Joseph Prince was born in May of 1963 to an Indian Sikh priest and a Chinese mother. During his earlier childhood, he lived in Malaysia. In 1983, Prince helped found New Creation Church. He was born Xenonamandar Jegahusiee Singh, but in 1990 he changed his name to Joseph Prince and was appointed senior pastor. He is married to Wendy Prince and has two children with her. In 2008, people started questioning whether or not he should be living as lavishly as he is.

In his book, Destined to Reign, Prince writes,

I distinctly heard the voice of the Lord on the inside.  It wasn’t a witness of the Spirit.  It was a voice, and I heard God say this clearly to me:  ‘Son, you are not preaching grace.’  I said, ‘What do you mean, Lord?…’Every time you preach grace, you preach it with a mixture of law.  You attempt to balance grace with the law like many other preachers, and the moment you balance grace, you neutralize it.  You cannot put new wine into old wineskins.  You cannot put grace and law together.  He went on to say, ‘Son, a lot of preachers are not preaching grace the way Apostle Paul preached grace.’

There are two different heresies contained within this quote. The first is Montanism. Montanism is the modern claim of prophecy. If modern prophecy is true, Scripture must be either incomplete or insufficient, so claiming to get direct, divine revelation is to say Scripture is to reject the complete and sufficient nature of Scripture. Furthermore, he is attributing his Antinomianism to God, lying about God, and making a blasphemous false prophecy.

The second heresy in this quote is the heresy of Antinomianism. Antinomianism is a heresy that denies the Law of God and its necessity today. Prince does this by saying God told him that the Law and Grace cannot be balanced (Which is untrue; the Law and Grace were perfectly balanced at the cross). He rips Mark 2:22 out of context to prove this point, further proving this prophecy is not from God.

Prince continues,

“Under the new covenant, we don’t have to keep on asking the Lord… for forgiveness because He has already forgiven us.” (Designed to Reign, Page 7)

Jesus taught otherwise. While Prince says to not ask for forgiveness, Jesus told us to pray, “… forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12, ESV) To claim that we should not ask for forgiveness because we have already been forgiven is as absurd as saying that we should not apologize to our spouses if we commit adultery if they have already forgiven us. It is ridiculous and absurd.

“The law is not for you the believer, who has been made righteous in Christ! The law is not applicable to someone who is under the new covenant of grace.” ​(​Unmerited Favor, ​Joseph Prince, Page 100, Emphasis in the original)

This is textbook Antinomianism, the exact same kind taught by Johannes Agricola in 1536 and Anne Hutchinson in 1636. He is even using the same language that Anne Hutchinson used (Namely, a misuse of the phrase “Covenant of Grace”) and he is teaching that the law no longer applies and that we are not obligated to keep God’s moral law. Paul addressed a form of this heresy in Romans 6:1-2 (ESV) by saying, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” The existence of sin in the Christian life presumes that there is still a moral law to be kept.

“Religion will tell you that ‘God’ wants you sick to teach you character and patience. Religion will tell you that ‘God’ wants you poor, so that you will learn humility. It sounds noble, doesn’t it? But these are LIES from the pit of hell!” (Unmerited Favor, Page 30)

This is the false gospel of the Prosperity Gospel. He is teaching that the idea that God wants you where He has you is a lie from the pit of Hell. Instead, Prince implicitly claims that God wants your physical health and financial prosperity.

“Sickness and diseases are not from God. On the cross, Jesus bore not just our sins, but also our sicknesses, diseases and infirmities, and ‘by His stripes we are healed!'”

In this case, Prince is directly stating that Jesus died for our physical health, which entirely neglects and distorts the real reason that Jesus died and preaches an entirely different gospel, which is no gospel at all, and he takes Isaiah 53:5 out of context to do so.

“I give thanks to God for my roots in the Word of Faith teachings. It is truly on the shoulders of great men of God like Brother Kenneth E. Hagin that we are able to see further into the Word of God today.” (Destined to Reign, Page 271)

Here he is admitting to being a Word of Faith heretic like Kenneth Hagin and thanking God that he is one. Word of Faith theology is a heretical system of belief that teaches that human words have a God-like power to create, and it is a lie similar to the one of the serpent in the garden, who said, “You will be like God.”

“God says to you, you have an edge, your edge is your mouth. You are righteous by faith, so speak. God’s favor is all over my business… whatever I do prospers.” (Christian Television Network, 11/18/2009)

I think Isaiah would disagree with this. He said in Isaiah 6:5 (ESV), “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”

While Joseph Prince uses John 15:7 as a proof text, we must look at the overall context to determine if that is accurate. The overall text doesn’t appear to be about “Speak[ing] God’s Word over your situation” or “Power [being] released.” Quite differently, the passage is about God being glorified through believers bearing fruit and obeying His commandments (Commandments that Joseph Prince rejects).

*Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Learning the Path, a now-defunct website.