Kenneth Copeland - No Greater Name Than Jesus
— Hello, everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland, as wired up as I am...
— Yes, sir.
— I'll tell you. Stirred up. I love it. I love everything about this. I love you. I love you. I just, well, praise God. Thank You, Father. Now, we were talking in the break about the M1 Garand. I trained on one. And 30 caliber gas operated semiautomatic weapon. That was 1957. I still know that. Nine and one half pounds without the bayonet attached. I trained on one. My father-in-law, if you could see the colors on this, that blue infantry braid that's around his shoulder here, three rockers up and three rockers down with a diamond in the middle made him a sergeant major. And those things came from combat. He carried the M1 Garand. North Africa. Fought against Rommel. Battle of the Bulge. And there's certain words on the back of that picture. 1944. Normandy invasion.
— That's that picture.
— Yeah. And he holds a place of honor in my life. He was so good to me. He had PTSD. We didn't know what to call it back then. That term came out during Vietnam. But, and he would come back. He was a schoolteacher. And he was principal of the high school in Jacksonville, Arkansas, where Gloria finished high school. I said, "You had a hand". She said, "No, I didn't either". She said, "It didn't make it any easier. It made it tough". Amen. Then he became superintendent of schools in Blevins, Arkansas. And one of my heroes. I trained on one. He lived with one. And here's the thing. He was defending the Constitution of the United States. He came through alive. My mother's older brother did not. This man did. And in his later years, thank God, he had a heart attack. And in Nashville, Arkansas, and they rushed him to Texarkana. And the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Nashville, Arkansas, stayed with him, stayed with him. He would just drink himself to oblivion because of the dreams. Fight those battles over again. He just stayed with him and stayed with him and stayed with him. And led him to the Lord. And class and radio and television audience, he never took another drink. It was over. World War II was over in 1999. Glory to God.
— See, I know most of the people he served with that he had command over didn't come home.
— Oh, yeah.
— And a lot of times it's because of the orders that he gave. I'll never forget the first time my commanding officer in Desert Storm called me in there. Stephens, sir, he says, I need you... He told me what we were going to do. He said, "I need you to pick out your crew and then pick out the backup crew for you if our crew doesn't make it". He goes, "There's a chance with this. You need to know". And the first thing I said to him, "Well, I'm going to lead this crew". He said, "Good". And then he wanted to know the other names. But the responsibility for the first time in all my training, the responsibility of I just may have killed a whole group of guys. And he lived with that every day and he lived with that till 1999 until he met the one who gave himself for him. And that's what got me out of PTSD when I fully committed to the one who gave Himself for me. And that's what made Peter bold in Acts chapter two, three and four right here.
— Sure it is.
— And that's what he's preaching. He's preaching Jesus when they commanded him. That's where we left off yesterday in chapter four. And they said, "By what power, what name did you do this"? And he begins to, if you don't mind, I'll look at it. Look, here it is right here. He says in Acts 4:11, "This is the stone, which was set at nought of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other for there's none other name under heaven given among men where you must be saved".
— That's it right there. No, no, no. There's not one. Stephens, did you ever notice that nobody says, "Oh, Buddha". That name doesn't cuss very bad. But I'm telling you all over the world, the devil sees to it. He sees to it because he hates Him. Well, so what? When you know the name. Now take that 19th verse, "Peter and John answered and said unto them, whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God you judge". You judge. Praise God. Now, and you come over here. And when they prayed, the place was shaken where they assemble. Oh, I'm telling you, the name is in operation. I said, the name is in operation. It's functioning. And that church is huge. Then you get into Ananias and Sapphira. Oh, fella just dropped dead. Then his wife dropped dead while he was buried here.
— Well, Brother Copeland, I believe you had the full power of Jesus' body, his church operating in one group of people.
— Just one group of people.
— I don't think we've ever seen that...
— No, we haven't.
— ...in our lifetime. I like this. Verse 13 of chapter four. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and learned and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. Now, the apostles will write all the time to know him.
— Now, let me tell you a little aviation story here. World War II cadets, the guys that got this war going on. Instructor came in and he said, "I have a cadet". The way he said... He said, "No, no, no, no, no. He can fly better than I can. He can fly better than I can". R.A. Bob Hoover took a book and read it in the principles and taught himself to fly. Arguably the finest Stick and Rudder Man ever alive. And he said, "I want him to help me train these other cadets because he had said to his instructor and the pilots that are listening to me know exactly what I'm talking about". He said, "Can you slice the pie"?
— Can I what?
— Can you slice the pie with your airplane?
— What do you mean? Well, instead of just rolling it this way, you begin to cut it in pieces like this until you slice the pie and hold your altitude and hold your heading. The instructor couldn't do it. So he taught him how to do it.
— I always heard that by the numbers, one, two.
— And then the North American F-86 came out during the Korean War. Well, some of it was pure jet. I'm going back to this as an analogy. And the guys were having, they were a little afraid of it. And some of them were overshooting and things like that. He said, "Well, no, wait a minute. Let me go demonstrate this airplane to you". So he flew it about halfway down the runway, took off. Came back around, landed it, took off. Just doing a chandelle as he got back over the end like that. Just kept on doing that. Those guys thought, well, I certainly could do that. But then he came back down, landed it on one wheel. I saw it. Now, he had command of that airplane. He told the airplane what to do. The wheel chocks. Here. Just a regular airplane, nothing special about it, just an Aero Commander. It's in Smithsonian now. Wheels here. Now, I'm talking about command here. They pushed it back. He started the engines. Went out and did his routine. Nothing special about the airplane. There's just something special about the man. And I was blessed to know him. And then he did his routine. Then he shut the engines down. Did the same routine. Landed. Both engines are shut down. And parked it. Rolled up and bumped his nose wheel on that same job.
