Objection: Most of the Highly-Regarded Word of Faith Teachers Have Not Been to a Legitimate Seminary

That’s probably why they can operate in faith!  Much of the material used in seminary classes today saps faith in the Word right out of people.  I don’t mind telling you that I haven’t been to what the objector would consider a legitimate seminary, though my wife and I both graduated from “Bible training centers” that were not seminaries.

Some of the anti-faith-biased reference works described elsewhere in this book are handed to students, who then come out sure that “the Greek” proves that Paul had an eye disease, that we are only spiritually healed by Jesus’ stripes, and other absurd notions that the Greek does NOT actually teach.  Sadly, many of them will go on to teach students later, and the circle of ignorance will go unbroken.

Having said that, I am not against serious Bible study and getting into the nuances of the Greek and Hebrew.  I enjoy it!  I know that when you study the original languages, it confirms rather than denies that healing is for all, provided by Christ’s atonement.

Some seminarians will not take you seriously if you never went to a seminary yourself.  But that is hypocritical, because some (but not all!) seminaries assign texts written by people who never studied formally in seminaries either – Peter, Matthew, John, Amos and David for starters!  People back then snubbed Peter and John, assuming that “unlearned” fishermen couldn’t know anything about spiritual matters.  What mattered is that they had been with Jesus.  That was more valuable than all the intellectual classes they could ever have taken.  Even Paul, after all his highest-regarded formal training, was a staunch opponent of the gospel until HE had been with Jesus!  Then he was willing to treat everything he had gained as excrement (Philippians 3:8) compared to what he gained in Christ.

I am not against places that really teach the Word.  As a pastor, I have not made going to a Bible school of any kind a requirement to be a church leader.  The people in the Bible did plenty of exploits without that kind of training.  However, I wouldn’t install someone as a leader who didn’t know the Bible!  When I pastored in Maine, people were graduating from a certain Maine seminary without knowing the Bible, and what they did “know” was false knowledge (“The Bible condemns a gay person going straight as unnatural,” “Paul was just biased against gay people” etc.).  Classes in underwater basket weaving would have benefitted them more than their seminary classes – at least they might still have had some respect for Scripture when they were done.  One FORMERLY good “divinity school” now teaches that Jesus never literally rose from the dead!  One of their graduates preached a message that I had the misfortune to hear in person about why a loving God would never send anyone to hell.  I’ll take a passionate Spirit-filled person who really knows Jesus but didn’t go to seminary over someone who listened to doctrines of devils for four years in an apostate institution like that one.

Now there ARE some seminaries where at least the professors are born again (that helps), but even then, I know that some of those professors are the biggest objectors to divine healing anywhere.  They would chalk that up to being more enlightened, while I would attribute it to being less enlightened. 

These professors are the sources of many of the objections that I answer in this book.

I actually wish that there were more good FAITH-oriented serious study programs out there.  Maybe more will be raised up.  Education is not evil.  It’s only when the educators go against the Bible that their institutions do the students more harm than good.  “Seminary” in and of itself is not a dirty word.  And as I point out elsewhere, I wish that faith people would be much more serious students of the Word.  When you start studying the Hebrew and the Greek texts, it REINFORCES what the Bible teaches about divine healing!