Objection: So-and-So Who Preaches Healing Got His Doctrine from So-and-So, Who Got His Doctrine from So-and-So, Who Was into Cult Theology

There is no shortage of books that personally attack certain ministers who preach faith and healing.  A similar common flawed objection says that “word of faith” theology, including healing, has its roots in cult teachings, based on the fact that a person whose writings influenced later faith teachers attended a college where unbiblical mind science was popular.

First, some cults have a more accurate position on certain subjects than some mainline churches!  I read a book from a cult once that demonstrated more knowledge of God’s will to heal and prosper his servants than most Christian denominations exhibit.  Of course, you should not join a cult for that reason!  They will still lead you straight to hell.  They teach some truths that are found in the Bible, but not the ones that will save you.

Second, the only question you need to ask is whether someone’s theology lines up with the Bible as a whole.  If it does, it is irrelevant which false cults might also correctly interpret the same Scriptures.  The fact that some false cults believe in healing does not mean that we cannot believe in healing.  (You will find that their application of healing is not actually Christian if you dig into it in detail.)

Third, it makes no difference from whom someone learns a doctrinal point.  The only question is whether it is right or wrong.  It does not matter who else teaches it.  Any false cult teaches part of the truth along with its heresies.  Otherwise, it would have no appeal to any rational person.  I was acquainted with a teacher in the Unification “Church” (cult) a long time ago.  He told me some truths on “spirit, soul and body” that were not only correct but also new to me at the time and would have been new to most Christians back then.  I never joined his cult, but there was some meat there to put the poison on.

Fourth, it doesn’t matter if the majority of people at a college embraced unbiblical mind science.  I used to live and preach somewhere where only 3% of the population was born again.  Does that mean that there is a 97% chance that I am actually unsaved, so we should just assume that I am a false teacher?

You don’t trace someone’s past influences to see if things be so.  You do what the Bereans did – search the Scriptures to see if what is being taught is so (Acts 17:11)!  They are either so or they aren’t.  Find out from the Bible!

If you’re not already familiar with the names usually involved with this objection, I’m not going to dishonor those people by giving them out.  However, even if someone USED TO be involved in cult theology, that person could have turned away from it and started preaching the truth.  I used to be involved with the occult, but I would hate to have people reject the teaching of someone whom I instructed because he got his doctrine from me, and I used to be involved in occult teaching.  It is unfair to hang someone’s past over him – find out what the person is teaching NOW (or taught at the end, not at the beginning, of his ministry).  That can go both ways – a couple famous healing ministers started out teaching normal doctrines and got “off” in later years into some bizarre stuff.

In fact, there is an annoying tendency of some people who think that they run “discernment ministries” (which are usually better described as “Satan-fueled gossip, innuendo, faultfinding and mudslinging ministries”) to cite old doctrines of men who have since changed their doctrines and even repented publicly for inaccurate teaching they did, and to do so in a way that leaves the reader with the impression that the people are still teaching the inaccurate doctrine that they long abandoned.  That is totally unfair.  Beware, lest you get caught up with criticism of a ministry that no longer teaches what you object to!  For example, if you find a site claiming that a popular healing minster believes that there are nine parts to the Trinity, you have found such an unfair site – beware!

Also, note that Faultfinder is not a ministry along with Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher, and those who think they are called to Faultfinding Ministry while they run around trashing everyone else need to wake up and realize that they are actually tools of Satan being used to cause division.  You can passionately disagree with doctrines people teach without tearing anyone down personally or giving their particular name a black eye and accusing them of being “of the devil” or heretics. This book, after all, contains quite a number of refutations to arguments of others against faith and healing, but you will notice that I do not use the actual names of those making the arguments, and I have no personal animosity toward any of them and would certainly not work to tear down their individual ministries or seminaries.  I’d prefer that they read this book and get more enlightened in some areas!

There IS a spiritual gift “discerning of spirits” but depending on how you interpret this, this is either (a) seeing into the spirit realm and seeing angels, demons, Jesus, God’s glory, etc. or (b) knowing supernaturally the spirit (good or bad) behind something said or (c) distinguishing whether a doctrine is of God or not.  Most “Word of Faith” teachers go with (a) while the “discernment ministries” go with (c).  At the risk of disturbing well-regarded “Word of Faith” teaching that discern means “to perceive by seeing or hearing,” I don’t think that this proves itself in the Greek; I believe that (b) is actually the most logical, given the fact that “discernment” (Greek diakrisis) actually does seem to have the meaning of “distinguishing” as opposed to “seeing” based on the only other 2 places where it is used, where is it actually translated “disputations” in one case and “discern” (within the phrase “discern good and evil”) in the other.  In fact, quite a few translations do use the term “distinguishing of spirits” or “distinguishing between spirits” for that reason.  Interestingly, even the Amplified Bible (AMP), which is often quoted by faith preachers who go with Explanation (a), lends itself more to Explanation (b) with its rendering “discernment of spirits [the ability to distinguish sound, godly doctrine from the deceptive doctrine of man-made religions and cults]” although I don’t think the AMP’s explanation is proper – the Word itself should let you distinguish true doctrine from false doctrine, and the discernment is of spirits, not doctrine.

Regardless of your convictions on the first two explanations, Explanation (c) can be tossed out.  The “gifts” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12 are manifestations of the Holy Spirit during a corporate gathering and are clearly spiritual and supernatural in nature.  What typical “discernment ministries” do is 100% intellectual and mental and has nothing to do with any supernatural revelation.  They are not actually involved in “discerning” of spirits at all; they are strictly involved in “discerning” of doctrine.  That can’t be what this gift is, because like the Bereans, we can study to see whether or not a doctrine is so.  The actual gift must have something to do with distinguishing spirits, which would be a different matter.

There are just some things in Scripture that will never be as clear in this life as we would like them to be.  We have had services where people have seen angels or even Jesus Himself.  I have seen a “glory cloud” that was so real, I was certain that it was a thick physical fog in the room, but the fact that others did not see it showed me that it wasn’t physical.  So certainly, it is possible sometimes to see into the spirit realm.  My namesake (Stephen) saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand.  So these things DO happen; the only question is whether they are part of the “gift of discerning of spirits” or whether that gift would more properly be applied to a situation where someone comes to a service and prophecies and someone else immediately senses that the person is there with ill intentions despite having given a “nice” word.  The latter could happen without a “gift” because the anointing that abides in us will also “rat out” the bad apples.  But then again, any believer has a measure of faith, knowledge and wisdom; the “gifts” involved supernaturally enhanced faith, knowledge or wisdom.  So at the end of the day, I don’t think anyone can conclusively “prove” exactly what “discerning of spirits” is, but I think we CAN demonstrate what it isn’t – the intellectual sifting of doctrine or mean-spirited fault-finding.

Please understand that I am not against sifting doctrine – as someone who loves to teach the Word, I get very fired up about sifting right and wrong doctrine, as you have probably figured out.  We all SHOULD rightly divide the Word of God.  (I was going to add “study to show ourselves approved” from the same verse 2 Timothy 2:15, but after “studying” that verse in the Greek, I found out that “study” does not mean “study” as we would understand it today!  It really means endeavor or be diligent, as that same Greek word spoudazo is translated elsewhere in the King James Version.  We have to be careful with the King James Version because it contains words that have different meanings in modern English.  We would have a completely different understanding today of Elizabethan phrases like “gay apparel” or “loosing one’s ass from the stall” or “dumb,” and we might mistakenly conclude that the prophet John did no miracles because he was a Baptist.)

My point is that “discerning of spirits” refers to something other than what certain “discernment ministries” want us to think it is.