Kenneth Copeland - An Exact Image of God
Kenneth Copeland: Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. Father, thank You again for opening the hearts of our minds, our hearts and minds and the concept that You created time for us. Because with You, there is no time. You are the future. You're the past. And we're learning this and it's great comfort to us that You have already planned a plan before the foundation of the world. And that plan included no sickness, no disease, no sin, You planned it all good for You are good, You are a good God and You're good to all. And we praise You today and thank You. Hallelujah. Let's look in the book of Ephesians. Mm hmm. And this... Oh, in the second chapter of Ephesians, let's start with the sixth verse. "And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast". Now notice this, look at this. "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus". When did that happen? Well, what did he write the church of Corinth? "Any man that is in Christ is a new creature created in Christ Jesus". Adam was created. Well, so were we.
Greg Stephens: That's right.
Kenneth Copeland: Created in Christ Jesus.
Greg Stephens: That was our God breath moment.
Kenneth Copeland: Yes. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained" or prepared "that we should walk in them. Wherefore, because of that remember ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh". At that time, you were without Christ, "being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise". Now we're down to the meat of this sandwich. Oh, glory to God, these blood covenant. And why did it have to be blood? Because Satan had... Listen, a paper contract, he'll break it but a blood agreement he cannot. What did this great apostle write in the book of Hebrew? What happened in the Book of Revelation? Blood. Blood, Blood, Blood. Revelation 12:11. They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. Faith, words.
Greg Stephens: Speak in his words. Speak in his words. If you confess me, I'll confess you.
Kenneth Copeland: And look at this marvelous thing. Oh, glory to God. And we have it. I think I've told this maybe this class, but I don't remember now, it's been quite some years ago, and I was so taken up that God spoke to Moses face to face. And particularly there when... that Moses broke ranks and interrupted God and said, "I want to see Your glory". Well so do I, he just interrupted him and God said, "Okay, but you can't look at my face and live. But I'll let my goodness pass before you". And I said, "God, Oh, you spoke to him face to face. And I want you to... I want to... I want to speak with you face to face". And it rose up on the inside of me. He said, "Son, you have everything I said to Moses".
Greg Stephens: Moses asked for something outside of his time. That's your time to be able to have that relationship with him. Yet God, all the promises of God are yes and amen. God still said, "Okay, I'll tell you how I'll do this. If you go back and you read that, you pay attention to it, it says, 'There is a place where you can stand by me.'" And he placed him in the cleft of the rock. He placed him for a moment in time, he took him from his position and placed him in our covenant and let his goodness.
Kenneth Copeland: His backside.
Greg Stephens: His history, he saw from that moment all the way back.
Kenneth Copeland: What hit me so, I pulled off of the side of the road and wept and this book took another place in my life. He said, "You have everything I said to Moses. You have everything I said to Joshua. You have everything I said to all of the prophets". He said, "I didn't leave anything out". It's all in here.
— For that moment of time, Moses was in Christ. This is why he was punished so harshly when he struck Christ again. Should've known, he was trying to teach them a principle. Christ must be struck first, the next time you'll speak to him. Hitherto you've asked nothing in my name, now you'll ask.
— He stepped out of his meekness.
— He stepped out of his meekness. You're absolutely right.
— I've never tied the meekness together with that.
— He was angry.
— Yeah, he got mad and in his mind, he was striking those people with that rod, he literally said so.
— But he was striking Jesus.
— And he struck the rock. But right then I heard it in my spirit. He stepped out of his meekness and his meekness was the reason God called him.
— That's exactly right, that's exactly right. What you just read in Ephesians chapter two, if you let me, I'll go back to Ephesians chapter one, that sets that up, Ephesians chapter one, verse nine, and this is what's happening this week with you. "Having made known unto us the mystery of his will..." The mystery of his will is not unknown to us now, "according to his good pleasure, which he has purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time..."
— Now that's it, right there.
— "...He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him", which we have an inheritance of.
— That statement is so huge. "Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he had purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times", not time,
— Times plural,
— fullness of times.
— That's all those covenants because Paul talked about, you didn't have a covenant, now you have one in this time.
— And fullness of times, who knows what that means? Only God knows what all those times are. That struck me, "in the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, which are on earth, even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance".
— Let's go forward to Ephesians three.
— Yeah, I will be glad to.
— Verse nine, "and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. Fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world have been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ. To the intent that now unto the principalities, the powers in heavenly places might be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God". You're the manifold wisdom of God. Listen to this, "According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord". The entire fullness of times dispensations is all in Christ Jesus, and I'm in him and he's in me. And this thing is not a mystery. So we got to understand then, who Jesus is.
— Now when a revelation comes and then it's taken to the pulpit and that revelation flows. That's when the angels find out about it. They receive their revelation through God and through Jesus. But now we are his body. And the Spirit is indwelling all of us. So as revelations come, for instance, think about this. Heidi and Rolland Baker are absolutely present-day apostles. Rolland was born in China to a Chinese missionary... born there. Heidi was born in the United States. And now they live in Mozambique. Now every revelation that comes out of that apostle anointing, I heard things Sunday through and from her, that was such a thrill. So she takes the Word of Faith that she has learned from us, which we learned from Brother Hagin, which she learned from Brother Hagin because she was so dyslexic that she couldn't read, well didn't mean she didn't know how to read, but just scrambled her words. He laid hands on her so Kenneth Hagin is in her life. He laid hands on her and she was instantly delivered from dyslexia. All of these thing... now here's that apostolic ministry has cross-pollinated with this ministry of faith. And out of this is coming revelations that the angels are learning. Now that's beyond my pay grade, you know, And that's the kind of thing the devil would like to mess up. I mean, he'd like to tear that up any way, any possible way that he could.
