Kenneth Copeland - Faith Expects Victory Over Darkness
Hello everybody. I'm Kenneth Copeland. Let's have a word of prayer and we'll get right into today's Bible lesson. Father, we just thank You and praise You. So we seek You, Sir, for revelation knowledge, knowledge revealed, revealed knowledge, not just sense knowledge, and we thank You for it. Revelation from Heaven. Oh my, we love You so and we thank You. And we ascribe all of the glory to the sweet name of Jesus. And it's in His name we pray, amen. Glory to God, open your Bibles to the sixth chapter of the book of Ephesians.
Now those of you that were with us yesterday, we're from here. I reversed the order a bit at the instructions of the Lord to give you this from the sixth chapter of Ephesians. And then we'll go back over to the fifth chapter of the book of Mark, because there, there's a connection here that's extremely important. Yes Sir, I'll do that. All right. Ephesians, chapter six, verse 10. "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might". Strong in the Lord.
Now this is not just talking about physical strength, but it has to do with physical strength, but strength, first of all, must come into the inner man. The spirit being, the human... I'm not going to stop right here just for a second. People, you know, get, oh, hung up, on sons of God. Well, now wait a minute. We are called mankind. The man was created first. We know that. Well, I don't understand that, well just read the book and go, but women are equally as important to men.
Now, the Scripture says to treat your woman as a weaker vessel, it did not say she's a weaker vessel. It said, treasure her and treat her as though she is. I do my best to treat Gloria like she's very fragile because she is a... she's my treasure. She's the first person that ever loved me unconditionally. And in just, hey, we've been married 59 years and it's just been heaven on earth because she made it that way. So she's my treasure. You talk about somebody that's strong. There ain't no way, girls. If I could I wouldn't have a baby. Dear God. I stood there and didn't, she's going through all that, and I'm standing there at the bed, crying like a baby, and she's here. She's strong. She's strong in the Lord. And then the power of His might.
Now, where does that go? The joy of the Lord is our strength. And that will come over into this physical body. When you feel like you've been pulled through a keyhole and you can turn, ah, ha and just ha ha yourself right on out. Amen? Put on the whole armor of God. You have to put it on. Nobody can shoot you up, but you, you have to put it on. That you may be able to stand, stand against the wiles of the devil, for we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers. Now you can see here and... now I don't mind telling you where I got this, my mentor, Kenneth Hagin, my father in the faith Oral Roberts. And, but a short time after I enrolled at Oral Roberts University, I was 30 years old, but Gloria and I were scriptural illiterates. We didn't have anything to unlearn. We didn't know anything to start with.
The first thing we ever heard was faith. And we hit it like a, like a chicken hitting a bug, man. Whew, man, glory to God. So, and he was in a pastor's home. He was preaching in his... Teaching, more in his church. And his little girl came in. She was about 11 years old. And so after the service that night, he and the pastor were, and he was staying there in the home with the pastor. And so they were discussing the Word and so forth over a sandwich and a glass of milk before they went to bed. And the little daughter came in and said, "Daddy, I got to go to school in the morning. You come pray with me". And so it's about 11 o'clock and she, and he said, "Oh, I forgot. Let's just kneel down here and Brother Hagin and I'll pray". Well, that is good enough for her.
And so Brother Hagin turned around and just facing the chair there. And when he did suddenly, he was in the spirit. And the Lord said, he saw Jesus right up there. He said, I'm going to teach you about demons, evil spirits, and demon possession. Now he talked to him for something like an hour and a half about this. Well, I listened to it again and again and again. And he told him these things now that, so, and you can see it here because you start at the bottom and go up to rulers and then go up to heavenly places.
So look at this, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Those are the ones that come demon possess people. Demon possession is someone that is taken over spirit, soul, and body is completely, totally obsessed. I mean, possessed by a devil, a devil. And spiritual, which wickedness in high places or wicked spirits in the heavenlies. Now those devils, other than Satan himself, those are the highest ranking evil spirits, or unclean spirits that exist. I won't go into the background of that and all that, but now you can see this. We won't turn there today, but you can see it in the book of Daniel and just go back and look at the 10th, 11th and 12th chapters of the book of Daniel.
Now, Daniel was on a partial fast, and he had been there for 21 days, three weeks. And you remember what happened? The messenger angel Gabriel said "Fear not, Daniel for we heard you the first day". So evidently he began to think there, they haven't heard me. He didn't have the name of Jesus. Fasting was a weapon, but now listen to this, for that... Well, yeah, we're going to have to go over there. I could quote it to you, but... The 10th chapter of Daniel. "And Gabriel said unto him, O Daniel, a man, greatly beloved"... I'm looking at a 10th chapter 11th verse. "Understand the words that I speak unto thee and stand upright for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling. Then he said unto to me, fear not, Daniel for, from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard and I've come for your words".
It took me three weeks to get here, but I'm here. "But the Prince of the kingdom of Persia or Iran, Iran is the right way to say it so I say Iran, withstood me one and 20 days, but lo Michael," one of the chief princes, Michael, the Archangel, Michael, the angel of war. Now when David said to Goliath, I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, this is what he was referring to. The angelic armies of God. That's what he said to Goliath. So Michael obviously was involved in this, but then look, "one of the chief princes came to help me. And I remained there with the Kings of Persia," 19th verse, "be strong, yea strong, and when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened from words, spoken by an angel and said, let my Lord speak for thou hast strengthened me. Then said he knowest thou whereof I came unto thee and now will I return to fight with the Prince of Persia? And when I'm gone forth, lo the Prince of Grecia shall come".
