"David Matthieu P.P."
<donotreceivethepentecostalanointing@theyarespiritsofdevilsworkingmiracles.c
om> wrote in message news:oWyfb.39484$k17.16747@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
The Teachings of Kenneth Copeland
by Greg Loren Durand
http://www.crownrights.com/books/copeland.htm
Why This Expose is Necessary
This expose is not intended to be a personal attack upon Kenneth Copeland.
As concerned Christians, we would applaud the charitable outreaches of his
ministry, such as the feeding of the hungry in Africa. This brief expose
serves solely as an examination of his teachings, which, when compared to
the Scriptures, are found to be in serious error. We therefore ask that
the
following information be given a prayerful reading and that each Scripture
reference be checked to see if our conclusions are indeed accurate (Acts
17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Creation:
Kenneth Copeland teaches that God created the universe and everything
therein out of a spiritual substance known as "faith." He supposedly
accomplished this by first forming a mental picture of the creation in
"the
insides of Him," then, by using words as containers for His faith, He
projected the image outwardly, where it manifested itself into physical
reality:
That is based on John 1:1-14
It says right here that faith is the substance of things hoped for.
It
is a substance. Faith is real. Faith is power. It's a force, and it is
very, very real. It's used by God at His will. He uses it on purpose.
This world and everything in it was created by Him and He used His
faith to do it.
...He understood and had the wisdom to use the force of faith and
to release it in such fabulous proportions as to bring in existence
everything that can be seen....
Now you couldn't really and truly say that He created it out
of
nothing because faith is something.... The whole thing was born out of
the force of faith that was resident inside the being of God.(1)
Copeland has completely misunderstood the biblical concept of faith, which
is not an actual substance or force as he insists, but it is simple trust
in
God (read Hebrews 11 in context). Furthermore, if the universe was indeed
created out of God's faith, and if this faith is the actual life and
personality of God, then the creation is merely an extension of God and
all
things are in their very essence divine, including Satan and demons. This
is
known as pantheism, and is a basic tenet of Hinduism and its westernized
offspring, the New Age Movement (Romans 1:25).
You conlusions are a bit far-fetched.
Adam
Kenneth Copeland teaches that Adam was "created" as a physical extension
of
God. After forming Adam's body from the dust of the earth, God then
literally duplicated Himself by incarnating His own Spirit into Adam. The
first man, therefore, was the divine offspring of his Father, and the
natural world was given to him to rule as a god:
God's greatest longing is and always has been to have a people who are
like himself, made of the same substance of which He is made. His
desire
is to have a family who is of one mind and one spirit with Him.
That was His plan when He made the first man. When God
breathed
the breath of life into Adam, He transmitted His very self into him.
God
imparted the same spiritual substance of which He is made [faith] into
Adam's being.(2)
...Adam is as much like God as you can get, just the same as
Jesus when He came into the earth. He said, "If you've seen Me, you've
seen the Father." He wasn't a lot like God -- He's God manifest in the
flesh. And I want you to know something -- Adam in the Garden of
Eden was God manifest in the flesh. He was God's very image, the
very likeness. Everything he did, everything he said, every move he
made
was the very image of the Almighty God.(3)
Copeland justifies this teaching by claiming that the word translated as
"breath" in Genesis 1:27 is the Hebrew word ruoch, meaning "spirit" or
"Holy
Spirit." Clearly, he has not done his homework, for though the word ruoch
does indeed mean "spirit," it is not the word used in this particular
passage. Instead, the Hebrew word neshama is used, which merely means
"breath" (i.e. in one's lungs), exactly as it is translated into English
(compare to Ezekiel 37:1-10). This does not mean that God duplicated
Himself
into Adam (Isaiah 43:10).
Are you denying that we are made in God's image? What then means:
"Jn:10:34: Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye
are gods? I.e. (Psa 82:6 NIV) I said: "You are gods"; you are all sons of
the Most High."?
The Fall
Kenneth Copeland claims that when Adam disobeyed God's command in the
Garden
of Eden, he died spiritually, losing his divine nature, and was incarnated
with the spirit of the Devil. Now he was "Satan manifest in the flesh,"
and
as a result of his transference of allegiance, God no longer had any legal
claim to the earth. Its new god and ruler was now Satan:
And the Bible says that God gave this earth to the sons of men. He
gave
them dominion over it. He gave it to them to be God over... and when
[Adam] turned and gave dominion to Satan, look where it left God. It
left Him on the outside looking in. He can't do anything down
there....
He had no legal right to do anything about it, did He?... If He had
injected Himself illegally into the earth -- what Satan intended for
Him
to do was fall for it, pull off an illegal act, and turn the light off
in
God, and subordinate God to himself. Now, he intended to get God
into such a trap that He couldn't get out. That's what he tried to do,
and he did it with man.(4)
The idea that Satan could somehow subordinate God to himself if "Cosmic
Law"
was not observed, is what is known as dualism. This doctrine portrays the
universe as containing an equal balance of good and evil within itself. In
the occult, whether the good or the evil side of this universal "force" is
employed is entirely up to the practitioner and his adherence to specific
spiritual laws. This is foreign to the Christian worldview, for our
Creator
is infinitely transcendent and superior to His creation, and therefore is
not bound to it by any "laws" (Psalms 24:1, 50:10-12).
