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Introduction This article looks at some of the
teachings of Word-Faith about God the Father, and how they compare
with what the Bible says.
According to the Bible, God is, among many other attributes:
- The everlasting Father (Isaiah
9:6; 63:16),
- Clothed with honour and majesty
(Psalm 104:1),
- The only wise God (Jude 1:25),
- A mighty God and terrible
(Deuteronomy 7:21; 10:17; Nehemiah 9:32).
We are to fear God "greatly", and
"give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name" (Psalm 96:8).
God Is Like Us
| God is a "spirit-being with a
body, complete with eyes, and eyelids, ears, nostrils, a
mouth, hands and fingers, and feet"
[Kenneth Copeland, ministry letter, (21
July 1977)],
"The Bible said He measured the
heavens with a 9 inch span. Now the span is the
difference, distance between the end of the thumb and
the end of the little finger. And, and that Bible
said, in fact the Amplified Translation translates the
Hebrew text that way. That He measured out the
heavens with a 9 inch span. Well, I got a ruler
and measured mine, and my span's 8-3/4 inches long.
So now God's span is a quarter of an inch, a quarter
inch longer than mine. So you see, that faith
didn't come billowing out of some giant monster
somewhere, it came out of the heart of a being
that is very uncanny the way He's very much like you and
me. A being that stands somewhere around 6'-2",
6'-3", that weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of a
couple of hundred pounds, little better, has a handspan
of 8 - and, I mean 9 inches across, stood up and said
'Light be', and this universe situated itself and went
into motion. Glory to God"
[Kenneth Copeland, Spirit, Soul, and a
Body 1, (1985), audiotape #01-0601, side 1]. |
Kenneth Copeland obtains this
information by assuming that the size of God's hand is the same as
the length of an Old Testament 'span'. But God is outside of
His creation and does not have measurable dimension. Solomon
tells us:
| "Behold, heaven and the heaven of
heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house
which I have built!" (2 Chronicles 6:18),
"Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith
the LORD" (Jeremiah 23:24b). |
When God says:
| "Mine hand also hath laid the
foundation of the earth, and My right hand hath spanned
the heavens" (Isaiah 48:13), |
...do we really suppose He possesses
a nine-inch hand span? The Hebrew original - not surprisingly,
from the context - means that God 'stretched out' the heavens.
The text nowhere suggests a nine-inch span. We must be careful
not to take Scripture's anthropomorphisms too far. The
following scriptures give us a better idea of the mightiness of
God's 'hand':
| "O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to show
thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what
God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do
according to thy works, and according to thy might?"
(Deuteronomy 3:24), "Ah Lord
God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by
thy great power and stretched out arm" (Jeremiah 32:17). |
Adam Was a
Reproduction of God
| "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. [Adam] 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 ... Adam, in the Garden of Eden, was God manifested
in the flesh" [Kenneth
Copeland, Following the Faith of Abraham 1,
(1989), audiotape #01-3001, side 1]. |
If this is so, why did the Lord
describe Adam as merely dust? Why did He give Adam orders?
And why did He judge him?
| "And the LORD God formed man out of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life; and man became a living soul"
(Genesis 2:7), "And the LORD God
took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to
dress it and to keep it. And the Lord commanded
the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:15-17),
"And unto Adam He said, Because thou
hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast
eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying,
Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy
sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
life ... In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast
thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return" (Genesis 3:17-19). |
The Biggest
Failure
| "I was shocked when I found out
who the biggest failure in the Bible actually is.
Everybody you ask, 'Who's the biggest failure?'
They say 'Judas', somebody else will say, 'No, I believe
it was Adam', 'Well how about the devil?' - he's the
most consistent failure. But he's not the biggest
in terms of material failure and so forth. The
biggest one in all the Bible is God. What, what,
what - don't you turn that set off - you listen to what
I told you - now you sit still a minute. You know
me well enough to know I wouldn't, I wouldn't tell
something I can't prove from the Bible ... 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 the fullness therein; a third of His
angels, at least - that's a big loss, man..."
[Kenneth Copeland, Praise-a-Thon,
programme on TBN, (April 1998)],
"God is the biggest failure on the
Bible ... the reason you've never thought that is
because He never said He was one"
[Kenneth Copeland, Praise-a-Thon,
programme on TBN, (1998)], |
But God never fails. He is
Almighty and all knowing, so He can never fail:
| "Every morning doth He bring His
judgements to light, He faileth not" (Zephaniah 3:5b),
"He shall not fail nor be discouraged"
(Isaiah 42:4a),
"Thou art the same, and Thy years
shall not fail" (Hebrews 1:12b). |
God Lost Control
When Adam sinned, "Suddenly,
God was on the outside looking in ... God found Himself in a
peculiar position"
[Kenneth Copeland, Our Covenant with
God, (1987), pp.8-11] because
He had 'lost control' of "the whole earth"
[Copeland, Praise-a-Thon,
(April 1988)]. Satan
surprised and outwitted God, and God subsequently had to find "an
avenue back into the Earth"
[Copeland, Covenant,
pp.8-11].
