Consider the following scenario. What if someone approached you and told you that “words are the most powerful things in the universe” and that the “natural world” could literally be reshaped by the words that you speak?1 What would you call such a person? To what worldview would he subscribe? You might rightly think that the person is a postmodernist—someone who does not believe that there is an objective reality that is fixed and unyielding. Or, you might conclude that he practices some form of mysterious Eastern religion that considers the world to only be an illusion. But such guesses, as good as they are, would both be wrong.

So just who might this stranger be? The answer in this case is perhaps shocking: he is a Christian pastor from America who probably appears weekly on a national television broadcast, sponsored by a station near you. Adherents to what is known as “word of faith” theology, these pastors or evangelists do not belong to any one denomination or organization. But this loose-knit group is characterized by three common and biblically inaccurate themes in their teaching.

1. Physical healing. The belief that physical healing from sickness and disease is available at all times to believers takes on a radical new meaning in the hands of the “word of faith” teacher. Citing passages such as Isaiah 53:4-5 (“by His scourging we are healed”) and Matthew 8:16-17 (“He Himself took our infirmities”), preachers such as Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland suggest that faith always brings about physical healing. Most of them take the position that physical suffering is evidence of a lack of faith and cannot be God’s will for a Christian. A sick person is thus ultimately to blame for his own infirmity.2

2. Promise of Wealth. A related teaching to the first claims that financial prosperity is acquired by following a simple formula. Citing Mark 10:29-30 as their proof text, “faith” teachers say that the Bible promises Christians a return of a hundred times on any amount of money “sown in faith.” Kenneth Copeland tells his followers that “Every man who invests into the gospel has a right to expect the staggering return of one hundredfold.”3 This principle has become a centerpiece of the television appeals of leading members of the movement including Frederick Price, Paul Crouch, and Benny Hinn, among others.

3. “Positive Confession.” The third, and perhaps most shocking, tenet of the word of faith teachers is the doctrine of “positive confession”—an idea which really encapsulates the first two mentioned above. Charles Capps, a former farmer who claimed he received the doctrine by direct revelation, popularized this teaching. Capps asserts that a person’s words literally construct the fabric of reality. “The natural world,” he avers, “is to be controlled by man speaking God’s words. . . . [they are] creative power.”4 As such, any negative language that a person speaks may usher in that reality. They should never say, “I’m not feeling well,” or else sickness and disease will actually come upon them.5 Capps’ teaching has been widely accepted in word of faith circles, but it has been retranslated into a new and even more popular format through the preaching of Joel Osteen. In his multi-million seller, Your Best Life Now, Osteen adapts positive confession to include the elimination of negative thoughts and words as a way of activating the power of God.6

Why have the “word of faith” teachers attracted such large audiences? Obvious answers include the American penchant for greed and selfish lifestyles. But before critics too quickly (even when rightly) judge the movement and its followers for its serious errors, they should engage in a bit of self-analysis. Perhaps one of the reasons so many Christians are looking to aberrant doctrine stems from the fact that they possess the deep sense that the power of God is missing from the churches they have been attending all of their lives. Heresy hunting is not enough. Defenders of orthodoxy must believe in and practice a religion that is supernatural, or else they run the risk of turning the living church of the Lord Jesus Christ into yet another dead institution of the modern world.
Footnotes:
1

Charles Capps, The Tongue: A Creative Force (Tulsa, OK: Harrison House), 1.
2

Some even cast doubt on the use of medical doctors. “Take medicine,” writes Kenneth Hagin, Jr., “until you can get enough faith in you where you don’t have to take it.” Faith Worketh by Love (n.p.n.d.).
3

Kenneth Copeland, The Laws of Prosperity (Forth Worth: Kenneth Copland Publications, 1974), 77.
4

Capps, 9.
5

Hendrik H. Hanegraaff, “What’s Wrong with the Faith Movement—Part One: E. W. Kenyon and the Twelve Apostles of Another Gospel,” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1993, 16, http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/crj0118a.txt (accessed October 26, 2005).
6

Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now (New York: Warner Faith, 2004), 306.

article adopted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located 1 and 1/2 miles east. Rt. 222