Month: November 2013

two gatherings of Israel

Prior to the first coming of Messiah, prophecies concerning Messiah were confusing.  There was much debate over whether there would be two Messiahs, one a suffering servant (Son of Joseph) and another a reigning king (Son of David) or if Israel was to do the suffering and the Messiah to do the reigning, etc…   It is now clear that there is one Messiah, and He came once to suffer and die for our sins, then rise in victory and will return again to rule and reign.

Similarly, there has been much confusion about the gathering of Israel together.  
Many get confused when looking at scriptures that talk about a day when Messiah will gather the faithful of Israel together to form a nation, yet there are also scriptures that talk about children of Israel being gathered together not because of their faithfulness, but for the sake of God’s Name (completion of His promises, whether Israel is faithful or not) and this gathering of Israel is in preparation for the Tribulation where He will ‘sanctify’ His people and prepare them for His return where He will gather together the believing remnant. (Isaiah 66:8; Ezekiel 36:17-24)
The closer we get to the time described by prophecy, the clearer and more understandable the prophecy becomes.
It is becoming clear that the nation of Israel formed in 1948 was the gathering of Israel in unbelief for the purpose of the rise of Antichrist, rebuilding the temple, and the Great Tribulation.
After the tribulation, Messiah will return and gather the faithful remnant of Israel, who have repented and accepted Messiah and were preserved through the tribulation to form the nation of Israel that will exist through the millennial reign.
Both gatherings are fulfillment of prophecy, and both gatherings are accomplished according to God’s Will and by His hand.
Whether gathered in belief or unbelief, keep in mind that nations are judged according to how they have treated His chosen and the nation of Israel.

Kenneth & Gloria Copeland

As someone who has marinated in the Word of Faith for several years, I speak from personal experience as someone who has walked in the shoes of one who has sincerely believed and preached error.  I am motivated by compassion to speak the truth in love to those who are still in those shoes.  I do not have anything against these folks and do not intend to address anything about them personally.  I only address doctrines they have taught in their own words.  In any case where I am in error, I hope to be corrected.  In any case where they have changed, matured, developed, and corrected their teachings, I will gladly annotate so.
There are good things in Word of Faith, but there are also some areas in which they go too far…  I will try to address many of the areas where they cross the line…
Doctrine of “little gods”
The bible says: 


I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me – Isaiah 45:5

Satan tempted Eve by saying “you will be like god” – Gen 3:4

Peter and Paul refused worship and said they were “men like yourselves” Acts 10:26; Acts 14:12

The teaching of there being many gods is polytheism, it elevates man to god-hood and lowers God to man-hood.


