Kenneth Copeland - Shemitah, The Year of Release
— Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland, this is Professor Gregory Stephens. Stephens is your name?
— Yes, sir.
— Okay.
— Yes, sir. Yes today.
— Gregory, born of God, Stephens.
— I'll take it. All Good.
— Yes, sir.
— That's good. And we are having a good time. This is a Word study... Oh, first of all, I was impressed to do this. This is Eagle Mountain International Church, so that's the name of the lake, and if I could show you why the Comanche that lived here, called it Eagle Mountain, but now there's a lake there. There wasn't anything but a small river there at the time. Anyway, this is my backyard. This is actually it. Looking out at the lake. Now, Gloria is the one that designed that. She did it all. I just stood around and watched...
— Watched it happen. Then she did good.
— ... all of that. So that's actually the thing. This is a dream. Greg, I've had this dream ever since those goofy pictures of... Isn't technology just delicious? That's actually right out behind my kitchen there, where we can sit out on the deck and watch the boats go by.
— I just saw some bumblebees flying over on the flowers
— That's what they do, that's what they do. Do you know it's impossible for a bumblebee to fly?
— Their body's too big.
— Yeah, aeronautically, they can't fly, but the bee doesn't know it. So he just does it anyway.
— Amen.
— His center of gravity is terrible, and his wings are too small, but he just goes on like he knew better. Oh Lord, you are so marvelous. We thank You today. Your Word's magnificent, marvelous, and we thank You today for it, in Jesus' name. Greg, let's go back over there to Numbers again.
— Yep.
— Now, we talked about yesterday. This is a Shmita year. So there's chaos in a Shmita year, there's great blessing in a Shmita year, but we have to choose.
— That's it.
— So I take the blessing side, and I'm reminded now of Deuteronomy 30:19, where God said, "Behold, I set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore you choose life, that you and your seed after you may live, that you may love the Lord thy God". Choose life.
— He gave you the answer to the test.
— Yeas, he did.
— It's like me being at Kenneth Copeland Bible College and saying, "Now, this is the test mark. Here's the answer. Choose the right answer".
— Choose the right answer. Then Jesus fulfilled that.
— Absolutely. To the letter.
— Yeah. He said, "My words are life. The flesh prophets are nothing, but my words are life". Praise God.
— Numbers... Where were you on? 16?
— Let's go to Numbers, the 16th chapter. Now we're going to stand on this. And all of you watching out there, we're standing on this. This is a worldwide thing, Greg. Look at this.
— Yes, sir.
— And He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stayed, it was stopped.
— Amen.
— Now, back up to 46 verse. "Moses said unto Aaron, take a cense, put the fire there in, from off the altar". So now, this is a covenant thing right here. "And put on incense, go quickly unto the congregation, make an atonement for them". Well, that's the blood of Jesus in the second coming.
— Yes, sir.
— "For there is wrath gone out from the Lord, the plague is begun". Aaron took as Moses commanded, and he ran into the midst of the congregation, and behold, the plague was begun among the people, and he put on incense, made an atonement for the people, and he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stayed.
— It's exactly what you...
— We believe God, this Shmita year, this COVID mess and all of the chaos that's caused by it is over.
— Yes, sir.
— It's finished.
— Yes, sir.
— Let me explain to you what a Shmita year is. Because a lot of people... "What do they keep talking about"? Well, we're talking about, it's a Jewish word. There are cycles and times they shall do that and prophecy how they see things yesterday. They're central to the Bible. They're central to Jewish life. A little less known by most people, it's central to Jewish life, is this time called a Shmita. It literally means, the literal word means the year of release. It's the year that something's released, that's in our hand. It's widely known as a sabbatical year. It's a Sabbath year. It's the seventh year on the seventh day. I told a rabbi one day, he asked me, he says, "What did God make on the Sabbath day"? And I said, "Nothing". He goes, "You're wrong". And I go, "Yes, sir. Okay, I'm wrong. How am I wrong"? He said, "He made rest by His own life".
— That's good.
— "You're going to do what I do now".
— Nobody knew anything about that until He said it.
