bluto - I wasn't aware that you wrote all of that stuff. I was just commenting on what you linked to. Sorry if I offended you, but I've seen a lot of these talking points before and have been rebutting them for many years.
Let's start with this claim:
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 God's will to heal the sick (12/92); believers have a legal and redemptive right to divine healing (1/93)
Yes, Kenneth Hagin said those things (except for the part about him not believing in sickness and disease), but I don't see how you can characterize them as heresy, unless you define heresy as any teaching you don't agree with. Most people consider heresy to be a teaching that violates essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and none of those do.
Then there's this:
"The Positive Confession movement is a charismatic form of Christian Science."
First of all, the movement is the Word of Faith Movement, or the Faith Movement, not the Positive Confession Movement. Kenneth Hagin never taught positive confession, but the faith confession of the Word of God. You don't just arbitrarily decide what you want and confess it to be yours. You have to have a biblical basis for it in order to have biblical faith. Also, the Word of Faith has ZERO to do with Christian Science, which came from New Thought. The Word of Faith teaching holds to all of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, while Christian Science and New Thought don't.
Next we have this:
Hagin went a step further, from heresy to blasphemy, when he said, "The believer is as much an incarnation of God as Jesus Christ"
This statement wasn't teaching deification, but was emphasizing the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Hagin was actually quoting Kenyon here, and when Kenyon said it in his book "The Father and His Family" he was using the word "incarnation" as a reference to God the Holy Spirit indwelling our bodies of flesh, and that's what "incarnation" means - God in the Flesh. https://goo.gl/X5Y8av
There's no heresy or blasphemy there .... just an out of context quote to misrepresent the meaning behind what he was saying.
Then there's this:
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.
When a person delegates authority, that doesn't mean that they relinquish all of their authority. It means that they entrust to others certain tasks to carry out under their authority. That's Management 101. It doesn't have anything to do with the sovereignty of God. It's just a teaching on how Jesus, the head of the church, is overseeing the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
Then there's the 30 year old allegations of Hagin plagiarizing Kenyon, which are easily debunked by reading what Kenyon's website says about the matter. Plagiarism of EW Kenyons
I'm not even half way through the page, but in the interest of time and brevity I'll leave it at that. I think you get the idea.
Let's start with this claim:
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 God's will to heal the sick (12/92); believers have a legal and redemptive right to divine healing (1/93)
Yes, Kenneth Hagin said those things (except for the part about him not believing in sickness and disease), but I don't see how you can characterize them as heresy, unless you define heresy as any teaching you don't agree with. Most people consider heresy to be a teaching that violates essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and none of those do.
Then there's this:
"The Positive Confession movement is a charismatic form of Christian Science."
First of all, the movement is the Word of Faith Movement, or the Faith Movement, not the Positive Confession Movement. Kenneth Hagin never taught positive confession, but the faith confession of the Word of God. You don't just arbitrarily decide what you want and confess it to be yours. You have to have a biblical basis for it in order to have biblical faith. Also, the Word of Faith has ZERO to do with Christian Science, which came from New Thought. The Word of Faith teaching holds to all of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, while Christian Science and New Thought don't.
Next we have this:
Hagin went a step further, from heresy to blasphemy, when he said, "The believer is as much an incarnation of God as Jesus Christ"
This statement wasn't teaching deification, but was emphasizing the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Hagin was actually quoting Kenyon here, and when Kenyon said it in his book "The Father and His Family" he was using the word "incarnation" as a reference to God the Holy Spirit indwelling our bodies of flesh, and that's what "incarnation" means - God in the Flesh. https://goo.gl/X5Y8av
There's no heresy or blasphemy there .... just an out of context quote to misrepresent the meaning behind what he was saying.
Then there's this:
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.
When a person delegates authority, that doesn't mean that they relinquish all of their authority. It means that they entrust to others certain tasks to carry out under their authority. That's Management 101. It doesn't have anything to do with the sovereignty of God. It's just a teaching on how Jesus, the head of the church, is overseeing the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
Then there's the 30 year old allegations of Hagin plagiarizing Kenyon, which are easily debunked by reading what Kenyon's website says about the matter. Plagiarism of EW Kenyons
I'm not even half way through the page, but in the interest of time and brevity I'll leave it at that. I think you get the idea.
Now, I understand all the talking points you have made on behalf of hagin and how they all fall right in line as if their "scripted." I'm also a little surprised that you did not mention hagin's great book "The Midas Touch." for good measure.
Now, you want to know what does offend me, the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dwbNvBq7eQ
You also said this: "There's no heresy or blasphemy there .... just an out of context quote to misrepresent the meaning behind what he was saying." In my original post I made it extremely clear about Jesus Christ going into hell and suffering there under Satan and his minions. Is this or is it not "blasphemy" of the highest order by hagin, copeland and many other wof teachers?
I find it interesting (to say the least) that 1 Peter 3:19 says, "in which also He/Jesus Christ went and made proclaimation to the spirits now in prison." That word "proclaimed" or "preached" means to publicly declare or to herald. What was Jesus "heralding" or "preaching?" The Apostle Peter says Jesus went to the Abyss and proclaimed His victory to the fallen angels imprisoned there. Read Colossians 2:15 where Jesus won and the cross triumphs over evil.
In other words, you have wof teachers teaching how Jesus went into hel and was tortured by Satan, beat up by Satan and as copeland stated "God the Father had enough and He "bellows" out "Enough" resulting in Jesus being born again in hell. The point is that you have Jesus Christ being a prisoner in hell when in fact he "Proclaimed" that the cross triumphs over hell. In short, your guys have it "butt backwards" like many other wof teachings. This is why I'm offended. Tell me honestly lancelot, do you think this "violates" any core essentials of the Christian faith?
IN GOD THE SON,
bluto