ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: PICTURES OF TRIBULATION & WRATH, Part 4

[Regner A Capener]

Another
Coffee Break:
  PICTURES OF TRIBULATION & WRATH, Part 4
 

This  past week I had an experience in which I was transported to Heaven.  I was taken to an area in which angelic beings were preparing white robes for the Bride of Christ.  There was a
significant portion of the event which dealt specifically with a covenant that the Lord has made with Della and me concerning our children, but let me first share with you that portion given as a prophetic message to the body of Christ.
 
Let me begin by sharing what I saw; and then I will share what Holy Spirit was
communicating.
 
I found myself standing in front of an area in which there were angelic beings seated at desks or tables.  As far to my left and as far to my right as my eyes could see, there were angelic beings. 
By the same token, as far distant as I could see there were angelic beings.  All of them were working on white robes, preparing them for certain believers.  It was obvious that they represented a virtually uncountable number of people -- all of whom were destined to wear these robes.
 
I was positioned directly in front of an angelic being who was working on the fitting and preparation of a specific robe for a specific believer -- in this case our oldest son, Chris.  An image
of Chris flashed in and out as the robe was being prepared, but he was not actually present in Heaven.  Another very tall angel stood right next to me and most of my conversation was with him.
 

The angel who was working on Chris's robe made the remark that he didn't understand why he was working on a robe for our son "since he's never going to get to wear it anyway."  In one sense his remark was understandable since Chris has not been living or walking with the Lord in the place he once knew, and has been living far beneath his destiny in God.  Nevertheless, I wasn't about to let that remark get past us unchallenged and immediately said, "Excuse me, but we have a covenant with the Lord concerning our children."
 

I immediately quoted Isaiah 59:21: "As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith
the LORD, from henceforth and forever." 

I could have added (but didn't at that moment) the promise God made when Chris was born, "And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children."  (Isaiah 54:13)  Note the emphasis on ALL!

The angel standing next to me looked at the angel working on Chris's robe and responded, "He's right, you know.  He does have a covenant with the Lord concerning all his children." 

The events that unfolded next made me really appreciate that covenant, and I understood just how important it was for me to lay claim to that covenant when challenged, and to speak it forth!  I also realized that a portion of what I was about to see had specific implications for families with sons or daughters who are not walking where they are supposed to with the Lord.  (If this applies to you and your family, take note of the events that followed and lay claim to God's promises for your children with boldness!)
 

As we stood talking, a veil was suddenly drawn up between the two of us and the rest of the area where the robe preparation was taking place.  As the veil went up, a brilliant light illuminated the entire area.  The light far exceeded that of the noonday sun for brightness, and had it not been for the veil, my eyes would have been blinded.  The light radiated an intense heat with it, but it was a very different kind of heat I didn't really know how to describe.  As it was, it was very difficult to look at and I turned my eyes aside toward the angel standing next to me.
 

"What is this all about," I asked.  The angel responded, "All these robes are being prepared for the fires of purification."  Instantly the parable of the ten virgins flashed before me and revelation began to flood my spirit.
 

In that instant all the sounds I'd been hearing were suddenly silenced and I was enveloped in total silence.  It was as though someone had shut off a switch.  The sounds of conversation were gone.  The sound of the continuous praise and worship in the background was silenced.  I turned again to the angel standing next to me and asked, "What just happened?"
 
His answer left an indelible imprint in my being.  "You are being cut off from hearing the cries of those who will be purified.  You cannot and must not bail them out.  You cannot and must not intervene in this midst of their trials lest the fire they are experiencing overtake you.  They must overcome by themselves!  They must fall on the rock, Christ Jesus!  You cannot intervene.  They cannot have your oil."
 

I wanted to ask if this meant that all of us as Christians were going to experience these fires, but before I could ask the answer flooded my being. 

"These fires of purification are specifically intended for those who have not yet responded to the dealings of Holy Spirit.  Many people have already responded to and embraced the fire in their lives.  This that is coming is not for them.  This is a furnace of affliction intended to burn away the bondages from those who've not yet
willingly abandoned them or responded to the opportunities presented by Holy Spirit.  No one will be forced to
respond against their will, but those that willingly and purposefully reject the dealings of God will open themselves to the wrath of God when it is poured out upon the earth."
 

