ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN VIII: Moses
Jan 30, '11 6:37 PM
By Regner Capener
Having been called to a prophetic ministry when I was very young,
I have become increasingly aware throughout the years that this is a very
controversial area of ministry – and one which requires the utmost integrity.
There is a level of responsibility that goes with speaking,
declaring or decreeing something “in the name of the Lord” as His
representative and spokesman that goes beyond normal preaching and teaching. Those
of us who walk and live in this realm have a higher standard to live by because
if we speak falsely or declare something that the Holy Spirit has not actually
said – or if we add to or take away from something He is saying – we
effectively discredit His Word and create conditions that Satan uses to deafen
people to hear the actual prophetic Word.
This is true also of evangelists, pastors and teachers to a lesser
degree, but the one who speaks and says in essence, “Thus saith
the Lord,” had better KNOW that the Lord is truly speaking that Word for that
moment in time and that the fruit or evidence must follow. I’m saying this
because I’m realizing that the Holy Spirit is really pulling us up short so
that we are cautious and careful – and yet bold to speak no matter the
consequences.
Thank God for the grace He has given throughout the years as I –
and my fellow brothers and sisters who operate in this realm of ministry – grow
and mature into the accuracy that must accompany us along with the personal
integrity required! I have not always been accurate. In years gone by I have
said things that obviously came out of a superheated imagination. They didn’t
come to pass as I said. And each time that has taken place, there has been an
“OUCH” inside because I missed God. His grace has covered my failures but He
has used each failure to teach me.
I’ve said all that to say this. There is a sifting taking place in
the prophetic “movement” (if I can use that descriptor) in this hour. There is
a shaking taking place for the purpose of sorting out those who are truly
anointed by the Holy Spirit and wear a prophetic mantle, and those who prophesy
in the name of the Lord for personal gain and self-aggrandizement. There must
be a separation that takes place so that as the apostle Paul wrote, “that they
which are approved [by God] may be made manifest among you.”
That word “approved” in the Greek text is the word, dokimos.It is an ancient word that
was commonly used among those who refined gold and silver for the purpose of
creating coins with certain and fixed value, and it speaks of the smelting
process – heating gold or silver in a crucible to the boiling point so that the
impurities come to the surface and get scooped off. In the end, what remains is
the pure gold or pure silver.
That’s exactly what the Holy Spirit is doing – and has been doing
– among those who are called to declare, decree and speak forth in the onoma (name) – the character, the
essence, the nature and makeup of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be proven in
the fire, and the Word tested and tried in us. The Word that comes forth must
be a proven and demonstrable Word.
Just as there have been a number of preachers, teachers and
evangelists who have misused the truth of the message of prosperity for their
own gain, there have been those in the prophetic realm who have likewise
misused their anointing, pointing accusing fingers at certain individuals whose
gifting, anointing and sharing has been misunderstood and as a result brought
discredit to themselves and confusion in the Body of Christ. This sifting of
the Holy Spirit, therefore, and separation between the “approved” and those who
walk in error must, of necessity, take place.
A certain young lady named Shamir brought my attention to the fact
that in my recent defense of some of the accused, I was doing the same thing as
those who were pointing accusing fingers. It was a warning I both received and
appreciated. When in our zeal to defend certain individuals or truths we
strongly believe, we use the same tactics as those who speak in error and
unbelief, we bring the same discredit to the Gospel. Naming names and pointing
fingers at individuals, accusing them of heresy, is both unscriptural and in
opposition to the command of the Lord (see I John 5:16).
Our responsibility is to minister forgiveness – not condemnation! Somehow
we have to get past the place where we feel any necessity to defend the Lord or
defend His Word. The Word of God defends itself and stands because of the
integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no need for our getting into
doctrinal disputations.
For my part I am glad when the Holy Spirit brings correction and
admonishment to me. After sixty-plus years of walking with the Lord in a very
personal relationship I know that correction comes in His love and His purpose
to bring me to the fulfillment of His destiny in and for me. We live in the
declining seconds of an age that is rapidly drawing to a close and it is
critical that we all walk circumspectly with an increasing thirst for the
manifested presence of the Lord in us.
‘Nuff said on that topic for now! Let’s
get back to our discussions on Heaven and the important sharing that took
place. What I’ve just shared is relevant to my discussions with Moses.
My conversation with Moses followed the succession of my
conversations with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and indeed, with the exception of
Joseph, all of my conversations followed in the chronological order of the
lives of those individuals throughout the centuries. Because I was remembering
so much of my experiences and conversations with David, I took him out of
sequence in these Coffee Breaks.
