Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

Affiliation

Methodist, then Free Will Baptist preacher; founder and president of Bethel Bible Institute, Spencer, Massachusetts (1898-1923); radio preacher in Seattle

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Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

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Life

Upstate New York

Essek William Kenyon was born on 24 April 1867 at Hadley, Saratoga County, in upstate New York, the fourth of ten children of a logger and a schoolteacher. The family moved to Amsterdam, New York, where he worked in a carpet mill. He was converted in a Methodist church at about seventeen and began to preach at nineteen, but for some years in his twenties he drifted from faith, hoping for a career on the stage.

Boston and Emerson College

In 1892 he enrolled at the Emerson College of Oratory in Boston, a school of speech and drama founded by Charles Wesley Emerson, whose teaching blended Christianity with the idealist and "mind-cure" philosophies then popular in New England. Boston was the centre of the New Thought and Christian Science movements. Kenyon's time at Emerson later became the centre of a dispute over the sources of his ideas.^†

He returned to faith under the preaching of A.J. Gordon, the Baptist pastor of Clarendon Street Church and a leader of the Keswick-style Higher Life and divine healing movements. Kenyon was ordained by the Free Will Baptists, married Evva Spurling in 1893, and pastored Baptist churches in New York and Massachusetts.

Bethel Bible Institute

In 1898 he founded what became the Bethel Bible Institute at Spencer, Massachusetts, a faith school without fees that trained preachers and missionaries; he led it for some twenty-five years and also held evangelistic campaigns in the north-east. His first book, The Father and His Family (1916), set out the core of his teaching. Evva died in 1914, and he married Alice Whitney in 1914.^†

California and Seattle

In 1923, after disputes with the institute's board, he left Spencer and moved to California, where he preached in Los Angeles and Oakland, mixing with Pentecostals but never joining them. In 1931 he moved to Seattle, founded the New Covenant Baptist Church, and began a daily radio broadcast, "Kenyon's Church of the Air". He published a series of books and a magazine, Herald of Life. His daughter Ruth Kenyon Houseworth continued his publishing work after his death.

Key dates

• 1867 - Born at Hadley, New York, 24 April
• c. 1884 - Converted in a Methodist church
• 1892 - Studies at the Emerson College of Oratory, Boston
• 1893 - Marries Evva Spurling; ordained by the Free Will Baptists
• 1898 - Founds Bethel Bible Institute, Spencer, Massachusetts
• 1916 - The Father and His Family
• 1923 - Leaves Bethel; moves to California
• 1931 - Moves to Seattle; founds New Covenant Baptist Church and radio ministry
• 1945 - What Happened from the Cross to the Throne
• 19 March 1948 - Dies in Seattle

Teachings and claims

Sense knowledge and revelation knowledge

Kenyon taught that there are two kinds of knowledge. "Sense knowledge" comes through the five senses and belongs to the natural man; "revelation knowledge" comes from the Word of God received by the human spirit. Faith must act on revelation knowledge even when the senses contradict it. A believer who is sick should not trust his symptoms but the Word that says he is healed.

Positive confession

Faith is expressed by confession. "What I confess, I possess," he wrote; "confession always goes ahead of possession". Believers should never confess weakness, sickness or defeat, because their words have power, and negative confession gives Satan legal ground.

Identification and authority

The believer is identified with Christ in His death, resurrection and enthronement, and therefore shares His authority over Satan, sickness and circumstance. "We are what He says we are."

Healing already provided

Healing was accomplished at the cross and belongs to believers by right; they need only claim it and confess it.

The new creation as divine

He taught that in the new birth the believer receives God's own nature ("zoe", eternal life) and becomes "as much an incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth".^†

Christ's spiritual death

Kenyon taught that on the cross Christ died not only physically but "spiritually", taking on Satan's nature; that He suffered in hell as the sinner's substitute; and that He was "born again" there before His resurrection. This was the price of redemption, paid to satisfy justice.

Documented controversies

• New Thought origins. D.R. McConnell's A Different Gospel (1988) argued that Kenyon's ideas derived in large part from New Thought metaphysics, partly through his studies at Emerson College, and that the Word of Faith movement had therefore taken over a non-Christian philosophy. Dale Simmons (1997) argued that Kenyon's roots lay chiefly in the Holiness, Higher Life and faith-cure movements of A.J. Gordon, A.B. Simpson and others, while confirming that he borrowed language and ideas from New Thought, which he also criticised by name. Joe McIntyre, a sympathetic biographer, denies any significant New Thought influence.
• Plagiarism by Hagin. His writings were later reproduced extensively, without acknowledgement, in books by Kenneth Hagin.
• The spiritual death of Christ. Theologians of every tradition have rejected this teaching as contrary to Scripture and the creeds.
• Leaving Bethel. His departure from the institute in 1923 followed disagreements with its board; the details are not fully recorded.

