Kenneth Copeland - Your Vote Is Your Responsibility, Not Your Right
Hello. This is Pastor George Pearsons. Welcome to this very special edition of the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast. We're talking about the election. And I want to remind you that all of the notes from these broadcasts are available to you. You can download them. And we want to make shows available to you. And we have on the broadcast today Brother Copeland, Bishop Keith Butler, and David Barton and myself as we talk about "Faith for Our Nation".
KEITH: I decided a long time ago that I have to preach the Word regardless of what the consequences were going to be.
GEORGE: Yeah, yeah.
KEITH: And I'm not going to tell you there ain't going to be a consequence till you stand up. You may lose some people in church, okay.
DAVID: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: But you will gain the anointing of God.
DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: And you'll...
DAVID: That's the other part of it.
KEITH: You will gain...
DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: ...God's supernatural...
DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: ...whatever it is that you will need.
DAVID: You will get the benefits.
KEITH: He will supply the need. So...
KENNETH: And whatever you compromise to keep, you're going to eventually...
KEITH: Lose.
DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: Eventually.
KENNETH: Your congregation...
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: ...is going down right now because of that.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: And it may be on the rise. But the moment you make that conscious decision, it's going down.
DAVID: See, and that's the thing that we found in the polling was, and George Barna and I did a book on this called "U-Turn". And what we found was that, when we asked these conservative Bible-believing pastors, "How do you know if your church is successful"? the top five answers were, "the number of people in the pews, the size of the offering, the square footage we have, the number of staff we have, and the number of programs we offer".
GEORGE: Wow.
DAVID: Jesus didn't have any of that.
KEITH: All wrong.
DAVID: Jesus, in John 6, turns to his disciples...
KEITH: All wrong.
DAVID: ...and said, "Everybody else is gone. You guys going to leave"? "Well, you've got the bread of life. We'll hang around". I mean, Jesus, all the time, was working discipleship not on numbers. And these are superficial things. And if you obey John... what is it? Acts 5:32, He gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him. If you will obey, you get all sorts of blessings. You'll get the anointing, you'll get all that. Go ahead and chase off the people that are hangers on anyway because you're after discipleship. You're not after hangers on out there. I mean, Jesus was, all the time, losing people. He offended them. He said, "You know what? I really came here to divide mother from daughters and sons from their... I came to bring a division". "Well, I can't offend anybody". Well, then you can't follow Jesus.
KENNETH: That's right.
DAVID: Jesus is offending people all the time.
KEITH: My spiritual father, Kenneth E. Hagin, used to say this: "I'd rather have the anointing for five minutes than the whole world with a fence around it".
KENNETH: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
KEITH: The anointing, having God's anointing...
KENNETH: He said to me...
KEITH: ...is what matters.
KENNETH: ...Saturday night, July 30th, 1977, 40 years ago. Last July the 30th, which was on a Saturday night, ha-ha, is when he called me out and set his hands on me and separated me into the office of the prophet.
KEITH: I was there.
KENNETH: And you remember what he said this to me. He said, "Now, you're going to get some persecution over this. And some friends are going to draw back from you. But those fair weather friends are not worth it".
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: "Go on with God. It's better to stand in His presence and say, 'I've not been disobedient.'"
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: Ooh. No, I left out something. He said, "Go on with God. Jesus is coming. It's better to say, 'I've not been disobedient.'"
DAVID: Mm-hmm.
KENNETH: That's the whole bottom line.
DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: That's the bottom line of what we're talking about because America is where she is, good or bad, because of what happened in the pulpit.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: Yes, sir.
GEORGE: Say that again.
KEITH: America was the great country because of all this.
DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: Okay? And you got the leadership because of all this, okay? And once you have...
DAVID: And here we are now.
KEITH: Again, it goes back to seedtime and harvest. The seed comes from the minister..
GEORGE: Mm, mm.
KEITH: Okay.
KENNETH: Now, men...
KEITH: ...then to the nation.
KENNETH: There are people that I know personally, sweet, darling, born-again, Holy Ghost-baptized, tongue-talking, healing, believing, sweet people that actually think the Democratic party is more like the Body of Christ in the way that it is constructed because it helps the poor, and everybody had everything in common.
DAVID: I'm going to jump in right there on a couple things.
KENNETH: But the people are not preaching the difference, David. That's important.
DAVID: They're not preaching the difference. But the other thing, and I've got to hit, this is where biblical stuff comes in, because the Democrats take care, there's 200 verses in the Bible that tells us to take care of the poor. Nobody's going to dispute that's a really big deal. Now, we're going to back there on the back. We're going to hang a piece of paper. I'm going to draw three columns on it. We're going to go through those 200 verses, and we're going to see, "Is this verse directed at the individual and the family, or is it directed at the church, or is it directed at the government"? When we get done with those 200 verses, there's three verses in the "government" category. All the government's told to do with the poor is, if they come into court, make sure they get justice. It's told, "Don't treat the poor different".