Joseph was the one exception to the order of things. Other than a
brief meeting with him on this first trip to Heaven, I did not have a real
in-depth conversation with him until some two years later on my second trip to
Heaven. In fact, he was the entire focus of my second trip, and it was a very
different experience from this first one.
As previously noted, virtually everyone I met and spoke with
appeared in the prime of life. It’s a funny thing, but I suppose because Moses
didn’t even begin leading Israel until he was 80 years of age I somehow
expected him to look like a stereotypical 80-year old.Wrong!
He was strong, muscular and appearing vibrantly healthy – much, I would suppose
– as he did when he fled from the courts and palace after Pharaoh found out who
he was and how he had killed an Egyptian.
My questions to Moses centered briefly on his life as Pharaoh’s
grandson, then his experiences with the burning bush and the voice of God, next
his return to Egypt to face a Pharaoh he would likely have known as an heir to
the throne before he fled into Midian, and finally
the things he experienced with Israel as they were in the wilderness. I was
curious about his responses to the Lord and how, after spending so much of his
early life in Egyptian culture, he was able to respond to God. His answers were
a bit of a surprise since there was nothing in my reading of Scripture that had
indicated the picture he drew for me.
Our conversation began after my introduction to him like this:
“Moses, I always thought you grew up in Pharaoh’s palace without any real
awareness of God, and that He introduced Himself to you for the first time in
the burning bush. What did you think when you first heard the Lord?”
He smiled and then laughed.“I suppose a lot of folks think that’s
the way it happened, but if you think back to the account in Exodus you’ll
remember that my sister, Miriam, offered to get a nurse for me when Pharaoh’s
daughter found me in the river. You’ll also remember that it was my mother who
Miriam got as my nurse.
“Now think about it for a minute. I spent more of my early years
with my real parents than I did in Pharaoh’s palace. My mother spent a great
deal of time talking about the God of Israel and telling me about our heritage
as descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I wasn’t unfamiliar with God. We’d
just never met personally until that day on Mount Horeb.
“Yes, I spent a great deal of time with my adoptive Egyptian
mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, and she made certain that I was treated as a
possible heir to the throne of Egypt. Pharaoh never knew of my birth as a
Hebrew. Had he known, he would easily have killed his own daughter – and me!”
“So you pretty much knew, then, that you were not an Egyptian
during your growing-up years?” I asked.“Was it hard to keep the secret? Did you
look enough like an Egyptian that no one asked?”
Moses just chuckled.“Egyptians and Jews look a lot alike. Dress an
Egyptian in the clothing of a Hebrew shepherd and you’d never know. Put me in
the typical garb of a member of the royal family and to all practical intents I
was Egyptian. No one ever questioned that I was a prince.”
He continued.“I didn’t really spend a lot of time among Pharaoh’s
family until after I was 12 years of age. They’d seen enough of me during my
earlier years that I wasn’t a stranger, but you have to understand that
children who were of the house of Pharaoh didn’t really have the run of
Pharaoh’s palaces during their nursing years and even up until they were
perhaps eight years of age. When they reached that age they were being schooled
as members of the royal family. Pharaoh’s daughter eased me in stages into my
preparation as a prince of Egypt.
“Those first years of my life with my parents teaching me about my
heritage as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – being a Hebrew – became
so instilled in me that when, as I grew older, I began to see the bondage and
hard labor of the Jews under the hand of Pharaoh. An anger and rebellion began
to grow inside of me at the treatment I was seeing. I wasn’t good at expressing
myself verbally so my frustrations just grew greater and greater as they were
pent up.
“Nearing the age of 40, everything exploded in me one day when I
saw a taskmaster beating a young Hebrew who was under his charge. Rage took
over and before I realized what had happened, I had killed that Egyptian. I dug
out some sand and quickly buried him, unaware that my actions had been
witnessed.
“Everything was still seething in me the next day when I saw a
fight unfold between a couple of my fellow Hebrews. When I stepped in to
intervene, the man who provoked the fight somehow knew that I was not a prince
of Egypt but rather a Hebrew like him. When he angrily responded, ‘Who made you
our prince and judge? Are you going to kill me like you killed that Egyptian
yesterday?’ it shook me to realize that my identity as someone other than a
prince of Egypt had been discovered. I knew that news would travel fast and
eventually reach Pharaoh’s ears.
“It did! It wasn’t a matter of more than a few weeks and Pharaoh
found out about the deception. From that moment there was an edict against me
and my life was done in Egypt. There was nothing to do but run for my life.
“It took me many days of walking and running to cross what you
would see as more than a hundred miles of desert and wilderness until I wound
up spent and famished among the fields and herds of Jethro,
the Midianite. You pretty much know the story. Jethro took me in; and after discovering that we were
related to each other distantly through Abraham he gave me his daughter, Zipporah, as my wife.
