EN GARDE!

EN GARDE: A term that describes the basic stance of a fencer. In a match, it's a warning from the director to both fencers to prepare to fence (not with chicken wire, but with swords). I've always been interested in the sport, ever since I watched a few Errol Flynn movies on TV.  As Robin Hood (a socialist if ever there was one) he could buckle the swash like no one else, but Zorro comes close.

The Bible issues the same command: be on guard for the many false teachers that are taking the money and the minds of the gullible. One such false teacher has taken over $300,000,000 in his 80+ years of shearing the sheep and is still going at it hot and heavy.

The question is, how do we know the false from the true? Is there a commonality among the deceivers? I believe there is, and, over the next several weeks, I'll submit four marks of wolves in sheep's clothing.

First of all, a false teacher will take a verse or even a few words and remove them from their context. Kenneth Copeland, he, of a net worth of over 300 million dollars, recently told an eager audience of itching ears that he assured them that he would live to be 120. 120? How did he come up with that figure, when, generally speaking, the psalmist said that three score and ten would be an average life span? The psalmist wasn't promising the reader anything; he was making a general statement.

Copeland came up with that figure because he said he was "in a covenant with God' to live to 120 based on Genesis 6:3: "Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 

What Copeland has done is to remove verse 3 from its context which is about the coming judgment of a universal flood in Noah's day, specifying that the great inundation is 120 years away, a period of grace, then comes the disaster. Genesis 6:3 is not a covenant into which any man, then or now, enters with God. 

Copeland also has cut another text from its context: Genesis 8:1: "But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark, and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided."

The master wolf put on his sheep's wool and built an entire sermon (I use the word loosely) on three words, "God's mighty wind," and made it into a promise that God's mighty wind would rid America of the Corona-19 virus.

At one point in the homily, Copeland looked into the TV camera and said, “I blow the wind of God on you [the virus]. You are destroyed forever, and you’ll never be back. Thank you, God. Let it happen. Cause it to happen.” Then he blew into the camera and led a chant with other members of his church: “Wind, almighty, strong, south wind, Heat: Burn this thing, in the name of Jesus. I say you bow your knees. You fall on your face.” (Speaking of looking into the TV camera, several people have noted that his eyes and twisted facial features look demonic.) 

By taking Genesis 8:1 from its contextual neighborhood which is all about the Noahic Flood, all of a sudden, Genesis 8:1 has something to do with Copeland's supposed supernatural ability to blow a virus from American shores. He completely ignores one of the cardinal rules of hermeneutics: Context is king.

Kenneth Copeland was born in Lubbock, Texas, in December 1936. Since that time, "according to various reports, he has used church donations to acquire a $20 million private jet. He allegedly has used this jet for trips to resorts and various other personal vacations. He also reportedly lives in a $6.3 million lakefront mansion that is also reportedly funded by his church. There have been reports that Copeland could be worth as much as $750 million or even $1 billion."

The sheep have been sheared. But what about those whose wool has been shorn?  God said something which is instructive about them. To Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, God declared, "The prophets prophesy falsely, and . . . people love to have it so."

TBC