Kenneth Copeland - How God Is Using Donald Trump
Kenneth Copeland: Welcome everybody to Tuesday's edition of the "Believer's Voice of Victory" broadcast.
Father, we thank you. First of all, we thank you for Stephen Strang, the insights and ideas and concepts that you have given him as a Christian journalist, a man that can that can investigate with an open heart, an open mind and deal with the absolute facts and truths. And we praise you for his life. And we thank you for this broadcast and the help that the people need all over the United States and the people that are watching this around the world because, so, every country on this planet depends on how this country makes it or doesn't. And we thank you and praise you for it. The best is yet to come. I believe that in Jesus' Name. Amen.
Kenneth Copeland: Stephen Strang, welcome.
Stephen Strang: Thank you.
Kenneth Copeland: I am so pleased. This 50th anniversary, 50 years in ministry just few years ago, the project that you brought to me and brought to this ministry and the Kenneth Copeland Word of Faith Study Bible Charisma Media, Charisma House, Book Group. Thank you, sir.
Stephen Strang: Thank you.
Kenneth Copeland: This was a work that I'd always dreamed of because I always had notes in this Bible here, but this one, there's a commentary and I just... I love it.
Stephen Strang: I love it too. I read it every day. I read it yesterday.
Kenneth Copeland: So I'm just... I'm indebted to you for having the God idea to do it. And I know when Stephen and his crew came down to talk to us about doing it, but there wasn't any question whether we gonna do it, it's when are we gonna do this? It was not if, it was when. Just the ideas set me on fire and I wanted you to know how much I appreciate it.
Stephen Strang: Oh, thank you...
Kenneth Copeland: And how much I enjoy it.
Stephen Strang: People know me as a journalist but I'm also a publisher, and we publish the modern English version of the Bible. And one of the crowning highlights of my entire life was publishing that Bible.
Kenneth Copeland: Oh, thank you.
Stephen Strang: I do really believe that. Why it is better to publish in the Word of God and to be able to put it in a format, a lot of publishing houses would not have had the vision to have done it that way. Or they would have said you got to do it this way or that way. We just it was whatever Brother Copeland wanted to do. And we just tried to make it happen.
Kenneth Copeland: I'll tell you it just blessed us. And just to feel that it's gonna, it's... I love Bibles and this thing feels good. Anyway. I love it. Thank you, sir.
Stephen Strang: Thank you.
Kenneth Copeland: We're discussing this 2020 election of course. And... Persecution has always come primarily from bad government. I mean you go, God's people have been persecuted by bad government. That's the reason for the United States. I mean, it was bad government that pushed people over here to risk their very lives, and a lot of them didn't make it to get out from under bad government that hated God. Now, that government claimed, claimed to love God. And here I have in my possession and I'm reading from the King James Version of the Bible. But it was not the people. It was the government.
Stephen Strang: And that's still true today.
Kenneth Copeland: It's true today.
Stephen Strang: Where Christians are persecuted and there's many Christians persecuted all over the world.
Kenneth Copeland: And it's...
Stephen Strang: It's with totalitarian governments, leftist government, socialist governments. And Donald Trump has actually lobbied on behalf of religious freedom in different parts of the world.
Kenneth Copeland: I noticed that.
Stephen Strang: He has, he puts Senator Sam Brownback as the ambassador for the International Religious Freedom. We're the only country that has an ambassador for that. He made an historic speech at the United Nations last fall. It was so good. I actually put it at the back of the book as an index. It is just a wonderful articulation of how important religious freedom is, not only in the United States, but around the world. Remember that missionary Andrew Brunson, that was in Turkey. And a lot of people don't know this because they don't play it up in the news media of course. But he's a Spirit-filled missionary. He's one of us. He, wasn't just some, I mean, it's horrible for any missionary to be persecuted, but you know that people were just praying, praying, praying to get him out, and any other president, any other state department, would have let that poor man rot in jail. They would've done a little bit of diplomatic, whatever they do. Donald Trump made it an international issue. He put tariffs and things on Turkey that made their currency plummet, their stock market plummet, they were going like, "uncle". "Here, take your missionary". Lift these sanctions that we put on them. And...
