Preparing the Bride of Christ For His Return By Janet Van Hierdan
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Sunday, August 24, 2014
Another
Coffee Break:
Exercising Spiritual Authority
August 22, 2014
I'd really intended to
get back to our series on Dealing With Fear today, but just felt to continue
the break a bit longer. During the past
three weeks we've talked about the Eskdale Miracle. Consider today's sharing somewhat of an
extension.
What
I’m about to share with you has been shared before in bits and pieces in
previous Coffee Breaks, and if you've seen or heard this before, pardon me for
the repetition.
During
my years at Long Beach Christian Center with Dwain McKenzie, I found a house
for the family on Harding Street in North Long Beach, perhaps a mile and a half
or two miles from the church. It was in
this house that the Lord stirred me to begin fasting at least once each year
for forty days.
Following
one of those early fasts, I just felt in my spirit to begin walking the
neighborhood each morning. In
Deuteronomy 11:24, we read of Moses’ prophesying in part to Israel prior to
their entrance into the Land of Promise, “Every place whereon the
soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours.”
That scripture went through me like a shot! The emphasis of the Holy Spirit was that I
should “possess” the territory where I lived – not by buying up all of the
houses and property, but by exercising the authority of the Lord in a tangible
way.
As my walks began, I started one block at a
time. Each morning, I would walk the
complete circumference of the block, praying over each home on that block,
occasionally stretching out my hand toward a home as I was directed by the Lord
and speaking something like this, “Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I
establish your Kingdom authority in this home.
Raise up righteousness here.
Bring salvation, healing and deliverance. I claim this home and this family for the
Kingdom of God.”
Over a period of weeks and many months, the
practice continued. I began to enlarge
the territory. For awhile it was simply
one block. Then it was two. Then it increased to three, then four, then
five, then six, and so forth, until I was covering a pretty large territory.
The practice was always the same. As I walked, I would pray in tongues. Sometimes I would pray with my understanding,
saying, “Father, I agree with your Word, and I take this territory for your
Kingdom. Everywhere the soles of my feet
tread, I take this territory and possess it for your Kingdom.”
I frequently extended my hand towards homes,
towards the public schools, toward businesses, praying over the occupants, the
school children, the school administration, the businesses and their
owners. There wasn’t any visible effect
from my prayers for perhaps as much as two years. One by one, I began to hear of or meet
families in the homes I was praying over.
Very few of them actually came to our church, but I began to find that
many of these families were coming to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and
Savior.
Frequently, as I met the families, they would tell
me where they had begun to attend a church or become involved in some
fellowship. In some cases, I actually
met their pastors. People began to be
saved, healed of various diseases and afflictions, and set free from evil
spirits – all as a direct result of simply consistently walking the territory,
praying over them and extending the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as I
walked and prayed.
One day, about a block south of our home, I
happened to see the Long Beach police conduct a raid on one of the houses I had
prayed over. It was a house I had really
felt strange about, but was new enough to this kind of prayer and intercession
not to recognize what I was sensing. It
was a house I consistently proclaimed the authority of the Kingdom of God
over.
Turns out the house was being used for the
manufacture and distribution of drugs – heroin and cocaine. The police shut it down and put the drug
dealers out of business – at least in my neighborhood. I knew it was a direct result of the prayers
and the consistent walking of the area.
A few months later, a house on the opposite side of
the street and down a half block from our home was raided by the police and
shut down. Because of the red light
above the front door that used to come on every evening, I suspected that it
was a whore house. It was. Again, Holy Spirit made clear to me the fact
that it was because of the exercise of spiritual authority taking place.
I became emboldened. I called up Dick Parrish, who also served on
the pastoral staff of Long Beach Christian Center, and asked him to join me in
some of these walks. Then Dwain McKenzie
(who had been my lifetime friend, brother in the Lord, and was the senior
pastor at LBCC) began to join in the walks.
We began to walk the territory near the church.
About two blocks from the church was a home where
some bikers lived. Every time we walked
past the place, I stretched out my hand toward the home and proclaimed the
establishment of the Kingdom of God.
Nearly twenty years passed after we had walked that
territory when the Lord orchestrated an opportunity for Della and I to meet the
bikers who had occupied that home Dwain, Dick and I had walked past and prayed
over. Della and I were in Atlin, British
Columbia sharing and ministering with friends from Anchorage.
We were invited to come over for dinner to the home
of an artist and sculptor who lived in Atlin with his wife and teenage
daughter. Sitting around the dinner
table that night, we happened to mention Long Beach. The artist perked up his ears, as did his
wife.
“You were in Long Beach, California?” he
asked. “When was that?” I responded that I had been there for about
five years in the early and mid-1970’s.
“Wow, what a coincidence,” he exclaimed. “So did we!”
