Truth Magazine

By Steve Wolfgang

Jerry Falwell is perhaps the quintessential media- made preacher. When he graduated from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO in 1956 and returned home to Lynchburg, VA, he was a virtual unknown. He started a little church with 35 people in a rented pop-bottling plant. He proved to be a tireless worker, canvassing the town – but he also went on radio the first week, and purchased TV time within a year. Even then, without the mushrooming of cable TV in the 1970’s, the chances are that he would still be unknown outside the county.

Falwell was born in Lynchburg on August 11, 1933 and raised there, attending two years at Lynchburg College (affiliated with the Disciples of Christ) before transferring to Springfield after a “conversion experience” in a local Baptist church. His mother had often tuned in “The Old Fashioned Revival Hour” with Charles E. Fuller, a famous radio preacher of the World War II era, and his preaching influenced young Jerry considerably. Thus, media evangelism was prominent in Falwell’s concept of religion from an early age.

The college in Springfield had roots in the Baptist Bible Fellowship, one of the more prominent Fundamentalist organizations which arose after the Scopes Trial. When he roomed at Springfield with the son of John Rawlings, mainspring of Cincinnati’s Landmark Baptist Temple, the concept of a “super church” was planted in Falwell’s mind. Returning to Lynchburg after graduation, he began Thomas Road Baptist church in the summer of 1966. From an inauspicious beginning in the old Donald Duck Bottling plant (a rented facility against which was erected a tent-like lean-to for Sunday School classes), the church has grown into a 21,000 member congregation (about a fourth of the town’s population) with a staff of about 60 employees. Other enterprises include a summer camp, a home for alcoholics, and Lynchburg Christian Academy. Liberty Baptist College, which was begun in dilapidated downtown buildings in 1971, was moved to Candlers Mountain in 1977, where a host of new buildings had been erected and 7500 students are currently enrolled.

A large part of Falwell’s ability as a promoter (“Businessmen in Lynchburg say he is . . . the best salesman they have ever seen”), is his extensive use of media. His “Old-Time Gospel Hour” (a tape of the 11:00 Sunday service at Thomas Road, edited with some extra footage inserted) has been on-air since 1969, and is now carried on 190 TV stations plus cable outlets.

Additionally, in 1979 Falwell founded the “Moral Majority,” a political organization (he has repeatedly stated that it is not a religious body). Renamed the “Liberty Federation” last year, this group allows him to work in common cause with Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and Protestants such as Billy Graham (with all of whom he has religious differences great enough that they would not be invited to preach at Thomas Road).

With all these enterprises (church, television program, college, political organization – all of which overlap to some degree, despite Falwell’s disclaimers to the contrary), it is difficult to tell what is the total income generated. Most estimates, however, place it in excess of $100 million annually, which allows Falwell the use of a mansion donated to the church as well as the ministry’s Israeli-made private jet. With Falwell’s takeover of PTL after the Bakker scandal, he will, if he is successful in salvaging that operation, have at his disposal the additional cable outlets and TV production facilities of that group.

Sources

Strober & Tomczac, Jerry Falwell. Aflamefor God (1979); Falwell, Dobson, & Hindson, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon (1986); Frances Fitzgerald, “A Disciplined, Charging Army,” New Yorker, May 18, 1981; Christianity Today, September 4, 1981; TIME, September 2, 1985.

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, p. 374
June 18, 1987

By Steve Wolfgang

Without question, America’s “best known Protestant churchman” is, and for years has been, Billy Graham. Born November 7, 1918 on a farm outside Charlotte, North Carolina, William Franklin Graham grew to adolescence with the daily regimen of dairy farming punctuated by revivalism and church services. He was sixteen when, in May, 1934, his father loaned a pasture to Mordecai Fowler Hain, a fiery revivalist from Louisville, KY. Along with Grady Wilson, a boyhood friend who would remain a close associate through the years, Graham responded to Ham’s “altar call.”

After spending the following summers as a Fuller Brush salesman and playing baseball, Billy enrolled in perhaps the best-known Fundamentalist school of that day – Bob Jones College, then located in Cleveland, TN. Described as “an evangelical boot camp” replete with “grim barracks . . . and posted notifications like Griping Not Tolerated,” the school seems not to have suited Billy, who left after one semester.

Graham transferred to the Florida Bible Institute at Temple Terrace, located on the campus of what is now Florida College. He had learned of the Institute through friends, one of whom would later recall that “after Bob Jones, Billy landed on that campus like he’d just been let out of jail, ‘I and, according to one biographer, “He will still mention now and then as he muses back over the years, ‘That time down there, that’s when I was the happiest.”‘ The story of his emotional experience on the eighteenth green, dedicating his life to preaching, is well known.

