Fallen Evangelical Mega-pastor Defends T.D. Jakes Against Modalism Heresy
You may remember the Elephant Room controversy back in 2011–2012. Evangelical pastors—who fancied themselves theological referees with a penchant for dim lighting and faux grit—decided they would settle doctrinal debates not by excommunication or biblical clarity, but by tossing heretics and halfwits on a stage together like a spiritual cage match.
It was a fiasco dressed up as dialogue. Out of this sea of compromised, at best, to outright false teachers and media-friendly frauds arose T.D. Jakes—a self-promoting Word of Faith tycoon who’s never met a dollar he didn’t like or a doctrine he couldn’t mangle.
Jakes is not merely heterodox. He is not just slippery or vague. He is, quite definitively, a modalistic heretic. For decades, Jakes has parroted the Oneness Pentecostal formula that God is one Person who “manifests” Himself in three “forms”—Father in creation, Son in redemption, Holy Spirit in regeneration.
Not three Persons, as orthodox doctrine teaches—but three “roles.”
Three hats on the same head.
Three performances from the same actor.
Neither is this just a simple misunderstanding from a doctrine that is unclear from Scripture. It’s a direct assault on the triune nature of God, and he has stated it in plain terms.
In a 1998 interview with "Living By the Word," Jakes said, "We have one God, but He is Father in creation, Son in redemption, and Holy Spirit in regeneration." Word for word, this is the Oneness Pentecostal line—a heresy condemned over 1700 years ago at the Council of Nicaea.
His church's website (now deleted and scrubbed, but we have the screenshot) once described God as existing in three manifestations—a modalist term if there ever was one.
And despite all the posturing at the Elephant Room, despite the sanctimonious claim that he "now affirms the Trinity," Jakes never retracted his earlier statements. Not clearly. Not publicly. Not biblically. He merely updated his vocabulary, swapping out old heresies with new euphemisms while keeping the same theological poison in the bottle.
Enter James MacDonald, now a wandering punchline with a persecution complex. In a series of bizarre and defensive tweets, MacDonald has now taken it upon himself to act as T.D. Jakes’s personal PR agent. Never mind the modalism. Never mind the long trail of heretical teaching and doctrinal chicanery. MacDonald insists that Jakes did, in fact, affirm the Trinity—and that anyone questioning this must be ignorant, unqualified, or simply malicious.