Genesis 4: 8 -- Why the Field Where 'Cain' Slew 'Abel'
In 1975 I prayed for the gift of tongues at Grace Bible Church in Honolulu, Hawaii. I gave the Lord my tongue to speak with. Nothing happened. I gave him my lips, mouth muscles, my jaw, my breath and voice, my larynx, my lungs, my life, my future children, my destiny -- I submitted everything I could think of -- and nothing happened. I realized that I was not accepted. Jesus knew me, and he rejected me.
I was cut to the quick. Crushed. I knew Jesus was real from what he had done in my life, but now I was rejected. What would I turn to for salvation? The thought came to ask how I might get to be acceptable, for that was my only hope. I entered a trance and eventually came to an expanse of earth, a field reaching to the horizon and some hills off in the distance to the right. The ground was soft mud; if I had been corporal, I would have sunk into it. I looked down, and the outline of a man appeared being cut into the mud. As if by a spoon, a mudden figure of a man was scooped out of the earth. The mud was transformed into bone and organs and blood vessels and flesh, hair, eyes before my eyes. Everything for it to live, I thought, and then it did live.
It looked down at the earth it had just been scooped from, and it -- for a moment -- recognized that it had just been made. It said to itself, "This is mud, earth. I am on earth." It looked into the distance. It thought, "This is day. It will get dark. It will get cold. I need to find shelter. Maybe a cave in the hills over there, or amongst some trees."
In my trance I soon became the one thinking in the mud-man and wound up taking his perspective AS him WITHOUT ANY REGARD FOR THE TRANSITORY, SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MY REALITY. It was in the field that my Cain -- Acquisition of physical reference -- slew Abel -- my consciousness of the underlying spiritual nature of my visitation in the mud-man.
I eventually came to understand that I was not only the man who had misused the Life I had been given by God, I -- my Life -- wholly belonged to God and must do what ever he purposed for me. In a moment of complete surrender, having cast out my self-lordship, He said, "Remember this, and it is all right." I was accepted, and there are no words to describe the elation and ecstasy of being accepted. And then the mud spoke in tongues! I had absolutely nothing to do with it except to observe it happening from inside. Never thought of that before.
I was cut to the quick. Crushed. I knew Jesus was real from what he had done in my life, but now I was rejected. What would I turn to for salvation? The thought came to ask how I might get to be acceptable, for that was my only hope. I entered a trance and eventually came to an expanse of earth, a field reaching to the horizon and some hills off in the distance to the right. The ground was soft mud; if I had been corporal, I would have sunk into it. I looked down, and the outline of a man appeared being cut into the mud. As if by a spoon, a mudden figure of a man was scooped out of the earth. The mud was transformed into bone and organs and blood vessels and flesh, hair, eyes before my eyes. Everything for it to live, I thought, and then it did live.
It looked down at the earth it had just been scooped from, and it -- for a moment -- recognized that it had just been made. It said to itself, "This is mud, earth. I am on earth." It looked into the distance. It thought, "This is day. It will get dark. It will get cold. I need to find shelter. Maybe a cave in the hills over there, or amongst some trees."
In my trance I soon became the one thinking in the mud-man and wound up taking his perspective AS him WITHOUT ANY REGARD FOR THE TRANSITORY, SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MY REALITY. It was in the field that my Cain -- Acquisition of physical reference -- slew Abel -- my consciousness of the underlying spiritual nature of my visitation in the mud-man.
I eventually came to understand that I was not only the man who had misused the Life I had been given by God, I -- my Life -- wholly belonged to God and must do what ever he purposed for me. In a moment of complete surrender, having cast out my self-lordship, He said, "Remember this, and it is all right." I was accepted, and there are no words to describe the elation and ecstasy of being accepted. And then the mud spoke in tongues! I had absolutely nothing to do with it except to observe it happening from inside. Never thought of that before.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
1:26 AM
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