To Know
the
Glory
Written
by Kenneth Copeland
Listen, my friend. You have an anointing in you that's the
Anointing of Jesus, and it is crying out for the glory.
There's something on the inside of you that cries for the glory of God.
Within the spirit of every born-again child of God, there is a divine
hunger. That hunger cannot be satisfied either by the things of this world or
by the theologies of religion.
It is not a desire that fades with time. On the contrary, the longer we
walk with God, the stronger it grows.
I remember a time some years ago when
Oral Roberts, my father in ministry and one of the men of God I esteem most
highly, invited Gloria and me into his living room, sat us down on the carpet
with him and said, "Teach me what
you have learned about faith. I'm the hungriest man for God you've ever
seen."
Brother Roberts had known God intimately for many years, yet something
in him craved more.
The Apostle Paul was the same way.
He walked in more revelation knowledge
than any man except Jesus Himself.
Yet when he wrote his Philippian Partners, he expressed a spiritual
hunger that was so powerful it completely overshadowed everything else in his
life.
He wrote:
“... I count all things but loss for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ [the Anointed] Jesus my Lord [and His anointing]: for
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I
may win Christ [the Anointed One and His anointing],
And
be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but
that which is through the faith of Christ [the Anointed One and His anointing],
the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That
I may know him, and the power of his resurrection....” (Philippians 3:8-10)
When you read these words, you can see exactly what Paul desired.
It's the same thing Brother Roberts desired. It's the same thing I long
for—more and more. Every believer hungers for it—whether he or she realizes it
or not.
Paul yearned for deeper revelation of the Anointed One and His Anointing
... and to know the power of His Resurrection.
Look again at that last phrase, the power of His resurrection.
If you're like me, you've read it hundreds of times assuming you understood
what it meant.
But if you'll study it with me for the next few moments, I believe
you'll see something about it so thrilling you'll want to run around the house
a couple of times.
You'll see what the power of His
Resurrection truly is!
Romans 6 sheds important light on it.
There, the Apostle Paul writes:
“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into
Jesus Christ [the Anointed One and His anointing] were baptized into his death?
Therefore are we buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ
[the Anointed One and His anointing] was raised up from the dead by the glory
of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4)
According to those verses, Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory
of God. So the power of His Resurrection is actually the glory.
Insert that truth into Philippians 3:10, and you'll see that means
Paul's burning desire was to know Jesus, the Anointed One and His Anointing ...
and to know the glory of God!
A Glimpse
of the Glory
"OK, Brother
Copeland," you may say, "that's
interesting, but I'm not excited enough to start running around the house
yet."
That's because you haven't yet received a revelation of the glory. But
once you do, you'll never get over it.
The glory of God is the most awe-inspiring subject in the Bible. It's so
big that you have to read the Old and New Testaments front to back to begin to
get insight into it.
Of course, we can't do that here but we can hit some highlights. Then
you can go back and study it more yourself.
One of the first glimpses the Bible gives us of what the glory actually
is can be found in Exodus 33:18-19.
There Moses cried out to God: "I
beseech thee, show me thy glory."
In response, God said, "I
will make all my goodness pass before thee."
In other words, God's glory is His goodness.
Usually, when we think about goodness, we don't think of it as an
extremely powerful thing, but the goodness of God is goodness in its ultimate
state.
It is far, far better than the worst bad there ever was. It is so much
greater than evil that when God's goodness is manifested, it totally
annihilates evil.
The goodness of God is so powerful and far reaching, it's beyond the
grasp of the finite mind.
God's goodness is so full of life that when God opened His mouth and
goodness-filled words came from His innermost being, it created a universe so
wonderful that it's beyond the mind of man to comprehend.
There wasn't any bad in that universe at all. It was totally good!
When the tangible force of God's goodness makes an appearance, it's
called the glory of God.
Throughout history, prophets and saints have seen the manifestation of
the glory and tried to describe it.
Zechariah likened the appearance of the
glory to that of "bright clouds," and his description must be accurate
because we see it repeated throughout the Bible (Zechariah 10:1).
It was the bright, fiery cloud of God's glory that led the Israelites
through the wilderness toward the Promised Land (Exodus 16:10).
It was the bright cloud of God's glory that shown down on the shepherds
the night Jesus was born (Luke 2:9).
It was the bright cloud of the glory that overshadowed Jesus on the
Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5).
