- Tongues-speaking charismatic Kenneth Copeland is considered to be the most prosperous and well-known in the "Word-Faith"/"Positive Confession" movement. His television program is carried nationwide on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and he is the author of numerous charismatic-oriented books and articles. 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). Copeland also says: "It would have been impossible for Jesus to have been poor!" (9/90, Charisma ). (Reported in the 2/15/93, Calvary Contender .)
- As the name "Word-Faith" implies, this movement teaches that faith is a matter of what we say more that whom we trust or what truths we embrace and affirm in our hearts. A favorite term in the Word-Faith movement is "positive confession." It refers to the Word-Faith teaching that words have creative power. What you say , Word-Faith teachers claim, determines everything that happens to you. Your "confessions," that is, the things you say-- especially the favors you demand of God--must all be stated positively and without wavering. Then God is required to answer (Charismatic Chaos , p. 281). Word-Faith believers view their positive confessions as an incantation by which they can 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).
- Word-Faith is the fastest-growing movement within the professing church. It has involved two distinct but closely related factions: the Peale/Schuller Positive/Possibility thinkers, with their roots in New Thought, and the Hagin/Copeland Positive Confession and Word-Faith groups, which have their roots in E.W. Kenyon, William Branham, and the Manifest Sons of God/Latter Rain Movement. In Kenneth Hagin's book, Having Faith in Your Faith (Copeland confesses that Hagin's tapes and books revolutionized his ministry), Hagin teaches that anyone can develop universal "laws of faith" to get what he wants. Hagin teaches that 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. The battle-cry of the Positive Confession (PC) movement is: "Have faith in your faith." This is a far cry from what Jesus taught: "Have faith in God" (Charismatic Chaos , p. 281). (Copeland's book, The Laws of Prosperity , teaches these same concepts.)
This is at the heart of the PC movement today, also known as the "name-it-and-claim-it" gospel. The PC movement is a charismatic form of Christian Science. This can be substantiated by simply comparing the similarities in their common beliefs. PC is basically warmed-over New Thought dressed in evangelical/charismatic language. (Other well-known PC'ers besides the "father" of the movement, Kenneth Hagin, and Copeland, his most successful protegè, are Charles Capps, Frederick K.C. Price, Robert Tilton, and David (Paul) Yonggi Cho. Many of them are graduates of Hagin's Rhema Bible Training Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.)
- Copeland's teaching on healing is a particularly destructive lie--in the 2/93 issue of Believer's Voice of Victory , Copeland says that every Christian is guaranteed physical healing and financial prosperity. Multitudes of those who have believed the charismatic lies about healing in the Atonement have become confused and disappointed. Many have become bitter against God because God did not do what they were convinced He had promised to do. The problem with Copeland's teachings is that God has not promised health and prosperity to His people in this present world. Nevertheless, Copeland speaks disparagingly of Christians who "are still living in sickness, bondage, and lack." Yet this "sickness, bondage, and lack" is the epitaph of a great many of God's choicest saints.
- Copeland is perhaps the best known proponent of the charismatic's "little gods" teaching (see below). He 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 ..." ("Take Time to Pray," Believer's Voice of Victory , 2/87, p. 9).
Copeland thus denies the uniqueness of Christ, saying that Christ was not God, only that He walked closely with God. And as Copeland says, so does he! Copeland, thereby, places himself on the same level as Jesus Christ, willing to blur the distinction between the will of God and the will of Copeland. Copeland seems to think that he and Jesus have about the same authority for the believer, and sounds like New Ager Shirley MacClaine when he says:
"You're all God. You don't have a God living in you; you are one! ... When I read in the Bible where God tells Moses, 'I AM,' I say, 'Yah, I am too!'" ("The Force of Love," Tape BBC-56).
- Copeland teaches that Adam was "created in the god class"; i.e., he was a reproduction of God:
"He was not subordinate to God ... [but] was walking as a god with the authority of a god. ... What he said went. What he did, counted. [And when he] bowed his knee to Satan and put Satan up above him, then there wasn't anything God could do about it, because a god had placed [Satan] there" ("The Force of Love," tape #02-0028).
