Kenneth Copeland - Follow the Inward Witness for Protection
— Welcome, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland, and this is Friday's edition of the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. The inward witness, Professor. The local church is the most powerful thing on the face of this earth. Jesus said the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. But only if it's a witness. This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached to all nations as a witness and then as evidence. And then the end shall come...
— ...and the Holy Spirit will come upon you to be witnesses.
— To be witnesses. Now, you were saying...
— This new covenant is something different now.
— Yes, it is.
— Jeremiah 31, verse 33. I'll read this to you real quickly, "But this shall be the covenant I'll make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I'll put my law, singular law, in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts and I will be their God. They shall be my people". That's covenant talk. Hebrews eight. Give you another one here. Hebrews 8:10. "This is the covenant I'll make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord, I'll put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts and I'll be to them a God, they shall be to me a people". Got same thing in Hebrews Chapter ten, "Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, shall every word be established". Hebrews 10:16. "This is the covenant I'll make with them after those days saith the Lord, 'I'll put my laws in their hearts and their minds will I write them.'" This law is written in my heart. What law are we talking about? It's the law of love. Yes, it is...
— ...to be a witness of that.
— Yes, it is.
— How do I know that? John 13, "A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men..." they are witnesses "they'll know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another". One commandment for a new and better covenant. And it's love. And that's the inner witness.
— And then you come to second Corinthians chapter 4:13. "We having the same Spirit of faith. according as it is written," that's the key. "It is written, 'I believed and therefore have I spoken.' We also believe and therefore we speak knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up also by Jesus" and so forth.
— Now let this mind be in you that was in Christ. This is the mind right here.
— There's two incidences that I want to tell you about.
— Yes, sir. Brother Hagin was preaching in El Paso. There were a lot of tape recorders down and like we used to do it in the old days, and he went to jump off of the platform and he liked to step in somebody's tape recorders. But he dodged it and really hurt his arm. And there was a nurse there. And so she called the doctor. On the way to the hospital, the Lord spoke to him. He even asked, "Did any of you hear that"? His wife was sitting right there. It was so strong to him, it was audible. But remember now he was on the bed of affliction for 17 months, listening to the Word of God. He had the advantage of his Spirit was so tune. The Lord said, "I'll fix this. I have everything prepared. I will fix this for you, but I'll talk to you about it in a moment". Well, come to find out. "The doctor told him, he said all the ligaments here in your arm", and so forth. He said, "This is worse than a break". And he said, "You'll never be able to do this". So he had it all fixed up and he was in the hospital just for observation. Miss Oretha had just been there visiting with him. She left and he was just propped up there in that bed. He's fine... observation. He's going home. The door was open about eight inches or so, and he heard footsteps coming down the hall and he said he just turned and looked. And when it came to it was a pair of Roman sandals came through that door and he said, "I looked up and it was Jesus". He said he walked over and took the chair that Oretha had been sitting in and pulled it up to the bed. He said, "Now, this is the last time I'm going to lead you like this". He talked to him about the prophet's ministry for about 45 minutes. He said, "You got in trouble with me. I called you and anointed you in the Prophet's ministry and you've been going around saying you're a teacher and a prophet and you got that out of line and got in trouble. I was not able to protect you on that platform". He said, "You remember the church, the large church, kept asking you, wanting you to come, they're large and so forth, and that little small church..." And he said, "You just had a good feeling on the inside about it". But he said, "Lord, that's a little small church", and this is up before Christmas. He said, "You remember you kept tearing that up to the big one, trying to write them back". He said, "That was my Spirit, trying to tell you it's not my will for you to be in that church. Now you go to that little church". So he went, right before Christmas. And this little church, he got there. Oh, Brother Hagin... He said, "We're a farming community. We had a cotton crop failure. We had a tomato crop failure". And he said, "Christmas is coming". So the Lord began to lead him and he said, "Now listen, you allow me to receive that. And don't mention that cotton crop thing and that tomato crop failure any more. You're putting failure in the minds of your congregation". Well, he caught on. So here is the point. He began to receive the offerings about the one he had the inward witness about and the people were ready to give. It was the pastor that had the failure. And so they built an annex, a Sunday school annex and a man with a lumber yard there in town found out about it. He gave them all the lumber. And they had an old potbelly stove in there. And so he kept receiving offerings and they put in an air conditioning system. Now, make a long story short, here's what the Lord told him. He told the Lord, he said, "Now you know what my budget is"? He said, "You write down exactly what you need in that church and you tell your ministering spirits to go out and get it". First chapter of Hebrews, "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for the heirs of salvation"? And he said that church began to grow and grow and grow. And he said at the end of it, he said five grown men and their families came in to that church because they no longer had a tomato crop failure. And the problem was not in the people. It was in the mind of that pastor. He had to change that pastor's mind from failure to success.