— That's good. That's real good. That's good. That's real good.
— I'll tell you. This Hoover's little boy did good. Command authority of that airplane. With all...
— It became an extension of him, Brother Copeland.
— And all of his obedience to everything in the P.O.H. He didn't violate any of that. Kept it inside the P.O.H. And Victor Sloan, the man that did the engines, is now our engine overhauler. And I had the privilege of winning him to the Lord. And he's never had a failure. Nobody has ever had a failure with one of his engines. He and I talked about that. And the thing that won Victor Sloan to the Lord was excellence. Excellence. And the voice came from the excellent... This is my beloved Son. Oral Roberts at ORU said to me many, many times, founded the university, he says Jesus' ministry was a ministry of excellence. So this university will be a university of excellence. Excellence. And he was very demanding about it. Excellence in the staff. Excellence in every part of it.
— Right. We were talking last week about basic training, boot camp. The Air Force, we're not as physical, I mean we didn't do all of the...
— Bless you, darling.
— But one thing we were good at is, was what you're talking about excellence, attention to detail. And our drill sergeants worked on attention to detail all the way through our training. Because you're about to turn an 18-year-old out who's going to be an aircraft mechanic or an avionics tech, working on the avionics or working on the airframe of the plane. You can't have one, oh well just, they don't need that bolt. Or we'll substitute that one with this one.
— Airplanes have been destroyed because of a bolt that was too long in the wrong place.
— Can you hand me that photo? I'm going to show you something. This was, this is us in our training, right there. And they've got a picture of that, they'll show you that. There we all are, dressed like pickles. That's what they called us, pickles. And in that photo, well there's a combat medic in there because I know him, he's right there, that's me. That guy went military police, right here. And we all had different specialties, but we're all learning the same basics to become a team. You're a faith specialist... Since you mentioned that, I didn't call myself that.
— No.
— Pat Boone and I have been very close friends since I was 18 and he was 21. And they did... anyway, his pastor was Jack Hayford. And he said, "I'm going to set you up a meeting with my pastor". I'd never met Jack, he's in heaven now, God bless him. He wrote some, some songs that people don't know Jack Hayford wrote. Anyway, I can just see it, we're in his office. And the staff brought the food in. He prayed over the meal. He said, "Copeland, I don't think you're balanced". Here we go again. "You're not supposed to be. You're a faith specialist. You're not supposed to be balanced". He said, "Balanced is an equal part of good and bad. So to be balanced, you'd have to be part unbelief". Well, he went ahead to preach me on that. So he said I was a faith specialist. Well, I hadn't thought about it like that, but the Lord called me to preach the Word of Faith. And so Pat took him some of my tapes and he had listened to them. Well, I didn't know all that. And thank you, Mr. Boone, you didn't tell me ahead of time. I hope he's watching this. Anyway, he didn't tell me ahead of time, but it blessed me.
— When we were in the Air Force, we all had things like this for our aircraft. We had what we called no-go items.
— Oh, yeah.
— You had a showtime and a go time on a sortie. And if you didn't have a no-go item, you don't go.
— That's right.
— And we went over the exact same boring checklist.
— Every time.
— Every single time. You would have to, you couldn't just say, I have my parachute knife. You had to show your parachute knife. And it had to be on the string and it had to be the right length on the string. Because if you drop that, you're hung in a tree, you can't get out, you know, except another way.
— They had a lot of experience in that during World War II.
— Absolutely. So we had all of these things that we had to have with us. I have my no-go. This should be a no-go. If you don't have this and the authority that you walk in, then you're not ready to go face the enemy.
— And I must go back to first words and last words. What is the first thing you say when you open your eyes? What's the first thing you thought this morning when you opened your eyes? I opened my eyes this morning and I looked. I don't know what time it was. And I said, glory to God. One day closer to the resurrection. Oh, glory to God. Yes. And I'm stirred up over daily television. So I got dressed, went into breakfast and told everybody I'm stirred up. I am stirred up. That, the very first thing you say, I go, oh no, oh, I hope I don't... Oh, oh no. I forgot to do it. I did it the night before. I say every day for me is, "Reveal yourself to me today". And he does.
— This is my believing day, my receiving day. It's the day the Lord has made. I'll rejoice and be glad in it. And all day I love my neighbor as myself. And I walk in the commandment of love.
— Yeah. Amen. Amen.
— And then I have certain things written out on a little small legal pad and Scotch taped to the mirror where I shave. Every day. I'm on the road, I do the same thing. Every day. The 10 Commandments. Every day. Scotch taped right there.
— It's become your checklist.
— Uh-huh. In Isaiah 53, Matthew 8:14, where it was fulfilled. Every day.
— And I've seen you do it for your partners over and over.
— And I pray over them.
— I've watched you do it.
— And we're out of time for today. We'll be back in a little while.