Can Faith Move Mountains?

Can our faith move mountains? 

People sometimes attack, mock, ridicule; choose your verb, us "Word of Faith"  preachers for saying that words can effect our lives. The problem, of course, is that we didn’t come to the Bible with this idea and try to squeeze this meaning out of some obscure scripture, we found it fairly plainly stated in the Bible. Or as Dad Hagin used to say, "Some people seem to think that I wrote this scripture."

But it was Jesus who said:

Mark 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That
whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou
cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe
that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have
whatsoever he saith.

It’s kind of instructive of doubt with respect to this passage that it starts with, "verily" or as the NIV puts it "I tell you the truth."
Jesus starts by telling us that what he’s about to say is the truth. I
guess he knew that people would have a hard time believing it.

As I pointed out previously, here,
this principle is repeated two other times in different contexts in the
Gospels. It’s also the principle behind Jesus instructions to his
disciples on how to do his works.

John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. 13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

Lots of people confuse this for a prayer scripture. But Jesus doesn’t say anything here about asking the father as he does in John 16:23.
The point here isn’t petitioning God, it’s doing the works of Jesus.
He’s teaching the disciples how to do his works. Did you ever notice
that when Jesus was healing the sick or working miracles he rarely
asked God to do something? He just commanded the demon to leave, or the
storm to stop, or only said the word and the servant was healed. That’s
what he’s teaching the disciples to do here. In fact, the word
translated "ask" in these verses can also be translated "demand". (See the large Kittels which has demand as the first definition of this word: " 1. aijtevw (aijtevomai)
as ‘ to demand.’ " Here’s the link, scroll down a bit for the begining of a very long entry and click to the next page where the definitions actually start.)

He’s not telling us to demand of God but to demand of the sickness
or demon or mountain. I believe he’s teaching the same thing here that
he taught his disciples in Mark 11:23 and in John 15:7-8.

The power of words is also the basis for the benedictions that many churches give at the end of the service. ( Okay, they don’t really mean it but that says more about them than about the power of our words.) The word benediction literally means, good speaking. Paul also uses this form of benediction or blessing in every one of his epistles.

I could give more proofs for the scriptural basis for the power of
words, and I probably will later, but these should suffice to establish
my point.

(Which is? Hold on, I’m gettin there!)

Which is that, The Bible teaches that our words have power to move
mountains. So then why all the mockery when we "Word of Faith" guys
teach this?

The real objection to this scripture has nothing to do with the
words of Jesus. It has nothing to do with this principle of the power
of our words not being in the Bible, because it obviously is.  Nor does
it have anything to do with the context, cultural or otherwise of the
Bible, because the people of Jesus day, like most people everywhen and
everywhere, believed that words were powerful things.

The real objection is its unseemliness.

These kinds of Scriptures are just embarrassing to us sophisticated,
well educated 21st Century Christians. These are just the kinds of
scriptures which make us the objects of ridicule in the eyes of the
world. And there’s nothing worse for the cowardly, modern, born again,
ixthus wearing, mega church attending, CCM listening, Christian than
being an object of ridicule. That’s why we don’t believe in this
supernatural, superstitious, "magic" kind of stuff. We are the children
of the enlightenment. We are materialists to the core. Or at least
that’s what we would like people to think.

But we can’t say that out loud, because in spite of our bias against
the supernatural we realize that without the supernatural there is no
Christianity. Without the supernatural there is no virgin birth, no
miracles, no resurrection from the dead, and alas, no coming again.
That’s the real problem evangelicals are ashamed to name.

To paraphrase what the snake handling preacher said in my favorite episode of X-Files, "Signs and Wonders",
"You have to choose whose side you’re on, boy!" You’re either on the
side of the enlightenment and rationalism and materialism or you’re on
the side of the obscure rabbi from the insignificant town on the edges
of the Roman empire, who was born of a virgin, healed the sick with his
command, cast out demons, walked on water, multiplied loaves and
fishes, raised the dead and said that if you believed, your words could
move mountains.

Whose side are you on?