When Adam committed high treason, according to Copeland, even though "created in the god class," he fell below the god class, but on the cross, Jesus won the right for believers to be born again back into the "god class" (see below). Jesus' deity, according to Copeland, encompasses "healing, deliverance, financial prosperity, mental prosperity, physical prosperity, and family prosperity." And because believers are now back in the "god class," they are guaranteed those blessings here and now (Charismatic Chaos , p. 272).
- Copeland teaches, as do all the Word-Faith teachers, that "Jesus Died Spiritually" (JDS). What makes the Word-Faith teachers' version of JDS, heresy (if not blasphemy), is their teaching that our redemption comes not from Christ's death upon the cross, but from His being tortured by Satan in hell for three days and nights! Copeland has, thus, embraced a heresy known as the "Ransom theory of the atonement." It is the view that Christ's death was a ransom paid to Satan to settle the legal claim the devil had on the human race because of Adam's sin. But that view contradicts the clear Biblical teaching that Christ's death was a sacrifice offered to God, not to Satan (Eph. 5:2) (Charismatic Chaos , p. 278). Copeland, for example, 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).
It is both fanciful nonsense and heretical to teach that our redemption comes through Satan torturing Jesus in hell. That would make Satan our co-redeemer. If he didn't torture Jesus enough, we wouldn't be saved--and if he did, do we thank Satan? Incredible! Moreover, Satan isn't even the proprietor of hell. He hasn't even been there yet. Nor will Satan torture the damned but 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 has been accomplished on the Cross . Christ told the thief on the cross who believed in Him, "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, Copeland, et al, say He ended up, instead, in the hands of Satan in the depths of hell! What blasphemy! (5/93, Berean Call ).
- Word-Faith teachers owe their ancestry to groups like Christian Science, Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, Science of Mind, and New Thought--not to classical Pentecostalism. It reveals that at their very core, Word-Faith teachings are corrupt. Their undeniable derivation is cultish, not Christian. The sad truth is that the gospel proclaimed by the Word-Faith movement is not the gospel of the New Testament. Word-Faith doctrine is a mongrel system, a blend of mysticism, dualism, and gnosticism that borrows generously from the teachings of the metaphysical cults. The Word-Faith movement may be the most dangerous false system that has grown out of the charismatic movement so far, because so many charismatics are unsure of the finality of Scripture (Charismatic Chaos , p. 290).
KENNETH COPELAND AND THE BIBLE ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- KENNETH COPELAND SAYS: God looks like a man.
- "The image being that he was a copy, looked just like, if you stood Adam upside God they look just exactly alike...Now a lot of people have missed that...but that's exactly true...The image is that they looked just alike. But the likeness, is that they act alike, and they are alike...Now here's Adam in the image of God, and in the likeness of God. All of God's attributes, all of God's authority, all of God's faith, all of God's ability, was invested in that man." (The Authority of the Believer IV, Tape #01-0304)
- "The Bible said in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, along about the twelfth verse, that He measured out the heavens with a span... And I found out from the Hebrew Bible, that the Bible said he measured the heavens with a nine-inch span...Can you conceive that? Not hardly, in the mind but your heart can't, your heart can't. A being, a being that stands somewhere around six two, six three, that weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred pounds a little better, has a span of eight and, I mean a nine inches across. A being that would walk the shores of Galilee, a being that would shed tears and a being that was hungry, and a being that would laugh and play with the kids, stood up and said 'Let it be.' And this universe situated itself and went into motion." (Spirit, Soul, and Body, Tape #01-0601)
- THE BIBLE SAYS: God is spirit, and is not like man.
- "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)
- "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change His mind." (Numbers 23:19)
- KENNETH COPELAND SAYS: There are many gods (or a god class).
