Kenneth Copeland - God and His Faith Are in Your Past, Present and Future
Kenneth Copeland: Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. This is Professor Greg Stephens, Kenneth Copeland Bible College. That still...
Greg Stephens: KCBC
Kenneth Copeland: Kenneth Copeland Bible College. How did that happen?
Greg Stephens: God did it.
Kenneth Copeland: Yes, he did. Before the foundation of the world and I just found out about a few years ago. Praise God, Father we thank You this morning. We open our hearts. We look into Your heart. Help us with this as we move over into Your area and to expand our thinking, our finite thinking to an infinite God, Creator of all things of whom there is no beginning and no end. Help us to understand this with our spirits today. In Jesus' name, we pray it. Amen. Let's open our Bibles to the Book of Isaiah in the 46th chapter. Now we will be looking into something that you really have to grasp with your spirit being because our spirits are eternal. Now, what happened to us, for me it was the second day of November of 1962, when I stepped across the light line. I stepped from the line of darkness into the spiritual light world. Amen. And had instantaneous results. And as I've shared with the class before, that very moment I physically felt and had a physical manifestation, a few seconds there that I couldn't close my mouth. And from that moment on, profanity was gone forever. So there was a tangible results, instantaneously. Now, God had already planned that. So anyway, let's look in the book of Isaiah, and this is 46 chapter eighth verse. "Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old:" Remember that. "for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me," Now listen to what he said. What does he do? "Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure". Greg, excuse me. Let's go back to Genesis 1.
Greg Stephens: Okay. There is a statement here that is understandable, but yet it cannot be understood with the natural mind. It has to be spiritually explored: In the beginning God. In the beginning, Elohim, plural. He's a triune God. Bereshit Elohim, in Hebrew, Bara Et.
Kenneth Copeland: The Father, the Son.
Greg Stephens: They're altogether.
Kenneth Copeland: The Spirit.
Greg Stephens: That's a plural word. The word for God right there Elohim is plural. And we are triune beings. We are spirit, soul and body. And if you will check out in the laws of physics that number three is just every place, neutrons and all of that. Won't get into all that. But here's what we're looking at, in the beginning. Well, where was the beginning? I don't know. But he was there. He has no beginning that we can understand. He has no end. So we want to look to this for the purpose of building our faith to reach into the future plans of God and bring his plan into the now in our lives.
— So that's where we're going with this. Now let's go back over there to... well, in the beginning God and the Spirit moved. So that's in the beginning God and then his Spirit moved. Now, "Remember... declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I'll do my pleasure". Now, let's go over to the second covenant in Second Timothy 1:9, beginning with the seventh verse. "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began". Before it even started. His work and his plans.
— That's right.
— Praise God.
— The three of them came in covenant with one another before we ever were. Excuse me. And before the foundation of the world. And that plan has not deviated one minute of one day. Not with Adam's transgression, not with any of us. That plan is set, and it will come to pass. He watches over his Word to perform it. The Word became flesh.
— He's not a man that he should lie, has he not spoken and will he not make it good.
— Absolutely. I used to wonder about this when I see that in the beginning God and then I'd see what looked like the Holy Spirit. I never saw Jesus in there. And I'm thinking, how can all three of them be there yet? John says he was there. All things were created by him in John chapter one...
— And for him. So let's go to that.
— Okay.
— And I'll show you something out of that.
— John chapter one?
— Yes. And then realize what you said. He created all things by and for him. So think about this. All three of them were there at the creation, it says so. Now, English speaking people don't get it. They just explore it a little bit since it's plural. In the beginning, God the Spirit, God the Son and God the Father. I am completely, totally convinced... Since before the foundation of the world, Jesus already was planned the sacrifice and would come into the world. This is his place. I'm totally convinced it was Jesus that did the speaking. That the Father gave him the words and he spoke them.
