Word Faith (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host. And today we want to talk about something called the Word-Faith Movement. The Word-Faith Movement. It's also known as positive confession, maybe name it and claim it.

Sometimes known as the Faith Movement. I like to call it blab it and grab it. And I'd like to give you some warnings today, look at it biblically, teach you from the biblical perspective how to analyze the Word-Faith Movement, and maybe give you some comments as well.

The first thing I'd like to say about the Word-Faith Movement is this. Number one, beware of people speaking for God and money at the same time. Beware of people speaking for God and money at the same time.

In other words, when people talk about money and say, send Jesus your money and then give you their address, you want to be very, very careful. One of the biggest proponents of the Word-Faith Movement, one of the original men here, at least in this generation, is Kenneth Hagen.

And he wrote in the book called How to Write Your Own Ticket with God. That must have been an interesting book. It's a bad title to start with. He says in the opening chapter, Jesus appeared to me, that's the name of the opening chapter.

I mean, how much scarier could it get? How much discernment do you need to say no to that? You don't need very much discernment at all. Maybe a little thimbleful, maybe a little spoonful. And here this man named Kenneth Hagen, Papa Hagen, Daddy Hagen, he says he's in the Spirit like when John was on the Isle of Patmos and a white cloud enveloped him and he started to speak in tongues.

So here's Hagen, and here's what happens. Quote, then the Lord Jesus himself appeared to me. He stood within three feet of me. Now right there, that's enough. We could close shop, we could say, we don't need to know any more.

I think about Paul in 2 Corinthians, and he goes to heaven and he's given a thorn, so he cannot even speak of what he saw. But of course, these other false teachers, they get to say whatever they want, and they've got to sell a few more books and get some more money.

And so they're talking about a variety of different things, and Jesus says to Hagen, you better get yourself a little piece of paper and a writing utensil, get a pencil, and then write this down. One, two, three, four.

If anybody anywhere will take these four steps or put these four principles into operation, he will always receive whatever he wants from me or from God, the Father. Say it, do it, receive it, and tell it.

And so when you say it, you say something positively, negatively, you are in charge, you are sovereign, you are the powerful one, you are speaking these words into existence, and then you do it, and now you combine what you say with what you do, and certainly then the next step must be certainly receiving it, and you're supposed to plug into the power house of heaven, faith is this plug, praise God, just plug in, and then tell others so they can be bamboozled as well.

This is just utter nonsense, and you need to be good Bereans, you need to see if these things are so, and when you go to some bookstore locally, or you go online and somebody's trying to promote some Kenneth Hagin book, you ought not to read that.

If you see Robert Tilton books, you need to stop reading those as well. Tilton said, being poor is a sin. When God promises prosperity, new house, new car, that's chicken feed, that's nothing compared to what God wants to do for you.

Robert Tilton, he is along the same lines of these other line heretic dogs. Fred Price, if you've got one dollar faith and you ask for a $10 ,000 item, it ain't going to work. It won't work. Jesus said, according to your faith, not according to God's will for you in his own good time.

If it's according to his will, if he can work it into his busy schedule, he said, according to your faith, be it unto you. And so the lists go on and on and on where these people try to, I'll say the word again, bamboozle you.

And they don't understand faith, they don't understand money, they don't understand sin, they don't understand the gospel, they don't understand God. And if you listen to them, may I say to you that it is because what they say appeals to you.

People heap up teachers after their own desires, 2 Timothy chapter 4 says. And if you'd like to listen to line heretic dogs who promote money, it's because you've got an issue of greed and you want that money too.

You want that $10 ,000 faith. Gloria Copeland says in her book, God's Will is Prosperity, give $10 and receive 1 ,000. Give 1 ,000 and receive 100 ,000. Give one house and receive 100 houses. Are a house worth 100 times as much?

Give one airplane and receive 100 times the value of the airplane. Boy, that is a fabulous deal. You just give all your houses to them and then somehow God will give you another house. Just listen to how foolish this all is.

John Avenzini, Jesus had a nice house, a big house, enough to have company, stay the night with him at the house. That's quite different, by the way, than when Jesus said the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

You want to follow me? Jesus said, I'm homeless. Here's John Avenzini with more lying heretic dog statements. He says, let me show you his house. Go over to John, the first chapter and I'll show you his house.