I asked him what part of Long Beach he had lived
in, and he described the street where Dwain, Dick and I had walked. Now it was my turn to be amazed. He and his wife went on to tell us that they
had been a part of the biker crowd, living a pretty wild, hippie kind of life.
I started to laugh.
“We never met during those days,” I said, “but you were surely some of
the people we prayed for as we walked the neighborhood.”
He almost came out of his chair. “You!
You! I used to watch you stop in
front of our house and stretch out your hand toward us. Never could hear what you were saying, but we
figured you must have been praying or something like that. That’s when my wife and I experienced the
Lord Jesus Christ coming into our lives and convicting us. That’s when we came to know the Lord for the
first time in our lives!”
I continued to walk the neighborhood where I lived,
gradually increasing the size of the territory where I walked until I was
walking portions of Atlantic and Long Beach Blvds.
One day as I was walking Long Beach Blvd., I was
shocked to see an X-rated porn theater that had just opened up. Something rose up inside of me in anger that
Satan would attempt to so brazenly encroach on territory I had been claiming
for the Lord. I walked right up to the
front of the theater, put my hands on the building and began to proclaim the
establishing of the Kingdom of God in the place.
Despite the fact that folks were standing out front
of the place and staring at me like I’d lost my marbles or something, I began
to speak out loud, “Father, in the name of Jesus, I establish your Kingdom
authority in this place. I shut this theater
down!”
It was several weeks later that I was driving down
Long Beach Blvd. and decided to check on
the porn theater. Not too surprisingly,
it was shut down. All of the billboards
and placards were gone and the theater marquee was empty. I thought to myself, Wow, this is too good to pass up.
I parked my car and walked over to the front of the
building, and again I placed my hand on the outside of the place and began to
proclaim the Word of God. I said,
“Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I again establish your Kingdom in this
place, and I raise up righteousness. Let
this building become something that will serve your purposes and be to your
Glory.” Then I got back in my car and
drove away.
Again it was some weeks that passed before I
thought of the theater and decided to go and check on it. As I drove towards the building, I saw a man
standing on a ladder putting letters on the theater marquee. I pulled over and parked and watched him
spell out the following, one letter at a time:
E – V – A – N – G – E – L T – E – M – P – L – E.
Brother, did I ever let out a war whoop! It had worked! What was once an X-rated porn theater was
shut down, and a church and worship center opened up in its place. I’ve no idea how long that church functioned
in that building, but years later when I came back to Long Beach for a visit,
it was still operating.
Naturally, I wasted no time in sharing it with the
folks at Long Beach Christian Center.
Dave Dobbs, who was also part of our staff, happened to be driving with
his wife in the San Fernando Valley some months later. They came across a huge construction site
where a large number of construction workers and a lot of equipment were busy
building some very elegant appearing structure.
Dave drove around the place out of curiosity to see
what was being built. A large sign with
an artist’s rendition displayed a future Buddhist temple. Dave remembered my experience and sharing
about the theater and thought, This is a
principle we need to apply here.
He and his wife parked their car, got out and
walked to the chain link fence that surrounded the property. They stretched their hands towards the
partially constructed building and proclaimed, “Father, in Jesus’ name, we
establish your Kingdom over this place, and we shut down this project now!”
It must have been two or three months that passed
before they happened to be back in the
Valley and thought about the incident.
They drove back to the construction site of that building, and – to
their astonishment – saw weeds grown up around the place. Construction had ceased almost from the day
they had spoken the word of authority.
Seems like it was almost a year later that Dave was
back in the Valley and thought about checking on the place one more time. The Buddhist trappings of the place were
gone, and it had been redesigned into a nice office building.
By now, you are beginning to understand what I mean
when I talk about Spiritual Authority.
That is the authority of Holy Spirit working in folks who are submitted
to the Lord and sensitive to His voice and leading. We don't get to do these things just because
it seems like a good idea. We do them at
the prompting of Holy Spirit. He plants
a rhema in our being and a holy boldness to
go with it.
That’s the kind of authority that brings
healing. That’s the kind of authority
that brings deliverance to people in captivity to Satan. That’s the kind of authority that tears down
the thrones of spiritual rulers – the apostle Paul refers to them in the Greek
text of Ephesians 6 as kosmokrator: world rulers of darkness – demon princes
who exercise power and influence to execute wickedness.
What is so fabulous is that Joe everyday Christian
has access to that authority, if he can simply grasp it. Folks get cheated out of living and walking
in this realm because of false teaching, because of screwball doctrines, and
mostly because of fear, doubt and unbelief.
If Christians would begin to exercise this kind of authority right in
the neighborhoods where they live, we would have a radically different world
today.
