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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” (DAY 6) – Don’t alter the Scripture to fit your lifestyle.

11/7/2011

David Barton
Daniel Webster, a great American hero, in the time of the Founding Fathers, grew up listening to
speeches of George Washington and John Adams, but he’s considered the most brilliant intellect
in the Senate – the greatest orator ever in the history of the US Senate:
     ‘...I believe that God exists in three persons; this I learn from revelation alone. Nor is it any
objection to this belief that I cannot comprehend how one can be three or three one. I hold it my
duty to believe not what I can comprehend or account for, but what my Maker teaches me...’
(His Confession Of Faith)

And that’s the right attitude. I may not understand it, but what I have found is once you ACCEPT
it you’ll start to understand it.

Kenneth Copeland
Oh yeah, you will because that’s the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When you begin to understand
with Him as the Teacher, you begin to get revealed knowledge which lifts us up. We now begin
to understand His Kingdom which gives us insight into that kingdom of darkness from which we’ve
been translated.

I heard Keith Moore say this:
     ‘We don’t alter the Scripture to fit our lifestyle.’

Our lifestyle is already screwed up. We don’t need to screw up the Scripture to fit this. On the other
hand, we alter our lifestyle to fit this Word which changes our lifestyle to match this
[Word of God] instead of taking all the power and strength out of His Word to fit our little
Mickey Mouse lifestyle.

David Barton
That’s right. We have a tendency to want to make God in our image rather than the other way around.
[Many people say:]
     ‘Here’s the way I respond. Here’s the way I think. So God understands this.’
No, you need to think like God thinks.

That’s why He wants a new mind in you. That’s why He wants a new spirit in you. A new way of
thinking and that comes through the Scriptures. And this is one of the things I’ve seen the church do
a lot...We’ve become very selfish-centered. We now tell people,
     ‘You know, you need to get saved because of what Jesus will do for you.’

> How about you need to get saved because He’s the SAVIOUR of the world!
> He’s the Creator.
> He’s laid down the standards of your life!

It has nothing to do with what He’s going to do for you…It’s the right thing to do!

Kenneth Copeland, KCM; David Barton, WallBuilders

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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” (DAY 5) – Do you really know the Word of God?

11/3/2011

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Kenneth Copeland
We’ve got a lot of people over whom Jesus is Lord, but His Word has no affect one way or the
other in their life. Consequently, He has NO entrance into anything they do because the pattern of
that kind of life is to make your plans and ask God to bless them. At the same time, the devil has
accessed their inner most thoughts because they believe what they hear and see and feel instead
of what God says.

David Barton
It does take deliberate effort for him [the devil] to not steal the Word. It takes faith in God and you
really got to be on guard. If you don’t know what the traps of the devil looks like, he’s got an advantage
on you. He’s going to try to steal the Word through a neighbor, try to steal the Word through the media…

Kenneth Copeland
Anything he can get you to FEEL or SEE – if he can keep you out here in this carnal feeling world,
he’s got you because he’s god over that world.

David Barton
One of the biggest ways he gets us is if we DON’T KNOW the Word. Jesus said,
     ‘If you don’t know the Word, you don’t know My power.’

Kenneth Copeland
If you don’t know it, you don’t have any faith in it.

David Barton
That’s right. You can’t apply it, then you don’t get the results. You get none of His benefits.

Kenneth Copeland
Gloria and I were in a meeting with Brother Kenneth Hagin back in 1967; I was a student at Oral Roberts
University. I was so hungry for faith. I wanted to know how it worked. I was travelling with Brother Roberts
and he used his faith on PURPOSE like you go choose a wrench and use it. I thought,
“Wow, I never seen anything like this!”

And at the same time Brother Hagin teaching HOW you do this. Well, faith comes by hearing and
hearing by the Word of God. We stood up in a meeting one night and he said,
     ‘Anyone present that you’re ready to make a commitment tonight, that whatever you see in
God’s Word that THIS Word is the AUTHORITY of your life. That whatever you
see in this Word, and you see what it’s telling you to do, that you’ll ACT on it and put it
first place in your life.’

