Matt Slick Bible Study - Kenneth Copeland Heresy-fest

We're live? All right, good, we're live. Not Memorex. No, wait, is it what it is? That's the old commercial. You know what that is, probably. Yeah, okay. Bad commercial hint. All right, I'm gonna pray, but jump right in.

As you can see, we've got Kenneth Copeland up here, and he'll tell you why we're doing this and what's going on. And hopefully people are gonna be watching and paying attention and we can have a discussion.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we come before you and we are very thankful for your grace. We're thankful for your truth. We ask, Lord, that you would anoint the words tonight, the time tonight, and everything that's gonna be happening.

Lord, just ask that people who are watching would understand what the truth is as well as what the lies are. We ask this, Jesus, in your precious name. Amen. All right, it's okay. And so, as you can see, got Kenneth Copeland up here on the screen.

Hopefully everybody can see that fine. So the hurricane is what prompted this. Actually, it was my wife. My wife's been with me for more, we've been married 30 years, almost 31, and years before that.

And so she has learned a great deal. She really knows a lot. A lot of people don't know that, but she does. And so she's getting ready for something and she was listening, I don't know how she found it.

And she comes out of the room and I'm working and she goes, you have got to listen to this. And it's Kenneth Copeland, right? And she goes, it's a heresy fest. And I said, really? And so the next day I finally got to it.

And I'm like, you have got to be kidding me. Some of this stuff is just dumb. And there's some worse heresy in other places. But what I did was I said, I'm gonna just use some clips. And so I've never done this before where I embedded video into PowerPoint.

So this is kind of an experiment. And this is only after two days of research and probably only four or five hours total of material and research because I've got other things to do and stuff. And so there's a lot more to go.

I've got about 30 or 40 slides and with some scriptures, with some videos. And mainly the video is just from this one source that my wife found and that I found on his website and stuff like that. So whenever I do these things and I document out of videos, I always copy the videos and keep them for use.

There's fair use laws. We'll get into that, but that's the next thing. As you can see here, it's fair use laws. This presentation may contain copyrighted materials. Such material is made available for educational purposes only.

This constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 USC Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. So something could be copyrighted, but just because it's copyrighted doesn't mean you can't use it.

You can quote it. It's called fair use. And that goes with video as well. All right, so I can take segments to illustrate things. I've had people say, if you quote one word of me, I'm gonna sue you. Dude, you know what fair use is?

No, what is it? But I'll sue you. Fair use is I can quote you for what you just said even. You can sue me, but you won't win. You know, that kind of thing. All right, so I've got a little speaker I bought today so we can hear the video audio.

Really nice actually. And see how that goes. And with that, what I'm gonna do is just jump right in. Now, I would like to spend probably a week or two just on one person, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, and put these together so that people can hear and see and do more.

So what I'm gonna do is just jump right in. And as you can see, words are the most important things on the planet. Okay, that's what he's saying. So let's just check this out. Okay, okay, see how nicely that's working?

Yes. Okay, here we go. Let me try it again. And God's word. Okay, let's try. I guess it turns off. I just got this a few hours ago. And, okay.

Words are the most important things on the planet. The most important things are on. And God's word is the most precious thing on the planet.

Now, are words the most important thing on the planet? No, that's not true. Words are not. But what he's saying from his context is that, and I think I got the quotes here as well on the issue of faith, and it'll make more sense later on.

But they believe that in the creative word, and that you're able to speak the word and make things happen. So words are the most important thing on the planet. And then he kind of qualified it, God's word, the most important.

But he goes words and then God's word. Well, no, the words, just words are not the most important thing on the planet. Most important thing in the planet, I would say is the glory of God. And God says in Isaiah 43, seven, he created us for his glory.

So we as Christians are to glorify God. The glory of God is the reason we're here. And I would say that, I would just propose that that's really the issue. Now, there's a, you know, I got a lot of these quotes here.

Okay, we'll get back, went too far. Oh, there we go. So he says, God has never taken anyone. Now, that's what he said, just God has never taken. So check this out.

So what he says. God has never ever taken anybody. Anybody.

Well, you know, there's small points, but could you hear me saying something like that? I'm preaching, teaching. God's never taken anyone. Like level program and we're taken and see if God's taken anyone.

Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him. It didn't take me long to find that. And it's an issue. Now, look at 2 Kings 2, 11 through 12. As they were going along and talking, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, which separated the two of them.

And Elijah went up in a whirlwind to heaven. Elijah saw it and cried out, my father, my father of the cherries of Israel and its horsemen. And he saw Elijah no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them into pieces.

So God took Elijah to heaven. Now, when he says don't take in anybody, he could mean the issue of in death, which I don't have any stuff there, but obviously we'll get into some things where God does bring judgment because if that's what he means, he's obviously wrong.

So these are small things, but the point is that these are such small things that they, in my opinion, reveal his lack of ability to properly understand the basics of a lot of things. And they will do that.

These positive confession people will just say things like this and then continue on. Nobody checks, as far as I'm concerned, I know, except apologists and people like me will check. But nevertheless, check this out, all right?

There's only one human being that he ever made sick. His name is Jesus. There's only one man that he ever sent to hell. He's never sent anybody to hell, ever. His name is Jesus. I can prove it to you.

Now, hopefully my spiritual Tourette's will kick in and start saying things like moron, heretic, false teacher, things like that. But with the, with anger, I don't want to say that, but does God ever make anybody sick?

Yes, he does. I'll show you. But he only made Jesus sick. That's not in scripture. Not there in scripture. And the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 4, 6, you're not to exceed what's written. So for him to say he made Jesus sick is wrong.

It's not in scripture, period. He said he's never sent anybody to hell except Jesus. Now what they're teaching here in the issue of hell is they actually talk about the place of torment. You'll see some more stuff later.

The issue of torment as a place that Jesus went and basically there is what they kind of teach this group of people, the positive confessionists and this heresy. They teach that Jesus finished the atonement in hell and they mean the place of punishment.

But unfortunately, a lot of this doctrine has come out of some of the creeds that Jesus went to hell and it just meant the grave and the afterlife. And it doesn't mean the place of torment and judgment.

And so this is a basic, very fundamental error on his part. Exodus 4, 6, the Lord furthermore said to him, now put your hand into your bosom. So he put his hand into his bosom and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow.

Would you say leprosy is a form of being sick? Yes. Did God make him leprous? Yes. Did God make anybody sick? Yes. Exodus 4, 11, the Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth or who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?

Is it not I, the Lord? Okay. Now about this particular verse, I have a friend from San Diego and we were over his apartment and he's into this still to this day, if I remember correctly. And so I was over his apartment and we're discussing this stuff.

And I said to him, I said, look, this is bunk. It's not true. And I showed him Exodus 4, 11, you know, cause he said God would never make anybody sick. It doesn't happen like that. He would never do that.

So I showed him this verse and I could still remember him sitting about 12 feet from me. I'm standing up and he's on his couch and he's got a Bible open and he's looking at the verse and he's reading it.

And for a full minute, he said nothing. I just waited, just in silence, waited a full minute. And he looked at me and said, well, I don't know what it means, but it doesn't mean what it says. Now that is a person's agenda, interpreting the word of God, not the word of God shaping their agenda, obviously.

So in Numbers 12, nine through 10, so the anger of the Lord burned against them and he departed, but when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous as white as snow. And as Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous.

So he cured her, but he did this. So does God make anybody sick? Yeah. It's what it is. Okay. You can do it. Now, I had a question for you guys. If those who are watching, just a basic question, just a basic question.

Would you say that God is a sovereign? Okay. Would you say he knows what he's doing? Okay. Would you say he is in control? Are you sure that you would say that he's in control? How little do you know?

How little do you really understand?

God's Sovereignty and Human Authority

God is not in control. Put your gun up. That comes from religious brainwashing. He's not in control.

What do you do with that? I mean, what do you do with that? God's not in control. And now I could just see myself in the crowd. You know, I'd be like, as has happened before, for some unknown reasons, I've been in situations where my hand will not listen to me.

It shoots up on you. Stop, stop, stop. Gee, you know? And then all of a sudden, I want to say things like heretic, heretic. You know, I said, you're a heretic. And I can't help it. God's not in control.

