The following video was recorded a couple of years ago by John Edwards, a fellow blogger aka Junker Jorge. John is an ex Word of Faith Pastor who was trained under Kenneth Hagin. For those whose computers don’t do videos well, I’ve transcribed his message word for word below. Be blessed!
Thanks John! Praise God for your willingness to warn others of this dangerous teaching.
Hey guys! My name is John Edwards. I’m a Rhema Graduate. I went to Rhema Bible Training Center in 96-98 and I was ordained by Kenneth Hagin and came to Alabama, started a church called The Edge then we changed the name to Hillside Church.
About January of 2008 I decided to leave the Word of Faith Movement. What I want to do is to put together a series of YouTubes; I want to help people out there who are trapped in the Word of Faith.
Word of Faith is a dangerous, cultic movement. And it’s so similar to the new age message that it’s right there beside it – and it sucks you in. Word of Faith – what attracted me to it is that I thought I could have a say in my life. I always had fear of maybe losing my kids or getting cancer or going bankrupt. I heard the Word of Faith message as it was presented by Kenneth Hagin and it gave me hope that I could have a say for my life.
And the dangerous thing about the Word of Faith is that it puts the believer in the driver’s seat and it puts God and His will and His plan for your life in the back seat. The whole Word of Faith movement is based on one passage of scripture in Mark chapter 11, verse 23, Jesus said “Whosoever shall say to until this mountain be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart thou shall believe those things that he sayeth, the things shall come to pass and he shall have whatsoever he said”.
Now what they did – Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi; He spoke in Aramaic. And a real popular teaching idiom back then in that culture was a phrase “moving a mountain”. It meant to cut through red tape, it meant to do the impossible with God. And Jesus was using a hyperbole in His teaching. It was an on- purpose exaggeration. You know where Jesus said if your eye causes you to sin to pluck it out, and He talked about hating your mother or father in comparing to loving Him? He doesn’t really want you to hate your mother or dad or pull your eyeballs out, He’s just using an exaggeration to prove a point on purpose to show how powerful faith is.
When Jesus was talking to his disciples and said “If you say to the mountain move -and it will move if you believe and not doubt”. His disciples had sense enough to know He was using an exaggeration to show them an example of the power of faith. Now what the faith preachers did- namely Kenneth Hagan whom I love, I went through the school, I’m not mad at him, but he was wrong. What they did is they made a science of every little word that Jesus said as hyperbole; they made a science on it. What the Word of Faith does is that it teaches you that you can have what you say. They take that last phrase that Jesus said “he shall have whosoever he said” and made a whole religion on how to get everything you need from God. And the dangerous thing about it is that it puts fear in the believer.
Word of Faith people are the most legalistic, paranoid, superstitious, in-bondage people I have ever known in my life. And you know what? I’m part of the problem! I preached the heresy for eight years. I taught people they could have what they say, and that’s not what Jesus said. At the most what Jesus said that you will have what you say to the mountain.
But Word of Faith teachers and Word of Faith Christians actually believe that whatever comes out of your mouth is actually going to happen. For instance, if you say” oh my back’s killing me”, they believe you’re going to develop cancer of the spine or something. If you say “oh my heads killing me” they’ll think you’re gonna get a brain tumor. They believe that your words will create entities in themselves and they’re not.
Your words are powerful. I can cuss you out with my words and make you mad. I can tell jokes and make you laugh. I can build you up or I can cut you down. But I cannot create things with my words as is taught by the Word of Faith. So the new age message, this humanism message is that man is God, that we all together as man we are God. We can do anything. We have our own wisdom and our own life. The Word of Faith message is very, very similar. It tricks you into thinking you’re in control of your life. You are in control of your destiny. I know because I taught this for many years. It’s a cult. It was founded on cultic principles.
E.W. Kenyon was a Baptist preacher who was very involved in new age and new thought and metaphysics. He went to a school in Boston that was covered up with new age and new thought. If you’ve heard about the new book called The Secret, if you’ve ever watched that – it’s new age – it’s humanism- it’s garbage– it’s counterfeit Christianity. It’s a counterfeit faith. Okay? And EW Kenyon took the principles of the new age, the new thought, The Secret, metaphysics and he blended it in with the bible to make another gospel – the gospel of me, the gospel of my words.
And the Word of Faith was then picked up by Kenneth Hagin who took Kenyon’s writings and then expanded on them. And the dangerous thing about the Word of Faith is it’s all centered on the power of your words, being the prophet of your own life, you, as a human, being in control of your destiny.
