Kenneth Copeland - Carriers of His Name
— Welcome everybody to the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. This is Tuesday's edition, and this is Dr. Melvin G. Barney, Esq. He has written a book that is, well, dynamite. There's so many things in here, Melvin. Talk about yourself, give us your testimony. Well, you've already told us yesterday where you were born, but your family and particularly your grandmother.
— My grandmother.
— And how you dreamed of being a lawyer, how you became so, and how you went to the right seminary. Just tell us about all of that.
— Absolutely. Well, like so many, my testimony is not anything that's ultra powerful, there's no dynamic changes that occurred in my life. I grew up in church. My mother drug me to church every time the doors were open.
— So you had an early drug problem, like I did.
— I had an early drug problem. My earliest memories were in church.
— Yeah, mine too.
— I was sitting on the pews playing with my toys while my mother was singing in the choir, that's the way I grew up. From my early, my earliest experiences, I became connected with the Lord and I developed a love for the Lord. But as I got older and I began to explore things, I wanted to be a lawyer. I received testimonies or I would receive prophecies throughout my early childhood, "You're going to be a preacher, you're going to be a preacher, you're going to be a preacher". I was like, "No, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a lawyer". So I ran from that calling for years and I went on then and pursued my law degree.
— Where'd you go to school for law?
— I went to school at UCLA School of Law. Yes, Bruins. I went to UCLA and I did get that law degree and I was heading in the direction that I wanted to go, and I loved God and I wanted to serve God, but I wanted to do so on my own terms. I think some other people can identify with that where...
— Yeah, may I confess?
— And I wanted to bargain with God, "Lord, can I just do this? I don't want to do that, but how about if I do this"? And I tried to bargain with God. But the gift and calling of God are without repentance. He won't let you go. So I found myself one day I was listening to the radio and I started listening to Christian broadcasting on the radio because this was part of my way of trying to bargain with God. "I'll grow closer to you. I'll study your Word. I'll get closer to you that way". But I still wanted to do my own thing. And this is how I got connected with Kenneth Copeland Ministries and listening to Kenneth on the radio.
— On the radio?
— On the radio.
— That's a long time ago.
— That was a long time ago. I would listen to those radio broadcasts every day. I would listen to you and I'd listen to Brother Hagin and I'd listen to Fred Price and just all of faith dynamic teachers. So this was my way of bargaining with God. And I went on to pursue my legal career, but God never let go of that. He never let me go with respect to the calling to ministry. I can remember as I fast forward, there was a period of time where I yielded to God and God let me know by introducing me to certain other individuals that you can be a professional and be a minister. Because one of the reasons why it was difficult for me to accept the calling is because in my early childhood, I didn't see that you could do both. It seemed like if you were a pastor, you had to carry yourself in a certain way and you had to look a certain way and you had to talk a certain way. None of which were appealing to me. So as I grew older and God introduced me to others who were models for me that you can be a man of God and you can be charismatic, you can be a man of God and you can be professional, you can carry yourself in a certain way, then it became more appealing to me. And that's when I said, "Okay, Lord, go ahead and have your way". At some point I'd realized I'm listening to people such as Kenneth Copeland and they're developing my hunger and thirst for the Word. I grew up in church and it was a ceremonial experience, but there was no hunger and thirsting for the Word of God. And so getting connected with your ministry and people such as yours, I got hungry for the Word. And one day, I don't know, I guess I was watching television and I heard an advertisement. I think it was on the Believer's Voice of Victory about ministry, school of ministry. And at that time you had a track at the United Theological Seminary.
— Yes, sir.
— And it was this Kenneth Copeland scholars. And so I said, "Okay, well, Lord, I want to go to seminary. And I want to go be a Kenneth Copeland scholar". And so that's where I applied, I got in, got connected, and this is how the research actually started for this book.
— Praise God, man. Well now to parallel that, my desire was to fly all my life. That was what I wanted to do. Well, then I wound up attempting to... Well, did. Got in the airplane business as a salesman. And that led me around kind of this way. And I wound up meeting Gloria Jean Neece and changed my history forever.
— Forever.
— But then I learned and the Word of the Lord came to me. He said, "I'm the one that called and anointed you to fly". And he said, "Now you fly for me". So now that's the two parallels there. That was my desire, and I tried to hang onto it and tried to hang onto it I didn't want to go back to school and all that. And I told Gloria, I said, "I don't know how to do anything but fly". But you have to go over faith.
