Peter Smythe

For the summer, I’ve decided to go off the beaten blog path and try to write a book on healing. Why do that? First off, the blog platform is nice, but I’ve noticed that much of my whiz-bang content isn’t being read because it’s all of two weeks old. The archive button is nice, but it doesn’t beat a table of contents and who wants to read more than 200 words on a blog post? Second, in looking across my shelves of books, I see that the authors that I use the most are all dead. Lake. Kenyon. Hagin. Price. Bosworth. All dead and gone, and no one’s taken their place. Third, while I love all those guys (and some girls), there are a few things, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh, the snake in the desert, and Peter’s stripes, that can be improved upon. So I’m in for a pretty busy summer.

Just for laughs, I took a stroll down Amazon’s statistics and found some interesting info on some of our favorite gospel writers. (Bear in mind that the higher the number, the lower the sales volume.)

Rick Renner

• Sparkling Gems from the Greek – 16,222
• The Dynamic Duo: The Holy Spirit and You – 133,581
• Paid in Full – 431,881
• Seducing Spirits and Doctrines of Demons – 815,668

Matthew Narramore

• Tithing: Low-Realm, Obsolete & Defunct – 146,571

E.W. Kenyon

• In His Presence – 41,103
• From the Cross to the Throne – 42,285
• Jesus the Healer – 131,869

F.F. Bosworth

• Christ the Healer – 22,084

T.L. Osborn

• Healing the Sick – 27, 210

Kenneth E. Hagin

• The Believer’s Authority – 20,981
• Understanding the Anointing – 46,985
• Tongues: Beyond the Upper Room – 61,856
• The Triumphant Church – 84,044

Philip MacMillan

• The Believer’s Authority – 87,560

Jesse Duplantis

• Everyday Visionary – 410,420

Gloria Copeland

• Blessed Beyond Measure – 68,664
• To Know Him – 182,051
• God’s Will is Prosperity – 503,933
• God’s Master Plan – 1,178,359

John Lake

• Diary from Africa – 39,819
• Sermons: Dominion over Sickness and Disease – 60,014
• Writings from Africa – 519,090

T.J. McCrossan

• Bodily Healing and the Atonement – 58,249

Kenneth Copeland

• The Laws of Prosperity – 143,764

Frank Viola

• From Eternity to Here – 24,807
• The Untold Story – 16,842

Mark Hankins

• The Spirit of Faith – 703,118
• Taking Your Place in Christ – 492,802
• The Power of Identification with Christ – 885,013

Creflo Dollar

• 8 Steps to Create the Life You Want – 37,572
• Live Without Fear – 100,947

Compare these numbers to Stephen King’s:

• On Writing – 647
• Under the Dome – 392
• Full Dark, No Stars – 891

Surprising to me was how well the old works stack up against the current books. For instance, Hagin’s reprint of T.J. McCrossan’s Bodily Healing and the Atonement currently outsells all of Gloria Copeland’s titles. And Kenyon’s books are all doing better than Creflo Dollar’s, Mark Hankins’s, and Kenneth Copeland’s bestseller.

I included Stephen King’s numbers because I am finishing, for the second time, On Writing. (Yikes!) Never having read any of his horror books, I can’t say that I’m a King fan, but On Writing shows that he’s a good writer. In it, he says,

Description begins with visualization of what it is that you want the reader to experience. It ends with your translating what you see in your mind into words on the page. It’s far from easy. As I’ve said, we’ve all heard someone say, “Man, it was so great (or so horrible/strange/funny) . . . I just can’t describe it.” If you want to be a successful writer, you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition. —Stephen King, On Writing 174.

After just three days into writing on redemptive healing, I know what he is talking about. Platitudes are easy and they’re the puffery of modern preaching; descriptions—those small, but critical facts of redemption—are hard. But they are the stuff of real faith.

[Note: Over the summer, I plan to post excerpts from the book from time to time.]

You might also like:

• Hello and Goodbye
• Friday’s State of the Blog
• Friday Ruminations
• Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology – Part 4
• Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology – Part 1