Well, Gloria and I both jumped up! We committed to it. When I made that commitment to do that, now He is already committed to me to teach me HOW to live there.

David Barton
And it’s that decision that you make that says,
     ‘If it’s in here [the Bible], I’m going to do.’
Now, you may not have read this from cover to cover yet but you’ve got to take the attitude that if it’s
in here, I’m going to do it.

And we talked [earlier] about Acts 17:11 that Paul with all of his journeys, the Bereans were the most
noble because they searched the Scriptures. But do you know what else it says? Paul said they were
the most noble because they received the Word with eagerness and they searched the Scriptures
to see if it was true. But it starts with RECEIVING.

Kenneth Copeland
Jesus talks about those guys in Mark 4 – they received the Word gladness but the Scripture says they
had NO root in them. This [Word of God] is where the root is.

David Barton
And I guarantee you, if you make that commitment that I’m going to do what’s in here…PERIOD…
because it’s God’s Word. There’s going to be a lot of stuff you’ll never understand. You read in here [and say],
     ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ You can’t say I’m not going to do it just because it doesn’t make sense.

Kenneth Copeland
If it already made sense to you…

it ain’t supposed to make sense – IT MAKES FAITH.

Kenneth Copeland, KCM; David Barton, WallBuilders

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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” (DAY 4) – God’s Word must be FINAL authority.

11/1/2011

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Kenneth Copeland:
Along came Brother Kenneth Hagin’s ministry…the Lord would have him go into an area of church right
after one of those big healing campaigns [with Oral Roberts] and begin to teach people that had gotten
saved in there. And a lot of them thought they were in deep trouble because their healings began to
vanish. Well, there were preachers that preached everywhere,
     ‘See, God’s taken His hand off of Oral Roberts…’

Are you kidding? Oral [Roberts] didn’t heal them. But the problem was they went right BACK to the
way they were thinking and acting that brought the sickness in the FIRST place! And now Brother Hagin
[would] get in there and spend 2 or 3 weeks and GET in the WORD and how FAITH functioned.
And then as they began to grow up in the Word and their thinking began to be renewed, they’d latch back on to that healing and kept it.

I came up…and that’s what the Lord starting dealing with me about. He said,
     ‘I have sleeping giant in the land.’
And He’s talking about that whole mass of people. And He said,
     ‘I’m going to wake them up.’

I said,
     ‘Hallelujah!’
He said,
     ‘You’re the needle.’

During those years, particularly during the 15 years of this ministry, David, I said and did things that I just wouldn’t ordinarily do or say. But it would either make somebody so mad they couldn’t sleep and go get the Word to prove me wrong and there it was ALL the time and very simple all the time. And I had pastors and preachers and people that would say,
     ‘Brother Copeland I have to apologize to you. I did not know it was in there [the Bible].’

Come to find out, everybody was just parroting what everybody else said,
    ‘It was what OUR group said and what OUR theology said.’

NO personal study at all.

David Barton:
Exactly. Great example: Paul loved the Bereans. Here’s a guy that travelled the known world – from Spain to Great Britain over into Asia – all these places he went on his missionary journeys preaching everywhere he goes. And the one he liked best was the Bereans in Acts 17:11. And the reason he liked them he says,
     ‘I talk to them; they don’t believe me. They have to go check it in the Scriptures everyday   to see if I’m telling them the truth. They are noble than anybody else.’

That was not an insult. And Paul said,
     ‘That’s the most noble group.’

Of all of his travels, the most noble group was the one that said,
     ‘I’m glad you said that. Let me check it out [in the Word].’

And if we get in there and check God’s Word – I don’t care how many credentials they got after their name, I don’t care how many times they’ve done something right – check it out. Get in God’s Word. And we have to train ourselves to get in here [the Word] and stay in here and think Biblically. Because that’s what’s going to turn the world around and that’s what the earth is groaning for: For us getting in the Word and living the Word and not just living a “Christian” lifestyle…because “Christian” lifestyle doesn’t mean much anymore. We need a Biblical lifestyle.