Copeland says:
Kenneth and Gloria with Paul and Jan Crouch on TBN saying they ARE gods.
That we do not have a god in us but that we are a God.
“You don’t have a God in you. You are one!” – The Force of Love audiotape
That Adam was God manifest in the flesh.
“God’s reason for creating Adam was His desire to reproduce Himself. I mean a reproduction of Himself, and in the Garden of Eden He did just that. He was not a little like God. He was not almost like God. He was not subordinate to God even. . . . Adam is as much like God as you could get, just the same as Jesus. . . . Adam, in the Garden of Eden, was God manifested in the flesh.” – Following the Faith of Abraham I, side 1
God and Adam are the same size
God spoke Adam into existence in authority with words. These words struck Adam’s body in the face. His body and God were exactly the same size.” – Holy Bible, Kenneth Copeland Reference Edition 1991, 45, emphasis in original
Adam looks the same as Jesus and God
“[Adam] was the copy, looked just like [God]. If you stood Adam upside God, they look exactly alike. If you stood Jesus and Adam side by side, they would look and sound exactly alike.”
Authority of the Believer IV 1987, audiotape #01-0304, side 1
“Adam was made in the image of God. He was as much female as he was male. He was exactly like God. Then God separated him and removed the female part. Woman means ‘man with the womb.’ Eve had as much authority as Adam did as long as they stayed together.”
Sensitivity of Heart KCP Publications, 1984, 23
“As a believer, you have a right to make commands in the name of Jesus. Each time you stand on the Word, you are commanding God to a certain extent because it is His Word.”
Our Covenant with God [Fort Worth, TX: KCP Publications, 1987], 32
Death on Cross was Insufficient, had to go through ‘spiritual death’ as well as physical 
Set aside diety as a man, then was re-deified by taking on satan’s nature, being tortured in hell, then was ‘born again’ as god
“When Jesus cried “It is finished!” He was not speaking of the plan of redemption. There were still three days and nights to go through before He went to the throne. He was referring to the Abrahamic Covenant. Jesus’ death on the cross was only the beginning of the complete work of redemption” (Kenneth Copeland, “Jesus – Our Lord of Glory”, ( Believer’s Voice of Victory, April, 1982, p. 3).
“He [Jesus] is suffering all that there is to suffer. There is no suffering left apart from Him. His emaciated, poured out, little, wormy spirit is down in the bottom of that thing [hell]. And the Devil thinks he’s got Him destroyed.”  – Believer’s Voice of Victory” program [21 April 1991]. This message was originally delivered at the Full Gospel Motorcycle Rally Association 1990 Rally at Eagle Mountain Lake, Texas
“He [Jesus] allowed the devil to drag Him into the depths of hell….He allowed Himself to come under Satan’s control…every demon in hell came down on Him to annihilate Him….They tortured Him beyond anything anybody had ever conceived. For three days He suffered everything there is to suffer.” (Kenneth Copeland, “The Price of It All,” 3.)
“For three days He suffered everything there is to suffer. Some people don’t want to believe that. They want to believe that after His death, Jesus just stayed in that upper region of Sheol that the Bible calls paradise, but they’re mistaken! If He had simply stayed there, there would have been no price paid for sin.” (Believer’s Voice of Victory, Vol. 19, No. 9, Sept. 1991)
“… Jesus died two deaths. He died physically and He died spiritually. When Jesus was made to be sin, He was separated from God… When His blood poured out, it did not atone. It did away with the handwriting of the ordinances that were against us… Jesus spent three horrible days and nights in the bowels of this earth getting back for you and me our rights with God…” (doctrinal statement dated March 12, 1979)
“That Word of the living God went down into that 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 began to look like something the devil had never seen before.”  –  The Price of it All,” Believer’s Voice of Victory 19, 9 [September 1991]:4
“He [Jesus] was literally being reborn before the devil’s very eyes. He began to flex His spiritual muscles. . . .Jesus was born again–the firstborn from the dead the Word calls Him–and He whipped the devil in his own backyard. He took everything he had away from him. He took his keys and his authority away from him.”(Ibid., 4-6.)
“It wasn’t the physical death on the cross that paid the price for sin..anybody could do that”  –  What Satan saw on the day of Pentecost
“Every prophet that walked the face of the earth under the Abrahamic covenant could have paid the price if it were a physical death only” “When he said ‘It is finished’ on that cross, he was not speaking of the plan of redemption. The plan of redemption had just begun, there were still three days and three nights to be gone through.” “[Jesus] accepted the sin nature of Satan in His own Spirit, and at the moment that He did so, He cried ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’.” “He [Jesus] was down in that pit and there he suffered the punishment for three horrible days and nights for Adam’s treason… There is a new birth takes place in the very depths of the earth, when the command of God says ‘That’s enough, loose him and let him go’.”  – What Happened from the Cross to the Throne

God has no right to the earth at all, he needs an invitation
“God had no avenue of lasting faith or moving in the earth. He had to have covenant with somebody. . . . He had to be invited in, in other words, or He couldn’t come. God is on the outside looking in. In order to have any say so in the earth, He’s gonna have to be in agreement with a man here.”
God’s Covenants With Man II 1985, audiotape #01-4404, side 1



God is the greatest failure in the Universe
“I was shocked when I found out who the biggest failure in the Bible actually is….The biggest one is God….I mean, He lost His top-ranking, most anointed angel; the first man He ever created; the first woman He ever created; the whole earth and all the Fullness therein; a third of the angels, at least–that’s a big loss, man. . .  –  Praise-a-Thon program on TBN [April 1988]



