From the Darkness of Word of Faith to the Glorious Light of the Gospel
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The following is a testimony from an African pastor who was caught up in the heresy of the charismatic Word of Faith movement that is prevalent in Africa. My name is Elly Achok Olare. I am a pastor in a small town in Kenya called Mumias, in Kenya’s sugar belt, about 500 kilometers west of Nairobi. It was in the year 1994, when I heard what appeared to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In reality what was advertised to me then was a Jesus who would meet all my needs and fulfill all my dreams as a young man. I was told that to be unsaved was to sign up to a life of misery, sickness and poverty. To embrace Christ was to step into a world of limitless blessing. I made then what appeared to be a practical and most logical decision to ‘accept Christ into my heart’. Zealous and wanting all that God would have for me, I quickly rose through the ranks and soon became a preacher of the same message I was given. I would later learn that this is the Word of Faith teaching, also called the Prosperity Gospel, or as some would call it, ‘the Health and Wealth Gospel’. I knew nothing else because there was nothing else apart from this that I heard. I only knew that God was good and that meant nothing negative or uncomfortable came from Him. I was taught at the start to deal with Satan who caused all negatives in my life in what I later came to know as ‘spiritual warfare’. It was ingrained in me that I was in the ‘God class’ (as Creflo Dollar and Kenneth Copeland would insist), and therefore had absolute authority in and of myself to ‘create my own world’ by positive thinking and faith-filled confessions. It was God’s will for me to be healthy and wealthy and anything less was to be repudiated in faith and the opposite called to existence by my positive confession. I learned that if all else fails, I was to engage the ‘heavenly language - the language of angels’ and bypass Satan and the hosts of darkness by praying in tongues. These I had thoroughly learned and taught others for many years
From the Darkness of Word of Faith to the Glorious Light of the Gospel
From the Darkness of Word of Faith to the…
From the Darkness of Word of Faith to the Glorious Light of the Gospel
The following is a testimony from an African pastor who was caught up in the heresy of the charismatic Word of Faith movement that is prevalent in Africa. My name is Elly Achok Olare. I am a pastor in a small town in Kenya called Mumias, in Kenya’s sugar belt, about 500 kilometers west of Nairobi. It was in the year 1994, when I heard what appeared to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In reality what was advertised to me then was a Jesus who would meet all my needs and fulfill all my dreams as a young man. I was told that to be unsaved was to sign up to a life of misery, sickness and poverty. To embrace Christ was to step into a world of limitless blessing. I made then what appeared to be a practical and most logical decision to ‘accept Christ into my heart’. Zealous and wanting all that God would have for me, I quickly rose through the ranks and soon became a preacher of the same message I was given. I would later learn that this is the Word of Faith teaching, also called the Prosperity Gospel, or as some would call it, ‘the Health and Wealth Gospel’. I knew nothing else because there was nothing else apart from this that I heard. I only knew that God was good and that meant nothing negative or uncomfortable came from Him. I was taught at the start to deal with Satan who caused all negatives in my life in what I later came to know as ‘spiritual warfare’. It was ingrained in me that I was in the ‘God class’ (as Creflo Dollar and Kenneth Copeland would insist), and therefore had absolute authority in and of myself to ‘create my own world’ by positive thinking and faith-filled confessions. It was God’s will for me to be healthy and wealthy and anything less was to be repudiated in faith and the opposite called to existence by my positive confession. I learned that if all else fails, I was to engage the ‘heavenly language - the language of angels’ and bypass Satan and the hosts of darkness by praying in tongues. These I had thoroughly learned and taught others for many years