Death

Kenyon died in Seattle on 19 March 1948, aged 80, after a short illness.^†

Legacy

Kenyon never joined a Pentecostal church, and in his lifetime his influence was modest. After his death, his books were taken up by the healing evangelists of the 1950s - T.L. Osborn and F.F. Bosworth cited him - and above all by Kenneth Hagin, through whom his teaching became the foundation of the Word of Faith movement. Phrases such as "What I confess, I possess", the believer's authority and revelation knowledge became the common language of the prosperity gospel worldwide. Kenyon is therefore the source of positive confession and the Word of Faith, though he himself did not preach financial prosperity in the later sense.

Measured against the creeds

Kenyon's call to trust God's Word and his emphasis on the believer's union with Christ have deep roots in Scripture. But his central teachings depart from the historic faith in several ways.

• Christ's spiritual death. The Church confesses that the eternal Son, "true God from true God", suffered and died in His human nature, offering Himself "through the eternal Spirit" without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14). That He took on Satan's nature, was tormented in hell and "born again" there is unknown to Scripture and the Fathers and contradicts His own words "It is finished" (John 19:30) and "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). The Apostles' Creed's "He descended into hell" has always meant Christ's triumphant proclamation to the dead (1 Peter 3:18-19), not His defeat.
• The believer as an incarnation. The Church teaches that we become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4) by grace, not that we become incarnations of God as Christ was. Christ alone is God and man by nature (Chalcedon, 451).
• Confession as power. To make one's words the means of obtaining health turns prayer into a technique and lays on the sick the guilt of a "negative confession". The Church prays "Thy will be done", following Christ in Gethsemane.

Major writings

• The Father and His Family (1916)
• The Wonderful Name of Jesus (1927)
• Jesus the Healer (1940)
• Two Kinds of Faith (1942)
• What Happened from the Cross to the Throne (1945)
• The Hidden Man (published after his death)
• Editor, Herald of Life

Affiliation

Assemblies of God minister (ordained 1936; resigned 1955); founder of Miracle Revival Fellowship and Miracle Valley, Arizona

Appears in

The healing revival, 1947-58, and after, Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

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Life

A drinker's son in the Ozarks

Asa Alonso Allen was born on 27 March 1911 in Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, into a poor family; his father and mother both drank heavily, and Allen later said that he began drinking as a child and was an alcoholic by his teens. He left home young, worked at odd jobs, and spent time in jail for stealing corn.^† In 1934 he was converted at a Methodist church revival in Missouri, and soon afterwards received the Pentecostal baptism in the Spirit.

Assemblies of God pastor

He married Lexie Scrivner in 1936 and was licensed by the Assemblies of God the same year, ordained later. For more than a decade he served small churches and held revivals in Colorado, Missouri and Texas. He later wrote that he fasted and prayed for the power of God, and on one occasion listed thirteen things God required of him before he could receive it.

Healing evangelist

In 1949 he attended an Oral Roberts campaign in Dallas and resolved to start his own healing ministry. He bought a tent in 1951, began a radio programme, and in 1954 launched Miracle Magazine, which by the time of his death had a circulation of around 450,000. His meetings were the most sensational of the healing revival: long, loud, with frenzied music, deliverance from demons, and testimony after testimony of healings. He displayed jars said to contain cancers and tumours expelled in his meetings, and invited anyone to come forward.

Knoxville, 1955

In October 1955, during a revival in Knoxville, Tennessee, Allen was arrested on a charge of drunk driving. He said he had been kidnapped and drugged, but he forfeited bond rather than contest the charge. The Assemblies of God asked him to withdraw from ministry pending an inquiry; instead he resigned from the denomination and continued as an independent.

Miracle Valley

In 1956 he founded the Miracle Revival Fellowship to license ministers associated with him. In 1958 he was given land in the San Pedro valley near Bisbee, Arizona, where he built Miracle Valley: a headquarters, Bible college, recording studio, church and housing for his staff and followers. His campaigns continued across America, and he was one of the few white evangelists of the time to hold integrated meetings in the South.

Prosperity and the last years

In the 1960s Allen turned increasingly to promises of financial blessing, teaching that God would give "power to get wealth" to those who gave to his ministry. He claimed miracles such as oil flowing from the hands and heads of worshippers. In 1967 his wife left him, and they divorced. His health and drinking worsened.

Key dates

• 1911 - Born at Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, 27 March
• 1934 - Converted; baptism in the Spirit
• 1936 - Marries Lexie Scrivner; licensed by the Assemblies of God
• 1949 - Attends an Oral Roberts campaign
• 1951 - Begins tent ministry
• 1954 - Miracle Magazine
• October 1955 - Arrested in Knoxville; leaves the Assemblies of God
• 1956 - Miracle Revival Fellowship
• 1958 - Miracle Valley, Arizona
• 1963 - Wins a tax case against the IRS
• 1967 - Divorce
• 11 June 1970 - Found dead in San Francisco

Teachings and claims

Healing and deliverance

Allen taught that sickness, deformity, poverty and addiction are often the work of demons and can be cast out by faith. His meetings featured extended deliverance sessions.

