Kenneth E. Hagin (1917-2003) General Teachings/Activities By Biblical Discernment Ministries - Tongues-speaking charismatic Kenneth E. Hagin died September 19, 2003 at the age of 85. (Because his influence in charismatic circles will never die, and because his son and grandson carry on with Kenneth Hagins teachings, this report will remain posted.) He was well known as the father of the Word-Faith/Positive Confession movement. (See endnote for a detailed description of the Hagin ministry empire.) In his The Word of Faith magazine, Hagin taught the following heresies: Receiving healing, just as receiving salvation, is simply a matter of appropriating what already belongs to us (6/90); healing is included in the gospel (8/92); God does not afflict people with sickness and disease (12/90); he (Hagin) went to heaven and talked with his sister (6/91); Jesus appeared to him in a vision in 1950 (8/91); he once went to hell in an out-of-body experience (9/91); he does not believe in sickness and disease (7/92); it is always Gods will to heal the sick (12/92); believers have a legal and redemptive right to divine healing (1/93). Hagin says: Your confession of faith in Gods Word will bring healing or whatever it is you need from God into the present tense and make it a reality in your life! (12/92). (Reported in the 2/1/93, Calvary Contender.) - As the name Word-Faith implies, this movement teaches that faith is a matter of what we say more that whom we trust or what truths we embrace and affirm in our hearts. A favorite term in the Word-Faith movement is positive confession. It refers to the Word-Faith teaching that words have creative power. What you say, Word-Faith teachers claim, determines everything that happens to you. Your confessions, that is, the things you say -- especially the favors you demand of God -- must all be stated positively and without wavering. Then God is required to answer (Charismatic Chaos, p. 281). Word-Faith believers view their positive confessions as an incantation by which they can conjure up anything they desire: Believe it in your heart; say it with your mouth. That is the principle of faith. You can have what you say (Charismatic Chaos, p. 285). - Word-Faith is the fastest-growing movement within the professing church. It has involved two distinct but closely related factions: the Peale/Schuller-Positive/Possibility thinkers, with their roots in New Thought, and the Hagin/Copeland Positive Confession and Word-Faith groups, which have their roots in E.W. Kenyon, William Branham, and the Manifest Sons of God/Latter Rain Movement. In Hagins book, Having Faith in Your Faith, he teaches that anyone can develop universal laws of faith to get what he wants. Hagin teaches that for a pastor or anyone to drive a Chevrolet instead of a luxury car isnt being humble, thats being ignorant of Gods law of prosperity that works for whoever you are, saint or sinner. Having faith in your faith is a far cry from what Jesus taught: Have faith in God. [Other Hagin books that clearly detail his theology are How to Write Your Own Ticket with God (Tulsa: Faith Library, 1979) and Godliness is Profitable (Tulsa: Faith Library, 1982).] Hagin claims Jesus told him, If anybody, anywhere, will ... put these [positive confession] principles into operation, he will always have whatever he wants from Me or God the Father (Charismatic Chaos, p. 281). - In an early-1990s edition of his magazine, The Word of Faith, Hagin clearly delineated his heresy of positive confession. The article was entitled, You Can Have What You Say: Often you create your own negative situations yourself with wrong thinking, wrong believing, and wrong speaking. So start believing according to Gods Word. Then begin making positive confessions of faith and victory over your life. ... You will never receive anything from God beyond the words you speak. ... If you dont like what you have in life, then begin to change the way you are thinking, believing, and speaking. Instead of speaking according to natural circumstances out of your head, learn to speak Gods Word from your spirit. Begin to confess Gods promises of life and health and victory into your situation. Then you can begin to enjoy Gods abundant life as you have what you say! This was not a slip of the tongue or some new doctrine. This is at the heart of the Positive Confession (PC) movement today, also known as the name-it-and-claim-it gospel. The Positive Confession movement is a charismatic form of Christian Science. This can be substantiated by simply comparing the similarities in their common beliefs. Positive Confession is basically warmed-over New Thought dressed in evangelical/charismatic language. (Other well-known PCers besides Hagins most successful protégé, Kenneth Copeland, are Charles Capps, Frederick K.C. Price, Robert Tilton, and David Yonggi Cho. Many of them are graduates of Hagins RHEMA Bible Training Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.) - Hagin went a step further, from heresy to blasphemy, when he said, The believer is as much an incarnation of God as Jesus Christ (Hagin, The Incarnation, The Word of Faith, 12/80, cited in Christianity in Crisis, p. 175,397). He has also said, If we ever wake up and realize who we are, well start doing the work that were supposed to do. Because the church hasnt realized yet that they are Christ. Thats who they are. They are Christ. This is a gross heresy. The