time I saw Him, and again the second time when He came for me to take me to Heaven. I understood why it was necessary for both Moses (he had seen this same thing) and David to be instructed by the Lord to create a thick veil to separate the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place. For someone without a real love-relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – one who is constantly in pursuit of His presence AND His Glory being seen in us as His people – the Glory of the Lord is too much for a person to handle.
The truth of this is revealed in Isaiah 42:9 where Isaiah prophesies the following: “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”
The phrase, “my glory will I not give to another,” is somewhat obscured in our KJV and other English translations. The word translated “another” from the Hebrew text is the word “acher” (which comes from the root “achar”) specifically translates to “hinder” in the sense of someone who lags behind, procrastinates, puts off, etc. The context of the translation “another” is that of someone strange (or perhaps estranged). The sense of this word is that of someone who does not walk with the Lord in intimacy – someone who is not in active pursuit of Him and His presence.
You get the picture, I’m sure. The Lord does not give His Glory to those who are passive or lackadaisical in their walk with Him. He does not give His Glory to spiritual stragglers. His Glory is for those who are in active pursuit of Him with their whole being, a people who thirst after Him and walk with Him no matter the odds or circumstances. They don’t care what it costs them in terms of reputation or creature comforts. His Glory is designed and destined for a people who respond in every way to become Counterpart and Other Self to the Lord Jesus Christ – His Bride!
The veil that Moses created for the Tabernacle and David commissioned for the Temple were a safety measure to prevent the destruction of those who might come into His presence unprepared or without honor and reverence. [This is a topic I’ll talk about in a little more depth when I share my conversation with Moses.] To do so would have meant death. The intimate presence of the Lord is reserved for a people who live exhibiting His agape love.
Even though it took a number of years for me to be able to assimilate and digest the enormity and the extravagance of this place, the utter grandeur took my breath away. David was watching my reaction as I took it all in. He quite properly read my face and thoughts; and he took my hand momentarily to get my attention.
“Now you can understand why every waking moment of my life from the point of seeing this was spent in the acquisition of as much wealth and riches as I could conceivably amass. For me to duplicate this or provide some semblance of the Glory and magnificence of the Lord in a central house of worship for the nation that common folks could relate to meant acquiring more gold, silver and other precious materials than any single human had ever done before in all of history.
“All that wealth wasn’t for me! Sure, the Lord made it possible for me to become rich beyond imagination, but it wasn’t to spend on a lavish lifestyle for myself! Some people express great surprise at the equivalency in your modern money being in the multiplied billions of dollars, but I didn’t care what the monetary value of the gold and silver was. I needed to duplicate as closely as possible what I saw in Heaven. The Spirit of God revealed the dimensions to me in much the same way as He revealed the dimensions of the Ark to Noah. I knew how long, how wide, and how tall it needed to be. I knew the respective sizes of all of the furnishings that would go into it.
“All these things, these dimensions, these quantities I wrote down after Nathan the Prophet told me that because I was a man of violence and bloodshed the building of the Temple would be reserved to my son who would replace me as King of Israel.”
I interrupted David at this point and asked him, “How did you feel when Nathan told you that you were not to build it? I mean, you had seen it with your own eyes! The vision of it was implanted in you as though it had been engraved!”
“A flash of disappointment, I guess, but the disappointment quickly faded with God’s promise that He was going to establish my house, and that my seed would forever sit on His Throne. The magnitude of that promise was almost more than I could take in, and it took some years for it all the register. You understand, though, why every breath of my existence from that moment forward was to accumulate everything that was needed so that when the day came, Solomon would lack for nothing and construction could begin immediately.”
I walked around for awhile just taking in the splendor of gold so pure it was transparent. The light and brilliance of the presence of the Lord throughout Heaven made this place so stunning as to be impossible to adequately describe. On Earth we have an expression we often use to describe people who live in overwhelming abundance. We frequently call them “filthy rich.” You’d never use an expression like that here!
Since my visits to Heaven, I’ve begun to realize that the reason we use the epithet “filthy” is because the world has contaminated the whole idea of wealth and riches. Those who do not walk in understanding and revelation cannot even begin to fathom the purity of God’s wealth and abundance. Our society has so infiltrated the thinking of wealth and abundance that “rich” is a bad word – especially among folks who have a socialist mindset. It has somehow become wrong and sinful to think “rich” or “wealthy.” Many Christians have lost sight of the fact that God promised His people the following:
“But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.” (Deuteronomy 8:18)
Get it? The focus on getting wealth is God-given so that He may establish His covenant!
Jesus made a phenomenal statement as part of His covenant with believers. It goes like this:
“The thief comes only in order that he may steal, and may kill, and may destroy. I came that they might have and enjoy life, and that have it in abundance – to the full, till it overflows.” (John 10:10 Amp.)
