Preparing the Bride of Christ For His Return By Janet Van Hierdan
A Tale of Two Brides is now available on Amazon.com:
Friday, August 8, 2014
Another
Coffee Break:
The Eskdale Miracle, Part 1
August 1, 2014
When I first shared
this story back in 2005, it was the first time I'd publicly shared many of the
details of an event that destroyed some of the religious doctrines that that
had boxed me in and restricted my spiritual growth. In the years since then -- and especially
within even the last few weeks -- it has been a blessing to be contacted by a
couple of individuals who were present and witnessed the events I'm about to
share again with you. I'll try to share
this whole story in three Coffee Breaks, but I will warn you that this will run
long, so bear with me.
I don't know how far I
can get into the actual events in Eskdale today, but let me at least lay some
foundations so you will understand what events unfolded that sent us into that
community.
The story
(or stories) I’m about to share are very real.
I should, however, build some fences around what I’m about to say just
so folks don’t get the wrong idea. You
know what I’m saying? If I just charge
out there and start telling this story, some folks will get the idea I’m either
prejudiced, have some kind of religious bias, or have a bone to pick with folks
who don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ in the same dimension I’ve come to know
and experience.
So
let me begin by saying I’m not out to roast Mormons. We have an entire branch of the Capener
family that is Mormon. My great-great
grandfather, John Capener, had a brother who came from England with him back in
1836. His name was William Capener. John and William had some disagreements with
each other in the 1840’s and parted ways from each other. That was when William joined Brigham Young,
following the death of Joseph Smith, and helped to organize the westward
movement of the Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois to their eventual settlement in
the Salt Lake Valley. You can’t go
anywhere in Utah today without finding the name, Capener, somewhere.
It
was one of my Mormon cousins, Dr. Jex Capener, who urged me to move to Salt
Lake City back in the late 1960’s after I resigned at Bethel Union Church in
Duarte, California and left my late-night radio talk show at the same
time. What I knew about Mormons and
Mormonism in those days would fit on the head of a pin, but I was about to get
an education.
Anyway,
the fence I need to build around my forthcoming comments is this: while I have
strong disagreement with much of Mormon doctrine, I have no dislike of Mormons,
and many of my friends throughout the years have been Mormons. My comments concerning some Mormon doctrines,
and the events I’m about to share, are not intended in any way to suggest
criticism or dislike or even hatred of Mormons.
They need Jesus Christ just like all of us. There are many professing Mormons who have
come into a relationship with Him, and there are many professing Mormons who
are simply religious and practice their doctrines – just like professing
Christians practice their doctrines – without a clue to what the Lord is
actually doing.
OK. Did I build my fence properly, or did I just
dig myself in deeper? Guess we’ll see,
won’t we?
The year was 1971, and it was early January. I was serving as Associate Pastor at Full
Gospel Assembly in Salt Lake City. The
Senior Pastor was a big Greek fellow by the name of Bill Christopulos. He was actually the guy that got me really
interested in learning the Greek language so I could read the original Greek
texts of the New Testament.
I’d been feeling pretty empty, spiritually. The visions, the experiences with angels, the
experiences of going to Heaven when I was nine and ten years old, seeing Jesus,
carrying on conversations with Him, and hearing His promises of things that
were going to unfold in my life – all coupled with the fact that very little of
it seemed to have come to pass in my life (I was just short of my 29th
birthday at the time), stirred a hunger in me that knew no bounds.
Right about that time, I received an invitation to
come and speak at the Full Gospel Businessmen’s international convention in
Phoenix. Although I accepted the
invitation, I thought to myself, Good
Lord! What do I have to give to these
folks? What is it you want me to share,
Father?
To compound the situation, my (then-) wife was
pregnant, but in pretty serious condition.
The pregnancy was not going well, and at six months into the pregnancy
weighed less than she did when she became pregnant. The week before we were scheduled to depart
for Phoenix, her doctor told her there was no sign of life in the womb, and
that as near as he could tell, the unborn child had died.