Now child of God, that's a house big enough to have company. Stay the night in. That's his house. Believer's Voice of Victory program on TBN, January 1991. Well, Jesus had to have a treasure, so that must have meant he has lots of money.

Avenzini goes on to say, Jesus was handling big money because that treasure he had was a thief. Now, you can't tell me that a ministry with a treasure that's a thief can operate on a few pennies. It took big money to operate that ministry because Judas was stealing out of that bag.

Do you think it can get any worse? I mean, this is just sad. It's ludicrous, it's asinine, it's appalling, it's repugnant, and it should make you mad. And if you are a Word-Faith teacher, you ought to repent and get born again is what you ought to do.

And if you're a Word-Faith follower, you ought to say to yourself, this is nonsense. This is not glorifying God. There's a reason WV &E doesn't have Word-Faith teachers on its radio station, it's because they're false teachers.

You don't hear the people who are on the station from Al Mohler to R .C. Sproul to Alistair Begg to John MacArthur to Adrian Rogers ever talk like this, because what they give is the right gospel. What these fools do is give you the false gospel, the wrong gospel.

It's a different religion. And we're not talking about Calvinism, Arminianism. We're not talking about premillennialism and postmillennialism. We're talking about the gospel of grace versus the gospel of greed.

John Avanzini says, John 19 tells us that Jesus wore designer clothes. Well, what else you gonna call it? Designer clothes, that's blasphemy? No, that's what we call them today. I mean, you didn't get the stuff he wore off the rack.

It wasn't a one-size-fits-all deal. No, this was the custom stuff. It was the kind of garment that kings and rich merchants wore. Kings and rich merchants wore that garment. And so what Avanzini's driving at is this.

Jesus wore designer clothes, you follow Jesus, so you should get designer clothes as well. This is just ludicrous, and I don't even know why I'm taking a show to talk about it, but there are people who foolishly follow because they heap up teachers after their own desires.

And their own desires are greedy, avarice. They have a desire to get rich, and you don't want to have the desire to get rich. You have to be very, very careful. Oral Roberts just died. He had written a book before he died called How I Learned Jesus Was Not Poor.

How I Learned Jesus Was Not Poor. This is just a money-making ploy. When they start doing this seed faith and seeding money, give a house, get a hundred back, it is a ploy to raise money. It is a plot to get you to take your money and place it into their hands.

And it's a trick employed by almost every charismatic televangelist out there today, this hundred-fold kind of return. I have a couple verses for those who are pastors, real pastors. Titus 1, holding fast, this is what elders should do, the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.

Pastors and elders can't just be positive in their ministry. We stand for what we're for, not what we're against. Because churches like that are talked about in Revelation 2 and 3 in a not-so-positive light by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here Jesus, through his apostle Paul, tells pastors, tells elders, you teach what's true and you refute those who contradict. Why is refuting those who contradict so important? Many reasons, but Titus 1, verse 10 goes on to tell us why.

For there are many rebellious men, evil talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision. Why do you have to stand up for truth? Because the errorists are so plentiful. The errorists are so plentiful.

And what happens to those errorists? What's our approach? Ignore, leave alone, they'll run their course and no one else will ever talk about it anymore because they'll just kind of evaporate and dry up.

Maybe the government will get them, maybe the lawyers, maybe the senators, maybe President Obama will tax them. We'll let someone else take care of it. Titus 1, verse 11 says, these people must be silenced.

They must be silenced. Did you hear that? Titus 1, verse 11, you need to look that up. These kind of men, these deceivers, need to be silenced. They need to have their lip zipped. They need to shut up is what they need to do.

False teachers, all false teachers, especially word-faith teachers, need to shut their mouths. And so how do they have their mouths shut? Well, this is not some kind of physical shutting their mouths, but you need to have other godly elders at your local church, godly pastors, people who teach the truth and come along and say, these people are wrong and this is the biblical reason they are wrong.

These people, Titus 1, verse 11 would declare, are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of, here it comes, sordid gain. Show me a false teacher and I'll show you someone who's in it for money, for sex, for power, for prestige.

