My friend, you and I have the privilege of being on this earth in a time when God is no longer limited. He will do whatever signs and wonders He wants to do, just as Joel prophesied and the Apostle Peter echoed.
These are the days of blood, fire and vapor of smoke - the time of intense outpouring of God's Glory. It's an exciting time for believers, certainly, but it is also a time in which we must know how to conduct our lives at every moment and in every situation.
Staying Anchored in a Flood of Glory
Imagine going to church some morning, getting in the building and then at some point during the time when everyone is singing and worshiping God, a cloud of God's Glory begins to fill the room, and it gets so thick that you cannot see anyone around you.
"Oh, come on, Brother Copeland, that's just too far-fetched."
Let me tell you, it's already happening.
I know of a church in Africa that had a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the daughter of a witch doctor was born again and baptized in the Spirit. Her daddy didn't like that one bit, so he went to that church during a service and planned to curse them - and I don't mean just say ugly things to them.
When he got there, there had been manifestations of God's Glory in that service and he said, "I don't care what kind of miracle you do, I'll match it!"
Well, he actually pulled off a couple of things, but the devil's been doing that since Pharaoh's days. Then all of a sudden, everyone in that church building started rising off the floor and got about four feet in the air where they were suspended - that is, everyone except that witch doctor who just kept running across the front of the room, jumping as high as he could. But God's presence was so strong that no one paid any attention to that old boy.
Finally, all this got to him and he fell on his face and gave his heart to the Lord. Sure enough, everybody just floated right back down.
This went on all night, and by morning the man was baptized in the Holy Spirit and free from a whole bunch of devils.
So what do you do in the middle of an outpouring like that? What do you do when the Glory of God, the signs and wonders of God, start spilling over into your everyday life, and not just down at the church building on Sunday nights?
Do What Jesus Would Do
Well, Jesus is our standard of living, so let's take a look at what He would do in a signs-and-wonders-type situation:
"When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do" (John 6:5-6).
Now, have you ever noticed that to those who believe, signs and wonders are a sign, but to those who don't believe, it makes them wonder? We see particularly in the book of Acts that people were always marveling or being filled with wonder and amazement over the miracles, signs and wonders manifesting in the lives of the apostles and believers.
We can take that a step further, however, and say that signs and wonders have never produced any faith. If they had, the nation of Israel would be a faith giant today, just from all those miracles recorded in the Old Testament.
But even as we get into the New Testament, it's obvious that signs and wonders produced no faith, because if they had, Jesus could have simply walked the streets of Jerusalem with His arms raised after He was resurrected so people could see the holes in His hands, and everyone would have followed Him.
I'm sure if He had done that, tens of thousands of people would have followed Him. Yet, there still wouldn't have been an ounce of faith in all of them put together, and not one of them would have been born again. They would have been a bunch of people full of wonder, following a man with holes in his hands, and even the excitement - or wonder - of that would have worn off in time.
I realize you may think I'm being pretty hard on these folks, but if you've studied the ministry of Jesus to any degree, you know that even His disciples were not much different than all the other people in the crowds that followed Him.
Jesus' disciples were continually walking alongside Him, watching Him work miracles and manifest the Glory of God, and all the while just as full of wonder as everyone else.
We know from the Scriptures that they spent plenty of time asking themselves, I wonder why He did that...I wonder why He didn't do that...I wonder what He'll do now...?
The reason we know they were thinking those thoughts - and even asking each other - is because Jesus asked them over and over, "Where's your faith...? Where's your faith?"
So here in John 6, when Jesus asked Philip, "What do you think we should do?" His purpose in asking the question was to get Philip to think. He was working on changing the way they all thought.
Jesus knew good and well what He was going to do with all those hungry people. He was going to feed them. He may or may not have known all the details of how it would happen, but He did know what to do. That's what I want us to examine.
I want to show you three aspects of Jesus that will help anchor us and keep us steady in the ways of God and the plans of God, especially when we begin stepping out more and more into these great end-time manifestations of God's Glory in our lives.
Let the Word Settle It
If there's one thing we will never have to guess about Jesus doing in any situation, it is that He will always be found doing what the Word says. He will always follow the Word. After all, He is the Word.
The first chapter of John tells us Jesus is the Word that became flesh and dwelt among men. He is the Word of God manifest and He always lines up with that Word. If He didn't, He would be violating Himself and His Father.
So whatever God's Word says, that's what Jesus will do, whether you or I go along with it or not, because the Word has settled every matter in heaven and earth once and for all.
In Acts 2, "when the day of Pentecost was fully come," signs and wonders began exploding on Jerusalem. Some amazing things started coming out of the mouths of that band of believers, and it quickly drew a large crowd.
Now all those folks standing around, listening to people speak in other tongues for the first time - and many hearing their own languages being spoken - marveled. They were filled with wonder.
But then what did Peter do?