It’s also a very materialistic, money-minded movement. You can go to any Word of Faith preacher or TV or any Word of Faith church and they can’t preach for 10 minutes without talking about money. They’re obsessed with money, they’re obsessed with wealth, they’re obsessed with cars and rings, and big churches and TV’s and helicopters and jets. It’s a dangerous movement, folks. There’s a lot of deception there.
The Word of Faith as it’s taught by Word of Faith preachers today, Kenneth Hagin, Michael Murdock, people taught like I did. I’m John Edwards, I know you never heard of me, but I taught it. Its not the new covenant, it’s not the New Testament. It’s a delusion, it is a lie, and it is a twist of scriptures. It’s designed to get your heart and your mind off of Jesus, off of the kingdom of God and on onto your bank account and on to your words. It produces fear, bondage and legalism. It’s counterfeit. It’s not the New Testament. The New Testament is about God loving you in your sins and sending Jesus His Son to die for you so that you can believe in Him and be borne again. To have all your sins forgiven, removed forgotten, so that you can have a personal Father – son, Father – daughter relationship with Almighty God to help you through life to give you the peace you need, to help you with your problems. And it’s about having eternal life. When you die you go to live with God the Father and Jesus in heaven forever. That is the good news; that is the gospel.
But the Word of Faith preachers have turned it around into a self help gospel of me. And what I want you to do is get you a New Testament, go to a Christian book store and buy the New Testament on CD and just listen to it. Just listen to the word of God. It’s a new covenant. It’s not a covenant of prosperity, health and wealth. It’s a covenant of dying to yourself to love others, to serve others. It’s a gospel of spreading God’s love to everyone. When you put others first, you love your neighbor as yourself. You put God first, you put Jesus first. You do have a God that will meet your needs. You do have a God that will heal your body, but Him meeting your needs and Him healing your body- that’s just a small part of the big truth of your redemption.
The Word of Faith is like putting a frog in a pot of water and turning the heat up, just start boiling the water, and he’s swimming around, and kicking around and he doesn’t know anything’s wrong! And before you know it –he’s cooked! That’s what happened to me! I started out wanting wanted to get The Faith. Why? So I could love God more? No. So I could be in control of my life. Look. I learned. I don’t want to be in control of my life, I want Jesus in charge of my life.
So, please come back and have a look at some more of these later.
God bless you.
Bye-bye
*****
Additional articles exposing Word of Faith heresy:
m'kayla's korner 
wow. I need to hire you!
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I need to link the other article you wrote on Hagin to this. 🙂
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hi m’Kayla – that is so well put and so easy to understand I’m so glad you put that in. I’m gonna make a copy of that. It’s worth.
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oops! I meant to say its worth keeping.
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I’m glad it was helpful to you! 🙂
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Mkayla, I bet your not a two finger typer like John and I. LOL This would have took me maybe two hours. GREAT JOB
John, pay the lady well. LOL
Mkayla, I hope you don’t mind if I use this, I will credit you of course. I have an article of Johns called “why I left” that I have been using as Johns testimony on our testimony page but this is much better. Is that OK with you sister?
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Absolutely!!! It’s not mine anyway. You can do that anytime you think it will help get the word out.
As for typing – it took hours. I had the vid in one window and MS Word in another. And each time I had to stop and back up the the video Word would close it’s window and I’d have to reopen. Not a good system at all. Besides, talking is much faster than typing which is why the courts have those special machines. One -fingered typing with this system would have been days. hehe
But that’s ok. It’s all for the good of the Lord.
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Pingback: Ex-Word of Faith Testimony of Pastor John Edwards (Junker Jorge) « THE WORD on The Word of Faith (a GroupBlog)
LOL :0) it would have taken me more than two hours LOL
Thanks for your hard work Mkayla. It is appreciated. I was just re-working our testimony page and this change will make it nicer. 🙂 THANKS AGAIN
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Thanks for the blog. Good to see people standing up like you.Thanks!
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Acidri,
Thanks for the encouragement. Blessings to you. 🙂
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Thanks for your prayers Peter. Remember to check my writing against the bible. We should never take the word of another for truth but always have those bibles open! 🙂
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It would be so great if I could hire you, really, thanks!
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re: “word of faith no more”
Yes, it really will be very soon “no more” bcos there will be NO MORE MONEY! And their world will collapse around them.
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Unless of course they move harder into the “we have no money and our ministries are under attack because of word curses spoken against us”. It’s another manipulative move to gain control and cash. But I vote for the collapse.