I shared a fair portion of the above with a group
of young folks at a fellowship in Barnwell, Alberta when Della and I were there
three or four years ago. The pastor and
his wife had a young son, two-year-old Timmy, who had club feet and had never
walked. Hearing the story of the healing
of the child in Eskdale spurred their faith and they asked if we could pray for
young Timmy. The Lord had already told
Della that He was going to repeat that event that day, so their request was not
unexpected.
We saw Holy Spirit repeat the miracle as little
Timmy walked across the platform in front of everyone for the first time in his
life. There wasn't a dry eye in the
place!
Shortly afterward, four young men in the group
suddenly got up from their seats and rushed out the back door. Remember the Eskdale experience I’ve talked
about? Barnwell is nearly 100% Mormon,
and like Eskdale has a population of about 350 people. Right next to the building where this
fellowship was meeting was the local Mormon ward.
These four young men went over to the ward hall and
stood on the sides of the building. They
placed their hands on the building and began to pray, “Father, in Jesus’ name,
establish your Kingdom and raise up righteousness in this place.”
No sooner had they gotten back to the service that
was underway when four young women decided to follow suit. They were frustrated that the guys hadn’t let
them know what they were doing, and they were determined to play their part in
whatever the Lord was going to do.
Naturally, they headed over to the ward, and each one of the four stood
at one of the four corners of the building.
They essentially duplicated what the four young men had prayed.
While they were praying over the place, the Mormon
bishop came out and saw them. He walked
over and said, “What’s happening here?
Can I help you?”
The girls sheepishly said, “We’re, uhhh….we’re just
praising the Lord and declaring His righteousness.”
The bishop kind of scratched his head and said,
“Uhh, OK. I guess that’s a good thing to
do on the Sabbath.” He got in his
vehicle and drove around to see the other girls standing at the corners. When they saw him, they beat a hasty path
back to the fellowship hall.
It was both amusing and an enormous blessing to see
young people respond so instantly. What
comes from it remains to be seen, but one thing is sure. When folks respond to the quickening of the
Lord, seeking to broaden the scope of God’s rulership in a practical dimension,
He always comes through with signs following.
Keith Moore made a statement in one of the
Southwest Believer's Conventions we went to that I've never forgotten, and it
applies to what I've just shared.
Eskdale, Long Beach, Barnwell…..they’re all examples of what happens
when you apply this principle.
When you want what God wants for the same reason
that God wants it, you become unlimited and unstoppable!
And that’s the absolute truth! That’s SPIRITUAL
AUTHORITY!
Let me remind you that
if you are in need of healing or deliverance from any kind of torment, please
join our prayer conference calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at
7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000. Then enter the access code: 124763#. To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy
opens the call up for everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to
your need for healing!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
Our book, A
Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is now available on
Amazon.com as an E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Brides-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00BSV6HZC/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1363139096&sr=8-8&keywords=A+Tale+of+Two+Brides#_
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Friday, August 15, 2014
Another
Coffee Break:
The Eskdale Miracle, Part 3
August 15, 2014
We're going to run
long today as we finish up this story.
Sorry about that, but when Holy Spirit goes to work, we have long since
come to the place of not thinking about time.
As I shared last week, it really didn’t matter that
I’d never engaged in any ministry of deliverance before this. The Lord was about to do what He does best:
save, heal, deliver, make whole, etc., etc., etc. I didn’t know else to do but to take the
man’s confession at face value. So I put
my hand on the bishop’s shoulder and started in, “You Spirit of Adultery, come
out of him in Jesus’ name.”
What happened next was something none of us were
prepared for. He was yanked into mid-air
and levitated as though by a gigantic unseen hand. His body rotated in the air horizontally,
then slammed to the floor, and he began to writhe on the floor like a
snake. I’d never seen the human body go
through the contortions he was going through.
I didn't know the human body was capable of such things -- and,
honestly, it isn't! Normally, that is.
Guess the Lord had taught me well. Despite the natural reaction to seeing such a
demonic display, there was no stopping.
I was like a bulldog. Display or
no display, these things were gonna go!
I kept right on commanding the evil spirits to come out. According to the confession the bishop had
made, I named those evil spirits by name and commanded them to leave him in the
name of Jesus.
Pardon me for a second while I share
something. You understand, don't you,
that using the name of Jesus isn't some kind of formula? We are not rattling off the name, Jesus, or
Yeshua, or anything like that and expecting things to happen. We are actually functioning in the very onoma, the character, the essence, the
makeup, the personality, the very authority of Jesus and His anointing! This is not a case of using some name like,
Tom, Dick or George. It just doesn't
work that way! We are IN Christ Jesus!
With my lack of previous experience in deliverance
and the Enemy thinking he could bluff me into yielding, it was like a spiritual
tug of war. Nevertheless, they began to
leave – one by one. Each time an evil
spirit would leave, there was a visible change.
