Kenneth Copeland - Choose Life, Choose THE BLESSING
— Hello, everybody and happy after Christmas, before New Year's. I know from the supernatural way the Lord's been leading us. He's setting up 2024 and we'll go into this aware of certain things that I no more intended came out with the intention to do that. But it's the Spirit of God is making a track that heads right to January 1 because 2024, big decisions are being made in 2024. And if you don't vote, shut up. You don't have anything to say. You can't gripe, you can't... no, you have no argument. Just shut your mouth when you don't vote. To not vote in the United States of America is a sacrilege. That's what this liberty is based on. And that's the reason people said it wouldn't work, because the people have the government. No, they don't. God owns this nation because of our first president. Praise God. So now let's go back to the book of Galatians again. I want to show you something from this fourth chapter. "Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:" Now look. "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law". When that time... look at that. When the time was come, he was right on time. And all of this over the last 2300 years has everything to do with us as American citizens. Why? "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty", glory to God, where with Christ has made us free. We're free people. We are free people. Glory to God and we stand fast there in. Now let's look at the primary calling of Jesus. Let's go back to the third chapter. "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith"? Now, that's what we're all about here on the Victory Channel. It's by the hearing of faith. Faith, the invisible... That's the name of the invisible creative force of God. Amen. And that's all explained in the book of Hebrews by this same Apostle. "He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached..". the scripture preached to him. "saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed". Okay, that's what George Washington did on the 17th chapter of the book of Genesis. And he said, "You will be our God". We're one of the nations that came out of Abraham. "For as many as are of the works of the law..". Here it is. "And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:" And that's why he went to that tree. That curse, spiritual death, sickness and disease and poverty. What is the blessing? Spiritual life, the new birth. Amen. And divine health and prosperity. Amen. And he did it, the moment he was raised from the dead. Thank God we were free. Now, why? "That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles" That's all of us. "through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ". We have individual, we have individual blessing, because we're his seed.
— My salvation, my covenant has no additives and no preservatives.
— That's right.
— You can't add to it.
— Can't add to it.
— 100% natural, Jesus plus nothing equals everything. The minute you start to try to add things.
— That's right.
— You're in trouble.
— Thank you, Jesus.
— You have to push away that unbelief. You have to stand fast in the liberty. Stand fast. Doing all stand, stand therefore. Standing requires, I got to take a stand.
— Now let's go over there to the book of Ephesians and in the sixth chapter. "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world," You remember the former mad man of Gadara. He had one unclean spirit, a ruler of the darkness, but there were a legion under that one. He was a ruler, but all of them had to give him up because Jesus delivered him. So one. "and spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies". Now we saw that in the life of Daniel. There was a spirit of Persia and a spirit of Greece. Well, this is the most important nation on the face of the earth, second only to Israel. And when your enemies call you the big Satan and Israel, the little Satan, you have received a great compliment. Otherwise they wouldn't even mention Satan, amen. And we have come to a strong and wonderful conclusion that the Ishmaelites... Well, I'm not the judge, but I see the results.
— You see the fruit.
— You can see the fruit of that tree. It's been on the wrong side of everything for all these years. And if you'll study and do some history, then it speaks for itself. But this is why Jesus came, to redeem us from that curse. Now, when I first learned this from Kenneth E. Hagin, I didn't know anything else. I had never heard of anything else because I was scripturally illiterate, and so was Gloria. You know, I was raised in Southern Baptist Church, and she's raised in the Church of Christ. So she and I didn't even talk about it. Wasn't anything to talk about. We didn't know anything about it, either one of them. But then when both of us accepted Jesus, whew, we wanted to know everything. And so afterwards there was just a church steeple. Wonder what they're doing in there. I mean, you can see what happened. The first thing we wanted to do was go to church. Well, then the calling came. But that curse of the law, I daresay the majority of Christians don't know what it is. And if you ask them what we're redeemed from, well, you know, sin, I guess. Well, that's part of it. But that's not the heart of it. When you find out you're redeemed from that curse, that every sickness, every disease, all poverty and all of that is under that curse. And you have to go back to the book of Deuteronomy and go back when Israel was redeemed from Egypt. They didn't know anything. They got on those two mountains, the blessing mountain and the cursed mountain.
— Joshua eight...
— So you start with the seventh chapter moves in it, the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy, and you just keep flowing into the 28th and then all the way through that and the Lord said, "I have placed before you life and death, blessing and cursing, choose life". That's reason he did it to redeem us from that curse that Jesus had to go to that, the law was the only thing they had. That you had to know, now this is against the law, so don't be doing it. But Jesus had to bleed and die to redeem us from that curse.
— Well, if you go back over to Galatians, Brother Copeland and Chapter four, Paul will write about it. He said, "Which things are an allegory:" verse 24, "for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, that's in the wilderness, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. If you go on down here, Jerusalem, which is free, which is the mother of us all. Now we brethren, as Isaac", verse 28, "are the children of promise". So the children of promise had to send away. They had to take a stand. You find in Genesis 22, where Sarah took a stand and said, "I need you to send the bond woman away and her son Ishmael". And so that's what we have to do now. We in the times we live in this next year, 2024. Believers are going to be required to take a stand.
