Session 3 - Heretical Heroes

Kootenai Church

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Good morning. Good to see you all again. And thanks again for the wonderful hospitality and for digging in last night.

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This session is titled Heretical Heroes. That would be a simple way to put it. I'm going to take you through three and help us understand the roots of the prosperity gospel movement.

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And a lot of the branches today, this is where things get conflated and sometimes confusing, is like anything that the devil concocts, it will have many different faces.

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Like a tree, you can imagine all the different branches, or a river system with all of its tributaries.

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That is in a way, visually, what the prosperity gospel, the charismatic movement, what is now the new apostolic reformation, and the third wave, and a lot of these historical branches have become or have turned into, and we'll go into that.

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Let me pray, and then we'll jump in together. Father, as we walk through some elements of history and the roots of the prosperity gospel movement, we know very well that even though some players have come along in the last hundred years to muddy the waters and to confuse and lead people astray, that the prosperity gospel and every lie from hell goes all the way back to the garden when the serpent said to Eve, in effect, did you really say?

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Your word was clear, your commands were clear for Adam, for Eve, and the serpent sought to undermine you in that.

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And that is where all this goes back to. We pray and ask that you would help us in our weaknesses, even our anxieties or our personal concerns.

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While we know we have a mandate to speak the truth and to be, in a way, your mouthpieces or your hands and feet as your body,

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Lord Jesus, we also know that you've got a good handle on all of this. We know that none of it is surprising to you, none of it's original, and while we may see something that appears new, there is an adversary who from the beginning has sought to tear down your word and replace it with lies.

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Help us to discern, to understand, to use history to help us be more faithful, more discerning, more vigilant, and even more hopeful in the present and the future, according to your will, in Jesus' name, amen.

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Modern proponents of the prosperity gospel and what has now morphed into a number of other movements, including the

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New Apostolic Reformation, will trace their roots to some historical heroes.

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Now they'll use the Bible and teaching and twisted hermeneutics and interpreting the Bible a certain way to prop up their belief system, but ultimately the prosperity gospel is rooted in people, what they would affectionately call their hall of generals or the generals of the faith, and they will use their ancestral ties, these heroes or these pillars of their faith, to support their modern day beliefs or their modern day teaching, and that they are representing

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God just now in a new generation, from Bethel praying down the spirit of William Branham, which is something that they've done before, to others like my uncle or even me growing up heralding

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Smith Wigglesworth as a general in the faith. Smith Wigglesworth was an old player who used to punch people and beat on people and say that he was really just knocking the devil out of them and he wasn't really trying to be rough with them, he was trying to be rough with their sickness or what the devil had put on them by way of infirmity, and he was a hero of mine.

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I used to think, wow, he is so aggressive and bold and courageous in his faith.

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I want to be just like Smith Wigglesworth. There was a photo frame in my house growing up.

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It started in the office at the church and ended up in our home office, and on it were photos of all of these historical heroes.

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There was A .A. Allen, there was Amy Semple McPherson, there was Katherine Coleman, there was Smith Wigglesworth, there was

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William Branham, and it was a photo frame that we thought was the

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Hall of Fame of preachers. And you picture today in various offices I've been in or some of the artwork currently we're concocting for our new offices at the church plant, and we think of the church fathers, we think of the reformers, we think of Martin Lloyd -Jones or Sproul or others, and when

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MacArthur goes into glory, him and others, as godly men die and they land the plane well, we think of them in that way.

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Well, it was exactly the opposite growing up, and these historical heroes gave us a foundation to stand upon.

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William Branham thought he was Elijah. His followers ended up keeping his body around, expecting a resurrection, and Wigglesworth, of course, beating on people and becoming infamous as the inspiration for Todd Bentley, who in today's world was banned from going to country.

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He's been pushed out of ministry in a lot of ways and keeps trying to come back, and he told grand stories of beating on old ladies and others to heal them.

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And so in this session, I want to walk you through three particular historical heroes of my former faith, and this will help you and I quantify where these things come from.

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It'll also take you on a few mental rabbit trails as you think, hey, I've heard of that, or doesn't

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Osteen teach that, or that's what, you know, Benny Hinn does, or that sounds a lot like Bethel nowadays.

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That's where that came from, and what this does is it helps us not be shocked or even worried that all of this is new, and well, this is novel, and well, what are we going to do?