Easily twenty minutes elapsed between the departure of the first and the
seventh evil spirit. It was a non-stop
battle. We couldn’t -- and wouldn't --
quit.
We were determined this man was going to be free,
and Brother Bill and I stayed with it.
Finally, we watched as his body went through one last wrenching
contortion. What flashed through my mind
as I watched it was the event recorded in Mark 9 and Luke 9, where the evil
spirit convulsed and tore the young man.
It was just like that. His body jerked, and suddenly went limp. In Mark 9:26, we are told that the evil
spirit tore the young man’s body and left him for dead, so much so that folks
standing around said, “He’s dead.”
The bishop’s eyes rolled back in his head, the
color disappeared from his face, the death rattle came from his throat, he
ceased to breathe, and to all the world he looked dead. As far as I was concerned, he probably was,
but at that moment I didn't care.
As noted in last week's portion of this story, no
one had left the place. The auditorium
was still packed. A mother and her young
-- perhaps nine-year-old -- daughter were sitting on the front seat. I heard the little girl lean over to her
mother and whisper, “Mommy, he looks dead!”
In that instant, what flashed through my head was
Jesus with Jairus’ daughter. Everyone
had said, “Don’t trouble the Master.
She’s dead.” Jesus had responded,
“She’s not dead, she’s just sleeping.”
It was Jesus’ way of making them understand that death, to Him, is no
more consequential than sleep. He could
wake a person from the dead as easily as He could awaken someone who was
asleep. I remembered that Jesus had
stretched out His hand, taken the dead girl by the hand, and said, “Little
maid, I say unto you, Arise!”
So I reached down, took the limp arm of the bishop,
and said to him, “Sir, in the name of Jesus Christ, arise and be made whole!” His eyes snapped back into place. There was a sudden inrush of air filling his
lungs, and he began to breathe. Color
flooded his face, and he leaped to his feet.
He began to dance across that platform, shouting at the top of his
voice, “I’m free! I’m free! Praise God, I’m free!”
I broke. The
emotion of the moment overtook me as I began to weep. Seeing the “signs following” that night in
one continuous display after another, hour after hour for more than five hours
just caught up with me.
Never in my life could I have imagined what the
Lord was going to do in Eskdale, Utah.
What Holy Spirit began that weekend was a long way from finished.
In fact, I can't say that I had really connected
the fast to the events that followed. It
actually was several years later – eight or nine years later – that the
significance of the fast, and the fact that the Lord had waited until the
eighth day to show me that I could continue the fast with water, actually
registered.
I should point out that all of the events I’ve
related thus far took place on our first night in Eskdale, a Friday night, and
the end of the 21st day of my 21-day fast.
Saturday morning was like being amongst a bunch of
kids who had been given new toys. The
excitement and joy over all the miracles of the night before animated those
folks in a way they had never known.
There were few prayers that day for miracles -- at least in the way that
folks had seen the night before. The
bishop was anxious to talk. He was
anxious to know Jesus Christ in the way he had seen demonstrated the night
before. We wound up sharing the
principles of salvation with him, and with the majority of the
townspeople. One after another, and
sometimes in groups of several at a time, we spent the entire day and early
evening on Saturday leading people in prayers of salvation and commitment to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
You have to understand that these folks were Mormon
– every last one of them. They had grown
up in Mormonism and in making a regular profession of faith in Jesus Christ and
their founder, Joseph Smith. The problem
was, their profession of faith was a ritual.
It was predicated on a formula.
It was based on the doctrines they had learned and grown up with – not
on having a real relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
They had grown up in a religious atmosphere – one
that’s not any different from those who grow up in the Catholic church, the
Methodist church, the Episcopal church, the Presbyterian church, or any other
church regardless of whether it is evangelical, hierarchical, or
Pentecostal. One doesn’t have to be
Mormon to be religious.
What I was seeing happen throughout our weekend in
Eskdale forever altered my perspective of religious names, denominations,
titles, and all that. I didn’t see these
folks as “Mormons,” just like I don’t see other folks as “Presbyterian” or
“Baptist” or any other denominational label.
They are “people,” PERIOD!
They need Jesus Christ, just like we all need Jesus
Christ. The labels are meaningless to
the Lord. He’s not looking for
Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Church of God,
Foursquare, Assemblies of God, or any one of a bazillion names folks have over
the door of their churches. He’s looking
for people who’ve committed their lives to Him, made Him the Lord of their
lives, and walk with Him in a personal, intimate relationship on a daily
basis. Period! End of argument.
These folks in Eskdale weren’t any different. They grew up thinking just being “Mormon”
would do it. Problem was, there were no
“signs following.” Once they saw the
“signs following,” heard the truth, and determined to make Jesus Christ the
Lord of their lives, everything was simple.
