In the late '60s, Kenneth Hagin began holding 10-day seminars every three months in Tulsa, where his ministry is based.

(In those days, a minister had to have long meetings. It took at least a week or two for a minister to get over the resistance of religious tradition and unbelief. Then after the people settled down and began to hear what he had to say, he could have a good three-day meeting!)

We were living in Tulsa at the time Ken was attending Oral Roberts University, and we started going to these 10-day meetings. Kenneth Hagin would cover subjects we had never heard before, such as spirit, soul and body.

Ken and I became consumed with the desire to learn more about the Word. We went to every meeting, never missing a service. We took our little children; we ventured out on icy streets. We did whatever it took to hear the Word of God.

Do you know how many people cared enough about the Word of God to come to those meetings back then? The building held about 150 people. I don't remember it ever being overfilled. In those little meetings, we knew just about everybody by name.

People just didn't know much about the Word in those days. I'm telling you, if you haven't been in this walk of faith as long as I have, you just don't realize how far the Body of Christ has come!

The situation is completely different today. Thousands of people travel every year to the Hagin Campmeeting in Tulsa and other faith conventions around the country. And when Ken and I travel through scores of little towns on cross-country motorcycle trips, it seems as if there is a Word church in every one of them.

And in every city, the churches that are preaching the Word of God—how to hear it, act on it, live by it—are the ones growing big in this day. Check it out—the mega-churches you read about even in secular publications are mostly Holy Ghost-filled Word churches. For the most part, they are also the ministries remaining on television.

Why? Because these ministries walk by faith and not by sight! God has raised up another generation of people who will let Him have His way.

We are that people. When God tells us to do something, we're ready to obey, no matter how far-out it looks or how big the giants are. We believe God can do anything that He says He can. We even believe He can use us to do it! (Believing that last part sometimes takes more faith than anything else!)

God Looks for Hearers and Doers of the Word
James 1:18-25 goes on to tell us what it takes to be a part of the first fruits God desires us to be:
It was of His own [free] will that He gave us birth [as sons] by [His] Word of Truth, so that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures [a sample of what He created to be consecrated to Himself].

Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear [a ready listener], slow to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry....

But be doers of the Word [obey the message], and not merely listeners to it, betraying yourselves [into deception by reasoning contrary to the Truth]. For if anyone only listens to the Word without obeying it and being a doer of it, he is like a man who looks carefully at his [own] natural face in a mirror;

For he thoughtfully observes himself, and then goes off and promptly forgets what he was like. But he who looks carefully into the faultless law, the [law] of liberty, and is faithful to it and perseveres in looking into it, being not a heedless listener who forgets but an active doer [who obeys], he shall be blessed in his doing (his life of obedience).
Hear and do. There's that same key again. As over the years many of us have heard and obeyed the Word of God, God has separated us unto Himself and made us a nation within a nation. We think God's higher thoughts and we live in God's higher ways (Isa. 55:6-12).

God had to have a people for this hour who would hear His Word and obey it. He had to have a people who, like Moses and Joshua, at His Word would stretch forth their rod over an impassable sea or put their feet into a rushing river, all the while believing that somehow

He would make a way for them. God simply will not operate on this earth without a people who will hear and do.

Separated by the Word of Truth
Jesus prayed, "Sanctify them, Father. Purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself. Make them holy by truth. Your Word is truth" (John 17:14-17).

We're not of this kingdom down here on the earth. We're of the kingdom of God. The Word of God has entered our hearts and sanctified or separated us from the world so that we would hear the truth and act on it in our everyday lives.

You see, even though you may be new to this walk of faith, I'm convinced of this: Those who are coming into the kingdom of God now are learning and gaining spiritual maturity much faster than 20 or 30 years ago.

Revelation of the Word is stronger now than it's ever been. It's the same revelation, but it's easier to get hold of than it was back then. Today we have opportunities that weren't available 30 years ago.

We have television. We have video. We have good Bible-believing churches. We have Bible schools that teach how to live by faith.

I'm telling you, we are a generation prepared for this hour! We're training for whatever is going to happen between now and the time Jesus returns. We've been separated by the Word of God. We believe this Word.

We don't care if the whole world says it's not true. We don't care what they say or think about us. We're determined to honor God's Word and do what He tells us to do. We're taking dominion in the Name of the Lord and seeing this final harvest through!


Excerpt permission granted by
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka:  Kenneth Copeland Ministries