— From flesh. He's seeing it from the eyes of flesh rather than...
— Let's come way this way. Two men... And I knew one of them particularly lived in Troy, Michigan. And well, it is Dan and Joe Lanaski. Now Joe and Linda were good friends of Gloria and mine and Brother Hagin and and all of us and Blaine and Helen Hamburg and all that group. And Joe... funny guy. But a young man had flown in a Beechcraft King Air, he was not a professional pilot. Well they weren't paying him to do it anyway, but he was a member of the church. They came to see Brother Hagin. He said, "Joe, why don't you and Dan spend the night with us".
— No Brother Hagin, we can't. We got to get back. He said, "Dan, Joe spent the night with me".
— No, Brother Hagin. He said, "Joe, I'm begging you to spend the night with me".
— No, no, no, no, no. I've got to get back. Got to get back now. I've landed at that airport. There's a lake right here and Troy sits right here. And the city and the airport... it's a nice airport. I've landed there, but it's right here. And sometimes it'll just fall over. So they were late that night getting in. Detroit is right here, 25 miles away. Like I said, this man, not a professional. I know exactly what I would have done. I wouldn't messed with it. Keep checking the weather going in and it didn't get any better. Now I just called Joe up here. I said, "Joe, Troy is socked in and we're going to Detroit. We get over there. I'll see to it that you get a car". But this young man said that he's going to take a look. So in that zero zero condition, he tried to take a look and hooked a power line and they died. Brother Hagin had it in his spirit, he said so later. You don't ever violate those things. Now, in the aviation world, IFR is instrument conditions, VFR is clear, Visual Flight Rules. There is a saying in aviation, it's a hard saying, but you have to go by it. It was VFR at the funeral. And it was.
— Now what you just described with Brother Hagin in that situation, he didn't tell him what was going to happen. The ministry of the Prophet in the New Testament is totally different. He doesn't tell you what you should do. You can see it with Paul. Paul is told by a prophet you're going to go bound in chains to Jerusalem. He didn't say you should do that or not.
— He took his belt and bound it and said that.
— And it was Paul. It was Paul's decision to do what was in Paul's inner witness to do. So don't go to a person or expect some prophet to tell you what you ought to do. You're going to have to learn how to listen to the inner witness for yourself. We live in a different time. The Holy Spirit is in all of us now, not just in... You didn't have access under the first covenant. You didn't have access to God. You had to go through a priest. Or through Moses. You didn't have that. You have that now. And we've got so many people that get so confused about that today because, well, the prophets said this about elections. The prophet said this about me or somebody asked me not too long ago, "What prophet do you follow"? They asked me this. That was the question that was asked to me, and I'd be ashamed to tell you where they asked me that. But they said, "What prophet do you follow"? And I went, "What"? Well, I follow Jesus Christ. I guess the second one next to that was I get to serve Brother Copeland in following Jesus.
— Don't you dare follow what I say.
— But I'm not following him for guidance in my life to that regard. You know what I'm saying?
— Even if I say, "Thus sayeth the Lord". You check it out. You don't say, "Thus sayeth Kenneth". If I find it out, I'll get on your case like a chicken on a June bug.
— We have so many people that are trying to use ministry as a ladder. Ministry is not a ladder at the table. You serve. Those people ask me all the time, How did you get on the program of Brother Copeland? I want to get on the program with Brother Copeland. How did you do that? I have to get my faith out to be on the program. You understand? I didn't do it.
— You know what my mother would say? They'd come to her. I really would like to talk to your son. I really need to spend some time with him. She would say, "Well, pray. I'm not about to go tell him you want time with him".
— That's exactly right.
— She could not afford to do that. Now if she had told me that I had done it because I honor her. But she knew that. And she was not about to do something like that and put me in that position. This inward thing, practice the presence of God, talk to him,
— My sheep know my voice. You get to the place where you'll learn to know that voice. And if you listen, you'll hear him teach at the level of Prophet just like Brother Hagin told him. I'm begging you, don't do it. Now, I couldn't tell him what to do.