The doctor absolutely forbid her to travel, telling
her that she could very likely die if she tried to make the trip, and that she
would most certainly naturally abort the child.
She chose to make the trip in spite of the doctor’s ominous warnings.
I didn’t arrive in Phoenix feeling particularly
“spiritual.” There was an incredible
sense of the presence of the Lord, however, as we began to gather with
others. Our second day at the
convention, we were in an afternoon session where another brother in the Lord
was doing the sharing. At the conclusion
of the session, he invited folks who needed to be healed to come to the
front. However, his invitation was
specifically for those who were lame.
My wife responded to the invitation, nonetheless,
and went forward. As she stood waiting,
the evangelist singled her out of the gathered group and called her
forward. He was quickened in his spirit
by the Lord to take exception to her case and spoke the word of healing to
her. She had – as previously noted –
actually lost weight, and was in her street clothes. She had no maternity clothing with her,
saving for one Hawaiian muu-muu.
She suddenly felt movement in her womb when the
word of healing was spoken, and in front of her eyes – and the eyes of those
around her – her tummy began to expand, stretching her clothing. She hurried out of the building back to our
hotel room where she put on the muu-muu.
By nightfall, she looked six months pregnant. The end of that story is that our daughter,
Melodie, was born a few months later, whole, perfect, and beautiful. She was a living miracle, and a gift from the
Lord, raised back to life in the womb.
That same night, I was the scheduled speaker for a
group of about 500 or so youth. The
experience of my yet-unborn daughter’s resurrection in the womb was fresh in my
spirit, and you had to know that I was charged! Jesse Duplantis shares the experience of a
lady in one of his services who suddenly cut loose, whoopin’ and hollerin’, who
– when questioned – said to him, “Brother Jesse, I’se overcharged!” It won't take you any great imagination to
know that’s exactly how I felt that evening.
After sharing for perhaps 15 or 20 minutes on
faith, I suddenly felt quickened in my spirit to say the following. “I believe there is someone here tonight who
has a birth defect. You are crippled
with one of your arms as a result. If
you will step forward, the Lord will restore that arm right now.”
Shocked me to no end! I’d never said anything like that in my
life! Taking a leap like that was waaaay out of my comfort zone.
An eighteen-year-old girl stepped out of one of the
back rows and came forward in response.
As she walked down the aisle, one could easily see that her right arm
was small, discolored, the size of a two-year-old’s arm. I turned and looked at the brother who had
invited me to speak – his name was Zane Fields – and without a word, we both
headed for the platform steps: he went one way, and I went the other. We both came around from opposite directions
to the front of the platform just as the young woman reached the front. Almost as if cued, we stretched forth our
right hands toward her and spoke, “In Jesus’ Name!”
Before we even drew back our hands, you could hear
a stir in the crowd as folks watched her arm grow to its normal size. It took maybe a total of 45 seconds. When it was over, her right arm was as normal
as the left one. It was nothing less
than stunning! It was the first time in
my life I had actually seen with my own eyes a creative miracle of such proportions.
The rest of the night is almost a blur in my
memory. I couldn’t even begin to hazard
a guess as to the number of similar creative miracles that took place that
night. What does stand out is the fact
that when I returned to the podium on the platform, the Holy Spirit gave me a
vision of a flame of fire burning in Utah and said to me, “I want you to begin fasting as
soon as you arrive home, and I want you to fast for three weeks.”
Wheww! The
longest fast I’d ever been on up to that time was maybe a week, and it was only
a partial fast. My thinking on fasts in
those days was mostly equated with Esther’s fast, where she fasted for three
days without food or water. The result
of that fast was the deliverance of Israel and a change in the course of
history for her people.
So, when I got home, as directed, I dived into the
three-week fast – no food, no water, no nothing! By the time I reached the eighth day, I was
looking for a hole to crawl into and pull the cover after me. If I tell you that I felt absolutely rotten,
it would be a gross understatement! On
that eighth day, however, I was laying in bed reading my Bible, and reading
about Daniel’s fasts. It suddenly dawned
on me that most of his fasts were selective, and none of them were without
water. Wow! What a revelation -- and what a relief! All of a sudden it was OK for me to continue
my fast and drink some water. As soon as
I did, my whole physical being responded, and I just felt ALIVE!
