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Paul King, Only Believe: Examining the Origin and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies <\/i>(Word & Spirit Press, 2009), 408 pages, ISBN 9780981952604.<\/b><\/p>\n\nPaul King, Only Believe: Examining the Origin and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies <\/i>(Word & Spirit Press, 2009), 408 pages, ISBN 9780981952604.<\/b><\/p>\n
Paul King is a scholar at Oral Roberts University and an ordained minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. In this volume of some 400 pages, beautifully published by Word & Spirit Press of Tulsa, Oklahoma he examines the thought of the Word of Faith movement. He does this in a novel and innovative way. Instead of the \u201coverkill\u201d approach that we saw among the heresy hunters of the 1980s and 90s, King first takes a good look at the history of Christianity. Among the Early Church Fathers, Medieval Mystics, Protestant Reformers, Puritans and Pietists he finds precursors of many Faith teachings. He gives special attention to the classic Evangelical authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is an area where King is an acknowledged expert. He is well acquainted with the Holiness, Healing and Pentecostal movements. He even makes a distinction between the Keswick and Higher Life movements that I have always seen as one movement.<\/p>\n
Throughout this very readable book, you will find numerous citations from classic faith leaders such as George Mueller, A.J. Gordon, R. A. Torrey, A. B. Simpson, Charles Spurgeon and Andrew Murray. King has made a detailed study of John A. MacMillan who wrote the seminal volume, The Authority of the Believer<\/i>.<\/p>\n
From this solid historical basis King develops his major thesis, namely that the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to practice a healthy faith that is both strong and<\/i> solid. What this looks like is worth pursuing, and King is a thoughtful and helpful guide.<\/p>\n
By ferreting out the faith doctrines among the classic authors of the previous two centuries, King is illustrating to us what should have been obvious \u2013 that Word of Faith teaching did not just suddenly fall out of the sky. It grew organically out of a nineteenth century context. It may be that the unfortunate and jarring overreaction of much of established Christianity to the amazing work of God in the Azusa Street revival of 1906 \u2013 1909, with some writers describing the first steps of Classical Pentecostalism with extreme pejoratives such as \u201cthe last vomit of Satan\u201d led to the total disjunction and separation of these branches of Christianity. King\u2019s book is a bridge to restore dialogue and mutually beneficial conversations.<\/p>\n
The major part of this study probes the theological and practical issues that one usually sees as distinctive of the Word of Faith movement. King prefers the term \u201ccontemporary faith.\u201d These issues include the nature of faith, the authority of the believer, spiritual laws, logos and rhema, revelation knowledge and Healing in the atonement. He also looks at positive confession, discernment and prosperity. Where necessary he expresses his reservations clearly.<\/p>\n
One can see that King knows the field and has read exhaustively in the Word of Faith movement. Unlike many authors, King does not just leave us with an analysis of what is wrong. He concludes with twenty-two statements of what a balanced and healthy faith should look like and a final recommendation, both to contemporary faith leaders and to the critics of contemporary faith teachings. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in the role of bold faith and in finding out how the Word of Faith movement is maturing in its thinking. It is the conviction of this reviewer that a balanced Faith movement represents the growing edge of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements across the globe.<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Henry I. Lederle<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul King, Only Believe: Examining the Origin and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies (Word & Spirit Press, 2009), 408 pages, ISBN 9780981952604. Paul King is a scholar at Oral Roberts University and an ordained minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. In this volume of some 400 pages, beautifully published…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2925,"featured_media":20846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5702,1],"tags":[3089,2793],"ppma_author":[4568],"class_list":["post-20845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history-2","category-fall-2009","category-pneuma-review","tag-king","tag-paul","author-henryilederle"],"authors":[{"term_id":4568,"user_id":2925,"is_guest":0,"slug":"henryilederle","display_name":"Henry Lederle","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/HankLederle-20100915-150x150.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/HankLederle-20100915-150x150.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20845"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/km7.a6a.mytemp.website\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=20845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}