KENNETH: Yes, sir.
DAVID: The only thing the governments do with the poor is to take care of civil process. Everything on meeting their material needs goes to the church and to the individuals.
KENNETH: Yes, yes.
DAVID: Jesus said, in Matthew 25:40, "Well, if you done, I was hungry, and you fed me; I was naked, and you clothed me". And they said when did it, if he did it, he said that to His disciples. He didn't say that to Herod. He didn't say that to Pilate. He said to that His disciples. Then you get into Isaiah 58, and God says, "Is this not the fast I have chosen, says the Lord? Is it not to teach you to deal your bread to the hungry"? Everything's about the individual. So when they say, "Oh, the Democratic party, the government takes care of the poor," no. The Bible says that God's people take care of the poor. Government's not supposed to be in the social programs. And I can take you all the way back in Deuteronomy where he says, all right, guys, when you harvest your fields, you round off the corners. And when you pick your vines, you don't go over it a second time. Whatever hits the ground, you leave it for the poor. Well, that means the poor have to go in and harvest. The poor have to pick it up. The poor have to work to get what they're getting. God provided for the poor, but they had to do something to get it. You know, and that is one of the things that shows how unbiblical we are...
KENNETH: That's absolute...
DAVID: ...and we're saying, "Wait a minute". We're saying the Democratic party's right because it's violating what the Bible says? For a Christian to say that, man, go back to God's Word. That's just unbelievable.
KENNETH: And then in the book of Acts, where it's talking about, they had all things in common, well, they were prospering not because they took it from other people and divided it all up even, it's because they were sowing, and God was prospering that whole...
DAVID: And the government wasn't involved in it anyway.
KENNETH: They had no government involved at all.
DAVID: If we wanted to make a compact among us to share our stuff, well, go for it. But the government did not step in and make it coercive. The government was not involved in that...
KENNETH: Neither did the apostles.
DAVID: Neither did, that's right.
KENNETH: They told Ananias and Sapphira, "Wasn't it yours? You should have done with it what you wanted to do with it".
DAVID: That's right. Nothing coercive in it at all.
KENNETH: That is so, but it's not being preached is the point.
DAVID: It's not being preached. And, you know, I'll go back to something else in the founding area, you had what were called parishes. Now, some denominations still have parishes. In parishes, you had what were called vestrymen.
KENNETH: Mm-hmm.
DAVID: And vestrymen, all right, you go back to the Bible. God told the priests, "Whenever there's poor among you, you, the priests, go into their home and see what kind of need they have and for how long," because you always assume the need was temporary. And the priest goes in and says, "Yeah, you're having a hard time. I think we can help you for two months here. We'll give you 60 percent for doing", And that's where every three years, you paid an additional tithe. It was to take care of the poor through the church...
KENNETH: Yeah, yeah.
DAVID: ...through the temple. So in the founding era, the Founding Fathers were vestrymen. George Washington was a vestryman. He visited all the poor in his community, came back to the church, said, "They need help for this long and this much and this amount". All over America, we had it divided into vestries. And your Christian deacons were the guys who went out and visited and came back with the report for the church on how much they needed and for how long. It was never the government that did that.
KENNETH: Never. Never, ever.
DAVID: Never, ever, ever.
KEITH: Is this the reason why initially, though, that the United States government gave taxes into the churches?
DAVID: Well, they gave taxes into churches, one, because they aren't supposed to control them. And you go to Ezra 7:24, and Ezra 7:24 says you do not tax this temple or the temple priests or anything else. So it was a biblical precedent that you didn't put that tax on it. But you didn't want to control. But it was also the thing that the church contributed so much...
KEITH: To the poor.
DAVID: ...through the social programs, I mean, social...
KEITH: Right.
DAVID: And I'm just going to jump on another one while I'm right here, because in I Timothy 5:4, it says that children are to requite their parents. "Requite" means to repay. And it's in the context of social programs. And so in the context of taking care of them, they took care of us for 18 years. They changed our messy diapers, they fed us. It's like, all right, children, now you owe your parents those 18 years they gave you. At the end of their life, they're going to be a burden on you just like you were on them. It's going to mess up your life. Don't go stick them in a rest home somewhere. Don't put them in an assisted living home. You repay your parents. The social programs were all within the church and the family. And we're avoiding I Timothy 5 like crazy now. "Man, it's going to mess up my soccer schedule with the kids if I have to take care of my parents. I'll put them in a restroom". So, no. The Bible says repay what they did, and for all those years. So the whole concept of social programs needs to be, and that's why, again, in this thing, that was so high. What was that issue number four that people wanted to hear?
KENNETH: Yeah.
DAVID: It's the government role, my role, the church role.
