DEATH CANCELLATION
Greetings, Salutations and Solutions!
Continuing with the pattern of beginning the past three Coffee Breaks, there is an urgent matter of prayer for believers worldwide on September 25th.
Not too long ago I became aware of what is known as the Ministers Prayer Network -- a now-international prayer movement that originally began in Nigeria in 1995 and began to spread around the globe. This is a non-denominational, trans-denominational group of ministers and church leaders spanning virtually every type of Christian ministry who come together without walls and divisions for the purpose of growing the Kingdom of God.
As founding pastor, Mosy U. Madugba, notes: "The aims and objectives of MPN are to create a forum for prayers and biblical leadership development, devoid of any ostensive, ceremonial and religious atmosphere. The later only breeds religious growth without deep convictions and commitment to God. MPN was therefore born to provide an avenue where ministers of the gospel can come together and speak the bare truth to themselves, and in sincerity and simplicity, rebuke, exhort and pray for one another, basically as a family of brothers and sisters, without any religious stratifications or classifications."
This past week, Pastor Madugba sent out the following notice: "On September 25th there will be a national prayer gathering of Muslims on the west front of the U.S. Capitol Building. They are expecting at least 50,000 to attend from mosques all across America. They say that they want America to see how they pray! A permit for this gathering was issued by Capitol Hill Police on July 28th. They will gather to pray from 4:00 AM until 7:00 PM.
“The gathering will take place by the site where U.S. Presidents have been inaugurated since 1981. The organizers say that it was Obama's inauguration speech in January and his speech broadcast from Egypt in June that gave them the idea for this prayer gathering on Capitol Hill. Please fix a fast to start 12 midnight a day before and go on till 7pm when they stop. It is warfare time. Do not joke with this. If Christians fail to frustrate this game plan in the spirit, you will regret the outcome."
Please don't just wave this off thinking this is no big deal! When you begin to realize that the "Allah" the Muslims pray to is nothing more than a modern incarnation of the ancient Baal/Marduk, you begin to understand that the purpose of this prayer is to release demonic spirits over the nation's capital and to seize spiritual control of America.
If Christians stand by and do nothing, God will hold them accountable. I heartily agree with Pastor Madugba's recommendation for believers to fast for that whole day and take the spiritual authority Jesus has released to us.
America was founded specifically as a covenant nation with the Lord Jesus Christ -- as an anchor for the Gospel, a place from which the Good News of Jesus Christ could be spread worldwide. We are not -- and must never be -- a nation under Islam! Should you desire to check out Islam's goals for this nation, simply visit http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com. It will chill your blood.
Will you join Della and me in united prayer and fasting on September 25th? Together we will turn back this flood of wickedness and evil. Together we will -- through and by the Spirit of the Lord -- raise up the standard Isaiah prophesies of in Isaiah 59:19:
"So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him."
OK. On with today's discussion.
In Hebrews 9:27 Paul makes the following statement, and it is one I grew up hearing -- and misunderstanding.
"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:"
I always read this as referring to the Great Judgment Day we would have to experience after death. We all have to die, do we not? There are two things certain in life (according to the quipsters): death and taxes.
Bahh, Humbug! What we miss is the rest of the sentence (verse 28).
"So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation."
Get it? Paul is saying, "Although it is appointed unto man once to die -- and after this the judgment -- Jesus kept that appointment with death and was offered up as the sacrifice for our sins -- the same sins that carry that penalty of death."
Remember what Jesus said to the crowds that followed Him after He fed the 5,000?
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world ......... Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." (John 6:47-51, 53)
Let's backtrack a little. What was it that God spoke to Adam when He set him in the Garden of Eden?
"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17)
There's a lot of commentary I could make on this event, but I'll hold off on it -- at least for now. The point here is that Adam and Eve did eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The partaking of that fruit introduced death into the human race. Adam and Eve were never designed to die. They were designed to live forever -- just like God! They had no appointment with death at all! The command to NOT eat of that tree was a warning that their lives would have a termination point if they did eat.
Every human being born from that day (the day they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) forward had an appointment with death. It became part of the human genome. It was a curse that came upon the human race; and it was part of the curse of the Law -- the law of sin and death.
Writing to the Romans Paul said, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." (Romans 8:2)
This is a real revelation from the Holy Spirit. If you aren't seeing it yet, ask the Holy Spirit to unfold this to you. It will change your entire perspective of what happened at the Cross.
Jesus kept our appointment with death, folks! This is a part of the revelation of the Table of the Lord. When we eat of the Table we eat of the Lord; and Jesus made it clear that when we eat of Him, we eat eternal life. Let's see if I can explain it like this.
Every disease, every infirmity, every sickness, every virus, every weakness that comes into or upon our flesh is a product of some part of our body -- some cell or set of cells -- dying. As we've already said, Adam wasn't designed to die. Eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil brought upon mankind the HIV of the human spirit. That HIV of the spirit resulted in an immediate reaction within human flesh.
Why? How?