— Nobody knew anything about rest till He did it.
— And one day is just no different than another, until He introduced it.
— He introduced it.
— So people worked themselves to death, literally. So an ancient, biblical mandate. This was not a suggestion. And I'll show it to you. As a matter of fact, let's go to Exodus 23. It's a God ordained year of rest for the land. It was in the land of Israel, every seven years. "In this Sabbath rest for the land, it's not to be sown, cultivated or harvested". Now, why would God have made it a Sabbath for the land? Because He made Adam steward up all the earth and the land. He didn't take that away from us.
— No, no.
— We still have that responsibility. Like that garden back there, planted, cultivated, taken care of. Here's where the instructions come. Exodus 23:10. "And six years, thou shall sow thy land, and thou shall gather in the fruits thereof, but the seventh year thou shall let it rest and lie still. That the poor of thy people may eat and what they leave, the beasts of the field shall eat, and like manner, thou shall deal with the vineyard and with thy olive garden". So six days shall you do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and that the son of thy handmaid and a stranger may be refreshed. And in all things that I have said unto you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other God". Don't you be talking that.
— Don't do it.
— Now, every time Israel failed to do this, they got in trouble, and they did. The judgment came, when they would not do it. Now, let's go along here. There's something huge in this chapter that has to do with us. So you've gone down, feast of harvest, first fruits and labors, and so forth and so on. And behold... Now, when He says, look, look. He said, "I sent an angel before you to keep you in the way".
— That's right.
— That's the way Joseph, Mary and Jesus were led.
— Absolutely.
— It was an angel that brought that word to them...
— And woke him up, and then went with them.
— ...and then got them up in the night, and then he led them. That angel led and guided them, and I present unto you that it's this angel right here.
— I believe it.
— Because, now look at this. "I sent an angel..." Now, this is a promise. "I sent an angel before you to keep you in the way, and bring thee under the place where I have prepared. Be aware of him and obey His voice, provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions for my name is in him, and if you shall indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be at enemy to enemies and an adversary to your adversaries". Now, I'm going to show you why it is not good to take one or two scriptures out and quote it, and go on, on, on, on, again and again and again and again, and really not know what it says, because this 25th verse doesn't make sense. "You shall serve the Lord your God, he shall bless your bread and water. I will take sickness from the midst of thee". And people said, "Well, no, no. No, no, no. See, Greg, it doesn't say that. It says, "And you shall serve the Lord, your God and bless your bread, and I will bless..." No, He didn't say that. That angel was responsible for seeing to it that the bread and water was good.
— That's right. That's right. He's there protecting them.
— Yes.
— It's all connected in here.
— Now, you go over into the Book of Hebrews, the Blood Covenant book, that explains the difference between the blood of animals and the Blood of Jesus, and the everlasting covenant in whom and in which we live. I call Hebrews better. Because everything in that book is better than Moses, better than angels, better... I mean, it is better. So He promised that. We go to the Book of Hebrews 1:14, the verse talking about angels. "My angel shall go before you". They only had one.
— Oh, praise God.
— Are they not all ministering Spirit sent forth to minister for those that are the heirs of salvation?
— Yes, sir.
— Greg, I am so totally convinced that on the Day of Pentecost, that loud roaring noise, as a rushing, mighty wind, I think you could have heard that anywhere on this planet. All of those angels, it's no longer Jacob's Ladder. They weren't coming on assignment going, back and forth. They all. Who knows how many? Every child born has one.
— Yes. Yeah. Wow.
— Jesus said so.
— Yes, He did.
— And all, all of those angels and the Spirit of the Living God, just permeating this entire planet at one time.
— They were allowed to be here again.
— Yes.
— They were not allowed to here before. This is why there was angels outside of Eden guarding the way.
— Yes.
— And these angels guarding the way guard, taking them on the way to Egypt and back and protecting them. You know how they paid for that trip, in their whole time down there? What the magi brought them.
— Yes. The gold and the frankincense.
— Yes, sir.
— The frankincense was a very costly perfume, worth in some cases, in some places more than gold.