God lives on a mother planet
“Heaven has a north and a south and an east and a west. Consequently, it must be a planet.”
Spirit, Soul and Body I 1985 audiotape #01-0601, side 1
“You don’t think earth was first, do you? Huh? Well, you don’t think that God made man in His image, and then made earth in some other image? There is not anything under this whole sun that’s new. Are you hearing what I’m saying? This is all a copy. It’s a copy of home. It’s a copy of the Mother Planet. Where God lives, He made a little one just like His and put us on it.”
Following the Faith of Abraham I, 1989 audiotape #01-3001, side 1 
Kenneth Copeland
Word of Faith
Word of Faith Teachers – Origins and Errors of their teachings

the problem of Lilith

The only place that “liliths” appear in the Bible is in Isaiah 34:14 which is a list of wild animals or devils — likely both in that the infestation of wild animals often is a physical representation or manifestation of the infestation of devils.

Isaiah 34:14 is one verse is a series of verses outlining the judgments of God against nations that have turned their backs to Him.  Taken in context, it is clear that one of the judgments or consequences of rejecting God is that the nation will become the abode of devils and wild unclean animals.

Judgment on Bozrah and Edom  Isaiah 34:6-15


For the LORD holds a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.


Wild oxen will fall together with them—young steers and mighty bulls.


Their land will be drenched with blood, and their soil will be swollen with fat.


For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for Zion’s cause.


Edom’s streams will be turned into burning sulfur, and its dust into sulfur; its land will become pitch.


It will burn night and day, and will never be extinguished.


Its smoke will rise from generation to generation, and it will lie desolate forever and ever.


And no one will pass through it.


“But hawks and hedgehogs will possess it; owls and ravens will nest in it.


God will stretch out over it a measuring line, and chaos, and plumb lines of emptiness, and its nobles.


They will name it “No Kingdom There,” and all its princes will come to nothing.


Thorns will grow over its palaces, nettles and brambles its fortresses.


It will become a haunt for jackals, a home for ostriches.


And desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and goat-devils will call out to each other.


There also liliths will settle, and find for themselves a resting place.


Owls will nest there, lay eggs, hatch them, and care for their young under the shadow of their wings; yes indeed, vultures will gather there, each one with its mate.

This concept of a land becoming the abode of devils and unclean birds is common to prophetic literature and the same phenomena is described by John in Revelation

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. (Revelation 18:12)

Contemporary to Isaiah at the time (~725BC) was increasing wickedness of Israel and adoption of the surrounding Assyrian, and Babylonian pagan religions.  It would then be these nations (whose religions that they chose over God) that would invade and overtake the northern kingdom of Israel (~722BC) and later the southern kingdom of Judah (~586BC).

Artifacts from the period reference lilith (a.k.a. lamia) only as a devils or classification of devils from Assyrian myths.  They are often depicted as devils that seek to seduce men to their deaths, similar to if not just another name for a succubus. It would not be unusual for Isaiah to include this term in his list of devils that will infest a nation that has turned its back on God since the terms would be familiar to his audience.

Lilith devils only begin to appear in jewish myths and mysticism during the captivity in Babylon and later Assyria.  They are not documented or described in jewish literature until the Babylonian Talmud was compiled over 900 years later in the 3rd-5th centuries AD.  Even so, it was until another 500 years later in the 8th-10th centuries when the devils Lilith is described as “Adam’s first wife” in the anonymously compiled medieval text called the “Alphabet of Sirach”.

This makes it unlikely that the “liliths” Isaiah had in mind when this verse was penned were related to the “Lilith, wife of Adam” myth.

In any case, one cannot hang an entire doctrine on a single verse, especially if that doctrine contradicts and conflicts with the rest of scripture.

Also, we should never reinterpret clear and unambiguous versus to make them fit a particular interpretation of ambiguous and unclear verses.  Instead, the clear and unambiguous verses should be used to clear up the ambiguous.

The problem of “Lilith” is that it conflicts with the justification for our salvation.  Sin and death didn’t enter into the world through “Lilith”, it entered in through one man, Adam.  Since it came into the world through one man, then our salvation can be made by one man, Jesus.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned … For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many …  For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous (Romans 5:12-21)

Being that liliths consistently refers to a class of seductive devils it is not surprising that this shaky myth continues to distract people from the true word of God and to leave them questioning the reliability of scripture.  Since it was Satan’s first step in seducing Adam & Eve into sin by leading them to question “Yea, hath God said…”