These are political stronghold demons. I don't know about other nations because I'm an American. I was born here, raised here. That's why politicians get elected to office, go to Washington DC and do, and say things they said they would never do and say. Right there, those high level devils, they're the ones that assigned to governments. And in some cases, Satan himself. But the name of Jesus has authority over the whole nasty bunch. Amen? So now let's go back to the fifth chapter of the book of Mark. And now we get insight and concept here of what Jesus was dealing with, with whom He was dealing, and we can see things in this... Well, I like to say it like that. We go widescreen here because we know things. Amen.
So now that we know and understand these things, we can, we can get a real insight in what Jesus said, and that's what Brother... and Jesus, when he appeared to Brother Hagin, he was just a little higher than he was. And all of a sudden this little demon came out and jumped in front of him and yakkity yakkity yak. Can you put out something like this? Like this black smoke and Jesus here just kept on talking. And Brother Hagin said, "Why don't He do something about this". Doesn't He know I need what He's saying. Why don't He do it? Why doesn't He do something about this? And finally, he got tired of that. he said, in the name of Jesus, shut up, get out of the way. And that little devil fell and ran off.
Now, listen to me. Jesus said to Brother Hagin, if you hadn't done something about that, I couldn't. Brother Hagin said, no, I'm not hearing you right. You said you wouldn't. He said, no. I said I couldn't. And then He gave him scriptures. Brother Hagin said, "Well, I don't know anything like that". He said, "Well, there's a whole lot here that you don't know". And so he gave him one scripture right after another. One of them, right before He left. "All authority has been given unto me, both in heaven and in earth. Therefore you go [in the earth] and you preach and you teach and you baptize. In my name you cast out devils. In my name if you drink any deadly thing it'll not harm you. In my name, you'll lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. In my name you'll speak with other tongues". In my name, in my name.
Then in the book of Ephesians, "Every knee will bow to that name. Heaven, earth and under the earth. The mighty name of Jesus, the name of God in the earth". Amen. Sean. Okay. Now, do we have our spiritual equilibrium here? So we're right there. We're just right there with Jesus. And so we have insight here into what's about to happen. They came over, Mark 5:1, "They came over into the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes". Now that, that was just on the other side of the Galilee. "When he was come out of the ship immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit," a ruler of the darkness of this world. Amen. All right.
Now follow me now. "Who had his dwelling among the tombs. No man could bind him, no, not with chains because that he had been often bound with fetters or shackles and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him and the shackles broken in pieces. Neither could any man tame him". Now, whoa. Now wait a minute. What is happening here? That's Samson in reverse. Sampson was not, could not have been a big burly man. No, he just looked like everybody else until the power of God would come on him. And it was the power of God's might. Ah, now we know what the spirit of God was referring to through the apostle Paul, be strong in the Lord and then the power of His might. And he was so powerful. No, he wasn't. God was so powerful on him that he pulled that whole temple down around him. Yeehaw!
All right. Always night and day. He did not sleep. You know he had to be skin and bones. He didn't sleep. "He was in the mountains and in the tombs crying and cutting himself with stones". He was a cutter. Very, very, very close friend of mine was ministering to some young women and they had cuts, scars on her arms. And he said to them, in fact, it's Todd White. Oh, what a man of God. And he said, no, that's not who you are. That's who you used to be. And he baptized them in water and they came up without those scars. Isn't that marvelous? No that's Jesus. Yes. It's marvelous. Magnifical, amen. "But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped Him".
Now class, let me tell you something. Have there been any man on earth that the devil could have stopped from worshiping Jesus, it would have been this man. He not only was totally possessed by this one devil, but that devil had operating under him from three to 6,000 devils. Couldn't stop him. Immediately, he fell and worshipped Him. Immediately. How long did it take Jesus to deliver him? About like that? You can be delivered like that right now, right now, because He's the same Jesus yesterday and today and forever. You can accept Him as your Lord and Savior today. Yeah but, you don't, don't start that yeah but. Jesus has done everything it takes for you to be born again, except pray your prayer.
That's the reason it is so easy. He went to the cross, He went to hell and suffered there like no man has ever suffered or ever will suffer again. And He bore your sins in His own body. He bore your sickness and diseases. He bore your poverty because He was made a curse for us and poverty is a curse of the law. And today you can have Him. I'm telling you, I don't care where you are or what you have done. Just Jesus, come into my heart. Can it be that easy? Yes it is. You know why? He's easy. He is so easy. It's not what you've done. It's what He's done. And He loves you. He loves you when you were acting like a fool. Yeah. Ask me how I know. He loves you. He loves you when whatever it was you did. And He loves you right now. Now follow me here, "and cried with a loud voice. What about I do with Jesus thou son of the most high God"?
I adjure, that's that devil talking, that's that devil, I've heard him. I've had him talk to me. And he said it, the ones I'm just imitating the ones that I have heard. He cried with a loud for, "Why... that thou torment me not". For he had said, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit". One devil, you get out of him right now. "For, he said into him, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. And he asked him, what is your name? And he answered saying, my name is Legion for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send him away out of that country". He was assigned there by the devil and he didn't want to leave.