Is It God’s Will for the Believer to Decree, Declare, or Speak Things Into Existence?
Many teachers from the Word of Faith Movement and the New Apostolic Reformation say that Romans 4:17 is all the evidence we need to believe that Christians can have whatever we speak into existence. In many places on TV and the internet we hear religious leaders telling us that our current life is the result of our words, the result of what we have said about our jobs, our families, our status in the communities in which we live and things like this. Similarly, the same teachers tell us the outcome of our lives is within our realm of control and that we must control our lives by carefully choosing to say only positive things about our lives so that they will come to pass. Kenneth Hagin has books entitled “You Can Have What You Say”, “How To Write Your Own Ticket With God” and a book simply called “Words”. Kenneth Copeland has books out entitled “The Power of The Tongue”, “Dream Big, Talk Big and Turn Your Faith Loose”, “How You Call It Is How It Will Be” and “Life and Death are in The Power of The Tongue”. Charles Capps has a book entitled “Calling Things That Are Not”, and “What I Confess, I Possess” are words in the beginning of a chapter in E. W. Kenyon’s “The Hidden Man”. They base these titles on ideas of speaking things into existence based on ideas taken out of context from Romans 4:17, Mark 11:23-24, Proverbs 18:21, Deuteronomy 28:8-9, and Psalm 133:3.
What Does Proverbs 18:21, and Romans 4:17 Mean?
All of the above writers/teachers are Word of Faith teachers. Proverbs 18:21 reads, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” If we interpret Proverbs 18:21 as many Word of Faith teachers teach to mean that unless you speak positive things about yourself your faith is not at work and you will only get negative things in life, then that is to say God is not powerful enough nor loving enough to save a mute person. It means God is prejudice towards the mute and his salvation is only for the ones who can declare, decree and speak things into existence. This is to say God is biased and unjust, and partial towards the speaking! If we believe we have to show our love for the living word of God by speaking things the word of God says into existence we are saying we believe the mute cannot love the word of God and we make ourselves out to be prejudiced and contemptuous towards the mute. So this scripture truly must mean we can love the word of God and God himself in our hearts, and find his salvation at work just as strong in the life of a mute and faith just as strong in the life of a mute as in one who is not mute. It is unnecessary to speak God’s word out loud in order for a person to be saved or to experience the power of God’s word at work bringing life to the believing one who does not speak with his mouth.
Romans 4:17 mentions the idea that “God calls into being things that are not in existence as though they were. “Some translations use the phrase that says God “called things that be not as though they were”. But if we look closely at Romans 4:17, it says God is the one who calls things that be not as though they were. We find no scriptures at all in the Bible telling the believer to call things that be not as though they were. The Bible plainly says that this is what God alone does.
The sole exceptions were when the 12 apostles and the 72 other disciples and Paul were directed by Jesus to “drive out evil spirits and bring healing to people.” They commanded people to be healed, commanded them to walk, and commanded them to stretch out their limbs. According to the website https://renew.org/new-testament-writers/, “The New Testament comprises twenty-seven books and letters, amounting to a total of around 181,000 words.” And according to https://newhopeeugene.com/, it takes around “…18 hours and 20 minutes to read the New Testament.” Within this plethora of words and time it takes to read the New Testament God did not find it important enough to show a lay person to command healing or anything else to come to pass, and there is no biblical evidence Jesus ever commissioned a lay person to ever command healing to come to themselves or to others. There is no teaching or doctrine to the New Testament church on how to command anything at all to come to pass, no teaching or doctrine for the New Testament church on how to command an exorcism to come to pass, while what we see today taught in many churches is very out of balance as far as what is emphasized by the writers of the New Testament and found important and worthy enough to be included in the scripture. The only scope by which healings were commanded to come to pass or exorcisms to happen was when Jesus commissioned his 12 apostles to do these things, along with the 72 other disciples also known as the 72 elders, and Paul.