He's just Armenian. What? Does he say anything after that? Yeah, yeah, we could go through the whole thing and stop here and listen. I get the whole video. But the point is, this is the things he's saying.

They're taking these clips here. I, you know, I want people to check the context and the whole bit. You can find this video, Kenneth Copeland and Irma, Hurricane Irma. Go on your own, you can find it.

From the breath of God, ice is made. And the expanse of the waters is frozen. Also with moisture, he leads the thick cloud. He disperses the cloud of his lightning and it changes direction, turning around by his guidance that it may do whatever he commands it in the face of the, on the face of the inhabited earth.

Whether for a correction or for his world or for loving kindness, he causes it to happen. Okay? Proverbs 21 .1. The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wishes.

Daniel 4 .35. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?

Ephesians 1 .11. Also, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will. I'm gonna conclude that God's in control. Now there's more verses I could go into.

You can do a whole, I can do a study on, is God sovereignly in control of things? There's tons of verses about this kind of stuff. Now, as far as God not being in control, God's out of control. Wow. I mean, it's just so stupid.

It just, to me, it's like, how can anybody take him seriously for that? What? This is my wife. She comes out of the room and she's like, you can listen to this, you can listen to that. She goes, oh, and I'm listening to a couple minutes in the next day.

She goes, oh, wait, there's more. You know? So I'm thinking, that's pretty attractive. My wife knows about heresy. Yeah, I like that. You know? Yeah. Okay. So here's some more stuff. Jesus is in control of the church, more or less.

Okay?

Jesus is in control of the church. And in the whole lot of that, he doesn't have much to say about it.

I mean, this is a heresy fest. This is stupidity. And people love this guy. This is the easy stuff. This is the mild stuff. You wait. So let's look at the scriptures again. We've already gone over Ephesians 1 .11.

Also, we've obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will. Ephesians 5 .23, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body.

Now, we don't have to go into much detail. Obviously, Jesus is in control of the church. And to say he doesn't have much say-so in a lot of what's in the church, he doesn't have much say-so? This is ridiculous.

He doesn't have much say-so. I can just see Jesus. You know, I got some ideas, folks. No, we don't have much say-so in that, Lord. Look, we'll tell you how it's going. This is the kind of thing that implies he doesn't have much say-so.

It has. Now, so I've got another question for you. Does God need our permission for anything? Are you sure? Because maybe you just don't know what you're talking about. Maybe. Permission to come into your heart?

Yeah, right.

God's Dominion Over the Earth and Judgment

Okay, check this out. The earth does not belong to God. It doesn't belong to Jesus. Because he gave it to men. And what we do here, God, if you'll study the scripture closely, you'll begin to realize that God is pretty well bound up to whatever we ask him to do.

He can't just come buttin' in here and stop that storm. Somebody on earth's gonna have to start speaking to this stuff.

Hey, where's a lightning bolt when you need one? I wish that happened. How do you take care of a lot of these? Well, it happened in my radio show. Lightning bolt. Took it out. So what we have here is God is bound up to us on earth.

Okay, he needs people's authority here on earth. This is part of their overall theology. I could expand this into one to 200 slides of showing stuff. They're quotes. It takes a lot of work. But they teach the idea that man's sovereignty is here on earth.

And for God to work effectively, he has to have someone here on earth he has to work with. It's a reduction of God, obviously. But nevertheless, Psalm 135, six, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and in earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

Does he need our permission? Does he need a man here? No. And we've already gone through Daniel 4, 35. He does according to his will and the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. And of course, Acts 4, 27, 28.

For truly in this city, they were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

So God doesn't need our permission. Now, I don't know about any of you, but God is never, and I have a master of theology, a master of divinity. And God's never asked me for my opinion on things. He's never consulted with me.

He's never asked me for advice. He's never asked for my permission. I figure I got an M .Div. That made me qualified, right? So anyway, of course not. But this is the idiocy that's being taught. Now, I don't have any problem with him having a lot of money.

It doesn't bother me. I don't care if preachers got lots of money, if they've earned it, that's their business. I don't have any problem with that. He's got a $7 million home, private jets, cars, things like that.

And it's because of the prosperity gospel and this elevation of man that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy. And this is what's going on. This is a sliver of some of the stuff that the positive confession movement is teaching overall.

