After the general introduction Hank Hanegraaf proceeds to tell a very interesting story in a chapter titled, “Turning Truth into Mythology.” The story presented in this chapter presents a view of what Christianity actually looks like through the Word of Faith (hence WoF) lens. From the very beginning, it presents a very distorted view of Christianity starting with creation. For instance, after the fall of man, the text says this:
God, in a flash, had become the greatest failure of all time. Not only had He lost his top-ranking angel, as well as at least a third of His other angels, but now, in addition, He had lost the first man He had ever created, the first woman He had created, and the whole earth and the fullness therein! (page 4)
Quite distorted, isn’t it? God is portrayed as a failure and it really calls into question His sovereignty. When God is no longer sovereign, then the religion is no longer truly theistic. The religion of WoF is more akin to henotheism since it attributes deity (little ‘g’ in this case) to man.
After reading the chapter “Turning Truth into Mythology” I couldn’t help but shake my head at the unbelievable world-view presented here. If a person takes all that the Faith teachers doctrine as truth, what is presented isn’t even Christianity at all.
Chapter 3 is entitled, “Cast of Characters.” Here Hanegraaf starts by talking about where the WoF teachings originated and goes further into today’s popular teachers. He references Essek W. Kenyon at the very beginning as the father of the Word of Faith movement. Hanegraaf and Justin Peters have both said that E.W. Kenyon was mild compared to some of the later WoF teachers. Hanegraaf goes on to describe other teachers. I found the research on the teachings of Kenneth Copeland to be especially bizarre:
Or compare Copeland’s teaching that God is six feet two inches to six feet three inches tall, weighs about two hundred pounds, and has a hand span of about nine inches with Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s statement that if you were to see God today, “you would see him like a man in form–like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man.” (page 25)
Like I said, theism is losing ground in this world-view.
Some of the other characters that were described didn’t shock me since I already knew about a lot of the information presented (such as Benny Hinn and Todd Bentley). Since I heard about the Lakeland Revival last year I have done quite a bit of research on Bentley. In my honest opinion, Todd Bentley is a very deceived person and has taken a lot of false teachings (and not to mention false visions like the “Emma” angel) hook, line, and sinker. I think that the terrible things that have happened to him and others (such as Bentley kicking a man in the stomach that had stage 4 colon cancer) are a result of bad doctrine.
So far so good. I like the book and I highly recommend it to anyone studying this movement.
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May 7, 2009 at 18:47
Deptford Dan
Hank Hanegraaf refers to Benny Hinn’s statement that Adam could fly, even to the Moon. Evidently, according to Benny, Adam had to be able to do what all the animals and birds could do if he was to have dominion over them – so he could fly like the birds. I wonder if he laid eggs!