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You've seen the pictures - boats filled with immigrants coming into New York Harbor with teary eyes fixed on the Statue of Liberty. That famous statue has been a symbol of economic opportunity and freedom from oppression for more than 126 years.

People are still looking for freedom. They are still seeking economic and political liberty. But more and more, they are looking for a freedom that runs much deeper.

In these last days, men and women from everywhere are going to flock by the boatloads, trainloads and planeloads to where they hear the Holy Ghost is being poured out. New people will gaze at that famous statue. As they look at it, they are going to say more than, "I'm in the land of the free." They are going to shout, "Hallelujah! I'm going to get free of this sickness and disease. I'm going to get free of this devil in me for the first time in my life. I'm coming to Jesus!"

That's because the nation to which they are coming will not be defined by geographical and political boundaries. They'll be seeking a nation within the nations. They'll be headed for the anointing. They'll be running to those who have become vessels for the outpouring of God's Glory.

The nation they seek is a nation that has been in the heart of God since He first made covenant with Abraham: "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?" (Gen. 18:17-18).

God has a dream - a dream He would not hide from His covenant man, a dream He gave the promises of His covenant to fulfill. God's dream is to build a nation through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That's been His dream from the beginning.

And that dream is being fulfilled today. Believers are taking their positions as rightful heirs in Christ and walking as living demonstrations of the covenant lovingkindness promised them according to Galatians 3: "They which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham…. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us…. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (vv. 9, 13-14).

Who are the people of this nation within the nations? Every Spirit-filled believer willing to believe and receive all that has been made available to him through the promises of God's Word.

Where is this nation within the nations? Everywhere believers are standing immovable, confessing the eternal promises of God's Word as real until the temporary situations before them change to line up with what God has said.

Demonstrating His Covenant
I want you to know, God's nation is real. And it's not relying on man's systems and ways to get things done. An African pastor came up to me in one of our meetings to tell me how his small church refused to depend on the systems of men to deliver them from a really bad situation.

His church was in a drought-stricken area under a Marxist government. It had been so many years since the last rain that the water reservoirs were dry, the animals were dying and the people were starving. Hopelessness had set in. Some residents of that community never took a step away from where they stood.

When night fell, people dropped in the street right where they were and went to sleep. Some would never get up again. Others got up the next morning and stood where they were, just staring out into space.

In the midst of that depression and devastation, somehow that African preacher discovered the Word of God. He realized he didn't have to wait for the political processes of the nation to get into gear. He was dealing with God, Who steps the nations with one stride and walks from island to island.

That little church began to believe God, and they didn't just sit on their faith either. They said, "Hey, it's going to rain on us. We'd better repair the levee."

They patched that old, bone-dry levee that had been neglected for years, walked around it and thanked God for the rain.

And rain it did. It didn't rain anywhere else in the area, but that reservoir was filled with water. Occasional rains after that kept it full of water. In addition to receiving a miracle from God, they continued to walk in the blessings of God.

Other people from the region started moving near the church and the reservoir. They came to survive, but they found more. The congregation grew from about 30 into the hundreds.

The pastor, knowing that church was to do more than just feed the people, began to disciple them and demonstrate the power of God to them. He allocated to each family a plot of ground around the reservoir to plant a garden. Rather than group all the believers' plots together, he followed the instruction of the Lord and laid it out in checkerboard fashion: saint, sinner, saint, sinner.

Everyone had water, and during the normal growing season everyone's crops flourished. But when growing season had passed, and everyone else's crops died, the gardens worked by the believers continued to produce. They had crops year-round.

One man would say to his neighbor, "How come my vine is dead and yours is alive?"

His neighbor would reply, "My God meets my needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

Pretty soon everyone was saying, "I don't want to be a failure. How do I get Jesus?"

Do you think that went unnoticed by the Marxist government? No way!

Government officials came, asking, "What are you doing? You are the only people in the whole area who have any hope. How are you getting hope?"

"That's easy. We eat and drink."

"How are you eating and drinking?"

"We've been reading the Bible."

"Don't you know that's against the law?"

"Yeah, but we eat and drink."

"Uh, you better keep reading the Bible," the official concluded. "You're the only hope this nation has."

Years later that government was gone, but that pastor and that church were not! God's nation will stand when every system of man has failed.

Let me tell you, when you start walking independent of the world's ways and dependent upon covenant with God, the results will turn the heads of the governments of this earth.

Releasing Heaven on Earth
God's people know that His covenant blessings shall come upon them and overtake them if they obey His voice. They will prosper in every way, their enemies will flee before them, they will be the head and not the tail, and none of the diseases of the curse of the law shall be on them (Deut. 28).

Do you know what we are talking about? We're talking about a little heaven on earth!

In fact, that's exactly what Deuteronomy 11:21 says. God told His people to keep His words in their hearts and teach them to their children so "your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth."

"But, Brother Copeland, I'm certainly not living in heaven on earth yet. I don't know any people who are."

Well, I am!

Don't get me wrong. I didn't say God's people are free from problems and pressures. Yes, like every other person on this earth, we get attacked. But we refuse to let those things which come out of the curse of the law of sin and death have place in our minds and in our bodies.

When my youngest children were in their early school years, our nation was fighting an epidemic labeled "swine flu." It was quite obvious that anything called swine flu could not have come from God.

Since we receive from Jesus, I decided my family was not going to have anything to do with it.

So, I gathered everybody together and announced, "We're going to take a flu shot." John's eyes grew to about the size of saucers!

"Now don't worry about it," I assured him. "This shot won't hurt."