W.T. Watson, founder and president of the Institute, recalled later that Billy “got down to business and started preaching to tree stumps along the Hillsborough River.” Remaining in Florida for three and a half years after his arrival in February 1937, Graham met many leading lights of Fundamentalism for whom Temple Terrace and the Institute became something of a mecca. One day Graham found himself caddying for a group of golfers from Chicago, which included the brother of the president of Wheaton College, a reputable evangelical school in suburban Chicago. Accepting an offer of a year’s tuition and board, Graham enrolled at Wheaton in 1940.

At Wheaton, Graham met his future wife, Ruth Bell (daughter of a Presbyterian surgeon who had founded “missionary hospital” in China), and began regular preaching duties at the Western Springs Baptist church. (Graham had changed religious affiliations in Florida when it was discovered, while he was preaching in a Baptist church, that he was a Presbyterian). After taking over the radio broadcast “Songs in the Night” with Canadian George Beverly Shea, Graham served for a while with Youth For Christ in England and the United States. While in Minneapolis for a “crusade,” Graham was heard by William Bell Riley, one of the leaders of the Fundamentalist movement, who recalled hearing Graham a decade before in Florida. In 1947, Riley persuaded Graham to take over as president of his organization of three schools in Minneapolis.

Being administrator of several schools proved not to suit Graham, however, and he soon turned to citywide 44campaigns,” involving several who had worked with him in the Youth For Christ organization. Perhaps the single biggest step to the platform of popularity came during Graham’s Los Angeles campaign in September, 1949, where he was able to attract attention from the press. When William Randolph Hearst cabled his editors (“Puff Graham”) during the fourth week of the campaign, resulting in Henry Luce’s visit to his campaign in Columbia, South Carolina a few weeks later. Graham had achieved entree into media stardom.

This sketch cannot report in detail Graham’s achievements since that time, but an historian currently at work on a “definitive” biography of Graham chronicled some of his achievements as of the late 1970’s, before his place in the evangelical galaxy began to be eclipsed by other televangelism supernovas: Graham’s weekly “Hour of Decision” radio broadcast was heard on over 900 stations around the world; his “crusades” being broadcast into over 300 TV “markets”; his syndicated column was carried by over 200 daily newspapers with a circulation of nearly 30 million readers; his Decision magazine, published in six languages and Braille, had a circulation of almost 4 million; several of his books, published in dozens of languages, have sold over 2 million copies each; the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headquartered in Minneapolis with more than 500 employees, includes his own film-production company located in California, and his branch offices in London, Paris, Sydney, Hong Kong, Kyoto, and Winnipeg; he has even been TIME Magazine’s “Man of the Year.”

Graham has achieved all this by adopting a “generic” Protestant theology (many would say by “soft-pedaling” many Bible doctrines unpalatable to popular culture), by molding a relatively inoffensive message to his own style and personality and by cultivating such an efficient organization. Although Graham certainly lives comfortably and has many “perks” as result of his position, he seems not to have unduly enriched himself financially (although the Charlotte Observer, for whom Graham served as a favorite religious object of “investigative journalism” before Jim Bakker came along, did uncover a “secret” $22.9 million fund in the BGEA in 1977). There has never been a whiff of sexual impropriety in his life (unlike some other popular “televangelists”), and he still stands today, although challenged by rising stars such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart, as “the high priest of the American civil religion.”

Sources

James Morris, The Preachers (1973); Jeffrey K. Hadden, Prime- Time Preachers (1981); William G. McLoughlin Billy Graham: Revivalist in a Secular Age (1960); John Pollock, Billy Graham: The Authorized Biography (1966) and Billy Graham: Evangelist To The World (1979); Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (1979); C. Allyn Russell, Yokes of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (1976); William Martin, “Billy Graham,” in David E. Harrell, ed., Varieties of Southern Evangelicalism (1981).

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 388-389
June 18, 1987

By Walton Weaver

The current emphasis on building self-esteem as the focal point around which our preaching and teaching are to be centered is being received enthusiastically by many leading theologians today. During the last ten years the book market has been flooded with books on the subject. What was first laid down as a guiding principle in child-rearing has now been brought over into religion and is being held up as a sound biblical principle which should be utilized in the pulpit and across the dining room table.

Is A New Reformation Needed?