— Used by the priests in the...
— All three of those gifts were very, very expensive. Extremely expensive. They were gifts from kings.
— Absolutely.
— They brought the absolute best that was available.
— And Brother Copeland made it to just bring a little jar of perfume. They loaded them up because it wasn't just three guys on camel.
— No.
— If you know anything of the military history between where they came from and what was happening, Herod was terrified of them, and the Romans too. This was the Assyrians. This is coming from the East and they didn't come with just three guys, they brought a whole team of people.
— That's a composite, because there were three different gifts, and they weren't anywhere near that manger, because He was at least two years old, the young child in the house. And this was a caravan of...
— Yeah, it was.
— ...soldiers.
— They anointed this little child when He came into the earth, we're about to celebrate His death and resurrection. And they anointed Him at the end. See, God intended a Shmita year, to be a blessing for His people. But when Israel turned away from it, there were all these warnings. Don't provoke that angel. When they turned away from observing those commandments, it manifested judgment. The choice was theirs. When they failed to do it, they got in trouble. When they did it, they were blessed. Let me show you the other place this has mentioned, Leviticus 25, if you could, Leviticus 25, beginning with verse one. It says, the Lord speaking to Moses in Mount Sinai saying, see God's speaking here. Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, "When you come into the land, which I gave you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord. Six years, thou shall sow thy field and six years thou shall prune thy vineyard and gather the fruit thereof. But in the seventh year, shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, and a Sabbath for the Lord". It's His. "Thou shouldn't neither so thy field nor prune thy vineyard". It kind of reminds me of Joseph with seven years of good, seven years of bad. It's not the exactly same thing, but seven is a significant thing with the Father.
— Boy, it's coming right up to the Jubilee.
— And it is.
— He's headed right for it. "And the Sabbath of the land shall be meat for you, for the land, for your servant, for the maid and for their hired servant, for the stranger that sojourneth with you. And for your cattle and the beasts that are in your land shall increase thereof be meat. And thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years under these seven times seven years, and the space of seven Sabbaths of years shall be under thee 40 and nine years. Then, then the 50th year, thou shall call the trumpet of jubilee, the sound on the 10th day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land, and you shall hallow the 50th year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof. It'll be a jubilee unto you and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man unto his family.
— So every seventh year was a mini Jubilee.
— Yes, but then after seven of those was the big one, the big Jubilee. That's what Jesus spoke about in Nazareth that day.
— Yes, He did.
— Now, when they didn't do it, God kept record of it. As a matter of fact, they would go into captivity for the number of years they didn't let this happen.
— Now that blessed me and surprised me when I found that out.
— It's amazing.
— It all co-relates to those same times. And they came out for those same amount of years, so that they don't be destroyed. Judgment is the mercy of God. He takes you from over here, and you did it wrong, but he has to get you out of this area here, and put you over here, and keep you over here.
— He let the land rest.
— And let the land rest, and then put you back over there on it.
— I had a neighbor say to me just recently, "Why are you always mowing your yard? You are the mowenest guy. The guy who lived here before didn't mow the yard this much". And my answer to him was, I just blurted out, he looked at me like I was crazy. I said, "This is the Lord's yard, and I'm the steward of it". I realized that it belongs to Him. Now people say, "Well, this is for Israel. We're in America. This doesn't apply to us". America was intentionally and specifically founded and formed after the pattern of Israel, by our founding fathers. Let me show you something, and you'll learn something here. They made a covenant with God at Plymouth, our first president made a covenant of God with Him that, "We'll be your people and you'll be our God". We had an Exodus from Europe, they didn't want anything to be with Europe, and ironically ancient Israel, many today want to return back to Europe. They wanted to return all the time, and we still have that today. The Plymouth Colony instituted the Ten Commandments as part of their law of the Plymouth Colony. We named mountains and cities and towns after Israeli places. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, all these different places, we took the names of these places. I've got a graph I want to show you on the screen here. I don't think I have it out here. I don't have it out here. The seal of some of our founding universities of this country.
— Oh, yeah.
— You talked about Yale.