Kenneth Copeland:
Let’s lay down then this first Biblical principle that we’re going to be walking in all this week.

(1) God’s Word must be FINAL authority. It says what It says.
‘But I don’t understand that Brother Copeland.’

Then don’t do anything UNTIL you do. You put this Book final authority,
‘It [Word of God] is first place in my life. This is what I do. This is what I say.
This is what I think. And with God’s help I will be transformed.’
That’s the first step in living in the Kingdom of God separate from the kingdom of darkness.

Kenneth Copeland, KCM; David Barton, WallBuilders

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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” – Message with Kenneth Copeland & David Barton (DAY 3)

10/31/2011

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David Barton:
There a great verse I love in Romans 12:2. In the King James it says,
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…

But in the Phillips translation, I love this, the Phillips translation says,
Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould…

In a lot of ways we have let secular people tell Christians how they should think and react [to different
issues]. We don’t take those things back and say,
     ‘What does the Bible say about these issues.’

So, we’ve let our thinking be shaped by what we hear in the news, what we read in the newspaper,
what our neighbors tell us, sometimes what we hear out of the pulpit which is not biblical a lot of times.
There’s a lot of stuff going on shaping the way Christians think. And that’s why we’re not seeing the
behavioral fruits. The earth is groaning for us to manifest ourselves as the Son of God.

We’re not living this [Word of God] stuff out, and that goes back to our thinking. I have a good friend
that teaches a Sunday school class and he asked the class how many times they have read through
the Scripture. He said if you consider reading through the Bible once every the year, [then] let’s figure
out in our adult lives… So they went around and gathered up [that] there were 365 adult years in that
class. They had read through the Bible 7 times out of 365 years, and 4 of them was from the guy teaching
the class. Out of all the other people, only 3 times had the Bible been read through cover to cover.

And here they are in church, going to Sunday school, but they haven’t been in the Book. They have
NOT shaped their thinking according to what the Book says. And that’s really where we are. Just ask
how many Christians have read through this thing from cover to cover – even once! How many know
the context? How many know what Jesus said? How many know that 26 times in the book of Matthew
it says, ‘This was done to fulfill the prophecy of whatever.’

You know, if you don’t go back and read those prophecies, you don’t know what the New Testament
is about. In the book of Hebrews more than 200 hundred times it quotes the Old Testament. You can’t
understand the book of Hebrews if you don’t understand the Old Testament. You’ve got to read the
WHOLE thing. Otherwise, you don’t even get the New Testament message. And that’s where we
have to get – WE HAVE TO GET IN THIS BOOK!

There’s a great quote that comes from Booker T. Washington which says,
     ‘No man can read the Bible and be lazy. The Bible increases your desires and
therefore your capacity to achieve.’

The more you read the Bible, the more you say,
     ‘I need to do that. I need to be like that. I need to think like that.’

The more you get into It, the more It will shape your thinking and the more It shapes your thinking,
the more it will shape the culture around you.

Kenneth Copeland
Let me see if this is an accurate summary of that:
A lot of people have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour that are not yet disciples of His. What He did,
what He says, what the Book says has no affect on their life day-to-day. They DON’T know what it says!
And if somebody comes along and says,
     ‘Now, you don’t need to be doing that. We’ve always done it this way.’

David Barton:
We’ve got all these reasons for it. You saying that reminded me of the Great Commission.
In Matthew 28:18-20 I think most Christians know this, they’ve heard it:

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying,
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world.

Now, we take that and have turned that into an evangelism mandate. We go tell everybody about Jesus.
That’s okay, but that’s not what He said. He said,
     ‘You teach them everything that I have taught you.’

The Great Commission is a discipleship commission; it’s not an evangelism commission. He says,
‘You teach them everything I’ve taught you.’