Robert H. Schuller, who is identified with the Reformed Church in America, and founder of the now 10,000 plus members Garden Grove Community Church in California, has written almost twenty books in the last fifteen years or so, and positive self-esteem has been the central theme in nearly all of them. Schuller is bold enough to say that nothing short of a “New Reformation” will do. Believing that the Protestant Reformation was a “mid-flight correction” which preached a God-centered message by emphasizing that man is a sinner, Schuller believes it is now time for the church to have another “mid-flight correction.” This time, however, the correction must be man-centered rather than God-centered. The man-centered approach is what is needed today to “communicate spiritual reality to the unchurched. ” The God-centered approach was what was needed in the Protestant Reformation, but not today. Only the “human needs” approach will work in our time. And, according to Schuller, the one basic human need – “the deepest of all human needs” – is “salvation from sin and hell.” But when Schuller defines the terms “salvation,” “sin,” and “hell,” so that they will nicely fit into his theology of self-love, or dignity of the human person, it is readily apparent that he is far removed from the Bible itself in the development of his new theology (or, as Martin Marty says, “a philosophy which makes room for God more than a theology that incorporates psychology”).

In Robert Schuller’s book, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, he leaves no doubt as to where he is coming from. Every key word like sin, hell, salvation, anger and hatred is defined in relation to self-esteem.

Self-esteem: Self-esteem is the human hunger for the divine dignity that God intended to be our emotional birthright as children created in his image.

Sin: Any human condition or act that robs God of glory by stripping one of his children of their right to divine dignity. Or, stated another way, sin is that deep lack of trust that separates me from God and leaves me with a sense of shame and unworthiness. Again, sin is any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem.

Hell: The loss of pride that naturally follows separation from God – the ultimate and unfailing source of our soul’s self-respect. A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem.

Anger, hatred, What is anger? What is hatred? It is really fear. And what is fear? It is the feeling of being

fear, insecurity threatened – a deeper feeling of insecurity. And what is that feeling of insecurity? It is a lack of self-confidence: self-confidence to cope with the ‘threatening, situation. And what is that lack of self-confidence? It is the result of a too-low self-esteem. ‘I don’t think I can’ rises from the deeper, ‘I don’t think I am.’

Salvation: To be saved means to be permanently lifted from sin (psychological self-abuse with all its consequences as seen above) and shame to self-esteem and its God-glorifying human need-meeting, constructive, and creative consequences.

Redefining the Bible

There is no question that the Bible is being reinterpreted by those who are promoting the new doctrine of selfism. What is called “Christian Psychology” today is largely a borrowing from humanistic psychology. And from the kind of definitions we have just seen of key biblical words there can be no doubt that psychological definitions are winning out over biblical definitions. This is what Dave Hunt calls “the seduction of Christianity.” Every gospel preacher should read his two books, The Seduction of Christianity, and Beyond Seduction: A Return to Biblical Christianity. He has some good things to say about this matter of redefining the Bible to make it fit into this new self-love theory.

As soon as the door was opened for the ‘truths’ of psychology to shed further light upon Scripture, a subtle process began that is bearing its deadly fruit in the church today. If ‘all truth is God’s truth’ and psychology is part of that truth, then it must be given equal authority with the Bible. Of course Christian psychologists deny this: They assure us that no psychological theory will be accepted that contradicts the Bible. But in actual practice ‘psychological truth’ is imposed upon the Bible and becomes the new grid through which Scripture is now to be interpreted. We are plainly told by some Christian psychologists that theology must be brought into line with psychological theory. Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ has even been baptized into the church and dressed in biblical language, in spite of the fact that Jews taught the opposite. (Maslow puts food, clothing, shelter, etc. first; Jesus puts them last and says to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness first. This plain truth is reinterpreted by the new experts, and anyone without training in psychology is disqualified from taking issue with them (Beyond Seduction, p. 140).

Schuller uses the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray as the basis for developing his new theology of self-esteem. He sees the theology of dignity or self-respect coming through in every part of this model prayer. But to find the gospel of self-love in every segment of this prayer he is forced (as he was in defining sin, hell, etc.) to redefine the terms used in the prayer so they will fit his self-esteem theory. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” reminds us of how great we are as God’s sons and daughters on planet earth; it is to make us conscious of our belonging to the family of God. So we are really praying, “God is my Father! I am his child. I am somebody! I bear his honorable name.”

