Before he died in 2003, the revered father of the Word-Faith movement corrected his spiritual sons for going to extremes with their message of prosperity.

Charismatic Bible teacher Kenneth Hagin Sr. is considered the father of the so-called prosperity gospel. The folksy, self-trained “Dad Hagin” started a grass-roots movement in Oklahoma that produced a Bible college and a crop of famous preachers including Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Charles Capps, Jesse DuPlantis, Creflo Dollar and dozens of others—all of whom teach that Christians who give generously should expect financial rewards on this side of heaven.

Hagin taught that God was not glorified by poverty and that preachers do not have to be poor. But before he died in 2003 and left his Rhema Bible Training Center in the hands of his son, Kenneth Hagin Jr., he summoned many of his colleagues to Tulsa to rebuke them for distorting his message. He was not happy that some of his followers were manipulating the Bible to support what he viewed as greed and selfish indulgence.

Those who were close to Hagin Sr. say he was passionate about correcting these abuses before he died. In fact, he wrote a brutally honest book to address his concerns. The Midas Touchwas published in 2000, a year after the infamous Tulsa meeting.

Many Word-Faith ministers ignored the book. But in light of the recent controversy over prosperity doctrines, it might be a good idea to dust it off and read it again. Continue Reading »

The secret of Hudson Taylor’s rest of heart, amid such tempests of hate, was his refusal to look at second causes.  His times were in God’s hands.  He believed that it was with God, and GOD ALONE, he had to do.  This is strikingly brought out in his article entitled “Blessed Adversity.”  With the experiences of Job as his text, he wrote:

“Even Satan did not presume to ask God to be allowed himself to afflict Job.  In the first chapter and the eleventh verse he says: ‘Put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.’ Satan knew that none but God could touch Job; and when Satan was permitted to afflict him, Job was quite right in recognizing the Lord Himself as the doer of these things which He permitted to be done.

“Oftentimes shall we be helped and blessed if we bear in mind that Satan is servant, and not master, and that he and wicked men incited by him are only permitted to do that which God by His determinate council and foreknowledge has before determined shall be done. Come joy, or come sorrow, we may always take it from the hand of God.

“Judas betrayed his Master with a kiss. Our Lord did not stop short at Judas, nor did He even stop short at the great enemy who filled the heart of Judas to do this thing; but He said: ‘the cup which My FATHER hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’

“How the tendency to resentment and a wrong feeling would be removed, could we take an injury from the hand of a loving Fa ther, instead of looking chiefly at the agent through whom it comes to us! It matters not who is the postman–it is with the writer of the letter that we are concerned; it matters not who is the messenger–it is with God that His children have to do.

“We conclude, therefore, that Job was not mistaken, and that we shall not be mistaken if we follow his example, in accepting all God’s providential dealings as from Himself. We may be sure that they will issue in ultimate blessings; because God is GOD, and therefore, ‘all things work together for good to them that love Him.’

“With peaceful mind thy path of duty run:
God nothing does, nor suffers to be done,
But thou wouldst do the same if thou couldst see
The end of all events as well as He.”

(From The Man Who Believed God, by Marshall Broomhall)

God’s wrath is the most misunderstood doctrine among Christians, yet it is one of the clearest doctrines in the Bible. It is so important that those who do not understand that God’s wrath will never fall on the believer get this, I have uncovered this sermon by John Piper which is one among many that fully explains what God’s wrath is and why we as Christians will never again feel this wrath because of what Christ did on the Cross. I pray it will open the hearts and spiritual eyes of those who thus far haven’t gotten this truth in the proper context as the Bible teaches it. I encourage you to read this, getting your Bibles out and seeing for yourself if these things are not so.

There are cultural forces at work inside and outside the church that make me eager to defend my Father’s wrath against me before I was adopted. He does not need my defense. But I believe he would be honored by it. And he commanded us, “Honor your father” (Exodus 20:12).

I write this from Cambridge, England, and my indignation about the assault on my Father is British-born. The calumny I have in mind is the following paragraph from a popular British writer:

The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offense he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement: “God is love”. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil (Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus, [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003], pp. 182-183).

This is breathtaking coming from a professing Christian. On behalf of my Father in heaven I would like to bear witness to the truth that before he adopted me his terrible wrath was upon me. Jesus said, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey . . . the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). Wrath remains on us as long as there is no faith in Jesus. Paul puts it like this: We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). My very nature made me worthy of wrath.

My destiny was to endure “flaming fire” and “vengeance on those . . . who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus . . . [and who] suffer the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). I was not a son of God. God was not my Father. He was my judge and executioner. I was a “son of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). I was dead in trespasses and sins. And the sentence of my Judge was clear and terrifying: “Because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6).

There was only one hope for me—that the infinite wisdom of God might make a way for the love of God to satisfy the wrath of God so that I might become a son of God.

This is exactly what happened, and I will sing of it forever. After saying that I was by nature a child of wrath, Paul says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son . . . to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
God sent his Son to rescue me from his wrath and make me his child.

How did he do it? He did it in the way Steve Chalke slanderously calls “cosmic child abuse.” God’s Son bore God’s curse in my place. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us or it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). If people in the twenty-first century find this greatest act of love “morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith,” it was not different in Paul’s day. “We preach Christ crucified, astumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

But for those who are called by God and believe in Jesus, this is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). This is my life. This is the only way God could become my Father. Now that his wrath no longer rests on me (John 3:36), he has sent the Spirit of sonship flooding into my heart crying Abba Father (Romans 8:15).Therefore, I pray, “Please know, heavenly Father, that I thank you with all my heart, and that I measure your love for me by the magnitude of the wrath I deserved and the wonder of your mercy by putting Christ in my place.

desiringGod.org; John Piper. Copyright 2008. Posted with permission