First, we turned to Deuteronomy 28 and saw that the flu was just one of the diseases that is described in the curse of the law of sin and death. Then, we turned to Galatians 3:13 and read that "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law." Finally, we took Communion together.

"There's your flu shot," I said. "When you're in school and someone starts talking about the flu, tell them your family doesn't have that. We've already had our shots, and we are not going to have it."

Then I said, "If there's any kind of a symptom of it that tries to touch your body, you stand up and say, 'No you don't, bless God. Not on this family, you don't.' You stand your ground, you stomp your foot, and you don't have it."

"OK, Daddy."

In more than 22 years, none of my family has had the flu. And I'm not going to let my shot expire!

God's Plan for His Dream
What happened in our family, and what is happening all over this earth, is that not only are God's people getting in on His dream, but they are also getting in on the plan for His dream.

We see that plan in Exodus 19. God, expanding on His covenant with Abraham, tells Moses to gather the descendants of Abraham together so He can speak to them and give them His law. "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation," He said (v. 6).

God's plan for His dream was to have a nation of priests. He was saying, I want a nation that's Mine. I want a nation that will bless the rest of the world. I want a whole nation of priests. I want everybody in the whole nation to be able to talk to Me face to face and personally, as a priest.

But the children of Israel refused.

Exodus 19:9-15 says God ordered them to be sanctified and come to the foot of the mountain so He could give them His law and covenant promises. But when the Lord came down with thunderings, lightnings, smoke and fire, the people feared and moved away from the mountain.

They did not want to be priests. They did not want to speak to God or hear from Him. "You speak to us, Moses, and we'll hear," they said. "But let not God speak with us, lest we die" (Ex. 20:19).

The people of Israel decided they would rather have Moses talk to God for them than to hear His voice and talk to Him themselves. So God sent the Glory Himself to that nation - Jesus.

They rejected Jesus, but that didn't stop God. Jesus went right on to the cross, right into hell. Defeating all of hell, He paid the price, brought redemption, was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of Majesty, and there was a great outpouring of Holy Ghost power in the city of Jerusalem.

At Pentecost, a new nation was born - a nation of reborn men and women, empowered by the Holy Spirit to believe and receive and minister the blessings of covenant with God, vessels through whom His Glory would fill the earth.

Describing who this nation was, Peter referred to the promise God had given Moses and wrote that "ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

Look at Peter's description of God's nation. They are a chosen people. A praising people. A people called out of darkness. A people walking in so much light that the devil has no place to hide. Wherever they rise up in faith, they are absolutely putting the devil in his place.

They understand God's heart behind the giving of His law: We're in a blood agreement here - I swore certain things to you. Don't go kill somebody. Don't be covetous. Don't go chasing around after that man's wife. Don't steal from people. I'll give you all you need. Come to Me. You don't even need to go borrow from other nations. Let them come borrow from you.

Do you see why He said, Don't put some other god before Me? Yet that's exactly what mankind has done with its humanistic ideas. We decided we would be god. We set up our system of healing. We set up our system of finances. We set up our system of education. We set up our nations. But it has never worked yet. Never.

The answer to all these things was born in the heart of God. Man can't come up with answers because this is God's dream. And God's dream is coming to pass!

The Roaring's Just Begun!
These days are God's days. The time schedule has moved over onto His time. At Mount Sinai God's voice thundered, but the people became afraid and refused to stand as kings and priests before their God. At Pentecost, God's voice rumbled again as He raised up a nation of born-again men and women empowered by the Holy Spirit.

For 2,000 years, Holy Ghost-filled, Word-believing, faith-speaking children of God have been walking as kings and priests in the earth. But do you want to know something really exciting? The roaring has just begun!

God is changing things. Political changes are happening right now. God is serving notice before heaven and earth that human beings are not running things on earth any longer.

It's thundering again, thank God, and I'm not running from the mountain - I'm running up that mountain. I want to get up there on top with Him. I want to talk to Him. If He's going to thunder, I want to thunder with Him. If He's going to roar, I want to roar with Him. If He's going to run, I want to run with Him.

I don't intend to get any further away from Him than I can help. I want to be right by His side. If He's healing, I want to be there. If He's going to raise the dead, I want to watch them come out of the hole, brother!

These are His days - the days spoken of in the book of Psalms. He said there would come a day when He would laugh at the wicked, and He would laugh at his foolishness: "But thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision" (Ps. 59:8).

Maybe you've seen the outpouring of laughter in Holy Ghost services around the world in the past few years. Well, what do you think it's all about? It's the joy of God's people laughing at the devil and all of his operation because his days are so short.

Let's quit being satisfied with just a healing here and there. Let's get in there and pray out the fullness of all that's in His heart to do for us and through us in the earth. Let's pray and get Him to "showing out."

We're in for the most glorious times in the history of the human race. God's dream is being fulfilled everywhere born-again, Spirit-filled, faith-talking believers are releasing the promises of His covenant into the earth. His people are the nation that is blessing all the nations of the earth. These are the people of whom the Bible says, "When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth:... By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted" (Prov. 11:10-11).

His people are a nation that will spit in Satan's eye and walk right up his back with the power of the Word of God, never turning around to see if he's coming up behind them! They are the nation within the nations, and the inside nation is overtaking the outside nations.

God's dream of a nation is coming to pass. God's people are fulfilling His dream in this earth. What you must decide is - Will you be in the middle of what He is doing?

I've made my decision. I intend to hang on to His coattails with everything I've got. You can too. I promise if you will, we're in for the ride of our lives.

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

Author Biography

Kenneth Copeland
Web site: 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.
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