Signs and wonders

He promoted claims of "miracle oil" flowing from the hands and of the dead being raised, and of crosses of blood appearing on people's foreheads.^†

Prosperity

In his later years he preached that God would give financial blessings in return for gifts to his ministry, and offered "prosperity" prayer cloths and other items, anticipating the prosperity gospel of later televangelists.

End-time revival

He saw his ministry as part of a last-days outpouring of miracles before Christ's return.

Documented controversies

• The 1955 arrest. As above. An associate later said that he was sometimes drunk afterwards and that his staff covered for him.
• Healing claims. Journalists and doctors questioned his displays of "tumours" and claimed healings; few were independently confirmed.
• Finances. His ministry was investigated by the IRS; it won its tax case in 1963. Critics pointed to the amounts raised through Miracle Magazine and his appeals.
• Sensationalism. Other healing evangelists, including Gordon Lindsay's Voice of Healing, distanced themselves from him after 1955.

Death

On 11 June 1970 Allen was found dead in a room at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, aged 59. His ministry first said he had died of a heart attack. The coroner found acute alcoholism and fatty infiltration of the liver, with a blood alcohol level of 0.36. He was buried at Miracle Valley.

Legacy

Allen's protégés included R.W. Schambach, Leroy Jenkins and others who carried his style into later decades, and his combination of healing, deliverance and prosperity preaching anticipated later televangelism. Miracle Valley passed through several hands after his death. His integrated meetings in the South are remembered as one of the more admirable features of his ministry.

Measured against the creeds

The Church prays for the sick, casts out demons in Christ's name, and calls the addicted to repentance and freedom. But Allen's ministry turned these into spectacle, built on claims that were rarely examined and a promise of financial reward for giving. His life also shows the danger of a ministry without accountability: he left the discipline of his own church at the first test, and the private struggle that ended his life was hidden from the people who trusted him.

The New Testament asks that those who lead be "sober" and "not given to wine" (1 Timothy 3:2-3), not for the leader's reputation but for his own sake and the flock's. And it warns against those who, "through covetousness, with feigned words, make merchandise of you" (2 Peter 2:3). The Church's answer to such failures is not contempt but the ordinary discipline of a pastor under authority, confession and the sacraments, which Allen's independent ministry had abandoned.

Major writings

• The Price of God's Miracle-Working Power (1950)
• Editor, Miracle Magazine (1954-70)
• With Walter Wagner, Born to Lose, Bound to Win (autobiography, 1970)

Affiliation

Assemblies of God pastor (1937-49); independent teacher; founder of Rhema Bible Training Center (1974)

Appears in

Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

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Life

A sick boy in McKinney

Kenneth Erwin Hagin was born on 20 August 1917 in McKinney, Texas, prematurely, weighing under two pounds; he was not expected to live. He had a congenital heart condition, and his father left the family when he was six. At fifteen, in April 1933, he became bedridden with what doctors told him was an incurable heart disease and a blood disorder. On 22 April 1933, he later wrote, he died three times that night, descending each time towards hell, and was brought back. He was born again in the experience.

Healed by Mark 11:24

For more than a year he remained bedridden, reading his grandmother's Bible. In August 1934, he said, he came to understand Mark 11:24 - "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them" - as meaning that he must believe he was healed before he felt any change. He declared himself healed, got up, and recovered. The verse became the foundation of his teaching.

Baptist and Pentecostal pastor

He began preaching in 1934 as a Southern Baptist "boy preacher" in a small community church at Roland, Texas. In 1937 he received the baptism in the Spirit with tongues and joined the Assemblies of God, which licensed and later ordained him. He married Oretha Rooker in 1938, and pastored several small Assemblies of God churches in east and north Texas between 1937 and 1949.

Visions and the field ministry

In 1949 he left pastoring to become an itinerant Bible teacher and evangelist, associating with the healing revival and The Voice of Healing. He said that between 1950 and 1963 Jesus appeared to him in eight visions, the first in a revival meeting in Rockwall, Texas, in 1950, giving him a special anointing to minister healing and teaching him about faith, demons and prosperity. In 1952 he said Jesus told him how to discern evil spirits.

Tulsa and Rhema

In 1963 he founded the Kenneth E. Hagin Evangelistic Association and in 1966 moved his headquarters to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He began a radio programme, Faith Seminar of the Air (1966), and the magazine The Word of Faith (1968), which gave the movement its name. In 1974 he opened Rhema Bible Training Center in Broken Arrow, near Tulsa, which by his death had trained some 20,000 graduates, many of whom founded churches worldwide. From 1979 he held annual Campmeetings in Tulsa. His books, mostly short booklets, sold tens of millions of copies.

