Kenneth Copeland - Words Are Spiritual Containers
— Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland, and this is the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. And again, today, we have this guy. This has become a pretty regular thing, and it's ordained of the Lord, in the very beginning. Professor Greg Stephens, First Covenant professor at Kenneth Copeland Bible College. And at the time that we're recording this, it was just a few days ago, that school started.
— Just started up.
— Just started up. And a lot of exciting people in there.
— It is very exciting. It's an honor.
— Yes, it is.
— When I saw you this morning, I mentioned, what an honor it is to teach your disciples. And that's the way I look at them.
— Wow.
— They are disciples that will carry the anointing of this Word of Faith message.
— Yes. Amen.
— To the outermost parts of the world.
— Yeah. Oh, glory to God.
— It's our responsibility.
— Thank You, Lord. Father, we do thank You today, and we praise You, and worship You. For without You, there wouldn't even be people. Glory to God. And we praise You and thank You in the name that's above every name, the name of Jesus. Amen.
— Amen.
— Just before Southwest Believers' Convention, in studying for that convention, the Lord dropped this in my heart. Just, uh, and it was there. Words are spiritual containers. Now I don't care in what language, what part of the world, whether people know it or not. Their words are spiritual containers.
— Yes sir.
— Words can contain faith. We know that faith-filled words dominate the laws of sin and death, when you engage your faith. So how do you do that? Well, you go to this book. We do have this wonderful book.
— We do.
— You go to this book, and you take these words, and you put them in your heart, you put them in your mind, and then you speak them. The Cessna Citation X, magnificent autopilot. Oh. There's just a little button right up there that says, AP. But, it's my choice to engage it. I could sit there through storms, turbulence, and fight that thing, or relax and let that autopilot take over that airplane. Now, I still have to manage it, because it'll fly me right straight into a thunderstorm if I don't tell it what to do.
— Right.
— So you have to engage your faith. Now, open your Bibles with me. These will be what Brother Hagin used to call his golden tale and text. These would be our golden text. First, then John 6:63. Notice what he said. It is the Spirit that quickens or makes alive. The flesh profits nothing. Now look, the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life. My words are Spirit and they are life. Now, we go to the book of Matthew. I remember someone saying, this wasn't all that long ago. "I just can't support the Word of Faith any longer". And the person he was talking to, it was him. He was talking to his employer. He said, "Why"? He said, "I just don't think it matters all that much what you say". Let's just see. Because Jesus said it matters.
— So in Matthew's gospel, in chapter 12, verse 32, "Whosoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world or the world to come". So you going to tell me, it doesn't matter what you say? Either make the tree good and the fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt. For the tree is known by its fruit. You generation of vipers. How can you be evil? Speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. That was what was in that young man's heart, in abundance. But he's a very immature Christian. I know him well, and just a lovely young man, but it's such a... And he's not the only one. He's just the latest one.
— Right.
— That has said that to me, or said it to Gloria. Now listen to this. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure, the heart bringeth forth good things. An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words, thou shalt be justified. And by thy words, thou shalt be condemned. And by your words, you got born again.
— That's right. The Spirit spoke words. God's Spirit spoke words to create everything. That started the pattern. And that's the way the pattern works now. He's talking about a man, out of his heart, out of his spirit man, what he's saying matters to God.
— What he has put in there, and put in there, and put in there, and put in there, and put in there, until it just automatically comes out.
— Right. It's like squeezing the toothpaste tube. Whatever's in there is coming out.
— That's what's coming out.
— When the squeeze comes on.
— Now, Greg, I want to mention this before we go any further, because this is so important. Music has the ability to bypass your mind and get into your spirit. Particularly, if you listen to the same song over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. And you can be there doing something, and it's playing in the background, and you find your... well, and yeah, I'm doing what? But you're keeping time. The Lord warned me about that many, many, many years ago, and he said, "Don't sing anything you wouldn't preach". So I have to be careful about certain thunk songs. Now, the song, when he was on the cross, magnificent song. Except one line, I'm not worthy. I can't sing that, because I'm a new creature.
— That's right.
— And God didn't make any unworthy new creatures.
— No. He said you're worthy.
— So before I recorded, and I was looking at that, and I said, and the Lord dropped it in my heart. No one's worthy. Now that said it.
— That said it.
— But you have to be very, very, very careful. And if you don't, you sing something, and sing it, and sing it, and sing it, until you get it down into your spirit. And some people even get the idea that it's in the Bible, when it isn't.
