A Teacher

Kenneth E. Hagin

1917-2003 Word of Faith & Prosperity Gospel Word of Faith movement (founder); Rhema Bible training

Faith confession as a law: believe you receive, then speak it

The transmission

Kenneth Erwin Hagin was born on August 20, 1917, in McKinney, Texas. He was born with a serious heart condition and a blood disorder, and as a teenager became bedridden and paralyzed. He converted to Christianity in 1933, and reported that on August 8, 1934, he rose from his deathbed after meditating on Mark 11:23–24 — the conviction that “faith in God’s Word” had healed him.

This experience became the seed of his life’s teaching. He pastored several Texas churches and worked as an itinerant evangelist before formalizing his ministry. Hagin founded the movement now called Word of Faith proper, beginning his independent ministry in the 1960s and establishing Rhema Bible Training Center (now College) in Broken Arrow, near Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1974.

He authored well over a hundred books and booklets, distributed in tens of millions of copies, and trained thousands of graduates who spread the teaching internationally. He died on September 19, 2003. It is well documented — notably in D.

R. McConnell’s A Different Gospel — that Hagin drew heavily, at times reproducing text nearly verbatim, from the earlier writings of E. W.

Kenyon. The Atlas treats this provenance as established while holding the teaching itself in good faith.

What they gave

Founding the movement: Turned Kenyon’s positive-confession teaching into an organized, reproducible movement with a training institution (Rhema) and a vast publishing engine (The Inner Creates the Outer).

“Believe you receive”: Codified Mark 11:24 as a working law — conviction precedes evidence, and the believer claims the answer as already given (The Inner Creates the Outer).
Faith as a force, the word as its switch: Taught that faith is a tangible spiritual force released by the spoken confession (The Inner Creates the Outer, The Inner Creates the Outer).
Mass transmission: Through books, tapes, and graduates, carried the teaching to the charismatic world worldwide, making it the largest real-world mind-power movement by headcount.

A note on the evidence. Two honest flags. (1) Provenance: Hagin’s documented, often verbatim reliance on Kenyon means the movement’s mechanism is inherited New Thought metaphysics, not a fresh scriptural derivation. (2) Fault vs mechanism: belief-as-cause may carry genuine psychological power, but the implied verdict that the unhealed or unprosperous lacked faith is rejected — suffering is not the sufferer’s fault.

In their words

As you study God’s Word and learn what His Word says you are, who you are, and what you have in Christ Jesus, even though it may not seem real to you, start confessing, “Yes, that’s mine, according to God’s Word.” You will then find that faith’s confession creates reality.

“Confession of God’s Word Builds Faith” (Kenneth E. Hagin Legacy Bible faith lesson)

You can have whatever you say. What you say is your faith speaking.

You Can Have What You Say! (1979)

What we believe is a result of our thinking. If we think wrong, we will believe wrong.