Conclusion

The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple. PSALM 119:130

We have covered a good deal of ground in twelve short chapters, from the foundations of the faith to the return of Christ, and some of it has been contested ground. It would be easy to close this book with the impression that Derek Prince taught a great many separate things. In truth he taught one thing from many angles for sixty years. The one thing is this: God has spoken, His Word can be trusted, and the believer who takes it seriously and acts on it will find it true.

One thread, many chapters

Look back and the thread is plain. The six foundations are what the Word calls elementary. The divine exchange is what the Word says happened at the cross. Faith comes by hearing the Word. The baptism in the Spirit is the promise of the Father recorded in the Word. Prayer and fasting are God’s people praying His Word back to Him. Blessing and curse, warfare and deliverance, Israel and the last days — all of these were, for Prince, attempts to take seriously parts of the Word the church had preferred to ignore. Even his teaching on rejection and fatherhood was an application of what Scripture says about the Father’s heart.

That is his great gift to the church: a stubborn, logical, lifelong insistence that the Bible means what it says and that ordinary Christians can read it for themselves.

The test he gave us

It is also the test by which he must be weighed, and this book has tried to weigh him by it. Where Prince built plainly on Scripture — on the authority of the Word, the foundations of the faith, the sufficiency of the cross, the call to pray and fast, the promise of the Spirit, the Father’s welcome to the rejected, the blessed hope — he is a sure and faithful guide. Where he pressed particular conclusions further than Scripture clearly goes — on curses passing down family lines, on the demonisation of believers, on the reading of current events as fulfilled prophecy — the reader should go more slowly, test more carefully, and hold his own conclusions with more humility. Prince asked for no less.

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. ACTS 17:11

A last word about the man

No part of Prince’s story teaches more than the one he would most have liked to forget. He helped to lead a movement that did real harm, and when he saw it he left, first of the five, and said publicly that it had been wrong. He explained the error from Scripture: what had begun in the Spirit had been continued in the flesh.

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? GALATIANS 3:3

That is a hard thing for any leader to do, and a rare one. It does not undo the harm. But it shows what his doctrine of the Word looked like in practice. He had taught for years that Scripture stands above every teacher. When it stood above him, he submitted. There may be no better example in his life for the reader to take away.

It also carries a warning. If a teacher as able and as sincere as Derek Prince could go so badly wrong for a time, so can any of us. Gifts, learning and good intentions are no protection. Only a humble submission to the Word, and to one another in the fear of God, will keep us.

What to do with it

So the plainest counsel this book can give is his own. Open the Bible. Read it through. Read it with a pen and a notebook, looking for what it says rather than what you expect it to say. Pray what you read. Act on what you understand. And check everything — including this book, and including him.

Go back to the chapter that most unsettled you. Not the one you found most interesting, but the one that touched something you would rather not look at. Take its application points, and do them, one at a time, over the coming months. Then take the next.

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. COLOSSIANS 2:6–7

A philosopher once sat in a barrack room with a book he had meant to master, and found that it had mastered him. The same book is open before you now. It has not lost its power.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Of all the chapters in this book, which one unsettled you most? Go back to it this week and do one of its application points.

2. Write down in a sentence or two what you now believe about the authority of the Bible in your life, and what you intend to do about it.

3. Choose one of the cautions raised in this book and study the relevant passages for yourself, until you have a settled and humble view.

4. Ask whether there is anything you have taught, led or encouraged that you now believe was wrong. Consider, before God, what repentance would look like.

5. Commit to a plan of reading the whole Bible, and ask someone to hold you to it.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You have spoken, and Your Word gives light. Thank You for every teacher who has pointed me to it, and above all for the One of whom it speaks.

Keep me from building on any man, however gifted. Let me build on Christ alone, and test every teaching by Your Word.

Where I have begun in the Spirit and gone on in the flesh, show me, and give me the humility to turn back.

Let Your Word dwell in me richly, and let me walk in it until the day I see You face to face. Amen.