I continued the rest of my three-week fast having
an occasional drink of water, but still refusing to eat any kind of food. At the beginning of the third week, Brother
Bill (as we referred to him) had a visit from a Mormon bishop whom he had known
off and on throughout the years. His
ward was Eskdale, Utah, a tiny little community (at that time) of about 330
people near the Nevada state line in the west-central part of the state.
“We’re continuing a study on the Holy Spirit this
coming weekend, and we thought it would be a great idea to have some Pentecostals
come and talk to us about their views on the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals are big on the Holy Spirit, and
we just thought it might be interesting if you guys would come.”
Reeeally? A
philosophical, intellectual, academic review and discussion of Holy
Spirit? Ohh, Brotherrr! I thought to
myself, THIS ought to be interesting!
I did not in any way connect my ongoing fast with
that invitation. I was fasting, waiting
on the Lord, praying in the Spirit and all that, but really had no clue as to
what the fast was all about. The vision
of the flame of fire didn't really have specific significance yet.
We arrived in Eskdale late Friday afternoon, the 21st
and final day of my fast. As we began to
prepare for the evening meeting, Brother Bill came to me and said, “I feel like
we need to partake of communion together before we go into this thing tonight.”
Yessir!
Wonderful! And that was how I
broke my fast.
7:00 PM. The
ward hall is jammed to capacity. I doubt
there were three people in Eskdale not present that night.
The bishop stands up, makes his introductory
remarks about their studies on the Holy Spirit, introduces us and says, “I
thought it would be a good thing to have a couple of Pentecostals come and talk
to us tonight since they are really big on the Holy Spirit.” Then he turns to Brother Bill, nods his head,
and sits down in one of the big chairs on the platform.
What I haven’t mentioned before is the fact that
Bill Christopulos was one of the most brilliant violinists you’ve ever heard in
your life. For many years before he
became a pastor, (back in the 1940’s) he was the first chair violinist with the
NBC Symphony Orchestra. (You'll
appreciate that, as a semi-classical guitarist, I really enjoyed playing with
him.) His wife, Welcome (that was her
real name!), was an equally gifted, talented and skilled pianist.
After the bishop nodded his head to Brother Bill,
he went and picked up his violin. Sister
Welcome went to the piano, and – without a word of introduction or
acknowledgement otherwise – they began to play as the Holy Spirit anointed
them. You could have heard a pin drop in
that place. I knew Brother Bill was
good, but …. well, this was different!
Ditto for his wife.
For twenty or twenty-five minutes they played. Never said a word. There was a holy hush that settled over that
audience. Finally, they wrapped it up
with a song that was for many years a George Beverly Shea hallmark of Billy
Graham crusades, How Great Thou Art!
When they finished, Brother Bill set his violin
down in its case and turned to me.
“Brother, this service is yours.”
You could have pushed me over with a feather. I was dumbfounded. Brother Bill was the Senior Pastor. He was the one with seniority and seasoning,
and I just figured he was going to do the speaking. We hadn’t discussed it beforehand. Not at all.
I thumbed open my Bible, and it fell open to Mark,
the 16th Chapter. My eyes
fell on the words of the seventeenth verse, “These
signs shall follow them that believe….” In a flash, I knew what Holy Spirit wanted of me. I stepped up to the platform and walked
behind the podium, laying my Bible open on that chapter. I began to read out loud the seventeenth and
eighteenth verses.
When I finished reading, I began with words
something like this, “We appreciate your invitation for us to come and talk to
you about the Holy Spirit. I must tell
you, however, that – contrary to Mormon doctrine – the Holy Spirit is not some
kind of mist in outer space. The Holy
Spirit is a very real and living person, the third member of the Godhead.”
