Danger and Apostasy! The Signs and Wonders of Kenneth Copeland
Kenneth Copeland is the most prosperous the “Word-Faith”/”Positive Confession” preachers. “Positive confession” teaches that words have creative power. What you say determines everything that happens to you. In “confessions” demanded of God, you must be positive without wavering. Then these people think that God is required to answer (Charismatic Chaos, p. 281). Word-Faith sees positive confessing as an incantation by which they conjure up anything they desire: “Believe it in your heart; say it with your mouth. That is the principle of faith. You can have what you say” (Charismatic Chaos, p. 285). Will the mouth move the mountain? Blab and grab it; name and claim it; what you say is what you get!
Noah was true prophet of great faith. God lists him in the faith chapter, Hebrews 11. How did godly Noah get the ark? Not like Copeland who yells, “If you are a God with God kind of faith, pronounce it, claim it. It’s yours. Say 82 foot yacht.” (Just move the mouth!) Gullible people are ripened for deception! What is a “God-kind” of faith? “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Is there anything God HOPES FOR or is there anything God has NOT SEEN? Really, the wealthiest Positive Confession preachers have the biggest mailing lists. While naming and claiming publicly, behind the scene the staff is flogging the mailing list. Positive Confession works in one direction, from the suckers in the pew or watching TV to the Faith preacher! You know them by their Cadillacs! With so many dollar $ign$, one wonder$ how anyone could fall for the Gold Rush! Greed says, “We are the King’s Kids and God wants us to have the best!” While these American big shots drive a Rolls Royce, the faithful Ethiopian believer has no shoes!
A fool is full of words (Eccl. 10:14). Gloria Copeland teaches the 100 fold return. Give one dollar and get $100. Give one car and get 100. Is she the giver? Of course not! You give to her! It only works one way. Formulas control her laws: shake-and-bake, huff-and-puff, confess-and-possess! As a baby in a high chair, bawl about formulas and God becomes the puppet.
Kenneth Hagin plagiarized much of E.W. Kenyon word-for-word. How foolish to be impressed with this man! Kenyon was an occultist! Hagin’s book, Having Faith in Your Faith, teaches that anyone can develop the universal “laws of faith” to get what he wants. Like the father of lies, he says, for a pastor or anyone to drive a Chevrolet instead of a luxury car isn’t “being humble, that’s being ignorant” of God’s “law of prosperity.” That works for “whoever you are,” saint or sinner (Charismatic Chaos, p. 281). Think! Hagin learned from Kenyon. Hagin’s tapes and books revolutionized Copeland’s ministry. So his book, The Laws of Prosperity, has the same concept. Reader, have faith in your faith — like a dog chasing his tail? Where does your Bible teach that? Jesus taught, “Have faith in God!” Test all things by Scripture (Acts 17:11).
Positive confession is just an evangelical language with a charismatic form of Christian Science. You should compare their beliefs. These false teachers include the Copelands, Kenneth Hagin, Charles Capps, Frederick Price, Marilyn Hickey, Robert Tilton and Paul Yonggi Cho. Many are graduates of Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training Center in Tulsa.
Copeland says Jesus told him, “Don’t be disturbed when people accuse you of thinking you are God … They crucified Me for claiming I was God. I didn’t claim that I was God; I just claimed that I walked with Him and that He was in Me. Hallelujah! That’s what you’re doing …” Wake up! That devil talk is gross apostasy! Did Jesus only walk with God? Well, Copeland says, so does he! Copeland likes to exalt himself to the level of Jesus Christ. Do Copeland is like the pagan New Ager, Shirley MacClaine by saying: “You’re all God. You don’t have a God living in you; you are one!” and when he says, “When I read in the Bible where God tells Moses, ‘I AM,’ I say, ‘Yah, I am too!'” Copeland does not bother identifying with Moses; He wants to be God! “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! … For thou hast said in thine heart … I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell” (Isaiah 14:12-15). Do you think a Word-Faith bigot is the I AM like Jesus? What do you believe about yourself? Which way are you headed?
Brigham Young, another false prophet (Mormon), taught that Adam was “our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.” He added a stinging warning, “Now, let all who may hear these doctrines, pause before they make light of them, or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation” (Journal of Discourses 1:50,51). Notice Young called this teaching a “doctrine,” not a “theory” as most Mormons like to refer to it today. As quickly as a religion will confuse who God is and lift some little mortal man to deity, that religion plunges into the depths of apostasy (if it has not already). Mormonism is rightly in the “cults” section of the Christian book stores. Now hear from another false teacher. Kenneth Copeland claims that Adam was “created in the god class,” that is, he was a reproduction of God: “He was not subordinate to God, but was walking as a god with the authority of a god.” Copeland says Christians are in this “God Class.” What blasphemy! Copeland just qualified himself and everyone who swallows the lie! God is in a class by Himself! “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD … understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me” (Isaiah 43:10). No more Gods will be accepted, Copeland; the job is taken!
These little pip-squeaks who would usurp God cannot create a single seed, while the true God sustains the universe! Human gods are always created and false. Never is a born again person called a god. “But the LORD is the true God … The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth ...” (Jer. 10:10-11). The god-class will perish! Be sure before you die, Jesus Christ is the true God! (1 John 5:20). Hinduism has 330,000,000 gods. Mormons have as many gods as “the sand of the sea.” The Muslim god is one of 360 false gods at Mecca. Masons believe in any god. The Word-Faith brand of faith is a multi-god cult. Kenneth Copeland’s gods are a repeat of Mars Hill (Acts 17). Christianity excludes every other God! We need the God of the disciples, “Jesus Christ … My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). We are blessed if we believe just like the disciples (vs. 29).
