Essek William Kenyon
Essek William Kenyon, whose life and ministry were enormously impacted by such cults as Science of Mind, the Unity School of Christianity, Christian Science, and New Thought metaphysics, is the true father of the modern-day Faith movement. Many of the phrases popularized by present-day prosperity preachers, such as "What I confess, I possess," were originally coined by Kenyon. Kenneth Hagin, to whom we next turn our attention, plagiarized much of Kenyon's work, including the statement, "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."
(E. W. Kenyon and the Twelve Apostles of Another Gospel, by Hank Hanegraaff)
"The modern Father of the Faith Movement, Kenneth Hagin plagiarized in word and content the bulk of his theology from E. W. Kenyon. All of the Faith teachers, including Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland, whether they admit it or not, are the spiritual sons and grandsons of E. W. Kenyon. It was Kenyon, not Hagin, who formulated every major doctrine of the modern Faith Movement....The roots of Kenyon's theology may be traced to his personal backround in the metaphysical cults, specifically New Thought and Christian science...Kenyon attempted to forge a synthesis of metaphysical and evangelical thought...The result in Faith theology is a strange mixture of biblical fundamentalism and New Thought metaphysics."
D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, pg. 184-186.
Essek William Kenyon:
"What I confess, I possess."
(E. W. Kenyon, "Hidden Man," page 98)
"I know that I am healed because He said that I am healed and it makes no difference what the symptoms may be in my body. I laugh at them, and in the Name of Jesus I command the author of the disease to leave my body."
(E. W. Kenyon, "Hidden Man," page 99)
"It is wrong for us to have sickness and disease in our bodies when God laid those diseases on Jesus."
(E. W. Kenyon, "Jesus the Healer," page 44)
"It is our confession that rules us."
Kenyon believed that his teaching would create a master race of Christians:
"When these truths really gain the ascendency in us, they will make us spiritual supermen, masters of demons and disease...It will be the end of weakness and failure. There will be no more struggle for faith, for all things are ours. There will be no more praying for power, for He is in us...In the presence of these tremendous realities, we arise and take our place. We go out and live as supermen indwelt by God."
"Now we are moving up into the big things...I said softly as I walked into the prayer meeting, We are coming into the spiritual redwoods. We are going to see spiritual giants, supermen. They have God dwelling in them...They no longer walk as natural mem. They belong to the love class, the miracle class. They are in the Jesus class. They have graduated from the lower class."
"We are not common folk. This [Revelation Knowledge] lifts us out of the common place into the super-realm. You are the real supermen and superwomen. You have gone outside of the realm of the senses, outside the realm of Sense Knowledge, and you have passed over into the realm of God, the spirit realm."
Despite the popular teaching, E. W. Kenyon was not Pentecostal:
"The Pentecostal movement, as it is called, reaching out over the country has had much blessing in it for many souls, but I must confess after having studied it carefully and impartially for the last three years, that there is in it as much destruction as there has been inspiration and instruction."
"Not only does Scripture fail to teach that tongues is the evidence of the indwelling of theHoly Spirit, but to makes tongues the evidence of the Holy Spirit's indwelling would be contrary to the law of God's dealing with the New Creation."
"There can be scientists in the realm of the Spirit as well as in the realm of the Senses. It has always been hard for Sense Knowledge men to accept spiritual things...Sense Knowledge cannot find God and would not know God if it found Him...The spiritual scientist does not deal in theories. He deals in facts...The spiritual scientists has proven there is a God...He has found that man is a spirit being in the class with God, he is eternal, he originally had an eternal body."
"This is not psychology or metaphysics. This is absolute fact. God becomes a part of our very consciousness."
E. W. Kenyon teaches that man as a species "is in God's class of being."
"According to Kenyon, Jesus died two deaths on the cross: the first spiritual, the second physical. It was necessary that Christ die spiritually because sickness and sin are both spiritual in origin, not physical. Kenyon states that 'Sin and sickness come from the same source. Satan is the author of both.' Likewise, 'Sickness is spiritual. It is manifested in our physical bodies as a disease.' The disease itself, however, is but a physical manifestation of a problem that is spiritual in origin. Christ's physical death did fulfill perfect obedience, but it could never eradicate sin and sickness because both of these are spiritual. The physical death of Christ was but the begining of his redemptive work, not its end."
"He [Jesus] went to Hell in order to take us to heaven."
"Kenyon maintained that if all believers were vitally indentified with Christ's rebirth in Hell, then the church would be elevated above every sickness, pain, circumstance, and imperfection. Where these things exist in the church, it is only because believers have failed to realize their Identification with Christ."
“We have sung `Nearer the cross' and we have prayed that we might be `Nearer the cross' but the cross has no salvation in it. It is a place of failure and defeat.”
(Essek William Kenyon, Advanced Bible Course, p.279)
"When this happened, spiritual death, the nature of Satan, took possession of His Spirit....He was to partake of Spiritual Death, the nature of the Adversary....Jesus knew that the moment had come, and He was to be made Sin. He must partake of that dread nature of the Adversary. His body would become mortal. Satan would become His master.... He [Jesus] had been lifted up as a serpent. Serpent is Satan. Jesus knew He was going to be lifted up, united with the Adversary.”
(What Happened from the Cross to the Throne Kenyon's Gospel Publishing Society, 1969, 20, 33, 44-45)
“I know that I am healed because I said that I am healed and it makes no difference what the symptoms may be in my body.”
(E.W. Kenyon, Hidden Man, pg. 99)
"If Jesus' physical death could pay the penalty for Sin as some contend, then why is it necessary that a Christian die? If a Christian dies physically, does he not pay the penalty of his own sin? If physical death is the penalty for sin, then why do not the whole human race pay their own penalty, and save themselves, for all die? But we hold that the physical death of Jesus did not touch the sin issue at all."
(E. W. Kenyon, Daniel R. McConnell, A Different Gospel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), 23, 28 note 23)