— Well, it's right there.
— Because we have a covenant with God in America.
— Here we are. You should stand fast in the liberty. We found that in the book of Galatians, the letter to the Galatians. In the book of Ephesians. "Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world and against spiritual wickedness in high places". Spiritual wickedness in high places.
— Daniel took a stand.
— Yes, he did.
— And he wouldn't eat that meat or bow his knee.
— Let's look at Ezekiel 28. Are you there? "The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart to be as God:" And you come on down. Now look at the eleventh verse. "Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee". And that's the devil and that's when he got pulled down from his place.
— That's right. He got into pride because he was so beautiful and he fell. He actually started a war with God. And you've really got to be slow to do that. Jesus said, "I saw him fall like lightning". Well sure he saw him, he was there, amen. And you go and read that, "You were lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more".
— That's in our future. That hasn't happened yet. I mean, that prophecy. That's what we talked about all those prophecies last week, earlier this week, they got Jesus in the earth. This is a prophecy that will be in the second coming. That it'll happen in the future.
— The day of judgment is coming.
— Quickly.
— And the angels that have been chained in the darkness forever that are in the book of Genesis and God dealt with them, that the world was full of wickedness. Well, it was caused because of those angels that had the daughters of men and created giants and terrible, horrible things in the earth, awful things. And Enoch wrote about it. So there had to be a flood and God in his mercy, said the days of man will be 120 years. Then he gave them 120 years before that flood to repent, and they didn't and then he began to talk to Noah and they all called him crazy. They mocked him until the rains came and cleansed the earth.
— And there was a type and shadow in that. There were two groups of people in the days of Noah, the believers and the unbelievers, just two groups. That's where we're at today. There's those who believe and there's those who don't. And there were in that group, the vast majority of people were outside the ark. There was a remnant that God placed inside of an ark, and they went through that, if you will, tribulation of the flood. And they came out on the other side of that, we're going to see the exact same things. Jesus will say as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be. There's only two groups right now, believers and unbelievers. Too many people, I'm going to say this, this isn't his words, these are my words. Too many of you have been voting for unbelievers.
— Well, that's true.
— They don't believe in God, cast God out of their party platform.
— And when you don't vote, that's who you voted for. You can't be counted on the good side.
— And so you need to take a stand now. And be on the right side. You don't want to be outside that ark when this all comes down. And so there were those that went through the tribulation or those that went through the ark. There was one person, though, prior to all of it that walked with God was not.
— And his name was Enoch. So there were three groups, actually, wasn't there? There was the people inside that tribulation art. There were those that perished and there was one that was the rapture. And taken away as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be. There will be one body that will be taken out before all of this hits. Praise God. And the rest of them will either perish or be in that tribulation.
— Now, some very atrocious things have been happening in the days right here. And people just talk about murdering babies like, well... you know, we need to vote whether to kill them or not. What! In my day, I mean, I'm 87 years old. That's unheard of. Well, we need to protect the women because they're going to do it anyway. Well, I know people are going to sin anyway, but I'm not going to pay for it. That doesn't make it right. You know how to move the crime rate way down? Take away the laws that are crime. Oh, the crime rate goes way down because nobody's guilty of anything.
— Days of Noah, Brother Copeland. The seed had corrupted itself. It was being corrupted. We've got medical doctors today trying to change boys into girls and girls into boys, seeds corrupted itself.
— I'll tell you, well, they are really glad I'm not in charge. That deserves a death penalty. You kill a child and lay there and let it die just cause you don't want it. These are the days like it was before.
— And they will be marrying and giving in marriage. Marrying is what God did, man and woman. Giving in marriage, the Supreme Court gave marriage rights to same sex marriage. That's giving in marriage. All of these things point to the days in which we live in. Now we shouldn't be afraid of this. Don't be in fear. You've got a covenant. America has a covenant. And we've learned what a covenant is.
— And there's another thing. There's a lot of repentance going on, there are people that have turned the other way and said, "I was wrong and I repent and I shouldn't have aborted my child". Well, where are the men in this? Bunch of cowards... But there's repentance. I'm not the judge. I'm glad I'm not the judge because I don't have much mercy for that. I really have to work on it. To judge not that you be not judge that's hard on me because it hurts me. It hurts me for those children. It hurts me for what has happened to them. And then they have to grow up and have to suffer with what someone else perpetrated on them. But this is the time we're in. These are the days like in the days of Noah. And I don't think we've seen the worst of it. I'm sad to say that, maybe we've pretty well seen the worst of it in this country, but it's not over yet. And we have a country that has pretty well given itself over to things that don't mean much, just sports crazy. I'm not against sports. I mean, I was an athlete myself. But the World Series is not the biggest thing in my life. The Super Bowl is not the biggest thing in my life. I've come to that place where it's interesting to watch the game, but I really don't care who wins it. It has nothing to do with me, you know why? I don't bet on it. And we're out of time. Glory, we end on victory!