The Multiplication of Error

Since the early 1970s, the same people who today espouse the "little gods" teaching have forged a virtually unbroken chain of serious doctrinal deviation.  We were first told that the church had forgotten the "proper" concept of authority, so it was necessary for us all to have "shepherds" to disciple us.  Thus, the "shepherding movement" spread and divided many churches across North America.  When this failed, the so-called "faith teaching" or "positive confession" was resurrected from the writings of Kenyon.  The Christian church was then informed (and still is) that God can be "commanded" to respond to our prayers of faith and that we can create with our tongue both good and evil, prosperity or poverty, health or sickness.  Such a position presupposed, in effect, that our faith (not God's sovereignty) was seated on the throne of heaven.

With great speed, these teachings expanded to the dictum that Christians are "little gods."  As the faith movement is embraced by leaders within the Christian Reconstruction movement, the "little gods" are given a "dominion theology."  One key reconstructionist leader, Gary North, boasts, "It has already begun:  bringing together the post millennial Christian reconstructionists and the 'positive confession' charismatics. . . . A new fundamentalism is appearing."  Dominion theology, as it is called, states that until we do indeed subdue the creation, the return of the Lord Himself will be delayed.

The multiplication of erroneous doctrine is now complete.  Unlimited faith, unlimited health, unlimited wealth, unlimited power, unlimited divinity, and now unlimited dominion.

The study of the kingdom of the cults has taught me many profitable lessons, and this is one of them -- error begets error; heresy begets heresy and always in the name of truth, always in the name of the gospel.  Those who propagate these erroneous views (the "little gods," the "born again Jesus," and so on) have sadly crossed over into the kingdom of the cults and stand in need of genuine repentance, lest they come under the inevitability of divine judgment. [The unrepentant will be going to hell.]

It is dangerous, in the presence of God, to affirm oneself as a deity -- even with a small "g."  It is blasphemous to speak in the name of God and utter false prophesies.  It is the height of theological folly to reduce God the Son, second Person of the holy Trinity, to a lost sinner with the nature of Satan and then send Him to hell with the requirement of regeneration before He can complete the work of redemption.

The words of the apostle ring true, "From such turn away" (2 Timothy 3:5, KJV).  "Keep away from them.  For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites.  By smooth talk and flattery [what could be more flattering than being told you are a god?] they deceive the minds of naive people" (Romans 16:17-18).

Don't Take the Bait!

One of the great paradoxes of Holy Scripture is Satan's desire to be "like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14).  He was hurled from the pinnacle of glory to eternal judgment as a result.  When God created man in His own image, jealous Lucifer tempted Adam and Eve with the luscious bait, "You shall be as gods."  Even after they had fallen, humanity was promised a Redeemer.  Through faith in Him, believers could have the relationship with God that Lucifer so desperately craved.  It is no wonder Satan hates the church, the bride of Christ, the building of God, because within it God has been pleased to dwell (I Corinthians 3:16).  Remarkably, He has described that relationship as "the body of Christ" built upon an unshakable, enduring foundation (Ephesians 2:20).

We are then, as believers, in a union of fellowship with the Trinity.  We are joint-heirs with Christ (John 17:11-26; Romans 8:17), eternally subject as He is Himself to the Father of spirits (I Corinthians 15:28) in love and by choice.  The church is not her own; she has been purchased by the sacrifice of Calvary. [not by Paul Mcullough]  Our identity is greater than any human concept of "godhood."  We are the heirs of eternity, recipients of an indescribable gift.

Let us not cheapen that inheritance or dilute it with perverted theology.  The cost is far too great.

-- by Walter Martin

Ezekiel 28:2 -- In the pride of your heart you say "I am a god; I sit on the 

throne of a god in the heart of the seas."  But you are man and not a god,

 though you think you are as wise as a god.

Also see Genesis 3:4-5 and Isaiah 2:6, 11

False Prophesies and a "Born-Again" Jesus

Those who teach the "little gods" heresy have also embraced other serious errors.  Among them are (1) the teaching that Jesus never claimed to be God when on earth and (2) the belief that Jesus died on the cross spiritually as well as physically, assuming the nature of Satan, going to hell, suffering punishment at Satan's hand, and being "born again" in the resurrection.  All of this had to happen, it is said, for our Lord to be our complete Saviour.  Deriving such blasphemies from E.W. Kenyon, Kenneth Copeland offered his followers and alleged prophesy from Jesus Christ Himself:  "Don't be disturbed when people accuse you of thinking you are God. . . .  They crucified me  for claiming that I was God.  But I didn't claim that I was God;  I just claimed I walked with Him and that He was in me.  Hallelujah, that's what you're doing."

Elaborating on this later, Copeland declared, "I didn't say Jesus wasn't God.  I said He didn't claim to be God when He lived on earth."  In response to his many critics, Copeland said, "Search the Gospels for yourself.  If you do, you will find what I say is true."  Having done just that, we find that what he says is not true and that Jesus contradicted him in the Gospel of John by affirming He was the great I AM of Exodus 3, for which the Jews sought to stone Him, claiming blasphemy as their ground.  They understood what apparently escaped Kenneth Copeland (i.e., that Jesus claimed deity).  Prophesies such as Copeland's do not originate with Christ or the Holy Spirit, and Scripture flatly rejects them as false.  We are, therefore, warned not to fear false prophets (Deut. 18:22).

In his Phillipians epistle, Paul confirms Christ's own self-understanding:  "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:  Who, [existing or never ceasing to be in the form of God] nevertheless: took upon Him the form of a servant." (2:5-7, KJV).