- "He is a spirit, and Jesus said the time will come and now is that they that worship Him, worship Him in spirit and in truth and He imparted in you when you were born again, Peter said it just as plain, he said we are partakers of the divine nature. That nature is life eternal in absolute perfection. And that was imparted, injected into your spirit man, and you have that imparted into you by God just as same as you imparted into your child that nature of humanity. That child wasn't born a whale, born a human. Isn't that true? Well now, you don't have a human do ya? No, you are one. You don't have a god in you, you are one." (Force of Love, Tape #02-0028)
- "Am I a god? Man was created in the god class, was not created in the animal class, it was the gods class. He has a uniqueness about him that even angels do not have...Now Peter said by exceeding great and precious promises, you become partakers of the divine nature. Alright, are we gods? We are a class of gods." (Praise the Lord, TBN, 2/5/1986)
- "He am healin', He am deliverance, He am financial prosperity, mental prosperity, physical prosperity, family prosperity. It's terrible grammar, but you understand what I'm sayin'. I'm sayin' it to effect my mind...And I say this with all respect so that it don't upset you too bad, but I say it anyway. When I read in the Bible where He says I AM, I just smile and say, 'Yes, I AM too.'" (Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast, 7/9/1987)
- THE BIBLE SAYS: There is only one God.
- "You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen. So that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor will there be one after Me." (Isaiah 43:10)
- "I am the first and I am the last; apart from Me there is no God." (Isaiah 44:6)
- "I am the Lord and there is no other." (Isaiah 45:18)
- "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.'" (Mark 12:29)
- "So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one." (1 Cor. 8:4)
- KENNETH COPELAND SAYS: Adam was God manifested 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 that. He was not a little like God, he was not almost like God, he was not subordinate to God even. Now this is hard on the human mind, but I'm tellin' ya what the Bible said." (Following the Faith of Abraham, Tape #01-3001)
- "Adam is as much like God as you can get, just the same as Jesus when He came into the earth, He said you've seen me you've seen the Father, he wasn't a lot like God, He's God manifested in the flesh! And I want you to know something, Adam in the Garden of Eden was God manifested in the flesh." (Following the Faith of Abraham, Tape #01-3001)
- "You see Adam was walking as a God, Adam walked in God's class, Adam did things in the class of god's, hallelujah...when he acted on the fact that, and bowed his knee to Satan and put Satan up above him, then there wasn't anything God could do about it, because a god had placed him there." (Following the Faith of Abraham, Tape #01-3001)
- THE BIBLE SAYS: There is no one like God.
- "How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears." (2 Samuel 7:22)
- "O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or earth below; you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue to walk wholeheartedly in your way." (1 Kings 8:23)
- "For who in the skies above can compare with the Lord? Who is like the Lord among the heavenly beings?" (Psalms 89:8)
- Note: If Adam was an exact duplication of God in nature, as Kenneth Copeland asserts, then why didn't Adam know whom Satan was? For God's nature is omniscience (Job 26:6, Ps. 147:5, 1 John 3:20). And how could Adam fall into a sinful state? For God, it is impossible (James 1:13).
- KENNETH COPELAND SAYS: The physical atonement did not pay for sin.
- "The death of Jesus Christ was not a physical death alone. If it had been a physical death, Abel would have paid the price for mankind. He was the first man that died because of honoring God and His Word. If it had been a physical death only, it wouldn't have worked! And if He hadn't died spiritually, that body never would have died." (What Happened From the Cross to the Throne, Tape #00-0303)
- "For three days He suffered everything there is to suffer. Some people don't want to believe that. They want to beleive 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 had to go through that same spiritual death in order to pay the price. Now it wasn't the physical death on the cross that paid the price for sin because if it had been, any prophet of God that had died for the last couple of thousand years before that could have paid that price. It wasn't physical death, anybody could do that." (Tape on file, Foundation for Christian Apologetics)
- THE BIBLE SAYS: It was the physical death of Jesus that atoned for our sins.
- "God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished." (Romans 3:25)
- "Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him." (Romans 9:5)
- "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood." (Acts 20:28)
- "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matt. 26:28)
- "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." (1 Peter 1:18-19)
- "...and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood." (Rev. 1:5)
- KENNETH COPELAND SAYS: Jesus Christ took on Satan's nature, or in other words, became a sinner while on the cross.