KENNETH: In Deuteronomy 15:4, talking about the blessing of the Lord. And the King James says, "save when there shall be no poor among you".
GEORGE: Yeah.
KENNETH: In the New Living, it said, "There should be no poor among you," because of the blessing of the Lord. And those that are poor, you only had seven years there...
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: And at the end of that seven-year period, you made adjustments. But at the end of the jubilee year, which we're in a jubilee year right now. But at the end of that time, everybody's debts were canceled, and Jesus preached that, "the acceptable year of the Lord". So God didn't make poor people.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: The devil and the curse makes poor people.
DAVID: And there is certainly not a permanent class of poor people.
KENNETH: No. And the whole deal is you don't work, you don't eat.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: And that's what the Scripture says.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: But when people get in, and they got a better idea and all of that, you're going to get in trouble. But the whole bottom line here is what I want the pastors to hear and what I want the people to hear, to put the bee on your pastor about it is you better preach these things from the pulpit, because if you don't, you're going to have to answer to God. And if you do, your congregation will prosper.
KEITH: And all this comes back to the vote.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: Yep.
DAVID: And the platform he's talking about.
KEITH: Which system is going to be closest to God's way.
GEORGE: Yeah.
KEITH: You determine that.
GEORGE: Yep.
KEITH: Okay, and then you make a decision to support whichever's closest to God's way.
DAVID: That's right.
KENNETH: That's the bottom line.
GEORGE: I want to address something, and then we need to pray about it. Going back to the vote, you just brought up that about the vote again. There are two words that you gave. Let me quote you on this from the Lord. "Pray over the". Well, let me quote Abraham Lincoln first. "The ballot"...
KENNETH: Yeah, that'd be first.
GEORGE: "The ballot is mightier than the bullet," Abraham Lincoln. But the Lord said, through you, "Pray over these elections. Pray and seek Me, and I'll reveal to you how to vote. It's important that you vote. For you see, I gave you the privilege of living in a country where you have a say in your government. But if you will not obey Me, if you'll not listen to Me, and if you do not vote, then you have not activated the seed of obedience that will cause me to be able to take care of you, whomever is elected".
KEITH: Mm-hmm. That's what we're talking about.
GEORGE: Then the responsibility, "I will," saith the Lord, "hold you responsible for voting for whom I tell you to vote. And you can't get out of it by not voting. I hold you responsible for voting for the wrong one if you do that". The thing that the Lord really put on my heart right now for us to deal is, here we are. Early voting is going on right now. The election day is just a few days from now. There may be somebody out there, Kenneth, who did not register to vote, and they're hearing this.
KENNETH: Mm-hmm.
GEORGE: And they're saying, "Oh, God, I have made a major mistake in my life". So I just believe that we can bring them before the throne. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with forgiveness?
KENNETH: Mm-hmm.
GEORGE: Forgiveness cleanses...
DAVID: Before you answer that, one process saying many, many states now have same-day voter registration.
GEORGE: Really?
DAVID: So if you didn't get registered, that's still no excuse. You show up and say, "Hey, I didn't", We've got same-day voter registration...
GEORGE: Is that right?
DAVID: ...in many states.
GEORGE: Well, that's good to know.
DAVID: So that's part of the process.
GEORGE: That's good to know.
DAVID: So if you think you didn't get registered in time, that's not the end of the story yet. You show up and say, "I didn't get registered, I need to do same-day registration".
KENNETH: Well, now, if you go before the Lord...
DAVID: Only a few states don't allow that, but some do.
GEORGE: Yeah.
KEITH: Some of them don't even require that you even have to have proof of who you are even to vote.
GEORGE: That's true.
DAVID: You're signing what's called a provisional ballot.
KEITH: Yep.
DAVID: And that provisional ballot is "I didn't get registered," or "I don't know if I am," or whatever, and then you vote, and they'll check it.
GEORGE: And they can go online and they can find out where.
KENNETH: Before we close, let's deal with this properly. Now remember... well, let me read this one more time in James 4. "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good", and now you know it, "and does it not, to him it's a sin". All right. In I John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin". Now, the light has come about a lot of these things. So now that you have the light, and it's there, so from now on, you're going to be held responsible for it. But now look at this, Verse 9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just," or righteous, "to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness".
GEORGE: Thank You, Jesus.
KENNETH: Now I'm going to lead you in this prayer.
GEORGE: Oh, thank You, Lord.
KENNETH: And listen to what you're praying. "Father, in the name of Jesus I have come into the light that I should have voted. And it's in my heart now that I am responsible. I repent of that sin. And in the name of Jesus, I, by faith, receive my forgiveness. I receive my cleansing of all unrighteousness. And, Father, in Jesus' name, before You, I see that I should have voted this way. Amen". Can you see it?
GEORGE: Yeah.
