Coronavirus: Televangelist Kenneth Copeland claims he can 'heal' people by making them touch their TV screens
Conservative pastor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland has stirred controversy after he told viewers of his program that they were "healed" of the coronavirus, which currently does not have a cure, after 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 outlandish claim during a "special report" on his Victory channel titled "Standing Against Coronavirus."
In a clip of the segment, Copeland reaches out his outstretched, glistening hand towards the camera and asks viewers at home to touch their television screens before saying, "Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord Jesus. He received your healing."
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."
"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.
It wasn't the only contentious segment during the program either, with the televangelist also suggesting COVID-19 was 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."