The Limit of Scriptures in the New Testament Showing Us What The Lay Believer’s Relationships to the Devil Should Be
Let’s look closer at this Bible reality that Jesus himself also never commanded nor commissioned a lay person to ever drive out evil spirits. Although the Bible tells us the New Testament believer has authority over the devil as far as resisting him, and standing against him, Christians are to hold to these two truths specifically. We have authority as far as standing in the faith against the devil, written in Ephesians 6, and we have authority to stand up against temptation as written in 1 Corinthians 10:13. The only teachings or commissionings showing a follower of Christ to be commanding healing to come to pass or commanding evil spirits to be driven out, were given by Jesus Christ to the 12 apostles, and to the 72 other disciples and to Paul who was an apostle who was one untimely born, (1 Corinthians 15:8) who also had a very dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ himself on the road to Damascus. What about the trampling of the devil under our feet as is spoken of in Luke 10:19? “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.” We must look at the context. Two scriptures earlier in Luke 10:17 it reads “Now the seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name!” 18 And He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” Again Jesus was establishing his authority to give the 72 disciples authority to heal people and cast out demons. These 72 elders were personally commissioned by Jesus to be full time evangelists and were given authority over the devil for reasons to be used in a full-time way. They gave up their lives and free choice of a career to obey Jesus’ commission to evangelize and heal. This was to point the early church to the reality of Jesus as Lord of heaven and earth. This authority was not used in places where mainly Christians would gather to worship Jesus in a large church meeting with beautiful music as is mainly how people today seem to use their authority over the devil in prayer and in attempting to heal people. Today the documented proof of lasting healing is rare and scarce. Very few doctors write letters to newspapers to confirm healings have happened, nor do you see doctors testify on video giving scientific proof that healings have been scientifically verified. There are many people who may say they feel better after a meeting in which they worship God and get prayed for but the majority of this type of thing seems to be psychosomatic healing that can go away after a day or after a couple days or so. This seems to point to the reality that believers today do not share the same effectiveness or level of authority or commissioning from Jesus to heal others, as the 72 other disciples did. What about the promise to believers today that Paul gives from God in Romans16:20 which reads, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” This scripture is indeed written to lay believers but does not say that the God of peace after you take authority over the devil, and bind him, rebuke him, and cast him out, will soon crush Satan under your feet. It says the God of peace (by HIMSELF, as an ACT OF HIS GRACE) will soon crush Satan under your feet. And this scripture is not a mandate from God that believers today should sing a praise song in which they jump around as if jumping on the devil to make it come to pass that God in fact will crush Satan as long as they do a worship dance of jumping and crushing the devil and shouting like Tarzan with a warfare victory shout about their authority over the devil.
The Difference Between the Way the Apostles, the 72 Other Disciples, and Paul Use Scriptural Precedent, Verses How Believers Today Use a Made-Up Scriptural Precedent to Command Things to Come to Pass
All of these New Testament people from Bible accounts above had personal relationships with Jesus face to face, except Paul. Paul himself was commissioned by Christ himself to write 1/3 of the New Testament and had a dramatic encounter with God in the heavenly realm where he was told it was not lawful in the sight of God for him to speak or write about what he encountered. It is safe to say he and all the above leaders in the New Testament I just mentioned are on a different kind of level, have a different commissioning, have a different kind of responsibility, and a different kind of authority than your average lay Christian today. None of these leaders commanded their circumstances to change, none of them spoke to cause their hardships to cease, none of them spoke for new seasons of blessings to come to pass, none of them spoke of seasons of prosperity coming to pass or things along those lines for themselves or for the church, none of them cursed illness, none of them cursed the roots of their problems, none of them commanded their situations to line up with their child-of-God blessings and line up with their spiritual-rights- as-children-of-the-King, none of them commanded their mountains of problems to move out of the way, none of them taught that the church is spiritual royalty with kingly privileges, none of them spoke to illnesses to leave, although they only spoke to evil spirits to leave. Sometimes illnesses are simply organic and not evil spirit based. But today we have so called teachers in the church all over the world teaching Christians to command their circumstances to change, to speak to cause their hardships to cease, to speak for new seasons of blessings to come to pass, to speak of seasons of prosperity coming to pass and to speak along these lines for themselves and for the church, teaching us to curse illness, to curse the roots of our problems, teaching us to command our situations to line up with our child-of-God blessings and line up with our spiritual-rights-as-children-of-the-King, we have teachers that teach us to command that our mountains of problems will move out of the way, we have teachers today that teach us that the church is spiritual royalty with kingly privileges, we have teachers today that teach us to speak to illnesses to leave, and for healing to come. Friends, if we have kingly authority, and should use it, Paul never would have had a thorn in his flesh, never would have had trouble seeing what he was writing with his own hand, none of the disciples ever would have been martyred, and Jesus who is the King of Kings NEVER would have died on the cross for our sins. We would be unworthy to wash his feet or undo his shoelaces forever because he never would have died for our sins and we would have never received forgiveness if Jesus had exercised his Kingly authority over us and demanded all his Kingly rights over us. It is the humility of Jesus that is amazing, and he calls us to walk in humility and grace and not be spiritual brats demanding our kingly rights!
We Must Understand the Writings and Teachings of the New Testament to the 1st Century Church to See if Christians Should Command Healing, Command Circumstances to Change, or to Command or Rebuke the Devil
There are 9 writers of the New Testament and none of them ever wrote an admonition to any of the members of the New Testament churches to drive out evil spirits, or command healing to come to pass except the apostles, the 72 other disciples and Paul, and these received direction and direct commissioning from Jesus Christ himself being given special authority to do so. Not even the church leaders in the Bible who were not writers of the books of the Bible, the apostles, the 72 others or Paul ever once declared anything to come to pass to make their lives easier although many of them wrote about conflicts, and sufferings, and persecutions which would later end in the deaths of many of them. The 9 writers include Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, Jude, and the unknown author of Hebrews. All of these authors except Jude, Luke and perhaps the author of Hebrews were apostles and were commissioned by Jesus to command healing to take place and to command evil spirits to be cast out of people, but they were not directed by God to include in any of their writings to admonish any lay believers to do the same kinds of practices.
