ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: HEAVEN VI: King David

[Regner A Capener]

Heaven VI: King David

Happy New Year Everyone!

Today’s edition of Another Coffee Break kicks off our 7^th year of publication!  We actually published a couple of Coffee Breaks in December of 2004 as a trial balloon to see how they would be received, but our actual first year of publication began in January of 2005.  I haven’t actually counted the total number published thus far, but I believe we have sent out somewhere between 600 and 700 posts.  Of nearly 600,000 readers worldwide, we still have somewhere between 30 – 40,000 readers who have stayed with me since early 2005.  My thanks to all of you for your support and continued readership.  My sincere hope is that these articles will not only be a blessing to you but that you will be drawn closer to the Lord as a result.

After receiving an encouraging email from Shalini Patras a couple of weeks ago it dawned on me that one of the most important discussions with David I neglected to include in the last Coffee Break was on the 23^rd Psalm.  Let me quote from Shalini’s email:

“I remember a few days back when I was praying, among some other things the Lord said, “The Lord is your Shepherd and you shall not want.  These are words from heaven that David heard and personalized for himself and so he wrote.”  When I read in your mailer about David talking about his songs originating in heaven long before he came on the scene, I almost screamed and jumped.  I remembered about what the Lord had said and understood it better.”

That said, let me take you back to the event I shared in the last Coffee Break where we were sitting on a hillside.  You’ll recall that I heard him sing the 8^th Psalm, declaring the glory and riches of the Lord with accompanying visions of creation unfolding.

The 23^rd Psalm is probably the most quoted chapter worldwide in the Bible.  It is also one of the most misunderstood and misquoted.  I can’t tell you how many funerals I’ve been to where the preacher read from the 23^rd Psalm emphasizing the phrase, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” as though that phrase somehow had relevance to the funeral or the “preaching” that accompanied it.

Even today when I hear preachers and evangelists use this passage of scripture, I wince at some of their illustrations because they are so far afield of what David experienced and saw.  As our conversation unfolded on that hillside David related how the Lord had made it applicable to him and his life.

“When I first heard the words of this Psalm,” he said, “There was a vision that began to unfold before me.  In 15 separate phrases I saw my life unfold.  What you refer to as the 23^rd Psalm is only the 23^rd because that’s how it was compiled when King Hezekiah began to assemble for the Levites the songs, the hymns and the prayers that God had given to me as well as to Moses.  It has mostly remained in that order ever since.  The 150 Psalms you have assembled together in your copies of the Scripture represent a cross-section of all that the Lord gave to me, to Moses, to Asaph, Heman & Jeduthun – but there were many more written that you don’t have.”

David paused and then swept his arm across the horizon as he continued, “When the first words of that Psalm first entered my spirit, it was a “YES” in my being.  My whole mind and spirit agreed.  I was a shepherd.  I led my flocks and provided for them everything they could ever need.  The parallel picture fit!  It was perfect!  The Lord was indeed MY Shepherd, and in Him – with Him – I had no need of anything.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that those words were going to apply at different stages of my life.  As various crises unfolded and challenges faced me, I was going to be confronted with my commitment to allow the Lord to continue to be my Shepherd and not take things into my own hands.”

He smiled a bit wryly.  It was as though he was looking back in time for a minute, and he said, “I did, you know.  I did take things into my own hands more than once, and it cost me!  I only have to remind you of Uriah the Hittite and the time when I numbered the armies of Israel as a couple of ready examples.”

The scene changed before us and for the first time I saw David dressed in kingly robes.  They were simple yet elegant.  He continued his tale.

“That shepherd’s Psalm became the hallmark of my years on the throne of Judah and then Israel.  It had become very personal to me during the years I was on the run for my life from Saul, but it took on new meaning.  I saw the provision of the Lord continually.  When I fought battles against the Philistines, when I hid from Saul in the hills and in the caves, the Lord set a table before me continually.  That table was spread with provisions for me and the families who stood with me.  It was spread with supernatural defenses against the enemies who continually surrounded us and threatened us.

“As I’ve already said, the words of the 23^rd Psalm were given to me prophetically along with visions as I sat on the hillsides tending my father’s sheep.  I don’t think I could have ever imagined the vision of the table and the cup running over as being so prophetic of Jesus and the covenant He restored to all of us with His ministry, His being the Word of Life, His suffering and death, and His resurrection.  When I first began to sing those words, I couldn’t have imagined the depth of the prophecy that was hidden in them.”