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The simple truth is these are just new dogs, new faces with old tricks, and every generation,

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Satan just cycles through another crop of his agents.

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Do I think that they're all demon possessed? No. Do I think that they're all possessed or taken captive by the devil?

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No. Some of them, well -intentioned perhaps in the beginning and then veer off course, but others most certainly,

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I would say, are under the control of darkness. That would not be too far -fetched to say, one being

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Kenneth Copeland, who I think is incredibly dark and even could be considered demonic or demon possessed in the way that he operates so flagrantly, and you could just look at the eyes if you wanted to be subjective and say that doesn't look very normal, but then you can match the teaching and the bravado of it all and say that looks awfully close to what would be somebody under the control of darkness.

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The prosperity gospel has garnered unparalleled popularity. To give you an idea of this, and I'm sorry it's not on the screen, but visually

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I have a chart in front of me, and this is in the book Defining Deception that we had written a number of years ago.

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If I were to just take you through quick numbers from the year 1900 to the year 2000, in Africa there were 900 ,000 charismatics around the year 1900.

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In Asia, the demographic numbers at the time, and these are from good studies done, and Bruce Shelley has all of this in his book

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Church History in Plain Language. That was another book that changed my life, by the way. When I read that for the first time,

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I thought, wow, okay, this is not new. Like everybody knows this stuff. If you read a book on church history, got it.

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Okay, there's a whole bunch of people that have done research and come along before me. This is really helpful.

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Okay, so there's millions of people and good Christians that are aware of where this all comes from. I had never read a book on church history before.

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In Europe, none. Latin America, none. In North America, 0 .1 % of the population, and in the

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Oceania region, none. In the year 2000, 126 million adherents to the prosperity gospel in Africa, 134 .9

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million in Asia, 37 .6 million in Europe. Latin America, 141 .4

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million, the highest. North America, 79 .6 million.

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The Oceania region, 4 .3 million. What does that tell you?

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That tells you that over the course of 100 years, major influencers propagated the prosperity gospel both here in North America and around the world, making it, if not one of, the most dominant or fastest growing type of belief system.

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And obviously Roman Catholicism boasts over a billion. Islam, of course. But if you were to say in the quote -unquote evangelical space, nothing has grown faster or more aggressively globally like the prosperity gospel.

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In a significant way, that's vastly different than what

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Jesus promises. He tells us it's going to be a narrow road, a narrow gate.

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Few will find it. And apparently over about a hundred year span, hundreds of millions are finding it, whatever it is.

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Jesus said that if you want to follow him, you'll suffer. He promises that to his disciples.

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Paul then comes along in the epistles and makes it clear to Timothy and his faithful protégés in the faith that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus are going to be persecuted.

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So the explosion has to be accounted for by something.

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And what that is is the selling of what every fleshly carnal mind wants.

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Health, wealth, and happiness. The good life. What has become known as the

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American dream. It's the result of ear -tickling, people wanting teachers like this.

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It's also the result of biblical illiteracy, and people not knowing their Bible, and leadership failures as men of God don't stand up and don't rightly teach and preach, and popularity is sought.

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All of this was pioneered in many ways by certain characters. The first I want to take you through is

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Catherine Coleman. She's the first. And I've chosen these three because they were near and dear to the influence in the way that we did ministry, and I would say if you went to the root of every one of their ministries, you'd see everything today is tied back to some level of what they did, in some way, shape, or form they've influenced.

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Of all the generals of the faith, and the charismatic movement, and the prosperity gospel, none are more shrouded in mystery and confusion than Catherine Coleman.

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People aren't really sure what to do with her. Her father became the mayor of a small town, and he achieved his success in the community through old -fashioned hard work.

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She was born to Joe and Emma Coleman in Concordia, Missouri, and her father was the mayor.

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Interesting tie -in, she was obviously the most influential figure in the life of my uncle, who actually sold some story that wasn't true, that my grandfather was the mayor of Jaffa.

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He was not, I can assure you that. And good men did research, and even called city officials in Jaffa, and they said, nope,

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Costantinian was not the mayor of this town, ever, in our records. But her dad really was the mayor of a small town.

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He was a blue -collar guy, and ironically enough, he despised preachers. He used to say, yeah, they're just all in it for the money.