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, ” raises a hope for every human being to discover the lost glory his heart desires. It assures me that I might be able to be someone for somebody. It means God will give us a human need-filling dream to feed our self-esteem. “Give us this day our daily bread” is redefined by making “bread” mean life’s basic needs. That may, not seem at first to be a new definition, but when Schuller tells us that fife’s basic needs are summed iip in possibility thinking, or a process of thinking that is stimulated and sustained by trust, that is a new meaning of “bread”! Forgiving is living, so “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” is meant to help us avoid the guilt of perfectionism without diffusing the drive to excellence. “We’ll take a giant step up the let’s-feel-good-about-ourselves-ladder when we experience the profoundly positive, regenerating, rejuvenating, revitalizing peace, love, and joy, that is the emotional reward of the person who receives and offers forgiveness,” Schuller says.

It is at this point that Schuller deals with the question of how one receives forgiveness he so desperately needs before he can really feel good about himself. In dealing with this question he discusses the terms sin, salvation and repentance. We’ve already seen how he defines sin and salvation. The core of sin is the lack of self-esteem, he says. The most serious sin “is the one that causes me to say, ‘I am unworthy. I may have no claim to divine sonship, if you examine me at my worst.’ For once a person believes he is an ‘unworthy sinner,’ it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.” Salvation is deliverance from sin (psychologically defined) and shame to self-esteem. Salvation is based on God’s unconditional grace. What is grace? God’s love in action for people who don’t deserve it (you are worthy, but you are not deserving, Schuller says). In keeping with his positive approach, Schuller describes the incarnation of Jesus in positive terms, i.e., instead of it being the humiliation of Christ it wag God’s glorification of the human being. The cross of Christ is also to be viewed positively; it places God’s value upon us. By his resurrection Christ has given us his highest honor (again a positive interpretation) – he has given us the opportunity to do his work and take his place in the world. All of this means that we really are somebodies!

Repentance is also defined as a positive creative force. It does not mean self-condemnation, self-denigration, self-abasement. “Rather, it means the turning of one’s life from sin to the Lordship of Christ. It is a turning from sin, with its rejection of self-esteem as the way to self-fulfillment to sanctification – the way of the Cross It is at this point that one is tempted (and thus the significance of that part of the prayer which says, “And lead us not into temptation”) to reject God’s plan for his fife, because the price will be high. But there can be no success without service. The Cross becomes God’s solution to humanity’s shame. On the Cross God made our human problem His problem. Our problem was and is a lack of self-worth, and on the Cross God demonstrated the infinite value of any and every person. So, to choose success as a goal (and setting goals is the only way to be enthusiastic) is to choose the Cross as the Way! This call of Christ to self-denial is a call to a commitment to do something creative and constructive. So it is a positive self-denial. The cross He calls us to bear will be offered as a dream, an idea. The greatest temptation will be to reject our cross out of fear of rejection, the possibility of a public humiliating failure, and this fear is a terrible threat to the ego. We should not be surprised by now when Schuller comes to that part of the prayer which says “deliver us from evil” and defines evil as fear, and then in this way comes back to his theme of a negative self-image, a lack of self-esteem, as the real evil we need to be delivered from. For what could evil be but fear, and what could fear be but a negative self-image?

Things to Remember

Now that we have Schuller’s view clearly before us, it might be well that we bring before our readers a few things to remember. An exhaustive response is not possible at this time, but a few things presented in a general way are certainly in order.

1. We should remember that any new emphasis that calls for a complete redefinition of all the key words that have to do with God’s scheme of redemption is to be viewed as highly suspect to say the least. Many false systems have been established in religion by someone taking one element in the Bible and seeing that element everywhere, or by misunderstanding some point of Bible teaching and then defining other terms related to the subject in light of that false definition. This danger must be avoided at all costs. As A. Berkeley Mickelsen warns:

. . . If a sectarian emphasis dominates our interest, we can make any passage a prelude to our favorite theme. Therefore, any out-of-balance interest, even if it is in a major element of the Bible, harms the interpreter. He loses a true sense of perspective. Once lost, a balanced perspective is difficult to regain. Under the illusion of being exhaustive in our study, we “find” what we are looking for in places where no one else has ever seen it (Interpreting the Bible, p. 371).

My teacher in hermeneutics during my junior year in college used to say, “If you allow a false teacher to create his own vocabulary, his arguments will be unanswerable.”

2. We must remember that many theological systems have been built upon extra-biblical presuppositions rather than upon the Bible itself. Schleiermacher’s theology was founded on pantheism. Hegel interpreted Christianity on the basis of logical pantheism. Kant’s notion of Christianity was guided by his theory of ethics. Ritschl’s theology is predicated on Kant’s philosophy. Much of neo-orthodoxy is inspired by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Ebner, Kant, and Buber (Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, p. 168). I am persuaded that it has been demonstrated by Paul Brownback, in his book, The Danger of Self-Love. Re-Examining a Popular Myth, that the new theology of self-love is rooted in the philosophy of existentialism and in the humanistic psychology of Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow.

