UNQUOTABLE QUOTES - Richard Roberts - "The Miracle Power of Seed"

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un-QUOTABLE QUOTES

RICHARD ROBERTS

DAILY GUIDE TO MIRACLES from Oral Roberts Ministries
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
www.orm.cc

The Miracle Power of Seed
Richard Roberts
Oral Roberts Ministries
www.orm.cc

"Second Kings 4 tells the story of a remarkable miracle. The prophet Elisha was running a Bible school with a hundred students when a famine struck the land, and they needed food. One day God sent a man to Elisha to plant a seed of a sack of grain and 20 loaves of barley bread. Elisha told his servants to give the food to the prophets to eat.

'What?' his servant exclaimed. 'Feed one hundred people with only this?'...Elisha repeated, 'Give it to the group of prophets so they can eat, for the Lord says there will be plenty for all. There will even be some left over!' And sure enough, there was plenty for all and some left over, just as the Lord had promised (vv. 43,44 nit).

I've often wondered how God did that. I don't know how He could take a sack of corn and 20 barley loaves and feed a hundred men with food left over any more that I can understand how Jesus fed 5,000 men, not counting the women and children, with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. And there were 12 baskets of leftovers! (See Matthew 14:13-21). But it illustrates the mighty miracle power of God. He can take a small seed of faith and provide a miracle in circumstances when there seems to be no way.

There is miracle power in each little seed you sow. And when you sow it, God grows it. The Word teaches that when you give-plant a seed unto God-He uses it not only for His glory, but He gives it back in the form of your need...multiplied. What need are you facing today? Plant a seed against that need and let God begin His work on your behalf!"

ON DOCTRINE NOTE:
Richard Roberts uses the incident in 2 Kings 4 in the attempt to support the "Seed Faith" (Giving and Receiving) doctrine originated by his father, Oral Roberts, but in the process he must twist the Scripture in order to make it conform to his claims, and then he uses the miracle described there as a smoke screen to hide the obvious difficulty that he creates, in order to make the reader believe that what he is claiming is actually found in the narrative.

The first difficulty is that Richard Roberts says, "One day God sent a man to Elisha . . ," but nowhere in the narrative does the Scripture state that God sent the man to Elisha or that God spoke to the man in any way. Richard Roberts would have the reader believe that God personally spoke to the man, but the Scripture makes no such statement. The only person in the narrative to whom God spoke was the prophet Elisha, ". . . for thus says the Lord, 'They shall eat and have some left over,'" v. 43.

Secondly, Richard Roberts cleverly and quickly inserts his "Seed Faith" teaching into his comment, giving the impression that the Scripture supports his theology, "One day God sent a man to Elisha to plant a seed of a sack of grain and 20 loaves of barley bread," but, like his claim about God sending the man, the Scripture makes no such statement about the the gift of food being a "seed" that the man planted. The Scripture does not even give an explanation as to the motive behind the man's gift other than it was a humanitarian gesture designed to support the men of God who were in need.

Thirdly, Richard Roberts twists the nature of the gift, claiming that it was an act of faith in order to effect a miracle, "He can take a small seed of faith and provide a miracle in circumstances when there seems to be no way." But there is no statement in the narrative that indicates that the man gave the gift under those circumstances. He made no mention of a miracle or the possibility that the gift could or would be multiplied many times over.

Fourthly, Richard Roberts indicates that the man gave the food as a seed gift, to be planted against a need. However, there is a problem with that claim, because in Richard Roberts' "Seed Faith" theology, giving is a hedge against the need of the giver, but in this case the man had a harvest, and he was not giving to satisfy his need but to satisfy the need of the prophets who were hungry. It was to be his gift that was the satisfaction and not some other miraculous event that would be the result of the gift. Nowhere in the narrative is there even a hint that the man expected his gift to result in a miracle multiplication of quantity that would meet the needs of the prophets.

Richard Roberts is attempting to broaden the circumstances in which money can be given as a "Seed Faith" offering, to include not only money given on behalf of the needs of the giver, but also on behalf of the needs of persons other than the giver. Not only does that redefine the nature of the "Seed Faith" doctrine, it also provides a broader selection of people who will give money to his ministry and creates a means by which he can potentially receive more money into his ministry than previously. The "Seed Faith" doctrine was created by Oral Roberts as a means of financing his ministry and is also the means by which virtually every major Word of Faith ministry secures its funding.

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