It was the bright cloud of God's glory that appeared to Saul of Tarsus
on the road to Damascus. The power of it knocked him flat on his back, and it
was so brilliant that it blinded him for several days (Acts 9).
There's so much brightness and power in God's glory that people who
spend much time at all in it literally shine.
Moses' face was so radiant with the glory of God when he came down from
the mountain where he'd met with God to receive the commandments he had to put
a veil over his face to keep from frightening people.
When Jesus was in the glory on the Mount
of Transfiguration, " ... his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as
the light" (Matthew 17:2).
Years after Jesus' resurrection when He
appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos, He was so radiant with the brightness
of the glory that His head and His hair appeared "white like wool, as white
as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire" (Revelation 1:14).
Jesus never has been and is not now a white-haired man. His hair is
dark. But when John saw Him, He was so bright with the glory that He glowed
with white light.
Some people assume the radiance John saw upon Jesus was due to the fact
that He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.
But the truth is, He was just as much King of kings and Lord of lords
during the first few days after His resurrection as He was years later when
Revelation was written.
Yet in those first days when He appeared to John and the other
disciples, there wasn't anything outstanding about His appearance.
The reason He now shines brighter than the noonday sun is because He has
spent years in the manifested glory of God!
My friend, Jesse Duplantis, has been to heaven and seen that glory. He
said it's so thick around the throne of God that you can't see through it. You
can just see an outline of God the Father through that brilliant cloud.
God Himself is so glorious that He looks like a fire from the loins up
and a fire from the loins down, according to Ezekiel 1:27. He's afire with the
glory!
There's so much power in that glory, Jesse lost all strength in the
presence of it. He fell on his face and could hardly move.
Yet, he watched as Jesus walked right into it and spent time in there
with the Father.
Of course, Jesse was only there for a short time but, even so, on the
night of that heavenly visitation when he went to a church to preach, people
said his very countenance glistened. The light and the glory of God were still
resident on him.
The Day the Glory Invaded Hell
Now that you've caught a glimpse of the awesome power of the glory of God, think about Jesus for a moment.
Now that you've caught a glimpse of the awesome power of the glory of God, think about Jesus for a moment.
He not only has that glory resident on Him, He has it flowing in Him.
That's right! His resurrected body has the glory of God flowing through its
veins instead of blood.
Jesus is filled with and surrounded by the glory and all that it is. All
life. All goodness. He is untouchable by death ever again. He walks in all
authority both in heaven and in earth with all spiritual and physical
authority.
Everything that man has and everything that God has all rolled up into
one Being with the glory of God flowing in His veins—that's Jesus.
And we are destined to be conformed to His image. We're headed toward
the same fullness of glory! That's why Jesus died for us. That's why He was
raised again—so He could bring many sons unto glory! (Hebrews 2:10).
Ever since the beginning, God created man to be glorious.
Psalm 8:5 says that when God made man,
He "...
crowned him with glory and honour."
Adam and his wife were crowned with the glory of God when God created
them. That doesn't mean they had silly gold circles floating over their heads.
It means Almighty God laid His hands on the crowns of their heads and
flooded them with His glory.
From Adam's first conscious day as a living soul until the moment that
he sinned, he never laid eyes on his physical body.
He was clothed from the inside out by the glory of God. His body was
protected by it. He could walk through the Garden of Eden without anything
harming him.
But when he bowed his knee to Satan, the light within Adam went out. The
source of the glory was quenched.
All the rest of his spiritual qualities were still there. He was still a
spirit. He had a soul and lived in a body, but the glory of God had departed
from him.
That's what spiritual death is. It's being separated from the life and
glory of God.
If Jesus hadn't come to redeem us, all
mankind would still be hopelessly trapped in that spiritually dead,
glory-deprived condition. "For all have sinned, and come short of
the glory of God" (Romans
3:23).
But, praise God, Jesus took our sin on Himself and bore the penalty of
it—which was spiritual death.
I've had ugly books written about me because I said that Jesus died
spiritually, but the fact is, I didn't say that - the Bible said it.
Jesus became our substitute. If he hadn't died spiritually, then we
could never have been made alive spiritually. But He did!
On the cross, Jesus was separated from the glory of God. He allowed
Himself to be made sin for us, and He became obedient to death. After three
days, He was made alive in the spirit by the glory of God!
