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 Angels
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Good Morning! Good Morning! How’re you doing this nice cool day? Woke up this morning to cooler temperatures than normal for south Texas. Winter temps down here remind me of the summer temps at Barrow – well, sometimes, anyway! ‘Course Barrow’s average summer temperature is 39 degrees. Can’t say that Mission meets that kind of average winter temperature. Ehhhh, you get the idea!
I just poured my steaming hot cup this morning. Got yours ready, yet? Maybe you’re drinking green tea like Michael, but I won’t hold that against you. I’m doing a cinnamon bun today, too. After my previous story reminded us about Eileen’s cinnamon buns from the Stampede, Della went out yesterday afternoon and picked up some at Mrs. Cinnabon’s. They don’t come up to Eileen’s for taste, but they’ll do for the moment.
We were just getting started the other day with our discussion on angels, and I figured there were a few more angel stories you might just enjoy. I suppose I could have waited and done part 2 later, but…..hey…….why not strike while the iron’s hot?
Della was reading a book by Gloria Copeland yesterday and got into a part on the number of angels assigned to God’s people. If you read Revelation 5:11, you see a whoppin’ lot of angels around the Throne of God. “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands..”
Ever try to figure out how many angels that represents? I decided to go to my Greek text and take a look at that verse. The word used in the original text for “ten thousand times ten thousand” is one that actually means: an incalculable number, many, more than you can know.
The translators were obviously trying to come up with something they thought would represent an incalculable number, so they translated
pollon as “ten thousand times ten thousand.”
It’s all right. We get the picture anyway.
Reading the book by Gloria Copeland got Della, her mother (who is spending the winter with us) and me into a discussion recalling more of our “angel experiences” while we were gathered for worship in some of the different towns and cities.
We were trying to remember whether this one happened in Anchorage or Post Falls, (and memory says it was Post Falls) but wherever it was, we were gathered together with a fairly small group for worship – perhaps a dozen people or less. The worship music had taken on a somewhat militant sound. It was a frequent practice for us to close our eyes while worshiping so as not to pay attention to those around us and just focus on the Lord.
On this occasion, the entire group suddenly found themselves lifted into the heavenlies. We saw thousands upon thousands of angels. They were arrayed in military order in ranks and companies. One very large angel – he was obviously a commander – came toward us. He dropped on one knee in front of Della and with a sweeping motion of his hand toward the arrayed angelic hosts said, “Command them.”
Della turned to me, and then to each of the others with us and said with a startled look on her face, “What do we command? What do we instruct them to do?”
I don’t remember who made the suggestion, but the instruction was to go forth on behalf of all of our children, to protect them, to intervene when necessary, and to orchestrate their affairs in such a way as to make them aware that the Lord was with them.
Again, I don’t remember that commander saying anything, but he took Della’s words and made another sweeping motion to the arrayed hosts as if they heard every word. We saw them peel off and disappear. There was no question that they were doing exactly as commanded.
In that same moment, we found ourselves back in the living room. It brought our worship to a sudden halt – maybe I should say, long pause, -- as we talked about what we had all just experienced. It made us aware that when we were engaged in intercessory worship, we needed to be aware that the hosts of heaven awaited our instruction to minister to those “who are the heirs of salvation.”
That was not the last time we experienced such an event, and we were much more prepared the next time it happened. I do not remember how many times we experienced something on that order as a group, but I do know that there were perhaps three separate occasions on which we were given the opportunity to instruct the angelic hosts to go forth and minister to specific needs.
If ever there was an event that made us aware of just how much authority is made available to believers when they are in agreement, well…….you couldn’t have a more graphic illustration. In the years that have followed, we have talked many times about those experiences.
One other event that took place in the midst of our worship at Trails’ End – Earle and Marcia’s ranch in Idaho – is one that I have mentioned in a previous article.
This was not a small gathering as those that happened when we were lifted corporately into the heavenlies. I don’t remember there ever being more than a dozen people present when we had the corporate experience of being taken together.
This event took place with perhaps forty singers, musicians and worshipers. By the way, if my terminology is confusing, let me explain that not all of the gathered worshipers were musicians. Everyone did sing – at times – but not everyone played instruments. There were several people who simply did what we have come to know as prophetic dancing, and I will explain that later.
This particular evening was one in which the worship was clearly the music of spiritual warfare. Robert Storer was our shofar trumpeter. For those unfamiliar with the shofar, it is the ram’s horn – literally. When blown by someone – like Robert – who has developed the skill necessary to blow it properly, it sends forth a penetrating sound the like of which is hard to describe. When blown outdoors on a quiet day, you can hear it for miles. The sound goes right through you.
Robert’s brother-in-law, Bob Bartow, is a brilliant keyboard artist – and I use the term “artist” purposely. Bob has spent probably hundreds of hours programming sounds into his Korg synth. He has been able to almost duplicate the sound of Robert’s shofar. When the two of them are synced together, the sound is indescribable.