He stood up and spoke. He preached in that anointing-charged atmosphere.
What did he preach?
The Word!
"This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel" (Acts 2:16). And then he went on to quote and preach that prophecy. By the time he finished, 3,000 souls were saved.
What happened?
The Word produced salvation in an atmosphere filled with God's Glory.
The Bible says heaven and earth will pass away but God's Word will not. If it were to pass away, Jesus would have to go with it, which is what the devil has been hoping and trying to make happen for the past 6,000 years. But you can forget that. It's not going to happen. The Word always remains.
Faith and Wonder Don't Mix
A second aspect about Jesus is that He will always and forever act by faith. Jesus did not get a free ride in this earth because He was, and is, the Son of God. How do we know this?
The Bible says it is impossible to please God without faith. It also tells us that Jesus perfectly pleased His Father. So He had to have lived and walked and talked and thought by faith.
Really, if you think about it, it is impossible to please anyone without faith. Your spouse, your parents, your children and your employer - every relationship requires faith. You simply cannot please anyone without it.
How pleasing do you think it would be if your spouse or closest friend came up to you and said, "I love you and I care about you, but I just don't believe a word you say"?
When you put it in that light, you begin to realize that any meaningful relationship demands faith and confidence.
So, we will never have to guess what Jesus will do in a situation. He will always act by faith. He will always please His Father.
Besides that, could you ever imagine hearing Jesus say, "Well, I wonder what I'm supposed to do now? I've got a whole mountainside covered with tired, hungry people and a handful of unbelieving staff members. I just don't know what I'm going to do."
No, you'll never hear Him say anything like that. That's not the way faith talks, and it's not the way Jesus talks either, because wonder and faith don't mix. But the Word and faith do.
"Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, not hearing by signs and wonders" (Rom. 10:17).
Burdens Removed, Yokes Destroyed
The third factor we see about Jesus that never leaves us guessing is that He never does anything apart from the anointing.
He tells us Himself in Luke 4:18, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach...to heal...to set at liberty...."
Jesus did - and does - everything by the anointing. He cannot function any other way. Why is that? Because it is the anointing - the very essence and presence of God, His abilities, His power - that removes burdens and destroys yokes (Isa. 10:27). That's God's way of doing things.
It takes God's Anointing to preach good news to the poor. It takes God's Anointing to heal the brokenhearted. It takes God's Anointing to preach deliverance to captives and recovering of sight to blind people, to set free those who are broken down by calamity. And of course, it will take God's Anointing to accomplish this end-time outpouring of signs and wonders in the earth.
I would also add, anything that opposes God's Anointing is anti-Anointing, which is why the devil is called the anti-Christ.
Jesus always functions, always shows Himself, by removing burdens and destroying yokes. Satan, on the other hand, always functions through piling on burdens and yokes.
Also, notice that Hebrews 13:8 does not say, "Jesus - the same yesterday, and today, and for ever."
It says, "Jesus Christ - Jesus, the Anointed One and His Anointing - the same yesterday, and today, and for ever."
Not only is Jesus the same yesterday, today and forever, but His Anointing is the same as well. God's Anointing has never changed, because God does not change.
All that is to say, if you are ever in a situation and wonder if a particular supernatural manifestation is of God or not, I can tell you for certain, it's God if burdens are removed and yokes are destroyed - natural, as well as spiritual ones. (Remember the witch doctor who finally broke in the overpowering presence of God's Glory?)
So Jesus never does anything apart from the Word. He never does anything apart from faith. He never does anything apart from the anointing.
That's why in John 6, when the hungry multitude came to Jesus, He knew exactly what to do. He simply acted on the Word, on faith and on the anointing.
In the end, Philip's answer to the question Jesus asked was, "Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little."
Likewise, in John 6:9, Andrew caught a glimpse of the miracle answer and then talked himself out of it. He said, "There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?"
In other words, both men had spent a lot of time around Jesus - they had heard the Word, and they had seen faith and the anointing in action. Nevertheless, they let the size of the problem and their own reasoning talk them out of the answer.
Both men let go of the Word. They let go of faith. They let go of the anointing. Of course it became a different story after these men were born again and filled with the Holy Spirit.
But thank God, Jesus didn't let go of the Word - ever. He held on. And because He did, everyone ate their fill that day with plenty left over.
So regardless of what you are facing today, lay hold of the Word. Lay hold of faith. Lay hold of the anointing. The Word will cause faith to rise up within you, and that faith will hook up to the anointing to meet any situation.
If you will lay hold of these - and not let go - the glorious end-time, miracle-working, signs-and-wonders-producing power of God will flow through your life. And as it begins to reach flood stage, you won't be swept away by wonder. You'll know that it's a sign...our time is up. We're Glory-bound!
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
For the last 50 years Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been passionately teaching Christians all over the world how to apply the principles of faith found in God’s WORD to their lives.
