Uncle Jay Hubbard answers "If God is not the Problem, who/what is?" with a @CopelandNetwork quote that went a little off-topic and got the post blocked from the @Quora space ...
“GOD IS NOT THE PROBLEM” was the title of an article in a recent Believers’ Voice of VICTORY magazine (Kenneth Copeland Ministries‘ monthly magazine). And it looks like the only way I’ll read through Kenneth Copeland’s article is if I’m sharing it here:
GOD IS NOT THE PROBLEM
And please, read the whole thing before you react to any little part that you think is wrong.
“The Bible is your Command Authority Manual. The more you study it and meditate on what it says, the stronger your Faith will become.”
Kenneth Copeland (later in the article)
There’s a phrase that’s become popular in religious circles over the years. When questions arise about why we see so much chaos and evil in the world around us, very often someone will say that although we may not understand it all, “God is in control.”
Those who say it may mean well. They’re usually trying to offer comfort and a spiritual perspective. But as seemingly spiritual as it may sound, there’s a major problem with the statement, “God is in control.”: It’s contrary to Scripture. Which means, of course, it’s not true.
If it were true, we’d all be in big trouble. We’d have to agree with a statement made by a newspaper reporter years ago who, because of all the tragedy he witnessed in his line of work, claimed to be an agnostic. Looking to religion for the answer, he was simply assured that, yes, there is a God, and He is in control.
“If He is, He sure does have things in a mess!” the reporter said.
The man had a valid point. If everything that’s going on in this world is under God’s control, any thinking person would have reason to question His competence, if not His very existence. The Bible tells us, however, that God is not in control of everything that’s happening on this earth right now. From Genesis to Revelation, it assures us that God is not the one who has gotten things on this planet into such a mess.
“Wait just a minute, Brother Copeland. Doesn’t the Bible say God is Sovereign?”
Not in the sense that many have thought. In fact, the word sovereign doesn’t appear even one time in the King James Version of the Bible. Some of the other versions use it, but even in those instances, when God is described as Sovereign, it doesn’t mean all-controlling. It simply means what the dictionary says: “first in rank, order and authority.”
Certainly, by that definition, God is unquestionably Sovereign. He is the Eternal, Omnipotent One who was and is and is to come, so He is first in rank. He existed before anyone else and created all things, so He is first in order. He is above all, and there is no authority higher, so He is first in authority.
((This article was adapted from the new book by Kenneth Copeland, titled Speak the Word: Walking in the Authority of the Believer.))
God does not exercise His sovereignty, however, by controlling everything and everybody on earth. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that the first thing He did after He created the earth was to put mankind in charge of it. As Genesis 1:27–28 says:
“God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God BLESSED them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (New King James Version).
What did God mean when He said, “have dominion…on the earth”? According to the dictionary, dominion is defined as “supreme authority, or sovereignty.” In other words, in the same sense that God is Sovereign over all, He made mankind sovereign on earth. He gave the first man and woman and their descendants full authority over this planet and everything in it (Psalm 115:16).
“Yes, but that was in the beginning in the Garden of Eden,” you might say. “A lot of things have changed since then.” That’s true. But God hasn’t changed one iota. Neither has His WORD. God’s WORD is His bond. He never breaks it. “The WORD of the LORD endures forever” (1 Peter 1:25, NKJV), and, since He “is not a man, that He should lie” (Numbers 23:19, NKJV), the words God spoke over mankind in Genesis 1 still stand.
It is amazing that God ever spoke those words at all. Considering how fallible the first man and woman and all the rest of us have proven ourselves to be, it’s astonishing that God, in all His greatness, majesty, power and foreknowledge, would choose to give human beings dominion over the earth that He created. Why would He do it?
We find David asking God that question in Psalm 8. After praising the excellence of the name of The LORD who has set His glory above the heavens, David says:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; and what is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas, O LORD our LORD, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (verses 3–9)
David wrote that Psalm thousands of years after Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. Yet in it, he confirmed that what God had said in Genesis 1:28 was still true: God has given mankind “dominion over” all the earth.
“It doesn’t look like it!” someone might say. “It doesn’t even look like Christians have much dominion. For the most part, it looks like the Church is as subject to all the messes in this world as everybody else is.”
I know, and one of the biggest reasons that’s true is because many Christians have the idea that God doesn’t want them to have any authority or dominion. Although they’re born again and love The LORD, they continue to see themselves as just helpless bumpkins trying to beg God into the notion of answering their prayers. Time and again over the years, in visiting various churches, I’ve heard dear, sincere Christian people carry on like they’re spiritual orphans.