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And he wasn't going to church, but the Coleman girls were, and eventually they made their way to the altar, made a confession of faith, and soon they entered the spotlights of ministry.

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Through a series of events, she was offered the opportunity to preach her first sermon in a small town.

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And from this simple beginning, she launched her ministry, and before long, she was holding large services.

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And eventually in 1935, Catherine Coleman pitched her revival tent, if you will, in Denver, Colorado.

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After a few years of success there, she ended up making a critical mistake in her personal life, and spent the next three decades reinventing her public image.

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She had a bit of a blip on the radar of her life with a marriage issue, in addition to some of the antics that she begun to propagate.

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She developed a ministry partnership, and that was both in the tabernacle there in Denver, and then on the road with Burroughs Waltrip, a guy who she ended up getting involved with.

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He was a married pastor, and there was a lot of suspicion revolving around a potential affair with him.

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He divorced his wife, left his two sons in Texas, and he asked Catherine Coleman to marry him not long after, which she did in 1938.

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And as they attempted to forge a life together, Coleman soon realized that her power and fame were jeopardized by the public scrutiny over the marriage.

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And basically, people weren't comfortable with what had come of this alleged affair, and that it was tied to an alleged affair.

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It was bad for the PR. So eventually she left Burroughs and released a public statement that spiritualized her decision.

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There's a Missouri State historian, Amy Collier Artman, she did an in -depth biography on Catherine Coleman and on her use of PR and the public image of a faith healer, and this provides a glimpse for us into the sort of tactics that we see today.

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Very interesting. She writes, in a masterful reinterpretation of her life, Coleman chose instead to present in speech and print her decision to leave

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Waltrip as a difficult moment of submission, the yielding of a strong -willed woman to the relentless call of God on her life.

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In one particularly emotional message given towards the end of her life and captured on the recording titled,

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An Hour with Catherine Coleman, she recounted her decision to leave Burroughs -Waltrip.

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I can remember the day, she says, I remember the hour. At 4 p .m. on that Saturday afternoon, on a dead -end street,

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I surrendered everything. It was all settled. The Holy Spirit and I made each other promises.

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I spoke in an unknown tongue, and He took every part of me. I surrendered everything.

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Then, for the first time, I realized what it meant to have power. Coleman ended her story with the words,

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That afternoon, Catherine Coleman died. Her presentation of her death to self was simultaneously a powerful image of sacrificial submission and brilliant manipulation of her identity.

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She had spun the PR and done so spiritually. If the divorced Catherine Coleman was dead, the critics had nothing to work with.

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As she told it, she was no longer the disgraced divorcee, but a chastened and sanctified and consecrated vessel for God's Holy Spirit.

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With this reinterpretation of her persona, she was able to move beyond what should have been a career -ending mistake and even turn it out for her own benefit.

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Does any of this sound familiar yet? This is exactly the tactics that my uncle, in particular, uses through marriage failures, through alleged affairs.

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There were no photographers taking iPhone pictures of Catherine Coleman, but now we have those.

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There's more of that in the wild stories surrounding him and Paula White and others.

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All of it spiritualized and spun. Now, both of them stand on stages and say,

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We're just friends going to Rome, visiting the Vatican. We would never do something impure.

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We would never do such a thing. And people today buy it hook, line, and sinker. One, they're biblically illiterate and they've bought into it.

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But two, when decisions are spiritualized, even people who are discerning think,

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Well, we want to believe the best. Perhaps it's true.

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And perhaps we've all just been a little uptight. Few in Coleman's day could pack a stadium like she could.

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She provided entertaining music, displays of the miraculous, and kept the audience in balance with the right mixture of laughter and old hymns and entertainers and brilliant stories.

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It was laughter. It was tears. It was heartstrings. And to her credit,

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I will say that she didn't preach some of the heretical doctrines that were embraced by others in her time.

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But rather she opted for the picture of a more feminist entrepreneur type, the faith healer, who had this insider relationship with the

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Holy Spirit. She was in a way a product of her day and age at a time when women were fighting for equality.

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Her ministry primarily put on a show, taught an over -exaggerated view on healing, and sprinkled in basic gospel presentations with an altar call.

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Beyond all of those elements, the climax was always the offering.

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Her crusades were designed to make money. She did teach and present that if people would give to God, He would give them what they wanted.