- "The righteousness of God was made to be sin. He 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 has thou forsaken Me.' You don't know what happened on the cross. Why do you think Moses, upon the inception of God, raised a serpent up on that pole instead of a lamb. I said why in the world do you have to put that snake up there, the sign of Satan, why don't you put a lamb on that pole? The Lord said, 'cause that was the sign of Satan that was hanging on the cross.' He said, 'I accepted in my own spirit, spiritual death and the light was turned off.'" (What Happened From the Cross to the Throne, Tape #00-0303)
- "The spirit of Jesus accepting that sin and making it to be sin, He separated from His God and at that moment He's a mortal man. Capable of failure, capable of death. And if Satan is capable of overpowering Him there, he'll win the universe and mankind is doomed. Don't get the idea that Jesus was incapable of failure because if He had been, it would have been illegal." (What Happened From the Cross to the Throne, Tape #00-0303)
- THE BIBLE SAYS: Jesus is, was, and always will be pure.
- "Can any of you prove Me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me?" (John 8:46)
- "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21)
- "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth." (1 Peter 2:22)
IN CONCLUSION:
We leave you with the words of the apostles John and Peter:
"Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you (or man) rather then to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard." (Acts 4:19-20)
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For more information, call: Perry Pellegrini at Foundation for Christian Apologetics (714)962-5460
DID JESUS CHRIST DIE SPIRITUALLY?
An Examination of Kenneth Copeland's Unbiblical View of the Atonement
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VICARIOUS ATONEMENT: THE HEART OF THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE
In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, we read the following:
"Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this Gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures..."
According to the Apostle Paul, the Gospel, or "Good News" that God has commissioned us to preach to the world is based entirely upon the redemptive work of Christ in our behalf. In fact, so important is the doctrine of the atonement to true Christian faith, that to believe anything other than what the Bible teaches in this area is, as Paul stated, "to believe in vain."
In light of the Apostle's exhortation in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 to "test everything", let us take a look at what Kenneth Copeland teaches regarding the atonement. On his tape entitled "What Happened from the Cross to the Throne", he made the following statements:
"...Now here's that part I want you to get. When [Jesus] said, 'It is finished', he was not speaking of the plan of redemption. The plan of redemption had just begun. There was still three days and three nights to be gone through before He went to the throne..."
"What was finished? The Abrahamic Covenant had come to a close. The final sacrifice was hanging on that cross. The priesthood had put it there. It was legal..."
"Now look at this. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane knows what's fixing to take place. The sin of the world was not laid upon Him. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, 'He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us..." (tape #00-0303)
Elsewhere, in a doctrinal statement regarding this issue, Copeland went on to say:
"[Jesus] became sin for us. 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..."
"Jesus went into hell to free mankind from the penalty of Adam's high treason... 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)
WAS THE PLAN OF REDEMPTION COMPLETED IN THE PIT OF HELL? Kenneth Copeland believes that the physical death of Jesus on the cross was not sufficient to pay for man's redemption, but that He also had to die spiritually and become incarnated with the evil nature of the devil. As stated above, he teaches that His Blood was merely shed to bring an end to the Abrahamic Covenant, which he referred to as "the ordinances that were against us". In other words, the final payment for our sins did not happen on the cross as the Christian Church has taught for nineteen centuries, but in the pit of hell where Jesus suffered as the very embodiment of sin for three days and nights:
"[Jesus] did the same thing that Adam did in the Garden of Eden. He made himself obedient to death and put himself into the hands of God's enemy, Satan. Only He ... committed this act, not by treason, but by choice. He did it in order to pay the price for Adam's treason...and the same thing happened to Him that happened to Adam - spiritual death!"
"Now listen to me! If it had been a physical death only, it wouldn't have worked... Do you remember what the Bible says...in 1 Timothy 3:16, 'God was manifest in the flesh and justified in the Spirit.' Well, now you can't get somebody justified, or made righteous in the Spirit if he wasn't first unrighteous. The righteousness of God was made to be sin. He 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 hast Thou forsaken Me?'
"You don't know what happened at the cross! Why do you think Moses, upon the instruction of God, raised a serpent up on that pole instead of a lamb? That used to bug me. I said, 'Why in the world you got to put that snake up there - the sign of Satan? Why didn't you put a lamb on that pole?' The Lord said, 'Cause it was the sign of Satan that was hanging on the cross... I accepted in My own spirit, spiritual death, and the light was turned off. Made to be sin.'" (What Happened from the Cross to the Throne)
It should be pointed out here that the Greek word translated as "justified" in 1 Timothy 3:16 of the King James Version, was a legal term borrowed from the Roman judicial system that simply meant to be pronounced "not guilty". It is quite clear that we are being told that Jesus was being vindicated, or shown to be righteous, not that He was being made righteous, as Copeland has suggested.
