Kenneth Copeland - Your Goliath Will Make You King
Hello everybody, I'm Kenneth Copeland Let's have a word of prayer, we get right into today's Bible lesson. Father, we do thank you and we praise you. We worship you today, Sir. We look to you for revelation from heaven, words that move heaven on the earth. Thank you, Sir. All is well in the household of faith. And we give the glory for all that's said and for all that's done to the matchless magnificent name of Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, our Champion, and it's in his name, we pray. Amen. If you believe that, say amen and give the Lord a praise. Thursday, boy, this week has gone by. My, my, my, praise God. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord, Jesus.
Now, we've been talking about David being a covenant man. So aware of his covenant with God that when he came up against this giant, that's roughly nine feet, 10 1/2" tall. I mean the man's coat weighed 125 pounds. This is an awesome site. And at the sight of the man, no they didn't wait to hear what he had to say. At the sight of him they ran. David didn't care how big he was. He had a covenant with God. He fully planned to kill him and he did. Amen.
Now, let's look here in 1 Samuel 17 and verse 55, "when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine, he said to Abner the captain of the host 'Abner, who is this kid? Whose son is he?' And he said, 'King, I don't know.' And the King said, 'Inquire who's son he is.' And David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine. Abner took him and brought before Saul with the head, with the head of the Philistine in his hand". He still had this head. That was the trophy of that fight.
Now, I want to say something to you and ask you a question. Now, think about it before you answer. Who made David King? Goliath. Goliath made him King. Nobody knew who he was until he came in with his head. Are you hearing me? You see where I'm going with this? In, have any former Marines in here? You know the Marine hymn, right? You know, you know, can you sing it? "From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli". What does that mean? Well, I'm not a Marine, I don't know well it's time you found out?
The first engagement outside the United States, was a detachment of Marines aboard ship. An Islamic king was making demands of the president. Third president of the United States, $250,000 ransom for your ships. Some things never change. In Tripoli, Libya, and the president sent a detachment of Marines all eight of them, led by a young Lieutenant by the name of John O'Banion. Can't you just see that sharp, red headed, Irish Marine. But, he led, he and seven other Marines, led an army of mercenaries. Army, and he had to deal with some of them and get them straightened out but he did it. And this, Yusuf, this Muslim King rather than face eight Marines gave up.
Yee, hah! Hey, come on. Rather than face eight Marines. That is the spirit of David against Goliath. I thought you'd enjoy hearing that? And what happened, that country was reborn because it was in trouble, it was in bad trouble right then. Well and you know what happened in 1865. Took a long, skinny, not a very good looking man until he became who he is. But he's beautiful in my sight. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. My, God. I dare say the first martyr of this nation. Glory to God. Somebody ought to shout amen in this classroom today. And the country was reborn again.
I had the Lord say to me several years ago, just as clear, now I've never heard the audible voice of God. One time I heard what sounded audible to me, that was one of the first time I flew over this property. It was at night, I was by myself and I just flown over this property, I didn't know it was this property at the time. And I heard in a radio voice, "Coming to you from the Revival Capital of the World". I looked down at my audio panel to see if I'd turned the low frequency radio mode, which I never do. And I thought, Oh, boy. I know where the political capital of the world is, that's Washington DC. I know where the entertainment capital of the world is, that's at Hollywood. I know where the country music capital of the world is Nashville, Tennessee.
Where's the Revival Capital of the World? I don't know. I was just got busy and, and it was not time. And I was coming to just right there to approach him. I had to call and, get clear, beautiful clear night. So wasn't on instruments or anything. And landed it, and forgot about it. Well, then a man on our board at that time called me sometime later. And he said, "Brother, Kenneth, there's a piece of property out here, north of town. I think we need to go look at it". We came out here.
Well, then I remembered what it was because when I was in high school, they came out here and had drag races and they had their stuff on these runways out here that the Navy built in 1942. So which is the airport now. So make a long story short. We came out to see this and... So I just put my foot on the barbed wire fence and held it up, Gloria, crawl through it. And I just stepped over it. When I stepped over that fence and turned around, I heard it "coming to"... No, he said, "this is the Revival Capital of the World, and you're gonna build it".
I just stood there in shock. And here we are here, here we are Hallelujah? Early seventies. Anyway, it pays to listen. And obey. Hey, come out here. What am I gonna do with 1,520 acres of land? I mean, I couldn't have bought chicken and setting hen and chicks you know, right then how am I going to do this? I don't care. That's not my problem. That's God's problem. That's his problem. Not mine, but I believed it. I believed it. I told Gloria. She said, "well, yeah". Well, and then later I, of course I had to find out who owned it. It was a man by the name of Pewitt. He was in the oil and gas business and never had married and he was a large donor to SMU and he just a strong man of God, 89 years old.
So, I went to see him and I had a young man with me back in those days, named Neil Hale. And I told Neil, and you're going to like this. I learned this from my dad. Now, we talked about Samson, right? And we understand that the Bible said that Samson killed a thousand men with the jaw bone of an ax. My dad said to me, "Kenneth". My dad was a world-class salesman. And he said, "now Kenneth". I worked for him for a while. he said, "when we go in there keep your mouth shut". I like to talk. Now, this is the reason why, when I became Oral Roberts' driver, and they said, "you don't talk to him unless he talks to you first".
