Evangelist justifies owning 3 jets, $760m wealth

Texas: A total fortune of $760 million; a $6 million worth lake view home. Do you think it’s too much for a preacher? Or are you offended that he travels back and forth on the three private jets he owns?

Ministers can live in a home worth up to $6.3million tax free.

Eighty-two year old Kenneth Copeland, the owner of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, would have none of it. He needs to use three private jets because “demonic environment on commercial flights are not good for a preacher”. Or that’s what he told television show Inside Edition. And his is a long standing position: in 2016 he called flying commercial getting in ‘a long tube with demons’.  

“Do you really believe that human beings are demons,” asked Lisa Guerrero, the interviewer. In response, Copeland points and snaps back: “No I did not and don’t you ever say I did.”

He then explains how watching marshals drag a passenger off a plane – seemingly referring to an April 2017 United incident – made him so mad.

Using it as an example for why he takes the plusher option, he asked: “Do you think that’s a good environment for a preacher to be?... I wanted to go punch that guy myself. I can’t be doing that when I’m getting ready to preach!”

“I could no longer do what I was called to do when I get on the airlines.” Besides, think of the agony just in case he lost his baggage in transit. Just in case.

You would expect the interviewer to quote the Bible to the Christian preacher: “It’s more difficult for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle.”

Ms Guerrero did it. And pat came Mr Copeland’s response: the Bible says that “all things are possible”.

The interviewer then tried again to the get the message through by saying her own grandfathers were preachers and did not agree with others doing the work of god while living with so much wealth.

It’s now the turn of the preacher to give her the essence of the Bible: “The Bible is full of wealth, miracles, goodness and badness.”

He defended hanging onto his estimated $760 million wealth because he invested $25 million in 2018. Last year he purchased a $3million Gulfstream V private jet from actor Tyler Perry.

And the Christian preacher gives the reason too: Jewish people believe in wealth.

In between the interview, he angrily pointed and stared at the interviewer and then prayed for her. He complimented her on her eyes, prayed for her, and even kissed her hand, and in the process, deflected questions, too.

He came under fire in 2010 for promising to use his wealth in 2010 for Haiti earthquake victims, but not following it through.