Here again Jesus makes clear that it is the thief – Satan – who wants to steal, kill and destroy and rob God’s people of the wealth that belongs to the Kingdom of God. Sorry to get off track a bit but you can’t help but see the gross distortions on the topic of riches and wealth and abundance once you’ve been in Heaven. It’s no wonder Satan doesn’t want God’s people to be blessed and be the richest folks on earth! He wants the power of wealth to tantalize and entice and deceive people into thinking that God wants folks to live “broke, busted and disgusted” so they will instead look to the world and his razzle dazzle instead of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Seeing what David accumulated and the enormous riches God empowered him to get in order to duplicate (on a smaller scale, of course) the Temple in Heaven really makes me appreciate Deuteronomy 8:18.
I have one more discussion with David I’d like to share with you before backtracking to talk about Moses. That discussion centers on the Tabernacle of David and David’s focus on continuous prayer, praise, worship and intercession – and his appointment of the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun to that ministry.
That’s where we’ll take this up again in our next Coffee Break.
Next: Heaven: David’s Tabernacle.
2011 is a year of great change, great stirring among the people of God! The call to purity and cleanliness before God has gone forth – and is going forth! This is also a year of God’s recompense on behalf of His people – a year of God’s Justice!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are now available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
Happy New Year Everyone!
Today’s edition of Another Coffee Break kicks off our 7th year of publication! We actually published a couple of Coffee Breaks in December of 2004 as a trial balloon to see how they would be received, but our actual first year of publication began in January of 2005. I haven’t actually counted the total number published thus far, but I believe we have sent out somewhere between 600 and 700 posts. Of nearly 600,000 readers worldwide, we still have somewhere between 30 – 40,000 readers who have stayed with me since early 2005. My thanks to all of you for your support and continued readership. My sincere hope is that these articles will not only be a blessing to you but that you will be drawn closer to the Lord as a result.
After receiving an encouraging email from Shalini Patras a couple of weeks ago it dawned on me that one of the most important discussions with David I neglected to include in the last Coffee Break was on the 23rd Psalm. Let me quote from Shalini’s email:
“I remember a few days back when I was praying, among some other things the Lord said, “The Lord is your Shepherd and you shall not want. These are words from heaven that David heard and personalized for himself and so he wrote.” When I read in your mailer about David talking about his songs originating in heaven long before he came on the scene, I almost screamed and jumped. I remembered about what the Lord had said and understood it better.”
That said, let me take you back to the event I shared in the last Coffee Break where we were sitting on a hillside. You’ll recall that I heard him sing the 8th Psalm, declaring the glory and riches of the Lord with accompanying visions of creation unfolding.
The 23rd Psalm is probably the most quoted chapter worldwide in the Bible. It is also one of the most misunderstood and misquoted. I can’t tell you how many funerals I’ve been to where the preacher read from the 23rd Psalm emphasizing the phrase, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” as though that phrase somehow had relevance to the funeral or the “preaching” that accompanied it.
Even today when I hear preachers and evangelists use this passage of scripture, I wince at some of their illustrations because they are so far afield of what David experienced and saw. As our conversation unfolded on that hillside David related how the Lord had made it applicable to him and his life.
“When I first heard the words of this Psalm,” he said, “There was a vision that began to unfold before me. In 15 separate phrases I saw my life unfold. What you refer to as the 23rd Psalm is only the 23rd because that’s how it was compiled when King Hezekiah began to assemble for the Levites the songs, the hymns and the prayers that God had given to me as well as to Moses. It has mostly remained in that order ever since. The 150 Psalms you have assembled together in your copies of the Scripture represent a cross-section of all that the Lord gave to me, to Moses, to Asaph, Heman & Jeduthun – but there were many more written that you don’t have.”
David paused and then swept his arm across the horizon as he continued, “When the first words of that Psalm first entered my spirit, it was a “YES” in my being. My whole mind and spirit agreed. I was a shepherd. I led my flocks and provided for them everything they could ever need. The parallel picture fit! It was perfect! The Lord was indeed MY Shepherd, and in Him – with Him – I had no need of anything.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that those words were going to apply at different stages of my life. As various crises unfolded and challenges faced me, I was going to be confronted with my commitment to allow the Lord to continue to be my Shepherd and not take things into my own hands.”
He smiled a bit wryly. It was as though he was looking back in time for a minute, and he said, “I did, you know. I did take things into my own hands more than once, and it cost me! I only have to remind you of Uriah the Hittite and the time when I numbered the armies of Israel as a couple of ready examples.”
The scene changed before us and for the first time I saw David dressed in kingly robes. They were simple yet elegant. He continued his tale.
