1 Boring Old Man

by Kenneth Copeland

If you’ve been sowing seed into the kingdom of God, I have news that will put a smile on your face, a skip in your step and joy in your heart.

Harvest time is here!

That’s right. As the Body of Christ, we’ve stepped into the season we’ve all been waiting for. We’ve moved into the time when the spiritual and financial crops we’ve planted…and tended…and believed for are coming up. It’s a time to rejoice and celebrate.

There’s nothing better than the thrill of harvest time! Oral Roberts, my spiritual father, and Gloria and I were talking about that fact not long ago, because the Lord had been speaking to him about it. He’d been reminding Brother Roberts of the days back when he held tent meetings in farm communities.

Sometimes he’d come into towns where the crops had been reaped and sold at a good price, and the streets would be full of joyful people. Everyone would be smiling and shouting greetings to each other. They’d be busy buying school clothes for the kids and stocking up for the winter. It was a glorious scene.

I know from my own experience what that’s like. As a child, I used to spend time on my grandfather’s farm. When harvest time came, whole truckloads of people would show up to help bring in the crops. All the kids would play together and at dinnertime, because there were too many people to fit into one house, the whole bunch of us would eat outside.

What fun that was! Everyone was making money. Everyone was on the move. Everyone was enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Nobody was thinking anymore about how hot and tired they’d been when they were out working in the fields, or talking about how their feet got blistered and their hands got calloused when they were chopping cotton and hoeing weeds. They’d forgotten about all that.

They had their minds on the harvest!

Making the Switch

That’s the way we, as seed-sowing believers, ought to be today. We should have our “reaping” faith in gear and our minds on the harvest.

That’s a switch for a lot of us because until now, we’ve focused our faith primarily on planting. We’ve concentrated on God’s promise to provide seed to the sower and bread to the eater.

Thank God for such bread-receiving, seed-sowing faith! It’s wonderful. It’s opened the door for God to meet our needs and give us enough to invest in the work of His kingdom. But that’s not all God wants to do for us. He didn’t just promise to give us food to eat and seed to sow, He promised to multiply that seed and give us a harvest. He said:

He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. (As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever. Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God (2 Corinthians 9:6-11).

God has had harvest time in His sights all along. That’s why He taught us about sowing and reaping. That’s why He sustained us and met our needs while we were waiting for our crops to come up. He intended to multiply our seed and give us such abundant harvests that we’d always have all sufficiency in all things and wouldn’t need any outside aid or support.

From the very beginning, God’s aim was to bless us so extravagantly that we could demonstrate to the world that we don’t need anyone but Jesus to support us. He is our Source. He is the One who enriches us in all things. He is the Lord of the Harvest!

More Than We Expected

Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest. He called Himself that in Luke 10:2. When He sent His disciples out two-by-two into the cities of Israel, He said, “The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.”

The problem is, many believers haven’t exercised their faith in the harvest aspect of Jesus’ ministry. They’ve gotten stuck instead on the seed-sowing part. “Brother Copeland,” they say, “I just keep sowing…and sowing…and sowing but nothing is happening.”

Sometimes they even complain about what happened to their seed after they planted it. “I gave $50 to a minister, and then I saw his son riding around on a new bike. I don’t think he should have spent my money that way!”

People with that attitude are digging up their seed. They’re interrupting the growth process and killing their crop. When Brother Roberts told us what God was showing him about harvest time, he said that’s a mistake believers must stop making. He said we must all learn to sow our seed, release our faith, then forget about the seed.

Forget about it?

Yes, forget about it! Let it go! It’s covered up in the soil of God’s kingdom. We’ll never see it again. So we should stop fussing over it…and worrying about it…and wondering what’s become of it.

“Ken, get your mind off the sowing part now,” he said, “and get it on the harvest instead!”

Ever since that discussion, I’ve been doing that more and more. In the process, the Lord has revealed some things to me. He’s let me know, for instance, that the harvest this generation of believers is reaping is far greater than we ever expected. We are bringing in crops we didn’t even plant.

How is that possible?

It’s simple. Many believers in generations gone by who were faithful to sow seed into the kingdom of God didn’t know anything about harvest. As a result, they didn’t reap what belonged to them. They left their spiritual crops in the field.

For a long time, my mom and dad were like that. They had such a strong revelation of the importance of giving into God’s kingdom that they actually added tithing to their wedding vows.

Back in 1927 when they were married, they declared they would tithe every dollar that came into their hands all their married life.

They did it, too. All his adult life, my dad had two bank accounts: One was God’s and the other was his. He never mixed them up. As a young boy, I’d go with him to the bank and watch him make out two different deposit slips, one for each account. My dad was diligent to do that for many years. He didn’t know how to reach out and receive his harvest by faith, however, until much later in life. So he never received the fullness of what he’d planted.

