Prosperity Gospel: Its Perverse Effects
A fundamental impulse to these ideas of the prosperity gospel comes from the so-called Word of Faith movement, whose main mentor was the pastor and self-styled prophet Kenneth Hagin (1917-2003). Among Hagin’s distinguishing characteristics were his recurrent visions that inspired him to make a unique interpretation of some of the Bible’s most well-known texts. See, for example, the case of Mark 11:23-24: “Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” These two verses for Hagin were the pillars of the prosperity gospel.
He states that to translate miraculous faith into works it must be without uncertainties, especially concerning the impossible things: you have to declare specifically the miracle and believe that you will get it in the way imagined. Hagin also emphasized another aspect: the fact that the desired miracle has to be considered as already conceded, that is, its coming into being has to move from the future to the past.
Source: la Civiltà Cattolica