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Coleman loved expensive things. She would often spend thousands of dollars shopping on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

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This area in Southern California became one of my favorite places to shop when I was working with my uncle.

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We would drive on a Monday, usually, and go to Beverly Hills. We would valet park.

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We'd go see Monsieur Bichon. We would go see Mr. Leon at the jewelry store. On the walls, back then when she was famous, you'd have

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Jessica Simpson and all of these other types that would be on the walls with their jewelry for the

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Grammys or some other awards show. Of course, in Monsieur Bichon's store, you'd have everyone from older presidents to presidents.

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I remember seeing Bill Clinton on a picture with him getting one of his suits tailored. The whole place was like going to a fashion show.

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He had hired models who would come and offer you orange juice or sparkling water while you got your clothes fitted.

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And I enjoyed that life. Who wouldn't? You would go and eat at the best restaurants, go enjoy food.

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Everybody just waits on you, and it's just next level. Well, Catherine Coleman would shop down there in the same way, and I didn't know that at the time.

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But the irony of driving from Southern Orange County on the beach where my uncle lived and where we had a home to Beverly Hills would be ballpark, an hour plus drive with some traffic mixed in, and we would listen to Catherine Coleman tapes or CDs that at the time my uncle's media team had redone so that he could listen to them.

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And then when the birth of the MP3 at that time became really popular before podcasts, we would listen to her the whole way there.

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And I was a driver also with my uncle, and so I would drive his G -Wagon Benz, and we'd go to Beverly Hills. And I didn't understand all this at the time, but you can imagine how fascinated

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I was as I read through Catherine Coleman's biographies for the first time and did research and said, wow, this all sounds eerily familiar.

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She fit the Hollywood scene quite well, and she was very much in her public ministry not fully trusted by many charismatic leaders and holiness

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Pentecostals because she never publicly demonstrated her ability to speak in tongues.

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And she actually refused to allow some tongue speaking in her services, a very odd mixture for her being in that world.

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Beyond all the controversy surrounding her personal life and her particular service structures, which my uncle copied verbatim, nothing raised more concerns than the documented research on her healing ministry.

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This is where it really comes to bear. Controversy erupted when a well -meaning doctor conducted a study to verify some of the healings that Coleman claimed had occurred in her meetings.

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Dr. William Nolan studied 25 people who had been declared healed at one of her services in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the results did not verify her claims at all.

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Two specific examples best illustrate the common embellishments and exaggerations that have become a mainstay in the modern healing movement and the prosperity gospel.

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One woman in Dr. Nolan's study was announced by Coleman as having been healed of lung cancer, but later it was confirmed the woman actually had

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Hodgkin's disease and was not healed at all. Another woman with a cancerous vertebrae tossed aside her braces and ran across the stage, much like they do or had done in my uncle's services on Coleman's command.

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The old, do something you could never do before, show the people how God has healed you. The crowds roared and she gushed with joy.

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The following day, the woman's vertebrae collapsed, and four months later, sadly, she was dead.

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And still, the question has to be asked, how could a woman who claimed to have had personal, audible, verbal communication from God be so unclear when it came to accuracy regarding healing?

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Well, it's simple, because none of it was real. Could God have healed someone?

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Sure. Could Jesus save people in these services? Of course. They don't belong to Catherine Coleman or anybody else, for that matter.

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The sheep belong to Christ. He can save, open eyes. He can draw whomever, however, but the truly saved don't stay in these places, and the truly healed are healed, and you'll know it.

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In the years that went on, it appears that Coleman distracted her audience from dwelling on her moral failures and her unconfirmed healings and her financial scandals by entertaining them with elaborate stories about her traveling adventures and other unusual and unverifiable healings.

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If you were to google YouTube footage of her crusade,

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May 3rd, 1975, in Las Vegas, you will find the perfect illustration of the

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PR tactics and the presentation and the aura and the hype surrounding her ministry in the same way you would see that with my uncle,

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Benny Hinn. They are nearly an exact match. Her ministry was a ladder for fame and power.

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She climbed it high during her time when women were desperate for equality, at the very best, to be fair.

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She was a woman who was disillusioned and wanted to make a name for herself, and found that in a

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Philippians 1 sort of pretense in ministry, but I'm of the mind that she fits into a completely different category of a woman who capitalized on feminism, used the

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Bible for her own gain, and took advantage of desperate people. If anything, she was delusional, speaking to a spirit that was not the

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Holy Spirit and entertaining truths that weren't true at all. The next figure is

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Oral Roberts. Oral Roberts lived from 1918 to 2009.

