Tracing the path of the word of faith or prosperity preachers in Ghana and West Africa

In the early 1980s, a generous man invited me to the first Full Gospel Businessmen's International Conference held in Kumasi, Ghana. I was then a student at the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. While I do not remember the exact year, I do remember that one of the speakers at that conference was Rev. Duncan Williams.

This generous man, who sponsored me to attend the inaugural meeting, continued to pay for me to attend the subsequent monthly meetings held at the Kumasi City Hotel, Ghana. The man would buy books by Word of Faith teachers and buy some for me after the meetings. Both of us read these books to the point where we decided not to take any medicine when we were sick. We started reading books by the following Word of Faith writers: Kenneth Hagin Snr., Kenneth Hagin Jr., Fred K.C. Price, Kenneth Copeland, Gloria Copeland, John Osteen (Joel Osteen's father), T.L Osborn, and Morris Cerullo. Later, we turned our attention to E. W. Kenyon and devoured all his books when we realized that all these writers borrowed their theology, especially Kenneth Hagin Snr. from Kenyon.

In 1988, before I left Ghana for Canada, I got sick some months before my departure and decided not to take any medication because of my Word of Faith theology. For almost two months, I was in pain and often feverish. At that point, I decided to go to the hospital to get a physical done. When I arrived in Canada, I went to the hospital and had a physical. They told me I had jaundice when the results came, which they could not detect in Ghana. The doctor said, "You are lucky; you could have died." It was then that I decided to take a careful look at the theology of the Word of Faith movement, or Prosperity Preaching. I swallowed the prosperity theology hook line and sinker. I preached and taught it until I began to study the Bible and theology for all they were worth.

One can only understand some of the unbiblical teachings of the prosperity preachers against the backdrop of the Word of Faith theology which they espouse. Let me state at the outset that I am a Pentecostal who believes in the power of God to heal and to destroy the work of the devil, but I am against any heretical teaching that can have a deleterious impact on people and undermines the sovereignty of God.

The Word of Faith movement's teaching is based on the declaration of Good Health, Long Life, Wealth, and Happiness. God wants his children to be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous. The question is: Where did Ghanaian Word of Faith preachers or teachers get these teachings? The simple answer is: From the late Archbishop Benson Idahosa of Nigeria, who also got his theology from the Word of Faith movement in America.

We need to trace the streams of thoughts that have saturated the minds of Ghanaian Christians and are part of the culture of the Christian community in Ghana and Nigeria. The prosperity message that has replaced the preaching of the cross of Jesus Christ in some circles of the Ghanaian Christian community has its origin in America with the teaching of E.W. Kenyon. Many Bible scholars and theologians consider him to be the birth father of the modern-day Word of Faith movement.

According to McConnell (1988), who wrote his graduate dissertation on faith teachers, Kenyon's theology parallels New Thought metaphysics? Many of the faith teachers who influenced Rev. Idahosa's ministries copied their writings and preaching from Kenyon. Kenyon teaches that "the divine power poured into the container of words could be called only one thing: "Faith." According to Kenyon, "faith-filled words" not only brought the universe into being but also governed the world as an invisible force. For Kenyon, the power of spoken word simply carried the faith to its desired ends."

The International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (IDPCM) maintains that the view espoused by E.W. Kenyon can be traced back to his exposure to metaphysical ideas derived from attendance at Emerson College of Oratory in Boston, a breeding ground for New Thought philosophical ideas. Lovett (1979) writes in the IDPCM, "New thought philosophy can be traced to Phineas P. Quimby (1802-1866), whose ideas became popular at the close of the last century. Quimby studied Spiritism, occultism, hypnosis, and other aspects of parapsychology. Quimby, a New England healer and mesmerist, was said to be the mentor of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy shared Quimby's view that disease is rooted in a mental cause."

Quimby used hypnosis and suggestion to heal his patients. He believed that all illnesses are usually a matter of the mind and come from the patient's mistaken beliefs. Quimby derived his thoughts and practices from the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer. Mesmer discovered that words strongly spoken were more effective and that through hypnotism, one can control another person by putting the person in a trance. Kenneth E. Hagin Sr., a man, described by Charisma magazine as the father of the modern-day Word of Faith movement, has been accused of plagiarizing from Kenyon. One just has to put Kenyon's book, "The Wonderful Name of Jesus," and Hagin's book, "The Name of Jesus," side-by-side to verify this claim.

Archbishop Idahosa of Nigeria, who received a diploma from Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas in 1971, had much contact with faith teachers like T.L. Osborn, Kenneth Hagin Sr., Copeland, and other Word of Faith teachers. After preaching in Nigeria, emphasizing financial success, he established a one-year training institute to train pastors from the West African region. The disciples he trained and ordained include Rev. Nicholas Duncan-Williams of Christian Action Faith Ministry, Rev. Charles Agyin Asare of the World of Miracle Bible Church, and many more.

Some of his protégés in Nigeria include Ayo Oritsejafor, David Oyedepo, Felix Omobude, Chris Oyakhilome, and others. Benson Idahosa lived from 1938 to 1998. Some of the popular clichés from Idahosa's preaching and teachings are, "My God is not a poor God"; "Your attitude determines your altitude"; "It is riskier not to take risks"; "I am a possibilitarian" and "If your faith says yes, God cannot say no." In other words, Christians can have whatever they want if they can exercise faith.

The thrust of the gospel, according to these preachers, is that the atonement or salvation of Christ is complete. Contrary to the Word of Faith teaching about salvation, the Judaic Christian faith teaches that our salvation is not complete until the second coming of Christ, after which time there will be no sin, no sicknesses, no diseases, and no death. Theologians describe this stage as glorification; we are not there yet, but the Word of Faith teachers want to force that stage of Christians' salvation into the present, resulting in many heretical teachings of the Bible. Orthodox Christianity describes salvation as, we are saved (Justification), we are being saved (Sanctification), and we will be saved (Glorification). We are not at the glorification stage yet: Some Pentecostal theologians like Gordon Fee describe the present stage as "The Already and Not Yet Kingdom."

Jesus and his disciples taught their followers to seek supernatural power in their ministries and personal lives through prayers, as he often did. Through prayers, helpless humans petition the all-powerful God who hears their pleas and answers them according to His divine providence: He answers them according to his ways and his time of choosing and not ours. This approach to the Judaic Christian God calls for the penitents to accept their weaknesses and dependence on God. However, the Word of Faith teachers find this approach unpredictable and want a magical way of compelling the supernatural to produce the desired results as magicians do. They manipulate the physical and the spiritual dimensions through what anthropologists describe as mental magic.

They also attempt to present a theodicy to absolve God from all things we consider evil: Sicknesses, diseases, wars, poverty, and death. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the existence of a loving God in the presence of evil. Since the beginning of the church, no one has provided a neat solution to this dilemma, not even the great Church father, St. Augustine. Nevertheless, the Word of Faith preachers castigate Job for his lack of faith and unbelief even when the Bible explicitly clarifies that it was God's will to prove Job's faithfulness, contrary to Satan's unfounded accusation against him.

I think ministers intending to preach the orthodox Christian gospel need to know the root of this movement to prevent their members from abuse. Many people have lost their lives because of these teachings. Some faith teachers mock cripples and the poor in their churches, scorning them for their lack of faith. In some cases, some teachers of the Word of Faith have told bereaved families that their loved ones died because of lack of faith. The Word of Faith teachers must realize that the death rate is one per person: We all have been sentenced to death. The question is, when?

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