Updated September 27, 2005 (first published October 4, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

On Thursday, September 17, 1998, I attended a Kenneth Hagin Holy Ghost Meeting at the New Life Victory Center in Huntington, West Virginia. Hagin, who died in September 2003, was the father of the Word-Faith movement and founder of the Rhema Bible Institute and the Rhema group of churches. His influence extends around the world. Thousands of students have graduated from Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training Center and have gone to various nations planting churches patterned after Hagin’s ministry. The stated purpose of Rhema is “to produce graduates who will carry forth the great charismatic renewal that God has sent into our time.” Hagin’s daily radio program, which is carried on by his son, Kenneth Hagin, Jr., is broadcast on more than 180 stations in the States and by short-wave to about 80 other countries. By the late 1980s, more than three million copies of Hagin’s 85 books and a half million copies of his sermons on audio cassette were being distributed each year. Hagin’s monthly Word of Faith magazine goes to 190,000 homes.

A large portion of the Huntington, West Virginia, meeting was given over to a rock-jazz concert disguised as a worship service. There were no hymns, no Scripture songs. It was obvious that the crowd came to boogie! Even old West Virginia farmer types were bopping around. The lyrics to most of the songs focused on unscriptural Word-Faith themes. The song “No More Bondage” falsely proclaimed “no more sickness, no more poverty, no more bondage.” The song “I’m Free” stated, “I don’t have to be sick; I don’t have to be poor; the devil’s under my feet; sickness is under my feet; poverty is under my feet; prosperity is complete.” Another song proclaimed repetitiously, “Demons are afraid of me.” The offertory was a strong jazz number which would have made any Bourbon Street nightclub happy.

Kenneth Hagin and other Word-Faith preachers claim that the Christian has the authority to profess wealth and healing with his mouth. In an article “How God Taught Me about Prosperity,” Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ told him not to “pray about money anymore; that is, the way you’ve been praying. CLAIM WHATEVER YOU NEED.” Christ allegedly further taught Hagin that he has personal angels who could be commanded to do his bidding.

In light of these claims, I believe it is exceedingly contradictory and hypocritical that at least 20 minutes of Hagin’s meeting was given over to fund raising.

In West Virginia, Hagin preached on “The Demonstration of the Spirit” from 1 Corinthians 2:4. There was no Gospel message, no preaching against sin or carnality or worldliness or apostasy; no call to grow in Christ. Instead, the message was a litany of alleged miracles which had been demonstrated in Hagin’s ministry. He told of a woman preacher who danced in the air (levitation). He told of another woman who danced during an entire church service, dancing the metal taps off of her shoes without making any noise. He told of a girl who fell into a trance during one of his meetings and remained transfixed for eight hours and 40 minutes. He had commanded that she be filled with the Spirit. Two men tried to move her to a warmer part of the room but they were unable to budge her. He told of how his wife and two other people were glued to the floor by the “Holy Spirit.” When someone was levitated in a meeting, Hagin’s wife and two other people had questioned whether it was of the Lord. He claims that God instructed him to touch all three of them on the forehead with his little finger, and when he did so, they were knocked to the floor and paralyzed so that they could not get up. They were not allowed to rise until they acknowledged that Hagin’s power was of God. When they admitted this, Hagin touched them again with his finger and they were released.

After he had preached for about ten minutes, Hagin began to argue that one of the demonstrations of the Spirit is drunkenness. At that point he stopped preaching and for about 25 minutes he staggered about, laughing, waving his arms at people and blowing on them, and otherwise acting drunken and foolish. He repeatedly tried to speak was unable to do so. Large numbers of people in the crowd also began to laugh loudly and some fell to the floor or staggered about and acted ridiculously like drunks. Women fell to the floor in all sorts of compromising positions and had to be covered with the assistance of ladies who are assigned that task. Kenneth Hagin, Jr., attempted to read from his father’s notes, but he could not form the words and staggered all the way across the front of the church.

When Hagin, Sr., began speaking properly again, he claimed that what had happened was a fulfillment of Acts chapter 2. He said the Apostles were drunk in the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. This is nonsense. Those who said the disciples were “full of new wine” were the unbelieving mockers who wanted to debunk the miracle of tongues (Acts 2:13). The mockers did not say the disciples were drunken because they were staggering about and their speech was slurred and they were falling to the ground, but because of the many strange languages which were used to preach the Gospel that day and because they wanted to slander the servants of Christ.

