We have been looking at Kenneth Hagin’s teaching from his book “The Believer’s Authority. This is part two of our series “Who is Kenneth Hagin’s Jesus?” The next few ideas we should examine from the book are in chapter 2 which is called “Seated With Christ.” In part one we talked about how the book of Revelation talks about Christ designating the church of Laodicea to sit on his throne with him after they are taken to heaven, and after they have fought the good fight, and they are sanctified completely. Going now to page 11, Hagin begins laying down spiritual sounding ideas not based in scripture that he is going to say over and over throughout his book and give them to us without backing them up, but will simply state them repeatedly as his choice way to make them sound plausible. The first of these is, “When Christ ascended, He transferred His authority to the Church.” But there is simply no scripture that tells us he transferred all his authority to the church, neither before he ascended, nor when he ascended, nor after he ascended.
If we consider Hagin’s vision, the Jesus in his vision was showing such an absence of authority in his actions that there seems to be a complete transfer of authority where no authority is retained by Jesus. This helplessness of the Jesus in the vision comes through loud and clear. But the Bible actually tells us that Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth. There is no scripture that says Jesus gave up, gave away, transferred or for some other reason does not currently possess that same authority that he had from the foundation of the world. The Lord maintains this authority which in essence is Jesus being in control, or in other words, is in essence the quality of his Sovereignty.
Scriptures That Back Up the Continued Sovereignty of Christ
The Bible tells us Christ continues to possess Sovereignty even AFTER His ascension. Acts 4:24b reads, “…Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.”. John 1:3 tells us “All things were created through Him, and without Him nothing was created that was created.” We know John in 1:3 is speaking of Christ who created the heavens and the earth and the sea, because John 1:1 and 1:2 is talking of the Word that is God, and that is Jesus. So John 1:3 is speaking of Christ and Acts 4:24b is telling us that the person who created the heavens and the earth is Sovereign, so because of what we know from John 1 about Christ creating the heavens and earth that Acts 4:24b is telling us it is Christ that is Sovereign. All of these scriptures were written AFTER Christ’s ascension. There therefore could not have been a transfer of Christ’s authority at his ascension! Being Sovereign means you have authority!
To add to this point, 2 Peter 2:1b reads “…They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.” The Sovereign Lord who bought them we know was the Lord Jesus who bought them with his blood, so this is saying the Lord who bought them-is Christ who is the Sovereign Lord. There could not have been a complete transfer of authority at the ascension because we could not call Jesus after he ascended one who is Sovereign if he in fact transferred all of his authority away from himself as Hagin claims Jesus did. Hagin’s Jesus was emphatic about not having any authority that he retained for himself but gave it all to the church!
To add again to this point, Jude 1:4b reads, “…They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” This very clearly says Jesus Christ is the Sovereign and Lord. And it was written about him after his ascension which is when Hagin says he transferred away from himself all his authority.
Just what is Sovereignty?
According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary found at https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/sovereignty/ the definition of sovereignty is speaking of God’s “absolute right to do all things according to his own good pleasure”. All these scriptures speak of Christ’s Sovereignty or in other words having full authority or full power to operate as he so desires in heaven and on earth. Hagin’s Jesus is not able to do everything he could desire. His Jesus said “If you hadn’t done something about the demon, I couldn’t”, shows us the anti-Sovereignty of God. To add to this point, the God of the Bible declares in Jeremiah 32:17-18 ‘Oh, Lord God! Behold, You Yourself have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You…”. And we know it was Christ who made the heavens and the earth by his great power and nothing is to difficult for Christ, either before the resurrection, or after, because it takes the Sovereignty of Christ to create heaven and earth, and that quality didn’t change about Christ from the Old to New Testaments, or from before the ascension to after the ascension.
To be clear in order for Jesus to have fully transferred his authority away from himself to the church, it by necessity had to have meant Jesus didn’t have all his wits about him, because what kind of Jesus would have given all his authority away so that he could not still remain in charge when he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Could God trust a broken church still in the process of sanctification and fallible or could such a God be trusted who put that weight of responsibility upon the shoulders of the fallen church? An emphatic NO is the correct answer!
What if it Was Just a Boundary Jesus Set on Himself to Get the Church to Act?