It's a sliver. It is heretical. Now, what gets me is that people just sign up for this. They just go for it. They love it. They think it's wonderful and it's appealing. Now, so what I was doing, I have Kindle.

And so I bought some of his Kindle books and it's really, Kindle's awesome because I can accept, you need to be able to alphabetize the collections. Come on, Amazon. And so I could get his books and I could do word searches like God, Jesus, Adam, church.

I just see a list and I can glance through. And so it really helps me to do my research pretty quickly. And so I was able to find all kinds of things and just, and you'll see some of the stuff here later, but it doesn't take much to do the research.

And what gets me is that people buy into this. And the reason is because it makes you feel good. So while I'm doing this research, I noticed I'm reading all these positive things and I started feeling good.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, I like what he has to say. And it's the truth. Now, I gotta be fair because just because he's saying things like God wants us to be successful, which I believe he does in many areas, doesn't mean, because he said it, doesn't mean it's not true.

We gotta be careful. We don't wanna commit what's called a genetic fallacy. This wacko guy says it, so therefore it can't be true. It's not the case. And I believe there's a lot of truth in what the positive confessions people are teaching, but they wed it with so much error that we have heresies.

Now, more questions for you. We've got a few more clips, then we'll get into some writings and some quotes. So who's the judge? Jesus. Jesus is the judge, John 5, 22, 23. So all judgment's been given to him, all authority in heaven and earth, Matthew 28, 18.

Now, what about God the Father? Does God judge anybody? God the Father?

Does God do this? Yeah. Does God send judgment at all? Well, God sends judgment. No, he doesn't send judgment. Judgment's coming. But judgment that we know in the earth today is a process of seed and harvest.

Of course, seed and harvest, you plant your $10 seed, your $1 ,000 seed, and you're supposed to get 10 fold back, that kind of a concept. So he says, God does not send judgment. Didn't take me long. Bible program, Genesis 6, 17.

Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life. Do you think that's a judgment? I think it is. 1 Chronicles 21, 15. And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it.

That's a judgment of God. 2 Samuel 24, 15. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And 70 ,000 men of the people of Dan to Beersheba died. Does God send judgment?

Yes, he does. Now, this is not rocket science. This is not difficult. You don't need some master's degree. You don't need to have anything other than just sit there and research, type in a word, look, figure things out.

Is what he's saying true? People are buying into this. What is wrong with them? What's wrong with them? So many thousands upon thousands of people, they don't care. Now, I got a clip, it's an old clip, Jan and Paul Crouch.

And Kenneth Copeland is on set with them. And the heresy that is gonna be spoken, it will be spoken by Paul Crouch. And then Copeland agrees. So this is all focusing on Copeland, but this is what Copeland is agreeing to, and you'll see, okay?

So here we go. Do you know what else they're settled in tonight? This hue and cry and controversy that has been spawned by the devil to try and bring dissension within the body of Christ, that we're gods.

I am a little god. Yes. Yes. I have his name. I'm one with him. I'm in covenant relation. I am a little god.

Critic, you are anything that he is.

The Claim That Christians Are Little Gods

Now, we've heard heresies. We've heard some false teachings. This one disqualifies him completely from being called a minister of the gospel, flat out. He is disqualified, and he should not be in the positions he's in.

If people knew their Bibles and knew their doctrines and weren't out to serve their own flesh by going into the positive confession lotto ticket system, hoping that they'll get the right combination of whatever it is in the celestial realm to get rewards and riches.

They weren't into that, and they believe the word of God, they would know that we are not little gods. And for him to say we are everything that he is is blasphemy. It's blasphemy. Now, I don't need to go into this very deeply, but here's some of the documentation, Isaiah 44, six.

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first, I am the last, and there is no God beside me. Are we little gods? No. You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

Before me there was no God formed, there will be none after me. Isaiah 45, five, I am the Lord, and there is no other. Besides me, there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known me. Now, what they'll commonly do is go here.

However, John 10, 31 through 35, the Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, I showed you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you stoning me? The Jews answered him for a good work.

