fleecing of the flock

JOHN HAGEE AGREES WITH WORD FAITH PROSPERITY PREACHER JOHN AVANZINI

Below Jerry Jackson, from his piece John Hagee—Preacher of Truth or Apostle of Error?, gives us some more about details concerning Hagee’s preaching the Prosperity Gospel of the Word Faith movement:

John Hagee believes that it is God’s will for God’s people to be healthy and prosperous, as long as they obey God’s ordinances. On April 16, 1993 John Hagee appeared on the Praise-A-Thon broadcast of the Trinity Broadcasting Network. During this appearance he said that “poverty is caused by sin and disobeying the Word of God.” In another Praise-A-Thon broadcast on November 4, 1992 he said, “poverty is a curse.”

According to Hagee, Christians achieve prosperity through giving. In the same November 4, 1992 broadcast he said, “When you give to God, He controls your income. There is no such thing as a fixed income in the kingdom of God. Your income is controlled by your giving”…

In the same November 4, 1992 Praise-A-Thon broadcast, John Hagee said, “There is a relationship between your soul and physical and financial prosperity. ‘This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth.’ That’s the spoken Word of God. ‘And then shalt thou prosper and have good success.’ When? After you speak and act upon the Word of God. And you’ve been hearing that tonight out of the mouth of John Avanzini (well known Faith teacher).” (Online source)

So according to John Hagee, “There is a relationship between your soul and physical and financial prosperity… After you speak and act upon the Word of God. And you’ve been hearing that tonight out of the mouth of John Avanzini.” Well, following are some classic Word Faith prosperity teachings from “the mouth” of Dr. John Avanzini:

Jesus was handling big money because that treasurer He had was a thief. Now you can’t tell me that a ministry with a treasurer that’s a thief can operate on a few pennies. It took big money to operate that ministry because Judas was stealing out of that bag.”
(Praise the Lord, TBN 09/15/88)

Jesus had a nice house, a big house–big enough to have company stay the night with Him at the house. Let me show you His house. Go over to John the first chapter and I’ll show you His house. . . Now, child of God, that’s a house big enough to have company stay the night in. There’s His house…

John 19 tells us that Jesus wore designer clothes. Well, what else you gonna call it? Designer clothes–that’s blasphemy. No, that’s what we call them today. I mean, you didn’t get the stuff He wore off the rack. It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all deal. No, this was custom stuff. It was the kind of a garment that kings and rich merchants wore. Kings and rich merchants wore that garment…

You don’t think these Apostles didn’t walk around with money? I mean, they had money. I just thank God that I saw this and gave up the denominational line and got on God’s line before I starved me and all my family to death. Go to Acts 24. 1 mean. you don’t think there wasn’t money in this Paul’s life! … Paul had the kind of money that people, that government officials, would, would block up justice to try to get a bribe out of old Paul.”
(Believer’s Voice of Victory,TBN 01/20/91)

And in her excellent article John Avanzini and His Talking Stones Ingrid Schlueter recaps her experience at the 2008 Inspiring Excellence conference when she heard Azanzini speak:

Avanzini had a whole new doctrinal revelation to tell us about: the doctrine of reverse entrapment. If you’ve never heard of that before, that’s because God just showed it to him right there. Reverse entrapment is when you put a gift to Avanzini on a credit card and outsmart the lenders who are trying to get rich off your debt. When you put a gift on a credit card, I quote, “something happens in the spirit world.”

Here he tells everyone how to have a credit card breakthrough. Turns out Avanzini has a way for you to get rid of your mortgage debt. All you have to do is to give him a gift the size of your house payment and God will see that your mortgage gets paid off right away. If you don’t have a house, $500 will do nicely for future debt. Avanzini assured us that it worked for him. (Online source)

It should be noted that I have personally seen this message and after Avanzini teaches that foolishness, which he does attribute to God, he turns to his close friend pastor Robb Thompson–who puts on the Inspiring Excellence conference–and asks, “Pastor, am I out of bounds with that?” Thompson emphatically encourages Avanzini and he continues right on with his fleecing of the flock.