They are greedy. Show me a false teacher that needs to be silenced and I'll show you the money trail that's not too far behind. It's like the Pink Floyd song, Money. And then it says in Titus 1, 12, one of themselves, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

And here is a quote from a Cretan poet himself, Epimenides. And here this poet from the 6th century said, yeah, there's a lot of Cretans, there are liars and that they're evil beasts and they're lazy gluttons.

And Paul's basically saying, yeah, even your own poets know it's true. Verse 13, this testimony is true. For this cause we prove them severely that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth.

We have to make sure we're very, very careful that we don't run around following people. The Titus 1, 16 would say they profess to know God, but by their deeds, they deny him. They can say they love Jesus all they want.

They can have Hebrews 13, 8 written underneath the communion table all they want. But the text says their deeds deny him being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed. Their works are not admirable.

Their works are not noble. Their works are not applaudable. Their works are worthless. They are disobedient. They are detestable. The same word, they're worthless is translated in Romans 1 as depraved.

They have a depraved mind. But Timothy, Titus, local pastor, local elders, Titus 2, 1 says, But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. And so when the Bible says in James that God chose the poor of this world to be rich in faith, then what do these false teachers do with that?

What do they do in Matthew 8, 20? Jesus said to them, as I referred to earlier, The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. What do we do with Matthew 17, 27?

It says, But lest we give them offense, go to the sea and throw in a hook and take the first fish that comes up. And when you open its mouth, you will find a stater. Take that and give it to them for you and for me.

We don't have any money on us right now. We don't have the tax to pay. So let's do a supernatural event and we'll get that tax money. Jesus had not a lot of wealth, and those who followed him were not wealthy either.

Oh, maybe some followers are rich, but you are not going to get rich if you follow Jesus. And if you follow Jesus because you want to get rich, you have the wrong Jesus. You have the idle Jesus. You have a trinket Jesus.

You have some kind of little troll doll Jesus, some Barbie G .I. Joe Jesus. That's not the real Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible through his apostolic messengers would say, Hebrews 13, Let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have.

The Jesus of the Bible would say through his apostolic messenger Paul, Be free from the love of money, 1 Timothy 3 .3. The Jesus of the Bible, not the troll trinket Jesus doll Jesus, the real Jesus would say in 1 Timothy 6 .10, Through Paul the apostle, For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pang.

I go overseas, South Africa, India, other countries, and see how these false teachers have come in and told poor people, told third world country people, Give me what you've got and you'll become rich.

I say, number one, Shame on the people who want riches so much they'll give their money, and shame on the false teachers, times two, for teaching such a twisted, perverted, unhygienic gospel. No one can serve two masters, Jesus said in Matthew 6, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money. You cannot serve God and money. You can go to Mark chapter 10 and look at the rich young ruler and what he wanted, what Jesus demanded. Everywhere you look, you'll see that money, if not thought about properly, just gets in the way.

There's a problem that money gives, and that problem is it breeds self-sufficiency in the sinful heart. And what the Bible wants, what God wants, is not self-sufficiency, not self-dependency, but a full trust in the work of another Christ Jesus, the risen King.

And so when Kenneth Hagen has, you know, 250 radio stations that he's on, 12 ,000 graduates from his school, 400 ,000 subscribers to his magazine, selling millions of books, I'll tell you why he's doing that.

He's doing it because people are greedy and they'll buy into that stuff. The same reason they buy into Benny Hinn's nonsense. The same reason why they buy into Robert Tilton or Fred Casey Price or anyone else.

Be careful when it comes to money. If you send money in for a gospel ministry on WV &E, it's above and beyond what you give to your local church, then I commend you. Excellent, well done, you can do that.

But if you're sending money in to get rich, you need to stop that right now. You need to stop sending money in to Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton, or any other fool that's on the station, not this station, but some radio station, you get and you think you're going to get money.

Don't do that. The second problem I have with Word Faith Movement is they have a distorted definition of faith. First, money they get wrong, then secondly, faith they get wrong. By the way, there's nothing wrong with money, it's inherently neutral.

