The Heretical Teachings of Kenneth Copeland
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 ...
!" ("The Price of it All," Believer’s Voice
of Victory, September 1991, p. 4).
Other Quotes
Illustrating Kenneth Copeland’s Heretical Teachings
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, 1989 audiotape, #01-3001,
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 ... Now, the reason you don’t think of God as a
failure is He never said He’s a failure. And you’re not a failure till you say
you’re one.” (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)
The
death of Jesus on the Cross did not pay the price for sins.
“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)
Jesus
was raped by homosexual Roman soldiers everyway possible.
“Let me tell you something folks. Anybody in here that’s ever been sexually
abused, listen to me right now. Listen to me very carefully. The Bible’s very
careful about the way it says these things. But down there in that dungeon,
Romans, ungodly men, ungodly men, put Him (Jesus) to every kind of abuse that
you can think of. There is no sin that Jesus didn’t bare. There is no thing,
there is no such thing as a sexual abuse on somebody that Jesus doesn’t know
firsthand what it’s all about. He’s been where you are. I don’t care what
you’ve been through, Jesus has been through it. And everything’s done to him
that we couldn’t even speak of.” (The Resurrection Truth)
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’s were exactly the same size.” (Holy
Bible, Kenneth Copeland Reference Edition 1991, p. 45)
God
is “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, [and] has a [hand]
span of nine inches across.” (Spirit, Soul and Body I, 1985, audiotape
#01-0601, side 1)
“[Adam]
was the copy, looked just like [God]. If you stood Adam upside God, they look
just 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)
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 going to have to be in agreement with a man here.” (God’s
Covenants With Man II, 1985, audiotape #01-4404, side 1)
The deification of Satan.
Satan is deified as the God this world and is positioned with so much power
that he could manage to “turn the light off in God.”
Ownership
of the earth is Satan’s.
“God’s on the outside looking in. He doesn’t have any legal entree into the
earth. The thing don’t belong to Him. You see how
sassy the Devil was in the presence of God in the book of Job? God said, ‘Where
have you been?’ Wasn’t any of God’s business. He
[Satan] didn’t even have to answer if he didn’t want to ... God didn’t argue
with him a bit! You see, this is the position that God’s been in … Might say,
‘Well, if God’s running things He’s doing a lousy job of it.’ He hadn’t been
running ’em, except when He’s just got, you know, a
little bit of a chance.” (Image of God in You III, 1989, audiotape
#01-1403, side 1)
“Here’s
where we’re gonna depart from ordinary church: Now,
you see, God is injecting His Word into the earth to produce this Jesus—these
faith-filled words that framed the image that’s in Him … He can’t just walk
onto the earth and say, ‘Let it be!’ because He doesn’t have the right. He had
to sneak it in here around the god of this world that was blockin’
every way that he possibly could.” (The Image of God in You III, 1989,
audiotape #01-1403, side 2)
“The
Bible says that God gave this earth to the sons of men … and when [Adam] turned
and gave that dominion to Satan, look where it left God. If left Him on the
outside looking in … He had no legal right to do anything about it, did He? …
He had injected Himself illegally into the earth—what Satan had intended for
Him to do was to fall for it—pull off an illegal act and turn the light off in
God, and subordinate God to himself … He intended to get God into such a trap that
He couldn’t get out.” (What Happened from the Cross to the Throne, 1990,
audiotape #02-0017)
“Adam
committed high treason; and at that point, all the dominion and authority God
had given to him was handed over to Satan. Suddenly, God was on the outside looking
in … After Adam’s fall, God found Himself in a peculiar position …God needed an
avenue back into the earth …God laid out His proposition and Abram accepted it.
It gave God access to the earth and gave man access to God ... Technically, if
God ever broke the Covenant, He would have to destroy Himself.” (Our
Covenant with God, 1987, pp. 8-11)
Jesus
Christ communicates directly with Copeland.
“Don’t be disturbed when people put you down and speak harshly and roughly
of you. They spoke that way of Me, should they not
speak that way of you? The more you get to be like Me,
the more they’re going to think that way of you. They crucified Me for claiming that I was God. But I didn’t claim I was
God; I just claimed I walked with Him and that He was in Me. Hallelujah.”
(“Take Time to Pray,” Believer’s Voice of, February
1987, p. 9)
“The
Spirit of God spoke to me and He said, ‘Son, realize this. Now follow me in
this and don’t let your tradition trip you up.’ He said, ‘Think this way—a
twice-born man whipped Satan in his own domain.’ And I threw my Bible down …
like that. I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘A born-again man defeated Satan, the
firstborn of many brethren defeated him.’ He said, ‘You are the very image, the
very copy of that one.’ I said, ‘Well now you don’t mean, 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, 1989, tape #00-0202, side 2)
Atonement Atrocities.
Copeland says that Jesus became a sign of Satan when He was hanging 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 hast thou forsaken Me?’ You don’t
know what happened at the cross. Why do you think Moses, upon instruction of
God, raised the serpent upon that pole instead of a lamb? That used to bug me.
I said, ‘Why in the world would you want to put a snake up there—the sign of
Satan? Why didn’t you put a lamb on that pole?’ And the Lord said, ‘Because it
was a 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, 1990, audiotape
#02-0017, side 2)
“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. … Jesus’ death on the cross was only the
beginning of the complete work of redemption.” (“Jesus—Our Lord of Glory,” Believer’s
Voice of Victory, April 1982, p. 3)
Jesus’
“rebirth” in hell.
“[I]n hell He [Jesus] suffered for you and for me. The Bible says hell was made
for Satan and his angels. It was not made for men. Satan was holding the Son of
God there illegally … The trap was set for Satan and Jesus was the bait.” (Walking
in the Realm of the Miraculous, 1979, p. 77)
Satan
blew it on a technicality, according to Faith theology, because Satan had
dragged Jesus into hell illegally. As Copeland puts it, “The Devil forgot to
take into consideration that Jesus hadn’t sinned Himself but, rather, had
merely become sin as a result of the sin of others.” (What Happened from the
Cross to the Throne, 1990, audiotape #02-0017, side 2)
“…
[t]hat 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. He was literally being reborn
before the devil’s very eyes. He began to flex His spiritual muscles … Jesus
was born again—the first-born 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.” (“The Price of it All,” Believer’s
Voice of Victory, September 1991, p. 4)
Miscellaneous
Quotes
“Any
O.T. prophet could have atoned for our sins if they knew what Jesus knew.” (Substitution
and Identification)
“Jesus
is no longer the only begotten Son of God.” (Now We Are In Christ Jesus,
1980, p. 24)
“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, p.
23)
“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 [
“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, KCP Publications, 1987, p. 32)
“God
was making promises to Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t even there. But, you see, God
deals with things that are not yet as though they already were. That’s the way
He gets them to come to pass.” (What Happened from the Cross to the Throne,
1990, audiotape #02-0017)