I’ve heard them pray as if God is pretty much disgusted with them. I’ve heard them talk to Him as if they’re trying to scratch their way back into His good graces by putting themselves down. “Oh, LORD, we’re no good!” they’d say. “We’re so unworthy!”
Of course, most Christians only believe that about themselves when they’re in church. Once they step outside the church building, they wouldn’t tolerate for a moment being told they were unworthy. Even after saying that very thing to God on Sunday, if on Monday you told them that they weren’t good enough to go into a certain restaurant or shop at a certain store or sit at the front of the bus, they would fight you all the way to city hall.
Why? Because on Monday they don’t have their religious cap on — and it’s religion, not the Bible, that has taught God’s people that they’re unworthy and no good.
Destroyed by a Lack of Knowledge
Don’t misunderstand me. I agree that we were all spiritually unworthy before we were born again. As sinners, not yet saved, we were totally spiritually bankrupt. We didn’t have a leg to stand on facing God. But He didn’t leave us in that condition. He didn’t just leave us—as the old hymn says—”Just as I am without one plea….”No, God sent Jesus to shed His blood and give us His own righteousness to stand on in God’s presence forever!
The moment we received Jesus as our LORD, each of us ceased to be an unworthy sinner and became a “new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17–18). We became God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:10). So now, instead of telling God what unworthy, helpless failures we are, we can go to Him and say, “Heavenly Father, I was once unworthy but—in Christ—You have made me worthy. So, I know that when I pray in His Name, according to Your WORD, You will do whatever I ask.”
The thought of approaching God with that kind of confidence actually scares some believers. They consider it to be presumptuous. They think boldly telling God that—based on His WORD—they fully expect Him to do what they ask, it’s like they’re bossing God around.
But it’s not. It’s getting with His original plan of dominion. It’s believing the Bible and exercising the “command authority” God has delegated to us in Christ, to bring His power on the scene and change things on this earth that are out of line with his will.
Command authority is a phrase The LORD Himself dropped into my heart when He instructed me to write this book. Although I’d preached many times in the past on the believer’s authority, He told me to teach it again and call it the command authority of a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. You have to teach this to every generation, He said, because My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6).
Lack of knowledge is a huge problem among Christians today, and it leaves them vulnerable to the devil’s destructive works. He’s able to put on them the same sicknesses and diseases, the same financial crises, the same misery and strife he’s inflicting on the rest of the world — all because they don’t know that they have dominion over such things through the Covenant with God.
Some precious believers don’t even realize they have a Covenant with God. They know they’re saved. They know the Bible an Old Testament and a New Testament. But nobody has ever told them what a testament actually is.
A testament is a covenant. It’s a legal document like a will. A person’s “last will and testament” is a legal declaration of how their belongings are to be distributed after their death. The New Testament is Jesus’s ‘Last Will and Testament.’ He is the only Man ever who left a will, died to put it into effect, then rose from the dead to ensure it’s carried out!
We—as believers—are the beneficiaries of His Will, and nowhere does it say that Christian people ought to be poor or sick or defeated. Nowhere does it say—like one old hymn does—that we are “just poor beggars” trudging along on this earthly sod.
No, Jesus’s Will says we were healed by His stripes (1 Peter 2:24). It says Jesus became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). It says we have been BLESSED by God with every spiritual BLESSING in the heavenlies and that “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).
Think of it: By Faith in Jesus, all of us—as believers—have world-overcoming victory! Yet many have been overcome by the conditions of this world, simply because they didn’t know what’s in our Covenant. They’ve never learned how to take possession of what Jesus provided for us in His Will.
What’s the solution?
Finding out what the Bible says.
Everything we need to know to live as victors is in that BOOK.
The holy Bible is as much an earthly manifestation of God as Jesus was when He was on earth. Yet many people who have copies of it sitting on their coffee tables or their nightstands haven’t taken the time to find out what’s in it. They’re being destroyed, not because the devil is so powerful, but because of a “lack of knowledge” of God’s holy BOOK.
The word knowledge in Hosea 4:6 comes from the same Hebrew root word the Bible uses to refer to marital relations — as in “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived…” (Genesis 4:1). It means ‘to have an intimate relationship with someone or something.’