— He wants to separate. He'd like to keep everybody separated from each other. He wants to keep you separated from the source.
— Jesus said it, and you need to quote it in the proper order. Jesus said, "The thief comes but for to steal..." Now that's what a thief does. He comes to steal, then to kill and to destroy. Steal what? The Word. Jesus said that he comes immediate to steal it. If he can steal the Word, then he can kill you. If he can steal the Word, then he can destroy your finances. But first and foremost, he's a thief. So you have to deal with a thief with the eternal things and to deal with him, you can't deal with him on paper. You have to deal with him with blood. He doesn't understand anything else, because he's a legalist.
— He thought he had Adam. He thought Adam was going to do what he did. He thought once Adam transgressed that Adam would rebel and fight God. Now that took a while for the kinfolk about him to do that. Adam didn't do that. First thing Adam did was Adam tried to cover himself. He was ashamed. He was afraid. He didn't say, "This is my new covenant partner with Lucifer". That's what Lucifer, I believe, thought he would do. But Lucifer didn't realize until that moment that truly that mankind was created in a different class. No, he's created in the God class. And a lot of people think Adam was some kind of caveman or something. No, he wasn't.
— No, no, no. There's two creations there...
— Yeah. Adam... Adam was very much like Jesus. Jesus was referred to as the Second Adam. Adam would have had control. We'd be amazed by Adam today before the fall.
— Yes.
— Adam could walk on water. Adam could create. Adam could name things, animals and different things and they would become what he said they were.
— When you study that carefully in fact, Greg and I were looking at that yesterday. Now God created those animals. He could have named them, but he didn't.
— Wanted to see what he would do.
— He put it in the hands of his overseer, who at that time was God of this world, God over it, to see what he would call them. I'm totally convinced after a lot of years of praying about this and seeking God for it and with it and in it, I'm totally convinced that when he called a parrot, a parrot, then the parrot became that color. When he called an elephant an elephant, then the elephant became that color. And because what he called him was what he became. God calls things that be not as though they were. God called, he spoke and things happen. But he put this over into his son, Adam, who looked exactly like him.
— He was an exact image.
— I saw it in a vision, it was one of the most powerful things I've had one open vision, but this one was, it was, I saw it. I saw God holding him by the shoulders. And he was exactly the same size.
— He was the exact image. He was created in his image.
— So now we know how the size of Jesus and he breathed in him, he was speaking into his face. And when I saw him, his nose was right there at God's nose, and he was holding him here. And this image was hanging here like this. And the first thing he heard was the blessing. That's what God was pointing out to me. The first thing he heard was he blessed him.
— So this is an artist picture of Jesus. And, you know, there's a great story behind this. So Adam was created exactly in this image. Romans Chapter five says that Adam was a precursor to the second Adam that would come. So what I did was, is I took this picture and I made a photocopy of it on a copy machine, and it came out looking a lot like that one. And I kept doing that. There was number two, I took the same. I would take...
— This is the second generation.
— That's second generation, here's third generation.
— Third generation.
— If you look at that.
— He's more gray headed, look at the gray hairs in this one. I didn't notice that before. But look, look. And you go back to this one. It's not there.
— No. And here's four and here's five. Just on a copy machine and he's turning gray. Now look here. By the time I get to ten, Noah, the Scripture says that Noah was righteous of his generation. Look at ten, how much it's degraded from the original. It took Adam 900 years or more to learn how to die.
— He didn't know how to talk death.
— No, never did. So in this whole thing, when you begin to look at this, that in chapter five of Romans, it talks about Adam as a figure of the one to come. It took the Son of God to replace the son of God. So Jesus comes and he has remastered us into that image. Now you have to receive that by faith.
— Now, Bill Winston says that he was the sample son.
— I can agree with that.
— He's the sample son after whom we are patterned.
— That's exactly right. But you've got to keep your faith in that original image.
— Yes, you do.
— And not copies of copies of copies of copies because you don't look anything like him then.
— His picture is in here. And some things are hard for me to describe after I see him. You start back over here. Now he already had the plan. But then to us, a mystery or a puzzle. A mystery or it's a puzzle. And so in the beginning, there's one piece...
— Abraham would have been another piece, Moses would have been another piece.
— Jesus in everyone of them.
— Yes, he is.
— All of those types. And when in the fullness of the dispensation of times, he was born in a city called Bethlehem. And blood... God killed an animal, and dressed...
— ...them in it, right.
— The first two.
— So now his son dies with his blood and is resurrected. And all of us who by faith have believed in that, overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. All of us that now believe in that are just back to this image.
— Yes, that's right.
— And we've got to retain that by faith, because nobody will tell you you're the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
— That's the reason, Greg, when I saw it the very first time, the Lord let me see what happened on the day of Pentecost. When actually the devil, according to Scripture he thought he had him. We just read that. Had they known they would have never crucified the Lord of Glory. He fell for that trap. So he's literally in hell suffering there more than any man before or since because he bore all of it. So then he got really embarrassed. Jesus made him bow down and he took his keys away from him.
— He tried to make Jesus bow down, remember that?
— Yes he did.
— If you bow down to me, I'll give you...
— Now Jesus made him bow down. The book of Hebrews said he brought him to naught.
— And it showed him openly, the Earth even witnessed, all of the heavenly realm witnessed.
— And all of his little devils realize they're following a loser. And they can't get out of it.
— No, it's too late.
— It's too late. And here we are out of time. Let's hurry up and get to tomorrow.
— Okay.
— Glory to God, we'll be back in a minute. Thank You, Jesus, Glory to God.