3. We must remember to take into consideration all the relevant material on the subject at hand so as not to be guilty of giving a distorted view. All subjects that the Bible treats are not of the nature of an either/or proposition. From what the Bible says on the subject of man’s worthiness one does not have to come down either on the side that says that man is totally worthless in God’s sight, or on the side that man is really somebody. There are passages that indicate that man is to have a certain amount of dignity about himself because he is made in the image of God, and he is made for a very high purpose. Looked at from the other side however, Paul asks, “For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7) When extremes are taken on either side of an issue like this one, false conclusions are reached in other ways as well.

As a case in point, take Robert Schuller’s statement that “. . . once a person believes he is an ‘unworthy sinner,’ it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.” Now wouldn’t it be interesting to see Schuller square that statement off with the fact that Paul from the time he first learned the truth about Jesus and himself, and was baptized and “immediately . . . preached the Christ in the synagogues,” viewed himself as the chief of sinners? (Acts 9:20; 1 Tim. 1:15) And even though he viewed himself as such a terrible sinner, he acknowledged that he was saved by the marvelous grace of God! Here then is a man who did believe he was an “unworthy sinner” but who honestly accepted the saving grace of God. Had Schuller not allowed himself to adopt such an extreme position on what he calls “the sacred right of every person to self-esteem,” he could have spared himself of making such a ridiculous statement.

Schuller’s view of every person’s sacred right to self-esteem is so distorted that he repeatedly tells us that we should spare the dignity of folks by not calling them sinners. If he is right, will someone please tell me what Paul was doing when he stood before the “unchurched” Felix and reasoned “about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come,” and by such preaching made Felix “afraid.” Schuller is telling us that preaching that makes people afraid, fearful, or feel bad about themselves, destroys their feeling of self-worth and should be avoided. Don’t call people sinners, he says. Did Paul not know that he should have been trying to build Felix’s dignity, make him feel good about himself, and make him feel like he was somebody?

4. Finally, let us remember that we cannot build strong churches by positive preaching and teaching alone. We must never be mean or obnoxious in our approach, but faithfully preaching the word of God does demand that we meet the person where he is. Paul preached to Felix what Felix needed to bring about necessary changes in his life. This same design must characterize all our preaching and teaching. This applies to the churched and the unchurched alike.

The admonition to “preach the word . . . reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2), applies to all who need to be reproved, rebuked and exhorted! There is a need for building up and for planting, but there is also a need for plucking up, breaking down, destroying and overthrowing (Jer. 1:10). When we see a self-love advocate like Robert Schuller define the new role of those who have been “led . . . into an existential encounter with . . . unconditional love and acceptance” as that of building people up and not putting them down (in essence by not calling them sinners), we know right off that the “New Reformation” he is calling for is not biblical. Robert Schuller, and most other advocates of self-love today, are advocating a perverted concept of self-esteem.

Conclusion

Are we ourselves in danger of being influenced by this new theology of self-worth? There is no doubt in my mind that we are in serious danger. Most of the sermons being preached in pulpits in some “conservative” churches are being developed right out of the books being written by “evangelical” writers in the denominational churches. Men like Chuck Swindoll, Warren W. Wiersbe, John White, Anthony A. Hoekema, and many others. Admittedly, not all of these men are self-worth advocates. But the point is that some of the churches are not getting all they need by way of good balanced preaching. Some controversial subjects are being ignored altogether. The only preaching some are doing is positive preaching. How long has it been since you have heard the preacher where you worship preach on instrumental music in worship, worldliness, church support of human societies, the sin of sectarianism, the identity of the New Testament church, salvation by grace through faith, etc. You may be hearing some good sermons on prayer, how to build a stronger relationship with the Lord, how to surrender to Jesus, the Lord’s life, death and resurrection, etc., but how much plucking up, breaking down, destroying and overthrowing have you seen lately?