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John
Thanks for sharing your testimony, actually ,its a testimony of Gods grace and His love for those who are His, not to mention patience.I grew up in a very staid and stoic church environment, we often joked and referred to ourselves as the ” frozen chosen” , and all the more so when we’d look across and see how much fun our charismatic cousins were having, but you know , after reading your’s and many other accounts of how the charismatic and pentecostal movements have affected people[ and continues to do so] i am thankful that God spared me from this, who knows how it would’ve ended up.
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Great testimony that I saw on John’s site. Thanks for putting it up here Mkayla. I see a lot of people falling into this type of thing around me. They want deliverance. They want instant gratification. Their desire to be out of their struggles is causing them to seek out these types of movements. And that desire often overrides discernment. It is causing so much bondage when they think they are gaining freedom. Reminds me of this verse:
2 Thess 2:10 “and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”
Rachel
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Hi Rachel. Nice to see you again. So many have forgotten the “laid down life” which is the true call of Christianity. Jesus told His disciples that in this life there would be much tribulation, but to be of good cheer as He has overcome the world. The operative being “He” not “we”. Tribulation and suffering is a part of life, and to find a way out is to miss the most important part of the journey. It is to miss out on who God is. We can’t get that out of a book or dvd, huh? 🙂
Blessings. 🙂
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PRIDE:
A good friend from Tulsa sent me a CD teaching on pride. I hated it. It really bothered me a lot and got me to thinking and praying which is sometimes a dangerous thing to do! I had ministry business to attend to in Indianapolis and in Michigan, so I must have listened to that CD a dozen times. It convicted me of self. It convicted me of pride. It opened my eyes to some of my motives. More than anything, it revealed to me that I had an enormous ego that could never, ever be content.
I realized that over the years, that I had transformed from being on fire for God to being on fire for me. Everything was about me. My vision, my church, my success, my reputation, my dream, my church, my services, my anointing, my, my, my, me, me ,me. It had become all about me, but how did this happen?
My name is John Edwards, and I was a Faith Preacher for ten years and one month. My wife and I attended and graduated from the premiere word of faith seminary in the world. During school I had the opportunity of working for some of the most famous names in the word of faith movement.
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I bet to disagree with this blog and with John edward. I’ve heard and read kenneth Hagin articles and I can judge having being born again for almost 17 years now,sanctified and filled with the holyghost that all E hagin said were in line with the scriptures and that it is John Edwards that is in error. I will also advise that he repents for the blasphemy he made that Christ was exaggerating in all his teachings especially with regard to faith. It is a great blasphemy to say that our master and saviour exaggerated,so it’s either he repents and makes d necessary amendment,I doubt if he will make it to heaven and besides why come out now to condemn E hagin after more than a decade of his death? People should be careful of what they say lest they incur the wrath of God upon themselves. So I strongly advise everyone reading dis post not to take or accept what john edwards is saying but study more of ur bible and read the bible while in d spirit because a carnal man cannot understand the things of the spirit bcos they are foolishness to him.so let’s be careful and study our bible more than reading christian articles or blogs.
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ndu, I studied under Hagin for a year or so, and having read a boatload of his books required of his course, and received a diploma upon completion of the study courses. I was raised under this kind of teaching so to believe that the word of faith doctrine is biblical was easy for me. Once I began to do research I realized Hagin’s teaching is false. He is known for not only his false teaching but also for using work belong to another and not giving the proper credit. He lied about his visions of Jesus. I can say this right on because we are told in the bible the next time believers will see Christ will be in the same manner as the witnesses saw him leave the earth – in the air.
We are admonished in the bible to search to find the truth presented by the teachers, to test all things, including prophecy. Hagin Sr. and Hagin Jr. do not pass. Please do research in keeping with the command of scripture. Challenge the idea that you have been taught to not speak against “the man of god” which is nothing more than fear-based manipulation and is a lie. Following teachings that are outside of scripture is the same as following another god. Please take time to seriously consider these things.
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I doubt if any of you actually listen to Kenneth Hagin or read his books with your Bible. I did in the last 40yrs my life I was not able to fault his teachings for they are all in line with the scriptures.
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Why such a silly comment when the opposite is true as to our experiences with Hagin and Rhema? His teachings are taken from sources that are not biblical, such as EW Kenyon, and combined with scriptures to make them palatable to those who do not study scripture for themselves. While it may be hard to accept this as truth for someone who has trusted the man, it is fact.
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