Kenneth Copeland - Why Were the Prophets of God Significant?
Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. And this is what... students, that's what it is. I'm just kidding around with you. We're in class Monday morning here at KCBC which is Kenneth Copeland Bible College, which still is amazing to me. But anyway that's what it is. And so we're going to be talking about some things that will help you as you study and see why things happened the way they do, because things happen in the Spirit world before anything happens in the natural world. And as you study spiritual background, then you can see the mind and heart of God and where it all fits in concerning Jesus. And we're going to be talking today about Jesus and the prophets.
Now Jesus ministered as a prophet. He said that himself. He said a prophet has no honor save in his own hometown. In other words, they don't care about me at home. Well, when you realize that Nazareth never did have over, but about 120 to 150 people in it. I mean, everybody there knew him. They knew him from the time he was a little boy. And the short version is, who does he think he is? He knew who he was, is who they thought he was that messed things up. So in the 14th chapter of the book of Luke and... no the 13th chapter, excuse me. We'll begin reading here.
Well, hang on a second... yes. In the 31st verse. "The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart for here: for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem", good place to underline something, "that a prophet I must walk to day and to morrow and the day following for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not"!
What's happening? Why the prophets? Now everything... all of it. There are three people involved. Well, God and Jesus as one, the prophet and the devil. God's not killing the prophets. And Jesus is lamenting over the fact that this bunch has been killing prophets all these years. Why? Why is the devil so after the prophets? Well, let's go back to the beginning and we'll see. And come back to... in the third chapter of Genesis, the ninth verse, "The Lord God called under Adam and said unto him, Where are you? Or why are you where you are? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself".
Now faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Fear comes by hearing and hearing by the words and the lies of the devil. So faith runs to God and fear runs from him in shame. Unless you know better than that. Let's get back over to where I was. All right, now notice something here. "And he said, 'Who told you you were naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? The woman whom you gave me". You did this. He blamed it on God. He really didn't blame it on her. He blamed it on God. And the Lord said and the woman said, "The serpent did it".
Gloria's little brother Stanley, when he was just a little guy, we were there in Center Point, Gloria's grandmother and granddaddy's home and we smell some smoke. Stanley!... Everybody just hollered at Stanley if anything was missing. And so he was in there in the bedroom, but he's... But the mattress was on fire up underneath it. Well there's no reason to even ask Stanley if he did it. But somebody did, Stanley did you do that? Well, who did? Blame it on somebody, certainly not me. There is a huge life lesson right here. Nobody would face up to the blame of it. Why? Because of fear and shame. Nobody sinned and died until Adam sinned and died and the devil lied to him through that snake. "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and thou shalt bruise his heel".
So the devil, the war was on. So anybody that looked like a prophet, this may be the one... kill him. Kill Elijah, Jezebel, I'm gonna kill him. Well, no it wasn't Jezebel. It was the devil behind her. In my opinion, if there was a demon possessed woman, that was it. Now after she was gone, her mamby pamby husband cried out for forgiveness, and he got it. So not anyone interested in killing any of them. But the devil is after everybody that even looked like. Even looked like this may be the one. This could be the one. So figure out some way to kill them, the only reason he didn't get a Elisha is because well he ran out on them, he left here but it's not going to be all that long from now. The devil is going to get a shot at him and Enoch. Amen. Those two men are still natural men living in the presence of God, but they're just like everybody else. I mean, they have to eat for nourishment because they still have a natural body. But Moses with a natural body was in the presence of God and didn't eat or drink for six weeks, 40 days, because God's presence was his food and his sustenance and his faith sustained him. Amen.
Now we come down to a situation where faith becomes involved in this. We follow those. If you just go back and study it, and follow the prophets. Amen. And the anointing's involved and the power of the anointing and the gifts of the Spirit that operated in their lives. And when they were about to bury a young man, because the Midianites were coming over the hill, they didn't have time to properly take care of it. So what did they do... there was enough anointing in his bones to raise him from the dead, talk about a prayer cloth, enough anointing, the residue of anointing in that prophet's bones was enough to raise that young man from the dead. So as you study the prophets and all and find all of the different ministries, the prophet, the apostle the prophet, pastor, teacher, all of them, all of them are here in this first covenant. They have to be because this whole book is about Jesus. That's the reason it's Holy Bible. Sometime just look up the definition of the word Bible, and it is a collection of facts and so forth about any one subject.
