On one occasion, Jesus is said to have revealed Himself to Hagin in order to give him a message about the authority of the believer. As the message was being given, a demon jumped on to the scene and started to make such a noisy racket that it was no longer possible for Hagin to hear what Jesus was saying. Jesus did not do anything at all about it, but continued to speak as though nothing was happening. Hagin was expecting an intervention from the Lord, but when this was not forthcoming, Hagin himself commanded the demon to be quiet.
When the demon was silenced, Hagin could hear Jesus again, and he was wondering why Jesus had not done anything about the situation. Then Jesus looked at him and said: “If you hadn’t done something about that, I couldn’t have.” 61 According to Hagin, Jesus continued by saying: “Not a single time in the New Testament is the Church ever told to pray that God the Father or Jesus would do anything against the devil. In fact, to do so is to waste your time. The believer is told to do something about the devil.” 62
To support his claims, Hagin’s Jesus quotes Matthew 28:18 where it says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. In Hagin’s account, Jesus explains: “But I immediately delegated my authority on earth to the Church, and I can work only through the Church, for I am the Head of the Church.” 63
In other words, what Hagin’s Jesus is saying is that He has already given the believer power over the devil. Therefore, it is the believer’s responsibility to use this power. If the Christian does not succeed by himself in wielding his power over the devil, then there is no further help to be had from Jesus — this is the assertion of the Jesus who appears to Hagin.
There is usually a certain amount of truth in false revelations, and this applies, also, to some of the revelations of Hagin. The Bible does say that believers have been given authority to cast out devils and to cure sicknesses. This fact may have been neglected by some Christians. However, the Biblical concept is that believers are sometimes allowed to use the authority which really belongs to Jesus Christ, subject to the will of God. Believers are always dependent on His authority, and He has never rendered Himself powerless. 64 There is not the slightest hint of any such thought in Matthew 28:18.
Jesus says in Revelation 2:26-28, that the Christian who overcomes and perseveres to the end in keeping the Father’s commandments will receive the same authority that Jesus has received from the Father. If the victorious Christian is to receive this authority at the end, this must mean that he has not got it now. If we already have the full degree of authority now, then the Lord’s words here would be meaningless.
The Apostle Paul writes in II Corinthians 12:8, that he asked the Lord three times that the messenger of Satan would depart from him. This is precisely what Hagin’s Jesus says we should not do. But the Lord did not say to Paul that it was a waste of time to pray to Him about it — though some Faith preachers interpret it this way. They actually interpret the Lord’s answer: “My grace is sufficient for you,” as though it meant that Paul had the authority himself to command the devil to depart from him. They say that Paul was going about it the wrong way by praying three times to God for help, and that he should have taken on the battle by himself, seeing he had been given the delegated authority over the demons. But this is an unreasonable interpretation as the context will show.
In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray, “deliver us from evil,” Matthew 6:13. The Bible’s Jesus, as opposed to Hagin’s ‘Jesus’, teaches us to pray to the Father to deliver us from evil.
Footnotes
61. Kenneth E. Hagin, The Believer’s Authority, p 30.
62. Kenneth E. Hagin, The Believer’s Authority, p 31. Italics in original.
63. Kenneth E. Hagin, The Believer’s Authority, p 32. Italics in original.
64. John 17:2, I Corinthians 10:26.
