From: gerald <gerald@evestamail.com>

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 14:40:12

To: WalterMartin@mail.serve.com

Subject: WM: RE: WOF

Richard Lee wrote:

Granted, the WOF movement doesn't go that far, but can you deny that Mary Baker Eddy's teaching about sickness share a relationship with the healing movements that antedate Pentecostalism by decades? What of E.W. Kenyon's influence? Many in the WOF DO in fact deny or distort the Trinity, and distort the Atonement!!! Did Kenneth Copeland repent of saying that God was a big man with a large hand span, or was he merely exaggerating? What of the Born again Jesus doctrine, that Christ took on the nature of Satan and burned in Hell, and accomplished the Atonement there? I would agree that Christians have disagreed over just what Jesus did among "the spirits in prison", but did he accomplish the atonement there? Just curious, thanks. I'm sure others will weigh in also.

Richard

Dave wrote:

Actually, WOF does not adhere to Christian Science. Christian Science denies the reality of sickness. WOF doesn't! Christian Science denies the reality of hell. WOF don't! Christian Science has a different Jesus. WOF doesn't! There is a huge difference between WOF and Christian Science. Christian Science is a non-Christian cult because it denies the Deity of Christ. WOF believe and uphold the Deity of Christ, The Trinity, His Bodily Resurrection, His atonement...

I agree that there is a difference between the WOF teachings and Christian Science. As Dave says, Christian Science denies the reality of sickness and disease, whereas the WOF teachers do not deny it. Charles Capps said,

"I don’t deny the existence of disease. I deny the right of the disease to exist in this body, because I’m the Body of Christ." (The Tongue-A Creative Force, pgs 42-43).

I do think the teachings are more similar to New Thought, another metaphysical movement. In research I have done, the WOF movement through Kenneth Hagin was influenced by E. W. Kenyon. His background at the Emerson College of Oratory and knowledge of Christian Science influenced his teachings. As shown in D. R. McConnells "A Different Gospel", eight examples of parts of writings by Kenneth Hagin were almost word for word of those of E. W. Kenyon.

The following are quotes by Charles Capps, E. W. Kenyon & Mary Baker Eddy:

"You refuse to give place to any other thought that would contradict His Word. You refuse to take the testimony of your Senses. There is the pain in your back, but you refuse to accept that as evidence that you have not been healed. "(E. W. Kenyon, The Two Kinds of Faith; Faith’s Secret Revealed, pg. 106)

"I know that I am healed because He said that I am healed and it makes no difference what the symptoms may be in my body. I laugh at them, and in the Name of Jesus I command the author of the disease (Satan) to leave my body." (E. W. Kenyon, The Hidden Man, pg. 99)(From A Different Gospel, page 147)

"Yes, the symptoms came. But the enemy can’t put anything on you without your consent. Now he can cause you to feel like it’s coming on. See, you go back to feeling there. That’s why it’s dangerous to live by your five physical senses—what you feel, see, hear, taste and touch." (Charles Capps, The Tongue – A Creative Force, pg. 53)

In her glossary of Christian Science terms, Eddy defines knowledge as "evidence obtained from the five corporeal [physical] senses," which "is not divine and is the origin of sin, sickness and death." (A Different Gospel, page. 103-104)

There are similarities in focusing on not living by your senses and not focusing on the symptoms. Because WOF teachers teach our sickness has already been healed through Jesus’ death on the cross, they just need to keep positively confessing and claiming their healing until it is manifested. Kenneth Copeland said the following in "What to Do When Healing Doesn't Manifest":

At least in the teachings of the Copeland’s ,if you are not healed it is something you are doing wrong, not because God didn’t want to do it.