What if we looked at the possibility that there are people in the course of everyday business who might say something to another business associate like “I’m sorry, I can’t help you” and although they may be able to help someone, they are limiting how much they are willing to help someone due to their personal boundaries by simply saying “I can’t help you”. What they mean is their conscience won’t let them help the person seeking help. But the Jesus of Hagin’s vision is not in this category because of the way he speaks and acts. As noted before, he says to Hagin, “If you hadn’t done something about the demon, I couldn’t have.”, not “wouldn’t have”. According to His own words, he didn’t have a choice, he simply “couldn’t” help. We then know it was not that his conscience was the issue nor was it an issue of personal boundaries. Furthermore, the Jesus in Hagin’s vision contradicts Hagin’s own assessment of why Jesus could not help. Hagin says on page 27 that Jesus refused to deal with the demon, which gives him a choice about dealing with the demon because refusing is a choice. So Hagin can’t even make his story to line up with what Jesus said to him in the vision.
Hagin goes on to prop up his ideas of authority on page 11: “He is the Head of the Church, and believers make up the Body. Christ’s authority has to be perpetuated through His Body, which is on the earth”. Hagin expounds on this saying throughout the book that “it is ONLY through the body of Christ on the earth that Christ can perpetuate his authority.” To say this is again to rob Christ of His Sovereignty on the earth, and make him dependent on mortals. A quality similar to Sovereignty that God possesses is his aseity or self-sufficiency. According to https://www.biblestudytools.com/ in an article entitled “15 Amazing Attributes of God: What They Mean and Why They Matter” on the definition of self-sufficient, it reads “God Is Self-Sufficient – He Has No Needs. “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” – John 5:26 As limited humans, we have incredible needs, which left unfulfilled, result in death. God, however, has never once been in need of anything. As Tim Temple writes, “God is perfectly complete within his own being.”
Hagin hasn’t considered all the implications or the meaning of what would happen if through the church was the only way Christ could perpetuate his authority. Christ would fall terribly short in the self-sufficient category, and therefore cease to be God. In all of Hagin’s writings there is no evidence that Hagin has put any thought into how many parts of the universe are in operation as a result of the fact that God has self-sufficiency over countless things. To try to separate God or Jesus from his self-sufficiency of having control over every huge and infinitesimally small part of the universe and everything in between is an impossibility. It is not even remotely possible in the lamest sense.
The Insufficiency of Man Compared to the Self-Sufficiency of Christ
To take the responsibility of a perfect sinless God who does not have any blemish and who does not have any darkness or flaw but who is bursting with goodness and virtue and who has all power and authority because He is infinite and He is the source, and creator of everything we see, if the church was made the sole avenue by which Christ could perpetuate his authority, the heaviness of that responsibility would utterly crush us to powder in a split second, because it would be something we could never make a mistake with, and the cost of one mistake would utterly collapse the whole universe because God would not be upholding it anymore. He would have entrusted the care of the universe to a limited, sinful church which does not have perfect knowledge of how everything should be run, nor do most of us even know the names of half the elements that exist as part of the periodic table. But Hagin shows just how much he has not thought through the implications of what God’s authority and self-sufficiency are all about by thinking and saying that a limited and flawed church or person could share the same authority as the throne of Christ has. Hagin says this many times throughout his book. We will cover this more in part three of this series.
Jesus is The Light and Light Scatters Darkness
And to examine Hagin’s Jesus, there is no Bible scripture anywhere that says Christ has no longer any more authority to act against the demonic powers with self-sufficiency or to even rebuke a mere demon except through the church because Christ would never divide away from Himself any of the divine characteristics which only God has. Christ is light, and demons are of the kingdom of darkness. Light always scatters darkness. Jesus is the light of the world. So the very substance of Jesus that he carries with him when he shows up in any place is enough to cast out demons.
Isn’t the Ascended Jesus More Free to Act With Spiritual Power?