— This is why the Jewish people, the rabbis, they sing the Scripture.
— Yes, they do.
— They sing the Old Testament.
— He's called a cantor.
— Yes. And the reason they sing it is because it bypasses.
— Yeah. I mean, Hebrew, that just simply means singer.
— That's it.
— He's a singer of the Scripture.
— And that's what they do. They'll get up and they will literally sing Scripture, or read it, or sing it. And they do that because, exactly what you said, it goes directly... This is why David sang so much of the Psalms.
— The largest book in this book is a song book.
— That's right.
— The Psalms.
— Well, you'll even see it written in there, to the worship leader, to the director.
— Yes. And that last Passover meal, the last thing they did was sing.
— That's right.
— I've often wondered, not now. No question about Jesus' voice. I want to hear Him sing. But it makes me wonder what kind of voice Peter had. And it'd be booming. I expect John was a singer.
— Oh yeah, yeah. I don't doubt that at all. The love revelation he had in him, which would've tied to that.
— And I wondered many times what they sang. And how they sang it, and what it sounded like. It was a very moving moment in their lives.
— They sang the ascent songs at that, the praise songs, for the Lord is good and His mercy endureth forever. They begin to sing those. That's on the way to the garden.
— Yes it is. They really didn't know what was going to happen.
— No.
— They knew that something was afoot, but the last thing they did was sing. That good?
— Amen.
— And how do we begin our services? By singing. And here again. There was one particular church that I went to, and it seemed like this man would sing this for my benefit, "Spare me nothing that you bore for me on the cross, that I might be closer to you". He's not qualified. Spare me nothing that you... So, and sure enough, I went back to that church, and he got up and he sang it. And I got up and interrupted him. I said, "Go sit down". He looked at me. Then I used a term from Brother Hagin. That song is embalmed with unbelief. Just go sit down right now. So he went and sat down, and afterwards, the pastor told him, and told me, he said, "I have told him not to sing that song. I've told him over and over". He said, "Maybe this'll fix it".
— Amen. I had somebody ask me, you were mentioning about Southwest a few months back. It was wonderful this year. It was wonderful. Somebody said, "What are you studying, professor"? And I said, "I'm studying words are containers". And they looked at me with the most puzzled look, "Why are you studying that"? I said, "Because my rabbi or the Copeland's teaching on that, that's what I study". Whatever you're teaching on is what I began to study. Because anointing is taught and it's caught.
— Yes it is.
— And so, when I present the news every day, what an honor it is to do that.
— It's VICTORY News. And it's the only news network, that I know anything about, that they close in prayer. After hearing all that bad news there then to pray.
— Well, we always do a good news story and we pray. And we've been known to pray in the middle of the news too.
— Yes.
— Just when you get the unction, we'll just do it. I've become aware of something. Enemies of America, the enemies of righteousness. Maybe that's the better word, instead of the enemies of America. They have one thing in common. They begin by changing words and definitions of a thing.
— Isn't that good?
— That's what they do. Because words are containers.
— They are just recently trying to change history, in the history books in the state of Texas.
— That's right. That's right.
— You can't change history. It happened.
— The good, the bad, and the ugly, all of it.
— That's the reason this book tells it all. It doesn't attempt to soft pedal anything, but it's full of the goodness of God.
— Now here's where we got to be careful with that. We get accustomed to a word, or to a message, and we hear it and we think, "Well, I've heard that before". You've probably heard, I've heard Brother Copeland teach on that. I've heard that story before. It's dangerous. I pastored in San Diego for many years, and I recognize Spanish. The minute I hear it, that's Spanish. When I see it, that's Spanish. I don't know what they're saying, but I know it when I hear it. I can be at a prayer line and see people praying and then, oh, that's speaking in tongues. Oh, that's speaking in tongues. I know it when I see it, when I recognize it. There's so many believers though, Brother Copeland, it's so sad. And I think, this goes to the vision you had of the big heads. They've gone to conventions for years. They've gone to meetings for years. They recognize the terms, but they've never received the working revelation of what they heard.
— That's right.
