Kenneth Copeland coronavirus: Texas televangelist offers special healing report on his Victory channel titled ‘Standing Against Coronavirus.’
Too good to be true? Then it probably is… or maybe it’s just your preacher on TV?
Conservative pastor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland has caused disconcert after telling viewers of his program that they were ‘healed’ of the coronavirus, which currently does not have a cure, after offering a spiritual healing session through their television sets.
Copeland, who is worth $760 million and is the country’s richest televangelist, runs the Tarrant County, Texas-based Kenneth Copeland Ministries (KCM) and made the claim during a special report on his Victory channel titled ‘Standing Against Coronavirus.’
In a clip of the segment, Copeland who has previously courted controversy over vast fortunes he has accrued through his ‘religious’ work, with received donations financing mega mansions, private jets and other lavish purchases- implores viewers to touch their tv sets and meet his outstretched ‘wet’ hands.
‘Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord Jesus. He received your healing,’ the pastor is beseeching viewers.
He then bows his head and continues, ‘Now say it: I take it. I have it. It’s mine. I thank you and praise you for it. I praise you that I’m well and whole.’
‘According to the word of God, I’m healed. And I consider not my own body. I consider not symptoms in my body. But only that which God has promised. Only that what the word has said.’
Continues the evangelist who has previously suggested God will heal all those who can muster up enough faith to believe for it: ‘By his stripes, I was healed and by his stripes, I am healed now. I’m not the sick trying to get healed. I’m the healed and the devil is trying to give me the flu… or whatever else kind of thing he’s trying.’
He ends by laughing into the camera and cleaning his hand with a towel handed to him by an assistant.
Watch: Texas televangelist insists he can blow coronavirus away
God told Kenneth Copeland that the coronavirus outbreak will be over soon because “Christian people all over this country praying have overwhelmed it." https://t.co/YFhZGz6YBO pic.twitter.com/da6Cpvv7qV
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 17, 2020
Using public health crises to ratchet followers and donations?
The televangelist went on to suggest COVID-19 is just a ‘very weak strain of flu’ that healthy people should not fear.
‘It (coronavirus) is so weak their symptoms are almost alike,’ he said during the broadcast. ‘Some people had it and didn’t even know it. They just haven’t found the way to knock that thing in the head yet.’
He claimed much of the reaction to this new strain of coronavirus had been based on fear and brought up 2 Timothy 1:7 to state that God would prefer for Christians to have faith they would overcome the disease even if they were infected.
‘For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,’ he preached. ‘So fear is a spirit and that spirit is the devil and he is the spirit of death.’
‘So fear is faith in him (devil). It’s a spiritual force,’ he continued. ‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Fear comes by hearing and a hearing by the word of the devil. The lies of Satan. All worry is fear-based. All anxiety is fear-based. All depression is fear-based. Amen. So fear of this virus, forget about corona. It’s another form of the flu.’
Unclear is whether the Coronavirus segment led to the pastor receiving outsized donations during his ‘healing’ segment.
The televangelist isn’t the first Christian leader to offer an unusual cure for coronavirus to his Christian followers. Pastor Jim Bakker, who hosts The Jim Bakker Show, told his viewers on February 12 that they could purchase a product called Silver Solution from a so-called natural health expert he was interviewing. The FDA has since issued a stern warning demanding that Bakker desist.
