Error in their Argument

The problem in the way that the heresy hunters try to discredit Full Gospel ministries is, they take selective parts of the minister’s sermon and make it sound like error. This is a deceptive way to make an argument. I will call this method Selective Collections. The listing of the worst errors of a movement is not a truthful representation of that movement. This method of analysis results in caricature not analysis, and results in destructiveness, not biblical reproof.

This can be demonstrated with an imaginary example. Suppose that I was an apologist for the Catholic Church and wanted to expose the error of Protestantism by showing that Martin Luther was not everything that he was touted to be. This could be easily accomplished by using his writings. Of course I would select the most imprudent of his writings. I would choose all his anti-Semitic sermons and pamphlets, his violent address during the peasants’ revolt, when he called on the knights to slaughter the rebel peasants. Then I would add the sermons that expressed his theological views with foul language. I would definitely not select his good writings like his Commentary on Romans. My anthology would be true, but by not showing the whole picture it would not be a complete view of his life and ministry. This would be an untrue and unfair representation of his ministry. (Excerpt from Quenching The Spirit by William DeArtaega)

The key is recognizing the difference between collections and history; between assembling a scrapbook of errors and writing a fair description of another minister’s theology. A good historian attempts to take a whole measure of a person and his writing. Even the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards said that no religious movement should be judged only by its extreme manifestations. The heresy hunters attack on the Word of Faith ministers and theology violates the historian’s mandate of fair representation. These men chose only the most extreme statements from the Word-Faith movement as representative of the whole movement.

Here is another example of how Heresy Hunters use just a small part of a teaching to make their claims of heresy. I recently received an email from a man in Northern Ireland, he was claiming that Kenneth Copeland was a heretic because brother Copeland said on a tape

"It wasn't the physical death on the cross that paid the price for sin..anybody could do that" "Every prophet that walked the face of the earth under the Abrahamic covenant could have paid the price if it were a physical death only"

Again, if you look at this by itself with the rest of what brother Copeland said on the tape it would seem to be error. It was not Jesus death on the cross that paid the price of sin. It was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus that paid the price.

"When he said 'It is finished' on that cross, he was not speaking of the plan of redemption. The plan of redemption had just begun, there were still three days and three nights to be gone through.

As you can see in context this teaching is orthodox. It was not JUST Jesus death on the cross that paid for our redemption. Like brother Copeland said, If it was just physical death that was required anyone could have done it. But it was not just a physical death, it was a man that knew no sin, that was made to be sin for us. Satan took Jesus to hell illegally, he had someone down there who did not belong there. For that he lost the keys to death, hell and the grave. Jesus then led captivity out of that place, with all the authority that Adam gave up.