North Texas is currently in the grips of a measles outbreak with nine confirmed cases, a number that’s expected to rise. The epicenter appears to be Eagle Mountain International Church whose pastor is the daughter of Kenneth Copland. She announced this to her congregation:
There has been a … confirmed case of the measles from the Tarrant County Public Health Department. And that is a really big deal in that America, the United States has been essentially measles free for I think it’s 10 years. And so when measles pops up anywhere else in the United States, the health department — well, you know, it excites them. You know what I mean I don’t mean. I don’t mean they’re happy about it, but they get very excited and respond to it because it doesn’t take much for things like that to spread.
Rather than get their children vaccinated, this church (part of Kenneth Copland’s “empire”) advocated faith healing. Now the pastor of this church is back pedalling on her faith healing stance:
There are a lot of people that think the Bible — we talk about walking by faith — it leaves out things such as, I don’t know, people just get strange. But when you read the Old Testament, you find that it is full of precautionary measures, and it is full of the law.
Why did the Jewish people, why did they not die out during the plague? Because the Bible told them how to be clean, told them how to disinfect, told them there was something contagious. And the interesting thing of it, it wasn’t a medical doctor per se who took care of those things, it was the priesthood. It was the ministers, it was those who knew how to take the promises of God as well as the commandments of God to take care of things like disinfection and so forth….
Many of the things that we have in medical practice now actually are things you can trace back into scripture. It’s when we find out what’s in the scripture that we have wisdom.
Although it’s quite late to the party, the church will offer a vaccination clinic. So much for their “faith healing” stance, eh?
If you really want to get creeped out, check out this video that features Copeland and Kenneth Hagin. It’ll give you a little taste of what kind of church we’re talking about in this story.
I’ve been to church services like this and… wow. They’re fascinating, yet horrifying to watch. I remember sitting in the back of such a church as a child, terrified that god would embarrass me in public. I was also awe struck, wondering how the pillars and business leaders of my community could act like such… well you’ll see.
More vids after the jump.