This was one of those nights where – as usual – the music was unplanned, unknown, never previously heard or played by any of the gathered musicians. Robert launched the evening with his shofar. He began to blow as never before. Bob picked up the sound on his keyboard and added an orchestral background to it. Suddenly, the Lord gave me words to sing, and we took off as a group, playing and singing this prophetic battle music. (All of it was recorded, incidentally, and we have put four hours of it – recorded during a four-month span – on three CD’s titled, THE FOUR WINDS, as well as another two and a half hours on two CD’s titled, THE CALL TO BATTLE.)
Suddenly the whole house started shaking. It was vibrating as though we were experiencing some kind of earthquake. Everyone stopped, jumped to their feet, and headed outside. The ground was rumbling, and we could hear what sounded like thousands of horses galloping in unison. If you’ve seen some of those movies where armies are arrayed on horseback and galloping toward the expected battle, you know what the sound is like.
This was like that, but it was as if there was an army so large, you couldn’t see from one side to the other. We all looked at each other and suddenly realized we were having an audible demonstration of something that was happening in the realm of the spirit. “Angelic hosts,” someone said. We knew it was true and headed back to our instruments and worship. The sound continued on with us as we worshiped for a long time.
Let me pause for a moment. Sometimes, when you share events and experiences like this, folks get the idea that we were getting together just so we could have these thrills and chills, and experience the goose-bumps that sometimes come with supernatural displays. Wrong!
Our gathering was for one purpose and one purpose only: to minister to the Lord. We weren’t there for entertainment. We weren’t there to see what we could get out of it. Our sole purpose was to do what David did when he assigned the families of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun to minister to the Lord in praise and worship before the tabernacle he had set up. David had no other objective than to bring joy to the heart of the Lord. Neither did we. The fact that we had so many of these incredible displays and experiences while worshiping was wonderful, but it was incidental to our gathering.
My cousin, Joan, sent me a quick email yesterday to remind me that I had shared with her (when we were young) experiences of seeing angels in our front yard when we lived in Nome, Alaska. One experience quickly came to mind – with some humorous overtones.
I was five years old and my brother was four. We were playing in our front yard in the winter. This was a winter with a lot of snow. When I say, “a lot,” I’m talking snow at least six feet deep on the level, with drifts that reached over the top of our church building.
We were playing with some of our neighbors – all of us were probably in the range of three to six or seven years of age. A pair of angels appeared in our front yard. We saw them traverse the yard and pass into our home, right through the walls. It was one of those “WOW” experiences for us as kids. I ran into the house to tell my mother that we had just seen angels come into the house. She had been on her knees in our living room, praying, and the presence of the angels was in some way a response to something she had been praying. She smiled at me and said, “yes!” and waved me back outside. It was no big deal to her.
For us as kids, it meant that we needed to “have church.” So we dug ourselves a room in the snow bank. I’m sure it took us several hours to finish, but we had a room big enough to accommodate a half-dozen kids. We made a bench out of the snow for some of the kids to sit on and cut ourselves a window into the room – separate from the tunnel that was our entrance. My brother went into the house to get a candle so we would have light, and the candle was set in the window.
We proceeded to have church. When you grow up with parents who are ministers and a dad you see preach at least three times a week, this is the norm. I’d already had many experiences of my own with the Lord by this time, so it was easy for me to stand up in front of the kids and preach.
Of course there had to be an altar call at the end and an invitation for people to accept Jesus Christ. A couple of those kids who were sitting there in that funky little snow house church actually bowed their heads and prayed with us to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.
My folks had lots of hardcover Bibles that had been supplied by the Gideons to give away, so I ran in the house and got a couple of Bibles to give the kids that had just prayed and accepted Jesus Christ. Naturally, we had to have a baptismal service, but how do you baptize someone in a snow bank? We gave up trying to figure that out and decided to wait until spring when we knew there would be lots of water from the melting snow.
Our experience with the angels and the subsequent “snow church” was a periodic subject of discussion with our playmates, so when spring came and we had lots of mud puddles, we found ourselves a mud puddle that was deep enough and had ourselves a baptism. Looking back on it brings lots of laughs, but it was just as real for all of us as when John the Baptist was baptizing folks in the Jordan River.
I don’t recommend that your kids try to duplicate our experience. <GRIN>
Mud puddles are not the recommended venue for baptizing youngsters. But, hey, when you live in Nome, Alaska, you take whatever opportunity presents itself – and when you are a five-year-old kid with an active, creative mind, mud puddles work!
I’m going to go and pour myself another cup of that really dark stuff and have a cinnamon bun. The rest of you finish your cup of coffee, and enjoy this Lord’s day.
Have the best day of your life, folks. Blessings on you!
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
Chat
with Regner
Music:
Angels Watching Over Me
This article may be reprinted, reposted, copied and re-used – in whole or in part – with proper attribution.
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