Final years

In the 1980s Hagin became the target of strong criticism from evangelical and Pentecostal scholars. In 2000, shortly before his death, he published The Midas Touch, which criticised excesses of prosperity teaching. His son succeeded him.

Key dates

• 1917 - Born in McKinney, Texas, 20 August
• April 1933 - Bedridden; near-death experience and conversion
• August 1934 - Healed, he said, through faith in Mark 11:24
• 1934 - Begins preaching as a Baptist
• 1937 - Baptism in the Spirit; joins the Assemblies of God
• 1938 - Marries Oretha Rooker
• 1949 - Begins itinerant ministry
• 1950-63 - Reported visions of Jesus
• 1966 - Moves to Tulsa; radio ministry
• 1968 - The Word of Faith magazine
• 1974 - Rhema Bible Training Center
• 2000 - The Midas Touch
• 19 September 2003 - Dies in Tulsa

Teachings and claims

Faith as confession

Hagin's core message, taken from Kenyon and his own experience, was that faith believes it has received before it sees, and expresses this by confession. "Say it, do it, receive it, tell it," he summarised in How to Write Your Own Ticket with God (1979). "You can have what you say."

Healing guaranteed

He taught that healing was provided in the atonement and that it is never God's will for a believer to be sick. Sickness is from the devil and is to be resisted and refused by faith and confession. Believers should "not confess" symptoms.

Prosperity

Drawing on Deuteronomy 28 and Galatians 3:13-14, he taught that Christ redeemed believers from the curse of the law, which includes poverty, so that financial prosperity is part of salvation.

The authority of the believer

Believers share Christ's authority over Satan and demons, and must exercise it; God has given the Church dominion on earth and will not act without its words and prayers.

Christ's spiritual death and the believer's divine status

Following Kenyon, he taught that Jesus died spiritually on the cross, taking on Satan's nature, and was born again in hell. He wrote that man was created "on terms of equality with God" and that "the believer is as much an incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth".^†

Revelation by vision

He presented his teaching as received by revelation, especially in the visions of 1950-63.

Documented controversies

• Plagiarism. D.R. McConnell showed in A Different Gospel (1988) that substantial passages of Hagin's books reproduce E.W. Kenyon's writings nearly word for word without acknowledgement, although Hagin presented his teaching as received directly by revelation. Hagin's ministry later said he had read Kenyon and absorbed his words unconsciously.
• Theological criticism. Critics across the churches - evangelical, Pentecostal, Catholic and Orthodox - condemned his teaching on Christ's spiritual death, on believers as "little gods", and on healing and prosperity. Pentecostal scholars such as Gordon Fee (The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels, 1985) were among the sharpest critics.
• Deaths and suffering. Critics recorded cases of people who abandoned medical treatment or refused to acknowledge illness after hearing Word of Faith teaching.

^†

• The visions, which he cited as authority but which cannot be tested.

Death

Hagin collapsed at his home in Tulsa on 14 September 2003 and died in hospital on 19 September 2003, aged 86, of heart failure.^†

Legacy

Hagin is called "the father of the Word of Faith movement". Through Rhema, his books and his many students - including several of the best-known televangelists of the following decades - he made Kenyon's teaching a worldwide movement, especially strong in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The prosperity gospel built on it has become one of the most influential forms of Christianity in the Global South. He was personally regarded by followers as humble, folksy and kind; his late Midas Touch tried, too late for many, to rein in the excesses his teaching had helped to unleash.

Measured against the creeds

Hagin's teaching inherits all of Kenyon's departures from the historic faith and adds others. Christ's "spiritual death" and rebirth in hell contradict the Church's confession that the eternal Son offered Himself as a spotless sacrifice and that His death destroyed the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). To call believers "an incarnation" as Christ was confuses deification by grace with the unique union of God and man in the one Person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451).

The promise of guaranteed healing and wealth sets aside the Lord's call to take up the cross (Mark 8:34) and the apostolic teaching that "we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). St Paul, who learned to be content "both to abound and to suffer need" (Philippians 4:11-13), and the long witness of the martyrs and saints, are a sufficient answer. And the claim to new revelation by vision, presented as above testing, sets one man's experience above the faith "once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).