— Yeah.
— And so I registered there at Oral Roberts University, and the Lord directed me to go to the sixth floor. So I just went up there and of course I'd just turned 30 years old, so I didn't look like a student. I wasn't supposed to be on that sixth floor. I just said that, "I'm a commercially rated pilot and I know this ministry uses airplanes and I need all the help I can get. Thank you very much". And then Ruth Roach, because I didn't know who she was then said, "Tell that to Dr. Messing". And he just grunted at me. So I turned around and Oral Roberts was standing right behind me. Now this is very important. He said, "Two weeks ago, I started to hire a new co-pilot and the Lord said, 'No, I have a student coming that's supposed to have the job.'"
— Steps of a good man.
— Well, that was God designed me to fly. And I learned how to fly from really good people and all that. I was fully qualified, standing right there in front of them, and it opened up a relationship with a man of God that lasted. I'm talking about an intimate relationship with that man.
— Praise God.
— Even after my dad went on and went to heaven, my mom, but he is my spiritual father. He fathered me and I saw and learned from him. You can see the plan of God was born into you. And the plan of God was born into me.
— Praise God.
— It's there all the time because it was established before the foundation of the world.
— Hallelujah. Glory to God.
— I have a picture of Gloria Jean when she was probably four and a picture of me when I was about the same age on my nightstand.
— Wow.
— And all of that, the flying and everything else, was designed so that I could meet her.
— Praise God.
— Because her unconditional love changed my life forever.
— Praise God. Powerful.
— So it's important to realize that we were created to be conformed to the image of Jesus, and that image was developed before the foundation of the world. And that's the reason abortion is such a horrible crime. You're cutting off those callings. Cutting. How many George Washington Carvers do you suppose have been killed? How many Booker T. Washingtons? How many Bill Winstons? Glory to God. How many Melvin Barneys?
— My Lord.
— 65 million. America's Holocaust. And there's a lot of problems in this country today because of it.
— Yes.
— And you can tell, you can always tell by people's reaction. And I remind you, and I remind the studio audience, the love of money is the root of all evil.
— Yes.
— And now that this thing's about to be stopped, because it never has been legal, 65 million children and it never has been legal. Never. A Supreme Court justice did this. They're legislated from the bench. And all of that is vitally, supernaturally important because it's not just United States. When the United States got away with it, there's so many just following suit. And it's something like the second biggest reason for death in the world.
— Wow.
— Murdering babies.
— Wow. Unbelievable.
— And you see the response, people are just going wild and mad for the right to kill their children. And you can find all that in the book. But I want to say this and then we'll go ahead here, Melvin. This country is being reset. And when you've had something a long, long time, you've had cancer a long, long, long, long, long, long time, then the surgery's painful.
— Yeah, yeah.
— "Well, you know what'll happen if they move the embassy of the United States to Jerusalem, it'll start World War III". It didn't start anything. But they changed the name of the street to Donald Trump Avenue. Amen.
— Amen.
— So we're about to have some serious surgery on this country. The economy's being changed back like it should be. But you have to go through these things and don't blame the people. It's demonic backed murder.
— Yeah.
— Amen.
— Amen.
— Now I've done all your preaching I'm going to do. You might just rear back and preach on this things, Dr. Melvin. And that calling as an attorney, sometime this week, see this green tab in the book?
— Yes, sir.
— That is talking about the power of attorney. Now I have talked about it in times past, but I want to hear what the power of attorney is from an attorney. We'll do that sometime this week. But you just be led to the Lord once I shut up and take us back in here.
— So when you talk about how God hands you on parallel tracks. And in my case, my desire was law school and my focus was law school and to become an attorney. And there was an obvious calling of God on my life. And of course I couldn't see how those things could work together. But now when I look back and I see my approach to ministry and to teaching and to studying the Word of God, what I gained from law school and what I've gained from being an attorney, I'm able to use it, those skills and apply those skills in ministry. And it's funny because one of the gentlemen from my church has indicated, he says, "We can see you as an attorney who's making his case for the Word of God".
— Making his case, yes.
— And that's my approach to ministry. But getting back to the book, so that scripture that we're using as the foundation, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain". After having dissected and gained an understanding of what that Hebrew word, which is translated take, means. And again, it means to carry or to bear or to transport. The next part of that passage, the scripture says, "In vain. Don't do so in vain". So the process, and this is the way my mind thinks, "Well, what does he mean by in vain? Well, obviously he doesn't mean vanity in the sense of someone's arrogance or conceit.