Furthermore, if God indeed had no right to interfere in the
world's affairs after Adam's fall without infringing upon Satan's
territory,
how then could He have cursed the serpent (Genesis 3:14), expelled Adam
and
Eve from the garden (Genesis 3:24), destroyed the world with the flood
(Genesis 6:7), confused man's language (Genesis 11:7-8), etc.? The Bible
is
quite clear just who was in possession of the earth in the Old Testament
(Psalm 89:11; Jeremiah 27:5; Haggai 2:8).
Copeland is a fundamentalist, like i am, and he interprets as the Holy
Spirit leads. From experience I know, that the Holy Spirit often leads me in
a wrong direction on purpose, so that I see myself getting stuck and learn
to back-track and find the right direction.
Copeland is stuck above on a dead-end track and surely will find his way
out with the help of the Holy Spiriit whom we all trust.
The Abrahamic Covenant and Jesus Christ
Kenneth Copeland teaches that since God could no longer legally operate in
the physical realm, He was unable to redeem mankind Himself. Beginning
with
Abram, He therefore sought out men who would willingly cooperate with Him
and give Him access back into the earth by speaking "faith-filled words."
Jesus Christ, the final product of the covenant between Abram (Abraham)
and
God, was eventually confessed into existence as the words of God made
flesh:
God's faith-filled Word was the original force in the universe....
He
began to paint a picture of a redeemer, a man who would be the
manifestation of His Word in the earth. The only avenue God had to
get His words in the earth was through men. As He would speak
life-filled words in relation to His covenant with Abraham,
His prophets would repeat those words in the earth.
So before Jesus came to earth, God spoke His Word and then
spoke
His Word again. How many times did He say the Messiah was coming? It
was
prophesied over hundreds, even thousands, of years. He kept saying,
"He
is coming. He is coming." The circumstances in the earth made it look
as
if there was no way He could accomplish it; but He just kept saying
it.
Finally, the great moment came when the Word was brought forth
in
human flesh.... The Word, which existed [as a force] before the
foundation of the earth, lived 33 years as a man. His name was
Jesus.(5)
Our Christian "God is love" (1 John 4:8,16) and Kenneth tries too hard
to capture the essence of love in words. It cannot be done, but give him
credit for trying.
You know, some folks got the idea that Jesus never did change
from the time He came 'til now... and that Jesus didn't have any
beginning and no end. That's not true.(6)
Nowhere in the Bible can the doctrine be found that Jesus was the words of
the covenant between God and Abraham manifested into a man. Instead, by
giving Christ the title of "the Word of God," the Apostle John was merely
employing the terminology of the Gnostics of his day in order to refute
their belief that the logos, the revealer of the Deity, could not have
become flesh. Jesus did not exist as an "image in the heart of God" which
was confessed and subsequently created like the universe, as Copeland
claims, for He eternally co-existed with the Father as a Member of the
Trinity (John 8:58; Phillipians 2:5-8).
The universe is a material creation and so is the flesh of Christ. You
seem to make no distinction. As Christ puts it: Jesus in Jn:3:6: That which
is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit.
The Atonement
Kenneth Copeland goes on to teach that the physical death of Jesus Christ
on
the Cross was not sufficient for the Atonement; He also had to die
spiritually, thereby becoming a satanic incarnation as did Adam in the
Garden in order to fully identify with man's fallen nature. Redemption,
therefore, was purchased, not on Calvary, but in the pit of hell, where
Jesus suffered as an actual sinner for three days and nights:
The plan of redemption began as Jesus spoke the words "It is
finished!"
He spent three days and nights in the earth before ascending to the
throne of God.... Jesus was made sin for us. Just as Adam dies
spiritually, Jesus dies spiritually. The spiritual death He suffered
caused His physical body to die.... When Jesus accepted the sin nature
of Satan into His spirit, Hecried, "My God, My God, why hast thou
forsaken Me?" He was separated from God.... He was ushered into
the bowels of hell.(7)
Since He was made to be sin, He had to pay the penalty for sin.
He had to die spiritually, which took Him into the regions of the
damned before He could redeem us.... When His blood poured out,
it did not atone.(8)
The teachings of Kenneth Copeland in this area directly contradict those
of
the Bible, for the Blood of the Lord Jesus did indeed provide atonement
for
our sins (Ephesians 2:13-16; Colossians 1:19-22; 1 Peter 2:24).
Furthermore,
as we have already seen, the Bible also teaches that Jesus is God in human
flesh. Because it is impossible for God to cease to be divine, to teach
that
Jesus at any time did not share that nature, is to deny that He was ever
truly God. If such were the case, He was certainly not qualified to share
the eternal life of God with anyone else (1 John 5:11-12).
Kenneth got himself muddled once again, and I am sure will continue to
do so, as we all are likely to. Regardless, give him credit for trying so
enthusiastically. It's his enthusiasm which infects and gets people to think
and come alive emotionally, if not mentally also. His esoteric ruminations
are far to complicated for the average believer to understand, or be led
astray by.
We fundamentalists enjoy his joyous and active imagination, and dismiss
everything which cannot be closely referenced Biblically. We advise you to
do the same. Enjoy!!!!
--
Pastor Frank
SONS OF GOD
Jn:1:12: But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the
sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Rom:8:14: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.
Rom:8:19: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God.
Phil:2:15: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without
rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine
as lights in the world;
1Jn:3:1: Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that
we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not,
because it knew him not.
1Jn:3:2: Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him as he is.
---
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