TV Frauds Gloria & Kenneth Copeland "Control" the Weather & Tornados

Much, though not all, of the distinctive theology of the Word-Faith movement is derived from the writings of E. W. Kenyon (1867-1948). Kenyon's mentor was A. J. Gordon, a Boston- based Baptist pastor and "faith-cure" teacher through whom Kenyon became ordained in the early 1890s. Although Kenyon was also exposed to New Thought and Christian Science in Boston, the extent of the influence of these mind sciences (which are clearly heretical) is disputed even among Kenyon's critics. Kenyon, like modern Word-Faith teachers, regarded the mind sciences as demonic counterfeits of authentic supernatural Christianity. Over the years Kenyon became a popular evangelist, preaching, for example, in the churches of A. B. Simpson (a leading and radical advocate of the "faith-cure" message and the founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance) and Aimee Semple McPherson (founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a major Pentecostal denomination). Kenyon's lasting legacy has been felt largely through his influence on popular teachers of the "Latter-Rain" movement, a "healing" revival of the late 1940s and 1950s spearheaded by the heretical and highly controversial William Branham. One of the evangelists on the fringe of that movement was Kenneth E. Hagin (1917-2003). Hagin claimed to have been healed of heart trouble as a teenager, though reportedly he had recurring heart problems at various times throughout his life. For most of the 1940s he had served as pastor for several Assemblies of God churches, but in 1949 he launched his own itinerant evangelistic healing ministry. By 1950 Hagin had started reading Kenyon's books and adopting some of Kenyon's teachings.