Major writings

Hagin wrote more than 125 books and booklets, among them:

• Redeemed from Poverty, Sickness and Death (1966)
• The Believer's Authority (1967)
• I Believe in Visions (1972)
• How to Write Your Own Ticket with God (1979)
• Zoe: The God-Kind of Life (1981)
• The Name of Jesus (1979)
• The Midas Touch: A Balanced Approach to Biblical Prosperity (2000)

Affiliation

Pentecostal Holiness minister; healing evangelist from 1947; United Methodist from 1968; founder of Oral Roberts University

Appears in

The healing revival, 1947-58, and after, Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

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Life

A stammering boy in Oklahoma

Granville Oral Roberts was born on 24 January 1918 near Ada, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, the youngest of five children of Ellis Roberts, a Pentecostal Holiness preacher, and Claudius Priscilla Irwin, who was part Cherokee. The family was very poor. Oral stammered badly as a child. At sixteen he left home for Atoka to finish high school and become a lawyer, but in 1935 he collapsed with tuberculosis and was bedridden for five months.

Healing and call

In July 1935 his brother Elmer took him to a tent meeting in Ada led by the evangelist George Moncey. On the way, Roberts said, he heard God tell him: "Son, I am going to heal you, and you are going to take the message of My healing power to your generation." He reported that he was healed of both tuberculosis and stammering when Moncey prayed for him. He was licensed to preach by the Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1936, and for twelve years served as an evangelist and pastor in Oklahoma, Georgia and North Carolina, while studying at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University. He married Evelyn Lutman in 1938; they had four children.

"If you will only believe"

In 1947, while pastoring in Enid, Oklahoma, he read 3 John 2 - "I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth" - which he came to see as the key to his ministry: God wants people to be well in body, mind and finances. He bought a new Buick the same day, by his account, and resigned his church to begin an independent healing ministry. His first campaign in Enid in May 1947 was followed by others across the country, and he moved his headquarters to Tulsa.

The tent and the screen

By the early 1950s Roberts had the largest tent in the world, seating more than 12,000, and was the most successful evangelist of the healing revival. He prayed for hundreds of people in long "healing lines", laying hands on them one by one, and taught that the point of contact - his touch, a handkerchief, a radio - released faith. His magazine Healing Waters (later Abundant Life) reached hundreds of thousands. In 1955 he began televising his tent services, bringing healing evangelism into American living rooms for the first time.

In 1956, at a crusade in Melbourne, Australia, hostile crowds and press criticism forced him to end the campaign early.^†

University and Methodism

In 1963 he founded Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, which opened in 1965, with its distinctive Prayer Tower and modernist campus. In 1968 he surprised Pentecostals by joining the United Methodist Church, Boston Avenue, Tulsa, and being ordained a Methodist elder, though he continued to preach healing. From 1969 his prime-time television specials, featuring entertainers, made him one of the best-known religious figures in America.

The City of Faith

In 1977 he announced a plan to build a medical complex that would join prayer and medicine. In May 1980 he said that a 900-foot Jesus had appeared to him in a vision and promised that the project would succeed. The City of Faith Medical and Research Center, with a sixty-storey tower, opened in 1981 but never filled its beds. It closed in 1989 with heavy losses.

"God will call me home"

In January 1987 he told his supporters that God would "call me home" unless $8 million was raised for medical-mission scholarships by the end of March. The money was raised, partly through a $1.3 million gift from a Florida dog-track owner, Jerry Collins. The episode was ridiculed across America and damaged his reputation.

Later years

He suffered personal tragedies: his daughter Rebecca and her husband died in a plane crash in 1977, and his son Ronald took his own life in 1982. He handed leadership of ORU to his son Richard in 1993 and retired to California. Evelyn died in 2005.

Key dates

• 1918 - Born near Ada, Oklahoma, 24 January
• 1935 - Healed of tuberculosis at a tent meeting
• 1936 - Licensed by the Pentecostal Holiness Church
• 1938 - Marries Evelyn Lutman
• 1947 - Begins independent healing ministry in Enid and Tulsa
• 1954 - The "Blessing Pact"
• 1955 - First televised healing services
• 1963-65 - Founds Oral Roberts University
• 1968 - Joins the United Methodist Church
• 1970 - Miracle of Seed-Faith
• 1980 - Vision of a 900-foot Jesus
• 1981-89 - City of Faith Medical Center
• 1987 - $8 million appeal
• 15 December 2009 - Dies at Newport Beach, California

Teachings and claims

Health and wholeness

From 3 John 2 he taught that God wills health and prosperity for every believer, alongside the salvation of the soul: "God is a good God." He spoke of healing for "the whole man" - body, mind and spirit.

The point of contact

Faith, he taught, needs a "point of contact" to release it - an act such as touching a television screen or a prayer cloth at the moment of prayer.

Seed faith

His best-known teaching was "seed faith". From 1954, in his "Blessing Pact", he promised donors that if their gift to his ministry was not returned to them from an unexpected source within a year, he would refund it. In Miracle of Seed-Faith (1970) he set out three principles: God is your source, give first so it can be given back to you, and expect a miracle. Giving is a seed which God multiplies back to the giver "in kind".

