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Shall We Write Off Kenneth E Hagin? Dave Hunt? How About E W Kenyon?, Part 12
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Part 12 begins with section 16 of my paper, "Shall We Write Off Kenneth E. Hagin? Dave Hunt? How About E. W. Kenyon?"
16. "Christianity in Crisis" by Hank Hanegraaff (Harvest House Publishers, 1993). (I commented briefly on this book under section 15.) I had read this book back about 1995, but I reread much of it to see what I need to include in this paper. I'm going to limit my comments to things that Hanegraaff said regarding Kenneth Hagin. He didn't say all that much about Hagin, and he said less about E. W. Kenyon.
On pages 74-77 Hanegraaff deals with Hagin's "How to Write your Own Ticket with God" in his chapter "The Formula of Faith." Hanegraaff is using the 1979 booklet "How to Write Your Own Ticket with God." I don't have that booklet, but I have that article in Hagin's 1984 "Bible Faith Study Course," and I have the tape series by that name. (I briefly dealt with this article earlier in section 3 of this paper, when discussing several articles from Hagin's "Bible Faith Study Course.")
I believe Hanegraaff's critique of this article leaves several serious wrong impressions. He makes it clear that he doesn't think it is possible for us to consider this to be a genuine revelation from the Lord Jesus to Hagin. He says, "Any Christian with an open mind who reads Hagin's booklet must conclude that Jesus Christ of Nazareth did not appear to Kenneth Hagin. Nor did He say the things Hagin claims He did. Either Hagin is dreadfully deluded or else he had a conversation with another Jesus who presented him with another gospel (2 Corinthians 11:3, 4)." That's a serious charge, and wrong, I believe.
If I didn't know any more about what happened that Friday evening in December, 1953 than what Hanegraaff says here, and if I didn't have any respect for Hagin and his ministry (along with Hanegraaff), it would be rather easy to reject what Hagin said in this article. Hanegraaff says "Hagin claims that Jesus Christ Himself appeared to him and personally gave him THE FORMULA FOR FAITH [my emphasis]." It is important to understand that Jesus was actually just giving Hagin the four points of a sermon outline for a sermon that would complement two other sermons that Hagin preached on a regular basis that deal with the woman with the issue of blood of Mark 5:25-34. That makes quite a difference! He had also received the sermon outlines for the two other sermons by revelation.
I don't especially like the title, "How to Write your Own Ticket with God." Hagin picked that title; it wasn't given to him. I'll give a few more details about the context in which Hagin received this sermon outline. He was holding a meeting in an Assembly of God church in Phoenix, Arizona. After a Friday evening service, in the home in which he was staying (the home of a couple who were members of that church), Hagin, the couple, and a few others were gathered for fellowship and refreshments.
Hagin had a strong urge to pray, and to pray then. The others joined him. He was caught up in the Spirit for about forty-five minutes, interceding for someone who was lost. (Thanks be to God for His concern for lost souls! We were all there! And thanks be to God for such intercessory prayer! I know one man who is very thankful for that particular intercessory prayer.) When the burden of prayer lifted, he had a vision of the coming Sunday evening service. He saw the people; he saw himself preach; he saw himself giving the altar call and saw himself speaking to a man on the second row of seats from the front. He told the man he didn't believe in hell, but he already had one foot in hell and the other foot was slipping in. He saw the man come forward, kneel at the altar, and be saved. It came to pass just that way on Sunday evening. Later the seventy-two year old man informed them that he had been taught that there is no hell and that he had serious heart problems. Hagin had told the people that Friday evening what he had seen, and they were all excited to see the man seated where Hagin had seen him sitting, dressed as he had seen him dressed, etc.
Hanegraaff didn't mention any of that. But he did mention that Hagin said that Jesus appeared to him. He appeared to him right after that time of effective intercessory prayer. Jesus spoke to Hagin about his ministry and his finances; He also spoke to him about our country, including the fact that He had been involved in Eisenhower's becoming president (he was elected president in 1952). When Jesus had finished speaking with him and started to leave, Hagin made a request of Him. He told Jesus that he believed that there was a third sermon to complement the two sermons he was preaching about the woman with the issue of blood, and he asked that if he was right that Jesus would give him the outline. Jesus said he was right and gave the four points of the outline with some explanation. The four steps that Jesus gave Hagin must be kept in the context that Hagin explains in this article. Hagin didn't claim that Jesus gave him THE FORMULA FOR FAITH.