Divine authority is so much a part of the personality and fabric of the nature of God, that if you take it away from him you don’t have God anymore because the light of Jesus is pure light and more powerful than darkness. So we could easily expect the resurrected Jesus to rebuke a demon. Jesus is the light of the world, and light scatters darkness. Surely the resurrected Jesus seems to be more powerful than Jesus before he ascended, because the ascended Jesus could no longer be tempted in any way, even though the Jesus on earth underwent temptation. The Jesus with the spiritual body in heaven is unveiled as far as his power goes, but the Jesus who walked the earth because of his earthly body limited his free exercise of power. But Hagin misses this obvious truth over and over throughout his book. Even though he limited his power while walking on earth, the earthly Jesus did battle with the devil on every front and won by standing his ground and not giving into temptation on any front. So it would seem the ascended Jesus would have more freedom to use his heavenly privileges of spiritual powers freely and unveiled by the flesh and blood body that he had when he walked on the earth and be free to rebuke a demon.
Authority is a Spiritual Matter, Not Just a Physical One
1 Corinthians 15:44 reads, “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” Jesus had a natural body on the earth, and it has been raised as a spiritual body in heaven that he operates in. So his authority which he possesses everywhere although his body is in heaven is a spiritually based authority, one could argue, because his body has been raised a spiritual body. He completed every battle of the physical nature so he ascended into heaven. And not only for that reason, but because authority is a spiritual matter, not merely a physical matter.
God Can Operate Simultaneously in Multiple Realms
The fact that Jesus has a physical group of people on the earth does not mean that his spiritual authority does not preside over the physical group of people. And while Jesus walked on the earth, Jesus rebuked demons, so as he is spiritually intact in his spiritual authority in heaven, he operates on the earth with that same spiritual authority from heaven. His spiritual authority can reach the material world of the earth, because if we go by 1Cor 15:44, we know that every spiritual body on the earth has a spiritual body in the spiritual world. And if we limit our view of Jesus’s power, we still must believe he has full authority over everything in the spiritual world. Who says God can only operate in one realm at a time? His spiritual authority can operate in every dimension of the universe all at the same time because he is God, and if he wants it that way, he can operate that way, in the physical realms of earth, as well as in all the spiritual realms, because to believe anything less about Jesus is to believe in something far less than the Jesus of the Bible. Quite clearly he perpetuates his authority from his spiritual person in heaven which transcends time and space and matter.
Our Capacity
Even if this were the only obvious point Hagin missed, this would be enough to collapse every argument in his book. Therefore the reality about Hagin’s Jesus being not able to rebuke a demon because he “couldn’t” is enough to cause Hagin’s whole book to crumble into nothing as we see that authority comes with and from a spiritual source—God and/or Jesus who both exist in spiritual form in heaven to be exact. Furthermore, God and Jesus who are spirit, can operate in every dimension of the universe because they are God, and Jesus would have been out of his mind to transfer all authority away from himself and to the church upon his ascension. If we just look at who we are compared to God, we simply do not have the capacity to share equal authority with the Christ to be the only avenue by which Christ can perpetuate his authority on the earth, nor is the church an avenue by which Christ’s authority can operate without flaws, bumps, and wobbles.
What About the Possibility of Some Authority Transferring at The Ascension of Christ Even if a Complete Authority Transfer Did Not Happen?
One of the scriptures Hagin uses to tie into the idea of the complete transfer of authority of Christ to the church is found on page 17 where he mentions Matthew 28:18. It reads, “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” Hagin is implying that what Jesus next said was the transfer of all authority. Verse 19 reads “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” This command that Jesus gave which Hagin links up with the transfer of authority happened before Jesus ascended into heaven, not after. And even though this happened before Jesus ascended, it wasn’t a transfer of Jesus’ full authority, it was Jesus telling them that He is the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth, not that he was giving away all of his authority to them for going into all the world. Logically we can say it would never take the full authority of heaven and earth to evangelize the world because Jesus has infinite authority, and he is unlimited and nothing takes all of the authority of Jesus to accomplish because nothing is infinite except God himself. So, nothing can drain the infinitude of God.