Well, I'd already learned how to do that from my dad taught me. And here's what he said. He said, "Samson killed a thousand Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass. And 10 times that many salesmen killed with the same weapon". A salesman had talked too much. So, we went in there, knocked on the door. He talked very slowly and I introduced myself. And we came in little small house over here at Glen Rose, Texas. And at the time he was worth roughly $300 million. But it's just he and his niece lived there. I said, Mr. Pewitt.
Now, I heard exactly what the Lord said to say. And you don't say any more or any less. I said, Mr. Pewitt, the property out at Eagle Mountain. The Lord hath need of that property. Now, we're inside the house. He said, "Well? It's for sale". I knew that, I didn't say anything. We sat down, seemed like hours. He had a, a real tick tock clock sitting on the mantle. I mean it was a real one. And you could hear it every time. The little pendulums swung. Wind up in the back. We sat there few moments. And I said, Mr. Pewitt. We don't have any money. We must have sat there 20 minutes. He didn't say a word. I didn't either.
"You boys come back to see me". I said, yes, sir. Thank you. So, we made our appointment. Came back, went through the same procedure, sat down in there and walked a while. And he said, "I'm gonna see you boys through this". I said, Mr. Pewitt something else I needed to tell you. We don't borrow money. I don't believe it's right to mortgage another man's property. Do you? And this property will belong to Jesus. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. I don't know how long we sat there. I didn't say anything. I already knew. This property is mine. It's coming to me some way or another. This is "The Revival Capital of the World". I'm not worried about it. I don't care. We could be sitting there 'til yet.
God said what he said, and I'm doing what I'm doing. We sat there a lot. He said, "you boys come back to see me". We made our appointment. Only this time he said, "I want you to meet me at a little restaurant there in Glenrose". And aim to get, said this to my secretary said, "and have somebody come that can write out." and so forth on a member of the board or something. He wants to be talking to an official board. And the man that was on our board at time is in the real estate business and a wonderful friend of mine and named Barry Hahn, he still lives in California.
And so we win. He's never smiled this whole time. That didn't bother me because the property is mine. It's been mine since, before the foundation of the world. This is the "Revival Capital of the World". So we sat there and he said, all right, now the whole contract is on letter-sized piece of paper. He said, "now then, you got anything against rent"? And I said, no, sir, I don't believe so. He still didn't smile. I did. But he didn't. He said, "You're rent"... Which was $23,000 a month. He said, "I'm gonna divide the property into four equal parts. Your rent will be $23,000 a month. When you can pay for a quarter. I'll deed it to you. The last, the fourth quarter, all your rent money will go towards the fourth quarter of the property". And he's he said, "is that satisfactory with you"? I said , yes sir. It is.
So he turned around and he said, "can you write that down? Just like I said it"? Barry said, "yes, sir. I can do that". So he just sat down over there and wrote it out and came over there. And it was 1500 acres at $3,500, an acre, which came to $5,083,000. I believe it was. So made the thing out. I signed it. Then he signed it. And now he said to Barry, he said, "now write that over again". Exactly the same way and take a million dollars off of the price. I'm the first donor. He slapped the table and he smiled. And he said, you gonna be bigger than Oral Roberts one of these days.
Just hear keep your mouth shut. The devil, will talk to you and all that just... So what? He's a zero. He's been brought to nought. Isn't that what zero is? But listen to God. Amen. Now, while they're writing this out, he said, "Kenneth," he said, "Portland Cement had"... now, he's not talking slow anymore. And he's also in a construction business. He said, "Portland Cement has been after me to get some gravel off this property". He said, "go ahead and"... I told them, they'd have talked to you. I said, Oh, okay. I said, well, you mean When I get a quarter paid for no, Son, he said, "I've given you all the mineral rights, sell some gravel boy and pay for some property".
We hit natural gas out here. My Lord. We sold a million dollars worth of gravel and is tearing the place up. And I said, quit selling that gravel. I'm tired of that, tearing my place up. Make it all ugly. Just quit that, praise God. I want you to know the Lord almighty God paid for this place. What seemed to me like overnight, Just paid for it.
Now think about what happened. We hit natural gas. We drilled the first three wells ourselves, which meant we owned that. Then we built a power plant out here, running off of gas. So we made our own electricity and we began to drill more water wells out here. So we got our own water and all of the water up in the headquarters building and at our home all goes through reverse osmosis. So for a long time. No utility bills. No rent. And I'm in the middle of the night, one night. And I'm not just laying there praying for my partners. And we're out of time almost, but I'll tell you this really in a hurry. And the Lord said "what would happen if all your partners quit"?
I said, I'm not gonna go there. You said, don't, remember what would you do? I thought, well, they quit. And they can't to come get my car. They can't come get my airplane. They can't come get the property. I said, we don't have any utility bills. And I thought, wow, Lord, absolutely nothing. He said. Yeah. And he said, "I don't care if they all quit, you'd have them all back 90 days". He said, cause you, I know you, you just go get in your airplane, go preach the Word. And that's what I do. And we're out of time. We'll see you tomorrow.