Kenneth Copeland - Put Your Trust in God for a Long, Healthy Life
Now, turn with me to Joshua 8, the sixth book in the Bible. Verse 11, "And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up, and drew nigh, and came to the city and pitched on the side of Ai. Now there was a valley between them and Ai". All right. Let's go over to the 29th verse starting with the 25th. "And so it was that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were 12,000, even all the men of Ai". Now, Verse 27, "Only the cattle and the spoil of the city Israel took for a prey unto themselves according unto the Word of the Lord which commanded Joshua. Joshua burnt Ai, made it a heap forever, even a desolation unto this day". Now, listen. "And the king of Ai..." Remember it said it's a valley there.
So there's two mountains on each side. "The king of Ai, he hanged on a tree until eventide". That's the type of Jesus being made a curse for us. "As soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcass down from the tree and cast it into the gate of the city, raise thereon a heap of stones that remaineth until this day". Now, you have it. What was it Paul Harvey used to say? And that is the rest of the story. Amen. The type was done there. The setup. Then the war, the absolute defeat, total defeat of Ai, complete defeat, complete defeat of the curse. When evening came, they hung him on a tree.
Now, we have Galatians 3:13. Redeem from that curse. I want to go to the 90th psalm, but I'm going to do it in the Classic Amplified because there's a footnote there if you'll turn there. In the 90th psalm, a prayer of Moses the man of God. "Lord, you've been our dwelling place and our refuge in all generation". Notice the word refuge. "Before the mountains were brought in," and so forth and so on. Now, come down in... Let me tell you something. Before I read this, let's go to Numbers 14:25. I'm just going to go ahead and read it here in the Classic Amplified.
"Now because the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valley, tomorrow turn and go into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, How long will this evil congregation murmur against me? I have heard the complaints the Israelites murmur against me. Tell them as I live, says the Lord, that what you have said in my hearing, I will do to you". They kept saying, "We're going to die in this desert. It is a land that flows of milk and honey, but it's full of giants and we're going to die. He brought us out here to die. He brought us out here to kill us". Well He's their covenant partner. They kept saying it and they kept saying it. "Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness all of you who were numbered of you from 20 years old and upward who have murmured against me. Surely none shall come into the land which I swore to make you dwell except Caleb and Joshua".
That left Moses out because he disobeyed God. He struck the rock and water came out, but the second time the Lord told him to speak to it. Use your faith to do it this time. So he got in deep trouble over that. Now, we know what happened in the 90th psalm. Turn over there now. "For all our days out here in this wilderness," says Moses, "pass away in your wrath. We spend our years as a tale that's told. For we adults know we are doomed to die soon without reaching Canaan. The days of our years are threescore or seventy years or even by reason of use 80. Yet is there pride in additional years". And people have taken that and I heard Brother Hagin say it over.
God promised us 70 or 80 years, but in the 91st psalm, it says, "Satisfy you know when I'm gone, I'm satisfied". He got hold of it. He heard Keith Moore preach it and he grabbed ahold of it, but it was way down the line and he got satisfied. I have the message. I have the message that he preached right before he went home back to Tulsa, and he was telling people what the plans we have for next year. The plans we have for next year which would have been 2004 and the plans that they had. He wasn't planning this. He went back home and so Jerry Horton always cooked for Kenneth and Oretha. So they went home and he got up and had a big breakfast and he told Jerry, he said, "I want another bowl of those strawberries and cream". She fixed him another bowl of strawberries and cream. He ate that. So then he ate it and looked over at Oretha and smiled and he was gone. He was satisfied.
So immediately Ken Jr. called me, but then he called me back just a day or two later and he said, "Kenneth", he said, "He's gone. He's down there in that hospital, he's gone, but his heart's still beating". Remember that's a supernatural heart. His heart didn't beat right. It'd flip and flop all around his chest and it'd get crazy on him for different things. I said, "Kenneth, I think you and the family need to go down there and turn it off". He said, "I knew that. I just didn't want to do it". So they went down there and began to praise God for his magnificent life and all and just laid hands on that body and spoke to it and said, "Now, you can stop. He's in heaven". And it just turned off. I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, faith works. Bible-based faith and hope works. Glory to God.
And so I did my best to take up where he left off. That's been since 2003. Anyway, so now you can see. You can see that never was... Now, let me read the footnote. "This psalm credited to Moses who's interceding with God to remove the curse which made it necessary for every Israelite over 20 years of age when they rebelled against God at Kadesh-barnea to die before reaching the Promised Land. Moses says most of them were dying at 70 years of age. This number has been mistaken as a set time of life. 70 years has never been the average span of life for humanity". It's not now. As we go and medical science increases like it has, there's a lot of people should have been dead of heart attacks that are walking around.
I have a man that... One of my very best friends, Mack Hammond, pastor up in Minneapolis. Young man was his co-pilot, had a heart attack. So they just wouldn't let him get his medical anymore. Well I also have a very good friend, Dr. William Bush. He was a Naval surgeon, flight surgeon. He learned how to fly in the Navy. Then the Navy put him through medical school and all that so he became a flight surgeon.
Now, I was preaching in a prison for Mike Barber and I got really short of breath. I just finished my job and so over around out there close to Dallas at Lancaster where we landed and we got in the airplane and David Weeter and I were in the airplane and Dwayne was up front in the cockpit. I got in there and sat down and relaxed and the glory of God came in that cockpit. I mean in that cabin and the word of the Lord came to me and He said, "I've given you a new heart. I have given you a new heart". 8:42 in the evening in the month of October in 2018, I think. I said, "I receive it. I have a new heart".