Healing and medicine together

Unlike Dowie or Wigglesworth, he came to teach that prayer and medicine both come from God and should be combined - the idea behind the City of Faith.

Documented controversies

• Seed faith. Critics within and outside Pentecostalism condemned seed faith as turning giving into investment and exploiting poor donors; it became a cornerstone of later prosperity preaching.
• The 900-foot Jesus (1980), widely mocked, and the failure of the City of Faith, which Roberts said God had commanded.
• The 1987 appeal, in which he said God would take his life if the money was not raised.
• Wealth. Critics pointed to his homes in Tulsa and Palm Springs, country club memberships and expensive cars; he defended them as God's blessing.
• Healing claims. Investigations in the 1950s found that many reported healings could not be confirmed; Roberts himself acknowledged that not all were healed.

Death

Roberts died of complications of pneumonia at Newport Beach, California, on 15 December 2009, aged 91. He was buried in Tulsa.

Legacy

Oral Roberts University, with several thousand students, remains a leading charismatic university. Roberts brought Pentecostal healing into mainstream American religion and onto television, and by joining the Methodists helped prepare the way for the Charismatic Renewal in the historic churches. Through seed faith he drew a direct line to the prosperity gospel, which later Word of Faith teachers built on.

Measured against the creeds

Roberts's compassion for the sick and his later insistence that medicine and prayer belong together are closer to the Church's tradition than much of the faith-cure movement. But his reading of 3 John 2 - a conventional greeting in a letter - as a promise of health and wealth for every believer is not the Church's reading, and it set the pattern for the prosperity gospel.

Seed faith inverts the Christian teaching on almsgiving. The Lord commands giving "hoping for nothing again" (Luke 6:35), and the Church has always taught that we give because God has given to us, not to secure a return. St Paul warns against those who suppose "that gain is godliness" (1 Timothy 6:5-10). And a minister who tells his people that God will take his life unless they give treats the faithful as a source of money rather than as souls in his care.

Major writings

• If You Need Healing - Do These Things! (1947)
• The Call: An Autobiography (1972)
• Miracle of Seed-Faith (1970)
• A Daily Guide to Miracles (1975)
• Expect a Miracle: My Life and Ministry (1995)

Affiliation

Assemblies of God evangelist (defrocked 1988); Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, Baton Rouge

Appears in

Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

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Life

Ferriday, Louisiana

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on 15 March 1935 in Ferriday, Louisiana, into a poor family during the Depression. He was a cousin of the rock-and-roll pianist Jerry Lee Lewis and the country singer Mickey Gilley; the three boys learned piano together. His parents and grandmother joined a small Assemblies of God congregation, and Swaggart said he received the baptism in the Spirit at the age of eight. He left school in the ninth grade and married at seventeen.

Evangelist and singer

Through the 1950s he preached as an itinerant evangelist in the rural South, often in great poverty, living with his wife and son in a trailer. He was ordained by the Assemblies of God in 1961. His gospel albums, recorded from the early 1960s, sold millions of copies and made his name. In 1969 he began a radio programme, The Camp Meeting Hour, and in 1973 a weekly television programme. He built a ministry centre in Baton Rouge, the Family Worship Center, and in 1984 opened Jimmy Swaggart Bible College.

The peak

By the mid-1980s his telecast was carried in more than a hundred countries and, by some measures, was the most-watched religious programme in America; the ministry's annual income was reported at over $140 million.^† His preaching was fiery, emotional and deeply Pentecostal, and he was an outspoken critic of Catholicism, rock music, psychology, humanism and, later, the Word of Faith movement.

The fall

In 1986 he exposed the adultery of a fellow Assemblies of God preacher in New Orleans, who was defrocked. In 1987 he joined in the condemnation of another prominent televangelist after that man's scandal broke. In February 1988 photographs were produced showing Swaggart with a prostitute at a motel in New Orleans. On 21 February 1988, in a televised service, he confessed tearfully, "I have sinned against you, my Lord," without naming the sin. The Assemblies of God ordered a two-year suspension from preaching; after three months he returned to the pulpit, and the denomination defrocked him.

In October 1991 he was stopped by police in Indio, California, with a prostitute in his car. He told his congregation afterwards that the Lord had told him it was "flat none of your business". His ministry's income and audience fell sharply, though it survived.

Later years

He continued to preach in Baton Rouge for more than thirty years, rebuilt a smaller broadcasting operation, and in 2010 launched the SonLife Broadcasting Network. In the late 1990s he began to preach what he called "the Message of the Cross", a cross-centred doctrine of sanctification which he regarded as the answer to the failures of his earlier life and of Pentecostal teaching generally.