Same thing with sex, it's not good or bad, it is just how it's used. And so sex can be for good or it can be for ill or sin. And the same thing with money, we need money, God needs, excuse me, we need money to transact, make transactions for life.

Now let's move to the second one, what about faith? What about faith? Faith is not a force. Faith is not some kind of empty canister. Faith is not some kind of thing that you can get anything you want through it, like health or wealth or success.

It's not some kind of force that's released when you let it be released with your spoken word, somehow discharging power through your audible words. That's all nonsense. That's all going back to E .W. Kenyon, that's the whole Copeland-Hagan ridiculousness.

Copeland says, quote, all it takes is seeing or visualizing what you need, whether physical or financial, two, staking your claim on scripture, and three, speaking it into existence. That is unbiblical.

Paul Yonghee Cho says the same kind of thing, this occult type of deal. Here's how it works. First, make a clear-cut goal, then draw a mental picture, vivid and graphic to visualize success, then incubate it into reality, and finally speak it into existence through the creative power of the spoken word.

They have this theme, speak something into existence. Kenneth Hagan, this spoken word releases power, power for good and power for evil. That's all wrong. Fred Casey Price, now this is a shocker, but God has to be given permission to work in this earth realm on behalf of man.

Yeah, that's more than a shocker, Price, that is blasphemy. Back to Price, yes, you are in control. So if man has control, who no longer has it? God. When God gave Adam dominion, that meant God no longer had dominion.

So God cannot do anything on this earth unless we let him or give him permission through prayer. Found in the book-burning book worthy of burning prayer, do you know what prayer is and how to pray? The Word Study Bible, page 1178.

Now that panders to the flesh, certainly. It panders to the pride of man. It panders to the autonomy of man. We will not have this king rule over us. And when it comes to force of faith released by words, you ought not to believe these guys.

Do not believe the ladies. You ought not to say to yourself, I can somehow control God, and I use faith as some kind of powerful force. It's a conductive force. It's a powerful force. It contains, you know, faith needs to have a container.

No, faith is not a force. Faith is not some kind of spiritual law. One man said, Charles Capps, here essentially is what God did. God filled his words with faith. He used his words as containers to hold his faith and contain that spiritual force and transport it out there into the vast darkness by saying, light be.

That is a lot different than the biblical concept of pistis, P-I-S-T-S, are the word for faith. What does the Bible say about faith? When Jesus said, have faith in God, what did he mean by that? When he asked the people, do you believe that I'm able to do this?

What did he mean by that? In Acts chapter three, faith in the name of Jesus, by faith in the name of Jesus, this man you see who is made strong. What does that mean? What does it mean in Hebrews 11? By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.

What does Hebrews 11 say? Let's let the Bible define faith. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean faith is words or a container of the faith?

No, if you think of faith, I'd like you to have a few different definitions from some biblical scholars. First is from Vine's expository dictionary. To believe, also to be persuaded of, and hence to place confidence in, to trust, signifies in this sense of the word, reliance upon, not mere credence.

George Zemeck said, faith is man's response to God, characterized by a totally dependent entrustment and demonstrated through a persistent commitment to obedience. Jane Ebor said, faith is a living, living, deliberate confidence in the grace of God, so sure that it would die a thousand times for its trust.

Or Simon Kistemacher, faith in God through Jesus Christ is a certainty that flows from our hearts, emanates from our minds, and translates into deeds. Vibrant faith of word and deed, spoken and performed out of love for God and for our neighbor, saves us.

It saves us. And this faith, friends, has an object. This faith isn't some kind of container, some kind of beaker, some kind of glass, some kind of two-liter deal. This faith has an object, and this faith turns away from self and looks to the object of his or her faith, who is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, the God-man. This is Mike Abendroth. It is No Compromise Radio here on WV &E 760, or you can go to www .nocompromiseradio .com. Josh McDonald, the executive director for No Compromise, has got a new website, a new look to it, so you might want to go there.

You can go to iTunes and get on the iTunes download. We'd love to have you write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. Word faith teachers, you need to stand up and teach the truth, friends. Jesus Christ is King.

Jesus Christ is God. And don't fall for these kind of men like Copeland Hagen, Fred K .C. Price, Robert Tilton, and the list goes on. God bless you.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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