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

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