There is no evidence the 72 other disciples Jesus sent out were given authority to transfer the gift of authority to command healing to come to pass to any lay person. We are not given Bible verses to show us we should practice any type of speaking things into existence, or commanding evil spirits to be cast out of someone as a normal part of our walk with God in the New Testament. Speaking things into existence is exactly what people try to do who are in the occult, in witchcraft, in the New Age and in mysticism. Furthermore, miracles were few and far between for the second century and beyond for the Christian leader, according to https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/50504/does-irenaeus-indicate-that-people-were-raised-from-the-dead-in-the-2nd-century. We have evidence that healings happened sparingly around the second century but no evidence that the leaders of that time commanded the healing miracles to happen or commanded the dead to be raised or commanded evil spirits to come out, but it is quite possible they prayed and asked God for the healings and miracles to happen, and asked God himself to remove the evil spirits when encountering a need for such things to happen. It remains to this day to be orthodox to ask God for healing by taking a humble and submissive approach, asking God to hear our prayers and not for the believer to command or speak healing or deliverance into existence.
What About Mark 11:23-24? Does it Give Us the Go-Ahead To Speak Things to Come to Pass?
Mark 11:23-24 is specifically about Jesus pronouncing a curse on the Old Testament religious system and on those who depended on the law, because the scripture already declared the curse would happen to those who rejected God’s plan in Jeremiah 11:3, Deuteronomy 27:26, Deuteronomy 29:9-21, and other scriptures. In Mark 11:23-24 Jesus gave the curse because there were many in Israel that were rejecting him, so God was simply fulfilling his word, and this does not have anything to do with the Christian speaking whatever he wants into existence. We have no right to call things into existence based on this scripture. I write more on this in future parts of this blog series.
Based on these findings, there is simply no evidence that today’s Christian has the right or go ahead from God to command anything to come to pass, to command healing, to command exorcisms to come to pass, or to speak anything into existence, because it is only God who calls things that be not as though they were.
Based on The Bible, What Does Our Authority Look Like?
While we do have authority over the devil, we do not have authority over healing. We only have authority over the devil in 2 ways, to resist him and to stand against him. There is no scripture telling the lay Christian to rebuke the devil. We are told to submit to God and resist the devil and he will flee in James 4:7. And in 1 Peter 5:9: we are also told to resist the devil; it reads, “So resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brothers and sisters who are in the world. In Ephesians 6:10-17 we are simply told to stand firm and resist the devil, while it fails to mention anything about the believer rebuking the devil, casting out the devil, or commanding the devil. While these scriptures clearly show the believer has been given authority greater than the devil, God seems to do so to free the believer from being under the temptations of the devil rather than for commanding the devil, rebuking the devil, or casting out the devil in order for physical healing to happen. There is no evidence in this greatest spiritual warfare instruction for the believers in the Bible of Ephesians 6 for anything about the lay person commanding healing to come to pass, or commanding anything else to come to pass.
In addition, Mark 11:23-24 is not a free ticket from God to command your problems like mountains to move out of the way, nor is it a ticket for the believer to command anything they desire to happen to come to pass, nor does it mean they can speak anything into existence just because they believe something in their heart, which I said previously I will cover in depth in one of the next parts of this series entitled “Decreeing, Declaring and Commanding Things to Come to Pass Are Not Instructions Jesus Tells The Believer to Obey”.
Let’s take a look: Ephesians 6:10-17 reads, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Overstepping Our Authority
We are to follow the examples of how the lay believer is to carry out their faith given us in the New Testament, and not overstep our authority. I trust that I have established the Biblical definition of overstepping our authority as seen in these examples which I mentioned before: “teaching Christians to command their circumstances to change, to speak to cause our hardships to cease, to speak for new seasons of blessings to come to pass, to speak of seasons of prosperity coming to pass and to speak along these lines for ourselves and for the church, to curse illness, to curse the roots of our problems, to command our situations to line up with our child-of-God blessings and line up with our spiritual-rights-as-children-of-the-King, to command that our mountains of problems will move out of the way, to demand solutions as the spiritual royalty of the church with kingly privileges like Kenneth Copeland did with demanding a vaccination of Covid-19, and demanding or speaking to illnesses to leave, and speaking for healing to come. The belief and practice of these abuses of spiritual authority leads the Christian to developing arrogance, false confidence which is a confidence based on something other than scripture, a lack of humility and lack of trust and reliance on God. It promotes self-reliance and self-directed prayer, and a belief in mystical answers from something other than God, and belief in mystical instruction rather than Biblical instruction.
Based on these findings, we can safely conclude that decreeing, declaring and commanding things to come to pass are not instructions for the New Testament believer. This short study of scripture gives us ample evidence to conclude that decreeing, declaring and commanding things to come to pass are outside the realm of normal and orthodox Christianity. We can also conclude that the practice of decreeing, declaring and commanding things to come to pass will lead the believer astray from the path of obedience to God. Following this false teaching resists our Christian humility and trust in God that He has chosen for the believer to follow. We can also conclude that those who teach the believer to decree, declare and command things to come to pass are teaching the believer to depart from the pathway of normal and orthodox Christianity and depart from obedience to God. LG
groenintheword.blog 