There's a principle here many believers have lost
sight of. Paul speaks of it in his
sharing with the Corinthian Ekklesia. "But I fear, lest by any means, as the
serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ."
(II Corinthians 11:3) That's it!
The Gospel of the Kingdom IS simple!
By the end of the day on Saturday, we had prayed
with the overwhelming majority of the people in Eskdale, and when we left
Sunday morning to head back to Salt Lake City, we estimated that some 75% of
the people in that community had personally accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Savior. Of that group more than half
had been baptized in the Holy Spirit with the clear evidence of speaking in
tongues.
I still hadn’t put two and two together concerning
the 21-day fast, but the events of those three days stirred something in me
that has never quit from that day to this.
My head was swimming in the events.
One thing I lacked was teaching concerning the
ministry of deliverance. Until Eskdale,
it had never been a part of my life, my understanding, or my teaching and
preaching. Oh, sure. I knew it was a major part of Jesus’
ministry, but applying it in a modern sense was missing.
It was shortly thereafter that I met Derek Prince
for the first time and began to be exposed to some really in-depth
teaching. Derek was a former WWII
British soldier whom the Lord had given some of the same extraordinary
experiences I’d just had in Eskdale. His
experiences began during the War, but they continued – virtually nonstop – for
many years.
He moved to the U.S. and became an American
citizen, and ultimately began pastoring a church in Chicago before being
dis-fellowshipped by the denomination the church belonged to. Like so many structured, denominational
churches, they had a doctrine that was in opposition to this ministry of
deliverance. Derek ultimately became a
major voice, a teacher and evangelist in the rapidly-growing Charismatic
Renewal movement that swept the nation in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
His sharing and teaching from Scripture, as well as
his personal experiences in dealing with evil spirits, opened up my
understanding and began to fill the huge void for me in this dimension of
Jesus’ ministry. This, however, is not
the place nor the time for me to share the experiences I began to have in the
years that followed ministering deliverance to people from demonic influence
and control. That will wait for another
time.
Nevertheless, Eskdale became a watershed in my
personal growth and understanding. If I
had griped to the Lord prior to that time concerning the lack of any
significant “signs following” the teaching, preaching, and pastoral ministry,
my gripes were no more. From that time
forward, they followed – virtually nonstop.
There was something else that followed:
fasting. I began to realize that the
21-day fast in obedience to the command of the Lord was directly responsible
for the incredible events that unfolded.
A determination engraved itself in my being. I resolved that my life would be given and
available to the Lord for whatever realm of ministry He chose to steer me to –
that I would never again resist any kind of ministry He called me to perform,
regardless of how controversial or challenging it might appear.
Beginning in 1973, and for ten consecutive years, I
went on at least one 40-day fast each year.
During most of the 1990's Della and I frequently were on two 40-day
fasts in any calendar year. There were
many years in which there were multiple fasts of varying lengths. The overwhelming majority of these fasts were
water only. The fasts have continued
throughout my life but they have changed in scope and nature. So has the dimension of ministry, and the
incredible experiences that have accompanied our walk with the Lord.
It was either late in 1979 or sometime in the early
part of 1980 after moving back to Barrow, Alaska that I was thinking about Bill
Christopulos and our experiences together in Eskdale. I decided to give him a call and check up on
him.
Very nearly the first thing out of his mouth when
he heard my voice on the telephone was, “Brother, do you remember Eskdale?”
My immediate response was, “Brother Bill, how could
I EVER forget Eskdale? Witnessing the
miracles that took place there changed my life!
That was a watershed event for me spiritually.”
He continued.
“You need to hear the end of the story, Reg. The miracles didn’t stop after we left. The change to that community was continuous.
“In the two years after we were in Eskdale, people
continued to make commitments to Jesus Christ until the entire community turned
to Jesus Christ. I think there were two
or three folks that were afraid to commit their lives for whatever reason and
chose to move away from the town, but literally everyone else accepted Jesus
Christ as their Lord and Savior. The
last I heard, more than three-quarters of those folks had been baptized in the
Holy Spirit.
“It was in 1973 – two years after we had been there
-- that the bishop called the community together and they agreed to have a
public ceremony similar to the one recorded in the 19th chapter of
Acts. They gathered together all of
their copies of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great
Price, the Book of Abraham, and books on Mormon doctrine, piled them together
in the middle of the town and had a great bonfire. The entire community renounced its ties to
Mormonism. They concluded that they
needed no “extra” doctrine or teaching other than the Bible as the Word of God.
“Brother, do you realize what happened? You remember the first seven, almost eight,
days of your fast without food or water?
