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REVIEW written
by Prof. Roger Smalling and posted on Amazon.com: "I read the text of this
book in 1986 while researching the Word-Faith aberration. The documentation
on the movement's origins is scholarly and thorough. Though other books deal
with different aspects of the movement, Matta's book is indispensable for
anyone researching Word-Faith in depth."
Rev. Roger L. Smalling
Presbyterian Church In America
Miami International Seminary
MORE NOTES ON The Christian Response...
The careful research
presented in this study (132 pages plus endnotes, full size pages, spiral
bound) is invaluable to those wanting an in-depth knowledge of the
philosophical Gnostic system underlying the Prosperity and Success doctrines
seen on "Christian" stations. Countless Christians have been ensnared by
these seductive doctrines. At the heart of their doctrine is the Gnostic
"Redeemed Redeemer" (also found in the original, Ancient Gnosticism) called
in this modern revival of the heresy, "the Born-Again Jesus". In their
teaching entitled "What Happened from the Cross to the Throne", they assert
the blasphemous idea that Jesus went to Hell like any sinner, was tortured
by Satan, which "paid for our sins", since Gnostics value only spiritual
torture as a true price for our "spiritual" sins! He was the first to be
"born again" and these teachers like to suppose that we are equal with Him
as born-again people. Copeland tells his followers. The only difference
between you and Jesus is that you're born again this side of Hell. Because
this teaching places Thought "realities" above any information from physical
and material sources around them (matter is "evil" in this system), mental
illness often ensues. Swedish sociologists report that an astonishing 50% of
all of their country's schizophrenics are a part of this cult's Rhema School
in Upsaala and their parishes. Hagin, Copeland, Price, DuPlantis, and Creflo
Dollar, are only a few of those preaching this ancient heresy of Gnosticism;
the author uses St. Irenaios' writings as a basis for answers to this
"scientific" method by which these cultists "create" prosperity by magic
incantations of Scripture and affirmations even as their ancient
brother-heretics did, beginning with Simon the Magician (Acts 8).
THIS GNOSTIC
TEACHING HAS MADE INROADS WITH SOME CONVERTS TO ORTHODOXY. We are
grateful to have this exposition of False teachings in order to correct the
works of Seraphim Rose and others who accept this Gnostic view as somehow
"orthodox".
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