Lottedah said:
I have never heard such garbage in my life.. what a falsehood. The WOF does not teach that, at least the churches I have been to Im wondering where you learned such information and you cannot lump all movements churches together. For instance some southern baptists are loonies and others are nice and normal.
This is true that all can not be lumped together. We are talking about the teachings from Hagin, Hinn, Copeland, etc.
These are the Big Daddy WoF and many Christians around the world get to hear this garbage...this is the kind of stuff the WoF have taught.
LITTLE GODS http://www.watchman.org/reltop/unbiblcl.htm
Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Copeland's wife, stated in
The Believer's Voice of Victory that, "when God breathed the breath of life into Adam, He transmitted His very self into him. God imparted the same spiritual substance of which He is made into Adam's being" (
Believer's Voice of Victory, June, 1986, p. 10).
In his sermon tape,
Following the Faith of Abraham, Kenneth Copeland teaches that God created Adam a god (having the same attributes as God Himself): "And Adam is as much like God as you can get, just the same as
Jesus when He came into the earth. And I want you to know something ¾ Adam in the garden of Eden was God manifested in the flesh." We now see that Brigham Young of
Mormonism isn't the only one who has taught the Adam-God theory (Deseret News, 16 June 1973), but also Kenneth Copeland. (parenthesis mine).
In
The Force of Love, another sermon tape, Kenneth Copeland states, "You don't have a god in you, you are one."
Kenneth Hagin in
Word of Faith says, "You are as much the incarnation of God as
Jesus Christ was. Every man who has been born again is an incarnation and
Christianity is a miracle. The believer is as much an incarnation as was
Jesus of Nazareth" (December 1980, p. 14).
Earl Paulk of the Harvester Church in Atlanta, Georgia, in his work,
Satan Unmasked, explains it like this: "Adam and Eve were placed in the world as the seed and expression of God. Just as dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, so God has little gods; we have trouble comprehending this truth. Until we comprehend that we are little gods, we cannot manifest the kingdom of God" (p. 97).
In his book
Agony of Deceit, Michael Horton has documented Kenneth Copeland in a 19 July 1987 crusade as saying, "I say this and repeat it so it don't upset you too bad. When I read in the
Bible where He (
Jesus) says, I AM, I say, Yes, I am too!" (p. 268). In John 8:58, I AM is a self proclamation of
Jesus' own unique Deity from Exodus 3:14, 15.
Dave Hunt, in his book
Seduction of Christianityity, documents Casey Treat, pastor of Seattle's Christian Faith Center, as saying in his tape series
Believing in Yourself that we're exact duplicates of God. "I'm an exact duplicate of God! When God looks in the mirror He sees me! When I look in the mirror, I see God! Oh, hallelujah! You know, sometimes people say to me, when they're mad and want to put me down. You just think you're a little god. Thank you! Hallelujah! You got that right! Who'd you think you are,
Jesus? Yep!...Are you listening to me? Are you kids running around here acting like gods? Why not? God told me to! Since I'm an exact duplicate of God, I'm going to act like God!"
One of WOF's proof texts for them being little gods is Psalms 82:6. If one looks carefully, it is apparent that God is mocking the judges (gods) who had perverted justice. He (God) says, "I say ye are gods, nevertheless, you will die as mere men" (vss. 6 & 7). This is the same proof text the
Mormons use to say one can become a god.
It is also a contradiction that if one is a god that one should die as a man. God is mocking and in a real sense condemning those that would arrogantly try to lift themselves to such status.
As is seen with Casey Treat, another problem with WOF teachers is their misunderstanding of the meaning of man being made in the image of God. To use Treat's own illustration of looking in the mirror, when one does look, what one sees is one's own reflection. The image is not reality. The image is only a reflection of one's reality. One reflects God's image (some of His qualities) but one is not God.
Granted that man is the apex of God's creation and as such is completely different from the rest of creation, but being God's image does not mean that one is a little god. Humans are not divine by nature. God is divine. "Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." (Galatians 4:8, also see Isaiah 1:6-11, 43:10, 44:6; Gen. 1:26, 28, 3:4-5; Ezekiel 28:2; Psalm 8:6-8).