Remember how Esther’s three-day fast altered the course of history for
Israel? Your days without food and water
played a role in altering the course of history for that community. That entire community came to accept and know
Jesus Christ! It’s incredible,
Brother! I don’t know of any recent parallel
in modern times where an entire community turned to the Lord. We were part of something absolutely miraculous! What God did among those people was
stupendous!”
Finally! Two
and two made four. For whatever reason,
I hadn’t seen the connection before. To
hear that the entire community turned to the Lord almost left me
speechless. Now, maybe you understand why
the word “impossible” is gone from my dictionary. There is no such thing in God. There is no such thing for those that walk
with Him in intimate love, whose lives are totally committed.
There is a dimension of life, of authority and
power available to the believer in Christ Jesus that knows no bounds. The reason why we have nutty doctrines that
abound in churches today that limit the believer is because those who teach
such doctrines have never really launched out and stepped past the boundaries
and boxes of their religious understanding.
Relying on human understanding so places limits on our relationship with
the Lord that folks get shortchanged in their walk with God. Jesus made some incredible promises that all
Christians have access to, but rarely avail themselves.
In John 14:12, Jesus makes the statement, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me,
the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do
because I go unto my Father.”
Isaiah prophesied it, and Paul repeated it in I
Corinthians 2:9: “But as it is written, Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”
Want the adventure of a lifetime? Want to see some of what God has prepared for
them that love Him? God HAS revealed it
to us by His Spirit! It’s available to
those whose pursuit after God’s best knows no holding back, no restraints of
any kind.
“These signs shall follow them that
believe; in My Name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new
tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it
shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
And that’s only
the works that Jesus did – never mind the promised “Greater Works”!
Let me remind you that
if you are in need of healing or deliverance from any kind of torment, please
join our prayer conference calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at
7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000. Then enter the access code: 124763#. To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy
opens the call up for everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to your
need for healing!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
Our book, A
Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is now available on
Amazon.com as an E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Brides-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00BSV6HZC/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1363139096&sr=8-8&keywords=A+Tale+of+Two+Brides#_
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 available
at http://www.RegnersMorningCoffee.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 remove yourself from the mailing list, please send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.To remove yourself from the mailing list, please 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.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Another
Coffee Break:
The Eskdale Miracle, Part 2
August 8, 2014
Let's get right to
this story. I'll back up just a bit for
you to get the context of what unfolded next.
Last week, I left off with what happened when I
asked the following question to the gathered group in the Eskdale ward house,
“Is there someone here tonight who has been in some kind of accident where you
were severely injured? Perhaps you have
an injury that has been with you since your childhood. If you will stand and come forward, the Lord
will heal you tonight.”
I wasn’t even hardly prepared for what happened
next!
Immediately, a gentleman in his fifties stood up in
the back row. His face was grotesquely
misshapen, the result of a fire he had been burned in as a teenager. He wore glasses that had to be a quarter-inch
thick or more.
He pointed to his face and roared, “Oh yeah? You say this Holy Spirit is real? Let’s see Him do something about this!”
Ever have your knees quake? Ever shake in your boots? Betcha my heart sank right into my shoes in
that instant. Faith as a grain of mustard
seed? Right! Would you believe a quarter -- or even a
tenth -- of a grain of mustard seed?
In my mind, I said, “Lord, you wouldn’t? Oh My
God! Lord, if you don’t show up on the
scene right now, we can pack our
bags and get out of here.” It was
put up or shut up time! Either the Lord
was who He said He is, and He was going to honor His Word, or we were done!
I was so scared; words wouldn’t come out of my
lips. Never in my whole life had I ever
faced such a challenge. I just motioned
for him to come forward. He got out into
the aisle and began to walk towards the front.
All of a sudden something just exploded in my
spirit! In that instant I absolutely
KNEW the Lord was going to do the miraculous!
About ten steps from the platform, I couldn’t wait for him any longer
and stretched out my hand towards him saying, “In Jesus Name!”
As he reached the steps of the platform, I heard a
gasp from the folks sitting on the front row.
They were seeing what I was seeing.
The flesh was pulling back into place on his face. The scarring was disappearing. New eyelids were forming where the old ones
had been burned away.
I thought I’d seen a creative miracle in Phoenix
with that eighteen-year-old girl whose arm had been restored, but this….this
was different! It was breathtaking!
Now
this gentleman was standing in front of me on the platform, and with 300-plus
other people, I was watching the flesh pull back into place on his face. Let me tell you something. If you’ve never seen that kind of creative
miracle before, it literally takes your breath away.
Here’s
a guy who had not only been burned physically, he'd lost much of his eyesight
and needed really thick glasses to see even a little bit. Topping that off, his emotions and
personality had been scarred by the obvious rejection he had suffered because
of his grotesque physical appearance.
