 |
The "Toronto Blessing"
A Theological Examination of the Roots, Teaching and Manifestations, and Connection Between the Faith Movement and the Vineyard Church
By Stephen Sizer
Note: This is an older page within Apologetics Index. The formatting will be updated soon. Instead of the menu on the left, you may want to use the expanded menu found on newer pages.
APPENDIX 1 : Some Heresies of the "Faith Teachers"
Quoted from - "Christianity in Crisis" by Hank Hanegraaff, 1993
1. Have Faith in Your Faith (not faith in our God)
- "Never, ever, ever go to the Lord and say "If it be thy
will..." Don't allow such faith-destroying words to be spoken from your
mouth." Benny Hinn
- "Faith is a power force...it is this force of faith which makes
the laws of the spirit world function....God cannot do anything
for you apart or separate from faith" because, "faith is God's
source of power." Kenneth Copeland
- "If you have a problem, any kind of need, housing,
transportation, situation in a marriage, you can release the
creative - see this all works by faith - the creative force of
God into existence." Robert Tilton
- "It would be a waste of their time to pray for Me [i.e., Jesus]
to give them the victory. They have to write their own ticket."
Kenneth Hagin
- "First make a clear cut goal, then draw a mental picture, vivid
and graphic,"..to "visualise success." Then "incubate" it into
reality, and finally "speak" it into existence through "the
creative power of the spoken word." Paul Yonggi Cho
- "I had a witch tell me this....She said, "You know that we are
taught in witchcraft how to kill birds with words, and how to
kill people with our mouth....We are taught with words to bring
disease on men...by speaking certain words that defeat them.." I
said, "Dear God, I didn't know the Devil has such power." And
the Lord spoke to me, and He said, "The Devil can kill with
words, then you with your words can bring life." And it just
come [sic] and clicked inside of me, brother....And we
Christians don't realise the power in our mouths." Benny Hinn
- "Now this is a shocker! But God has to be given permission to
work in this earth realm on behalf of man....Yes! You are in
control! So if man has control, who no longer has it?
God.....When God gave Adam dominion, that meant God no longer
had dominion. So God cannot do anything in this earth unless we
let Him. And the way we let Him or give Him permission is
through prayer." Frederick Price
2. The Deification of Man and the Denigration of God
- "Man was created on terms of equality with God, and he
could stand in God's presence without any consciousness of
inferiority.....He made us the same class of being that He is
Himself....Man lived in the realm of God.
- "Adam committed high treason; and at that point, all the
dominion and authority God had given him was handed over to
Satan. Suddenly, God was on the outside looking in...After
Adam's fall, God found Himself in a peculiar position...
- God needed an avenue back into the earth...God laid out His
proposition and Abram accepted it. It gave God access to the
earth and gave man access to God....Technically, if God ever
broke the Covenant, He would have to destroy Himself." Kenneth
Copeland
- Did you know that from the beginning of time the whole purpose
of God was to reproduce Himself? Who are you? Come on, who are
you? Come on, say it: "Sons of God!" Come on, say it! And what
does work inside us, brother, is that manifestation of the
expression of all that God is and all that God has. And when we
stand up here, brother, you're not looking at Morris Cerullo;
you're looking at God. You're looking at Jesus." Morris Cerullo
- God is "not some creature that stands 28 feet tall, and He's got
hands, you know, as big as basketballs. That's not the kind of
creature He 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 neighbourhood of a
couple of hundred pounds...and has a hand span of nine inches
across." Kenneth Copeland
- "Man, I feel revelation knowledge already coming on me
here....See, God the Father is a person, God the Son is a
person, God the Holy Ghost is a person. But each one of them is
a triune being by Himself. If I can shock you-and maybe I
should-there's nine of them....You say, I never heard that. Well
you think you're in this church to hear things you've heard for
50 years?" Benny Hinn
3. The Demotion of Christ to a "Spirit filled" prototype
- "Adam as the copy, looked just like [God]. If you stood
Adam upside God, they look just exactly alike. If you stood Jesus and
Adam side-by-side, they would look and sound exactly alike."