— Well, he never changes, "I changeth not". What did he say when he was on the earth? The things that I say are what I hear the Father say. So that hadn't changed since before the world began. Whenever the Father told him, I say it this way: the Father is the architect of the plan. Jesus is the executor of the plan. In other words, he's the one that speaks it into existence. And the Holy Spirit is the revealer of that plan. And that's the way I can wrap my mind around it.
— And in him lies the power.
— Yes, sir.
— He's the power agent. He's the creating agent.
— That's correct.
— And the force of that power is faith.
— That's correct.
— So now and blood was involved in this all along. But we know that the planets, the stars were created for times and seasons for us.
— So that we could keep some track of time. He's outside of time, yet he's inside of time because of Christ, because Jesus. He got into our time when he was outside of our time. I'll show you that as this week goes along. In John chapter one, "In the beginning was the Word of the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the same was in the beginning with God". Whenever that beginning was... "All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life. And the life was the light of men and the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not".
— Now right there in those five verses. Oh, there is so much revealed in those verses, and particularly when you come down to that 14th verse, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us..."
— "...and we beheld his glory, the only begotten of the Father". Then you go down to verse 17, it says, "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ", so all truth came through him. Thy Word is truth. And so he is that truth. He is that grace. Now, I can show you something really interesting because, you know, I have to study it out, in that original word, Elohim. You can see it. They'll put that on the screen. There's the... here it is. This is original Hebrew, our current Hebrew Elohim. And this is paleo or ancient Hebrew. Ancient Hebrew is pictures. So in that word, "אלהימ" (Alef Lamed He Yod Mem) in Hebrew. 34 times Elohim is used in Genesis chapter one, 4000 times in Scripture. Elohim is the word that's used. So that first letter, Alef is a little triangle with that line, that's an ox. It's the meaning of a strong leader, the first or it would point to God the Father. The second letter Lamed is a shepherd staff, isn't that interesting. It means the one with authority or the one with the voice of authority, Brother Copeland, the one who speaks authority. So he's the one who speaks the Word. He's the one that speaks Creation. That would be the son. He's the great shepherd. Shepherd staff. Hei is a man with his hands raised. Behold, look at this. That's the Holy Spirit. So there they all are in the name Elohim. God is a picture of a hand or an arm. See the hand, see the arm. And Mem is liquid waters. So when you put them all together, Elohim, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit accomplished the divine deed that we behold by separating the waters. It's all in that name, what was happening in Genesis chapter 1. You don't see it until you look at the ancient Hebrew letters that Abraham or Moses would have looked at. But in that beginning, all three of them were involved with creation. All three were doing it and now we behold it, we see it, we look at it. And it may be a mystery to us, but it shouldn't be.
— Now, when we were discussing this originally, the Lord dropped this in my heart. We write in this direction left to right. We write from the past toward the future. His language writes from the future to the present. Praise God. Even the language denotes the fact that he is our future. And our future is already planned. And there's no sickness nor disease in. He's never planned that. That's the devil's plan. But he planned life. He is life everlasting.
— And this is why we keep our eyes and our focus on him. And when we do, we're looking to our future. And our future is him. He is our future. We don't know what we shall be, but we know this. When we see him, we'll be like him. The New Testament has a... new covenant has a lot to say about this, and this is what we use our faith for, that we get back to that position. Faith is now, but faith is not limited to now because it's connected to God in his faith that faith is past, present and future. That faith can go future and bring present. The God kind of faith can reach into the future, bring it into the now, because that's not difficult for him. So Jesus hadn't died on the cross yet. And he forgives a man's sins and heals him at the same time and they get upset about it. And he said, "Well, which is easier? To heal him or to forgive him of sins"? What he's doing is he's reaching into the future... The time that he would die for, became a perpetuation of our sin. He reached in and brought that to that man there.