We do not stone you, but for blasphemy, and because you biggy men make yourself out to be God. Jesus answered them, has it not been written in your law? I said, you are gods. If you call them gods, to whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken.

So they very often say, the Bible says you're gods. Now, yes, it does right there. I said, you are gods, and that's Jesus, his words, but he's quoting Psalm 82, verse six. So here's the entire Psalm 82.

God takes his stand in his own congregation. He judges in the midst of the rulers. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah just means like a pause. Vindicate the weak and fatherless.

Do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy. Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I said, you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for it is you who possesses all the nations.

This is what's called an imprecatory psalm. An imprecatory psalm is a psalm of condemnation and judgment. To imprecate is to wish harm upon somebody, judgment upon somebody. So it's an imprecation. These are imprecatory psalms.

There's many. It basically is where the psalmist says, God, get them, judge them, destroy them. It's imprecatory, and they are in the word of God. This is an imprecatory psalm, and it's dealing with the unrighteous judges.

And they were in the power of life and death over people. It says, yeah, you are gods. You have life and death power and things like that. I call them really gods, obviously. Nevertheless, you will die like men.

You know, there's lots, I can go a lot more on this, but this is just a cursory, this is the intro. If I were to do a course on this, I could go into details, go into Jesus, show more stuff, but this is basic.

All right, now, this is only a portion of his books that he sells. I have no problem with him making money off of his books. That's fine, make money. I make money off of my books, that's not a problem.

But the problem is that his books are not sound theologically. So quotes from the teachings of Kenneth Copeland. So there's from some of these books, audio tapes and stuff, and you're gonna see, it's gonna amp it up a little bit more here on what's going on, what kind of things he teaches.

So we don't have any more audio except for one repeat of when he said, their little gods be gone. We'll go back to that once. So now we're just gonna be doing some reading here. What I would love to do is find excerpts of him saying these things, but it takes a lot of research to get all this material, which is fine, but it's a lot.

Nevertheless, faith is not the product of reason, but of the reborn human spirit. It is not the product of the mind, but of the heart. Faith is a power force, is a tangible force, a conductive force. This is Copeland, The Force of Faith, 1983, Kindle edition, locations 163, 165.

So I got these documented from the sources. So this is what I found in his books. Kindle's awesome, just go through. And I have a whole section that I copied out, which is just, you just can't believe he's saying some of the stuff he's saying.

And I extracted some stuff out of that as well. Check this out, the force of faith must be behind your words for them to cause things to come to pass. So your words have the force of faith that causes things to occur.

This is sorcery, okay? This is sorcery. Faith, like any other force, must be applied in order to gain any benefit from it. In the same way the spirit man consumes spirit food, God's word, and that spirit food produces spirit power, which is called faith.

So faith is a force, like energy, like magnetism. And you can use this faith to do things by your words and your command. Witchcraft, sorcery, it's what it is. Faith is a force that has to be developed.

The same scripture says that we are to be sound in faith. Patience and faith are individual forces. They work together the way faith and love work together. I wasn't even sure, okay, which ones of these do I want to copy and put in here?

There was just one after another, after another, after another. This just gives you a sufficient gist. Faith is a force. All right, now, jumping around a little bit, I put this together, not so to speak on the fly, but I was putting it together.

I'm gonna be expanding it, some other things, so you'll bear with me as we go through some of the order of things. For example, about Adam. The Lord allowed me one day during a season of prayer to see a vision, what happened when man was created.

In a vision, what happened? I've not had many visions this dramatic and detailed, so it marked my thinking forever. In my spirit, I saw God standing up, holding Adam's body in front of him. The first thing I noticed was that they were the same size.

Adam's form was just like God's, except it was limp and grayish looking. It didn't have much color to it. In alien parlance, we call those grays, but at any rate. So they're the same size. God's body and Adam were the same size, all right.

God spoke Adam into existence in authority with words, okay, these words struck Adam's body in the face. His body and God were exactly the same size. Well, he doesn't say. So here's one of the problems with doing research.

If it's on Kindle, I can get 10 books and we're talking a couple $300, okay, on Kindle, okay. And then I have to get books like this as well. And when you see quotes from various sources, and I've got books that have these things quoted in them, and I've seen them before.