Over the centuries, there have been many faithful tithers and givers like my dad—believers who sowed a lifetime of seeds and, because they knew nothing about reaping, never reaped the return. The devil thinks their seeds are buried and forgotten. But God never forgets a seed. He never counts it out. He always multiplies the seed sown, then He goes looking for someone with faith enough to harvest it.

And you know what? We’re the generation of believers He’s been looking for!

We’re the ones who’ve been blessed with the last days outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of harvest. We’re the ones who will reap the spiritual and financial crops sown by our grandfathers and grandmothers. We’ll bring in harvests sown by spiritual ancestors we don’t even know.

Different Crops: the Same Anointing

I start jumping every time I think about that because harvest time is a happy time. Harvest time is what makes all the work worthwhile. That’s true in the natural scheme of things and it’s even more true spiritually.

Think about it. What could possibly be more thrilling than reaping the biggest harvest of souls in the 2,000-year history of the Body of Christ?

I’m telling you by the Spirit of God, that’s what we are doing. It’s already started. More people are coming into the family of God than ever before in all of Christian history. The Lord of the Harvest is sending us out as laborers to gather up the most staggering spiritual crop this world has ever seen. This is the beginning of massive harvest!

“But Brother Copeland,” someone might say, “I thought you were talking about a financial harvest. I thought you were saying the financial seeds we’ve sown are ready to be reaped.”

I am.

You see, you can’t have a spiritual harvest by itself. You have to have a financial harvest at the same time because harvest time is the most-expensive season of the year.

I learned that in my boyhood days on my grandfather’s farm. At harvest time, you’re buying more fuel, you’re hiring more people, you’re spending everything you have to get that crop in from the field before the weather starts to ruin it.

That’s why it takes a harvest of finances to reap a harvest of souls. Bringing in those spiritual sheaves is expensive! That’s OK, though, because the same anointing that brings forth the spiritual crop brings forth the financial crop. Both kinds of seeds are multiplied by THE BLESSING that flows to us and through us from the Lord of the Harvest.

So, roll up your spiritual sleeves and go to work in both realms. Get ready to have the time of your life.

If you haven’t thought of yourself as a harvester before now, start thinking of yourself that way. Renew your mind to the truth of God’s Word. Dare to believe the Lord of the Harvest is calling you—yes, you!—to help Him bring in His end-time crops. He’s speaking to you and saying, “Until now, you’ve known Me as the Lord over your seed. You’ve known Me as your bread provider. But I want you to know Me now as Lord and Minister of the harvest.”

Mysteries Revealed

I’m persuaded that’s what Jesus is saying to every believer who will listen these days. His fields are ripe and He is hunting high and low for those who will open their Bibles, stand on His promises of blessing, and get their harvest faith in gear. He is searching for bold receivers who won’t back away in doubt, but will jump on the truck with the rest of the harvesters and head for the fields.

The Lord spoke by prophecy during the 2006 West Coast Believers’ Convention and said those who respond in that way will be equipped with revelation that will help them get the job done. He said:

More and more, faster and faster, in more clarity and detail, the anointing will cause revelation to flow and mysteries in Christ to come clear as never before in these days in which you live. For these are the times when the mysteries shall be unveiled and you’ll say, “My, my, isn’t that simple, isn’t that wonderful.” Hallelujah. And it is and will continue to be that way because these are the times, saith the Lord, when all people will see the glory. The whole earth shall be filled with it. Amen. This is that day and this is that hour and for those that are committed, and those that are strong in the Word, and those that put My Word first place in their lives will continue to flow, and it will be a continuous flow of revelation in your life and it’ll get sweeter and sweeter as the days go by. It’s harvest time!

Things are going to increase in intensity. There are those of you that will begin to experience an outflow and overflow not only of anointing to minister to people, but in the financial realm also. And the increase will come not because of more work, or more effort on your part, but because of the intensified flow of the Holy Ghost. Not by might, not by any other way except by My Spirit, saith the Lord. My power and revelation of the love of God on a level and on a plane never before seen, never before understood by the general population of the Body of Jesus Christ.

The revealings of the secrets of faith and power. Hallelujah. Glorified knowledge in the Holy Ghost, and how to walk in anointings that will cause people to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior; Jesus as Baptizer in the Holy Ghost; Jesus as Healer and Jesus as Financier. You will be able to help them receive on a much higher plane and it will seem like, “Why this is just the most-effortless thing I have ever seen,” and that is exactly true. You are walking into an effortless, sweatless anointing. Hallelujah. A time of great outpouring. It’s here, it’s already in operation, saith the Lord. So jump in, jump in and enjoy the swim for the time has come.

Jesus is the High Priest and Chief Executive of heaven’s finances and it’s harvest time in the kingdom of God.