Restoring Book-of-Acts Power to the Church Today
To me, one of the most stirring books of the Bible is the book of Acts. It has always thrilled me to read it and see how mightily God worked through the Church in those days. But for years, one thing about it has bothered me.

I couldn't understand why the Church in Acts was so much more powerful than the Church today.

Of course, I'd heard the religious explanations, religious ideas like, "Well, Brother, the early Church just needed more power than we do now..." or "Miracles passed away with the first apostles...." But, frankly, I just couldn't accept such theories.

After all, the Bible doesn't say anything about an "early" or "late" Church. It doesn't say anything about a point in time when one of the apostles stood up and said, "If anybody's going to get healed they'd better do it today because tomorrow healing passes away. After midnight there won't be any more miracles because that's when the late Church starts!"

The very thought of such a thing is ridiculous.

Since Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, there's no biblical reason why the Church today shouldn't function just as powerfully as it did in the book of Acts. Yet, for the most part, it hasn't. Over the years, I've asked God why this is so, and His answer was astoundingly simple: The reason we've seen less of God's power at work in the Church today than the first believers did in their day is because we have not preached the message they preached!

"Wait just a minute now, Brother Copeland," you may say. "We preach the New Testament at my church. We preach straight from the letters of the Apostle Paul and John and Peter!"

That may be true. But those letters hadn't been written during the Church's first years. What's more, when they finally were written, they were intended to be read by people who had been spiritually born and raised on a message most Christians today have never even heard - the message of the Christ.

Not Jesus' Last Name
You see, despite the fact that a large percentage of present day believers frequently use the word Christ to refer to the Lord Jesus, despite the fact that we've used Christ to identify entire denominations, very few people even know what the word means, much less understand the message behind it. That's because Christ is not an English word. It's a Greek word.

Why translators have neglected to translate it for so many years, I do not know. But because they did, generations of Christians have missed out on a major scriptural revelation. For hundreds of years, western believers have ignorantly used the word Christ as if it were Jesus' last name. We've used it as a religious title.

But the plain truth is the word Christ means "Anointed."

Although we generally think of the word anointed in a spiritual context, the word in and of itself isn't spiritual. Anointed simply means "poured over, smeared on and rubbed into." When you go to the beach, you anoint yourself with suntan lotion. So there's nothing particularly special about the generic word anoint.

But when you begin to talk about Jesus being The Christ, the One who has been sent by God and anointed with God's delivering power, the word becomes very, very special. It takes on great significance, not just because it's some kind of mystical, religious term, but because of the powerful, practical nature of what the Anointing of God can do.

People today don't know much about that kind of anointing, but the Jewish people in Jesus' day knew a great deal about it. In fact, they were looking for it. They were expecting the Messiah—that's Hebrew for the Christ or, in English, the Anointed One.

For hundreds of years, the Jewish people had been looking for the Deliverer God had promised to send them, the One with the power of God on Him, the One who would free them from the oppression and bondage of their enemies and restore to them their heritage of blessing.

Sure enough, when Jesus came on the scene, that's exactly what He preached. He said, "God has anointed me. I'm the One you've been looking for!"

Jesus didn't preach to the general public that He was the Son of God. He only preached that to the religious leaders who had studied the Bible and should have known Who He was. To the ordinary folks, He simply preached He was anointed (See Luke chapter four).

The Message of the Early Church
Do you know what happened when Jesus preached that He was anointed?

In Nazareth, not very much because the people didn't believe it. They took offense and said, "How could you be anointed of God? You're just Mary's boy! We know your brothers! You're nobody special." Then they tried to push him off a cliff.

But elsewhere, when Jesus preached that He was anointed and people believed Him and received that anointing, the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard and the dead were raised! (Matt. 11:5). In other words, the burden-removing, yoke-destroying power of God that was on Jesus went to work and set people free!

Now think about this for a moment. Every time Jesus preached that sermon, the disciples were there. They knew that anointing sermon backward and forward. They knew it so well they could have preached it themselves, but Jesus stopped them. He "charged...his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ" (Matt. 16:20). He instructed them not to preach the message of the anointing.

