Got an illegal robo-call on my cell phone yesterday from “Prophet Manasseh Jordan” which was basically an appeal for donations.
Manasseh Jordan is the son of Bishop E. Bernard Jordan, and is linked to T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Steven Furtick, and Craig Groeschel of Life Church. There are wider linkages — Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, James Robison, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar — because they are all part of a much bigger Word Faith movement, a relatively recent offshoot of the old Pentecostal movement. All of them have worked with each other, at least indirectly, offering many kind words about each other’s ministries, each with varying styles and portions of the basic teaching.
It’s a false teaching, typically ridiculed as name-it-and-claim-it. It’s a sort of magical invocation, using spells to obtain desired ends. It is, at best, a half truth. Please note I don’t say it doesn’t work that way. Anything you really want bad enough is likely in your reach, but at what spiritual cost? People who believe they can verbally demand something and see it happen are typically operating off the basic principle of desire. That is, if you are obsessed with something which is honestly possible, your subconscious will steer you into decisions which tend to optimize the opportunities for that obsession. It works often enough simply because that’s the way the world is, for now. It’s a portion of the moral fabric of the universe, just enough to get by with it in the context. Missing many of the finer points of God’s Laws, what they promote is little more than a newer version of Pharisaical legalism with a softer tone. Even when they talk about “born again,” it’s a matter of what man can accomplish.
Do they really believe the churches in Macedonia, wracked by poverty, was somehow lacking faith? Paul said they were quite faithful, fully loaded with grace. They gave sacrificially, painfully depriving themselves of worldly goods their bodies needed in order to participate in the gospel. They never harvested a vast reward of more money, but form of riches which ignored this world. They understood nailing the flesh to the Cross.
The bottom line is the Word Faith god is a slot machine which pays out more often than not — “seed faith giving.” Their measurable success does not mean their massive programs come from Jehovah as a good and blessed expression of His will. God will certainly give people enough rope to hang themselves. These folks are avid participants in the anti-spiritual crusade which forms the bulk of what Christians churches do. Church History is replete with rejecting the clear and sharp division between the Spirit Realm and the Fallen Realm, having absorbed without question Aristotle’s false unified reality. They read the Scripture with bald literalness by default, and insist symbolism is reality.
In the Old Testament, the terms “holy” and “sacred” did not carry the same pool of meaning and intellectual assumptions they do today. When Moses was told to take off his shoes before the Burning Bush, it wasn’t because the bush was holy, but God’s Presence was. Moses and most of his audience would understand those terms with that very kind of symbolism. You show respect as a commitment to God and His requirements, as One who rules over your very being. Calling that “sacred ground” was never meant to be taken literally. So when religious officials refer to their buildings as sacred, they often mean something completely different, and treat it differently than what the Law of Moses meant. The church serves the same mistaken assumptions which provoked a few Israelis to idolatry with the Bronze Serpent.
The Word Faith teachers treat stuff as literally sacred and blessed, and their whole world is a matter of what man can accomplish. They don’t even comprehend what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus. They dumb down the meaning of nailing your life to the Cross of Christ to a simple mind trick. I wonder what their robust little kingdoms will be like when the underlying world economic system breaks? God only knows whether they will panic and start acting crazy, seek compromise with the Beast of human government, or get right and embrace the otherworldly ways of Christ. A real church needs nothing, only the people committed to Christ.
What they have right now, what they seem to believe is so all important, given by God, won’t be worth much against tribulation.