On that day, God's absolute, utmost goodness invaded the pit of
absolute, utmost badness "hell itself" and surged into Jesus'
emaciated, sin-filled spirit.
The glory of God re-created Him and made Him the firstborn from the
dead. All the sin, sickness and demons of hell had to bow their knee and turn
Him loose, because they couldn't stand the presence of the glory!
Like a Rocket Headed Home
Now think about this. Let it sink in.
Now think about this. Let it sink in.
It is that same glory Jesus is leading us into right now. We're headed
for glory like a rocket locked on a target.
The Bible says as we behold as in a
glass the glory of the Lord, we are being "... changed into the same image from
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Notice that verse says we're changed as we behold the glory. How do we
do that?
By attending to the "glorious gospel." The
gospel that is in the Book you carry to church every Sunday is the Word of the
living God, and it is filled with His glory!
When you read it under the Anointing of God, you're changed more and
more into the very image of that glory. That's why the Apostle Paul said:
“... Be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which
ye have heard ... Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation
of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God: Even the
mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made
manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ [the Anointed One and
His anointing] in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:23, 25-27)
Listen, my friend. You have an anointing in you that's the Anointing of
Jesus, and it is crying out for the glory. There's something on the inside of
you that cries for the glory of God.
There was a time when we sinned and fell
short of the glory. But we're no longer short of it. Now we have "the
hope of glory" within us.
The word translated hope there doesn't
mean "wish". It means "absolute expectancy".
With that in mind, you can read Romans
5:1-2 as follows: "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ [the Anointed One and His anointing]: By whom
also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in
hope [absolute expectancy] of the glory of God."
It's time for us, as believers, to take
a faith stand concerning the glory!
When you're standing by faith, you don't
say, "I sure hope I get it one of
these days."
No, when you take a faith stand, you go to the Word of God, find out
what God has already said, and then take an uncompromising stand on that Word.
You say, "That's mine! I settle it now in the Name of Jesus
according to the Word of the living God. I fully expect to see the glory of God
in my life!"
Personally, I've already determined to take that stand. I have meditated
and studied the scriptures concerning the glory until I am fully expecting it
to manifest in my life.
I'm expecting resurrection power to accompany me wherever I go. I'm
expecting the same glory that shone like fire on the face of Jesus to shine in
me and my situation.
I'm expecting my God to supply all my needs. How? ACCORDING TO HIS
RICHES IN GLORY!
I'm not looking for that glory to come floating down out of heaven. I'm
expecting it to come from the inside of me. I'm expecting it to come from the
inside of you.
I'm expecting it to come out of us
because 1 Chronicles 16:27 says: "Glory and honour are in (God's) presence,
... "
And since God Himself is present in us through the indwelling Holy
Spirit, the glory is already inside us!
Our problem up to now hasn't been a lack of glory. It's been a lack of
understanding. We've haven't had a revelation of the glory of God within us.
We haven't known how to release it so it can flow from the inside out.
We haven't known how to cooperate with the glory. But God doesn't intend for us
to remain ignorant.
“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of
darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ [the Anointed One and His anointing].
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power
may be of God, and not of us.” (2 Corinthians
4:6-7)
God hasn't left us in the dark. He has commanded the light to shine and
give us a working knowledge, an ability to comprehend and understand how to use
the glory of God that dwells within us.
He has given us the "mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16).
In other words, the same anointing that is on the mind of Jesus is
available to us.
So ask for it! Ask God for the knowledge of the glory. James 1:5
promises He will give it to you liberally.
There's no need for you to stay tied up in knots over some problem the
devil has pushed on you.
There's no need for you to be stopped by some mountain of sin, sickness
or poverty the devil has put in your path.
You have the glory of God on the inside of you. You have the anointing
to release the manifestation of that glory.
So start expecting the glory!
Begin to expect to know the solution to that problem.
Expect the glory to explode through you and blow that mountain sky high!
When you put the Word of God in your heart and in your mouth, expect
your words to be filled with the same resurrection power that caused hell
itself to bow its knee 2,000 years ago.
Expect the all-powerful goodness of God to permeate your whole being—spirit,
soul and body—until your life shines with the very light that shines from
Jesus' face, the light that illumines all of heaven.
Expect the glory!
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Excerpt permission granted by
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc. aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc. aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
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