Kenneth Copeland: Does that remind you of a certain King that had a certain woman that was the wife of Abraham, "get that woman out of here".
Stephen Strang: That's exactly what happened.
Kenneth Copeland: That's exactly what happened.
Stephen Strang: In 24 hour period, Andrew Brunson went from being in a jail to being at the White House, met with President Trump, and at the end, he asked the president while the TV cameras were rolling, if he could pray for him. He got on his knees, put his hand on him and prayed that God would fill him with the Holy Spirit. That's such a bold prayer. And Donald Trump did not do that to curry favor. He already had the Christian vote if you know what I mean. But it was a principle. He believes in it. He really believed in it.
Kenneth Copeland: Stephen, the man has said over and over and over, if it's the right thing to do, do it. Well, he's a billionaire. He's not used to thinking, "do we have the money"? He's used to thinking, "I don't care what it takes, let's get the man out of there". And if I have to, if I have to put the twist on those people just twist it on. Well, they might attack you. Won't bring it on. Then when you do that, they don't.
Stephen Strang: They don't.
Kenneth Copeland: No bully ever takes the challenge.
Stephen Strang: And Donald Trump is strong. He can stand up to these bullies. Almost nobody else does. And he is attacked every single day. It's amazing. I believe that there's gotta be some kind of hedge of protection around him from the Lord.
Kenneth Copeland: Yeah, you know, it is.
Stephen Strang: I mean just every single day, it's something new and you would know better than I do because you've been with him more times. I've only... I interviewed him once and talked to him on the telephone once. But you've met with him and he just seems happy. Like, he doesn't have a care in the world, and yet you know that all the pressures of life are on top of him. I try to go into this in the book because the media has created a caricature of Donald Trump. In fact, when I met him, in the 2016 election and interviewed him, I rather expected him to be kind of the brusque person that we see on the TV.
Kenneth Copeland: He's not at all.
Stephen Strang: Not at all. He was polite, he was respectful, I had a certain length of time, I had my questions ready. In fact, you gave me one of the questions. Do you remember that?
Kenneth Copeland: I do.
Stephen Strang: I was writing, I said, I'm interviewing Donald Trump, and I asked several people. I asked Governor Mike Huckabee as well. And I asked him your question, but he was respectful. He was soft spoken. And I write about this in the book, "Trump and the 2020 Election", to tell what he's really like. And I interview people like Paula White-Cain and others who know him very well. Mike Evans says that he walks around saying thank you every other word in just his conversation. I'd write about how he plays chess with Baron when he has time in the White House. I mean, just things that you don't... some glimpses into what he's really like. Then he met with the ministers, you and Gloria were there where he had a state dinner. Never in the history. Has there been a state dinner for Christian leaders. And then he turns over the pulpit, which is very brave thing to do, when you got a room full.
Kenneth Copeland: Everybody laughed. He said, "now just take your time", and anybody that wants to gather and everybody gonna riot, "we're not too much time".
Stephen Strang: And then he also... so I think that even that shows a certain amount of humility, a certain interest in learning from other Christian leaders. But when they asked him, one of the people I asked him, and you would remember better than I do. Although I document this in the book. How did he wanna be remembered? He said he wants to be remembered as the president that prays more than any any other president.
Kenneth Copeland: That's what he said.
Stephen Strang: Which you would never, never expect Donald Trump to say. And whether or not he prays more than... the fact that he would even think about it. I think is pretty significant. And it also is a little glimpse that there's a lot of prayer going on when the cameras aren't around.
Kenneth Copeland: That's right.
Stephen Strang: And...
Kenneth Copeland: When we walked into that meeting in Trump Tower, Gloria and I were sitting there at the end of the table there, he just walked by us, well, I'd never met him, He said, "Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, I watch you on television all the time", and just kept going. I said, "what"?
Stephen Strang: A lot of people don't know this, but he has said similar things to Jim Bakker, who would have thought? He watches David Jeremiah. And I really think that it was Christian television. Him sitting late at night, watching Paula White.
Kenneth Copeland: That's what got his attention.
Stephen Strang: Got his attention.
