In one meeting conducted by Gloria Copeland she made comments about speaking to the weather to prevent any harm being done to you as a child of God. She then told a story about her husband Ken Copeland rebuking a water spout that appeared near their plane during a flight, after which it went back up into the clouds. The critic played a tape of her comments and then said that if she really has that kind of power that would make her a terrible person because she allows so many people to suffer and die in storms when she has the power to stop them.
Apparently he didn’t think through the implications of his comments. After all, Jesus had the power to prevent disasters. Does that mean that during His three and a half years of ministry nobody on the face of the earth died in a storm? Of course not! Well, if He had the power and He didn’t use it and people ended up dying, by his logic that would make Jesus a terrible person.
Do you remember the time when Jesus was told that Pontius Pilate had killed some Galilean worshippers? (Luke 13:1) Why didn’t Jesus prevent that? Why didn’t He prevent the eighteen men from dying when the Tower of Siloam fell on them? (Luke 13:4) Wasn’t He God? Couldn’t He have prevented those things from happening? Of course He could, but the fact is Jesus only rebuked a storm when it posed a direct threat to Him and those close to Him just as He only seemed to provide healing to people who believed in Him. In Mark 16:18 Jesus said that believers will be given protection from serpents (or snakes). In Acts 28:3-5 Paul shook off a poisonous snake and was unharmed just as Jesus had said. No, Paul didn’t go looking for a serpent to try to prove anything to anybody, but when he was the victim of a snake bite he just shook it off.
Kenneth and Gloria Copeland don’t go looking for storms to rebuke any more than Jesus did, and neither does anybody else in the WoF movement that I’m aware of. But we all do believe that when the forces of nature threaten us as they did Jesus and His disciples, we can use the name of Jesus in faith to claim protection or deliverance.
I don’t condone everything that Pat Robertson says and does, but I recall that in 1985 I was watching him on the 700 Club as Hurricane Gloria approached the area where CBN is located. It was a powerful storm (they were calling it the storm of the century) and could have destroyed their facilities. He commanded it to turn away in the name of Jesus and forbid it to enter their area as it was forecast to do. Well as you can see from the tracking map below, Gloria turned to the north and spared the Virginia Beach area and CBN. Coincidence? You tell me.