“That shepherd’s Psalm became the hallmark of my years on the throne of Judah and then Israel. It had become very personal to me during the years I was on the run for my life from Saul, but it took on new meaning. I saw the provision of the Lord continually. When I fought battles against the Philistines, when I hid from Saul in the hills and in the caves, the Lord set a table before me continually. That table was spread with provisions for me and the families who stood with me. It was spread with supernatural defenses against the enemies who continually surrounded us and threatened us.
“As I’ve already said, the words of the 23rd Psalm were given to me prophetically along with visions as I sat on the hillsides tending my father’s sheep. I don’t think I could have ever imagined the vision of the table and the cup running over as being so prophetic of Jesus and the covenant He restored to all of us with His ministry, His being the Word of Life, His suffering and death, and His resurrection. When I first began to sing those words, I couldn’t have imagined the depth of the prophecy that was hidden in them.”
Once again the scene changed before us and we were obviously in a totally different part of Heaven. For the first time I began to realize what David saw as King of Israel when the Holy Spirit began to give to him a vision for the Temple. This part of Heaven was laid out just like the design of the Temple that David gave to Solomon – except on a huge scale. There were the area divisions into what became (in David’s Temple) the Outer Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. There were the Treasuries – great rooms with wealth beyond the scope of human understanding or comprehension. I didn’t realize it at the time and didn’t learn about it until years later, but one of those Treasury rooms contains body parts for folks in need of healing or restoration.
Stop and think about that for just a minute! Do you realize that when we pray and petition the Lord for the healing of an individual who has lost an arm or leg or who has organs in their body that are failing or have failed, there are replacements that await them in Heaven in a specific Treasury room. If people could only see and realize what stupendous provision God has made for those who believe and act in faith, it would change things in the body of Christ dramatically!
During most of our childhood years my Dad drilled my brother and I in Scripture memorization. We were required to memorize at least one verse of Scripture every single day. One of the first things we memorized (and had to be able to quote verbatim from beginning to end) was the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 & 7).
One of the things Jesus says in Matthew 6:19-21 is this: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Every time we tithe, every time we sow seed, every time we give to missions, every time we give or minister to the poor and needy, every time we give to ministries that are producing fruit for the Kingdom of God, we are laying up treasure in the storehouses, the Treasuries of Heaven. More than that, every time we lay hands on the sick, every time we intercede for people in crisis situations, every time we pray, declare and decree the Will of God over our friends, our family members and over those the Holy Spirit directs us to, we are laying up treasure in those Treasury rooms.
What is so phenomenal about that is that there is a huge multiplication factor that takes place with every tithe and every gift, every prayer and every act given or done in faith. Our problem here on Earth is that we neither understand God’s multiplication nor even visualize what He does with it. Furthermore, we don’t even begin to comprehend how to draw on those Treasuries for the multiplication and growth of the Kingdom of God here on Earth (in the natural realm) or the growth of the Kingdom in us as earthen vessels.
Sorry to take a bit of a side-trip there but Matthew’s record of what Jesus said really leaped to life as I took in the sight of the Treasuries and saw what David saw as the Holy Spirit poured into him the vision of the Temple.
The place that would have been represented in the Temple by the Holy of Holies was a Cloud of Glory that literally filled the place. It radiated that same sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ that I felt the first time I saw Him, and again the second time when He came for me to take me to Heaven. I understood why it was necessary for both Moses (he had seen this same thing) and David to be instructed by the Lord to create a thick veil to separate the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place. For someone without a real love-relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – one who is constantly in pursuit of His presence AND His Glory being seen in us as His people – the Glory of the Lord is too much for a person to handle.
The truth of this is revealed in Isaiah 42:9 where Isaiah prophesies the following: “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”
The phrase, “my glory will I not give to another,” is somewhat obscured in our KJV and other English translations. The word translated “another” from the Hebrew text is the word “acher” (which comes from the root “achar”) specifically translates to “hinder” in the sense of someone who lags behind, procrastinates, puts off, etc. The context of the translation “another” is that of someone strange (or perhaps estranged). The sense of this word is that of someone who does not walk with the Lord in intimacy – someone who is not in active pursuit of Him and His presence.
You get the picture, I’m sure. The Lord does not give His Glory to those who are passive or lackadaisical in their walk with Him. He does not give His Glory to spiritual stragglers. His Glory is for those who are in active pursuit of Him with their whole being, a people who thirst after Him and walk with Him no matter the odds or circumstances. They don’t care what it costs them in terms of reputation or creature comforts. His Glory is designed and destined for a people who respond in every way to become Counterpart and Other Self to the Lord Jesus Christ – His Bride!
