Kenneth Copeland - How the Kingdom of Darkness Influences Government
Let's go over to 1 John, little John. Praise God. Thank you, Jesus. 1 John, chapter 1, verse 5. "This is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all". Verse 7, "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. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins He is faithful and just or righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness". Not when you feel about it. The moment you confess it, if you do it in faith. I believe it. Amen. Hallelujah. In Him is no darkness at all. I don't know, to renew my mind about things I have a different way, I guess, from other people to do it.
I was reading in the 12th chapter of Romans one day and, you know, offer your body as a living sacrifice. I thought, okay. This is not really my body, this is my sacrifice. So for a long time there, until it really became, I really became aware of it, I just didn't refer to my body, I referred to my sacrifice. I know it sounds goofy to other people, but I said, you know, you can say what you want to. I got it over to my, renewed my mind of the fact that this is a living sacrifice and I need to take better care of it. Amen. So then, when... Well, I won't go into the rest of that. But let me tell you this. In order to... I believe it in my heart, but to charge my mind with it, what is absolute? What is absolute? Absolute good is no bad at all. Absolute light is no darkness at all. Yeah, I know that. But how can I really mark my mind in how huge this is? How good really is God? The only way I knew how to do it is to find out what absolute cold is. No heat at all. I'm not talking about in outer space. Of course out there there's no heat at all. I'm not talking about that.
What if you could come to absolute cold in this atmosphere? It would be four... Now, this is Fahrenheit. It would be 459.67 degrees below zero. Okay. Now that's cold. Now, when I was just a young boy... In fact, I hadn't been out of high school but a few days. My dad's office was in the Texas Pacific Railroad, the terminal there in Fort Worth, they turned it into an office building and so forth and his office was there. Well, the building right next to it was the shipping and freight and so forth, and I got me a job in there. I hadn't been working in there but, I don't know, but two, three, four days, I guess. And I didn't know anything.
Now, this is back in the day, you understand? And of course, Thanksgiving and Christmas, this is big deal. Well, it still is. So they would stock up on turkeys and chickens. Well, they had these boxes about this big and, I don't remember, there was two turkeys and four chickens or whatever it was, and they had cutouts in each end of them, and I stuck my fingers in there. Well, when they're thawed, they fill that box completely up. It's pretty heavy, but I was a good size boy, you know? Picked that thing up. And so I started out, they had a blast freezer. It was 40 below zero in there. You go in there and push those boxes in there, the big fat turkeys and chickens. Well, they told my ignorant self to go back in there now and get, I don't know, I forgot what it was. It was turkeys or chickens, it doesn't make any difference. They were frozen. And go get those and move them over to this other place. Well, you know, I reached up here like this and I just pulled one. Well, they shrunk up inside that box and banged into my fingers.
Now, we took those turkeys and chickens, and they all laughed, you know, they're standing there and I'm doing this because I was so stupid that I didn't know they shrunk up. I was not stupid, I was very ignorant. That's the way you say ignorant in Michigan. In Texas, it's ignorant. Yes, just ignorance. Just good old west Texas ignorance, you know? So anyway, my point is this. At 40 below zero, you could take those boxes in there and sit them in there for a few minutes. I'm not talking about hardly any time at all. That's the reason we were not allowed to stay in that side of that freezer any length of time. Freeze to death in there. God, absolute goodness. And the devil is absolute badness. So, how do you find no cold at all? In hell. You found the book of Isaiah yet? And we'll talk about that in a moment.
The book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verse 9. We could... And you need to spend time and just read that whole chapter, but we won't take time to do that. Verse 9, "Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning"! That name, day star, son of the morning. What is Jesus called? Yes. Now, I can't prove this, but you can't prove it isn't. But this stands, this stands. Lucifer. The third archangel. I'm totally convinced, Dr. Jackson, that he was Jesus' personal angel.
Now you remember, John wrote the revelation, signified by his angel. That's really worth thinking about. And there's some other things here that are most startling and outstanding. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit that they shall see thy narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble? Is this the man that made the earth to tremble? That did shake kingdoms? That made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners? All the kings of the nations, even all of them that lie in glory, everyone in his own house".
Go with me now to the sixth chapter of the book of Ephesians. The spirit of God revealed to the apostle Paul. The rank and file of the kingdom of darkness, beginning with the lowest first. Verse 11, "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness or wicked spirits in the high places or in the heavenlies". The fossil record does not lie. There was the so-called Neanderthal man. But there's a missing link. That's because it's missing. Praise God. Thank you Jesus. God blessed them and God said unto them, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth and subdue it". That race was here. That's what caused that flood. That's what caused it. Oh Brother Copeland, I don't believe this. Well, it's not going to affect your salvation one way or the other. But we look at this in order to get a strong look at the goodness of God. Amen.
Lucifer, obviously, was on this Earth. He said he was. And he destroyed the Earth, he destroyed the nations, and this thing had to be flooded. So now that race of people that were here, there was a whole race of people here that had to be removed. And what you and I know as the devil who at one time was Lucifer, the bright morning star, he was the most beautiful, he was... I mean, he was the grandest in beauty of them all. Gabriel is a messenger. Michael is a mighty warrior. But Lucifer was the musician. He was the musician. And Phil Driscoll pointed out to me, in the list of his instruments, there are no horns. The trumpet belongs to God. Isn't that amazing? That's interesting, isn't it? Oh yeah. He had everything else, but he didn't have a horn. Praise God. Well, you know, only a horn player would really pick up on that. Hallelujah.
So that's the reason music has been used. Oh, horribly, just horribly. I know, I used to be part of it. I never did, I didn't use bad music. I despised that even when I was a sinner. You know, I just thought music's a good thing to make money with and learned better than that very quickly. It's amazing, when you see these, that I am totally convinced that those wicked spirits in the heavenlies are the highest form of those people that were on this Earth. Because they are far more intelligent than these other devils. Principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, but then there are wicked spirits in the heavenlies. That's the ones, and if I had time, I'd prove it to you from the book of Daniel. They are the ones that battle governments and causes governments to do terrible things. Horrible things. And for a while, think they're doing right. I come from the days of apartheid in South Africa.
And Ray McCauley and I, oh Lord, now think about this. Here is a government that for years and years was connected to Great Britain and followed down those lines. But during World War II and thereafter, they decided that we will adopt the same laws that apartheid, keep them apart. Anyone of color, Indian, Black, doesn't make any difference. But we're going to keep them apart from us. So they actually adopted, now think about it. People wouldn't do this if there's any brain in their head. They adopted those same laws that Germany used with the Jews, with people of color. And Ray and I broke the law right and left. There's Johannesburg and then there's Soweto. Soweto. We weren't supposed to be over there, and they weren't supposed to be over here, but we did it anyway.
And then Ray McCauley, God bless him, Rhema graduate, what a great man of God. When de Klerk was elected president, President de Klerk and Ray McCauley, a born-again, spirit-filled, tongue-talking Rhema graduate wrote the new constitution of South Africa. Now you know the other side of the story. Thank you Jesus. And God is so good that people have a hard time believing that. They still do. And the Lord told Gloria in 1998, "You start preaching on the goodness of God, and don't you quit regardless of what anybody says to you about it". And back then, even in 1998, we started getting a lot of flak about it. But God is a good God. He's good all the time, day in, day out, all the time, just good, good, good, good, good.