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Granville Oral Roberts pioneered the prosperity gospel and seed faith theology as it's known today.

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I call him a pioneer because he used tactics and strategies that very few had ever used, including media, in new and unique ways.

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He obviously got into the education world as well, launching Oral Roberts University to the degree that now, even as we speak,

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Oral Roberts' baseball team is in the Stillwater Regional, playing

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Oklahoma State, Washington, my alma mater, Dallas Baptist University.

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The idea that a faith healer of his caliber, and that's not a compliment, would have a university that the

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NCAA would now even take seriously and that has established itself is evidence that, generally speaking, if you can get the money to roll in, no one really cares what you're teaching.

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Unlike his predecessors, the facts surrounding his life and ministry are not filled with moral failures, and his teachings were crystal clear to everyone.

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Meaning, people aren't confused about Oral Roberts. It's all there. Whereas Katherine Coleman and people prior weren't as well documented, though some have done good research today,

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Oral Roberts, it was obvious. He was born in humble circumstances. He was the son of a preacher, and young Oral suffered from tuberculosis.

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At age 17, he claimed that God spoke to him personally and healed him. His own biography documents this life -changing moment this way.

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God said to him, he says, son, I'm going to heal you, and you're going to take my healing power to your generation.

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You are to build me a university based on my authority and on the Holy Spirit. Roberts was miraculously healed that night, he says, of both tuberculosis and lifelong stuttering.

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His call from God and supernatural healing marked the beginning of a miracle ministry. Not long after his dramatic claim of healing, he married

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Evelyn Lutman von Estock on Christmas Day 1938.

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He found his wife, and together they developed the theology that bankrolled the family business.

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History scholar Christopher Reed captures this moment in the obituary of Oral Roberts after his death in 2009.

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He says at the age of 29, he was a struggling part -time preacher with church pastorates in Oklahoma, and his college studies had not brought him a degree.

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He told the story of how he picked up his Bible, and it fell open to the epistle of 3 John. His eye caught verse 2, which read,

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I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

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He had not heard this verse before, and neither had his teacher wife, Evelyn, though both were the offspring of preachers.

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Roberts decided immediately that it was all right to be rich. The next day, he bought a

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Buick, and God appeared, he said, telling him to heal people. Roberts then added this aspect to his tent revival meetings, and months later in Enid, Oklahoma, he cured, he said, a woman, the use of whose hand had been impaired for 38 years.

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Do you notice the pattern of many of these characters as they have an experience that no one can verify?

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They talk to a deity that we're not sure of at all. Well, we would be,

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I would say, but others not, and they're told to do something that no one else is to do, just them, and they're going to do this special thing and have this special calling.

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Roberts didn't mince words when it came to his version of Jesus or the gospel. He boldly taught and defended his belief that Jesus' highest wish was for every believer to prosper materially, in their health as well, and to have happiness and perfect peace and power in the soul.

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He twisted the Bible to make his point, and he, in one of his books, tells his readers that Jesus said in 3

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John 1 -2, Beloved, I wish of all of all things that thou may prosper and be as in health, even as thy soul prospereth, when in fact it was just the

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Apostle John's loving way of greeting his readers at the time. There's a best -selling book in his era,

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If You Need Healing, Do These Things, that Oral Roberts wrote. The Miracle of Seed Faith, A Daily Guide to Miracles, and Successful Living Through Seed Faith.

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The desperate crowds could not get enough of his promises. They were unaware at the time, and unconcerned, his followers at least, as he mishandled the gospel of Jesus Christ in every single way.

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And Roberts didn't just use scripture -twisting tactics to build his prosperity gospel empire into a multi -million dollar machine.

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He was incredibly innovative. In 1963, he was able to leverage his

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Native American heritage to obtain a U .S. land grant for the property that he now built the university on.

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He built a 500 -acre campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I've already made mention of that.

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He also built a faith -healing hospital, or faith -based healing hospital, in 1981 called

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City of Faith. And his stated goal was to merge the power of prayer with science and medicine.

