In a new video from WP Films, Darren Davis, pastor of Harbour Church in South Florida, asks a group of Christian evangelists and leaders about their methodology regarding the gospel and miracles. Daniel Kolenda, president and CEO of Christ for All Nations, begins the discussion by saying, “I believe that the preaching of the gospel clearly coupled with signs and wonders works every time. I don’t think it gets better than that.”
Kolenda then brings up a Pentecostal teaching about healing he’d been taught as a young man, and how he realized that teaching was wrong.
“I was taught years ago in the Pentecostal church,” Kolenda says. “People said to me, if you pray for the sick and they don’t get healed, don’t blame the sick person. It’s not their fault. Don’t blame God. It’s not His fault. Blame yourself. Well, you know what happens when you adopt that philosophy? You don’t pray for the sick. Because you don’t want it to be your fault. So what I learned was if I have to take the blame when somebody doesn’t get healed, then I should be able to take the credit when they do get healed. I began to realize that both the credit and the blame were not mine. My job was just to obey and be faithful, and I leave the results with God.”
Bolz later echoes Kolenda’s thoughts, and notes that when gifts get credited to the individual, the individual can get distracted from what’s truly important.
“In the charismatic and Pentecostal streams that are more signs and wonders oriented—and there’s lots of diversity there—I feel like there’s a performance issue,” Bolz says. “… I’ve watched so many people start to go past the undiluted gospel because their gifting of what they could control ran out, and they’re still trying to go out and preach. They’re still trying to go out and get invitations and go places. … I’ve watched friends start to teach on the Illuminati and Nephilim and ‘We’re going to teach on seven levels of healings.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m so exhausted. None of that actually shows me who Jesus is.'”
Bolz later adds, “The crowds are attracted to the love of God and who He is. And when your crowd decreases, usually it’s because you’re not focused on the major. You’re focused on something minor. And as soon as that’s not exciting anymore, you lose your audience and then you have to perform and find something else. I’ve watched guys who are healing evangelists who started teaching these weird doctrines because they ran out of healing power. So they had to have secrets. They had to have something that could tickle the ears.”
Watch the video to hear their full discussion.
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