A Different Gospel: Updated Edition

Write a book like this one! McConnell wrote one of those "you either love it or hate it" books. Witness the raging reviews below! McConnell hasn't written the perfect book. There are some loose ends that could have been addressed more thoroughly. For example - if the faith preachers have it wrong, then how does faith work? What about the clear scriptures that tell us we can move mountains (Mt 21:21), rebuke storms (Lu 8:23ff), and have what we say (Mk 11:23)? Some very clear scriptures need to be addressed, IMO. However, McConnell nails many of the loose ends in the word faith / positive confession movement. Like the fact that occult groups have long taught that the forces of nature, or God, have to do what you tell them to, if you get the words right. That's the essence of magic. And it's the essence of the faith people's teaching -- You get what you say, you live your words (good or bad)... McConnell's careful footnoting connects the founders of the faith movement clearly to the occult, New Thought, and Christian Science movements. And he raises the very relevant point - do heresy and error create orthodoxy? McConnell updated his book in the mid 90's and answered his critics. The claim that this book is dated or debunked is silly. The issues are still on the table. Get this book. It's the best, most balanced, most researched book done to date on this important rift in the church.

This is a book that tells the truth. I have always believed that truth is truth, even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is falsehood, even if everybody believes it. The word-faith movement is big, what with the TBN television network and other big names promoting it, but that doesn't make it truthful. It is almost embarassing to say that I was raised a Pentecostal, because most of Christendom today (and non-Christians, for that matter) identify me with this movement. It is indeed an heretical movement, based on the teachings of Kenyon, who was steeped in the Eastern idea of there being a god within each of us, and the idea that Jesus was someone who needed a regeneration of his own heart after the death on the cross (discounting the orthodox Christian idea of a sinless man having broken the chains of death, hell, and the grave). This movement is based on Eastern concepts, but because it has taken on the terminology and outward appearances of Pentecostalism (speaking in tongues, on-the-spot translation, faith healing), many believe it to represent Pentecostalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. One only needs to ask an older member of a mainstream Pentecostal church (Church of God, Assembly of God) to find out this isn't so.Classic Pentecostalism has always maintained that there is no such thing as a "free lunch" in this fallen, sinful world, even for saints. We will all grow old and die (the death rate is still one per person, as Hank Hanegraaf says), and there is no guarantee of wealth in this life. Just because someone is a "child of God" is no guarantee of continued health and wealth. Both the godly and ungodly include the poor and sick. In fact, Jesus himself claims that his disciples "shall be hated of all men for my name's sake". The important things of life are not bound up in trying to surpass Bill Gates' bank account, nor in visiting the plastic surgeon past the age of 90. As we have all heard of "get rich quick" schemes, if it "sounds too good to be true, it probably is". In this case, some of these word-faith teachers are becoming wealthy off people's desire to have God's promises in this life (health and wealth forever), and are using the ploy of religious fervor to do it.McConnell has done a fantastic service by writing this book, even though sincere, dedicated Christians are unknowingly involved in this movement. He details the history of the movement to the present day, something that Hanegraaf's book didn't do. Very interesting and convincing. Would that there were more brave souls as McConnell to step forward.

. . .against one of the more insidious heresies of modern American Protestantism. (Ever notice how the hyper-faith movement doesn't seem to work outside the United States?)McConnell, using the very words of the practitioners of these teachings against them, demonstrates the "quasi-Christian" origins of much of the hyper-faith movement, points out significant heresies endemic to the movement -- and confronts one of its major leaders with serious evidence of blatant and flagrant plagerism.For additional valuable analysis of the hyper-faith movement, the interested reader might be interested in "From the Pinnacle of the Temple" by Dr. Charles Farah.

My summary above is a brief review of people named and judged, in writing, by the Apostle Paul for one reason or another. Why didn't Paul just read his Bible and not judge anyone else? "A Different Gospel" is one of the most important treatments of the Faith Movement, as it is written by a charismatic graduate of Oral Roberts University. One reviewer attacks Hanegraaff, who only wrote the forward to this edition of McConnell's book. McConnell wrote this book in the 80s before Hanegraaff was known. The single most damaging fact shown by this book is that the "Father of the Faith Movement," namely self-proclaimed prophet Kenneth Hagin, plagiarized the writings of no less than three ministers (including E. W. Kenyon) throughout his own ministry. When he was caught and confronted, Hagin blamed God for it. Since Hagin and others were long ago confronted individually and by groups, it is certainly proper to go and "Tell it to the church." For Hagin fans, I'll make it simple: plagiarism is theft; saying that God made you do it unwittingly is lying. This is the root of the fruit. Speaking of the fruit, if healings validate the spirit behind a ministry, then those in the Faith Movement should feel well at home in a Christian Science reading room. This is a fitting observation, because McConnell discovered that Kenyon has direct educational, doctrinal, and testimonial links to the metaphysical cults (Christian Science, New Thought, etc.). Thus, Hagin has plagiarized and popularized, via Kenyon, key Christian Science ideas unknowingly. These ideas have become so entrenched in modern charismatic thought (although they are not inherently charismatic in nature), it is difficult to get adherents to see the forest through the trees. Other people, including but not limited to Gordon Fee, Walter Martin, Michael Horton, Curtis Crenshaw, Richard Abanes, James White, Chuck Smith, Michael Moriarty, John MacArthur, Joni Eareckson Tada, Ron Rhodes, and Elliot Miller have written and spoken against the spiritual dangers of the Faith Movement and its teachers. Rest assured, the Apostle Paul would be proud. But I'm also sure that the followers of Philetus viewed the Apostle Paul with the same measure of contempt that most of the one-star reviewers feel toward the brave people listed above.

This book is an outstanding contribution to public understanding of the importance of the faith teaching. Chapters 6-8 particularly, carefully and responsibly document why the faith teachers are teaching a gospel different to the one Jesus and Paul taught. Quoting extensively, and responsibly from the faith teachers Mc Connell shows that the Faith Teachers are teaching that Jesus is not the unique Eternal Son Of God become man, and but merely the first man to become a son of God, or a god. He proves/documents how their teachings say that we save ourselves through trusting not in Christ, but in our faith (force), and that it is in fact our faith (force) that transforms us into gods (little gods). He quotes faith teachers teaching that christians are as much an incarnation of God as Christ was, and that as little gods we are the same substance as God, identical relicas of Christ. These are not minor issues on which we can agree to disagree, and live in peaceful acceptance of each other. These are issues at the core of the teaching of Paul and Jesus' definition of what it means to be a christian, and to have (or not have) Eternal Life. Any Christian (who trusts in Jesus' punished in his own place, and lives under Jesus' Lordship) needs to get a good understanding of this powerful and deceptive teaching, and to reach out in love to those they know ensnared by it, teaching the truth in love