Kenneth Copeland - Your Covenant Gives You Authority
Hello, everybody. I’m Kenneth Copeland. This is the Believer’s Voice of Victory Broadcast. And like the Lord said, every believer has a voice and it is the Voice of Victory. Just make sure it’s not an echo. Don’t go around quoting me. Quote this book. And don’t say Brother Copeland said. No, no. Like with Brother Hagin. You say, Brother Copeland showed me in the scripture where it says, and then you quote the scripture. I didn’t write this book. I just love it. You can tell. I’m rather excited about it today. Glory to God. I asked Gloria, you know, I just turned 88 years old in December. I said, «Gloria, how did I get this old…»? «Oh», she said, «One day at a time, sweet Jesus».
She’s still five years younger than me. And she’s still really funny. Anyway, Father, we just thank You for the book and the way it works. In a nutshell, again, because so many people don’t really, Christian people don’t really realize this. I didn’t either. For a long time, I still really got serious about staying in the covenant years and years ago. It had to be prophesied. Once Adam sinned, it had to be prophesied because it’s all going towards Jesus and the cross. All of it. That’s where it was headed all the time. So the first covenant, or once the Spirit of God through the mouth of a prophet put it into the earth, Micah, Bethlehem-Ephratah. David was born in Bethlehem.
So was Jesus. So Son of David. That’s important when you see it. It had to be spoken here by the prophet. So they get over into the second covenant because the devil tried to stop him every way he could. He tried to stop him and he tried to kill him. But he didn’t do it. Jesus said, «No man takes my life. I lay it down». And you remember they were astonished that he was dead so fast. Now, let’s go back to Genesis chapter two and we’ll see something here. In the second chapter of the book of beginnings and the verse 15, And the Lord took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it.
Now, if we have time, we’ll get over into the Eden covenant in the book, in our book. And the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden, you may not eat. And it was, we know it was fig tree. It wasn’t an apple and no, but they covered themselves with fig leaves. So we know that. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will not eat of it. For in the day that you eat thereof, you will surely die. And the Lord God said is not and so forth and so on.
Now, I want you to notice this. And formed the beast of the field and brought unto Adam, the man, Adam, Adam, red. Really? And brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all the cattle, the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field. For Adam, there was not found a helpmate for him. Not a dinosaur mentioned. The fossil record doesn’t lie. I won’t take the time to do it, but it’s over in the life of Lucifer. Well, yeah, see, he did it in six days. No, he redid it in six days. Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, Elohim created heaven and earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Now, the Spirit of God moved over the water. That was the first flood. That wiped out that dinosaur age because that’s when Lucifer, the archangel of praise and his beauty and his pride. And he said, I’ll be like the Most High God. He was here. And Jesus said, I saw him fall like lightning. He was in Heaven. The archangel of music. And Phil Driscoll was quick to point out to me, no trumpet. For in the last days, God’s trump will sound. But stringed instruments and all of that. He was the musician of praise. No, I’m getting off track. So, and he named everything, and the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Now see, this is the reconstruction of it. And Elohim, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, plural.
So, I wanted you to see this. And now, he turned it over to his man. You name them. They have ruins of the saber-tooth, the cave men, the Neanderthal man. There’s a missing link. That was because they were here at a different time. Of course, it’s missing. Everybody tries to gather it up. But the thing I wanted you to see is he gave us dominion over everything that flies, swims, crawls, everything. Dominion over it. The man named it today. There’s a half a million bugs but the bugs weren’t there yet. Only the animals that God created. The bugs and the lice and the ticks and all of that came with the curse. But he named the animals and the birds of the air and the different species.
Isn’t this magnificent? We have dominion here. We have dominion here. It has nothing to do with… I’m not a white man. I’m a preacher of the gospel. It doesn’t have anything to do with the pigment of my skin. That’s not only demonic. I don’t have time to tell you what I think about it. Because I don’t want to get mad. But Adam said, this is now… Oh, he said, it’s not good for a man to be alone. For a man to be alone. And he caused of great sleep to fall on Adam and closed up the flesh thereof. Like I said, no belly button on either one of them. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone. Don’t you know he’s… God formed her with his own hands. Oh, oh, don’t you know she was really something. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
And here again, he just, he knew better. He knew better. God told him, you’re going to die. And the devil said, You’re not going to die… spiritually. They didn’t know what die was. Do you realize that? Die? What’s die? They were covered in His glory. They’d never seen a physical body. And when they saw it, even though it was perfect, to them, it looked ugly because they’d never seen anything but His glory. And they were, they were ashamed of it. But my point is the authority that he gave us, he turned it over to his man to name these things. That’s the reason an elephant is an elephant and not a bobblygog. I mean, if he’d have said bobblygog, a bobblygog would have had a long trunk. Amen.
And that was a reason then. And, uh, I’ll just touch on this in the book of Genesis. The sons of God, angels, took part with women and it created the giants and then you can pick it up in Greek mythology. No, that’s, that’s where they came from. And Goliath was a throwback from that. You remember they said there’s giants in there. Giants. Giants in there. Well, where’d they come from? They’re a throwback from that generation. So to learn all these things is very important. Now I want to get back to this. In one of my absolute heroes then and still is now. This is chapter four.
