ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: SPIRITUAL DNA
In 1996 I had an extended experience in which I was transported back and forth in time as the Lord showed me His plans and purposes for His people. It took place daily over a roughly three-month span. When I say "transported" I'm not talking about being taken physically -- although it might as well have been because of its impact on me -- but rather taken through portals in the realm of the Spirit. That experience is far too lengthy and too detailed to try and share in its entirety in a forum like this, but the revelations and impartations by the Holy Spirit, and the angelic visitations that accompanied it are still producing new understanding in the core of my being on a daily basis.
Let me lay a little foundation for you to help you understand the context of my adventures in the Spirit.
This series of experiences began while Della and I were visiting in the home of some dear friends -- Beryl & Chester Mjolsness -- in Cochrane, Alberta. Beryl frequently drove, along with another very close friend -- Mary Ellen Olnick from Red Deer -- to Post Falls, Idaho to participate in our extended spontaneous praise and worship gatherings where at the time we were based for ministry. That said, from time to time we had our gatherings in their very spacious log home.
When Chester decided to expand the size of the house and add a 3000 square foot addition for his hunting trophies (he was a widely-traveled and well-known big game hunter), Della and I had the rather unusual opportunity to chink the new logs (putting the insulating filler material between the logs to prevent the outside air from coming through). It resulted in periodic trips back and forth to Cochrane, and Della wound up being Beryl's "go-to" person in getting things done around her house.
It was just one of those trips where I had some real time to spend alone with the Lord while Della was helping Beryl. Sitting at a desk in the guest bedroom where we stayed with my Bible spread out in front of me and a computer to take notes with, a portal between time, space and eternity suddenly opened in front of me. An angel of the Lord stood at the portal and beckoned me. The reality of the moment was stunning to say the least. Not until I had stepped through the portal did I realize that what was taking place was happening in the realm of the Spirit, and not in my fleshly body. It began a series of adventures with the Lord that I am sometimes at a loss to really properly explain. Daily, and sometimes several times a day, the portal opened before me and I walked into a dimension where time and space literally spread out before me like a scroll. I was in eternity.
As I was taken from one place and time to another and permitted (instructed, actually) to carefully watch the events unfolding, some of the things I witnessed were spread out over days and weeks, and yet when I returned to the present only minutes or hours (at most) had passed. It gave me a whole new understanding of just how easy it is for us as committed believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to enact the will of God in this realm. The more I experienced this moving between time and eternity, and eternity and time, the veil that separates these dimensions became more and more transparent.
Remember how Jesus instructed the disciples to pray? "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done in earth as it is in Heaven......" (Luke 11:2)
This is not a prayer of request. It is not a prayer of asking God to do it. Neither is it intercession. Read it carefully! It is a prayer, a decree, a declaration which reaches through the veil of time and eternity and brings God's Will into the present.
Now, let's rephrase and amplify this into more modern terms:
"Father, you are not just my Father but rather THE Father of an entire family -- our Father! You dwell in the Heavenlies -- all of them -- and your name (your onoma, your character and makeup, your very essence) is Holy. I worship you, and I declare you to be the essence of the Holy of Holies!
"Because you are Father God, because you are in me and I am in you, and you have adopted me into your family by and through the covenant that was ratified in the Blood of Jesus, you have delegated your authority to me to decree your decrees and commands here on earth in the same way you have already declared and decreed things to be in Heaven. Therefore I command your Kingdom to come here on earth. I declare the rulership of your Kingdom to be in force in this part of the earth you have given me responsibility for....."
Are you getting the drift of this? Nothing -- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING -- in this prayer we so tritely refer to as "The Lord's Prayer" incorporates asking, requesting, begging, or coming to Father with hat in hand!
In case you think I've lost it, let me finish this prayer so you can see and understand what I'm talking about.
"I speak by your authority, Father, and command your Word to come alive in my being to produce both spiritual and physical growth and life -- that same kind of growth and life that comes by eating of Your Son, the Bread of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ.