Also, it was in Luke 10:19 that Jesus gave the disciples a measure of authority. It reads “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.” Jesus gave them authority only over all the power of the enemy, and he did not give them authority over speaking things into existence, telling the sun when to rise and set, nor did he give them authority over getting all their bills automatically paid on time, nor authority over raising every person from the dead that they could lay their hands on, and many other things they did not receive the full authority Christ. Even Jesus did not raise a lot of people from the dead. In his 3 and ½ years, there had to have been several dozen, if not hundreds of people in the cities he preached in who died, and he only raised Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, and the widow’s son from the dead. The disciples were not designated to do works greater in stature than Jesus, but to do works in greater number, them being a group of 12 disciples, and Jesus being one person, and there is only a couple accounts of the disciples raising people from the dead, which should not surprise us, because raising someone from the dead should not be a common thing, unless you are God himself. Some scholars say most of the works they did were a lot of preaching and teaching and the authority for healing miracles dissipated from the apostles including Paul within a few dozen years after Jesus ascended. Wouldn’t there be a clear record of the healing miracles continuing for centuries after Jesus ascended if Christ meant for healing miracles to be an everyday thing? One would think this to be true.
When Was the Partial Authority Transferred? Matthew 28 Was Not About an Authority Transfer and Not About The Disciples Casting Out Demons or Devils.
Luke 10:19 was about when the disciples received a partial transfer of authority was spoken long before Jesus’ death and ascension, and they received authority over all the power of the enemy. In Matthew 28:18 Jesus was merely telling them that He was the One who had all the authority in heaven and on earth, but no authority transfer is given of all authority in heaven and on earth. Earlier in the beginning of Matthew 28, the disciples had just heard about the chief priests telling the soldiers to make up a lie about the disciples stealing away his body. The disciples knew that if they were to go out and preach that Jesus is risen from the dead they would be in direct opposition to the lies that the authorities or chief priests and soldiers were clearly planning to spread about why Jesus’s body was not in the tomb anymore. Starting in verse 11, it reads “Now while they were on their way, some of the men from the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. 12 And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13 and said, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him while we were asleep.’ 14 And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 And they took the money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews and is to this day.”
So it was possible that the soldiers could get into trouble if the proof got out that Jesus actually did rise from the dead. This was the thing that they did not want to believe because they did not want people to follow Jesus as God, because they wanted to regard him as man. They believed he would attract too many followers if they considered him s coming from God and they would lose their positions of power. But the truth of the resurrection would save people, and that is why Jesus spoke of having all authority in heaven and on earth and that the disciples should go ahead and preach anyway about Jesus rising from the dead even though they might get into conflicts with the priestly authorities.
What Matthew 28 Does Not Say
Furthermore, this passage in Matthew 28 is saying nothing about the disciples being told to cast out demons or having authority over devils. Jesus was the one with the authority over devils, and he gave it to the disciples in Luke 10:19. Luke 10:19 reads, “Behold, I have given you authority to walk on snakes and scorpions, and authority over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.” But even in this transfer of partial authority there was never a time when the Lord walked the earth that He warned the disciples that He would become unable to help them fight the devil, nor was there any warning that the disciples would become the sole wielders of this authority. There was never a prophecy of the Old Testament given to warn the followers of Christ that they should get ready for a huge transfer of responsibility. Surely Jesus would have considered a transfer of authority of such monumental caliber to be told to his disciples, but he never told them “All the responsibility for perpetuating My authority on the earth will soon rest on your shoulders!”
Ready to Haphazardly Wield Authority?
To pull the story line from Hagin’s vision of fiction, there was never a time spoken of by Jesus of how he would sit down in heaven to take a break from his work on the earth in order for the weightiness of that work to be continued at the hands solely of the body of Christ. But Hagin spends much of his time in his book telling his audience that they are “not doing enough with the authority Christ gave them” because they “don’t know anything about authority.” And whether intentional or not, Hagin has now primed the pump of the imagination so to speak of his audience and they audience grasps for what that could mean and ready to try their hand at “wielding their authority” because Hagin never comes out anywhere in his book in a clear exhaustive way to tell his audience what it looks like to walk in authority. He just gives hints of it, speaking of healing and of dominating the devil, and of not being defeated, and repeats the same statement that “most of the body of Christ just don’t know that they have authority.”
We will see Hagin prime the pump again to keep the reader’s appetite for authority to flow as the plot unfolds and thickens in the next post about Hagin’s vision of this thoroughly unbiblical Jesus. LG
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