Heresies in the church - Part 6

If ever you had the ambition to become god, the WOF preachers will only add wood to the fire.

New God?

To give you the full effect I am going to give you a lot of quotes by these people. I hope it doesn't bore you to death, but we need to know what these people teach.

Benny Hinn

"When you were born again the Word was made flesh in you. And you became flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. Don't tell me you have Jesus. You are everything He was and everything He is and ever shall be.... It (the new man) says, 'I am as He is.' That's what it says.. As He is, so are we in this world. Jesus said, 'Go in My name, go in My stead.' Don't say, 'I have.' Say, 'I am, I am, I am, I am, I am.'" [1]

"When you say, 'I am a Christian,' you are saying, 'I am mashiach' in the Hebrew. I am a little messiah walking on earth, in other words. That is a shocking revelation....May I say it like this? You are a little god on earth running around." [2]

Kenneth Copeland

"God's reason for creating Adam was His desire to reproduce Himself. I mean a reproduction of Himself and in the Garden of Eden He did just that. (Adam) was not a little like God. He was not almost like God. He was not subordinate to God even.... Adam is as much like God as you could get, just the same as Jesus....Adam, in the Garden of Eden, was God manifested in the flesh." [3]

"You don't have a God living in you, you are one!" [4]

"Folks, when you were born again, the Bible says you became bone of His bone. You have rights and privileges because you have been born of the Spirit of God. God has been reproduced on the inside of you. These rights re yours because Jesus of Nazareth paid the price for the sin problem and caused you to be reborn." [5]

"You need to realize that you are not a spiritual schizophrenic--half-God and half-Satan--you are all God." [6]

Is this not all very interesting? If we looked for the fingerprints of the one who taught this lie we simply need to read

Gen 3:5 ESV For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

From the beginning Satan tried to entice us with being deity, as if he has the authority to offer it. It is man's search for self-rule or deity that has brought man to point of the pit. One more step and man falls into a chasm, which he eventually did when Adam gave in to the devil's temptations.

In the passage of John 10:31-39 the words of Jesus are used by WOF proponents to "prove" their point:

Joh 10:34 ESV Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I said, you are gods'?

What is the point of what Jesus said here? Does He actually mean that we are gods? Jesus is here responding to his opponents with an ironical use of Psalm 82:6, where God condemns the unrighteous judges of Israel for their self-righteous attitude and pride. These judges sinned by showing partiality towards the wicked rather than defending the weak. The very next verse here is quite telling:

Psa 82:7 ESV nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince."

To imagine that we are gods when we are saved is to misunderstand our condition, even though in Christ. Even though the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our lives, it does not mean that we have been deified! If man is deified, surely we also have to accept the doctrine that we are therefore sinless! Yet, the Scriptures deny that we are sinless, even after our salvation.

1Jo 1:8-10 ESV If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (9) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (10) If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

"Jesus mocks the people as if to say, 'You all think you're gods yourselves. What's one more god among you?' Irony is used to provoke us, not to inform us. It is not a basis for building a theology." [7]

Copeland continues:

"Pray to yourself, because I'm in your self and you're in Myself. We are one Spirit, saith the Lord." [8]

"I say this with all respect so that it don't upset you too bad, but I say it anyway. When I read in the Bible where he [Jesus] says, 'I Am,' I just smile and say, 'Yes, I Am, too!'" [9]

"If you stood Adam upside God, they look just exactly alike....If you stood Jesus and Adam side-by-side, they would look and act and sound exactly alike....The image is that they look just alike, but the likeness is that they act alike and they are alike....All of God's attributes, all of God's authority, all of God's faith, all of God's ability was invested in that man." [10]

The terms "image" and "likeness" refute Copeland's point. The Hebrew word for "likeness" (demuth) simply means similarity or resemblance, not identity. Furthermore, the term itself actually "defines and limits" the word "image" (Hebrew: tselem) in order "to avoid the implication that man is a precise copy of God, albeit miniature" [11]

However, Copeland continues with his heresy:

"But this must come first! Surely, this is Isaiah 53 Surely he [Jesus] hath borne are grief's and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken smitten of God and afflicted. Now what's he talking about?....He was wounded for our transgressions. In other words he said we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God, but he wasn't, he was wounded for our transgressions, where did that statement come from? Well the high religious people of the day.... Ah.... said that this horrible thing we see here on this cross, here you have got three men hanging side by side on a cross; in Scriptures in the 52nd chapter of Isaiah makes this statement....Ah.... That he was so torn up, he was so oh my goodness, he was as many were astonished his visage or his form was so marred. One translation says so twisted out of shape, more than any man and his form more than the sons of men. Now did you ever wonder why that centurion that executioner that stood right their by all three of those crosses why did he say well surely these were the sons of God? Because they all died.... the crucifixion, they all died the same way. But the one in the middle was totally different because his body was so twisted and went into such shape that the others didn't. That they figured only God could have done this to a human being. And he said surely God did this surely this is of God. Why would they think that? Well the high priests said and told everybody that this happened because he accounted and said that he was equal with God....he said he was equal with God, and so they considered that robbing God, they considered that blaspheming God. That it was wrong, it was terrible that he should say such a thing. Well that same religious idea is hear today. It's the same idea. How do you do it? How would anybody do this? You really cannot ever come to that place were you let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be called equal with God. Let this mind be in Kenneth Copeland, Oh my goodness, Ah! that thinks its not robbery to be called equal with God." [12]

Kenneth Hagin

"Every man who has been born again is an incarnation and Christianity is a miracle. The believer is as much an incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth." [13]

Hanegraaf answers this: "...while the Bible clearly declares Christ to be pre-existent (John 1:1; 8:58; 17:5), nowhere in Scripture do we find the concept of human pre-existence. In fact, human pre-existence remains a concept relegated largely to such cults as Mormonism. The fact that Christians are indwelt by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (John 14:17,23) in no way implies that the Bible endorses the concept of incarnation for Christians." [14]

Hagin continues: "This eternal life He came to give us is the nature of God." He then adds, "It is, in reality, God imparting His very nature, substance, and being to one human spirit....Zoe, then, means eternal life, or God's life. This new kind of life is God's nature....Even many in the great body of Full Gospel people do not know that the new birth is a real incarnation....Jesus was first divine, and then He was human. So He was in the flesh a divine-human being. I was first human, and so were you, but I was born of God, and so I became a human-divine being!" [15]

Moriarty writes against this: "This view, developed by the scholarly monk Nestorius (ca.381-ca.452), taught that the Word did not actually become flesh (John 1:14) but only united Himself to a human being. Christ was in effect a God-bearer rather than the God-man. Nestorius ended up making Christ out to be a man in whom, in Siamese twin fashion, the divine and human natures were combined in a mechanical union rather than in an organic union of natures. Hagin's view of the incarnation is very similar to the fifth-century Nestorian heresy." [16]

A final quote from Hagin: "Man...was created on terms of equality with God, and he could stand in God's presence without any consciousness of inferiority....God has made us as much like Himself as possible....He made us the same class of being that He is Himself....The believer is called Christ....that's who we are; we're Christ!" [17]

The next post will be the last in this series: Heresies in the church - Part 7.

Read the previous post in this series here.

Just thinking...

End Notes

[1] B. Hinn, "Our Position in Christ #2-The Word Made Flesh", Orlando, FL: Orlando Christian Centre, 1991, audiotape #A031190-2, Side B.

[2] B. Hinn, "Praise-a-Thon" program on TBN, 6 November, 1990.

[3] K. Copeland, "Following the Faith of Abraham 1", Side A, Fort Worth, Texas, K. Copeland Ministries, 1989, audiotape #01-3001.

[4] K. Copeland, "The Force of Love", Fort Worth, Texas, K. Copeland Ministries, n.d. audiotape BCC-56.

[5] K. Copeland, "The Force of Righteousness", Fort Worth, Texas, K. Copeland Ministries, 1982, p18.

[6] K. Copeland, Believer's Voice of Victory, March 1982, p2.

[7] W. Martin, "Ye Shall Be As Gods" The Agony of Deceit, ed. M.A. Horton, Chicago: Moody, 1990, p97.

[8] Kenneth Copeland, "Believer's Voice of Victory", Feb. 1987, p9.

[9] Kenneth Copeland, "Believer's Voice of Victory" broadcast on TBN, recorded 7/9/87.

[10] Kenneth Copeland, _Authority of the Believer IV_ (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1987, audiotape #01-0304), side 1.

[11] R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981), 1:192.

[12] Kenneth Copeland, Believer's Voice of Victory, Monday 29th January 2001 [GOD TV].

[13] K. Hagin, "The Incarnation", The Word of Faith magazine, 13, 12 (Dec. 1980): p14.

[14] H. Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, Harvest House, 1993, p176.

[15] K. Hagin, Zoe: The God-Kind of Life, Tulsa, OK. Faith Library, 1981, p40.

[16] M. Moriarty, The New Charismatics, Zondervan, 1992, p332.

[17] K. Hagin, Zoe: The God-Kind of Life, p35-36.