Although it was not specifically spoken, there was a realization once again in me that the fire is not for destruction but redemption.  When John the Baptist came as a forerunner for Jesus Christ, he prophesied, "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:  Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."  (Matthew 3:11-12)
 
One of Holy Spirit's principal aims and objectives is to "burn up the chaff [in us] with unquenchable fire."  It is a fire you can't put out, and its purpose is to burn out everything that doesn't permit us to conform to the perfect image of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Consider the very first of the Seven Spirits of God.  Isaiah names four of the seven in his prophecies, the first being seen in Isaiah 4:4, the Spirit of Judgment and Burning.  The purpose of God's judgment is to set things right or back in alignment with His Word and His purposes.  The purpose of burning is to burn up all that is impure, all that contaminates the very character and makeup of the Lord Jesus Christ in our spirit, our soul and our body.
 

I've written this before, but for the purpose of this application let me again share II Timothy 2:15 from my own amplified translation from the Greek text: "Be instantly responsive to the Lord, making yourself available to Him in the midst of the crucible, a tried and tested laborer, who has no fear of being examined -- one who, by virtue of God's testing and the time spent in the crucible with Him, knows the proven word of truth."
 

The crucible is the vessel into which gold is place which needs to be refined and purified.  That crucible is heated in an intense fire in order to get the impurities to float to the top where they
can be scooped off.  This is a process that smelters and refiners use repeatedly until they can certify that their gold is 99.999% free of impurities.  Using that same analogy it becomes clear that this is what the Lord is doing with His people -- His Bride in particular.  What's more, His fire "burns up the chaff with unquenchable fire!"  There are zero impurities in His people when He is finished with this process.
 
You understand, don't you?  This is NOT the "comfortable gospel": this is the Gospel of the Kingdom!  It is the rulership of the King in our lives, and His rulership means we conform to His standards and His measurement -- NOT what we might like them to be. 

WOW!!   This certainly wasn't the way I expected to begin today's Coffee Break discussion, but what I saw and heard in Heaven certainly fits and is consistent with the pictures of tribulation I've been sharing thus far. 

I was sharing with a bible study group earlier this week and we were talking about the nature of tribulation.  One of the characteristics of tribulation that we really need to anchor down in our
spirit is that its purpose is redemption -- not destruction! 

Tribulation is not a squeezing together, an application of great pressure designed to squeeze the very life out of us!  God intends for His people to experience this so that He has an overcoming people, a people who've been tried in the furnace of affliction and have come forth in His image and likeness.  His objective from the beginning has been our redemption, our restoration, our return to that image and likeness in which he first created Adam.
 

We can use the example of the three Hebrew children -- Hananiah (Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach) and Azariah (Abednego) -- who refused to bow to the image of the king Nebuchadnezzar) [see Daniel 3], and were subsequently cast into a furnace heated to seven times its normal heat -- a temperature which killed those who cast the three into the furnace.  The king and his servants standing by saw the Lord appear in the fire with Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, and they walked about in the fire with absolutely no effect!  The only thing that happened to the three was that their bonds were burned off, and they were able to walk about and converse freely with the Lord.
 

That's the same thing intended for God's people today.  Those who willingly embrace the fire soon discover that the Lord is there with them.  Those who embrace tribulation find that there is a level of fellowship and intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ that words fail to properly convey! 
At the same time, those who embrace these times of stress, pressure, accusation, persecution come to the realization that the Lord has been delivering them from fear, from past failures and from areas of weakness in their flesh that have plagued them throughout the years.
 

How is it that I can say these things?  If I were to tell you that I read all this in a book somewhere, we'd all have a good laugh, and you'd know I was telling one great big story.  The fact is, I can give you a guided tour (and already have to some extent in previous Coffee Breaks) of my personal walk with the Lord in the midst of tribulation.
 

OK.   Let me give you one more picture of tribulation before we change gears and take a close look at the wrath of God.
 

