Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11096 This question arises more often than it should need to, and the fact that it does reflects the influence of certain streams of Christian teaching that have set faith and medicine in opposition to one another. Some believers genuinely wonder whether consulting a doctor represents a failure of trust in God. The biblical…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11101 This question generates more anxiety in Christian circles than it should. Some believers feel guilty for taking medication, as though reliance on a prescription is a failure of faith. Others have been told, sometimes by well-meaning pastors and sometimes by manipulative ones, that true Christians should trust God for healing and that taking…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60110 Few questions in pastoral ministry provoke more anguish than this one. A believer prays earnestly for healing, trusts God sincerely, and yet the healing does not come. The result is often confusion, guilt, or a quiet crisis of faith. The question deserves a careful, honest, and compassionate answer, because the stakes are not…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08078 The prayer of Jabez, found in a brief passage in 1 Chronicles, became a cultural phenomenon in evangelical Christianity following Bruce Wilkinson’s bestselling book The Prayer of Jabez (2000). The book sold over nine million copies and spawned an entire industry of related products. Some have connected Jabez’s prayer to spiritual warfare, treating…
Reading Time: 8 minutesQuestion 60048 Few theological errors have achieved the global influence of what is commonly called the prosperity gospel; also known as the health-and-wealth gospel, word of faith teaching, or name-it-and-claim-it theology. This movement, which emerged in mid-twentieth-century America and has since spread to virtually every continent, promises adherents that faith properly exercised will result in…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11093 The question of how Christians should give to the church touches on stewardship, worship, gratitude, and the practical reality that local churches need financial resources to carry out their mission. It is also a question where popular teaching has often imported assumptions, whether from the Old Testament tithing system or from the prosperity…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04114 Christian television has produced a particular kind of ministry figure: the faith healer who calls words of knowledge from the platform, lays hands on people who fall backwards, announces dramatic healings, and encourages large financial donations as an act of faith. Millions of people watch these programmes. Some are ill and desperately hopeful….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11080 The prosperity gospel is one of the most widespread and most destructive distortions in contemporary Christianity. Its core claim, that financial wealth and physical health are God’s will for every believer and the guaranteed result of sufficient faith and giving, has spread across television, the internet, and large sections of global Christianity, promising…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60082 The Word of Faith movement is one of the most widely diffused streams of popular Christianity in the world today, with roots in mid-twentieth century America and branches now extending across every continent. Its central teachings about health, wealth, confession, and the power of spoken faith are encountered across television networks, megachurches, and…