Once again the scene changed before us and we were obviously in a totally different part of Heaven.  For the first time I began to realize what David saw as King of Israel when the Holy Spirit began to give to him a vision for the Temple.  This part of Heaven was laid out just like the design of the Temple that David gave to Solomon – except on a huge scale.  There were the area divisions into what became (in David’s Temple) the Outer Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies.  There were the Treasuries – great rooms with wealth beyond the scope of human understanding or comprehension.  I didn’t realize it at the time and didn’t learn about it until years later, but one of those Treasury rooms contains body parts for folks in need of healing or restoration.

Stop and think about that for just a minute!  Do you realize that when we pray and petition the Lord for the healing of an individual who has lost an arm or leg or who has organs in their body that are failing or have failed, there are replacements that await them in Heaven in a specific Treasury room.  If people could only see and realize what stupendous provision God has made for those who believe and act in faith, it would change things in the body of Christ dramatically!

During most of our childhood years my Dad drilled my brother and I in Scripture memorization.  We were required to memorize at least one verse of Scripture every single day.  One of the first things we memorized (and had to be able to quote verbatim from beginning to end) was the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 & 7).

One of the things Jesus says in Matthew 6:19-21 is this: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Every time we tithe, every time we sow seed, every time we give to missions, every time we give or minister to the poor and needy, every time we give to ministries that are producing fruit for the Kingdom of God, we are laying up treasure in the storehouses, the Treasuries of Heaven.  More than that, every time we lay hands on the sick, every time we intercede for people in crisis situations, every time we pray, declare and decree the Will of God over our friends, our family members and over those the Holy Spirit directs us to, we are laying up treasure in those Treasury rooms.

What is so phenomenal about that is that there is a huge multiplication factor that takes place with every tithe and every gift, every prayer and every act given or done in faith.  Our problem here on Earth is that we neither understand God’s multiplication nor even visualize what He does with it.  Furthermore, we don’t even begin to comprehend how to draw on those Treasuries for the multiplication and growth of the Kingdom of God here on Earth (in the natural realm) or the growth of the Kingdom in us as earthen vessels.

Sorry to take a bit of a side-trip there but Matthew’s record of what Jesus said really leaped to life as I took in the sight of the Treasuries and saw what David saw as the Holy Spirit poured into him the vision of the Temple.

The place that would have been represented in the Temple by the Holy of Holies was a Cloud of Glory that literally filled the place.  It radiated that same sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ that I felt the first time I saw Him, and again the second time when He came for me to take me to Heaven.  I understood why it was necessary for both Moses (he had seen this same thing) and David to be instructed by the Lord to create a thick veil to separate the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place.  For someone without a real love-relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – one who is constantly in pursuit of His presence AND His Glory being seen in us as His people – the Glory of the Lord is too much for a person to handle.

The truth of this is revealed in Isaiah 42:9 where Isaiah prophesies the following: “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”

The phrase, “my glory will I not give to another,” is somewhat obscured in our KJV and other English translations.  The word translated “another” from the Hebrew text is the word “acher” (which comes from the root “achar”) specifically translates to “hinder” in the sense of someone who lags behind, procrastinates, puts off, etc.  The context of the translation “another” is that of someone strange (or perhaps estranged).  The sense of this word is that of someone who does not walk with the Lord in intimacy – someone who is not in active pursuit of Him and His presence.

You get the picture, I’m sure.  The Lord does not give His Glory to those who are passive or lackadaisical in their walk with Him.  He does not give His Glory to spiritual stragglers.  His Glory is for those who are in active pursuit of Him with their whole being, a people who thirst after Him and walk with Him no matter the odds or circumstances.  They don’t care what it costs them in terms of reputation or creature comforts.  His Glory is designed and destined for a people who respond in every way to become Counterpart and Other Self to the Lord Jesus Christ – His Bride!

The veil that Moses created for the Tabernacle and David commissioned for the Temple were a safety measure to prevent the destruction of those who might come into His presence unprepared or without honor and reverence.  [This is a topic I’ll talk about in a little more depth when I share my conversation with Moses.]  To do so would have meant death.  The intimate presence of the Lord is reserved for a people who live exhibiting His agape love.