Kenneth Copeland
- "God is injecting His Word into the earth to produce this
Jesus-these faith-filled words that framed the image that's in
Him....He can't just walk onto the earth and say "Let it be!"
because he doesn't have the right. He had to sneak it in here
around the god of this world that was blockin' every way that he
possible could." Kenneth Copeland
- "Had the Holy Spirit not been with Jesus, He would have sinned.
That's right, it was the Holy Spirit that was the power that
kept him pure....Without the Holy Ghost, Jesus would never have
made it...Can you imagine Christ headed for the grave, knowing
He would remain there forever, if the Holy Ghost would change
His mind about raising Him from the dead?" Benny Hinn
4. Some Atonement Atrocities that Deny the Cross
- Jesus knew the only way He would stop Satan is by becoming
one in nature with him....! He did not take my sin, he became my
sin. Sin is the nature of hell.....Jesus said "I'll be
sin...I'll go to the origin of it. I won't just take part in it,
I'll become the totality of it...." He became one with the
nature of Satan, so all those who had the nature of Satan can
partake of the nature of God....." Benny Hinn
- Spiritual death means something more than separation from God.
Spiritual death also means having Satan's nature....Jesus tasted
death-spiritual death-for every man.....And His spirit and inner
man went to hell in my place. Can't you see that? Physical death
wouldn't remove your sins....He's talking about tasting
spiritual death." Kenneth E. Hagin
- He [Jesus] accepted the sin nature of Satan in His own spirit.
And at the moment that He did so, He cried, "My God, My God, why
hast thou forsaken Me?".....why do you think Moses, upon
instruction of God, raised the serpent upon the pole instead of
a lamb? That used to bug me. I said, "Why in the world would you
want to put a snake up there-the sign of Satan?....And the Lord
said "Because it was a sign of Satan that was hanging on the
cross." Kenneth Copeland
- "Do you think that the punishment for our sin was to die on the
cross?....No, the punishment was to go into hell itself, and to
serve time in hell separated from God....Satan and all the
demons in hell thought they had Him bound and they threw a net
over Jesus and they dragged Him down to the very pit of hell
itself to serve our sentence." Frederick Price
- "When Jesus cried, "It is finished!" He was not speaking of the
plan of redemption. There were still three days and nights to go
through before He went to the throne....Jesus death on the cross
was only the beginning of the complete work of redemption.....In
hell He suffered for you and for me.....a twice-born man whipped
Satan in his own domain. I said "What?" He said, A born-again
man defeated Satan, the firstborn of many brethren defeated
him." He said, "You are the very image, the very copy of that
one." I said, "Goodness, gracious sakes alive!" And I began to
see what had gone on in there, and I said, "Well now you don't
mean, you couldn't dare mean, that I could have done the same
thing?" He said, "Oh yeah, if you had the knowledge of the Word
of God that He did, you could've done the same thing, 'cause
you're a reborn man too." Kenneth Copeland
Conclusions
I take no delight in quoting such gross heresy from these so
called "Faith Teachers", but I do so because I am firmly
convinced that they represent a powerful cultic movement of
wolves in sheep's clothing who have infiltrated the Church. So
be warned - be on your guard. (Acts 20:28-31)
"Under the banner "Jesus is Lord," these teachers are leading
thousands of unsuspecting Christians away from the Kingdom of
Christ and into the kingdom of the cults....the Church [must]
take a firm stand for the faith "once for all delivered to the
saints"...while there is yet time to avert a disaster of
unimaginable proportions."
Hank Hanegraaff.
 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
Return to Top Return to Sugar and Vinegar Menu
Go to Apologetics Index What's New?
|
 |
A Quick Guide To Apologetics Index 