Preparing the Bride of Christ For His Return By Janet Van Hierdan
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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#_
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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.
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#_
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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