Copeland teaches, like all Word-Faith teachers, that “Jesus Died Spiritually.” Redemption comes not from Christ’s death upon the cross, but from His being tortured by Satan in hell for three days and nights. Hey! More blasphemy! It’s called the ransom theory of the atonement heresy. It views Christ’s death as a ransom paid to Satan to settle the legal claim the devil had on the human race because of Adam’s sin. That contradicts clear biblical teaching; Christ’s death was a sacrifice offered to God (Eph. 5:2), not to Satan (Charismatic Chaos, p. 278).
Copeland says: “He allowed the devil to drag Him into the depths of hell as if He were the most wicked sinner who ever lived … Every demon in hell came down on Him to annihilate Him … [They] tortured Him beyond anything that anybody has ever conceived … In a thunder of spiritual force, the voice of God spoke to the death-whipped, broken, punished spirit of Jesus … [in] the pit of destruction and charged the spirit of Jesus with resurrection power! Suddenly His twisted, death-wracked spirit began to fill out and come back to life … He was literally being reborn before the devil’s very eyes. He began to flex His spiritual muscles … Jesus Christ dragged Satan up and down the halls of hell … Jesus … was raised up a born-again man … The day I realized that a born-again man had defeated Satan, hell, and death, I got so excited … !” (Believer’s Voice of Victory, September 1991).
What wicked fanciful nonsense, teaching that our redemption comes through Satan torturing Jesus in hell! Satan becomes a co-redeemer? Suppose he didn’t torture Jesus enough and we couldn’t be saved; or if he tortured Jesus, do we thank Satan then? Think! Satan isn’t the proprietor of hell; he hasn’t been there yet! Satan is not there to torture the damned; he will himself be tortured with “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41) when death and hell have been “cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:14).
Before He died, Jesus cried in triumph, “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30), indicating that our redemption was accomplished on the Cross. Christ told the believing thief, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Lk. 23:43), not in hell! He said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Lk. 23:46). Yet Hagin and Copeland say He ended up in the hands of Satan in the depths of hell! (Berean Call 5/93). God pity you if you face Jesus with these heretical lies!
Wayne Westby writes, “No wonder Copeland twists up his face like a serpent and whines when he expounds these demonic teachings. Christ did not become a demoniac on the cross; but Copeland and the rest become demoniac by swallowing this potion. It is Jonestown revisited … The whining voice of Copeland is a demon speaking doctrines of devils. I have never seen a normal Christian speak like him. There is a terrible heaviness in his preaching that leaves you depressed. I heard him on radio before I saw him on television. I thought there was something wrong, now I know what it is, Demons. One must have the wrong spirit to say Jesus was demoniac on the cross. There is no hope for one to get saved who believes in a demonic Jesus, ‘another Jesus,’ a false Christ (2 Cor. 11:4).”
If you have the right Jesus, you are right for all of eternity; if you have the wrong Jesus, you are wrong forever! Cults claim to believe in Jesus; but ask them which one? The Mormon Jesus is the brother of Satan, one god among many; the Jehovah’s Witness Jesus is Michael the Archangel, one of the Chief Princes (Dan. 10:13); the Christian Science Jesus is a Divine Idea; the Theosophy Jesus is the reincarnation of the world’s soul; the New Age Jesus is the Christ consciousness we all have or an Ascended Master equal to Buddha; the Scientology Messiah for mankind is Hubbard; the Bahai and Masonic Jesus’ are dead prophets like Mohammed; the United Pentecostal’s Jesus is not eternal (Micah 5:2); the Spiritist Jesus (Occult) is the Ultimate Medium in the 6th sphere of astral projection; the Jesus of the “Children of God” is just another sinner; the Ekankar (Hindu Cult) Jesus is the Ultimate Guru; the Golden Ruler’s Jesus is a mere example (they save themselves); the Roman Catholic Jesus must be contacted through His mother (1 Tim. 2:5); Kenneth Copeland’s Jesus died as a demoniac on the cross and had to be born again! Folks, the wrong Jesus can not save anybody! Whatever contradicts Scripture is from false prophets with lying spirits in their mouths. If you are in one of these deceptive cults, run, don’t walk to the nearest exit!
In his Believer’s Voice of Victory magazine, Copeland teaches the following heresies: “God has never used sickness to discipline His children” (9/89); “AIDS is ‘absolutely not’ God’s way of punishing immoral people” (11/87); Jesus didn’t claim to be God when He lived on earth (8/88); the New Age/occult techniques of positive imaging and visualization are for God’s people today (9/88); God intends for His people to be united, and, “That union won’t be based on doctrine” (12/88); healing is for every believer (2/93); and tongues are for the entire Body of Christ (1/93). He says, “It would have been impossible for Jesus to have been poor!” (9/90 Charisma). Word-Faith teaching is corrupt! It’s ancestry comes from groups like Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, Theosophy, Science of Mind, and New Thought. Their undeniable source is cultish, not Christian. They have different gospel (2 Cor. 11:4). The Word-Faith doctrine is a mongrel, blending mysticism, dualism and gnosticism, borrowing from the metaphysical cults. Word-Faith may be the most dangerous false system from the charismatic movement, while many Charismatics are unsure about the finality of Scripture (Charismatic Chaos, p. 290). You must not be a part of turning others to error! If telling the truth is important, you will not run from proof like the a cult in a system of mind-control. Dear soul, do read Christianity in Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff.
Titus 1:9 “Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.”