— Yale University has a Hebrew words on their seal, that come from the breastplate of the high priest. Urim vetumim. What's written on their seal is what's written on the high priest's breastplate, Brother Copeland. That was the university of Yale. Columbia University has the sacred name in it. Yud Hei Vav Hei, is on the seal of Columbia University.
— Praise God.
— Dartmouth College is another one, has the name of God Almighty. In Hebrew on Dartmouth College seal, it says, El Shaddai, right on it.
— Now, don't tell me we didn't make covenant like Israel did...
— Praise God.
— ...and we're not under this. So maybe Shmita applies to us as well since we found it ourselves...
— There's no question on that.
— ...on that pattern. I believe that it applies to any Christian, and it applies whether they know it or not, and without any understanding, I don't know why everything is just so bad and so terrible and so bad. Well, it'd be interesting to look up the time and the year in Wuhan, when China developed up that synthetic virus. And I'm not making this up, you can look for it yourself. The Jewish doctor that treated President Trump and just had him turned around...
— In days.
— ...in days. He wanted out of there so bad, because he was healed, and I'm quoting him. He said, "This is a synthetic virus". Meaning, it was designed to do what it does. And I could go into other things like that. Why hadn't anybody doing any autopsies of the lungs? Why has it been so chaotic? Well...
— There you go.
— There you have it. And it was all feeding up towards a Shmita year, and it's time to go away.
— It is time to go away.
— At the end of a Shmita year, deaths are forgiven. At the end of the year, deaths are forgiven. Rabbi Cahn in his research of this, discovered that every major financial collapse or...
— That's huge.
— ...stock market crash in America happened on Shmita year. Now, that's on page five. Yeah, right here on Tuesday.
— I'm going to get that book out and read it again.
— Well, I have it, I'll bring it for you. Every major financial collapse or stock market crash in America occurred during Shmita year. According to his calculations, each of the five major financial collapse that occurred in the last 40 years happened in Shmita. 1973. Well, another thing happened in 1973. Roe v. Wade happened in 1973.
— Yes it did.
— Yes, it is. So '73, 1980, 1987, the year 2000, 2001, 2007, 2008.
— But look at that one.
— The great depression of 1929 also began in a Shmita year as did the major crash of 1937 and '38.
— They all hit on the same year.
— Why? Because there's the judgment that's happening for not keeping it, but it doesn't have to be the judgment on our house.
— That's right.
— We don't have to participate in that when we know what this is and how to.
— No.
— I just missed that because I was born in 1936. So you were right, prior to that.
— Yes. So this judgment happens, because people don't keep that Sabbath.
— Now, that people give President Roosevelt the credit for stopping the depression, he didn't. World War II stopped it.
— World War II did, that's correct.
— And up until 1941, it had not rained in the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma for seven years.
— There you go. There you go. The Dust Bowl.
— And that land rested, because you couldn't farm it anymore. Now listen to how God stopped that. They had just plowed up Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, because it was so fertile up there,
— but they abused it.
— And Congress wouldn't pay any attention to it, until they had a dust storm that just... I don't know that they ever had one before since. They had a sandstorm that turned, that just darkened Washington D.C. And the government decided, "Maybe we better do something about conservation". Well, if they'd have listened to God, they wouldn't have had it in the first place. But they didn't know.
— Absolutely right. So those who are in personal covenant relationship with the Father, with Adonai, through Jesus, our Messiah, you've got nothing to fear.
— That's it.
— But those who get to know the Lord, the coming days are going to be a time of judgment, if we're not careful, and I'm grateful that I'm in that covenant relation. Okay. Tomorrow, if you'll allow me, I'll break the numbers down for you on what this year is, and we'll look at some past years.
— If I will allow you?
— From a biblical perspective.
— I'll run you out of here if you don't.
— And I'll do it there.
— We'll do it. Oh, I can hardly wait, can you? Glory to God. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Well, this has been wonderful. And tomorrow we'll do this, and I want to tell you something. I thank you today. I just get really excited about this kind of thing. It's good. And we'll be back in a few moments.
— Praise God.