“For most of the next forty years, I was a farmer and a shepherd –
at first taking care of Jethro’s flocks and herds,
and then having my own. Zipporah and I had a couple
of sons whom we raised to likewise be farmers and shepherds.”
“So you lived a completely different life than you had in Egypt,”
I said.“Wow! How hard was that? After the palace and royalty, now you are …
well… like a regular person!”
“This was an important part of my life,” Moses responded. He was
obviously amused at my analogy of his becoming “a regular person.”
“God had to take the Egypt out of me,” he said.“For every year I
had spent in Egyptian life, living both as a prince of Egypt, and also as a
Hebrew seeing the hard bondage of travail of my people and being frustrated
over not being able to do anything about it, the Lord had to completely
re-educate me, year for year. My mindset had to change completely. I didn’t
realize that the nomadic life of a shepherd and herdsman was preparation for my
future leadership of Israel and the years that were going to be spent moving
about like nomads in the wilderness.”
“So you were 80 years old – or almost 80 – when you first saw the
burning bush,” I mused, thinking back to the Scriptures I had read.“What did
you think when you first saw that bush?”
“It wasn’t just the bush that wouldn’t burn up, it was the
appearance of the Angel of the Lord in the midst of it,” he responded.“At first
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and then to see the Angel in the midst of
the fire…well…I’d heard stories about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and their experiences
with the Angel of the Lord, but this was not just a story! I was seeing this
with my eyes and hearing the Angel of the Lord with my ears! It stopped me in
my tracks.
“It was the Lord God talking to me through this Angel! You can
believe that when I heard him say, ‘Take your shoes off: you are standing on
holy ground,’ I took my shoes off and dropped to the ground afraid to look.”
I interrupted him to ask, “What I don’t understand is why when The
Lord told you that you were His chosen vessel to deliver Israel from the
Egyptians – and especially after you had the two signs of the rod turning into
a serpent and your hand becoming white with leprosy – you argued with Him, and
continued to argue with Him, and told Him that you couldn’t speak and that they
wouldn’t hear you! Why would you argue with God in the face of such power and
authority?”
“That’s a good and honest question,” he answered.“Looking back in
retrospect, I’d have to say that there was a place of fear that still existed
in me. Despite having been out of Egypt for 40 years I was still contaminated
with the some of its remnants. Everything about Egypt was fear. Pharaoh ruled
by fear and intimidation. The people – both the Egyptian people and we as
Hebrews – lived our lives in constant fear. A sword hung over the land
continually.
“At that point in my life, I really had no personal experience of
walking with God. Despite all the things I’d been told by my parents about the
Lord and all the things I’d heard about God’s Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, it was all second hand. None of it was personal for me.God
was showing Himself to me in that moment and it should have been enough, but
there was still enough residual fear in me to contaminate my trust in Him.”
Moses stopped his explanation momentarily and pointed his finger
at me.“Let me tell you something, young man! The Lord has given you this
experience, just as He has already given you many other experiences with Him
and with angels to establish a baseline of trust and confidence in Him. You’re
going to need it! We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you didn’t have
some very important purpose in His Kingdom economy in the years to come.
“Satan will try to fill you with fear.He
will make every effort to contaminate you just like I was. In the years to come
you will have many contrary experiences. You will probably blunder just like I
did and make decisions and choices you’d like to undo. Don’t let your regrets
and missed opportunities deter you. Don’t forget, God is a God of second chances.If you miss it the first time, He’ll give you
another opportunity.
“Your ability to trust the Lord completely no matter what you see
and no matter what experiences you have that seem totally contrary to His Word
and His commands to you.Your life will depend on your
ability to trust Him and have confident faith that whatever He tells you to do,
you CAN do, and you MUST do knowing that He most certainly will fulfill His
Word to you. Speak His Word no matter the people and no matter the
circumstances. He will back you up just like He backed me up.”
Those words registered in my being in that moment and just as
Moses had indicated, in the years to come I would get sidetracked and
contaminated by fear. I had no idea just how much the Enemy was going to try
and sabotage the Word in me and prevent me from fulfilling God’s commission in
me.
Obviously I’m not going to have time today to talk about Moses’
leadership and his experiences in dealing with Israel and bringing them out of
Egypt, not to mention his frustration with them in the wilderness. We’ll save
that for our next discussion.
Next: HEAVEN: Moses & Israel.
2011 is a year of great
change, great stirring among the people of God!The
call to purity and cleanliness before God has gone forth – and is going forth!This is also a year of God’s recompense on behalf of
His people – a year of God’s Justice!
Blessings on you!
Regner
A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER
WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email
Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
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