It is time for concern when religious papers are being circulated and churches are being built on a totally positive approach. It is time for concern when preachers are reading more from Tim LaHaye, and other modern “evangelical” writers, than they are from T.W. Brents, J.W. McGarvey, David Lipscomb, Roy Cogdill, and other good seasoned and sound Bible students from the past, as well as those who are with us today. It is time for concern when we are being told that the Samaritan woman of John 4 was not lost because she was a sinner, but because she did not believe in Jesus as Messiah; or, in other words, she was not lost because she was in the wrong church, because the man she lived with was not her husband, etc. Brethren, had she believed in Jesus as the Messiah and yet remained with that man who was not her husband, and had she continued in the “Church of the Samaritans,” would she have been saved anyway? Or, if Jesus had never come, would she have been lost or saved? If lost, why? Tim LaHaye, or Chuck Swindoll, or Warren Wiersbe, and all the other “evangelical” writers would have liked our brother’s statement about the Samaritan woman. But I still believe R.L. Whiteside was right when he said, “The gospel was designed to save a world already condemned. It is only in a relative sense that people are lost because they do not obey the gospel. Primarily people are lost because they are sinners” (Paul’s Letter to the Saints at Rome, p. 23). Read his illustration about the man drowning. He refuses to be rescued. Why did he drown? Because he did not get into the boat, or because he was in the water? Because he was in the water. He would have drowned just the same had there never been a boat.

Brethren, it will take only one generation of totally positive preaching, where there is no plucking up, breaking down, destroying and overthrowing, for the Lord’s church in our time to completely lose its identity. May God save us from ourselves!

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 375-378
June 18, 1987

By Mike Willis

I stand amazed at the financial empires which the TV evangelists have been able to build. Through their abilities to raise funds from their listening audiences, they have been able to purchase television time, erect buildings for their corporate offices, build a recreational facility (Heritage Park), operate a university (Oral Roberts University), operate a hospital (City of Faith medical center), and many other bold financial enterprises.

At the heart of the message of the TV evangelists is a gospel of financial prosperity that is tied to one’s giving to the Lord, the TV evangelist serving as the point of contact with the Lord. The covenant of giving may be called “The Key to Prosperity” (Evelyn Wyatt, Wings of Healing), “The Laws of Prosperity” (Kenneth Copeland), or “The Miracles of Seed-Faith” (Oral Roberts). Inasmuch as some of us are unfamiliar with the message being taught by TV evangelists, I want to present their message in sufficient detail for us to grasp their message:

1. Evelyn Wyatt. Claiming to have received a direct revelation from God in a vision, Mrs. Wyatt wrote,

The Scriptural pattern for receiving is to give. . Too often people are inclined to reverse the principle by expecting to receive first, then give, but note the words of Jesus again. First He said, “Give,” THEN, “it shall be given unto you.”

The plan that God showed me is simple and direct, and carries a promise of continued blessing for everyone who will make a covenant with Him to give a special offering each month for a year (“The Key To Prosperity”).

2. Kenneth Copeland. In The Laws of Prosperity, Copeland wrote,

You begin to know that God is the source of your success, that He is the one giving it to you, that there is an endless supply behind you and an endless supply in front of you. All you must do is be a channel for it, and giving is the key that opens the door . . . . Do you want a hundredfold return on your money? Give and let God multiply it back to you. No bank in the world offers this kind of return! Praise the Lord! (pp. 66, 67)

You give – then it will be given to you again. The key is to give continually. As you are working in the Word and God’s prosperity is being produced in your life, you will reach a point -when your bread is coming back to you on every wave. It is your job to put it on the water. It is God’s job to see that it comes back! You do your job and let God do His; then you will be continually receiving. The more you give, the more you will get; the more you get, the more you will have to give. God intended for these things to work this way. When you get to this point, more will be coming in than you can give away! (p. 34)

3. Oral Roberts. The three steps to Oral Roberts’ plan are (1) look to God as your source, (2) give that it may be given to you, and (3) expect a miracle. He claims to have discovered this plan of giving through a study of Jesus.

He began everything He attempted with giving first. He connected giving with seed and laid down the example as the Christian’s life-style. I was forced to change my thinking. Before this I had given after I received. But I redirected my principle of giving from a debt owed, to a seed I sowed. It was revolutionary but entirely scriptural (The Miracle of Seed-Faith, p. 28).

In a conversation with Jesus in his prayer tower, Oral learned more about “seeding” a miracle.

This was a whole new thought to me. Although giving was a key part of the Blessing-Pact, it had not become quite clear that giving was the seeding for our miracle from which God our Source would multiply back with such an increase it would be bigger and more powerful than our mountains of needs and problem (A Daily Guide To Miracles, p. 63).

Through statements such as these and testimonials on TV shows, the TV evangelists are communicating to their audience that financial prosperity can be obtained by showing enough faith in God to make a donation to their ministry.