When Paul was writing to the Ekklesia in Thessalonica, he said, "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thessalonians 5:23)
Notice the way he phrased this: "your whole spirit and soul and body." We are first and foremost spirit beings. Our spirits never die. We are secondarily soul. Our soul is our identity, our thought processes, our mind, our character and personality. We are lastly physical bodies. If our spirit becomes contaminated it affects our soul. If our soul is affected, it alters the way we think, and the way we speak. Whatever we speak -- because we are primarily spirit beings dwelling in shells of flesh and blood -- it has a direct bearing our physical well being.
Proverbs 23:7 tells us that "As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he."
When we allow the Spirit of God to superintend our spirit, there is a natural -- and spiritually logical (if I can express it like that) chain of circumstances that follows. When we trust our knowledge and wisdom and understanding over and above what God has said and is saying, there are spiritual consequences that follow.
Follow me down a spiritual path for a minute.
It takes faith to accept and receive our salvation through Jesus Christ. When we trust in, rely on and believe that Jesus paid the price for our sin with His suffering, His death, and His resurrection, our spirits respond to that faith. Faith works by love -- agape love. It was the agape love of Jesus that brought Him to earth and impelled Him to redeem us from the curse.
But redemption from the curse was inclusive of a whole lot more than salvation from sin. "Salvation" has been sold down the river and cheapened into only "saved from sin" when in fact "saved" is only a tiny part of what Jesus accomplished.
We get our word "saved" from the Greek sozo (pronounced sodzo), which means: to save, to heal, to deliver, to make whole, to protect, to preserve, to restore to completeness. One Greek commentator put it like this: "to return to the state or condition that existed (in the Garden of Eden) before the fall of man."
Jesus' very name in the Hebrew, "Yeshua," means: salvation, deliverance, aid, victory, prosperity, health, welfare, wholeness.
So what was Adam's condition in the Garden before the fall? He was in perfect health. There was no death in him of any kind. He wasn't designed to die. After all, he was made in the image of God -- and as we know, God never dies. He always was, He is, and He will always be. He is the personification of eternity.
That's how Adam was created. [In our next Coffee Break, I'll try to demonstrate for you from Scripture that Adam lived in the Garden, walking and talking with God for some 2,000 years prior to the fall.] Whether you accept that argument -- or simply believe that Adam ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on the third 24-hour day of his existence and then lived for 930 years, dying slowly until death took him -- doesn't really matter.
Adam -- and all the generations that lived prior to the Flood -- lived for the better part of a thousand years after the fall! Sin corrupted the whole environment of the earth and shortened man's lifespan in such a way that, with a few exceptions, most people never even made it to a hundred years of age.
Redemption from sin also included redemption from death, sickness, dying, weakness and infirmity; and -- for those that die, resurrection to eternal life. This is a phenomenal revelation if you can grasp it. Redemption from the curse also incorporates -- for women -- redemption from pain in childbearing; and Della and I know a number of women who have been able to receive this revelation by faith and take advantage of it. Redemption, as well, provides redemption from poverty and the restoration of prosperity. Once again, this is a revelation that folks must grasp and receive by faith in order to walk in.
Are you beginning to get the picture? "Salvation" is a huge package! For folks who limit it to redemption from the penalty for sin, they miss out on living a dimension of life here and now that Jesus intended so that the Father would receive glory. Cancellation of death -- in the here and now -- is part of the package. This is a revelation that many folks are just beginning to get a handle on.
Let me ask you something. It takes faith to accept and receive the salvation that Jesus provided -- and provides -- by His grace. Fact is, the faith that gets activated when one receives salvation from the penalty for sin is Jesus' faith.
When you read Mark 11:22 in the Greek text (rather than the KJV or other English translations) it renders more accurately to "Have [or possess] the faith of God." Or, we can read it, "Have God's faith."
The apostle Paul affirms this in Ephesians 2:8 when he writes, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God."
Because of the way this comes out in the majority of our English translations, one tends to read it that Paul is saying that grace is the gift of God, but when you read it in Greek it is obvious that both grace and faith -- together -- are God's gift to us. We cannot receive God's grace without faith -- His faith -- and correspondingly, we cannot receive God's faith without having His grace. The two are inseparably linked together because of agape love.
Writing to the Ekklesia in Galatia, Paul notes that faith is energized (worketh, KJV), empowered and made effective by agape. (See Galatians 5:6)
That is the kind of faith which must be operational for us to receive the revelation of death cancellation. It's the same kind of faith that operates when we receive our healing. It's the same kind of faith that functions when we receive deliverance from evil spirits. It's the same kind of faith that works when we leave the poverty mindset and begin to think abundance.
Jesus came to bring us abundant LIFE! He came to keep our appointment with death so that we don't have to die! Are you seeing it yet?
That's where we'll quit for today. There's more to this revelation, and I'll share it with you in our next Coffee Break.
See you soon.
The Lord has set a table before us that is fit for kings and priests -- and we are both in Him! We have a feast set before us designed to help us function as kings who rule and reign, and priests who worship and come before God's presence in boldness and joy.
Be blessed!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
455 North River Road
Prosser, Washington 99350-6554
(509) 781-6099
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