I'll drink to that!
Posted on 08/10/2005 8:13:30 PM PDT by wallcrawlr
FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) - God and money took center stage when nationally known television minister Kenneth Copeland brought his Southwest Prosperity Convention to Fort Worth, Texas, last week.
Copeland is one of the most prominent of a school of evangelists who preach an often-controversial theology that says when people immerse themselves in the Bible's laws of prosperity, God will bless them with spiritual, physical and financial health.
"God wants you to have life and have it more abundantly," Copeland declared at the opening session Monday night, paraphrasing John 10:10. The six-day conference ended Saturday.
When I walked into the Fort Worth Convention Center, people were raising their arms and singing "There's a sweet, sweet spirit in this house." You could almost touch the emotion in the air. Then Copeland bounded onstage to a standing ovation from 5,000 early registrants; he greeted visitors from 42 states and 22 foreign countries.
"Hallelujah!" he shouted. "Welcome to Fort Worth."
Copeland has had his summer convention in Fort Worth for years. But it has always been called the Southwest Believers Convention. The "prosperity" name was added this year, and speakers included the aptly named Creflo Dollar of College Park, Ga., author of a book called The Heart and Guts of Prosperity.
Copeland has a sprawling ministry headquarters on Eagle Mountain Lake, complete with an airstrip. He and his wife, Gloria, live in a ministry-owned home with a dock on the lake. He has offices in Canada, England, Australia, South Africa and Ukraine, and he has flown his own jets to preaching locations around the world.
Their friends have told me the Copelands are generous in donating to other ministries. Their Web site (www.kcm.org) says 10 percent of ministry contributions go to other ministries. No information was available on which ministries benefit.
Advocates of Copeland's teachings say he has helped save their health, their families and their pocketbooks. But he's vilified by critics, such as Hank Hanegraff, president of the Christian Research Institute, who say Copeland and others proclaim a "name it and claim it" theology that is a "counterfeit" Christianity.
Prosperity isn't just about money, it affects every area of life, Copeland told those at the meeting. He declares on his Web site that "money is a lousy god" and that wealth and power cannot answer every need.
Copeland's Fort Worth roots are deep. Fresh out of Polytechnic High School in the 1950s, Copeland was a pop singer, and one of his hit records, Pledge of Love, led to appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and with Steve Allen on the old Tonight Show.
After his Christian conversion, Copeland says he and his wife, Gloria, were drowning in debt before they discovered teachings of the late Kenneth Hagin Sr., one of the fathers of prosperity theology.
Having plenty of money is not wrong or ungodly, as some have taught, Copeland contends, and for proof quotes 3 John 1:2: "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." He also advocates a controversial tenet of prosperity theology - that believers can specifically name what they need and God will give it to them from a heavenly storehouse.
"You can draw on heaven like a magnet," Copeland said this week. "We don't have to wait until we get to heaven to get God's blessings. Now's when we need them."
Critics claim that such theology caters to greed and selfishness and that it contrasts with the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and others who took vows of poverty.
But Copeland vigorously defends his message, saying God wants to bless Christians so they can help others. Copeland said Satan wants to keep people from claiming the gifts God has for them.
At the meeting, he led the crowd in shouting to an invisible devil, "Take your hands off my money. Take your hands off my family. Take your hands off my body."
Copeland said he is a "dependently" wealthy man.
"I depend on God," he said. And he's not just wealthy spiritually. "I've got a lot of money," he told conventioneers. "I've been told not to say that, because people will stop giving."
But not to worry. When ushers began taking the offering, the white plastic buckets quickly began filling with mounds of greenbacks.
You can draw....hmmmm....sounds like we have the "power".
Interesting article and title.
Good point. Copeland...ugh.
Religion is the last refuge of the Scoundral ( B. Dylan)..what happened to humility and a vow of poverty.
Pretty balanced article.
I am surprised.
Have you ever heard Kenneth or Gloria speak?
yeah, Ive seen their show a couple times. Thought it sounded ok. Now I know whats behind it.
I did listen to Copeland about 30 years ago and it seemed to me that he was a tad more orthodox back then. (Or maybe I was less orthodox) He did teach me the importance of praying for a parking space before you leave for an appointment downtown.
There is a truth to God wanting us to prosper and if you read Deuteronomy (I forget which chapter off hand) it is clear that that promise of prosperity does include a measure of present temporal material wealth to those who do God's will.
IMO Copeland has made a religion out of those promises and attempts to apply them to every aspect of our lives. Clearly there are limits on the promises and conditions that Copeland and other prosperity preachers seem to ignore.
My most strident objection to Copeland's teachings are his references to beleivers being "little gods". It seems that is Hannegraff's principle objection as well. IMO, idea that we can conjure up miracles is tantamount to witchcraft. We cannot conjure up miracles. Miracles are the result of the God's supernatural intervention in our lives. We do not control God. If there is a miracle, it is because it was God's will from all eternity, not because we made God do it.
Not sure what you mean.
Deuteronomy 28:2-14
2Ti 4:3-4 The time will come when people will not listen to sound doctrine, but will follow their own desires
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1461031/posts
Why, you have gotten more orthodox. ;^)
I knew you'd like that.
What happened to them? Hell, I want to know how either one became a virtue. I'm not a big Copeland fan, but neither am I a fan of humility or poverty. Honesty, industriousness and integrity are virtues. Humility and poverty are not.
Copeland and company seem to ignore all the promises of destruction and calamity if you don't do God's will, but they do seem to latch onto the idea that the promises of prosperity apply to them and their followers.
When you get to verse 15, you start to get nervous and you start hoping that maybe this chapter doesn't really apply to the church and maybe it just applied to Israel. I wonder if Copeland has ever quoted verses 15 to 68. If the promises of verses 2-14 apply to us, then the curses of verses 15 to 68 must also apply.
I don't know about you, but I don't keep the commandments as well as God suggested in that Chapter. But for the grace of God, I suspect those curses should befall me.
I'll drink to that!
I am in no way a theologian, so can any of the more informed Freepers run me through thr standard rebuttal to the line "it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven"?
Pour me one while you're at it.
"Honesty, industriousness and integrity are virtues. Humility and poverty are not."
I don't think many long-stablished Christian orders would agree with that. They seem to value vows of poverty, chastity, humility and meekness.
Incidentally, these are some of the reasons why I am not practicing Christian.
I'm still trying to figure out where they got needles back then.
Well...Cleopatra's needle was / is huge.
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