Even though it took a number of years for me to be able to assimilate and digest the enormity and the extravagance of this place, the utter grandeur took my breath away.  David was watching my reaction as I took it all in.  He quite properly read my face and thoughts; and he took my hand momentarily to get my attention.

“Now you can understand why every waking moment of my life from the point of seeing this was spent in the acquisition of as much wealth and riches as I could conceivably amass.  For me to duplicate this or provide some semblance of the Glory and magnificence of the Lord in a central house of worship for the nation that common folks could relate to meant acquiring more gold, silver and other precious materials than any single human had ever done before in all of history.

“All that wealth wasn’t for me!  Sure, the Lord made it possible for me to become rich beyond imagination, but it wasn’t to spend on a lavish lifestyle for myself!  Some people express great surprise at the equivalency in your modern money being in the multiplied billions of dollars, but I didn’t care what the monetary value of the gold and silver was.  I needed to duplicate as closely as possible what I saw in Heaven.   The Spirit of God revealed the dimensions to me in much the same way as He revealed the dimensions of the Ark to Noah.  I knew how long, how wide, and how tall it needed to be.  I knew the respective sizes of all of the furnishings that would go into it.

“All these things, these dimensions, these quantities I wrote down after Nathan the Prophet told me that because I was a man of violence and bloodshed the building of the Temple would be reserved to my son who would replace me as King of Israel.”

I interrupted David at this point and asked him, “How did you feel when Nathan told you that you were not to build it?  I mean, you had seen it with your own eyes!  The vision of it was implanted in you as though it had been engraved!”

“A flash of disappointment, I guess, but the disappointment quickly faded with God’s promise that He was going to establish my house, and that my seed would forever sit on His Throne.  The magnitude of that promise was almost more than I could take in, and it took some years for it all the register.  You understand, though, why every breath of my existence from that moment forward was to accumulate everything that was needed so that when the day came, Solomon would lack for nothing and construction could begin immediately.”

I walked around for awhile just taking in the splendor of gold so pure it was transparent.  The light and brilliance of the presence of the Lord throughout Heaven made this place so stunning as to be impossible to adequately describe.  On Earth we have an expression we often use to describe people who live in overwhelming abundance.  We frequently call them “filthy rich.”  You’d never use an expression like that here! 

Since my visits to Heaven, I’ve begun to realize that the reason we use the epithet “filthy” is because the world has contaminated the whole idea of wealth and riches.  Those who do not walk in understanding and revelation cannot even begin to fathom the purity of God’s wealth and abundance.  Our society has so infiltrated the thinking of wealth and abundance that “rich” is a bad word – especially among folks who have a socialist mindset.  It has somehow become wrong and sinful to think “rich” or “wealthy.”  Many Christians have lost sight of the fact that God promised His people the following:

“But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.”  (Deuteronomy 8:18)

Get it?  The focus on getting wealth is God-given so that He may establish His covenant!

Jesus made a phenomenal statement as part of His covenant with believers.  It goes like this:

“The thief comes only in order that he may steal, and may kill, and may destroy.  I came that they might have and enjoy life, and that have it in abundance – to the full, till it overflows.”  (John 10:10 Amp.)

Here again Jesus makes clear that it is the thief – Satan – who wants to steal, kill and destroy and rob God’s people of the wealth that belongs to the Kingdom of God.  Sorry to get off track a bit but you can’t help but see the gross distortions on the topic of riches and wealth and abundance once you’ve been in Heaven.  It’s no wonder Satan doesn’t want God’s people to be blessed and be the richest folks on earth!  He wants the power of wealth to tantalize and entice and deceive people into thinking that God wants folks to live “broke, busted and disgusted” so they will instead look to the world and his razzle dazzle instead of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Seeing what David accumulated and the enormous riches God empowered him to get in order to duplicate (on a smaller scale, of course) the Temple in Heaven really makes me appreciate Deuteronomy 8:18.

I have one more discussion with David I’d like to share with you before backtracking to talk about Moses.  That discussion centers on the Tabernacle of David and David’s focus on continuous prayer, praise, worship and intercession – and his appointment of the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun to that ministry.

That’s where we’ll take this up again in our next Coffee Break.

Next: Heaven: David’s Tabernacle.

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

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Prosser, Washington 99350
[phone]

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