— No.
— So looking at the Hebrew word that's translated in vain, he's talking about worthlessly, to no avail. So when we put it all together, he's telling us, "Do not carry, bear, lift the name of the Lord your God to no avail. Don't carry the name of God in a worthless manner". So in other words, what is that telling us? To not do so in a manner that won't get us results. Well, what are the results that God wants us to get? What he promised in his Word. And so he's given us, the people of God, the authority, the authorization, the charge, the command, the instruction to carry his name and to do so in a way that will get results, that will cause the will of God to come to pass, that will cause the manifestation of things in our lives that God has promised us. We, as the people of God, are given that responsibility to use his name in such a way that it will cause his will to come to pass. And his name is the means by which we are to do that.
— Say that again. To cause his will.
— To cause his will to come to pass.
— Yes. Amen.
— And so he tells us, "You shall not..". We're carrying the name of the Lord our God. But if we're not utilizing it as we should be in order to cause his will to come to pass, when we're facing tragedy, when we're facing... We talk about the assaults and the attacks of the devil. And instead of using his name to combat those things, we're whining, "Oh, this is happening to me. Saints, pray for me because I'm going through this". And so on and so forth. And God is frustrated with us because he says we have in the name of the Lord, but we're carrying it in vain. And I talk about in the book how it's like having an umbrella.
— That's good. I enjoyed that too. Yes, yes.
— I'm in Texas now, and I don't know what your seasons are here. I know you guys got a lot of rain here. We don't get this rain like this in California. But when it's raining cats and dogs outside, crazy storm going on, and you have an umbrella in your hand, you have to go from one place to another and you have an umbrella in your hand, but you go out into the elements and you don't use your umbrella.
— You don't open it.
— You don't open it.
— That really impressed me in the book.
— You arrived to your destination, you are wet, you are drenched, you are suffering from the elements, and you had an umbrella all the time that you should have been using in order to protect you from those elements.
— Yes. Yes. You would've been in the tower.
— Exactly.
— Yes.
— And so you've carried that umbrella in vain.
— Oh, that's good, isn't it? That put vain in its proper perspective. That is really good, man.
— And that's what we're charged to do with the Word of God, not to carry his name in vain. Instead of us whining and crying about things that the devil is doing in our lives, our charge is to use the name of the Lord in a way that will bring the devil into subjection, that will cause us to walk in our victory. That will cause us to walk in the way that he walked. "The works that I do shall you do also and greater than these shall you do".
— Now that reminds me of something here. I want to say this, because we'll go back to 17 chapter of Genesis. Let's look in the book of Ephesians, the third chapter.
— Okay.
— And by the Spirit of God, the Apostle Paul said this about the name in this third chapter, and let's look in the 13th verse. "Wherefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory. For this cause, I bow my knees under the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named".
— Yes. Glory.
— The whole family's named. All of us. Every born again child of God.
— Glory to God.
— But how many billions of them do you think that they have no idea, never heard a message like this, have no idea of what kind of power is really in the name that they bear. Well, look what he said, "That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man that Christ or his anointing may dwell in your heart by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ who passes all knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us". Because of the name
— Because of the name.
— Hallelujah.
— Glory to God.
— So we're in the name.
— I'd just gone to bed, this is years ago, I wasn't all that sleepy and I was just laying there praying in the Spirit. Gloria was already asleep. And I just said, "Lord, teach me the name". And Melvin, I'm telling you, the glory of God flooded my inner being with that name. And I looked up sleep scriptures. Names really do fascinate me. Well, wonder where sound asleep came from. I don't know. Where does fast asleep come from? I don't know. I guess Google probably knows, but anyway. I said, well in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I'm sound asleep right now. I'm sound asleep by faith. Get up in the middle of the night, well, glory to God, I'm still sound asleep because of the name.
— Because of the name.
— In that name, I'm asleep. And since a little boy, I always had trouble sleeping. And by faith, I changed my sleep patterns. All my life, my days and nights went upside down. I was always more alert from, oh, 11:00 to 12:00, 1:00. And that's the time of day that I'd study and be alert. But then I'm worthless until about 11 o'clock in the morning. So I had to shift that around. And it changed my sleep patterns and it was always difficult for me to do it. And we're out of time. No, we're not. We got tomorrow and the next day.
— Amen. Amen.
— We'll be back in just a moment.