Lord Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh. He is the eternal Son of God. Nowhere is the believer said to be an incarnation of Almighty God. The Lord Jesus Christ performed miracles to demonstrate that He was the Son of God, the promised Messiah. No Christian can do the things that Christ did. Not one Pentecostal preacher has ever been able to perform the miracles that Christ performed. It is blasphemous confusion to claim that the believer is an incarnation of God like Christ was. - Hagin obviously did not believe God is sovereign. Jesus, according to Word-Faith theology, has no authority on earth, having delegated it all to the church. He developed this point in his book The Authority of the Believer (Tulsa: Faith Library, 1979). And though most Word-Faith advocates would affirm the personality of the Holy Spirit, their teachings, in effect, depersonalize Him by consistently speaking of Him as a power to be drawn upon rather than it is we who are to be His instruments (Charismatic Chaos, p. 267). - When one starts believing that he is Christ, with the power of Christ to create reality, the stories become ludicrous. Surely Hagin had the most unusual story of all. He said that when he was younger and still single, God led him to break off a relationship with a woman by revealing to him that she was morally unfit. Hagin claimed God miraculously transported him out of church one Sunday, right in the middle of the sermon. Worst of all, Hagin was the preacher delivering the sermon! (Charismatic Chaos, p. 49.) - In How to Write Your Own Ticket with God, Hagin saw a vision of Jesus, and said to Him, Dear Lord, I have two sermons I preach concerning the woman who touched Your clothes and was healed when You were on earth. I received both of these sermons by inspiration. (Emphasis added.) Later, Hagin quoted what Jesus told him in reply: You are correct. My Spirit, the Holy Spirit, has endeavored to get another sermon into your spirit, but you have failed to pick it up. While I am here, I will do as you ask. I will give you that sermon outline. Now get your pencil and paper and write it down. (Emphasis added.) Hagin claimed to have received numerous visions, as well as eight personal visitations from Jesus (see below). Hagin wrote, The Lord Himself taught me about prosperity. I never read about it in a book. I got it directly from heaven (How God Taught Me About Prosperity, Tulsa: Faith Library, 1985). That claim, of course, is a lie. (Charismatic Chaos, p. 268.) [Hagin also claimed that he knew that Paul wrote Hebrews because Jesus appeared to him (Hagin) and told him so!] Hagin claimed that of the eight times Jesus appeared to him, seven times Jesus was barefoot; the other time Jesus was wearing Roman sandals, and came into Hagins room, sat down by his bedside, and talked with him for about 30 minutes. During that time, Jesus allegedly taught Hagin how to be led by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Hagin described Jesus as 511 tall and weighing about 180 pounds. This is of course impossible (cf. 2 Cor. 5:16). If the resurrected, ascended, glorified Christ chose to visit Hagin for a midnight chat, He would not be wearing sandals, and Hagin would be toast (3/4/96, Christian News, p. 12). - Other examples of Hagins false teachings (Source: Hagin Drunk In The Spirit, David Cloud, 10/4/98, FBIS report): (a) Hagin claimed that his teaching was given to him by God, but in fact he plagiarized heavily from the writings of Kenyon (1867-1948). D.R. McConnell, in his book A Different Gospel, documents this with pages of comparisons proving beyond question that Hagin plagiarized Kenyons writings. McConnell introduces this section of his book by saying: Hagin has, indeed, copied word-for-word without documentation from Kenyons writings. The following excerpts of plagiarisms from no less than eight books by E.W. Kenyon are presented as evidence of this charge. This is only a sampling of such plagiarisms. Many more could be cited. (b) Hagin taught that Christs physical death did not remove sin. Rather, it was Christs alleged spiritual death and struggles in hell that removed sin. Hagin taught that Christ was sent to hell and there struggled against Satan and demons, and by his victory over them was born again. This is heresy of the greatest sort. The Bible plainly states that we are redeemed by Christs death and blood (Acts 20:28; Heb. 9:14; 10:10). The atonement was finished on the cross. When Christ dismissed His spirit from his body, He cried, It is finished (John 19:30). The Lord Jesus Christ was not born again; He was never lost. He bore our sin, but He was never a sinner. He was never tormented in hell by Satan and the demons. Nowhere does the Bible say that Satan is in hell or that he has any influence in hell. One happy day in the future, Satan will be bound for 1,000 years in the bottomless pit (Rev. 20:1-3) and ultimately he will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10), but nowhere does the Bible say Satan is the master of hell. (c) Hagin claimed he was guided by alleged visitations of angels and of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His book I Believe in Visions describes eight of these. The seventh occurred December 12, 1962. Hagin claimed the Lord prophesied to him in this visitation that He would soon begin to move among all denominations to bring them into a full salvation and into the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ told him that he would play a part in this ecumenical miracle revival. (A similar prophecy was given to David DuPlessis by Smith Wigglesworth in 1936. The ecumenical-charismatic movement, which has since swept through the Roman Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant denominations, would appear to be a fulfillment of these prophecies. DuPlessis was the first to carry Pentecostal experiences to the Roman Catholic Church. He was the only Pentecostal to attend Romes Vatican II Council in the mid 1960s.) (d) Hagin taught a health-prosperity gospel. He wrote: Like salvation, healing is a gift, already paid for at Calvary. All we need to do is accept it. All we need to do is possess the promise that is ours. As children of God, we need to realize that healing belongs to us (Hagin, Healing Belongs to Us, p. 32). He further said: God is glorified through healing and deliverance, not sickness and suffering (Hagin, The Key to Scriptural Healing, p. 17). Hagins claims do not match reality, though. A few years ago he claimed that he hadnt been sick in 60 years, but actually he had several cardiovascular crises, one lasting six weeks (and the final crises being his cause of death). (e) Hagin claimed that the Lord spoke to him in a vision in 1959 with the words: If you will learn to follow that inward witness I will make you rich. I will guide you in all the affairs of life, financial as well as spiritual (Hagin, How to Be Led by the Holy Spirit). In an article How God Taught Me about Prosperity, Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ taught him not to think that it is wrong to have riches. Allegedly Christ told him not to pray about money anymore; that is, the way youve been praying. CLAIM WHATEVER YOU NEED. Christ allegedly further taught Hagin that he had personal angels who could be commanded to do his bidding. Hagin said Christ told him in 1963 that the angels were waiting for his command to provide his material desires: They are waiting on you to give them the order, just as the waitress cannot do anything for you until you give her the order (Hagin, I Believe in Visions, p. 126). [Wasnt it then exceedingly contradictory and hypocritical that at least 20 minutes of Hagins meetings were given over to fund raising?] - Here is just a sample of some of the direct revelations and/or direct anointings Kenneth Hagin claimed to have received from the Lord. (All quotes from The Word of Faith magazine.): (a) ... You have learned faith both through My Word and by experience. Now go teach my people what Ive taught you. Go teach My people faith. These words, spoken years ago by the Head of the Church to Rev. Kenneth E. Hagin, have never lost their sense of divine urgency, Decades have passed, and that heavenly commission still stands (11/96). (b) In March 1945 ... On Sunday afternoon I was lying on the living room floor. The Holy Ghost said, When youre in your sixties, the two main thrusts of your ministry will be radio and the printed page (11/96). (c) Then almost twenty years later in 1963, during an unusual time of prayer at a meeting in Houston, the Lord told me four things to do: Go to neutral places to hold my own All Faiths Crusades and invite everyone to come; put all my teachings from my daytime teachings on tape; and get on the radio and teach -- dont preach (11/96). (d) Waves of Gods glory swept through the sanctuary, and people broke out in Holy Ghost laughter or dancing in the Spirit. Then Brother Hagin began laying hands on various people in the audience, telling them to Be blessed! He was operating under such a strong anointing that ENTIRE ROWS OF PEOPLE WOULD FALL UNDER THE POWER OF GOD when Brother Hagin touched the first person in the row -- or at times just walked by the row! Afterwards, Brother Hagin began to close the service -- but the Holy Ghost arrested him, striking him dumb or mute by the power of God! For the next hour, Brother Hagin, unable to speak himself, walked throughout the audience, handing various ministers the microphone so the minister could speak as the Lord led him. But the moment Brother Hagin gave the microphone to someone, THAT MINISTER WAS EITHER STRUCK DUMB, FELL UNDER THE POWER OF GOD, OR WAS OVERCOME BY HOLY GHOST LAUGHTER (5/96, Description of a meeting conducted by Kenneth Hagin at the Winter Bible Seminar 96 on the RHEMA campus). [Hagin had been in the center of the current Laughing Revival. It was during a Rodney Howard-Browne crusade at Hagins church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that Vineyard Pastor Randy Clark received the anointing which he subsequently carried to Toronto.] (e) One morning at a recent Holy Ghost Meeting, the Lord asked me a question ... The Lord said to me, Do you think Id ask you to do something that I wouldnt be willing to do? (10/96). (f) The Lord spoke audibly to him and told him when was the proper time to applaud (clap) during a worship service: The Lord didnt say, Dont ever clap. He was explaining the right and wrong time to clap. ... Im only telling you what the Lord told me! (10/96). - Hagin displayed his hyper-charismatic theology on a regular basis in his The Word of Faith magazine. The following excerpts are from Hagins From the Archives series. This is presented as further proof of the nonsense emanating from charismatic pulpits today.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:42:33 +0000
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