By Elizabeth Prata
Most jobs are jobs we retire from and think nothing of it. It’s the natural course that we retire from long haul trucking, bricklaying, nursing, teaching. I’m going to be 66 soon and I’m thinking about retiring from my school job.
But when a man is called to be a pastor, and he goes through training (usually seminary), and walks up to his pulpit for the first time, for these men it’s a lifetime commitment. To them, the responsibility is so heavy, they care for their flock so much, the call feels permanent. He stays at the pulpit, unless the Lord takes him home or he falls under reproach and disqualifies himself.
Not that pastors can’t or shouldn’t retire. The Levites were to serve in the tabernacle until age 50. But in today’s times, the Bible does not give a standard for when a man should step down. The qualification is that he should be “able to teach”. (1 Timothy 3:2; 2 Timothy 2:24). There are other considerations, too.
We often think of the ‘able to teach’ qualification as an entry requirement, but we don’t as often think of it as an ending qualification. Is he ‘able to teach’ in his 60s? 70s? 80s? 90s?
As we age it is true our minds are not as sharp. We may be full of wisdom as the white hair shows but sometimes the brain under it doesn’t function as well as it used to. Other times, the mind is agile but health concerns impact the preacher’s ability to perform his duty the way most men perform it. We saw this for decades with ‘country preacher at large’ David Miller. Confined to a wheelchair, his body atrophying, he could not hold a Bible … but he could memorize the Bible! And though his body atrophied, his mind was sharp and boy, could he preach!
He passed into heaven in 2024, at age 78, still sharp and mentally focused on His Lord.
For other preachers, there are clear signs that the preacher must step back, slow down, or retire. Charles Spurgeon, known as the Prince of Preachers, endured crippling physical ailments that eventually forced him to step away from the pulpit for weeks or months. His mental trials of severe depression and anxiety plagued him too. For Spurgeon, his skill at preaching was bundled with these physical and mental ailments he’d dealt with for over 20 years. He passed away not his home city of London, but in France, where he had gone to find warm air and pleasant light for his health.
Justin Peters shared a video of Kenneth Copeland recently. Copeland will be 90 years old in a few months. In 2024 Copeland experienced what his ministry reported was a ruptured appendix with severe fallout and required surgery, hospitalization, and a long period of recovery. When he emerged from that trauma, he announced that he had “made a new covenant with God. On December 6, 2056, I’ll see y’all later.” He says God gave him 120 years to live. His old, worn out body now “is even better.”
But is it really? Justin Peters’ video shows the opposite. As we are all but flesh, and flesh is but grass, Copeland’s is fading quickly.
Isaiah 40:6
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I asked, “What should I cry out?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field.
Psalm 90:5-6
You sweep them away in their sleep; they are like the new grass of the morning— / in the morning it springs up new, but by evening it fades and withers.
Psalm 78:39
He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.
At his most recent conference, the Southwest Believers’ Convention he founded,Copeland’s back troubles and age required him to sit in a chair while he preached. He is now wearing glasses because one’s eyes don’t work as well as they used to. And most troubling of all, his mind wandered and he mumbled and fumbled through the sermon.
The video was hard to watch. It is sad to see a man who is so obviously in decline in front of us, mentally soft and rambling and forgetting.
You can see Justin’s video here. Peters makes a plea to Copeland and also his granddaughter who works in his ministry by giving them the Gospel.
Steve Kozar of The Messed Up Church website made a shorter clip of the same sermon of Copeland and his difficulties-
Copeland has consistently preached health if you have faith. His videos announce things like, “You have been redeemed from sickness and disease”. His videos advertise that “Kenneth Copeland has the key to divine health- Unlock the door and fully receive the BLESSING of divine health in your life today!”
Make no mistake, Kenneth Copeland and his wife Gloria are heretics of the highest order. Justin Peters has consistently pointed this out, comparing Copeland’s preaching to actual scripture. Copeland has never preached an honest, credible sermon in his life. Which makes his obvious decline, combined with confirmed health issues and his advanced age, all the more crushing.
Where do heretics go when they leave this earth? Hell. They have abused the Lord’s name for decades and they go to the fires of hell and are punished for it. This is heartbreaking. No one should be exulting that a failing pastor is at the pulpit, least of all one whose decades-long ‘ministry’ is built on sand and whose future looks like torment.
2 Peter 3:9: The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then should you die, house of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:11).
A man ascending the stairs at his church to his pulpit is concerned with honoring the Lord the best he can, with all his strength, mind, and heart. Or he should be. Most pastors do. Here, about ten years before the Lord claimed his redeemed pastor John MacArthur to heaven, MacArthur was asked in a Q&A when a pastor should retire.
He has always said that if he is at the pulpit not making sense, to make him stand down.
Below, slide to 59:00 for the retirement question
A pastor should have good men around him to support him in his healthy and vigorous years, and to support him when it seems he cannot honor the Lord with his preaching because his mental health is in decline. When he is not ‘able to teach’. It’s hard enough to watch a man who used to be vigorous slow down, it’s very hard to watch a heretic approach his doom with ever more stumbling steps. Copeland’s future seems to be rising up to meet him. And that is very sad.
From Justin Peters’ Youtube page, the description of the Kenneth Copeland Video:
At 89, Kenneth Copeland preached his own conference sitting down, wearing eyeglasses, losing his place between Romans 10, Romans 5 and Hebrews 11 — and he has a pacemaker in his chest, arthritis in his fingers, and back surgery ahead of him. This is the man who has taught for over 60 years that healing is always God’s will and yours the moment you’re ready for it.
Justin Peters walks through footage from this year’s Southwest Believers Convention in Fort Worth, where Jesse Duplantis, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn and Bethel’s Bill Johnson all shared the platform. He notes Gloria Copeland’s visible decline — Benny Hinn laid hands on her and prayed last year, and she is worse now — and recalls her own cruel words about the sick lacking faith.
The heart of the episode is an interview Copeland’s granddaughter Courtney did with him, where she openly admits she is struggling to understand why her grandfather is still in pain. Peters traces the 2004 back injury that cancelled four crusades, the ruptured appendix, the sciatic nerve, and Copeland’s admission that the Lord led him to a born-again neurosurgeon.
He also answers Courtney’s framing of karma, the law of attraction and manifestation as biblical, correcting the misuse of Proverbs 23:7 and Proverbs 18:21, and names these as New Age techniques welcomed into Word Faith theology.
Peters closes with a clear gospel appeal — Christ satisfied God’s wrath on the cross, not in hell — and Exodus 4:11, Psalm 119:71, 2 Kings 13, Galatians 4:13-14 and Philippians 1:29. It matters because this bankrupt gospel has exploited the poor and sick for decades, and souls are at stake.
the-end-time.org 