Now, my mother and that side of the family all had heart trouble. That's what finally brought my mother to heaven. So I took it. Well then they examined me and said I needed a pacemaker. I went to the Lord. I said, "I'll just take that by faith". He said, "No, no. You're too far behind the power curve". Now, that's an aviation term. There is a place when you begin to increase the angle of attack on an airplane where it's about to stall and you can get it to a place where there's not enough power to blow it out of that stall. You're going to have to put the nose down and get some speed to get it out. That's the power curve. He said, "Receive the pacemaker by faith". I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ..." Didn't even have one yet. I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, come on, pacemaker".
Well there was afib there and my heart beat will do this and just flop around. The doctors rolled me in and David was standing there. He said, "Look at your heart rate". It's 60 and then it's 70. So they took me up there. I thought it was going to be about that size. Well it is, but the battery is about this big and they had to make a pocket. They didn't put me all the way out. This woman asked me, said, "Do you snore"? I said, "How would I know"? I said, "No, I don't snore". She laughed.
See, I've already got this thing. So what? They made this pocket for this thing and I thought, "Dear Lord". That thing is not any small thing. He said, "Oh Mister Copeland..." I don't know what they were shooting me with, brother, but I'm telling you it was instantaneous. They rolled me back in there and he said, "Now, look at your heart rate". Boom, boom, boom. Well I got a job to do now. And they had a defibrillator in this thing. I set it off a couple times. I got on that treadmill and boom. I did just what you're doing. I started laughing. I said, "Oh". Got on that treadmill and went to work with my new heart. They did a test. I did not need a stent. I had one blocked artery and it had bypassed itself. Went to work, got on that treadmill.
Now, the Bruce protocol is an aviation thing and you have to pass this thing. It's nine minutes. Well before I took it, I was working out with the Bruce protocol. Passed it, got my physical back, I'm flying. Never did quit. I passed it with the defibrillator in there operative. And it didn't set it off. Now, I took the thing by faith. So the tech rep came out and paired up with this thing and turned the defibrillator off and I have record of that and it went to the FAA. That's what they were worried about, that defibrillator. That thing went off right before a landing or something, but I don't know how afraid they think I'd have to be right before I land for it to cause that thing to go off.
Anyway, my point is I took it by faith and then the corresponding action. I didn't just give up and just go sit down and wait for my heart to kill me. So I'm flying again and my heartbeat right now is 80. I wear a Fitbit. Do you wear a Fitbit? That's kind of cool, isn't it? Oh, yeah. I get on the treadmill and that thing, boom, boom, boom, boom. It counts my steps. The way I work out, I get on the treadmill for 30 minutes and I'll do 3600, 3800 steps in 30 minutes. On times when I can work out all week long, then I can come up with 45,000, 50,000 steps for a week. Now when I'm out here like this, I don't get a chance to do that, but I am so well. I am so healed.
We'll see corresponding action here in a moment, but I wanted you to see that. Now, Moses went through saying that. So let's go to Genesis 6:3. Moses said all that. This is first mention, what is called in the Bible first mention. "It shall come to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them, sons of God saw that the daughters of men and they were fair", and da da da. The third verse, "And the Lord said 'My spirit shall not always strive with man for that he is also flesh.'" Now, the New Living said, "He is only flesh". He wasn't born again then, couldn't be anything but just flesh. "Yet his days shall be 120 years".
Medical science even says the human body should last 120 years if it wasn't for sickness and disease. But that's Bible. So now, we fast forward. Everything that has anything to say about long life from there is based on 120 years. Now, you know why God gave them food laws. They didn't know how to eat. They came out of Egypt. They didn't know how to eat. The stuff they eat would kill you. So it was called kosher and those foods and the letter that the apostle wrote to Timothy, there's a bad comma.
Anyway, I don't have time to tell you, maybe before we get through, about nothing to be refused if received by thanksgiving and prayer. There's no commas in Greek. It's a totally different, have you ever seen it? The Greek alphabet? There are no letters there. To us, they're symbols. Alpha, omega, the beginning and the end. That's the Greek alphabet. That's the way. And Jesus said, "I am the alpha and the omega". There's so many letters in that alphabet, but it doesn't have words and commas and punctuation like our languages do. So there's mistakes because of that, but just know this. There's certain foods that if you continue to eat them all the time, you will begin to have physical problems. Over 98% of chronic diseases in the United States are self-induced. Amen.
Now, Moses, here's the way he followed it. If a writer writes a psalm and the next one doesn't have a writer, then they attribute that to the next one. So let's turn to the 91st psalm. Remember, he talked about refuge and here in the King James, "The Lord has been our dwelling place in all generations," and so forth and so on. Now, come over here. He wrote this one. Now, he's talking about our lives are being cut off. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He shall abide under the shadow of Shaddai".
The God who is more than enough. He just got through telling them, "You're going to die, all of you, but He's the God that's more than enough. Don't worry about it". It didn't say they went to hell. They just died early because they didn't know how to talk as covenant people. So now, he's beginning to give them the answer. Now, here's what Moses has learned. You need to say it. He learned that at the rock of water. You need to say this. There are three people in here. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, He is my fortress, He is my God. In him will I trust. Surely He will deliver you. Surely.