By Kenneth Copeland
I’ll never forget the first time I saw cancer bow its knee to the mighty Name of Jesus. It was in 1967, in the invalid tent at one of Brother Oral Roberts’ healing meetings. I hadn’t expected to be in the tent that day. Green as a gourd when it came to ministry, as a recent addition to Brother Roberts’ flight team I’d just expected to be his transportation. But instead I’d found myself ministering to the sickest group of people I’d ever seen.
Initially, I had simply been told to stir up their faith.
I was just supposed to recap the healing message Brother Roberts had preached in the main service, and then he would come in to pray for them.
When Brother Roberts showed up, however, he informed me I’d be the one doing the praying and the laying on of hands. Then, seeing all the color drain out of my face, he assured me he’d be right there to correct me if I messed up.
The first person we ministered to was an emaciated-looking woman who was lying on a little canvas army cot. So weak she couldn’t even sit up without her nurse’s help, she’d been so eaten up with stomach cancer she was just skin and bones, except for her tummy which pooched out with a tumor so big it made her look pregnant.
I knew Brother Roberts taught that when ministering healing it’s important to establish a point of contact when releasing faith, and since I’d been studying about the power of the Name of Jesus I used that as my point of contact. I reached out and as I laid my hand on the woman I began to say, “In the Name of Je—”
Before I could finish, Brother Roberts’ voice boomed out from behind me. “IN THE NAME OF JESUS,” he roared, “whose I am and whom I serve. You foul, unclean spirit, come out and take your hands off God’s property!”
Instantly, the woman blew that tumor out on the floor. She jumped up off the cot and screamed, “I’m healed!” and took off running around the room. Her nurse went chasing after her, afraid that any second she might die, and I just stood there big-eyed, marveling at the power of Jesus’ Name.
Not too long afterward, in another one of Brother Roberts’ meetings, I saw the same kind of thing happen again. That time, though, I didn’t have Brother Roberts standing behind me. Because so many sick people had come for prayer, I was praying for a line of them by myself.
One woman I prayed for had a monstrous-looking malignant cancer on her face. Bluish in color and twisted throughout with bulging purple veins, it covered her eye and had grown all the way up into her hairline. The moment I put my hand on it and said, “In the Name of Jesus,” it just vanished!
Everyone around saw it happen, and the collective gasp practically sucked all the air out of the room. My mother, who’d been standing behind me as I prayed, said, “Where did it go?”
I didn’t know.
I did know though what had happened to it. That cursed thing had been destroyed by the all-powerful Name of Jesus. It had dematerialized at the sound of His Name because, as Philippians 2:9-11 says: “God…hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Jesus and His Name Are One
“But Brother Copeland, you and Brother Roberts are both called to the five-fold ministry. The Name of Jesus works miracles for you because you’re specially anointed.”
No, Jesus’ Name works miracles for us because He’s anointed, and His Anointing is in His Name. Jesus’ Name, spoken in faith by any believer, can do anything He can do because He and His Name are one!
Peter and John proved this in Acts 3 when the lame man was healed at the temple gate. You remember how that happened. As they were passing by, the lame man asked for alms and looked to them, expecting to receive something.
“Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God” (verses 6-8).
When the people in the temple saw the man had been healed, they were astonished. They knew he’d been lame from birth and that this was a notable miracle. Realizing it had been done at the hands of Peter and John, everyone crowded around them and started treating them like spiritual supermen. But Peter stopped them.
Rather than going along with the idea that the miracle had happened because he and John were apostles and therefore anointed with special power, he said just the opposite.
“He answered unto the people…Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus…whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all” (verses 12-13, 15-16),
Faith in the Name of Jesus is what caused the lame man to jump up and walk! Peter didn’t even pray for that man. He just released faith in Jesus’ Name and that Name did exactly what Jesus Himself did in those kinds of situations.
In Acts 4, we see another confirmation of this. We see that after the Jewish leaders commanded Peter and John not to say anything more in Jesus’ Name, the whole company of believers got together and prayed: “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus” (verses 29-30).
Notice that doesn’t say that signs and wonders may be done “in” the Name of Jesus. It says that signs and wonders may be done “by” the Name of Jesus.
How can His Name work miracles?
The same way He Himself worked miracles during His earthly ministry. He didn’t do them by His own power. As He said in John 14:10, “…the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” That statement is still true today. Jesus isn’t physically on earth anymore but His Name is, so the power of the Father that dwells within does the works through that Name.