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The towering structure was built, and through the giving of ministry partners who donated $120 million in four years,

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Roberts told his partners about a face -to -face conversation he had with Jesus, where he was told that the ministry partners would give the money.

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This is very convenient. It would be as though Pastor Jim gets up here and says, God told me that y 'all are going to give the money to renovate the building, and that's what he told me, so today we're going to give, and you all assume that God has obviously mandated that.

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According to the letter that was forwarded by someone else, Roberts says he encountered

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Jesus at 7 p .m. as he stood in front of the City of Faith in South Tulsa.

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He said it was the second time he had met him, and in the letter Roberts told his partners, I felt an overwhelmingly holy presence all around me.

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When I opened my eyes, there he stood, some 900 feet tall. It's hard to say, because it's lunacy.

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Looking at me, his eyes, oh his eyes, it says. He stood a full 300 feet taller than the 600 foot tall

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City of Faith. There I was face -to -face with Jesus, the Son of the Living God. Roberts continued on,

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I have only seen Jesus once before. He stared at me without saying a word.

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Oh, I will never forget those eyes. He then reached down, put his hand under the

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City of Faith, lifted it, and said to me, see how easy it is for me to lift it? Roberts told his partners that he told

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Jesus he had taken City of Faith as far as he could. Jesus's reply, according to Oral Roberts, was,

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I told you at the beginning that you would not be able to build it yourself. I told you that I would speak to your partners, and through them

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I would build it. Roberts said that Jesus assured him that through the partners, the

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City of Faith would be finished. Very convenient. Whatever version of Jesus that Roberts saw that day, the 900 foot figure, had no power to sustain the supposedly divinely inspired hospital.

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The City of Faith only lasted eight years, and every year it was a financial disaster. At one point, he tried to recover the whole thing, claiming

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God said to him he would end his life if eight million dollars wasn't raised between January and March of 1987.

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The worried followers, that their beloved leader would die, began to send in money, and the money was raised.

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And despite his ability to manipulate the giving of his partners in the short term, the City of Faith then was sold to various investors as multi -purpose office space, and today it is called the

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Cityplex Towers. Roberts' teaching and outlandish claims created a legacy built on false teachings, false motives, and false information.

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He did not teach about God as described in the Bible. Instead, he developed his own definition of God, and it was based on his theology of healing.

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He wrote at one point of his healing theology, if God has ever healed one person, he will heal two.

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If he heals two, he will heal four. And if four, then eight. And if eight, he will heal all who believe.

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It's interesting math. Else you make him have healing compassion for one and not the other.

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Should that be done, he would not be God, but a man. No, you will not be able to say it is

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God's will to heal one and not his will to heal another. He is either a God of love, perfect love, or he is not

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God at all. Isn't that right? He wrote in his book,

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If You Need Healing, Do These Things. It's on page 23 of that old book. I have a copy of it. I had to search far and wide for it.

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Thankfully, it's not in strong circulation today. Roberts rejected the sovereignty of God in his healing theology and really in his overall general theology.

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He dismissed God as not being a God of perfect love if he didn't heal everyone. And that's blasphemy.

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Roberts claims to have raised dozens from the dead, including a baby in the middle of a service.

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And this claim was in the Associated Press as he tells a conference that he's raised people from the dead.

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And his son, Richard Roberts, is quoted saying,

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Right in the middle of my dad's sermon, a woman came running up to the platform with her baby in her arms, screaming,

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My baby has just died. My baby has just died. That child had died during the service. My dad had to stop in the middle of his sermon and lay hands on that child and that child came back to life again.

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Richard Roberts speculated that there were probably dozens and dozens, this is a quote, and dozens of documented instances of people who have been raised from the dead.

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And that was all proclaimed by Richard in 1987 on June 27th.

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That article was out in the New York Times. And to this day, the ministry provides no evidence of anyone being raised from the dead.

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But it sells and it raises the money and the attention that he was after.

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By the time his empire grew to its peak, he was making millions of dollars annually.

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He was upholding a lifestyle that prosperity preachers of today would seek to emulate.

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And aside from the obvious conclusions that one can draw concerning Roberts' credentials as a healer, it may be his lesser known teachings that inspired much of today's charismatic chaos.

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He taught seven rules of faith that will bring you what you want. Two of them are, go where the power is and lose yourself.

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He teaches that as well in his book, If You Need Healing, Do These Things. And what do people do today? They move to the revivals.

