Over the past couple of decades I have received hundreds of letters from people who have fled the Word of Faith movement. These letters tell heart-rending stories of the sick being told that their sickness is a direct result of their sin.
One such letter is the personal testimony of a woman who was blind from birth. After she came to faith in Christ she joined a church that had been infiltrated by the Faith Movement. It wasn’t long before they were instructing her to confess perfect sight and commanded God to honor His word. When nothing happened, they began to denounce this woman for her lack of faith. They said that something was in her life that hindered God’s will. They said God was held up because of some point of sin or disobedience that He just couldn’t get around until the women straightened up.
This dear lady went on to write that she had spent many hours and many sleepless nights agonizing over this issue. She then became depressed and began to lose her joy. She even felt that there was no use in praying to God anymore. Some Sundays she would stay away from church, because she felt like an outsider in God’s family, watching his pet children get blessed because of their faith. She said “If I was doing or not doing something that hindered God I was at a loss trying to discern what it was.” She continued that she would cry out to God in despair, “What do you want me to do?”
In time she discovered that God had never forsaken her and that her blindness was not a result of her sin. The real problem was not the lack of her faith, but the Faith follower’s lack of understanding. When she came to that realization, she said she felt like a different person. She finally recognized that in Jesus’ eyes she was whole, and that she was still as important to Him as she had been at the beginning of their relationship, and determined that no one was ever again going to take that joy away from her.
Very astutely she observed the real motivation behind the Faith Movement and that was that she discovered that many people wanted to see her healed or pretend to be healed because her blindness upset their theological applecart. She said, “It’s hard to believe in their beliefs when a disabled person who thanks God for disability comes along. It’s as if their faith won’t stand up, if I don’t go along with their agenda. I believe that they wanted my healing for their own sake, not mine. It might sound harsh, but I don’t think they have a thumbnail of faith.”
She closed her letter with the following,
I want the staff here at the Christian Research Institute and the Bible Answer Man broadcast to know that I heartily support your stand concerning this issue. It’s a killer, a spiritual cancer. It grieves me that so few in the body of Christ are willing to listen to the truth that you and the ministry so diligently put forth. I pray God will continually encourage you and direct your path through criticisms and denouncements. I almost didn’t hear the truth in time.
Therein lies the problem, there are so many people that are following the faith movement, and they’re in the churches for a while, and then fall out of the back doors of the movement— often times into the kingdom of the cults. They don’t know who to trust or what to believe. This is one of the many reasons I wrote Christianity in Crisis 21st Century. Please check out our website at www.equip.org or call us at 1-888-700-0274 to see about getting your copy.
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