THE WORD OF FAITH MOVEMENT 2

A Enemy Within. (Concluded)

Essential to the WFM (Word of Faith Movement) is the delusion that people function as "little gods" endowed with the faith capacity to speak and create their own world. Faith is the power or positive force by which believers are first to imagine their perfect world, and then make it happen. As Kenneth Hagin (known as "Dad" Hagin to the WFM) once put it: "I'm a believer; I'm not a doubter. I have a measure of God kind of faith. I have a measure of the kind of faith that created the worlds in the beginning. I have mountain moving faith!!!!" Thus man becomes a god who creates his own world and controls his own destiny, a world and a destiny that include wealth and health.

The WFM advocates a super spirituality based upon visitations and visions of God, promotes the man is god doctrine, and views faith as a creative force by which Christians make their own world, a world of affluence and wellness. The Copelands, Ken and Gloria, are well-known exponents of a success gospel that promotes man at the center of his own little world. Ken says, "You are entitled to all the rights and privileges in the kingdom of God . . . health and wealth." Even more bluntly, Gloria says in her book God's Will is Prosperity, "Give $10 and receive $1000; give $1000 and receive $100,000 . . . Give one house and receive one hundred houses or a house worth one hundred times as much. Give one airplane and receive one hundred times the value of the airplane . . . In short, Mark 10:30 is a very good deal." Then Fredrick Price said in a sermon, "If the Mafia can ride around in Lincoln Continental town cars, why can't the King's Kids?"

The apostle Paul described WFM teachers as those who are "depraved" and "deprived"; those "who suppose that godliness is a means of gain" (1 Timothy 6:5). Teachers that promote the gospel as a get-rich scheme, Paul calls depraved! Yet in this narcissistic culture they pawn themselves off to professing Christians as ministers of God. "Godliness actually is a means of great gain," states the apostle, "when accompanied by contentment" (1 Timothy 3:6). In their never ending quest to get more, these false teachers of the WFM prey upon the greed that is instinctive to our malcontented, coveting and depraved human nature. Depraved ministers capitalize on depraved hearts.

Jim Bakker, was once an advocate of the wealth and health message (a message that has any one of a number of monikers, i.e., name-it-claim-it, success-'n'-life, and so on). He has grown now to admit the error of the message he once preached to an audience of millions on the PTL Club. He confesses, "For years, I helped propagate an imposter, not a true gospel, but another gospel." His confession is honest, but as far as stemming the drowning tide of the WFM, it is too little and too late.

Of the Word of Faith Movement, respected educator and Bible scholar Donald Campbell once remarked that it "is grievous and threatens to engulf the Church and sweep many professed believers into dangerous currents of false and destructive doctrine." The Apostle Paul warned, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (2 Timothy 4:30). Teachers in the WFM can be seen and heard on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a network that holds a virtual monopoly on religious television programming. By the droves, professed Christians are embracing novel doctrines that provide momentary and sensate relief for felt needs, but possess no power to fit the soul for heaven.

Pastor Larry DeBruyn