Fundamental Flaws In Seed-Faith Giving

1. Poverty is cured by the atonement. Many faith healers have preached that in the atonement Jesus provided healing for the body (Isa. 53:5 – with his stripes we are healed). Some have gone a step further to say that the atonement also delivers us from the “curse of the law – poverty.” Kenneth Copeland said,

Jesus bore the curse of the law on our behalf. He beat Satan and took away his power. Consequently, there is no reason for you to live under the curse of the law, no reason for you to live in poverty of any kind . . . . Poverty is under the curse of the law, and Jesus Christ has redeemed us from the curse and has established us in abundance, not bare necessity! (The Laws of Prosperity, pp. 51, 54)

Oral Roberts wrote that Jesus meets our present needs – water for thirst, food for hunger, strength for weakness, riches for poverty, kiss for sorrow, gladness for misery, and love for loneliness. “So Jesus reached up and took heaven and kissed the earth with it and opened it and gave to the children of men. He came with outstretched hands filled with God’s blessings, with an open heaven behind Him. He came into people’s lives at the point of their need, performing miracles and setting them free” (A Daily Guide to Miracles, p. 227).

The atonement on Calvary did not cure our financial woes. If I am in debt when I obey the gospel, I will be in debt the day after I obey the gospel. Jesus has not promised to deliver me from financial bankruptcy through obedience to the gospel. The blood of Jesus is no more a cure for my financial woes than a cure for my physical hunger and thirst. Promising men that their financial woes win be cured by obedience to the gospel is to promise them more than God promised.

2. Giving for seffish reasons. The teaching of seed-faith giving encourages one to give in order to get something from God. This is demonstrated by these chapter titles in Oral Robert’s book the Miracles of Seed-Faith:

How I Learned a Lesson Early in My Ministry to Look To God As My Source For A Loan

How Two Young Men Through Applying The Principles of Seed-Faith Became Tulsa’s Third-Largest Builders

How A Friend Got His Dream Job Through Applying The Key Principles of the Blessing-Pact

The TV evangelists promise their audiences that their problems (whether they are financial, physical, emotional, marital, etc.) will be solved when they have enough ffaith in God to plant a seed for God to multiply back in his harvest. The “seed” should be planted in the TV evangelist’s particular “garden” (ministry). The desire for something from God is used to motivate the listener to make a donation to the TV evangelist’s ministry. The motive of giving to God is reduced to selfishness – one gives to God in order to receive a greater gift from him.

In The Health and Wealth Gospel, author Bruce Barron demonstrated how this message is being used as follows:

Jerry Savelle, in one service recorded for cable television and designed to help raise money for Copeland’s proposed World Outreach Headquarters building in Fort Worth, invoked a literal application of the hundredfold return in an unusual and potentially exploitative manner. With a live audience watching, Savelle handed Copeland ten checks for one thousand dollars each and stated:

Each of these $1,000 checks I am now giving to you will return one hundredfold to me, according to God’s word. One for my church, one for my school, one for my mission work…. and this last one for my wife and myself personally. Folks, these checks will return a total of $100,000 each! Can you say “Praise the Lord”? What are you waiting for? Get on your feet and get in on this! Let’s take the biggest offering ever! I want it now! Who will do what I did! Who will sow in famine and reap one hundredfold? Well, come on! Come running, you sower! (p. 140)

In Abundant Life (July 1980, p. 4), Roberts wrote, “Solve your money needs with money seeds. ” This teaching on giving appeals to man’s carnal greed as his motive for giving and thereby undermines the gospel.

3. Through seed-faith giving one manipulates God. One distinction between magic and religion is this: in religion one submits himself to the higher will of God; in magic man manipulates a higher power to get things for himself. In seed-faith giving, one plants a seed (a financial gift) which God must cause to grow into a harvest (one’s desired result). Hence, one is able to get anything he wants from God by seed-faith giving. He manipulates God through seed-faith giving.

4. Financial poverty becomes a proof of spiritual poverty. Should one have a financial need which is unmet, he either does not know about seed-faith giving or lacks the faith to practice it. In either case, his own financial needs manifest his spiritual poverty.

5. The doctrine of seed-faith giving is believable only to those who live in an affluent society during a period of inflation – a period during which the general affluence of the country touches the lives of all citizens, including those who send donations to TV evangelistic. In such a society testimonials of success are easily found. If one could persuade thousands of people through TV preaching to donate money on the promise that they will receive a unexpected return on their money, he would expect that someone would write saying that he had received unexpected money. Such letters are then used as testimonials to encourage other to participate in seed-faith giving.

The Seed-Faith Concept Misapplies Scripture

The TV evangelists have appealed to Scripture to teach their message of seed-faith. In so doing, they have abused Scripture, twisting and perverting its context to fit their message. Here is a partial list of Scriptures which have been abused:

1. 3 John 2. “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” Oral Roberts said that this Scripture was “the greatest discovery Evelyn and I ever made about health, prosperity, and spiritual blessings” (A Daily Guide To Miracles, p. 35). John’s personal wish for Gaius is distorted into a divine promise of financial prosperity for all believers. There is nothing in the text that promises financial prosperity upon the condition of faith in seed-faith giving.