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So many people I talked to who have come out of this movement at one point or another had moved to Reading to be at Bethel or moved to Sacramento to be at Jesus Culture, or they've moved to somewhere in the

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South to be with some other faith healer. You go where the power is, and that is really the impetus for Bethel's Supernatural School of Ministry, where they tell people, come to us and receive what we have.

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Finally, Kenneth Hagen. He lived 1917 to 2003.

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Kenneth Hagen is widely known as the father of the Word of Faith movement. He's influenced today's richest preachers in countless ways, and Hagen, like every other general, claimed his teachings came directly from God as divine revelation.

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He is the inspiration for Kenneth Copeland. If I had to trace back today's prosperity preachers to each one of these characters,

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Catherine Coleman would be your obvious model for every kind of faith healer in their theatrics, including my uncle, spawning others.

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Oral Roberts, your prosperity gospel preachers, your big high dollar, high wealth, high influence, high society types.

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And Kenneth Hagen, your crazy Word of Faith types that make you wonder, how in the world do people buy into this stuff?

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And all you need to do is drive by Kenneth Copeland's giant cattle ranch in Fort Worth, or wherever he is out there in the boonies, and you will see this stuff works.

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Kenneth Hagen, in part a product of a predecessor,

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E .W. Kenyon, who long before televangelists were filling the airwaves with expensive suits and money -making promises,

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E .W. Kenyon developed a new cultish hybrid theology at the turn of the 20th century. The phrase he had coined was, what

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I confess, I can possess. He mixed the beliefs of Phineas Quimby and his hypnotizing new thought teachings with Christian teachings.

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Quimby's metaphysical philosophy taught that humans can use their mind to alter their reality through the power of confession.

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This is where all of this comes from. The problem with Kenyon's theology was that he changed biblical confession and its focus on sin and faith and the right belief about Christ.

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Romans 10 .9, if you believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. 1 John 1 .9, confessing sin results in Christ washing you clean of your sin.

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Instead, he taught people to confess their desire for temporal comforts like healing and material prosperity. According to E .W.

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Kenyon, God never planned that we should live in poverty, either physical, mental, or spiritual. He made Israel the head of the nations financially.

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When we go into partnership with Him, meaning God, and we learn His way of doing business, we cannot be failures.

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He will give you the ability to make your life a success. If I said that in a Joel Osteen voice, you'd be certain it was

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Joel. Much of what Kenyon taught sounds like a transcript of a

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Joel Osteen sermon. And this similarity is probably because Osteen was indirectly influenced by Kenyon's teaching as he grew up in the

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Word of Faith movement under his father, John Osteen, who was the pastor of the church, by the way, that now

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Joel leads. The following quote by E .W. Kenyon sounds like one of Osteen's television sermons.

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E .W. said, You will seldom rise above your words. If you talk sickness, you will go to the level of your conversation.

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If you talk weakness and failure, you will act it. You keep saying, I can't get work,

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I can't do this, and your words react to your body. Kenyon also taught confession always goes ahead of healing.

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Don't watch symptoms, watch the Word, and be sure that your confession is bold and vigorous. That is where a lot of this comes from.

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Kenneth Hagin comes from this family tree of theology. To build his platform of power, he used a dramatic conversion story filled with fantastical claims of supernatural experience.

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At the age of 15, he was dying of heart problems, and after a supernatural visit to hell on three separate occasions and one trip into glory,

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Hagin returned to his body and recovered from his disease. This is explained in one of his sermon resources titled,

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I Went to Hell from 1982. Quite a sermon title.

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Perhaps prophetic. He claimed that Jesus personally appeared to him eight times after his trip to hell over the course of several years.

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After several unsuccessful attempts to pastoring a local church, he left the pastorate and began his itinerant ministry, then launched his own radio program in 1967.

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By 1968, he had started his first magazine titled, The Word of Faith, which is still in circulation.

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He also founded Rhema Bible Training College in 1974. Just met a woman this past week.

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Her and her husband are at our church. They came to membership class. She is a graduate of Rhema Bible School. She grew up under Hagin's influence, and the

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Lord saved her. His teachings were spreading like wildfire, and he used all sorts of chaotic teaching and antics to draw people in.

