By Rev. Mel C. Montgomery 

      You've heard it, or read it.  I have too.  "False prophet Kenneth Hagin," "heretic Kenneth Copeland," or "blab it and grab it," and "hyper-Charismatic."  Criticism that is mean-spirited, unchristian, and saturated with distortions of the Word of Faith teaching.

     We've learned to turn a deaf ear to it.

     But we've gone too far.  While turning off those who misjudge us, and viciously persecute us, we have gotten to the point where we don't even judge anything about our movement at all. We go along with anything that comes along in our movement.

     That's a mistake.

      It is time that we who have been blessed by the Word of Faith movement--as have millions--begin to take an honest look at what a genuine move of God has evolved into.

     In many cases:

     It isn't pretty.

     It is by no means godly.

     My life was changed forever when Kenneth Copeland held a 3-day meeting in my hometown of Wichita Kansas in 1981. I found out in those meetings that God is a good God. He wants me to prosper and be in health. He wants me to succeed in life and be happy, and that when this life is over, He wants me to come to be with Him forever.

     I learned also though that He is a God that responds less to emotion, and feelings, and more to faith in His Word. He wants me to rise up like a spiritual adult, take hold of His promises, and believe Him for the answer to my prayers. Brother Copeland's teachings opened my eyes and I have never closed them again.

     I've fought alot of battles since then.

     Some I've won. Some I've lost, in spite of releasing my faith.

     Some sicknesses I've been miraculously healed of, some I've recovered from with the doctor's help, and some I'm still challenged with today. But win or lose, sick or healed, prosperous or broke, I've counted it all joy and moved on.

      If I didn't receive an answer to my prayer, I didn't blame God, or Kenneth Copeland, or other people. I just stayed in there with God, and usually over the course of time God was able to get across to me why I didn't receive.

    Like a child, I have skinned my knees--so to speak--and have dusted myself off, bound up the wound, and gotten back into the thick of things.

     So I have no axe to grind. I carry no grudge against God or anyone else.

     But I've seen the years go by and I've become concerned over elements, patterns of thinking, and matters in our movement.

    WE ARE RIGHT in many of our teachings.

     BUT WE ARE WRONG in some ways we have applied them, and in the extremes to which we have taken things.  

     Some of our leaders are saying that we are on the verge of the greatest GLORY we have ever seen.  They boldly proclaim that things in our movement are better than they have ever been, and all is well and getting even better.

    I wonder.

     Brother Hagin prophesied that 2006 would be a year of Glory. 

     And I know in my life, 2006 brought several unexpected financial blessings bordering on absolute miracles, and I began experiencing some stronger manifestations of the Holy Spirit than I've seen in several years.

     Greater things are in motion.

     But is it enough to sit back passively and say, "God bless this mess?"

     Do we just hope and pray that so much Glory will fall on us that it will just overwhelm and straighten out whatever is wrong in our movement?  Is such passivity actually Scriptural?

     While it is true that Jesus Christ needs no help from us in correcting and disciplining his Church, never-the-less, he also commanded:

     "Let all things be done decently and in order"--I Cor. 14:40.

     Decency and order is a command, not a suggestion.

    We ministers, whom Christ has entrusted with ministering to His sheep, have an obligation to judge ourselves and correct ourselves lest we be judged.  (I Cor. 11:31).

     I see few, if any in our circles, judging much of anything.

     Let me make this comparison: I was born-again in 1980 through watching the old PTL Club. Jim and Tammy were at their ministry heighth. I was a partner with them, and that I do not regret even to this day. But as I received brochure after brochure from them, announcing this new plan, starting that new building, erecting this new expansion, I became concerned.

     Then they sent me a brochure about their plans to build a new 10,000-seat "Chrystal Palace" Cathedral, for which they were soliciting money.  Then I became alarmed.

     I heard a lot of talk about "Victory" and "Glory" then too.  Jim and Tammy and the majority of Charismatics thought everything was fine and getting even better by the minute. 

     But I thought, "Boy, this can't keep going on much longer! It's like a train rushing madly down a hill approaching a curve, with Jim stoking the fire hotter by the second. It is going to crash and blow up. It can't help but blow up."

     And eventually it did.

     In a recent interview, Jim said that at the end of PTL it was growing at a rate of 7000% per year.

     Let that figure sink into your thinking for a moment.

     7000%!

    That tells us that in it's last year of operation, PTL was 70-times larger in December than it had been in January.

     No corporation, institution, or ministry can hold up under such explosive uncontrolled growth.

     In the physical body do you know what doctors call the uncontrolled explosive growth of a cell?

     They call it cancer.

     Uncontrolled explosive growth in a cell is disastrous.

     And it is catastrophic in ministry also.

     PTL literally grew itself to death.

     Are we growing ourselves to death?

     They then, like we now, were claiming victory and expecting Glory.  Yet they addressed absolutely none of the excesses that were so flagrantly displayed in their ministry.  

     I'm as concerned for the Word of Faith movement today as I was for PTL shortly before its end.

     I'm somewhere between concerned and alarmed.  

     Yes, our movement is experiencing some growth.  But it is uncontrolled growth.  There is no accountability.  There are no checks and balances.  Teachings have become increasingly bizarre. 

     It has gotten so out of whack, that Charisma magazine's editor J.Lee Grady has begun sending out some alarming e-mail updates describing excesses that have become common in our circles: moral excesses, financial excesses, and doctrinal excesses.  If not addressed these will destroy us.  Glory or no Glory.  

     Can you go down the tubes, while shouting victory and expecting Glory?  We need look no further than King Solomon of old.

     The Glory of God filled Solomon's Temple.  Solomon was the wisest man of his time.  But Solomon addressed none of the misconduct and sin in his own life.  All that glory and all that isdom did not keep him from falling from Grace at the end.

     Will all the wisdom we supposedly have, and the Glory that we believe is manifesting, keep us from falling from Grace as we too refuse to deal with any of the excesses of our movement? 

    Can we get that to work for us, when it wouldn't work for Solomon?

     Respectfully, too many who are so bold to preach about giving, faith, and the anointing, are strangely silent--or nearly silent--about accountability, integrity, self-denial, and morality. 

Copyright 2006 Mel C. Montgomery.  All rights reserved.  Material may be copied and shared with others if done so in entirety, without charge, and attribution is given.