I went on to share some basic fundamentals of Holy Spirit, who He is, how He works in the
life of believers, and what His purpose is as one sent as the Paraklete – the
Comforter – in the physical absence of the Lord Jesus Christ following His
ascension into Heaven. Then I said, “Now
I could stand here all night and tell you who Holy Spirit is, what He does, how
He operates, His character and makeup, and all of that; and when I finished,
you’d walk out that door not knowing any more than you did when you came in
tonight. What you need is to see Holy
Spirit in your midst. What you need is
to see Him operate right here in this building among you tonight.”
From that point on, the words that came tumbling
out of my mouth were totally unplanned.
If anybody had asked me, I wouldn’t have said them. “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?
That's where I have to stop for today. Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger ....
well, OK, maybe not (grin). Just want to
get you warmed up for what Holy Spirit did -- and what He is doing AGAIN today!
Again, if you are in
need of healing -- especially if you have some terminal disease or prognosis of
a very short time to live from the doctors -- 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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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
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Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this
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Sunday, July 27, 2014
Another
Coffee Break:
Dealing With Fear, Part 4
July 25, 2014
Throughout more than
50 years of ministry, the Lord has opened some unusual doors of utterance to me
in some pretty unusual places. I can
truthfully say that walking with the Lord has been a nonstop adventure! During the past few weeks a couple of folks have
been in touch with me who were present during an event that was life-changing
for me. In was an event in which Holy
Spirit showed up and showed out in about as grand a style as you'll ever want
to see. For me it was a foretaste of the
"greater works" that Jesus promised us. You remember what Jesus said as He sat at the
table with His disciples before He was crucified?
John 14:12-14: "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. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will
do it."
During the next few
weeks, I expect to be traveling quite a bit, and that tends to complicate the
time I need for writing these Coffee Breaks.
Because of the recent reminder of a couple of people who were in
Eskdale, Utah when Holy Spirit showed up during an opportunity to minister in
this Mormon community, I thought I would reprise my sharing of that miracle
during the next couple of weeks. This is
a story that was first shared some nine years ago in this Coffee Break column.
I've not had an
opportunity to revisit Eskdale since that memorable weekend in 1971, but I
received updates from folks who were there and were firsthand witnesses to the
change that took place in the years that followed. That said, stay tuned for The Eskdale Miracle in the next couple
of weeks.
During the
last few Coffee Breaks, we've talked about the events that followed when Adam
and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We've spent the last couple of weeks dealing
with the way in which the Fear of Evil and the Fear of Man unfolded, and last
week mostly dealt with some of the symptoms of the Fear of Man. Today, let's finish the sequence of events
that unfolded in the Garden and consider some of the consequences.
Genesis 3:14-24:
"And the LORD God said unto the serpent,
Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above
every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat
all the days of thy life: And
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
The word,
"curse," used in this instance, comes from the Hebrew 'arar. In a general sense, it means: to execrate, to be put under, to denounce, to loathe.
In a wider sense, it means: to remove the ability to prosper, or to succeed, or to
multiply and grow larger. The description here of what
happened to the serpent applied to both the physical creature as well as to
Satan, who used the serpent as his vessel of choice. The overwhelming majority of people, no
matter their race or ethnicity, loathe and detest serpents or snakes as a
byproduct of this curse. I won't take
time today to deal with these consequences because it will take me off course,
but we may come back to this later.
"Unto the woman
he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee.
Lets amplify this verse from the Hebrew: "Unto the woman He said, I will enlarge
and increase your pain, your labor and your hardship and your pregnancy; in
painful labor and great difficulty will you bring forth children; your constant
desire, your longing, your craving [for affection and response] shall be
towards your husband, and he shall govern, and have complete dominion and power
over you."
Are you seeing how the man-woman, woman-man
relationship was so distorted by the curse?
Are you seeing how the curse brought fear into women, and how the curse
so caused women to become almost slaves?
This was NEVER the way God designed things in the first place, but when
Eve, and then Adam, submitted to the lie of Satan and directly violated God's
command to NOT eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil the
relationship between wives and their husbands, women and men, husbands and
wives, and men and women became grossly distorted and warped almost beyond all
recognition.
Excuse the digression for a minute, but consider how
Eve came into the world to begin with.