Key dates

• 15 March 1935 - Born in Ferriday, Louisiana
• 1950s - Itinerant evangelist in the South
• 1961 - Ordained by the Assemblies of God
• 1969 - The Camp Meeting Hour radio programme
• 1973 - Begins weekly television
• 1984 - Opens Jimmy Swaggart Bible College
• 1986 - Exposes a fellow minister's adultery
• 21 February 1988 - "I have sinned" confession
• April 1988 - Defrocked by the Assemblies of God
• October 1991 - Stopped by police in Indio, California
• 2010 - Launches SonLife Broadcasting Network
• 1 July 2025 - Dies, aged 90

Teachings and claims

Classical Pentecostalism

He preached repentance, holiness, the baptism in the Spirit with tongues and divine healing in the form of the Assemblies of God tradition in which he was raised.

Against Catholicism

He attacked the Catholic Church in sermons and in booklets such as A Letter to My Catholic Friends, describing it as a false church and Marian devotion as idolatry.

Against the Word of Faith

He was among the first Pentecostal preachers to attack the Word of Faith movement publicly, condemning its teaching on positive confession, on believers as "little gods" and on Christ's "spiritual death", and calling it a different gospel.

The Message of the Cross

From the late 1990s he taught that the believer's victory over sin comes only by placing faith in the cross, not in any religious work or discipline, and that this truth had been obscured in Pentecostal preaching. He produced an "Expositor's Study Bible" with notes on this theme.

Documented controversies

The 1988 scandal

His confession and the photographs of February 1988, coming months after another televangelist's fall, made the televangelist scandals of 1987-88 a national story and badly damaged public trust in religious broadcasting.

Rejecting discipline

His refusal to accept the Assemblies of God's suspension is the reason he was defrocked; the denomination stated that restoration required submission to the discipline.

1991

The second incident, and his response to it, led many former supporters to abandon him.

Defamation

The New Orleans minister he had exposed sued him for defamation and won a large jury verdict in 1991, later settled for a smaller sum.^†

Death

He suffered cardiac arrest at his home in June 2025 and died on 1 July 2025, aged 90.

Legacy

He is remembered both as one of the most gifted Pentecostal preachers and gospel singers of his generation and as the emblem of the televangelist scandals. His fall, together with others in the same years, prompted the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and others to press for higher standards among broadcast ministries. His ministry continues in Baton Rouge.

Measured against the creeds

Much of Swaggart's preaching was within the evangelical consensus: he confessed the Trinity and the deity of Christ, preached salvation by grace through faith, and his later insistence that the believer's hope rests on the cross rather than on spiritual techniques is close to the Reformation's theology of the cross. His criticism of the Word of Faith movement anticipated what most theologians across the churches would say.

His attacks on the Catholic Church, however, were of the kind the historic churches regard as uncharitable and frequently inaccurate. And his history illustrates the danger, described in this section's topic pages, of a ministry with no accountability beyond the preacher himself. The historic churches hold that ministers are under the discipline of the Church (1 Timothy 5:19-20), and that the office, not the personality, carries the ministry; when a minister rejects discipline and continues to preach, he separates himself from the very order that could restore him.

Major writings

• To Cross a River (autobiography, 1977)
• The Expositor's Study Bible (2005)
• The Message of the Cross (sermons and booklets, from the late 1990s)

Affiliation

Assemblies of God pastor; founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church, Seoul (1958)

Appears in

Church growth, seeker churches and the megachurch, Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel

Profile

Link to this profile

Life

Ulju and illness

Cho Yong-gi was born on 14 February 1936 in Ulju County, near Ulsan, in Japanese-ruled Korea, the eldest son of a Buddhist family. His father's business failed during the Korean War, and Cho left school for a time to work. As a teenager in Busan he fell seriously ill with tuberculosis and was told he had little time to live. A young Christian girl visited him and gave him a Bible, and he was converted; he said he was healed of the tuberculosis through prayer and that Jesus appeared to him and called him to preach.^† He worked as an interpreter for American missionaries, including the evangelist Lester Sumrall.

The tent church

In 1956 he entered the Full Gospel Bible College in Seoul, run by the Assemblies of God. There he met Choi Ja-shil, a widow and fellow student, and in May 1958 the two began a tent church in Daejo-dong, a poor district on the outskirts of Seoul, with five members. They prayed for the sick and visited the poor; the church grew. In 1961 it moved to Seodaemun in central Seoul, and in 1965 Cho married Choi's daughter.

Collapse and the cell groups

In 1964, exhausted by preaching, visiting and baptising, Cho collapsed during a service. Unable to carry the work alone, he divided the congregation into home cell groups led by lay people, mostly women - a decision that met with resistance but became the foundation of the church's growth.