The veil that Moses created for the Tabernacle and David commissioned for the Temple were a safety measure to prevent the destruction of those who might come into His presence unprepared or without honor and reverence. [This is a topic I’ll talk about in a little more depth when I share my conversation with Moses.] To do so would have meant death. The intimate presence of the Lord is reserved for a people who live exhibiting His agape love.
Even though it took a number of years for me to be able to assimilate and digest the enormity and the extravagance of this place, the utter grandeur took my breath away. David was watching my reaction as I took it all in. He quite properly read my face and thoughts; and he took my hand momentarily to get my attention.
“Now you can understand why every waking moment of my life from the point of seeing this was spent in the acquisition of as much wealth and riches as I could conceivably amass. For me to duplicate this or provide some semblance of the Glory and magnificence of the Lord in a central house of worship for the nation that common folks could relate to meant acquiring more gold, silver and other precious materials than any single human had ever done before in all of history.
“All that wealth wasn’t for me! Sure, the Lord made it possible for me to become rich beyond imagination, but it wasn’t to spend on a lavish lifestyle for myself! Some people express great surprise at the equivalency in your modern money being in the multiplied billions of dollars, but I didn’t care what the monetary value of the gold and silver was. I needed to duplicate as closely as possible what I saw in Heaven. The Spirit of God revealed the dimensions to me in much the same way as He revealed the dimensions of the Ark to Noah. I knew how long, how wide, and how tall it needed to be. I knew the respective sizes of all of the furnishings that would go into it.
“All these things, these dimensions, these quantities I wrote down after Nathan the Prophet told me that because I was a man of violence and bloodshed the building of the Temple would be reserved to my son who would replace me as King of Israel.”
I interrupted David at this point and asked him, “How did you feel when Nathan told you that you were not to build it? I mean, you had seen it with your own eyes! The vision of it was implanted in you as though it had been engraved!”
“A flash of disappointment, I guess, but the disappointment quickly faded with God’s promise that He was going to establish my house, and that my seed would forever sit on His Throne. The magnitude of that promise was almost more than I could take in, and it took some years for it all the register. You understand, though, why every breath of my existence from that moment forward was to accumulate everything that was needed so that when the day came, Solomon would lack for nothing and construction could begin immediately.”
I walked around for awhile just taking in the splendor of gold so pure it was transparent. The light and brilliance of the presence of the Lord throughout Heaven made this place so stunning as to be impossible to adequately describe. On Earth we have an expression we often use to describe people who live in overwhelming abundance. We frequently call them “filthy rich.” You’d never use an expression like that here!
Since my visits to Heaven, I’ve begun to realize that the reason we use the epithet “filthy” is because the world has contaminated the whole idea of wealth and riches. Those who do not walk in understanding and revelation cannot even begin to fathom the purity of God’s wealth and abundance. Our society has so infiltrated the thinking of wealth and abundance that “rich” is a bad word – especially among folks who have a socialist mindset. It has somehow become wrong and sinful to think “rich” or “wealthy.” Many Christians have lost sight of the fact that God promised His people the following:
“But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.” (Deuteronomy 8:18)
Get it? The focus on getting wealth is God-given so that He may establish His covenant!
Jesus made a phenomenal statement as part of His covenant with believers. It goes like this:
“The thief comes only in order that he may steal, and may kill, and may destroy. I came that they might have and enjoy life, and that have it in abundance – to the full, till it overflows.” (John 10:10 Amp.)
Here again Jesus makes clear that it is the thief – Satan – who wants to steal, kill and destroy and rob God’s people of the wealth that belongs to the Kingdom of God. Sorry to get off track a bit but you can’t help but see the gross distortions on the topic of riches and wealth and abundance once you’ve been in Heaven. It’s no wonder Satan doesn’t want God’s people to be blessed and be the richest folks on earth! He wants the power of wealth to tantalize and entice and deceive people into thinking that God wants folks to live “broke, busted and disgusted” so they will instead look to the world and his razzle dazzle instead of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Seeing what David accumulated and the enormous riches God empowered him to get in order to duplicate (on a smaller scale, of course) the Temple in Heaven really makes me appreciate Deuteronomy 8:18.
I have one more discussion with David I’d like to share with you before backtracking to talk about Moses. That discussion centers on the Tabernacle of David and David’s focus on continuous prayer, praise, worship and intercession – and his appointment of the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun to that ministry.
That’s where we’ll take this up again in our next Coffee Break.
Next: Heaven: David’s Tabernacle.
2011 is a year of great change, great stirring among the people of God! The call to purity and cleanliness before God has gone forth – and is going forth! This is also a year of God’s recompense on behalf of His people – a year of God’s Justice!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 515-0133
All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are now available at http://regnersrangers.multiply.com/journal/ and are being slowly added at http://www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
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