KENNETH: I should have voted this way. So now I've done it in my heart. The Lord accounts me as I voted, even though I didn't, because I'm forgiven of it, I'm cleansed of it, and I made my decision. Even though I made it late, I made the decision, and the Lord has forgiven me so I don't care who's elected. For the next four years, He's going to take care of me because I changed my heart.
GEORGE: That's right.
KENNETH: Amen.
GEORGE: That's right. That's right. And I took that, too, as a pastor, the forgiveness, for not doing more of what we should be doing. There are words that you have spoken recently that are just echoing in my spirit, "Jesus taught them many things".
KENNETH: Yes.
GEORGE: That's what a shepherd does. And I'm thinking to myself, "He taught them many things. He taught them many things". What do I need to do to change that? How do we, as pastors and ministers, bring this element into the life of our church? I mean, you as a pastor, being involved in the political realm, you're sensitive to it. You bring it into the life of your church. We're all questioning that same thing, and we receive the forgiveness for not doing our part. Listening to you all talk, especially you, there are things that we as a church are responsible for that the government has no business doing.
DAVID: That's right. That's right.
KENNETH: And don't forget this. Don't forget this. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If you're not just preaching political issues and you're taking it to the Word of God, the people are hearing it, and their faith is growing, and they're saying, "Boy, I'll tell you, my family never voted this way. And I don't know what I'm going to get from them, but they didn't save me, they didn't baptize me in the Holy Ghost, and they didn't heal me. So, hey, and from what I'm hearing from pastor, man, I'm going. I got the faith for it now".
GEORGE: Yeah, yeah.
KENNETH: And the fear is gone.
KEITH: And that Greek word for "faith" is "pistis," which means trust, confidence, belief, reliance, assurance, okay? Belief. The only way that people are going to get all of that is that we have to preach it.
KENNETH: You've got to preach it.
GEORGE: And what an influence we have. Think about it. And if I'm correct, George Bush was in church when he heard the sermon that his pastor preached that encouraged him to run for president.
KENNETH: You know, I had forgotten about that, but that's true.
GEORGE: And the influence that we have.
DAVID: We have influence, and I'm going to hit one other thing from a historical standpoint because I think it's a big fallacy the church has gotten into. And if we can get this one fixed, I think we can get back to this kind of stuff. The Great Commission is not an evangelism mandate. And the sinners prayer did not exist till the 1920s with Billy Sunday. And so our belief that the Great Commission is to have people say the sinners prayer, how did people get saved before 1920? How did they get saved for 1,920 years? The Great Commission, Jesus didn't say make converts. He said, "Make disciples of all men and teach them everything I've taught you".
KENNETH: That's right.
DAVID: If I'm only getting, frankly, I'm a Christian. I don't need to get saved 52 Sundays a year. I'm a Christian. I need something to do on Monday when I get to McDonald's or Tuesday when I'm at Home Depot. Give me something that's real. And that's what this stuff used to be. And if we'll go back to discipleship rather than converts, and by the way, I will point out that in the first Great Awakening, with George Whitfield, 80 percent of the nation physically heard him preach a sermon with their own ears. Now, back in that era, when you're traveling by horses, you think of those 13 colonies, and you go from...
KENNETH: Well, they killed him. He gave his life for it. He preached himself to death.
DAVID: His last three years, he would preach, go spit up a bunch blood, fold up his pulpit, put it on his horse, ride to the next town, preach, go spit up a bunch of blood. It killed him. He didn't know he was in a revival, but he was faithful and he discipled people. And when you do that, you will turn things, so if we can get that concept of discipleship down, that "I'm supposed to be teaching everything He", Jesus, in Luke 19, has an entire teaching on no fault divorce and the definition of marriage. Jesus, in John 8, has a whole teaching on civil process and what happens when you're in court. Jesus, over in Luke 19, has a whole teaching on economics. And in Matthew 20, it's on the minimum wage. And Jesus taught it. Why aren't we teaching it?
GEORGE: Wow.
DAVID: So if we'll get that Great Commission out of just conversion and back into discipleship, man, we'll get back to this kind of stuff.
KENNETH: Praise God.
GEORGE: Yep, yep.
KENNETH: Gentlemen, thank you. My goodness, David, I tell you what.
DAVID: Hey, Ken.
KENNETH: I don't ever get into one of these sessions and I know George feels the same way, I'm just amazed at what God can say in just a couple hours. I mean, but you can't get there unless you've inquired of the Lord.
GEORGE: Yeah.
KENNETH: You can't get there without study. You can't just pick up some morning and grab a few things and go preach against abortion or something. You've got to spend some time and inquire of God and lay on your face in your study until your spirit man begins to rise up on the inside of you, and a hot, fiery, burning message comes boiling up out of there. That's when you get results. And in times like this, we're going to get results. Praise God.