The "born-again" Jesus concept perverts, on the other hand, the doctrine of Christ's finished work on the cross, as demonstrated in the following quotations:

It was not sufficient for Christ to offer up only His physical life on the cross.  His human spirit had to  "descend into hell" . . . .  While Christ was identified with sin, Satan and the hosts of hell ruled over Him as over any lost sinner.  During that seemingly endless age in the nether abyss of death, Satan did with Him what he would, and all hell was "in carnival." (Billheimer, Destined for the Throne, pp. 83-84.)

Jesus is the first person ever to be born again.  Why did His spirit need to be born again?  Because it was estranged from God . . . .  What is spiritual death?  The opposite of spiritual life . . . .  Spiritual death means something more than separation from God.  Spiritual death also means HAVING SATAN'S NATURE . . . .  When one is born again, he takes upon himself the nature of God.  Sin is more than a physical act; it is a spiritual act.  He became what we were, that we might become what He is . . . .  His spirit was separated from God.  And He went down into hell in our place.  (Kenneth E. Hagin, The Name of Jesus, pp. 29-32)

If Jesus paid the full penalty of sin on the cross only, that is, by His physical death alone, then sin is wholly a physical act . . . .  Jesus' work was not finished when He yielded up His physical life on the cross.   (Billheimer, Destined for the Throne, p. 94.)

It is unnecessary to analyze this error further.  It proclaims itself.  When Scripture speaks of Christ's being made sin for us (II Cor. 5:21), both the context and grammar indicate that He became a "sin offering,"  of which Isaiah spoke (Isaiah 53:4-7, 10) and which is duly recognized by a footnote on the passage in the New International Version.


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com. 

More Misapplied Texts

2 Peter 1:4

Another passage often seized upon by "little god" proponents, 2 Peter 1:4, reads:

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises:  that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (KJV).

The first word, "partaker," is interpreted by faith teachers to mean that man actually takes the divine nature for himself, that he actually participates in the divine nature or essence.  It could be pointed out that on my last birthday, I partook of my birthday cake but I did not become part of the cake.  Similarly, Peter is certainly not teaching, in violation of all divine revelation, that man -- a finite being -- actually becomes one with the substance of deity.  Let us find out what he was saying.

Hebrews 1:3 in the original Greek reminds us that Jesus Christ is the incarnate "character" of God, and herein lies the answer.  Because of Christ's death in our place, we have figuratively "died" to sin (Romans 6:2) and are to live in the glory and power of His resurrection (Romans 6:5).  We are to seek those things that are above where Christ dwells at the right hand of God, since we are "seated. . . in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians. 2:6).  We, like Jesus before us, are to reflect the character of God in our lives.  We have been redeemed.  God has recorded to our account the righteousness of His Son and has charged His Son with our guilt (Romans 4:4-8).  The Christian, therefore, is justified by faith in Jesus Christ because he has become a partaker of the divine nature and character of God.

The image of God in man, which was shattered, marred, and defaced by sin, due to the first Adam, is restored in the last Adam, the Lord from heaven.  We have become recipients of a new set of attributes patterned after the last Adam, motives and affections that are constantly at war with our fallen nature (Rom. 7; Gal. 5:17).

We partake of the divine nature in the sense that we imitate, not duplicate, His character in our own lives.  We were "predestined to be conformed to the likeness of [God's] Son" (Rom.8:29).  As we were partakers of the fallen, Adamic nature, so now we are partakers of the resurrected Christ's character -- not partakers of His divinity but of His sanctifying grace.  We are being conformed to Christ's moral image (likeness), not to His essential deity.  We are called to resemble Him in our lifestyle, but we cannot become Him (deity) in any way, shape, or form.

John 1:12-13

"Yet to all who received Him" says the gospel, "to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God -- children not born of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."

This text is usually offered, along with other passages referring to man as "begotten" by God, to erroneously prove that the believer, through a direct creative act of the Holy Spirit, becomes a god-bearing person, as Christ Himself was. (This is known in church history as the Apollinarian heresy.)  But do such texts really teach that, as "born again" children of God we ourselves share God's divinity?

In the same text cited by the faith teachers (John 1:12-13), John is urging for the uniqueness of Christ's relationship to the Trinity as "the only begotten Son of God."  As believers, we are adopted children (Romans 8:15, 23; 2 Corinthians 5:20; Ephesians 1:5).  When, for instance, Kenneth Copeland states "God begets gods,"  He is ignoring the meaning of the term begotten and therefore falsely concludes, "You are all little gods."

Jesus Christ is the unique, one-of-a-kind, incarnate Son of God and is, therefore, different from believers.  "In the beginning was the Word," says John.  "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).  John the Baptist, our Lord's elder in age, nevertheless said of Christ, "He who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me." (v. 15).  The Baptist recognized that Jesus' origin was eternal. "No-one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side has made him known" (v. 18).  We are adopted in time; Jesus is God's eternally-begotten Son, whose origin and deity never began but have always been.

Kenneth Hagin, therefore, is gravely mistaken when he asserts that the Christian "is as much an incarnation [of God] as is Jesus of Nazareth."  And Kenneth Copeland is wrong when he insists "Jesus is no longer the only begotten Son of God."  When the Word became flesh, God the Son remained what He always was -- the second Person of the Trinity.  Man is not an incarnation.  He is never spoken of as such in scripture -- limited as he is to finite humanity.

None of these texts in any way suggest that redeemed men are or ever will be gods.  As we have noted, Scripture forbids this as idolatry and blasphemy, in both testaments.  We can see, then, that from their very language those who maintain the "little gods" doctrine are affirming a type of pagan polytheism over against classic monotheism.  This constitutes, by any measurement, heretical doctrine.


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com.