As he
reached the platform and finally stood in front of me, he took his glasses
off. It was then that everyone could see
the new eyelids that had been forming around his eyes. Without eyelids, a person’s eyes look almost
– no, forget the “almost” – scary!
Bizarre! It’s a sight you don’t
easily forget.
Taking
his glasses off, he looked me straight in the face. I still wasn’t over the shock of seeing such
miraculous ongoing creation, and I stumbled a bit for words.
“Umm….Sir,
what do you see,” I said cautiously. He
looked at me for a second and then responded, “Well, you kind of look like a
tree.”
Under
any other circumstances, his response would have been almost comedic. What flashed through my head in that instant
was Jesus at Bethsaida. (See Mark
8:22-26) I remembered that Jesus had
spit on his hands, touched the blind man man’s eyes and said to him, “What do
you see.” The man responded to Jesus, “I
see men as trees walking.” Jesus had
touched the man’s eyes the second time, and his eyesight was restored.
When
that incident flashed through my head, I instant reached up and put my hand
over the man’s face and said, “Sir, in Jesus’ name, receive your eyesight.”
I
pulled back my hand and again said to him, “Now, what do you see?”
He
looked at me, tears began trickling out of tear ducts that hadn’t worked since
he had been burned, and he turned to look at folks in the audience. With his old glasses still hanging by his
fingers at his side, he began calling the names of friends who were sitting
next to him. “Frank, John, Fred, I can
see you. I can see you.”
Pandemonium
exploded in that place. Without so much
as a ‘by your leave’ or a word of invitation of any kind, the center aisle
suddenly filled with folks who wanted prayer and personal ministry. It caught me completely off guard.
I
turned to Brother Bill and said, “Brother, this is more than I can handle
myself. Why don’t we split this into two
prayer lines?”
He
nodded his head and came back up to the platform, and we instructed the people
to form two separate lines. I took one
line, and Brother Bill took the other, and we began ministering to those folks
one-by-one.
It
was a night of miracles. One after
another after another after another.
Periodically, we would face a particular need where we would stop and
agree together in prayer.
One
such incident involved a mother with a child of perhaps four years of age. He had never walked in his life because of
club feet. When the Lord healed that
child, and he began to take his first steps across that platform in front of
everyone, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Blind
eyes were healed that night. Both
physically and spiritually. Deaf ears
were unstopped, both physically and spiritually.
The
word “impossible” lost any meaning that night.
Doubt, unbelief, skepticism, fear….you name it….all of it went out the
door as Brother Bill and I ministered to those folks for nearly five straight
hours.
We
lost track of the miracles that occurred.
We lost track of time. It became
meaningless to us.
It
had to have been around 12:30 in the morning when we ministered to the last
person in line. Funny thing,
though. Nobody left that place.
When I looked up for the first time at the crowd, I
realized that it was 12:30 in the morning and the place was still full. Folks just went back to their seats after
receiving ministry, and sat there watching what the Holy Spirit was doing in
their midst.
Ever notice how reality has a way of banishing
contrary doctrines? You can be taught
something, and believe it your entire life, but when you actually see the Lord
working in your midst, and His works are contrary to what you’ve believed all
your life, your thinking and your doctrines undergo radical revision.
I never had to say another word to those folks
about who the Holy Spirit is, or how He functions, or what His purpose is. Mist in outer space? Brother, did that doctrine ever disappear
that night. For those Mormons, anyway!
Another thing.
I never preached salvation that night.
But the reality of Jesus’ presence and His power working in their midst
brought those folks face to face with their need for a relationship with
Him. And people started accepting Jesus
Christ as their personal Lord and Savior with an entirely new understanding.
The best was yet to come that night, however. You think it was exciting up to this
point? You think those Mormons were
getting some doctrinal revision? They
hadn’t seen anything, yet. Neither had I. Had to admit, even my doctrines were
undergoing some revision!
The last person had been ministered to. The last one in line, anyway. All through the night, the Mormon bishop had
been sitting in his seat on the platform, watching these events unfold. Periodically, he would get out of his seat,
come and stand next to us to watch the miracle unfold, then go back and sit
down.
Now, he got out of his seat, and came and stood in
front of me. He folded his arms and the
look on his face was as though he was looking far into the distance. The first words out of his mouth were,
"Well, I've seen enough!"
You can imagine my instantaneous reaction. The very first thought that went through my
head was, Oops! This has been too much for him. We're getting ready to get our walking papers.
Funny how the mind tries to take you off track with
doubt, isn't it? Believe me, the Enemy
WANTS you to doubt, or to be in fear.
Nevertheless the bishop continued after a short pause. "I've seen enough. I'm convinced."