She was not taken from his head so as to usurp his authority, and she
was not taken from his leg or his foot be to trampled on like some kind of
slave. She was taken from Adam's side to
be his counterpart, his "other self."
The world mistakenly and erroneously refers to this as a
"soul-mate." "Soul"
has nothing to do with it. We are first
and foremost spirit beings, and when we operate from God's paradigm and are
joined by Him, we are "counterparts" for one another.
Eve was created from a part of Adam. Most translations say that a rib was taken
from Adam, but let's be clear. The
Hebrew word, tsal'ah,
is more representative of "a portion of his side." This is the very same word used otherwise
throughout the OT for "the side of a hill" or "the side of a building." Whether in fact it was Adam's rib -- and I
believe that it was -- there was more to it than that! The Lord took a part of Adam -- a part he
had originally been designed and created with -- leaving him incomplete. Adam's completion was in Eve. Hence, she was his 'ezer -- his help, his
assistance, his finisher, the one who would surround and protect him.
Does that sound like today's picture of a
husband-wife relationship? NOPE! Certainly not in our modern society's
world-view. The spirits of fear have
jumped into relationships and into our society.
Women have been treated as property in many cultures, and in Islam even
less than that. For centuries and even
millennia, the concept of "women under subjection" has been more a
case of a master-slave mentality on the part of men from virtually every
nation, culture and society, and women -- fearing for their safety or
protection or provision -- have bowed to the pressures of that mindset.
As a consequence we have seen women, who
instinctively know that they were not to be treated as some kind of
"thing" to be trampled on by men, rise up in rebellion against the
treatment. The whole "women's
lib" movement is a by-product of the fear erupting in utter and complete
anger. The current insanity that abounds
in political circles stating that "abortion is a woman's right" and
that "the woman has the right to say what happens to her body" arises
as a counter-reaction to generations of fear caused by abusive treatment. The tens of thousands of murders of the
unborn children that have taken place through abortion is visible evidence of
what happens when fear becomes the ruler in a woman's life.
In the modern church -- and even in evangelical and
Pentecostal circles -- Paul's teachings and admonitions in his epistles have
been so abused and taken out of context that women often have no place of
acceptance in ministry, even when the anointing of Holy Spirit is clearly
evident. What seems to have been lost in
understanding is that if we have been redeemed from the curse of the Law, if we
have been redeemed from the curse of death, if we have been redeemed from the
curse that came upon the relationship between husband and wife (or vice-versa)
as well as the man-woman or woman-man relationship, then EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF
THE CURSE HAS BEEN CANCELED!!! The shed
blood of Jesus, His death on the Cross and His subsequent resurrection have set
free those who are "in Christ Jesus!"
Folks, the blessing we have as members of the body
of Christ is that the husband doesn't have to be everything in a marriage. The wife is no longer the servant or the
slave of the husband. The husband is no
longer "lord and master" of his wife.
Let me digress again to share an example.
The Lord gave me a real revelation of the husband-wife
and wife-husband relationship when He gave Della to me. For the first time in my life I understood
what it was to have my counterpart, my "other self." I understood what it was to have the Lord
give to me someone whom He had designed to complete me and fill out those parts
of my life that were lacking and insufficient.
The best part of this gift in Della was that she loves the Lord more
than she loves me -- and THAT'S the way things are supposed to be! I don't stand between her and the Lord and
her relationship with the Lord. Neither
does she stand between me and the Lord and my relationship with Him. What's really cool is that we both have flaws
but our flaws are not the same. Together
we make one whole person.
Now that I've waxed so verbose on this topic -- and
there's a whole lot more that we could cover -- let's continue.
"And
unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and
hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat
of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of
it all the days of thy life; Thorns
also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of
the field; In the sweat of
thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it
wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Here is the evidence of the wider sense of the
Hebrew word, 'arar. Here we see the removal of the blessing from
the ground. Where before Adam and Eve
had yielded to the deception of Satan the ground had brought forth
spontaneously with little effort, now the life in the earth was removed. With Satan having become the "prince of
this world," the judgment that was upon him and the sentence of
destruction that hung over him now began to contaminate the very soil. The very ph
balance of the soil would be affected.