"I erase from existence (this is the literal translation of the Greek word, aphiemi, otherwise translated "forgive") the offenses, the hurts, the debts and the sins of all those who have done wickedly against me, and that gives me the legal right and authority in Christ Jesus to declare that my offenses, hurts, debts and sins against you are erased."
"We will not be tempted to do or to say things contrary to Your Will and Your Word, Father, because You have delivered us from all evil and from the Fear of Evil."
Matthew adds more worship to the end of this prayer with the ending, "For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen."
I can see the wheels spinning in your thoughts, so let me quickly explain.
When the disciples came to Jesus and said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray," they weren't using a word which describes everything we think of in our modern society as "prayer." They weren't asking Him to show them how to ask, or beg or necessarily make requests of Father. The word translated in this instance "pray" in the Greek text is the word, proseuchomai. This word occurs within the framework of a covenant relationship in which an intimate relationship and bond have been developed.
The disciples were literally saying to Jesus, "Lord, teach us how to communicate properly with Father so as to enact His covenant will and purposes here." And Jesus responded with a clear and concise answer that would make the veil between this earthly realm and the Heavenlies literally transparent and navigable in the Spirit.
The entire plane of reference Jesus was creating for them was one activated by DNA transformation. Let's go back to the Garden of Eden for a minute.
You need to see something that took place when God breathed into Adam the breath of life. Adam had been formed by the hand of God to be an exact duplicate of Himself -- a physical representation, a visible example of what He looked like and how He operated in the spirit realm. Adam was flesh and bone, but not yet living until the breath of God was breathed into him.
Consider, for a minute, the breath of God. That is the same breath that came forth when the words were spoken, "Light BE! The word used here in the Hebrew text is neshamah, and differs from the ordinary Hebrew word, nashaf, which would describe a puff of wind or breath. Dr. William Gesenius, in his Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon, tells us that this word -- neshamah -- literally describes the Spirit of God imparting His life and His wisdom.
Adam -- at least at that moment in time -- was no mortal. He was immortal. (Mortality didn't come until Adam ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and took upon himself a part of the DNA of a doomed being -- the Serpent, Satan -- who was no longer an eternal being.) The DNA of God was in him. He was in the likeness and image of God. The way this is phrased in the Hebrew text is that Adam was an exact replica -- a photographic image, if you will -- a veritable model of the Lord God made by God to His specifications.
It was no miracle that Adam could "name" all of the animals and every living creature that walked upon the face of the earth. This "naming" process was not simply calling the animals, "bear", or "lion", or "elephant", or "hippopotamus", or "giraffe" or anything else like that. Out of Adam's mouth came a rhema -- a direct, creative word -- which caused each animal and each species to have a character, a makeup, a personality, and individual essence with specific likes and dislikes, tastes and cravings of its own. Each animal, each species, was distinct. Its nature was spoken into being -- creatively -- by Adam.
Why? Because Adam had God's DNA. He was like God. He was God's model in flesh and bone here on earth. I've heard several rabbis say that the last phrase of Genesis 2:7 should be read, "and man became a living, speaking spirit."
So why am I emphasizing this? It was never God's intention to create mortal beings. Mortality is not part of His DNA. His objective from the very beginning was to create a family of beings who would be like Him, function like Him, speak like Him, breathe like Him, love like Him and exist like Him eternally -- in other words, they would be compatible with Him. They would be His counterpart, His "other self," if you will.
Sin corrupted that. Though the DNA of God was still at the core of the creation of the human race, the contamination of self-will, rebellion, and (what we've come to call) learning created a divide between God and man. For the Lord to receive His due in His creation meant that only He could bridge that divide. The process by which He did that was unique and nothing less than spectacular!
Because the contamination came through eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that tree was reserved by God unto Himself (the Holy Portion, if you will, in the Garden), John the Baptist prophesied of Him saying, "And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the tree..."
That tree had to be cut down in the realm of the Spirit so that it could no longer be accessed as a substitute for the knowledge and revelation necessary for our redemption. There had to be the cleansing of the contamination to our DNA, and the restoration of our being into that first image and likeness in which God created us.