Then he said, “When you started off tonight, you
quoted that scripture from Mark, ‘These
signs shall follow them that believe: in My Name they shall cast out devils….’ I have seven devils that live
inside of me, and I can tell you the day and the hour they came in.”
Think I was shocked? That doesn’t describe it! I’d never heard anyone say anything like that
in my life. I didn’t know a person could
know something like that. Because of my
religious pre-disposition, for me to hear it out of the mouth of a Mormon
bishop made it all the more astonishing.
It just didn’t fit.
My doctrines didn’t allow for that sort of thing. Oh, sure.
I knew that the casting out of evil spirits was a major part of Jesus’
ministry. But so far as I knew – at
least as far as I could remember – I’d never met anyone in my life who had a
demon. (Truth be told, I had run into a
number of folks in bygone years who were afflicted by evil spirits, but had no
foundations to recognize what I was seeing.)
What I knew about demons (the KJV use of the word, devils, is
inaccurate) could fit on the head of a straight pin.
Teaching on the ministry of deliverance was simply
something that I had never grown up hearing.
I had heard that Christians couldn’t have evil spirits (that was a lie),
and most of the people in ministry I’d ever encountered had a “hands off”
attitude about the ministry of deliverance.
Their attitude – and mine up to this moment in time – had been one of
fear in taking on Satan. After all (so the thinking is with some
folks) Satan is almost as powerful as
God. Got to really be careful or Satan
might get you if you don’t know what you’re doing!
What a pile of horse puckey! The fear of evil spirits, demons, devils,
whatever you choose to call them, is planted by the evil spirits so you won’t
touch them – so they will be left alone to operate and contaminate the will and
processes of the Lord in your life with impunity. They are threatened by the presence of Holy
Spirit and the authority we have in Christ Jesus, and they will do whatever
they can to distract or sidetrack.
My mind was reeling. I said to the bishop, “How do you know you
have these devils? How do you know when
they came in?”
He began to unfold – in front of that group of
people – a tale of sinful activity he had engaged in for years. He began to confess specific sins – such as
adultery – with his wife sitting on the third row hearing this confession for
the first time in their married life. As
he talked about his yielding to the temptation to engage in adultery, he said
it became easier and easier and easier.
“One day,” he said, “it was out of control. I wanted to stop. I suddenly knew that I was being driven by a
force, by a presence that wasn’t me. Now
I had to do it. And I’ve lived in
torment with it.”
He went on to relate a series of events that had
unfolded otherwise in his life, and how he knew that these demonic spirits had
taken control of these various aspects of his life and his behavior.
Tell you what.
It was all new to me. I turned to
Brother Bill and said, “Brother, have you ever dealt with anything like this
before?”
He grinned, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well,
a little.”
Wheww! A
little is better than none at all. I
would gladly take someone who had actually engaged in successful deliverance --
even if there wasn't an abundance of experience. So I asked Brother Bill Christopulos to stand
on one side of the bishop, and I stood on the other.
Once more, it was put up or shut up time. This had been a major part of Jesus’
ministry. The fact that I didn’t
understand it, and the fact that I had never been involved in this kind of
thing before was completely irrelevant.
The Greek word used throughout the New Testament
that gets translated, Savior, is the word, soter. It actually means: healer,
deliverer, savior. It means one
who makes whole. It comes from the root word, sozo, which literally translates to: to
save, to deliver, to protect (both literally and figuratively), to heal, to
preserve, to make whole, to make one do well (prosper).
Didn’t matter that I’d never done this before. The Lord was about to do what He does best:
save, heal, deliver, make whole, etc., etc., etc. I didn’t know else to do but to take the
man’s confession at face value. So I put
my hand on the bishop’s shoulder and started in, “You Spirit of Adultery, come
out of him in Jesus’ name.”
What happened next was something none of us were
prepared for. He was yanked into mid-air
and levitated as though by a gigantic unseen hand. His body rotated in the air horizontally,
then slammed to the floor, and he began to writhe on the floor like a
snake. I’d never seen the human body go
through the contortions he was going through.
I didn't know the human body was capable of such things -- and,
honestly, it isn't! Normally, that is.
Sorry, but I have to leave you with another
cliffhanger! Stay tuned, folks! This story just gets better and better.
Let me remind you that
if you are in need of healing or deliverance from any kind of torment, please
join our prayer conference calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at
7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000. Then enter the access code: 124763#. To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy
opens the call up for everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to
your need for healing!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
Our book, A
Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is now available on
Amazon.com as an E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Brides-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00BSV6HZC/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1363139096&sr=8-8&keywords=A+Tale+of+Two+Brides#_
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 available
at http://www.RegnersMorningCoffee.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 remove yourself from the mailing list, please send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.To remove yourself from the mailing list, please 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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