— If he'd said that to me, I said, "Good, I'm coming to your house. You got an extra bed? You're going to have to feed me. You're going to have to put me up because I'm not about to leave this town". And there's nobody that busy. But I had to learn that. Yeah, but I learned a lot of things out of aviation itself. But I mean, if I just have an unction, the same thing. Unción in Espanol. Anointing. Don't go home today that way. In Dan Stratton's church 911 there was a man that commuted and he's in Dan's church and he worked in... the Trade Center, that's what I was trying to say. He was driving to the station with his daughter. She said, "Daddy, couldn't we just stop and have something to eat or something? I don't ever get any time with you. You just take me to school and go get on the train and go to work". He said, "I don't see why not". Dan told me that guy is never late. He was 15 minutes late that morning. You see what the Lord was doing? Don't go in there. Something like 85% of his congregation worked in the World Trade Center, and none of them were there. Or there was one man had on a white shirt and a dress suit. He walked out of all that rubble and his shirt wasn't even stained. And he had been teaching for days how to hear the voice of the Spirit, the Lord had it in his heart...
— ...and didn't realize it. So he's preaching from that level. You preach all the time from the level of Prophet. And if people will listen, they'll hear a prophet speak. Can I leave with one more verse?
— Please do.
— Galatians Chapter five. Paul is writing to us. I'm going to go verse 14:17-18. "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself". Verse 17: "For the flesh..." this is what put a fleece says... "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would". Look at verse 18. "But you be led by the Spirit, you're not under the law". When I first read that, I thought, "Did that just say what I thought"? Yes, it did.
— And what else did it say? This is the fruit. The fruit of the Spirit. Glory to God.
— The fruit. Fruit can grow. Love is the fruit of the Spirit. Love can grow in me. But the love of God's been shed abroad in my heart. I don't need to go any further than right here to pray because this is where love is. It's in me now. It can grow in me but it's in me. And I'm not under... I can't mix that way of receiving from God the law way with my new covenant way because the Spirit is in me.
— I never miss an opportunity to tell Gloria Jean how much I love her. Never, not ever. I don't know how many times a day I tell her. I just get an opportunity. I'll just grab her up. I'm practicing my love for her. We don't say ugly things to one another. Never have, and not going to start now. And when I tell people that I'm never sick. Why are you never sick? No. But I had to act on the Word of God. And I saw it one day in Exodus. I just settled it forever. But here's the thing. You've heard me say it over and over again, but I'm going to say it to you over and over and over. Over over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over over, two things. Don't you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever again feel sorry for yourself. Don't you ever do it. That brings on depression, which brings on grief. And you hadn't lost anything. Every night, I don't care where I am in the world, right there at home. If I'm on the road somewhere, I call Gloria before I go to bed and tell her I love her, every night. I can't remember back far enough to remember how long I've been doing this, Greg and I see it in my mind and I see the Lord up here, and I'm down here watching him and listening to him. And the young lawyer came up to him, texting him and said, "Which is the greatest commandment". And he said, "The greatest commandment of all is love the Lord thy God with all your heart, all your soul all your mind, renew your mind, all your mind and all your strength and all your wealth. And the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself for on this hangs all the law and the prophets". And I say all but Master, you said in John 13:34, "I give you a new commandment that you love one another, even as I have loved you", every day, every day, every day, every day, every day of my life. This is in me in abundance because I got it out of this book. This is a love book. It's a love letter to the world. And the first half of it is hard because it was hard. You think it wasn't hard on Jesus?
— Hadn't been ratified yet, but now it has been ratified. And here's the thing I've learned from the Holy Spirit. He will not compete with the Internet, social media, television, football, anything else.
— No, I don't have time for that. I may watch a little football and baseball because I like it. I used to just... forgot I read that. When I was in Tulsa, I fasted my newspaper for five days and hadn't gone back to it yet. That was 56 years ago. I don't need that. I could careless. Well, who won the World Series? Who won the Super Bowl? Amen. I'm a whole lot more interested in...
— ...being led from here.
— Yes. And my great grandson now is playing football. I'm interested in his game.
— That's right.
— I want to know where little Kenneth is playing. His name's Kenneth Aaron, and we're out of time. I know you got things from this, amen. Why don't you write and give us your testimony? We'll be back in just a moment.