Originally posted by Paul DeYonghe
“Where’s the beef? Where’s the beef?” my opponent asks me
He tsks me, he tasks me
Attacks while I’m kickin’ back—see?
Well I’ll up the steaks, I got his beef right here
No B.S.’in’ here
I won’t hand you a bum steer
The “famous” is ripe for a choice prime ribbin’
Tenderize his lies with knowledge I’ve been given
And just when you think the joke’s been udderly played
I milk it just a bit more, pass the mic off to J—
But wait, but wait, these doctrines still assail
I expect a decent fight, but fG7 seems to flail:
“These doctrines are impurity—
No, they’re immaturity—
No, they’re from obscurity—
Wait, these things are Pagan.”
All the while streaming from the lips of Copeland-Hagin
Well I’d rather snuff Skoal than be dippin’ from that tin
Or listen to Benny Hinn
And wind up in the Loony Binn
Little gods who’ll perish like the frauds that they are
Try to store their faith in words like fruit in a jar—what?
Faith isn’t the Force, man, this ain’t no movie, it’s real life
With all its joys and its sorrows, all its struggle and strife
I know you’d rather walk streets of gold than dirt
But for now you’ll have to put up with the pain and the hurt
While I was taking time off, just exploring the board
You pulled a sneak attack, you must be out of your gourd
You shouldn’t have tried to cross this mad Berean,
Now you’ve been caught just like the Chaldean
Drinking his own urine and eating his dung
You mess around with DeYonghe, you wind up getting stung
And now that my rhyming skills have made you meek
I’ll step down off the mic, provide the content you seek
Well, judging from the last post, it looks like fG7 is willing to pull every other Word-Faith “apologetic” trick out of the bag except “touch not mine anointed.” Obfuscation, deflection, and camouflage are all evidenced here. He tries to cloud the issue of faith once again, claim obscurity for the heresies of the Faith teachers, attempts to deflect conversation away from the Movement by claiming it’s not a movement, then tries to pass off the Movement as a subset of charismaticism.
fG7 would have one believe that the heresies I’ve listed above are not part of the foundational beliefs of the Movement. That’s only partly correct; some of them are, some aren’t. The “Incarnation” comment made by Hagin may not, in and of itself, be a core tenet of the Movement, but it aligns nicely with the “little gods” doctrine, which is. The “man created in equality with God” comment made by Hagin has been echoed by the other faith teachers enough to be considered core; Benny Hinn claimed Adam could fly and go to the moon. The confession of healing over one’s body, claiming health by divine right, is part-and-parcel of the Movement—I know of no Word-Faith teacher who doesn’t teach this. All of this dances around the true issue: fG7’s unwillingness to call a spade a spade. He’s done everything but own up to the fact that these men teach (or have taught) grave theological error. If these men have received so much feedback about these statements, why don’t they publicly retract them?
As to the Movement not being a movement, that’s absurd. The Movement holds at least two big conventions here yearly: Hagin’s Campmeeting and Victory’s Word Explosion. (I used to go to the latter, until one year some Word Shrapnel hit me in the eye.) These conventions gather like-minded teachers: the Copelands, Hinns, Cerullos, and Hickeys of the world. If the Movement isn’t distinct, why not have a John MacArthur or a Max Lucado, one of your more mainline evangelicals, give a message? And the “word of Faith” catchphrase being media-invented? I’ve seen no evidence of this, but I do know that Hagin’s periodical is called The Word of Faith.
As to trying to disguise the Movement as a grouping of “Spirit-Filled” believers, I take offense on behalf of charismatics everywhere, even though I’m not one. Many of the Movements most vocal opponents have come from within charismaticism, including Charles Farah, D.R. McConnell, Walter Martin, and yes, Hank Hanegraaf.