In his reply to these mockers, PETER PLAINLY SAID THEY WERE NOT DRUNKEN (Acts 2:15). In Ephesians 5:18 Paul CONTRASTS drunkenness with the filling of the Spirit. The drunk is not in control of himself but is under the power of a foreign substance. In contrast, the Spirit-filled Christian is entirely in control of himself under the direction of the Holy Spirit. There is absolutely no case in the New Testament of the Lord Jesus Christ or the apostles or the early Christians staggering about in a drunken stupor, unable to attend to necessary duties, as those in the modern charismatic “laughing revival” have experienced.

THE CHRISTIAN IS COMMANDED TO BE SOBER AT ALL TIMES (1 Thess. 5:6,8; 1 Tim. 3:2,11; Titus 1:8; 2:2,4,6; 1 Pet. 1:13; 4:7; 5:8). If for no other reason, I would reject Kenneth Hagin’s ministry on this basis alone. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

The only example of “spiritual drunkenness” in the Bible is in the prophets, referring to God’s judgment upon sin and apostasy (Isa. 29:9-14; Jer. 51:37-40). These prophecies sound a solemn warning to the charismatic Word-Faith crowd. They have rejected the sound teaching of the Bible; they have refused to be sober and vigilant; they have mocked careful biblical discernment; they have exalted experience over doctrine; they have gone awhoring after feelings and “signs and wonders”; and they have been blinded by demonic delusions. God warns that those who refuse to obey the truth will be blinded by lying wonders (2 Thess. 2:9-12). The Lord Jesus plainly stated that it is an evil generation that seeks after a sign. “And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet” (Lk. 11:29).

Throughout the rest of Hagin’s sermon, various people were laughing hysterically in various parts of the auditorium, making it difficult to follow his message. The service could best be characterized by confusion, but the Bible says, “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1 Cor. 14:33).

It ended like it began, with a sensual rock concert disguised as a worship service.

Kenneth Hagin’s positive-confession teachings, which he derived at least partially from the false teacher E.W. Kenyon, have spawned an entire movement within modern Pentecostalism. Its proponents have vast influence. The Dictionary of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements admits that “Kenyon’s writings became seminal for the ministries of Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Don Gossett, Charles Capps, and others in the Word of Faith and Positive Confession movements.” This dictionary also notes that Kenyon influenced Ern Baxter, F.F. Bosworth, David Nunn, T.L. Osborn, Jimmy Swaggart, “and many others.”

In a survey taken by Charisma magazine in 1985, seven Word-Faith teachers ranked among the top 24 most influential Charismatic leaders. Kenneth Hagin, Sr., ranked third. Hagin’s protege Kenneth Copeland ranked second. Other Word-Faith teachers listed in the survey were Marilyn Hickey, Fred Price, Robert Tilton, John Osteen, and Norvel Hayes.

Kenneth Hagin claimed that his teaching was given to him by God, but in fact he plagiarized heavily from the writings of E.W. Kenyon (1867-1948). D.R. McConnell, in his book A Different Gospel, documents this with many pages of comparisons, proving beyond question that Hagin plagiarized Kenyon’s writings. McConnel introduces this section of his book by saying: “Hagin has, indeed, copied word-for-word without documentation from Kenyon’s writings. The following excerpts of plagiarisms from no less than eight books by E.W. Kenyon are presented as evidence of this charge. This is only a sampling of such plagiarisms. Many more could be cited.”

Kenneth Hagin taught that Christ’s physical death did not remove sin. Rather, it was Christ’s alleged spiritual death and struggles in hell that removed sin. Hagin taught that Christ was sent to hell and there struggled against Satan and demons and by his victory over them was born again. This is heresy of the highest caliber. The Bible plainly states that we are redeemed by Christ’s death and blood (Acts 20:28; Heb. 9:14; 10:10). The atonement was finished on the cross. When Christ dismissed His spirit from his body, He cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The Lord Jesus Christ was not born again; He was never lost! He bore our sin, but He was never a sinner. He was never tormented in hell by Satan and the demons. Nowhere does the Bible say that Satan is in hell or that he has any influence in hell. One happy day in the future he will be bound for 1,000 years in the bottomless pit (Rev. 20:1-3) and ultimately he will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10), but nowhere does the Bible say Satan is the master of hell.