Making disciples of all men. You need a relationship with Jesus Christ, you need to be saved but
you need to live biblically once you get saved.

Kenneth Copeland, KCM; David Barton, WallBuilders

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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” – Message with Kenneth Copeland & David Barton (DAY 2)

10/29/2011

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David Barton:
Start acting like God’s people. And in America particularly this is a problem we have right
now. Um, there’s national polling done by a number of groups, but one of them that’s a national group
that really focuses on Christians is George Barna. And George Barna has now gone through 70
categories of moral behaviour – looking at moral behavior in the nation, and he says that he can find
no substantial difference from professing Christians and non-Christians on moral behaviour.

Kenneth Copeland:
Where is he looking? He didn’t call me.

David Barton:
No, he didn’t call us but there’s too few of us and Christians professing the Name need to be there.
And here’s one of the statistics that got me from a number of polling places is that in America the
divorce rate for born-again Christians is 27%. So what’s the rest of the nation not born-again Christian?
The rest of the nation is 24%. And for atheists and agnostics the divorce rate is 21%. Tell me why
atheists and agnostics have more stable marriages than born-again Christians?

Kenneth Copeland:
Well, this plug this into the mix and this is a real eye-opener for me: Satan is not attacking atheists,
agnostics – he’s not attacking the world out there. They’ll kill themselves. But somebody gets into the
Kingdom of God and begins to pick that Bible up, Jesus said,
     ‘He [satan] will come immediately trying to STOP the Word.’

He [satan] will persecute and do everything he can to stop…

David Barton:
And he’ll even look like an angel of light when he does it.

Kenneth Copeland:
And if they don’t know their weapon [Word of God], if they don’t know who they are in Christ Jesus. \
Just in the natural, in the carnal mind, Romans 8:6 says,
      For to be carnally minded is DEATH,

David Barton:
2 Corinthians 2:11 says,
     ‘If we’re ignorant of his [satan’s] devices, then he has an advantage over us.’

Out in the country what makes traps work, I mean the reason we can trap skunks is they don’t know
what a trap looks like. If they every figure out what a trap looks like, we can’t trap them.

Kenneth Copeland:
David, I went to one bullfight in my life. I didn’t want to go to that but I was in another country and I was
in a position where it would have been an insult for me not to go, and so I went. In a way, I’m glad I did
because the Lord showed me something.

I watching this big, strong animal and he keeps attacking a red rag. He thinks that red cloth is his
enemy and he continually misses his enemy, who is standing right in front of him, he’s standing
right there in eyesight of him, but he’s focused on that red rag. And the man out there in the ring knows
good and well if he [the bull] ever notices who he is, he’s in trouble. He’s got to keep his [the bull]
attention over here with that red rag and the Lord starting talking to me about that.

The Lord said,
     ‘What you are witnessing is the way the devil has managed to handle My people who
> don’t know who they are,
> don’t know their weapons,
> don’t have any understanding of the spiritual rules and laws in the Kingdom of God
and so they’re still living over here in the kingdom of darkness and don’t know any better.’

David Barton:
They’ve got a label that says,
     ‘I’m a Born-Again Christian,’

but they are still thinking very much like the world.

Kenneth Copeland:
That’s it…no mind renewal at all.

Kenneth Copeland, KCM; David Barton, WallBuilders

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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” – Message with Kenneth Copeland & David Barton (DAY 1)

10/28/2011

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Hello Everyone,
I hope you have been enjoying the 'Why' series by Pastor Ron Carpenter of Redemption World
Outreach Center. I sure have!

For a few days we will be taking a break from his series and looking at a message titled,
'The Word of God Is Your Final Authority' by Kenneth Copeland and David Barton. This
message talks about being a Christian, what do your fruits show, do you know what the
Bible says and you're responsible for the knowledge God reveals to you.