There’s a whole lot more to Jesus’ Name than most of us have understood!
Proverbs 18:10 says, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” Jesus said to the Father before He went to the cross, “While I was with [my disciples] in the world, I kept them in thy name” (John 17:12), or in other words, “I kept them safe in the strong tower of God by the mighty power that is present in His name.”
“But Brother Copeland, those verses are referring to the name of the Father,” you might say. “They’re not talking about the Name of Jesus.”
They’re talking about both, because when Jesus was raised from the dead, the Father bestowed on Him His own Almighty Name. The Name that, in the Old Testament, was revealed to Moses when God talked to him out of the burning bush. The Name God told Moses to give the Israelites when they asked him to tell them who had sent him to be their deliverer: “I AM THAT I AM: and [God] said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you…. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Exodus 3:14-15).
The Power That Split Hell Wide Open
In the Hebrew language, the Name God used in those verses is spelled YHWH. It has no vowels in it, so no one in our day knows how to pronounce it. Originally, the Jewish people knew, but over time they became too awesomely afraid of that Name to say it.
The scribes would write it when copying the Scriptures (although they would go and bathe, even before writing it). But there was so much power in it, they were concerned that if they said it in vain it would kill them. So, when they spoke of it they just said, “The Name,” and eventually the pronunciation of YHWH was lost.
Maybe their attitude was extreme. But we, as believers today, can’t criticize it because we’ve gone to the other extreme. We tend to say “in the Name of Jesus” a lot, but we say it shallowly, without much thought or reverence. We use His Name without releasing any faith.
How do we change that?
We renew our minds with what the Bible says about it. We study and meditate on what the Scriptures say about the great power of that Name and let The LORD reveal to us the mighty things it can do.
He is eager to talk about it! I can tell you that from experience. I remember one time, for example, I was studying along these lines and He said, Kenneth, in your opinion, what is the largest, most powerful expression of the power and glory that’s in My Name?
“That’s simple,” I replied. “It was the power that was released when You created the heavens and the earth.”
No, He said, that was easy. At creation, no one was arrayed against Me. All I had to do was just speak. But when I raised Jesus out of hell, everyone was arrayed against Me. All of hell and even My own people were against Me.
What’s more, when Jesus went into hell as our substitute, no one had ever gotten out of there before. Satan had a right to rule there, and up to that point his rule had gone unchallenged. Yet Jesus went there anyway. He did what the Father sent Him there to do, and when His work was complete He used His massive faith to call on God’s Name, and the power of that Name split hell wide open.
It flashed into that place like a lightning bolt out of heaven, recreated Jesus’ emaciated spirit, and brought Him up out of there as the first born-again man. It resurrected His body and, as Hebrews 1 says: “When he had by himself purged our sins, [He] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high…[having] by inheritance obtained a more excellent name” (verses 3-4).
Talk about a mighty inheritance! When Jesus completed the work of Redemption, He inherited the excellent Name of the Most High God Himself. He received the greatest honor the Father could bestow—the Name that in the Old Testament is spelled YHWH, the Name above all names.
Unlike those of us who, as believers, received that Name as an unmerited gift of God’s mercy, Jesus earned that honor. He won that Name by conquest! He defeated the devil at every turn during His life on earth and conquered him on Calvary by offering Himself up to death as the Perfect Sacrifice. Then, “blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, [He] took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:14-15).
Just think about all Jesus had to do to win His Father’s Name! He suffered beyond anything any other human being has ever suffered or will ever suffer again. He took on Himself the world’s sin and bore all humanity’s sicknesses, sorrows, poverty and pain. He went through more than we can imagine, and passed all the tests. And once He’d paid the full price for man’s Redemption, He forced satan to bow his knee and took the keys of death and hell away from him. Then He came up out of that place alive, in the image of the Father.
Now He’s your LORD!
You’re named after Him!
He says to you what He said to the disciples in Matthew 28: “All authority has been given unto me, both in heaven and in earth. Therefore, you go into all the earth and take My Name!”
Do you know what satan hears when you say that Name?
He hears the Name that stripped him of his power and left him with nothing. He hears the Name that invaded hell 2,000 years ago and whipped him once and for all.
So, start putting pressure on him in that Name! Develop your faith in it, and as Philippians 2:5, 9 says: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…. God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name”!
This article was first published in Believer’s Voice of Victory magazine – February 2019 edition.
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