By Hank Hanegraaff

The F-L-A-W-S in the prosperity message are as deadly as they are counterfeit.

If you are healthy and prosperous, words created your reality. Conversely, if your baby dies or you contract cancer, you are the prime suspect. According to one of America’s most popular prosperity preachers, “The moment you speak something out, you give birth to it. This is a spiritual principle, and it works whether what you are saying is good or bad, positive or negative.”

FAITH FORCE. According to prosperity preachers, faith is a force, words are the containers of the force, and through the force of faith you create your own reality. As such, they convince followers that what happens in their lives—whether good or bad—is a direct result of words. This notion is a form of occult metaphysics—cleverly packaged and clearly poisonous. In sharp distinction, biblical faith is a channel of living trust—an assurance—that stretches from humanity to God. Put another way, faith is only as good as the object in whom it is placed. Faith in words is credulity; faith in the Word made flesh is certain.

LITTLE GOD. Virtually every theological heresy begins with a misconception about the nature of God. Such is the case with prosperity peddlers who recast man in the image of a little god and remake God in the image of a large man. Kenneth Copeland, for example, claims that God is “a being that is very uncanny the way he’s very much like you and me. A being that stands somewhere around 6’2″, 6’3″, that weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred pounds, little better, and has a hand span of nine inches across.” The minute that God is assigned physical qualities, such as height and weight, He is no longer the God of the Bible. As Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

ATONEMENT ATROCITIES. As the letter A of the acronym F-L-A-W-S is at the center, so, too, the atonement is central to the gospel promise of redemption. Tragically, prosperity preachers like Joel Osteen have blatantly reconstructed the centrality of Christ’s atonement on the cross. In the face of Scripture, which plainly tells us that by His death Jesus destroyed him “who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14), Osteen has Christ finishing the work of redemption in hell. In Osteen’s version of sacred Scripture, even that was insufficient to atone for our sins. After the resurrection, “there still had to be a blood sacrifice for our sins. There still had to be a price paid.” That is why Jesus commanded Mary not to touch Him after the resurrection. “Why didn’t Jesus want Mary to touch him?” asks Osteen. “I’ll tell you what it was! Jesus had just risen from the grave, and he still had his holy blood on him. It was this blood he was going to use as a sacrifice for our sins.” In short, Jesus said, “It is finished!” Joel says, “It has just begun!”

WEALTH AND WANT. Wealth is the watchword of the prosperity movement. Jesus was wealthy. As such, we, too, should be wealthy. Prosperity pastor John Hagee points to the gospel of John as proof positive that Jesus lived in “a big house” and wore “a designer robe.” Hagee is so committed to presenting a Jesus who wears a Rolex that he is willing to do whatever it takes to sell this myth to parishioners. “What’s the good news to the poor?” asks Hagee. “The curse of poverty has been broken at the cross. If you have the anointing, you don’t have the curse of poverty. If you will practice the principles of prosperity in the Word of God, God will make you the head, not the tail.” If Hagee and company are right, if prosperity is indeed a promise and poverty a curse, the apostle Paul would have been among the most cursed of all men. Yet far from being cursed, Paul was content: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:12).

SICKNESS AND SUFFERING. Kenneth Hagin, the father of the Word of Faith movement, may have boasted that he had not had a headache, the flu, or even “one sick day” in nearly sixty years, yet he suffered at least four cardiovascular crises, including one full-scale heart stoppage. In the end, he experienced the reality that the death rate is one per person. Absent the descent of our Savior, we are all going to physically die. Some time ago I received a letter from a woman whose brother-in- law had enrolled in Kenneth Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training Center. While there, his wife contracted ovarian cancer. Rather than seeking medical attention, the couple denied the symptoms of cancer. Predictably, she died. Tragically, her Faith friends resorted to regurgitating the standard line of the health and wealth gospel: the woman had not been healed due to her lack of faith. Who knows what untold tragedies testify to the devastation that follows in the wake of the Word of Faith crowd.

In part adapted from Christianity in Crisis: 21st Century Hank Hanegraaff

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

John 16:33 NKJV

FAITH FORCE

LITTLE GOD

ATONEMENT ATROCITIES

WEALTH AND WANT

SICKNESS AND SUFFERING

For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis: 21st Century (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009).

 

***Note the preceding text is adapted from The Complete Bible Answer Book: Collector’s Edition: Revised and Expanded (2024). To receive for your partnering gift please click here. ***