2. Mark 10.29-30. “And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” This passage was literally interpreted by Jerry Savelle on Kenneth Copeland’s broadcast which was mentioned earlier. Savelle’s $1,000 check was expected to bring $100,000 back to him. If Savelle was as literal with all things mentioned in this verse as he was with money, he could donate his house to the ministry and receive 1000 houses back, donate his physical brother to the ministry and receive 1000 physical brothers, donate his mother to the ministry and receive 1000 mothers in return (would Savelle like to show how this could be done biologically?), donate his wife to the ministry and receive 1000 wives (shades of Joseph Smith), or donate one of his children to the ministry and receive 10W children in return. I suspect that these TV ministers might understand brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, and children to refer to spiritual relationships, not physical. However, when financial matters are mentioned, the meaning of the terms immediately shifts to literal houses and dollars. Their theology contradicts solid exegesis of the text.

3. Galatians 6.7-8. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” The reaping of this text has no reference to reaping in this life; it refers to life everlasting in the world to come (Mk. 10:30). The corruption is eternal damnation in hell. To use this verse to teach that one shall receive financial prosperity by making a donation to a TV evangelist’s ministry is to pervert this text.

4. 2 Corinthians 9.6-11. Rather than reproducing this text, I will encourage our readers to read it from the Bible. This text is more plausibly used than any other so far cited. Nevertheless, this text plainly states that the harvest which is reaped from sowing is “the fruits of your righteousness” (9:11). In his commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians, Fred Fisher correctly stated, “The result of their liberality would be progress in righteousness on their part. Thus, Paul revealed that he was not thinking of material rewards for giving, but of immaterial ones” (p. 393).

5. Old Testament texts. The TV evangelists cite a number of Old Testament texts to justify seed-faith giving – giving which is done in order to get a blessing from God. Several things need to be said about these texts in a general way: (a) Promises made to Israel as a nation are applied to specific individuals. God made many promises of prosperity to Israel as a nation on the condition that she would be faithful to God. We are not to understand that every individual saint in that nation had to prosper in order for that promise to be fulfilled, for such is definitely not what happened. (b) General truths, such as in the Proverbs, are given specific application. The Proverbs condition many temporal blessings upon obedience to the word of God (e.g., diligent labor produces prosperity). The wisdom literature also recognizes that time and chance happen to all (Eccl. 9:11); consequently an individual may do all that the word of God says and still not be prosperous because of circumstances beyond his own control.

Hence, the Scriptures used to prove the doctrine of seed-faith giving are distorted and perverted by the TV evangelists.

Seed-Faith Teaching Ignores Scriptures

Those who preach the seed-faith principles of giving ignore “some plain statements from the Scripture which are not in harmony with their doctrine.

1. Scriptures which foretell that the righteous shall suffer for righteousness sake. Though he was a perfectly obedient Son, Jesus did not have a place to lay his head (Lk. 9:57). Jesus taught that the righteous might have to give up their lands and houses because of Christ (Mk. 10:29). The Hebrew Christians lost their possessions because of their faith in Christ (Heb. 10:34).

2. Some faithful saints were not prosperous people. The apostle Paul not only suffered persecution, he also experienced hunger and thirst and nakedness, even though he was a faithful Christian (2 Cor. 11:27). Saints suffered in the famines which struck the general populace (Acts 11:27-30), even as did the unrighteous.

Conclusion

Seed-faith giving is a fund-raising device created by TV evangelists to motivate the general populace to donate money to their ministries in order that they can pay their bills. The principle of seed-faith giving is not only absent from the Bible, it is also contrary to the Bible teaching about giving. In the biblical sense, these TV evangelists fit the description of the false teachers of 2 Peter 2:3 who “through covetousness … with feigned words make merchandise of you.”

Seed-faith giving preys on the unfortunate. Those who are attracted to this message are the poor and desperate, who sometimes send their last dollars and “expect a miracle.” Like their Pharisee counterparts, the TV evangelists who preach seed-faith giving “devour widows houses” (Matt. 23:14), as they build their financial empires on contributions sent in by poor and desperate people.

Seed-faith giving is a doctrine of the devil which is causing the general public to lose confidence in religion in general. As such the doctrine must be opposed and resisted wherever it is taught.

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 379-382
June 18, 1987