So they're good quotes, okay. This is where they're from. But I need to verify and seek all contexts of all things. It takes a lot of work and a lot of research. I had a friend back in Southern California, Perry Pellegrini, and lost contact with him.

And I was over his house one time. He's the guy who did the research for all this stuff. Back in the 80s. And he told me that he had cassette tapes and he would just listen to them all the time. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week for months.

And he's the guy who found all this stuff back then. These guys, not just Copeland, but others. And he gave the research to people at CRI, which became the foundation for a lot of books that people have written.

So these quotes are going around in circles. Going around, anyway. Okay, so 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 like, 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.

Yeah, Mormonism. Yeah. Oh, you wait. There's more. Does this disqualify him as being a decent teacher? Of course. He's gone. Why is he still being followed? This stuff means he doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's obviously wrong. The only difference between man and God was this. Unlike God, who was eternally sovereign and independent, man was dependent on God. In all other ways, God and man were so exactly alike that when the angels saw God and Adam together for the first time, they must have thought they were seeing double.

What a shock it must have been to see the eternal almighty God in all his radiant light and glory, standing face to face with someone who looked just like him, someone who had the same radiance and the same fiery presence.

Someone who was, as we say, in my part of the country, the spittin' image of God. So God, Copeland says that God wanted to reproduce himself. The Bible tells us that God created us for his glory, for his glory.

Not to create an image of himself. He was a spirit, an image of God himself. He wasn't just a little like God. He was exactly like him. He didn't contain any part of God. He contained everything God is.

He was absolutely filled with God. Now, you know, how many times do I have to read heresy, different forms of it, before people get it? Well, it's already obvious that this is just a heresy fest. This is ridiculous.

And yet this guy is extremely successful. Just tells you how bad off the Christian church is. Now, let's turn to Jesus and see what he says about Jesus. Conceived in the womb of a virgin, Jesus was not just a spectacular and spiritually successful member of the fallen Adamic race.

He was God's own son, the second member of the Godhead, clothed in a body of flesh that pulsed, not with the sin-contaminated blood of Adam, but with sinless blood generated by the word of his heavenly father.

Now, that's not a problem. It's okay. He doesn't say everything heretical. I could pick only heresy stuff. He actually says a lot of good things. He does. That's not bad. How about this one though? After Jesus died physically, his sin-deadened spirit descended into hell.

Oh, come on now, someone might say, Jesus didn't go to hell. He finished the work of redemption when he was on the cross. He said so himself. No, when he said it is finished, he wasn't talking about redemption.

Everyone who served the gospel knows that the plan of redemption wasn't finished until after the resurrection. Now, you've heard me teach on the issue of the nature of the atoning work. Jesus was made under the law, Galatians 4 .4.

Sin is breaking the law of God, 1 John 3 .4. Jesus equates sin with legal debt in Matthew 6 .12 and Luke, Matthew 6 .12 and Luke 10 .4. He equates sin with debt. And Paul the Apostle says in Colossians 2 .12, and actually 13 .14, that Jesus canceled all of our sin.

Excuse me, having forgiven us all of our transgressions, having canceled the certificate of debt. So he canceled it. And 1 Peter 2 .24 says he canceled, he bore our sin in his body on the cross. In John 19 .30, Jesus says it is finished.

And the word it is finished in Greek is tetalostai, which literally means a debt paid in full. So he finished the atoning work on the cross. That's what it is. But he wasn't talking, this is what he says.

No, when he said it is finished, he wasn't talking about redemption. And what he goes on to say is that he was talking about the Old Testament covenant. That was done, that was finished. It's not what's going on.

This is heresy. I mean, this is just ridiculous. How is it that he could be taken seriously by anybody? The angel spoke the words of the covenant to her, Mary. Now check this out, listen to this. She pondered them in her heart, and these words became the seed.

So the angel's words became the seed. And the spirit of God hovered over her and generated that seed, which was the word that the angel spoke to her. And there was conceived in her, the Bible says, a holy thing.

The word literally became flesh. Well, that's a denial of the atonement of the incarnation. By this statement alone. Now he says in other places that we already read, Jesus is God in flesh. But you see, this is why you have to sit with him and say, wait a minute, you said this, and then you said this.