Kenneth Copeland: Watching her.
Stephen Strang: And he called her up and he said that she had the "it factor". You know how somebody has it?
Kenneth Copeland: Well, yeah, he's a television guy.
Stephen Strang: He knows that he's very canny on those kinds of things and forward, and started a relationship. And I, I've known Paula for years. I knew her back in that era. I remembered in conversation, her telling how this celebrity had called her ministry office. I mean, I just remember it because it was just kinda odd little did I know that a friendship would develop and that she would help, I guess, disciple him. But it showed that there was something going on in here. He became more serious about life, he went from being pro abortion to pro-life. He started thinking about what he wanted to do whatever years he had on earth. And he ended up being president of the United States. I guess when you earned that much money as a billionaire there's only so many building, more buildings you can build and I really believe that God raised him up. I really do. In fact, that's why I wrote my first book, "God and Donald Trump", because we covered that election. And there were prophecies that he would win against all odds and all this kind of stuff. And it was a... and then he won. The prophecies came true and it was an untold story. And in the past, as a publisher, we'll have an idea for a book and we'll hire a writer. Well, in this case, because I had interviewed him and because I had been all involved, I wanted to write it myself. And that was the first book to try to tell the untold story of how God used this unlikely billionaire and raised him up. And you've heard them this comparison. He was raised up like King Cyrus. Cyrus was a pagan king who God used to get the Jews back to Jerusalem. And God used Donald Trump, this carnal billionaire who sometimes tweets things that make us cringe but used him to get the embassy from Tel Aviv back to Jerusalem. Just kind of like Cyrus. In fact, Jonathan Cahn, the Messianic Rabbi who wrote the "Harbinger", writes about all these comparisons in some of his books about how the Jews were in Babylon exactly 70 years, And then Truman was like Cyrus, recognizing Israel. And then exactly 70 years later, Trump moves the embassy and he finds all this significance. And I actually tapped Jonathan Cahn in my book because he's got a gift and insights beyond anything I've ever seen. But I tried to pull out some of these things to show the Christian reader that it's not... we have to understand things, and it's not just saying "well, I like this Cable News Network because it's more conservative than this one" or whatever. To understand what God is doing. And there are foreshadowing in the Bible of things. Cyrus being one of them. But also Jonathan Cahn chose that when he was... Ahab and Jezebel who are the most wicked king and queen ever in Israel history who caused them to sacrifice their children to Baal. Doesn't that sound like abortion? A very powerful husband-wife. Never in Israel history had a queen been that strong. Never in American history had any first lady been as strong as Hillary Clinton. I mean, these parallels are uncanny. And then there is an uncouth person that nobody ever heard of who came in called Jehu. And Jehu, is the one who got Israel back to serving the one, true God. And so Jonathan Cahn sees that there is a similarity to Jehu as well. But isn't that good to see that we can see a foreshadowing in the Bible but but you know we do that in other ways. Didn't people say that Martin Luther King was like Moses leading his children to freedom? And other things like that, or maybe somebody would follow God and they would say, well, he's like Abraham or God raise somebody up like Joseph or like Esther. We use it but never before with the president. I've never heard any of this with any of our presidents. And I think that it's important that we understand this. Now, can we make it? Can we start a new denomination with a new theology? I think not. But it should make us go, "Hmm, I wonder at what God is at work".
Kenneth Copeland: The other two times that it happened, one was Abraham Lincoln, the other was Ronald Reagan. And each one of these men changed things.
Stephen Strang: They absolutely.
Kenneth Copeland: Because they didn't know anything about government. Now, Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. He was not a president. Politics was not so much the thing with him. It was slavery that was the thing with him. It was the moral purpose behind what he was doing. Ronald Reagan is the same, basically the same thing, but never, never, in his critical a time, we'll accept Lincoln of course. But never at such a critical time as this and never to this degree, because this man thinks he's a billionaire. Ronald Reagan thought he was president. And Gloria said to me, she said, "well, Ronald, Reagan's an excellent actor". And all he had to do was act like a good president. And he was, well, come on.
Stephen Strang: The great communicator.