Victorious believers have an intimate relationship with God’s BOOK! As Charles Spurgeon once said, “A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.” Christians who spend so much time reading and studying their Bibles that they wear them out know how to live as world-overcomers. No matter what kind of trouble comes their way, they can rise above it. They’re able to walk in their command authority and receive from God whatever they need because they know that in the Bible, Jesus said:
“Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14, NKJV).
“WE DON’T NEED TO BE FURTHER CONFUSING UNBELIEVERS BY TELLING THEM THAT GOD IS IN CONTROL, LEAVING THEM THINKING THAT HE IS THE PROBLEM.”
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7, NKJV).
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7, NKJV).
The Bible is your Command Authority Manual. The more you study it and meditate on what it says, the stronger your Faith will become. The more you hear what The WORD says about who you are in Christ and what you have in Him taught and preached, the more proficient you’ll become at operating in the victorious Faith that overcomes the world.
That’s the reason The LORD instructed me to write this book: to help you get increasingly established in the scriptural truth about your authority as a believer. To help you learn how to exercise it and become so confident in it that you act on it.
God wants you to walk in your authority. That’s His will for every Christian, and it’s time for all of us to do it — not only for our own sakes but for the sake of a lost world. The world is in a big enough mess already. we don’t need to be further confusing unbelievers by telling them God is in control, leaving them thinking that He is the problem.
God is not the problem
He’s not the one behind all the evil, chaos and destruction in this world. The devil is the thief who comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” Jesus came that “they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10, NKJV). He went to the Cross, paid the full price for sin, rose from the dead, and defeated the devil. Then He gave us—as believers—everything we need to enforce the devil’s defeat. He gave us His authority (His name) and His Spirit, and said to us before He ascended into Heaven:
“All authority has been Given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18–20, NKJV).
Take Him at His WORD. Make a quality decision right now to become more proficient at operating in your command authority as a believer in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As you read this, ask The LORD to give you more revelation about how to take your place of dominion, put the devil on the run, and live as the overcoming victor this world is longing to see.
There were times (when I was typing the above article) that I had to fight the urge to ‘jump in and correct Brother Kenneth there’ (maybe “correct” is the wrong word … maybe I meant more ‘reinterpret it the way “an agnostic like me” (understanding “beliefs” as more like “parables to help deal with uncomfortable reality”) would put it);
But his point was something like ‘we (humans … believers and unbelievers) have “command authority” over our worlds (and the responsibility for the messes we make).’
I know many will say … many things that conflict with the idea that we have “command authority”: basically, ‘no one would choose to mess up the world for humans, so obviously humans are not in control.’
We’re not, but God is not—as I quoted Brother Kenneth. The well-meaning Christian lyrics that say He is … That’s another one of those ‘parables to help deal with uncomfortable reality,’ sort of the way that the belief (that Jesus forgave all His persecutors, rose from the dead and ascended) is a parable that convinces us that His way is the right way.
The Passion (Lord Jesus Christ’s final trek to Golgotha) acted as a cultural catalyst that:
- Invented the concept of universal human equality.
- Created the institutions of charity and medicine.
- Redefined leadership as service rather than domination.
- Provided the emotional and narrative backbone for Western art and literature.
- Established the global system of timekeeping.
I had asked Leo A.i. to tell me what real (non-supernatural) effect Jesus’s ‘Passion’ had had on the world; I thought it would be something like ‘instead of going to war over their Leader’s assassination, the disciples merely taught “all nations” to “turn the other cheek” (etc.)
But Leo A.i. came back with an essay about how His ministry started a whole re-evolution in
1. The Concept of Human Rights and Dignity
...
2. The Foundation of Western Law and Justice
...
3. The Shift in the Concept of Power
...
4. Art, Literature, and Culture
...
5. The Calendar and Timekeeping
...
6. Ethics of War and Peace
...
7. Psychological and Existential Frameworks
I guess that’s an example of the difference between ‘individual intentions of our use of our “command authority”’ (He just wanted His guys to live abundantly!) and ‘the world our “command authority” creates.’ And really, the ‘command authority’ His Words carry today show that His ultimate intention was a world of people who—loving ‘whatever they consider to be their god’—’do unto each other as they would have done unto themselves.’
That’s the command! The word “command”
comes from an ancient word that means “to recommend, entrust to” (see “commend” … altered by influence of an ancient word that means “to commit” (see “mandate”)).Footnotes
Comments
Post a Comment
I appreciate your comment, and I'll probably approve it & publish it soon (give me about a week before you try to post it again when it doesn't publish immediately ... thanks)