After His resurrection, however, Jesus changed that instruction. He commanded His disciples to go to Jerusalem to wait for the promise of the Father.

"For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence...But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:5,8).

Just before Pentecost, Jesus turned the disciples loose at last to be witnesses of His Anointing. He said, "Now you can preach the anointing message to the ends of the earth because the anointing is about to come on you and the works that I do you'll be able to do too!"

The message of the anointing was the message of the early Church! They didn't know much about anything else but they were so strong on the anointing that after Saul (later known as the Apostle Paul) was born again and filled with the Holy Spirit, he spent "certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway he preached Christ [the Anointed One and His Anointing] in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God" (Acts 9:20).

Those early believers were so full of that anointing sermon, they had the Apostle Paul preaching it just a few days after he was saved!

God Can't Confirm What We Don't Preach
It's time we learned a lesson from those first believers and started preaching the same things they did. It's time we stopped telling people, "Well, you know, Jesus is the Son of God, but He isn't working miracles today. He'll get you to heaven by the skin of your teeth but that's about all you can expect."

It's time we started telling people the same thing Peter and Philip and Paul did:

Hey folks, Good news! God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power and He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him. We are witnesses to the fact that He is still alive today and if you'll receive Him as the Christ, The Anointed Son of God, His eternal life will come into you and His Anointing will smash every damnable curse the devil has used to oppress you. It will heal you, deliver you and set you free!

"Well, Brother Copeland" some might say, "even if we did preach that we wouldn't see the power the first apostles did because God isn't doing those kinds of miracles today."

Yes, He is. I know because I've seen them myself. I began seeing them 30 years ago when I was working in the invalid tent at one of Brother Oral Roberts' meetings. I remember it like it was yesterday. One night a mother brought in her little paralyzed daughter strapped to a board and tied to a wheelchair. The only part of her body that little girl could move was her eyes.

During the message that night, Brother Roberts had instructed the people how to receive by faith from the Anointing of God. He'd said, "When I lay hands on you, begin to do something you couldn't do before." So just before Brother Roberts came into the invalid tent, I reminded the people of that.

When I did, the little girl looked up at her mother and said, "Mama, untie me!"

Her mother argued but the little girl insisted. "Untie me!" she said. She wanted to be ready.

I'll never forget what happened when Brother Roberts laid hands on her. First, she just began rolling her eyes. She couldn't move anything else. But soon the movement began to spread...from her eyes...to her head...down her neck...and to her body. Then she leaped off that board and started running around inside that little tent.

"I told you I was going to get healed, Mama!" she cried. "I told you!"

Do you know why that miracle happened? It happened because Oral Roberts dared to tell that little girl that Jesus is anointed today. He dared to tell her that Jesus is her deliverer—and she believed it. Then he dared to expect the anointing to flow through him!

That wasn't the last time I saw the book-of-Acts kind of power in operation either. Over the years, I've seen it many times. And since I've been preaching the anointing I've begun seeing it more and more.

Listen, my friend, when the Word of God is preached, the power of God is on that Word to bring it to pass. That's why when we preach the new birth, people get born again. God works with and confirms the Word.

But God can't confirm something we won't preach. He can't release the burden-removing, yoke-destroying power of God among the people unless we tell them about it. So let's get busy. Let's pick up the message the Church preached in her power days. Let's preach that Jesus is anointed.

As the Spirit of the Lord said during a recent meeting:

You preach it and I'll do it, saith the Lord, because I am He that was once dead, but yet I am alive forever more, and I have the keys. So go forth. I've given you the keys to the kingdom. Go tell them I'm anointed, and that same anointing will be on you, and you will see the same signs and wonders that you have longed for. But you will long for them no more, saith the Lord. For great, great is the outpouring among you now!


Source: From Faith to Faith Devotional by Kenneth and Gloria Copeland
Excerpt permission granted by Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries