ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN XIII: Ezekiel

ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN XIII: Ezekiel

And Another Good Day to You! (Or is that supposed to be “G’Day?)

Sorry. I have lots of Aussie friends – and even a few relatives – but my ability to duplicate their accent is a bit missing.

As something of a follow-up to my last commentary concerning the “flushing” out of the poison in our mouths, Jesse Duplantis recently had one of the best analogies I’ve heard. (Don’t mean to just be quoting Jesse in case it seems that way, but he’s had some rather spectacular and anointed sharing of late that’s worth repeating.) I’ll try to quote or paraphrase him as closely as possible.

“The reason that folks jump all over what they call the ‘Word of Faith’ movement or the ‘Prosperity Doctrine’ is because there are some preachers out there who grab hold of part of the revelation and just focus on that part instead of waiting to get the entire revelation. That places an imbalance on what they teach and causes resulting error.”

Jesse is right! Just because there are preachers and teachers who are labeled “Word of Faith” or “Prosperity” doesn’t mean they have the whole revelation. Their lack of balance, however, does not invalidate the truth of the Word of Faith, nor does it mean that teaching prosperity is heresy. Let’s face it, folks. If a person speaks out against the Word of Faith (and I don’t just mean the so-called ‘movement’) they are speaking contrary to what the Word of God very specifically says!

Hebrews 11:6 very clearly states, “Without faith, it is impossible (see that word, ‘impossible’?) to please God.” The corollary to this is that faith MUST be in our mouths as a part of our normal ordinary speech. It is an incontrovertible truth that you cannot have what you speak against. There’s another side to this, too. Nowhere in the Word are we instructed to call those things that are as though they weren’t! It is fair to say that most things that are exist because someone spoke them into existence one way or another.

Let me give you an example.

A certain person said to me – not once but several times throughout the years – “I’ll probably have or get cancer. It runs in our family, so I guess that means I’ll have cancer.” Sure enough the man came down with cancer. He got exactly what he confessed. He brought into being a disease he didn’t need to have because he spoke unbelief. Meanwhile he was made aware of the promises in the Word concerning healing. With only a partial understanding of the Word of Faith, he began to call his cancer nonexistent.

I understand what he was trying to do, but that was not an exercise of the Word of Faith. He was trying to call those things that are as though they weren’t – and it didn’t work. He should have spoken the truth and said, “I have been diagnosed with cancer but the Word says that Jesus paid the price for my healing – that by His stripes I’ve been healed. Therefore I lay claim to the covenant that I have with the Lord Jesus Christ. I accept and receive healing from cancer by and through the blood of Jesus and in His Name!”

See the difference? The first confession gets you nowhere because it simply isn’t truth. It is nothing more than unbelief masquerading as faith. The second confession acknowledges that you have been afflicted but that Jesus paid the price so that you could be healed of the affliction. That’s the truth, and that’s what you have to walk in.

Unbelief, incidentally, is not a lack of believing. Unbelief actively believes something which is contrary to what God is saying, or what He has said before. For many people, unbelief is far more powerful in their lives than having faith and declaring and decreeing agreement with what The Word Himself says. Unbelief challenges the promises that Jesus made. Unbelief essentially says, “I don’t believe that Jesus will keep His Word to me. Maybe he’ll do it for somebody else but not me.”

Just as faith gives rise to a creative confession, unbelief always gives vent to a negative and (ultimately) destructive confession. That confession declares and decrees a thing in the life of the decreer. What it decrees is exactly what a person believes – even if what a person believes violates the Word of God.

When someone says to me, “I don’t believe that,” or, “I don’t believe that applies to me” they are unequivocally saying that they’ve chosen to actively disbelieve what God says, thus placing their “belief system” above that of the Lord. When someone says to me, “I don’t believe in the idea of Christians living in prosperity,” they are without question denying the very efficacy of the Word and the multitude of promises of the Lord. Deuteronomy 28 – all by itself – should be sufficient to quash that unbelief.