One of my heroes of faith is Bishop David Oyedepo, pastor and Faith tabernacle in Ota, Nigeria. A remarkable person. He’s what I call a modern day covenant man. I’m certain a major part of what has to do with his living in the continent of Africa. It’s huge, it’s covenant life. And that’s what he said to me. He said, «I understand covenant. We pray and obey». But he said, «And the healing part I had no trouble with. But the prosperity part, I read mama Gloria’s book. 'God’s Will is Prosperity.'» Oh, okay. Okay. That was his answer. Okay. Somebody asked him, «Are you preaching that American gospel»? He said, «No, Jesus was not born in America». Prosperity gospel. They continue to do this year after year. The church in 1983, people gathered a church, spent so much of their time praising and worshiping God.
The Bishop had learned earlier the power of praising God for what he had already promised in his Word and standing fast until the results came. This is a covenant man. Understood it and does understand it. And I read his book and I thought, Oh, the students teaching the teacher, his book on prosperity far exceeded mine. And, um, they continue to do this. Then they decided to buy land outside the major city of Lagos. That was 500 acres of jungle full of lions and monkeys and wildlife, fast forward about 25 years. That’s when Bishop Oyedepo and I met in 2008. America, much, uh, and America and much of the world was in a global financial crisis with real estate bottoming out.
Faith Tabernacle, however, was experiencing a boom. 2000 acres cleared and developed with buildings, infrastructure, including a facilities seating 50,000 people. The project had caused US 250 million and it was phase one. The miracle was they did, did it debt free, no American money and all in one year… he got the debt free from us all in one year. How could such a feat be accomplished in such bad financial times and out of the middle of a jungle? Covenant, not just any covenant, one bought and paid for by the precious blood of Jesus. God, by his Spirit instructed Bishop Oyedepo to build and the Bishop and his people knew they had a blood covenant with Jehovah Jireh, the Lord that is the provider so that all kinds of officials and professionals said it could not be done.
The people of Faith Tabernacle were confident through the direction and power of the Holy Spirit, the project would be completed. They trusted the one who had given the directive, supply all their need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Now, Hebrews 13:15 and Psalm 22:3, if you want to make a note of that, The acts of praise were a declaration that he was faithful to keep his promises. Now, next step, next paragraph, the power of God’s Word combined with praise provided a great harvest. The project was completed. What’s more, in 2008 when we met, he told me 250 million for phase 2, was already in the bank. $250 million with no American money. That’s what I said. Wooh!
So I began to read his book and I suggest you get it, but he got it out of this book. And my wife, Gloria had written in her book, God’s will is prosperity. And she took all the scriptures that we’ve been talking about and he said, «I got it». Well, the first time we landed there, at the Lagos airport, we were in a Citation X and I didn’t fly that leg. I just, I was in the cabin. Dwayne was flying and the customs agent said, «I’ll take care of this one». And he stuck his head in there. Mama Gloria! Oh, Papa…! What? The teachers. Beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings and good things. And began to weep. I have a picture. We were leaving and so I was about to get on the airplane and I was flying out that day. And these two young men just ran up there and got down in front of me.
And another one got down there. One boy said, wait a minute, wait a minute. They were working at the airport. They were land men. And all got down like this. So I got my oil bottle and anointed them with the oil of gladness for the abundance of all things. And out on the ramp of an airport that has never happened in the United States, all the many years I’ve been flying since 1961. But there it did. Yes. And appreciated it because we brought the gospel of prosperity to them. And they cried. When the custom’s agent stuck his head in that airplane, he began to cry. Beautiful are the feet of those that take the gospel of glad tidings. And that’s what this is.
Now, Abraham considered not his own body. He considered only the covenant of blood. I consider not my own body. 88 years old. I was 83 when I made this outline. It is the most powerful thing. And Greg and I went through it more than one time in this book. Blood agreements. It is the most powerful thing on the face of this earth. It’s the blood of the Lamb. When the missionary Stanley from England couldn’t get past the borderline of the stories in here. And his interpreter says, «You’re going to have to cut the covenant with somebody or you’re a white man. You’ll never get past right here». He said, «What does that mean»? Well, he said, «You’ll have to drink one another’s blood». «What»? «And you’ll have to exchange gifts».
Well, that was repulsive to him. He said, well, it’s either that or go back home. All right, let’s go. And he had problems with his stomach. So he had a little goat for goat’s milk. So here was a King, big man. He had a staff with copper wire around it. And so they had the ceremony. And so one of them came over and cut the King’s hand, cut Stanley’s hand and in a cup of wine and they drank and they became blood brothers. He gave him that staff, he wants your goat. Either make the exchange or go back home. Okay, I’ll do it. How much time I got, Tim? Just long enough to do it. He carried that stick. People bowed down before him. He represented the King. They bowed in front of him. He said, «I just held this up and they do this». We’re in covenant with the King and we have gifts. Nine manifestations of the Holy Ghost. And he gave gifts unto men. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. And we’ll be back in just a moment.