When I refer to this as "DNA," you all understand that I'm using this in a metaphorical sense, do you not? We are first and foremost spirit beings. Our physical bodies are only containers to house our spirit and our soul. Our spirits existed with God before we ever came to inhabit these bodies. Whether we experience the "twinkling of an eye" transformation of our physical bodies into bodies that never die or whether we depart from them through death, our spirit and soul will return to the Lord.
Lest anyone misconstrue what I'm saying, the "twinkling of an eye" transformation ONLY applies to born-again, committed believers who walk in an intimate love-relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That also applies to those who depart from these bodies through death and return to the presence of the Lord.
Unbelievers will never experience this. And unbelief is not simply a lack of believing these things: unbelief is an active decision and act of the will to oppose the Word and the Will of God.
Now, let's get to an aspect of spiritual DNA, the revelation of which literally unlocks the door of understanding to our operating as true sons of God, heirs and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.
Let me first bracket a statement that comes from personal conviction, and not one that I can absolutely prove from Scripture -- at least not yet. I do this purposely so that no one thinks I'm promoting this as some "new doctrine." It isn't! It has long been my conviction that Adam and Eve saw through the veil that separates time and eternity. I tend to believe likewise that they had the ability to traverse between dimensions as easily as Father God. I have lots of reasons for believing this, but that's not what this Coffee Break is about so we will leave it there for the time being.
In any event, we know that Jesus certainly crossed time and eternity with ease. He was the "last Adam" who came to undo and remove the curse that impaired our God-created ability to live and function as we were intended -- fellowshipping and operating as the family of God. Think about His DNA for a second. Mary was "with child" by the Holy Spirit. That meant that Jesus had Father's DNA! And He made it crystal clear to all of us that it was His intention to bring us back to that same place where He operated -- and operates!
Jesus spells it out like this: "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
That "life" He's talking about is "zoe" life! J.H. Thayer, in his Greek-English Lexicon defines zoe like this: the absolute fulness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God, which -- through Him and through Jesus Christ -- is transfused into human nature.
I've partially paraphrased Thayer and bypassed a fistful of other Greek words in order to simplify this translation. You get the idea, I'm sure. We're not talking about life in the sense of "animal life" which is here today and gone tomorrow. We're talking about the very life and breath of Father God, the same life and breath that Jesus breathed.
And, Folks, Jesus didn't come to dispense this kind of life in dribbles; He came to liberally give it to us, as the Amplified Bible puts it: "to the full till it overflows"! He absolutely intended that our DNA be transformed, changed, "conformed to the image" -- that same image He was in!
The apostle Paul puts it very succinctly in Romans 8:29: "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."
I've underlined four very pertinent words in this verse which, in the Greek text, make it abundantly clear. Here's how I've rendered this verse from the Greek:
"For those whom He knew and had intimate knowledge of (and relationship with) before they came to be born, He also predetermined and limited in advance so they could be jointly formed and fashioned like unto the very likeness, character and makeup of His Son; because His purpose from the beginning was that He (Jesus Christ) would be the firstborn and first-begotten among a multitude of brothers." (Note: There is no female or male in Christ Jesus because we are all -- once again -- first and foremost "Spirit beings"!)
Am I making sense to you? Are you seeing this picture -- this principle?
Again, Ephesians 1:15-23 says that Jesus is the head of the body, and WE are the body. That makes us part of Him. We are inextricably woven with Him. His DNA is our DNA. You see, folks, as I said in our last Coffee Break we have to get our limitations removed. We have to stop thinking "in the box." Religion and religious thinking keeps us boxed in and prevents us from operating in the fullness of the character, the nature and the makeup of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given Himself for us and to us, and His command is that we go forth IN Him with Him IN US!
I had hoped to talk more about the portal between time and eternity in this discussion, but I think I'll hold it for now and share pieces of it as we resume the Heaven experiences in the next Coffee Break.
"It is God's grace that allows spiritual awakening to recognize the distinction between religious spirits and the Holy Spirit. The religious spirit introduces into the Church the spirit of the world nullifying the grace of God. The views of truth necessary to purify the Church are not such as the world gives, but are such as are communicated by God's Spirit." (Paul Keith Davis)
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
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Sunnyside, Washington 98944
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