Yoido

In 1973 the church moved to a new auditorium on Yoido Island in the Han River, beside the National Assembly. It was renamed Yoido Full Gospel Church. With Choi he founded a prayer mountain at Osanri, where thousands came to fast and pray. By the early 1980s the church was widely described as the largest single congregation in the world, and by 2007 it reported some 830,000 members, with many satellite churches.^† Cho founded the Kukmin Ilbo daily newspaper in 1988 and an array of educational, welfare and broadcasting organisations. He used the name Paul Yonggi Cho in the West until 1992, when he took the name David.

International influence

From the 1970s Cho spoke at church growth conferences around the world; Church Growth International, which he founded in 1976, taught his cell-group model to pastors of every denomination. He was chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship from 1992 to

1. He retired as senior pastor in 2008 but remained influential.

Key dates

• 14 February 1936 - Born in Ulju County, Korea
• c. 1953-54 - Tuberculosis; conversion
• 1956 - Enters Full Gospel Bible College, Seoul
• May 1958 - Founds a tent church with Choi Ja-shil
• 1961 - Church moves to Seodaemun
• 1964 - Collapses; begins cell groups
• 1973 - Church moves to Yoido
• 1976 - Founds Church Growth International
• 1979 - The Fourth Dimension
• 1988 - Founds the Kukmin Ilbo
• 1992-2000 - Chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship
• 2008 - Retires as senior pastor
• 2014 - Convicted of breach of trust and tax evasion
• 14 September 2021 - Dies in Seoul

Teachings and claims

The threefold blessing

Cho's central teaching, drawn from 3 John 2 ("that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth"), was the "threefold blessing": salvation of the soul, prosperity in all things, and bodily health. He set it alongside a "fivefold gospel" of regeneration, the fullness of the Spirit, healing, blessing and the second coming.

The fourth dimension

In The Fourth Dimension (1979) he taught that the spiritual world is a higher dimension that governs the three dimensions of the material world, and that believers, by clearly visualising what they pray for and speaking it in faith, "incubate" the answer and bring it into being. He gave examples of praying for specific items, down to the make of a bicycle. He also wrote that non-Christian religions and occultists use the fourth dimension, which critics seized on.

Prayer and the Spirit

He taught persistent prayer, fasting and the baptism in the Spirit with tongues in the classical Pentecostal manner, and laid great weight on personal communion with the Holy Spirit.

Cell groups

He held that the Church grows through small groups meeting in homes under lay leaders, each expected to multiply, and that this recovers the house churches of the New Testament.

Documented controversies

Visualisation

Evangelical and Pentecostal critics alike argued that the "fourth dimension" owed more to positive thinking and New Thought than to Scripture, and that it treated prayer as a technique for obtaining what one wants.

Blessing theology

His threefold blessing was criticised in Korea and abroad as a prosperity gospel suited to the Korean economic boom, and for teaching that health and wealth are signs of spiritual health.

Financial conviction

In February 2014 the Seoul Central District Court convicted him of breach of trust for causing the church losses of about 13 billion won by directing it to buy shares in a company owned by his eldest son at inflated prices, and of tax evasion on the transaction. He was given a suspended prison sentence and a large fine; his son was also convicted. The convictions were upheld on appeal.^†

Succession and governance

Disputes over the control of church-related organisations by members of his family drew public protests from church elders in the 2010s.

Death

He suffered a brain haemorrhage in July 2020 and was cared for in hospital for more than a year. He died in Seoul on 14 September 2021, aged 85.

Legacy

Yoido Full Gospel Church is the most famous example of the megachurch built on cell groups, and the model has been copied in thousands of churches worldwide. Cho was the best-known Pentecostal leader in Asia, and his blessing theology shaped Pentecostal and charismatic preaching across the continent. His care for the poor in the early years, and the welfare institutions he founded, are part of his legacy alongside the financial scandal of his last years.

Measured against the creeds

Cho confessed the Trinity and the Apostles' Creed and preached Christ's death and resurrection. His recovery of the ministry of lay people in small groups echoes the care of souls in the historic parish and the household prayer of the early Church.

His teaching departs from the historic faith at two points. The first is the threefold blessing: the creeds promise the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and eternal life, not prosperity and health in this life; 3 John 2 is a conventional greeting, not a covenant promise, and the apostles taught contentment in want and plenty alike (Philippians 4:11-13; 1 Timothy 6:6-10). The second is the fourth dimension: prayer in the historic churches is the petition of children to their Father, "Thy will be done", not a technique by which visualised desires are brought into being. The confidence that faith creates its own reality is closer to the New Thought movement than to the Lord's Prayer.

His conviction for breach of trust also illustrates the dangers, described in this section's pages, of a church built around one man and his family without independent oversight.

Major writings

• The Fourth Dimension (1979; vol. 2, 1983)
• Successful Home Cell Groups (1981)
• Prayer: Key to Revival (1984)
• Salvation, Health and Prosperity: Our Threefold Blessings in Christ (1987)