Kenneth Copeland: Yes sir, he played the part. So this man is playing the part of a billionaire, running a business, he's used to being boss, he's not used to people telling him what to do. And he's used to negotiating with people that change nations, and control things and-
Stephen Strang: The globalists, we call them. And that's really the struggle here. Everything else can kind of be traced back to that, And that's a one world government, which the Bible talks about. We have to wonder what's really going on.
Kenneth Copeland: You know, Stephen, now my dad, my dad was world-class salesman and negotiator. My dad was a very kind man. But, and I learned a lot from my dad and I'm watching Donald Trump do the same thing, and everybody's said, "he called Erdogan a good guy. You don't call the guy a bum and then go try to negotiate with him". That's stupid. You don't come out and say the guy's murderer. And then go have a negotiation meeting with him. No, you call him a nice guy. And then you get in a room with him and just put the screws to him. But that's negotiation and politicians don't know how to do that right.
Stephen Strang: But he's not a politician.
Kenneth Copeland: No, he's not.
Stephen Strang: He's a businessman. And he's a great leader, and...
Kenneth Copeland: He's about as diplomatic as a black bear. He doesn't, diplomacy doesn't enter into his thinking because that's not the way he was raised. And I'm not saying that that's all bad, but there had to be somebody, trained a lifetime, his dad coming up with nothing and teaching his son how to live in that world. And his dad told him when you go to the job, don't talk to the foreman. He'll tell you whatever he wants you to know. Go talk to the brick layer, go talk to the guy that's got a wheelbarrow in his hand, and he'll tell you what's actually going on and you can fix it. That's what he's doing now.
Stephen Strang: You're right. And you know, his dad was a great man and his dad had a big influence on him. And I go into this in the book, he was raised to a Presbyterian. They went to church every Sunday as a young adult, he went to Norman Vincent Peale Church. And if you... and Norm, I had the privilege of meeting him and I believe he was a great man. A lot of us Pentecostals kind of looked down on people, but, he loved Jesus, he really did. But he said, you can believe, and you can do things and you can kind of see his influence in Donald Trump.
Kenneth Copeland: Now, those of you that are way too young to know who he is. He wrote a book called "The Power of Positive Thinking". And boy, it started out in Reader's Digest and it just went wildfire. He said, the working title of my book was the power of faith. But if I'd have said faith, nobody would have read it.
Stephen Strang: That's right. And also in that era, and it's still true in a lot of places. A lot of the Christians were like doom and gloom and negative and small thinking and legalistic, and he was saying, you need to think positive and have... And it was his way of saying faith.
Kenneth Copeland: Get out of negative thinking. Get out of... and you ever noticed, Mr. Trump does not talk about negative things. Everything is great. We're gonna do this. Great. It's great. It's been great. It's going to be greater. And everything is on the up. It's on the rise. He never gripes about anything. He makes fun of a lot of stuff, but he never gripes about anything. Now, my being a reformed showman, that's what I studied as that's what I wanted to be. And I watch his stage plan. He starts off, funny, funny funny. He does funny stuff.
Stephen Strang: I enjoy watching his rallies. They're just fun. Good entertainment.
Kenneth Copeland: But then, and Democrats can't get a crowd but people just fall all over themselves just to get in them, not to hear him to watch him. He's a show. But then he gets down to business.
Stephen Strang: And getting back to how he was raised, his mother was really the strong Christian of the family. She was raised in a very... she was Scottish, so she was raised a Presbyterian in Scotland, in a very conservative strain. And her family is from the Hebrides. You've heard of the Hebrides?
Kenneth Copeland: Yes.
Stephen Strang: 'Cause there was a great revival in 1948 to 51 called the Hebrides Revival. And there's been stories that his mother was involved in that Hebrides Revival, but she wasn't 'cause she'd moved to America about 15 years before. But her extended family were all impacted by the Hebrides Revival.
Kenneth Copeland: Well, had an effect on her, through them and the things that were passed down.
Stephen Strang: Absolutely. And he went through confirmation in the Presbyterian Church, and listen, you were... if you go through confirmation, you know the Bible...
Kenneth Copeland: We're out of time. You did that to me, Tim Fox.