— Let's go over here in John 16. Now remember now, class from 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 is all in one place. Now, of course, it's fine to draw certain verses and passages out of there, but it needs to be studied all together without the numbers in it, because it's all in the meal that changed heaven and earth because none of them, they were there all night... had to get Judas out of the room, get the devil out of there so you could get on in to the preciousness of all this. And then he began to talk to them in the future, and they didn't realize it. I'm going to send one. Well, they had no idea what... we're crossing a bridge of time here. Now in this 16th chapter and look at the 13th verse. "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth", he's talking about a time. And it's a bit confusing to them because you know Philip, and so they asked, "Where are you going? Show us the Father". And Jesus said, "Philip, you've known me all this time and you don't know if you've seen me, you've seen the Father". And so Philip, I'm thinking is going... Huh?... because time is about to change. So come on down through here and look down here at the 22nd verse. "And ye now therefore have sorrow. But I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and your joy no man takes from you. And in that day"... In that day, we are now in that day.
— Yes, we are.
— "In that day, ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily," Oh, when there's two "verilies", he is about to say something... "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full". In that day. Now, thank You Jesus.
— He repeats the same thing there in 25 and 26 going on down.
— Yes, in that day, in that day. In that day, you'll do the works that I do. Greater works... that's what he said. I'm telling you, they didn't understand any of this. They didn't understand any of it till the day of Pentecost.
— That's when the power promised to them came in them, not on them, but in them. That's our day. That's the day the church was born.
— And Jesus asked a question. The Christ, when he comes, who will he be? They said, "The Son of David". The Son of David. The Syrophenician woman. How did she get his attention?
— She called out, "Son of David, have mercy on me".
— Yes. How did Bartimaeus get his attention?
— Same thing.
— They had a revelation that he was Messiah. But the Syrophenician woman reached across Covenants.
— Yes, she did. And so will the centurion.
— Yes, he did, Cornelius.
— Because he understood the authority that went back to Genesis one,
— That's right.
— ... where he spoke the Word and created everything. I'm the man under authority. I recognize your authority. Your authority comes from God. He'll even say that at the cross. Certainly this was, truly this was the Son of God.
— And I used to I didn't understand that, but I didn't realize that this centurion was Cornelius.
— I believe so.
— Well, there's no question about it, because he's a garrison commander, you know they had more centurions. He was there. He was in command. And if you look at it, where his home was just right there, right close to Pilate.
— Caesarea, he's stationed in Caesarea. That's where Pilate's governance was. He would come to Jerusalem twice a year.
— And that's where the centurion, he was the commandant of that area. It didn't mean he had 100 men. It meant he had at least 100 men under him. So all of those around there, all of the Roman soldiers, everybody involved, all of them that were involved in the crucifixion were under his command.
— He would have traveled with Pilate, If Pilate went down to Judea he would have traveled with him.
— And he's his arm, he's his guard and he's commandant of the Roman guard in that area. Now, there's some other things you can put together with that. Those that were out there herding the swine that day, that reason that frightened everybody so is because that certainly wasn't food for any of the Jewish people. It was for the Romans. And those that were out there guarding those were under Cornelius command. So now you can see, he says, "I tell those people to take care of those pigs, they do it. I tell them to come here and they do it. And I know that sickness is to you what those pigs are to me. I can command those soldiers out there and you can command this disease". But he saw something through faith beyond his time.
— Yes, he did.
— Before, I mean, long after some see... Jesus, he would have been in charge. He would have been in charge of making sure that that tomb was sealed and in charge of that whole event that day. And then he goes back and he's... the Spirit says that... the angel says your prayers and your giving have come up before me.
— He's the one that built that synagogue...
— In Capernaum.
— So that was the synagogue in Jesus' hometown.
— Yeah.
— You see the connections? God planned that before the foundation of the world. He had that man planned. He had his birth plan. He had him born at the exact moment.
— Might of had to change his orders to get him over to Israel.
— Well, absolutely. Well, his orders would come under what Micah said. Cause Micah said it'd be Bethlehem.
— Yes he did.
— So our mission for 715 years, Micah's words, controlled armies, controlled and caused that census to be taken so that he would be born exactly at the right time on that spot. And we're out of time. And the Lord had this plan before the foundations of the world and he knew what we'd do here today. And we'll be back in a little bit.