Now, the only one that I've ever seen or read was the Shooter's Bible. Well, there is nothing holy about it, but I'm telling you, you've never seen... There's so many facts in that that it is absolutely boring unless you're going in the gun business or something. Unless you're just really so thrilled with ballistics, you can hardly stand it without it. But then there are other books that could be called that, for instance, that if I were to hold the AFM, which is the Aircraft Manufacturers Manual and everything in there is written by the manufacturer of the airplane, or you could get a book concerning all the cars that General Motors ever built. All of the facts, all the figures about them. And we were in class, first class on a particular airplane one time. And Flight Safety, which is the training organization.
And they held up the flight training manual, which was from Flight Safety. And they said, now this is your flight training manual. But if there are any questions here, we go back to the AFM because they built the airplane and I thought I wish preachers had that much sense. Go back to the manufacturer's handbook. Not what your school guide said. And it's first in this place. I heard the Lord say this about 2023, in 2023 it is an absolute must for you and for me to put God's Word first place in our lives. What does that mean... final authority. This is absolute authority, God is never wrong. I wrote this right in the front of this Bible. Always stay on the God side of everything. He was right the first time. Amen.
And I'll give you an example of that, we have enough time left. I was in the 13th chapter of Romans, and we had, Gloria and I had come from Tulsa to preach at Grace Temple Church. And of course, we stayed there with my mother and dad and I was back there and what had been my bedroom when I was in high school. And I was preaching on the book of Romans. "Every soul shall be subject unto the higher power, for there is no power but of God, the powers that be ordained of God". And I just reading down here and reading on down here, "Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom is due; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man any thing, but to love"... What? "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another:" Huh? Gloria! I looked in my Amplified and said, "Stay out of debt".
Well, you can't build it on that one verse of scripture. I know that, I knew that then. I'm talking about final authority. She came in there and I read that to her. Well you know what I was thinking I mean, there went the company airplane and she's thinking there went to house. She looked at that. She said well, if that's what the book says, that's what we're going to do. And out the door she went. That's final authority. Now we had to learn how. Well, now the same day, I really needed because of tapes ability, a large Ampex tape recorder that would run at 15 inches a second on the tape and so forth.
And I knew a man very well in Louisiana that they carried those. So and then I called him that afternoon and he's, "Yeah I have one in stock, I'll just ship it to you". And I said, "How much in there..." It was $375 or whatever it was? He said, "I'll just put a note in there and you can sign it and pay me whenever". I said, "Yeah, that's fine". And I thought what in the world have I done. Well it's too late to fool with it. So I asked my dad, I said, "Dad I have a package coming in on Trailway bus and just go on and leave service and would you pick it up for me".
So he did and then I just forgot about it, went ahead and preached on what I intended to preach the first place. And so my whole idea was, I get this thing, I'm just going to turn it around and ship it back until I have the money. Well, anyway, that all worked together and got back, got home with it. And I said well... and my dad says, "Oh listen there's something here, there's a check here that woman handed me on the way out of church and said it was for you. It paid for that recorder. I thought, whew...", and the Lord said, "I was way ahead of you, don't do that anymore". Praise God, don't do that anymore. I said, "Yes, sir," but we had a strong learning curve that we had to get into.
And as the Lord leads, we'll get in to some of those things as we're talking because the insight that we must see, nothing happens in the natural world but what it's already happened in the Spirit. And then why? Why did it happen is more important in some cases than when it happened. But all of that is very important because we are sojourning in this book. Amen. And we praise God for the opportunity. Don't you? Don't you praise God for the opportunity to do this and have one another to talk to. Oh I tell you I think about the times when I was at ORU. What a thrill that would have been to have had someone that we could discuss these things on this kind of level. Of course that's what happened at Rhema because of all the things that Brother Hagin learned.
Well, Gloria and I learned it from him on tape. And so the first graduating Rhema class is an interesting story. There were this young man named George Pearsons and Terri Copeland were at ORU and she said, I want you to hear my dad preach. So they came, I preached at Sheridan Assembly and what I didn't know they were going to do, they presented me with a Rhema class ring because of all the Rhema curriculum was on those tapes. I didn't know it. Nobody else did. But it was all there. And so I have that class ring today. Praise God. And it says on each side of the ring that I have faith. That's where I learned it. Father, we thank You today for this study. We give You the praise and the honor and the glory for it. It's such a wonderful thing to be part of this school in Jesus' name. Amen. Come on, give the Lord praise and thanksgiving.