But the true God cannot be surprised,
for He knew how the whole of history would work out from before the
foundation of the world:
| He declares: "the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times the things that are
not yet done, ... My counsel shall stand, and I will do
all my pleasure" (Isaiah 46:9-10),
"Known unto God are all His works from
the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:18),
"I will utter things which have been
kept secret from the foundation of the world" (Matthew
13:35b),
See also: Matthew 25:34;
Ephesians 1:4a; 1 Peter 1:20; Revelation
13:8. |
Nor can God be outwitted, for He is
absolutely "perfect in knowledge" (Job 37:16), "His understanding is
infinite" (Psalm 147:5), and He is all powerful:
| "I am the Almighty God" (Genesis
17:1b), "And I appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God
Almighty" (Exodus 6:2-3). |
God Needs Our
Permission
| "[God] doesn't have any legal
entree into the earth. The thing don't belong to
Him" [Kenneth Copeland, The
Image of God in You III, (1989) audiotape #01-1403,
side 1]. |
As a result:
| "In order to have any so so in the
earth, He's gonna have to be in agreement with a man
here" [Kenneth Copeland,
God's Covenants with Man II, (1985), audiotape
#01-4404, side 1]. |
In other words, God can't do anything
on this earth unless we give Him permission.
But to insist that, at any stage, the
Earth didn't "belong"
to the Lord is to fly in the face of explicit scriptures such as:
| "The earth is the LORD's, and the
fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell
therein" (Psalm 24:1). |
Is there anything that the Almighty
God cannot do? The Bible says that nothing is too heard for
God:
| "Ah Lord God! behold, Thou hast made
the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and
stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for
Thee: ... the Great, the Mighty God, the LORD of hosts
is His name, Great in counsel, and mighty in work: for
thine eyes are upon all the ways of the sons of men: to
give every one according to his ways, and according to
the fruit of his doings" (Jeremiah 32:17-19),
"Then came the word of the LORD unto
Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all
flesh: is there anything too hard for me?" (Jeremiah
32:26-27). |
God is omnipotent:
| "Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that
did He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all
deep places" (Psalm 135:6), "and
He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven,
and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can
stay His hand, or say unto Him, what doest Thou?"
(Daniel 4:35),
"Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth" (Revelation 19:6b). |
Hence, to teach that there are things
that God "has no legal right to do anything
about"
[Kenneth Copeland, What Happened From
the Cross to the Throne, (1990), audiotape #02-0017]
for fear of being ruled unlawful by "the
Supreme Court of the Universe"
[Charles Capps, Authority in
Three Worlds, (1982), pp.50-51]
is to badly mislead the flock.
These scriptures show us that it is
God Himself Who is the Judge of the Universe:
| "Shall not the Judge of all the earth
do right?" Genesis 18:25, "O
LORD God of Israel, Thou art righteous: ... we are
before Thee in our trespasses: for we cannot stand
before Thee because of this" (Ezra 9:15),
"...the LORD: for He cometh, for He
cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with
righteousness, and the people with truth" (Psalm 96:13),
"Righteous art Thou, O LORD, and
upright are Thy judgements" (Psalm 119:137),
"God shall judge the righteous and the
wicked" (Ecclesiastes 3:17),
"...understandeth and knoweth Me, that
I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgement,
and righteousness, in the earth" (Jeremiah 9:24),
"Righteous are Thou, O LORD, when I
plead with Thee of Thy judgements" (Jeremiah 12:1),
"Therefore hath the LORD watched upon
the evil, and brought it upon us: for the LORD our God
is righteous in all His works which He doeth: for we
obeyed not His voice" (Daniel 9:14),
"I charge thee therefore before God,
and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall judge the quick
[living] and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom"
(2 Timothy 4:1),
"To the general assembly and church of
the firstborn, ... and to God the Judge of all" (Hebrews
12:23),
"And I saw a great white throne, and
Him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the
heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God;
and the books were opened: and another book was opened,
which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out
of those things which were written in the books,
according to their works. And the sea gave up the
dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up
the dead which were in them: and they were judged every
man according to their works. And death and hell
were cast into the lake of fire. This is the
second death. And whosoever was not found written
in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire"
(Revelation 20:11-15). |
These scriptures leave us in no doubt
whatsoever as to just Who is the High Judge of the "Supreme
Court of the Universe". There is not one single thing in
creation that is not listed in the Revelation passage above:
"earth", "heaven", "the dead, small and great", "death", "hell".
Every single created thing will appear before God to be judged by
the "Judge of all".
The True God
Compare the statements of the
Word-faith teachers about the Lord God with what God says of Himself
in His Holy Word. How much does the Word-Faith movement
encourage us to glorify God and to be in awe of Him? The Faith
movement teaches a small and emasculated shadow of the true God.
The Lord has given us some very strong words about those who think
that He is just like us:
| "Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and
thy tongue frameth deceit. ... [T]hou thoughtest that I
was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will
reprove thee ... Now consider this, ye that forget God,
lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
Whosoever offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that
ordereth his convention aright will I shew the salvation
of God" (Psalm 50:19-23). |
Elizabeth McDonald
March 2016
©
Bayith Ministries
http://www.bayith.org
bayith@blueyonder.co.uk
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