Revelation 8 begins like this (see the first six verses): "And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.  And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.  And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.  And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.  And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.  And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound."

Without revisiting all of the events that took place on June 9, 1994, we had numerous friends and brothers and sisters in the Lord who reported things happening to them like the following:
 

One of our sisters in the Lord from High River, Alberta was driving to Edmonton.  Some 60 or 70 miles out of Edmonton she saw a hitchhiker standing alongside the road.  She had made it a practice to NEVER pick up hitchhikers, and it caught her completely off-guard when Holy Spirit spoke loudly in her spirit and instructed her to stop and pick up this hitchhiker.  Because it was
not something she was inclined to do she drove on past and kept going. Holy Spirit again spoke -- this time audibly -- and said, "I said STOP!  Go back and pick up that hitchhiker!" 

She had no option but to obey, turned the car around in the center divider and went back and picked up the hitchhiker.  As she pulled back into the traffic flow she turned to ask the gentleman where he was headed.  Before she could open her mouth, he looked at her and said, "The trumpet has been set to the mouth," and he vanished into thin air.  The whole experience shocked her and she didn't know what to make of it.  She contacted the RCMP office in Edmonton upon arriving and related what had happened.  The duty officer said to her, "Lady, you are the ninth person to report that tonight!"
 

In the days that followed (and she immediately shared it with us and our fellowship) we had friends in Lethbridge, Alberta who reported the same experience; and we subsequently heard of multiple like events taking place all across the northwest from Montana to Oregon.  I've no doubt that there were other parts of the U.S. and Canada (and even very likely other places in the world) who had the same identical experience on that date.
 

What was it all about?  This is a personal opinion, but my conviction is that the body of Christ was being prepared for the sounding of the seven trumpets by the seven angels!  Take a look at the very first thing that happens when the first angel blows his trumpet.
 

Hail and fire came down together with the result that a third of the earth's vegetation was destroyed.  That's a picture of unusual heat, volcanic eruptions and seismic events resulting in the
destruction of crops worldwide on a scale hitherto unknown. 

The next angel sounds and we see what amounts to cataclysmic geologic plate shifts resulting in the death and destruction of one-third of all life in the sea, along with the ships caught in the resulting tsunamis.
 

The third angel blows his trumpet and a huge flaming meteorite falls to earth resulting in the contamination of a third of the earth's water supply.
 

The fourth angel sounds his trumpet and the heavens are literally darkened as what I will describe as a planetary object passes close by the earth in what astronomers would refer to as a "near miss" causing a part of the sun and moon and stars to be obliterated from view for a full 24-hour period.
 

Without getting into all of the events that follow (please read Revelation 9) it becomes very clear that God's objective is to bring people to repentance and salvation -- sozo.    Look at the ending two verses of Chapter 9. 

"And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts."

You get the picture, don't you?  The purpose of these plagues and catastrophic events is to get people to repent.  So far we haven't seen the wrath of God.  Despite all the chaos which unfolds during this time of tribulation on the earth, Father God has yet to pour out His wrath!  When He does, folks, the earth will see and KNOW the difference between tribulation and wrath. 

That' where we go next!

"Fresh and exceptional things are about to take place in the Church around the world. It will stretch our faith, but it will uniquely prepare us for an awesome demonstration of God's glory. The Bible foretells that the spirit of this generation will be as it was during the days of Noah. The Scriptures portray Noah as one who found favor in God's sight.

Through a divine visitation, God specifically prepared Noah for unprecedented events that unfolded in his generation. No human reasoning or natural wisdom could have provided the necessary insight and strategic blueprint for survival. Noah prevailed only by the Spirit of Revelation and obedience to the spoken word of the Lord.
 
Only in the supernatural realm can we receive the provision for our generation. This spiritual reality requires a far greater faith than we presently possess on a corporate level. Therefore, we must set our faith in order to access God's end-time promises to the Church. Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life and He desires to display His resurrection power and life, so we may behold God's glory.  (Prophetic Word from Paul Keith Davis)

Blessings on you!

Regner

 

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES 

709 South 7^th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
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