— That words are container. Satan always attacks words. So and so is the Word. He always immediately comes to get the Word that was sown, and then he will attack the image of something. That's his path of deception. That's how he operates, how it works. So when God spoke to the Earth at the very beginning, his DNA went in the Earth. This is how I know the Earth's not going to be destroyed by us. It'll only be destroyed by him. He did it the first time with the flood, sent a covenant seal of the rainbow, that I'll never do that again in that manner. But in the end he will. So I want to read you an Aramaic translation, not a Hebrew translation or an Arabic, an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bibles called the Targum. And in Genesis 1:3, the Lord said, "Let there be light. And there was light". According to the Targum, here's what it says. The Aramaic translation. The word, Memra, of the Lord said, "Let there be light". Now listen to this. "And there was light according to the decree of his Word".
— Yes.
— So it was the Word that made that happen. And this is why he watches over his Word to perform.
— Oh yes.
— And now, if we're His disciples, if we're like Christ, then we need to be watching over our words to perform it, because they are a spiritual container. So when God changed the name of Abram or Abram to Abraham, he put that H in there, which is the hay from even the word Hashem. Hashem literally means, the name. It's not a name like Mike or Greg. It's the name. So when they say Hashem, they're literally saying, the name. It's that name that's so holy that we don't even know how to say that name. That's the holiness of what He put inside of that covenant man, that friend of His, Abraham. So when you look at the names, and I don't think we've done a really good job, no condemnation on anyone. If you named your kid, doorknob, I'm sorry. But people just come up with names, nowadays. I saw in the news the other day, a lady named her child after Covid. Now Brother Hagin said, "That's ignorance's gone to seed".
— It is worse than that.
— So she named her child after a bacteria. Because he was born around that time, and historically. I don't know why she did that. It makes no sense to me. But names have meaning. So what if I told you, the very first place I see the plan of salvation is in people's names in the Bible. Adam is man. Seth, his name. See, Eve thought that Abel was going to be the deliverer. She didn't know it would be thousands of years later. And then when Cain killed him, God gave another son, Seth. And she named his name as appointed. And so God appointed. So she changed her faith from being in this person to no, this is a now appointed. This will be the appointed seed. So Adam means man, Seth means appointed. Enosh is his son, and it means mortal or frail. Kenan is his son. His name means sorrow. Mahalalel means blessed. It has L in there, God. So it'd be blessed God. I'm giving you all the definitions of the first few people in the Bible. Jared means he'll come down, shall come down. Enoch is a teacher, means teaching. Methuselah. Now, there was a prophecy about him that when he dies would be the judgment. So Methuselah, his name shall bring, is what it means. His name shall bring the judgment. Lamech means despairing. And then Noah brings a relief or comfort. So when you put all of their names together, what's in a name? Here's their names. The definitions. Man appointed mortal sorrow. The blessed God shall come down teaching. His death shall bring the despairing relief or comfort. There's the plan of salvation. And the first, however, eight many, eight guys in their names, in the meaning of their names. Now tell me if words don't matter.
— Well.
— That can't be done.
— In naming a child, I've noticed, you have to be aware of possible nicknames.
— Yes.
— Now, there's no telling what they'll call that boy. They'll probably call him flu. Something.
— They'll be always be speaking death over him.
— Over him all the time.
— I mean, it's child abuse.
— So names are extremely important. So that now, I learned a lot from my grandfather on my mother's side. When he came up, of course he's Indian, so he didn't have a name. Everybody just called him Chum. He was Chum Owens. Well even he had to sign up for the draft in World War I. And the guy was writing down and said, "What's your name"? He said, "Chum Owens". "No, I don't need your nickname. What's your name"? "W.E. Owens". "Well, what does the W.E. stand for"? "William Elmer". He named himself after two men that he had very high respect for.
— There you go. There you go.
— He named himself. He had the privilege of choosing his own name. So he named himself after two men that he had very high respect for, William Elmer Owens. W.E. Owens.
— It's not too late to change your identity.
— Well, that's right.
— Because Jesus changed my identity.
— Yeah. That one is true. That little boy gets old enough, he ought to change his name to penicillin, or something.
— Yeah, he probably will. I don't know where that came from.
— Well, it's better than... is better than flu. Flu or whatever. Yeah. Pestilence, you know?
— But thank God that he gave him a name exalted above every name, and that I am named in his name.
— Oh my. Yes.
— That's my identity now.
— Yes. Praise God.
— And I have to meditate on that, because the words are containers.
— Praise God. In our coming. Well, we're out of time. How did you do that?
— I talk too much.
— Okay, well, all right. We'll be back in just a few moments.