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There's a helpful video posted on YouTube titled, Kenneth Hagin Pretends He is About to Preach, Acts Demon Possessed Instead, and it was put on YouTube by none other than Phil Johnson, so we thank you,

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Phil. Being drunk in the spirit, so -called, causing people to shake and convulse and act demon possessed,

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Kenneth Hagin put on a spectacle. He taught that Jesus was born again, that he had to be, among other things.

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All false teaching is deadly, but perhaps nothing was more openly blasphemous than his little god theology.

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This heresy teaches people to elevate their view of themselves, and that they too will be and are a god, a little god.

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Hagin wrote, the believer is as much an incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth.

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He taught that each person was, quote, created on terms of equality with God, and he could stand in God's presence without any consciousness of inferiority.

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God has made us as much like himself as possible. He made us the same class of being that he is himself.

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On and on it goes. His work of plagiarism was exposed by D .R.

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McConnell in his book on Hagin and on this false gospel and the word of faith movement.

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As D .R. McConnell, the book's titled A Different Gospel, he puts next to each other Hagin's writing and E .W.

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Kenyon's writing, and they are verbatim. Hagin being the original plagiarizer.

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His life and ministry were built on a foundation of sand, and unfortunately many preachers were influenced by his ministry and happy to copy his theology because it worked.

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I remember years, years later having a conversation with my own father, who

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I love very much and actively have good conversations with now, and we had launched a school in the 80s, he had,

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I was a kid, titled the Signs and Wonders School of Ministry. People would pay tuition and be taught how to do miracles.

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This was the original before Bethel was Bethel. My dad and uncle both had Signs and Wonders Schools of Ministry, and I remember curating the material years ago when

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I was working for my dad and my uncle, and I had the files and we're printing them.

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We were launching a new semester, and I remember seeing all of the material years later after researching all of this.

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I said to my father, did you study? Did you do this kind of thing actively, make it up yourself, look at the

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Bible, see it there, or did you read their books? How did you come to the place of teaching these things?

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And he said, Kost, I'll be honest with you. I'm an uneducated man. I love the

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Lord. I think I obviously made some mistakes, but you just did what they did.

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And I bought their books, and I bought the studies, and I bought their curriculum, and then I packaged it myself and presented, and it worked.

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That's what everybody wanted. They wanted Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagen. They loved this stuff, and that's what essentially people came to us for.

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I never thought, well, I'm a heretic, or this stuff is wrong. I thought everybody else was wrong, and everyone was crazy.

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I just had never studied. I didn't go to some Baptist school like you, you know. This is his exact words.

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He said, now, you know, I don't know what was true and what wasn't, or what. I just know that that's what a lot of us did.

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And interestingly enough, you can see the pattern, and I'm not excusing anyone here, just helping you understand the links, of even

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Joel Osteen using positive confession as the foundational piece to his ministry, as it was for his dad,

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John Osteen. John was a proud partner with Kenneth Hagen in making positive confession theology a formative part of the

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Osteen legacy. John Osteen is quoted saying,

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I think Brother Hagen is chosen of God and stands in the forefront of the message of faith.

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That was a taped interview on February 24th, 1982. These are the players that are now long gone, but still reign as influential.

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These were my heroes. They inspired the legacy that has continued, unfortunately, through my family and into the next generation.

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And all of that should fill us with two particular thoughts or feelings.

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Number one, gratitude. That the

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Lord would save any of us from where we were. That He would snatch us, like a brand snatched from the burning, and pull us out of what seems to pull so many in.

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And then it should also fill us with fear. A fear of the Lord and a fear for their souls, should they continue down this path unrepentant, rejecting the truth, because hell is the destination and has been the destination of those who have taught these things without repentance.

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An important piece of the prosperity gospel and its history that helps us understand there's nothing new under the sun.

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Thank God we're saved. Let me pray for us, and then we'll do a break, and do a seven -minute break, and jump in.

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Father, thank you for saving us. Thank you also for faithful church historians. Thank you for public record, even, perhaps in your common grace, allowing that there be ways in which your people can go and do research, use discernment, and while media can be so useful to the enemy in spreading false teaching, we can also use it to our advantage to pull quotes and to prop up your truth and show how weak, how blasphemous, and how empty these teachings truly are when compared to the glorious truth in your

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Word and your gospel. Bless our time as we shift gears in the next session, and thank you for your kindness and mercy upon us.