NAME IT AND CLAIM IT (PART III)

“Word of Faith Movement Is a Spiritual Mushroom Cloud”

By Akin Ojumu

“Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons. A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the global climate, causing widespread famine.”

While the above statement, which I borrowed from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) website, is true, I think there’s something far more destructive, much more inhumane, and a lot more indiscriminate than nuclear weapons.

As far as lethal weapons go, nothing is more devastating than false teaching and false doctrines in my opinion. Whereas the greatest harm that nuclear weapons inflict is limited to the body, which is temporal, false doctrines take aim at the soul, and it is eternal. The promulgation of false teachings brings about ruin to people’s faith. Fallouts from the spread of false teachings can and do result in spiritually deadly outcomes.

I like the way Tim Challies enunciated the dangers of false doctrine.

“False doctrine confuses truth and error and fails to distinguish between what God has revealed in his Word and what has been fabricated by men or demons. It undermines godliness by promoting what is novel or speculative in place of what is true. False doctrine allows sin to take root in our hearts and minds and works its way out in our lives. Propagated false doctrine weakens a church’s defense, providing an easy opening for more false teachers to spread through the congregation. False doctrine elevates ungodly leadership, permits false teachers, removes God’s blessing, debilitates the church for times of difficulty, and weakens her for the future.”

One of the deadliest false doctrines of modern times is the Word of Faith movement. It’s a mushroom cloud of heretic beliefs that has spread across Christian denominations all over the world causing untold mayhem and incalculable disaster. Pentecostal Christianity in Africa is infused with the beliefs of the Word of Faith Movement. In fact, there’s no Church in Nigeria that is not, in one way or the other, shaped and corrupted by the false teachings of the Word of Faith movement.

Yet, what a vast majority of Christians fail to realize is that the Word of Faith movement is, in fact, an offshoot of the New Thought movement, which is a metaphysical belief system that has its origin in the occult.

Last time, we discussed two of the three core tenets of the New Thought movement. First is the belief that humans are divine. This is the idea that we are “Little Gods” and therefore we are equal with the Almighty God.

The second is the Law of Attraction which is the belief that by positive thinking and positive confession, we can create our own realities and bring into existence whatever it is we desire. The other word for this is Manifesting; which refers to the practice of bringing something into reality through focused thoughts, beliefs, and visualizations. The fundamental idea is that positive thinking attracts desired outcomes.

The third core tenet of the New Thought movement is progressive revelation.

3) Revelation is Progressive

In New Thought, “Truth” is viewed as a matter of continuing revelation, and no one leader or institution can declare with finality what the nature of truth is.

It’s on the basis of the falsehood that revelation is progressive that false apostles, fake prophets, and faux teachers of all shapes and sizes have emerged purporting to receive direct revelation from God. Not only does God speak to them directly outside of the Bible, but some of them have also told cock and bull stories of drinking tea with God. There are even others who have been to Heaven for 30 days to receive lectures about the mysteries of God.

Because the pioneers of the Word of Faith Movement were taught and greatly influenced by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, the metaphysical folk healer who founded the New Thought movement, the teachings and ideas of the New Thought are the doctrinal pillars on which the Word of Faith movement stands. New Thought ideologies dressed up in Christianese are the core beliefs of a vast majority of supposedly Christian denominations around the world today. The tenets of New Thought are what is preached in Churches in Africa, especially in Nigeria.

But guess what, the ideologies of the New Thought and Word of Faith movements are of demonic origin and diametrically opposed to Scripture. The Bible is a closed Canon. Revelation is not progressive and there are no new revelations being given to any man today. As Christians, the Scripture is all we need to walk uprightly before God. If you want to hear God, read your Bible. If you want God to speak to you audibly, read the Bible out loud.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

2 Peter 1:3

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.”

Jude 1:3

“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Revelations 22:18-19

“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”

The idea that humans are divine is the Devil’s oldest lie. There’s nothing about human beings that makes us equal with God. Only one Person has both been fully man and fully God all at the same time. And that’s the Lord Jesus. Those who say they are gods are of their father, the Devil.

There’s nothing biblical about the “name it, claim it, blab it, grab it” doctrine. It’s the deceptive babbling of morally corrupt souls. Decreeing, declaring, and commanding is a waste of saliva. Anyone who claims he can create his own reality by his thoughts and words is most certainly living in an alternate reality of his own making.

My prayer is that God will open the eyes and minds of my friends who still hold on to the demonic beliefs of the Word of Faith movement.