Furthermore, to say that the holy Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, took upon Himself the sin nature of Satan for even a split second, much less for three days and nights, is extremely heretical, and indeed blasphemous (1 John 1:5). Unfortunately, Copeland's errors do not stop there:
"The death of Jesus Christ was not a physical death alone. If it had been a physical death, and a physcial death only, Abel would have paid the price for the sins of mankind. He's the first man that died because of honoring God and His Word. He was the first man that God dealed (sic) with in a prophetic manner after the fall of mankind."
"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." (Ibid., parenthesis added)
"The Spirit of God spoke to me, and He said, 'Son, realize this... A twice born man whipped Satan in his own domain.' And I threw my Bible clear out on the floor. I said, 'What?' He said, 'A born-again man defeated Satan... You are the very image and the very copy of that one.' I said, 'Goodness gracious, sakes alive... You couldn't dare mean that I could have done the same thing?' He said, 'Oh yeah, if you'd had the knowledge of the Word of God that He did, you could've done the same thing, 'cause you're a reborn man, too.'" (Substitution and Identification)
THE CROSS OF CALVARY: THE REAL SITE OF BIBLICAL ATONEMENT Obviously, Kenneth Copeland has an understanding neither of the biblical doctrine of atonement, nor of the unique nature of the Provider of that atonement. The Bible specifically says that Adam's rebellion in the Garden of Eden brought sin into the world, thereby separating the entire human race from fellowship with its creator (Romans 5:12). Due to the hopeless condition of a sinful nature that was passed down to all men through the fallen bloodline of Adam, there existed not one individual that could satisfy the eternal justice of God and thereby restore the lost communion between Creator and creation (Romans 3:10-18). This is precisely the reason why God Himself became Man (John 1:1, 14, Philippians 2:6-8), so that in the person of Jesus Christ, the righteous requirements of the Law could be fulfilled (Matthew 5:17, Romans 8:3,4) and His innocent life could be offered on behalf of the guilty (Isaiah 53:10, Romans 5:6,7). To teach that a fallen man, be he a prophet or even a professing Christian, could have "paid the price", thereby satisfying the wrath of a holy God against the sins of fallen men, is both illogical and ludicrous. Clearly, this is the "spirit of antichrist" that the Apostle John warned about in 1 John 2:22, for it implicitly denies that Jesus alone was, and is, the Christ.
Again, Copeland's teaching is clear that Jesus did not pay for our redemption with His Blood when He died physically upon the cross. However, that is exactly where the Bible teaches that the atonement did take place. In Hebrews 9:13,14, we read:
"The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the Blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God?"
In chapter 10:10-14 of the same book, we are told:
"... We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool, because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy."
Finally, in Romans 3:21-25a, we read:
"Now a righteousness from God, apart from Law, has been made known... This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe... God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His Blood."
The reader should note that the "righteousness from God" is appropriated to the individual only when faith is placed in God's provision for sinful man - namely the "sacrifice of atonement", which we have seen was the physical life of Christ. There is absolutely no room for misplaced faith here, for the concluding phrase in the above verse ("in His Blood") has set the definite boundaries. Consequently, to believe, as Copeland teaches, that Christ's shed Blood was an insufficient payment for our sins, thereby making necessary His spiritual death and subsequent satanic incarnation, is to shift attention away from our only means of justification before God.
Clearly, the teachings of Kenneth Copeland and the other leading faith teachers regarding this important doctrine directly contradict the Bible. The "gospel" of the Faith Movement therefore is a "different gospel", and must, for this reason, be exposed as the serious threat to Biblical Christianity that it is:
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the One Who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the Gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned. (Galations 1:6-9)
- Greg L. Durand ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For more information, call or write to: Perry Pellegrini at Foundation for Christian Apologetics - 8281 Garfield Avenue - Huntington Beach, CA 92646 - (714)962-5460 (voice)
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