When someone says, “Speaking in tongues is of the Devil,” they blaspheme the Holy Spirit by attributing His work and ministry to Satan. They actively disbelieve Acts 2:39 and dismiss it as not relevant to the present time. They place themselves in grave danger of severe judgment.

Let me get back on track. We don’t know it all yet. In case you hadn’t already figured it out (grin), I’ve made some serious mistakes, errors in judgment and errors in teaching. I was very sincere years ago when I taught against the laws of tithing – and I was sincerely wrong! The problem was that I didn’t have revelation by the Holy Spirit and so I taught from humanly acquired and (very!) erroneous reasoning. Were it not for the grace and mercy of the Lord I would still be caught in that error.

That said, I’d hate for someone to take something I taught 10, 15 or 20 years ago from an incomplete place of understanding and suggest that I currently preach and teach that same error.

(Unfortunately, folks who condemn many of the so-called “Word of Faith” and “Prosperity Teachers” do exactly that, taking things they said as many as 20 or 30 years ago and repeating them as current doctrine when in fact they have grown in their understanding and areas of teaching as the Holy Spirit has continued to unfold revelation from the Word.)

Thank the Lord for His instruction and correction. Thank God for His patience with me in my stupidity and His grace to bring me out of error. I’m still learning and still growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

OK. Enough of that. Let’s move on.

Ezekiel has long been one of my favorite prophets. It didn’t used to be that way, but when I began to have some of the same experiences and same visions he had, it changed my perspective and gave me a real appreciation for him. Little did I realize when I was talking to him that less than two years later I would experience his “wheel in the middle of the wheel” in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Ezekiel was a Levitical priest who when he was introduced to me appeared in priestly garments. I’d have guessed him to be roughly 5’10” or 5’11” tall, and “lean and mean” if you get the metaphor. He was no spindly-looking guy, however. He had soft facial features – the look of someone who has spent a lifetime in the presence of the Lord.

Here again was someone whose appearance belied the mental images which came from seeing all the “stuff” he went through, and the requests the Lord made of him in order to become a literal prophecy himself to the nation. Stop and think about it!

What do you think a guy would look like to whom the Lord first said, “Take this roll (scroll) and eat it?” OK, how about this one:

“Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.”

Then the Lord follows that one up with, “And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.”

Got the picture? Ezekiel is commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days as a sign to Israel. Next he’s commanded to lie on his right side for 40 days. Each of those acts becomes a prophecy to Israel.

But wait. It gets even stranger yet!

“And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair. Thou shalt burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled: and thou shalt take a third part, and smite about it with a knife: and a third part thou shalt scatter in the wind; and I will draw out a sword after them. Thou shalt also take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts. Then take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire; for thereof shall a fire come forth into all the house of Israel.”

So Ezekiel is commanded to shave his head and his beard and use the hair in four different ways to prophesy. Do you think this might look strange?

Try this one on!

“Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof. And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it. Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink. And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.”

Say what?

“And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them. Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment: That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.”

Wheww!!! Yecchh! “Prepare thy bread (with dung)?” Think you could do that? Somehow I doubt it! And we think some of God’s people today are strange! And this was just a sampling of the very unusual things God required of him as he became the prophetic Word of the Lord to Israel.

Now you begin to get the idea why I began my questions with Ezekiel like this: “Did you think you’d lost your mind, or maybe that you were hearing things, when the Lord asked you to do all that strange stuff? I mean, WOW! I know you were supposed to represent a prophetic picture to the people, but I don’t remember anyone else ever being asked to do such odd things, ‘cept maybe Isaiah once or twice.”

It seems that my questions often provoked laughter on the part of the individuals being questioned, and Ezekiel was no exception. Put in the perspective that I had just shared, he couldn’t help but laugh. In fact, it caught his “funny bone” to the point where he almost doubled over laughing.

“I guess I’d never thought of it cumulatively like that,” he responded, “but I see what you’re driving at. As you’ve just pointed out, Isaiah was required to walk about for three years naked and barefoot in order to become a prophetic message to Egypt and Ethiopia.