Kenneth Hagin further taught that the Christian is an incarnation of God like Jesus was. “The believer is as much an incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth” (Hagin, “The Incarnation,” The Word of Faith, Dec. 1980, cited from Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, p. 175,397). This is a gross heresy. The Lord Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh. He is the eternal Son of God. Nowhere is the believer said to be an incarnation of Almighty God. The Lord Jesus Christ performed miracles to demonstrate that He was the Son of God, the promised Messiah. No Christian can do the things that Christ did. Not one Pentecostal preacher has ever been able to perform the miracles that Christ performed. It is blasphemous confusion to claim that the believer is an incarnation of God like Christ was.

Hagin received guidance by alleged visitations of angels and even of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His book I Believe in Visions describes eight of these. The seventh occurred on December 12, 1962. Hagin claimed the Lord prophesied to him in this visitation that He would soon begin to move among all denominations to “bring them into a full salvation and into the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ told him that he would play a part in this ecumenical miracle revival.

A similar prophecy was given to David DuPlessis by Pentecostal “prophet” Smith Wigglesworth in 1936.

The ecumenical-charismatic movement which has since swept through the Roman Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant denominations would appear to be a fulfillment of these prophecies. DuPlessis was the first to carry Pentecostal experiences to the Roman Catholic Church. He was the only Pentecostal to attend Rome’s Vatican II Council in the mid 1960s.

The succeeding ecumenical-Charismatic movement has not been based on the Word of God, though. Charismatic Catholics who have received the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” have not turned away from Rome’s heresies but instead have found that their love for heresy has been rekindled. They have subsequently fallen more in love with the false Catholic Mary and with the false Catholic mass and with the blasphemous office of the pope. I have witnessed the unscriptural fruit of the ecumenical Charismatic movement firsthand. In 1987 and again in 1990 I attended with press credentials two of the largest Charismatic conferences ever held. They were organized by the North America Congress on the Holy Spirit & World Evangelization. Roughly 40 denominations were represented. Fifty percent of the tens of thousands of attendees were Roman Catholic. A Catholic mass was featured every morning. Catholic priest Tom Forrest from Rome brought the concluding message at both meetings. In Indianapolis Forrest preached a message on why he was thankful for Roman Catholicism, and he said that he praised the Lord for purgatory! Upon the authority of the Bible I can testify that the ecumenical-Charismatic “revival” is demonically inspired because it produces doctrinal error instead of truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of TRUTH.

Kenneth Hagin promoted a health-prosperity gospel. He said: “Like salvation, healing is a gift, already paid for at Calvary. All we need to do is accept it. All we need to do is possess the promise that is ours. As children of God, we need to realize that healing belongs to us” (Hagin, Healing Belongs to Us, p. 32). He further said: “God is glorified through healing and deliverance, not sickness and suffering” (Hagin, The Key to Scriptural Healing, p. 17).

Hagin’s claims did not match reality, though. In the early 1990s he claimed that he hadn’t been sick in 60 years, but actually he had had several cardiovascular crises, one lasting six weeks. Heart disease is a sickness, dear friends!

As for prosperity, Hagin claimed that the Lord spoke to him in a vision in 1959 with the words: “If you will learn to follow that inward witness I will make you rich. I will guide you in all the affairs of life, financial as well as spiritual” (Hagin, How to Be Led by the Holy Spirit). In the article “How God Taught Me about Prosperity,” Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ taught him not to think that it is wrong to have riches. Allegedly Christ told him not to “pray about money anymore; that is, the way you’ve been praying. CLAIM WHATEVER YOU NEED.” Christ allegedly further taught Hagin that he had personal angels who can be commanded to do his bidding. Hagin said that Christ told him in 1963 that the angels were waiting for his command to provide his material desires. “They are waiting on you to give them the order, just as the waitress cannot do anything for you until you give her the order” (Hagin, I Believe in Visions, p. 126).

This is the source for the terms “word-faith” or “positive confession.” That which the believer confesses with his mouth will become true in reality. Various forms of this false idea have spread throughout many parts of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement today.

Friends in Christ, beware of the Rhema Bible Institute and the many churches that are affiliated with it throughout the world.