The empowerment to prosper and multiply had been
removed. No longer would it produce the
way it had for Adam and Eve in the Garden.
The contamination of the ground would now yield "thorns and
thistles," weeds, and soil imbalances that mankind would have to deal
with. Even the air would begin to become
polluted as a result of the efforts to get the soil to produce.
What it meant was that -- for some folks --
depending on where they were and what conditions they encountered with the
soil, the ground simply would not produce without some serious hard labor. For some, all of their labors were going to
produce little to show. It marked the
beginning of the entrance of a Spirit of Poverty. Those folks who capitulated to it would
become poor and suffer ongoing need in many areas of their lives. With that Spirit of Poverty came the Fear of
Not Having Enough (or Insufficiency) along with the Fear of Inadequacy -- all
of which served, and were part of the family of, the Fear of Death.
The whole earth literally would begin to slowly lose
its balance. To compensate, the various
geological plates that form the makeup of the earth would begin to move and to
shift. Earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions would begin to reshape the surface as the earth itself tried to
regain the pristine balance that existed during the Garden years. The apostle Paul very appropriately describes
this condition in his letter to the Ekklesia in Rome.
Romans 8:22: "For
we know that the whole creation experiences the same calamity [that has come
upon mankind] and suffers sympathetic pangs together until now." (RAC Translation & Amplification)
What Paul is referring to is the redemption of this
earth that will take place with God's people -- the Bride of Christ -- when
they come to their full maturity and resume their rightful authority over
creation. Here's how he expressed it in
the previous verses:
Romans 8:19-21: "For
the intense anticipation and expectation of the original formation of creation
fully expects the manifestation and disclosure of the mature sons of God. For the original formation was made
subject to transientness and profitlessness, not voluntarily, but through Him
who has subordinated creation in confident expectation, Because the creation itself also shall
be delivered and released from the bondage of ruin and decay into the glory and
dignity of the unrestrained freedom of the children of God." (RAC Translation & Amplification)
How's that for a mouthful? You see what is taking place with us, don't
you?
Let's see if we can wrap up the last of this Genesis
narrative.
"And Adam called
his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD
God make coats of skins, and clothed them."
While it may not be obvious at first glance in this
passage, the revelation here is that the redemptive plan of the Lord was
already in action as an atonement for Adam's sin enacted. The "coats of skins" referenced
represents the killing of lambs or sheep in order to provide Adam and Eve both
with cloaks -- garments that would drape over their shoulders. The blood of lambs (or sheep) was shed in
order to provide them with a God-made covering to replace the Glory that had
once been their covering. It was
prophetic of the time when the Blood of the Lamb -- Jesus Christ -- would be
shed in order to provide a path of restoration so that we could once again be
clothed in His Glory.
"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of
us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also
of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: Therefore the LORD God sent him
forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed
at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned
every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
No portion
of Scripture more accurately describes the conditions that now prevail in the
geographic area that once encompassed the Garden of Eden. It would have been catastrophic for creation
had Adam and Eve been permitted to continue to live in the Garden and have
continued access to the Tree of Life.
The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil produces fear
and an arrogant, self-sufficient pride.
There is absolutely NOTHING about the Tree of Life that is compatible
with that fruit.
It became
necessary, therefore, for God to drive Adam and Eve out of the Garden and block
their access entirely to the Tree of Life.
The Cherubims were (and are) angelic beings who were given an assignment:
generate an environment so inhospitable to human habitation that they would
fear to enter. The daytime temperatures
in that region today of 145 degrees Fahrenheit -- to me at least -- present a
tangible picture of the flaming sword which "turns every way"
presenting certain death to those who try to make a life for themselves there.
We should
be able to return to this discussion around the third week of August. Meanwhile, watch for the story of the Eskdale
Miracle.
Again, if you are in
need of healing -- especially if you have some terminal disease or prognosis of
a very short time to live from the doctors -- 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!
(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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Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this
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or visit: http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.
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