I want to comment on what Hanegraaff says on page 335. He is quoting from Hagin's "I Believe in Visions" (Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1981), page 51. I have the 1972 edition of the book by Fleming H. Revell, page 50. He says, "Hagin claims that Jesus appeared to him in 1950 and gave him a special anointing to minister to the sick." I believe it is true; Hanegraaff clearly doesn't. During this encounter Hagin was able to see Jesus' hands. Hagin says, "I saw in the palms of his hands the wounds of the crucifixion - three-cornered, jagged holes. Each hole was large enough so that I could put my finger in it. I could see light on the other side of the hole." I know that the Romans sometimes used four-sided nails (with four corners); I don't know about three-sided.
Hanegraaff says "...Jesus could never have shown Hagin the alleged holes in His palms. As any student of Scripture and history knows, the nails were driven through Christ's wrists as opposed to His palms." I have always wondered about this. I wouldn't expect Hagin to miss it on a detail like this, but it's certainly possible. In his endnote 33 Hanegraaff shows that the Greek noun ("cheir") that is translated "hand" can include the arm, and therefore can include the wrist.
I'll quote part of Hanegraaff's endnote 34. "Dr. Pierre Barbet was the chief surgeon at St. Joseph's Hospital in Paris. He performed experiments on cadavers in the 1930s which showed that crucifixion by nails though the palms would not have supported the weight of the body on the cross. The nails would have ripped through the flesh. See Pierre Barbet, "A Doctor at Calvary," Eng. transl. (P. J. Kennedy and Doubleday, 1953 [French orig. 1950]) cited in Ian Wilson, "The Mysterious Shroud" (Doubleday, 1986), 17, 20; and Frank C. Tribbe, "Portrait of Jesus?" (Stein & Day, 1983), 80, 99-104.
Interestingly, an actual crucifixion victim of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70, named Yohanon ben ha-Galgol, was excavated by Israel archeologists in a New Testament-era cemetery just outside Jerusalem in 1968. Johanan was crucified with a nail through the radius and ulna bones of the forearm, as evidenced by grinding found on the inside of the radius bone at the wrist end (Wilson, 32, 33; and Tribbe, 86-87).
Barbet's experiments with cadavers have recently been repeated and confirmed by Paris orthopedic surgeon Dr. Pierre Merat ('Critical Study: Anatomy and Physiology of the Shroud,' 'The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XXth Century,' no. 218 [April 1989], 3-4)."
I have always believed that the Shroud of Turin could be the actual burial cloth of the Lord Jesus Christ. One strong argument against the shroud has been the carbon-14 dating in 1988, where three labs all dated the shroud between 1260 and 1390, far too late for the shroud to be genuine if the dates are accurate. Everyone agrees that if the samples are contaminated in any way it can affect the dating of the samples. [[I had a footnote: Frederick T. Zugibe's book, "The Crucifixion of Jesus" (M. Evans and Company, 2005), is packed with information about the Shroud of Turin. I'll say more about Dr. Zugibe as we continue. In chapter 19 of the book, Zugibe dealt with the strong possibility that the small sample of cloth that was taken toward the edge of the shroud and divided into three parts for the carbon-14 dating of 1988 was not representative of the original cloth of the shroud, because of later repairs to the shroud, and that this could be sufficient to explain the late dates (AD1260-1390) that were obtained by the carbon-14 testing. It is quite possible that carbon-14 tests using samples of the original cloth will verify the cloth to be about two-thousand years old.]] There are many articles on the internet, starting in March 2013, discussing new scientific evidence, using a different method of dating that dates the shroud in the days of Christ plus or minus a few hundred years.
I'm quoting from the internet article "Science Shines New Light on Shroud of Turin's Age" by Shafer Parker in the "National Catholic Register
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