Have a Blessed day,
Heather
Healed of Cancer

The Word of God Is Your Final Authority

Kenneth Copeland:
We are in a very, very critical time. All throughout ever since the day the curse was released in the
earth, life has been critical on this planet. And each generation pushes towards the climax of that

generation and pushes that generation’s knowledge of God, obedience to God – right to the brink.

And as it develops, as revelation of God develops in the earth, each generation is responsible

for what God reveals him.

So, like someone said to Gloria [Copeland], she had already said,
     ‘These are the last days.’

And someone said,
     ‘Yeah, but every generation says that.’

She [Gloria] said,
     ‘I’ll tell you what, it’s your and my last days – whichever way it goes.’

And that’s always true. But this one, the things that are happening now are very, very unique. Other

generations in the past have pointed to it, knew it was coming, and now we’re seeing it manifest

right in front of our faces. So, what we do, what we say, the faith that we release towards

God is so important – not just for the recovery of the economy or the salvation of our personal nation

or things like that. But our faith that God to wrap up and complete HIS plan as HE planned it.

Praise God. Which is always to our benefit.

I’m just seeing all kinds of things that are just coming more clear everyday. The split between the

kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of God and this Kingdom that we got born into when we made

Jesus Lord of our lives. We’re supposed to be living here…separate from that. But so much and

so many of God’s people have got over in there – don’t know the laws and the language of the

Kingdom of God and so are getting cheated and robbed out of what God…literally Jesus gave His

LIFE for us to be able to do and be able to live untouched by that mess. And His people are

suffering needlessly.

David Barton:
We are and a lot of it is self-inflicted because the solution is right here [Word of God]. And

the number of people that don’t know God’s Word and live by It…you go back to Matthew 22:29

where Jesus says,
‘You guys make a mistake, you don’t know the Scriptures and therefore you don’t know

the Power of God.’

And one of the things that has really stood out to me, Jesus has told us in so many occasions (He

goes through it in Luke 13, He goes through it in Matthew 6, so many places) – you know a tree by

it’s fruits. And so if I look at a tree and it’s got a big sign on it that says, ‘I’m an apple tree,’ but it

keeps on producing bananas, I don’t care what the sign says.

And we’re finding that with Christianity. Um, great example is worldwide in ‘70s, ‘80s’, ‘90s, we’ve

seen a number of revivals across the world. We saw revivals in Central America. We saw revivals

in South America. We saw them in Africa. And one of the significant things, if you look at the

evangelization of Africa in the 20th century, you now have nations in Africa [that are] 90% professing

Christian nations. 90 percent. That’s 3 to 4 generations now of Christians in those nations. Specifically

in Central America we have one nation [that is] 90% Christian as a result of all these revivals. And

this is 15 to 20 years ago those revivals happened.

So, great to have 90%. BUT here’s the problem. The nations in Africa that are 90% Christian:

the age rate today is higher than it was 10 years ago; the government corruption today is higher than

it was 10 years ago; poverty has increased in those nations. Then what good did it do to have

Christianity come to your nation? Because now you’ve got more corruption, you’ve got more age,

you’ve got more poverty, the mistreatment of women has continued –

where’s the FRUIT of Christianty?

And the nation in Central America that’s 90% Christian just elected openly homosexuals as their

national leaders. Now how does a Christian do that given the Bible?

Because we don’t know what’s in here [The Holy Bible].

We don’t know It. We don’t live It.

And that’s what is killing us. Romans 8:19 says,
‘The whole earth is groaning for the manifestation of God’s people.’

[To be continued…]

Kenneth Copeland, KCM | David Barton, WallBuilders

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“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” (DAY 6) – Don’t alter the Scripture to fit your lifestyle.

“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” (DAY 5) – Do you really know the Word of God?

“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” (DAY 4) – God’s Word must be FINAL authority.

“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” – Message with Kenneth Copeland & David Barton (DAY 3)

“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” – Message with Kenneth Copeland & David Barton (DAY 2)

“The Word of God Is Your Final Authority” – Message with Kenneth Copeland & David Barton (DAY 1)

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