“When the Lord first began to instruct me in this strange behavior, He warned me that Israel was extremely rebellious and that they would react vehemently to the Word I was sent to deliver. If you remember how He spoke to Jeremiah, He instructed him not to pay attention to the reactions of the people. He told Jeremiah that they would fight against him and try to take his life. He repeated Himself several times to Jeremiah when He said, “Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee.”

“What God said to me was, “And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house. And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: for they are most rebellious.”

“The parallel was identical. God was letting me know that these people were like poisonous scorpions and that they would try to sting me and infect me with their poison. I knew in my spirit that I was going to be an illustrated prophetic Word of the Lord – one that would be so graphic the people would not be able to get the picture out of their minds. The Lord was so serious about them receiving this message that He was making me into something that was pretty extreme in order to get His Word engraved in their spirits.

“That didn’t mean the people were going to hear and obey the Word. In fact, He said to me, “For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do send thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD. And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them.”

Ezekiel paused and said, “Are you understanding this?”

I nodded my head. “That’s pretty extreme! Obviously it is very important that God’s people hear the warning because of the things that are going to happen.”

“There’s more, but before we continue there are some things I need to share with you, young man. The Lord Jesus arranged this trip for you because there are some things that need to be planted in your spirit. He has some important assignments for you – just as He had for me, for Isaiah and for Jeremiah. Much of what I’m about to share with you will fade from your conscious memory for several years because the timing of what I have to say is for a day that awaits you.

He continued. “A day will come when you will cry out to the Lord asking Him concerning the events that will be unfolding at that time. The Spirit of the Lord will bring this conversation back to you and remind you of your calling and purpose. He will time it in such a way that your purposes in God will begin to flower and mature.”

Now my curiosity was piqued! I stood up straight and waited to see what Ezekiel was going to say.

“I’ve just told you what the Lord spoke to me when He first called me. I wasn’t being sent to other nations and other peoples. I was being sent to the House of Israel. Though there will come moments in time when you will address people who are not of the house and family of God – and you will see them quickly and readily respond to the Word of the Lord – God is sending you primarily to His people.

“When He sent me to the houses of Judah and Israel, He specifically warned me that I would be addressing a very stubborn and rebellious people who did not want to hear the Word I was speaking. The same is true for you. In the years to come you will find yourself delivering the Word of the Lord to people who call themselves believers, members of the body of Christ … Christians. But they will be locked into doctrines, teachings and mindsets that have blinded them to the calling and purposes of God in their lives.

“Many will rebel against the Word of the Lord that you speak. You will be despised, rejected, regarded as heretical, spoken evil of, conspired against, thrown out of places, and some of them will even try to kill you. Do not, for a moment, allow any of that to affect you. Do not in any way compromise or water down the Word of the Lord which He gives you to speak. Their lives and their spiritual futures depend on your faithfulness to deliver God’s Word.

“That doesn’t mean all of them will reject the Word. You will certainly see results, and God’s Word will certainly come to pass. But be prepared, young man! There will be times when your obedience to the Word of the Lord will cost you everything. Never fear. There is a day of harvest and a day of reward and you will see and experience it. Don’t be intimidated by the long wait. Do not, under any circumstances, allow what seem to be interminable delays and the rejections you will certainly experience cause you to quit and give up. You’ll never regret enduring and persisting in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances.”

My conversation with Ezekiel still had a little ways to go, and I’m running long today, so let’s hold it for our next Coffee Break.

Next: HEAVEN XIV: Ezekiel, the Prophetic Musician.

A shaking is going on the midst of God’s people! Jesus is coming back for a Bride without spot or wrinkle. It is imperative that we as His people yield to the fire of the Holy Spirit and the purification processes He is bringing us to. The fire is not for our destruction, it is to get rid of the bondages that keep us from reaching His destiny for us!

Blessings on you!

Regner

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
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