Who Is
Your Covering?

What is this page about?

This teaching is not often written down. That is one reason why it is hard to argue with. Here is how people usually hear it. This page wrote these words. They are not from a real person.

Three different ideas are mixed together here.

People who defend the second idea often say, “If you are against the covering, you are for the third idea.” That is not true. The old church asked for obedience to ministers. It also put ministers on trial when they did wrong. It did both for almost two thousand years.

The short answer

1. “Don’t touch my anointed ones” is about a travelling family. No minister is in it. Read the verses before: “when they were but a few men in number… He allowed no one to do them wrong. Yes, he reproved kings for their sakes” (Psalm 105:12–14). The anointed ones are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God protects a weak family from strong kings. People use the verse today for the opposite.

1. “Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft” is said to a king. The prophet Samuel says it to King Saul, because the king did not obey God (1 Samuel 15:23). The rebel in the verse is the leader. When a leader says it to his church, the roles are turned round.

1. David would not hurt King Saul. But he also left, and he did not come back. He escaped through a window. He hid in fields and caves. He collected four hundred men. The story teaches: do not hurt the leader, and do not take his place by force. It does not teach: stay. In those years, David’s safe place was a cave.

1. The stories of Korah and Uzzah are serious. But they do not teach the covering. Moses defended himself against Korah with a claim that people could check: “I have not taken one donkey from them, neither have I hurt one of them.” (Numbers 16:15) These stories do not turn a modern preacher into Moses.

1. The New Testament warns the shepherd, not the sheep. Leaders must not be “lording it over those entrusted to you” (1 Peter 5:3). That means they must not rule like kings. Teachers “will receive heavier judgment” (James 3:1). Paul warned a group of leaders that some of them would go wrong: “Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things” (Acts 20:30).

1. The Bible tells churches to check their teachers. The covering teaching forbids exactly this. The people of Berea checked Paul’s words in the Scriptures every day, and the Bible calls them “more noble” (Acts 17:11). “Test all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). And the Bible does not forbid a complaint against a leader. It says how many witnesses are needed (1 Timothy 5:19).

1. The early church asked for strong obedience, but for a different reason. See Part 2.

1. The church decided long ago that a minister’s holiness adds nothing to what he gives you. See Part 3.

1. The church made courts to remove bad ministers. See Part 3.

1. The covering teaching is young. It is not in the early teachers, the great church meetings, Luther, Calvin, or the old statements of faith. In its modern form it began in 1948.

The early church: strong obedience, no umbrella

Ignatius was the church leader of Antioch. About the year 107, Roman soldiers took him to Rome to be killed. On the way he wrote seven letters. He asks for very strong obedience.

See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father

Ignatius of Antioch, about the year 107

In simple words: All of you must follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ follows the Father.

This is stronger than a modern “covering” preacher would dare to say. But look at his reason. It is always the same, and it is never protection. He wants one church and one Lord’s Supper in each city, not many groups that fight each other. In seven letters he never says that the bishop keeps you safe from anything.

Compare two sentences that this page made up.

No sentence like these is found in any Christian writing of the first three hundred years.

And think about Ignatius himself. He was a bishop in good standing. He obeyed everything. He was against no one. And he wrote his letters under guard, on the way to die. He did not think that anything had gone wrong.

What the church did when the minister was the problem

This fact should end the argument. The churches that honoured their ministers most also wrote the most rules for removing them. This makes sense. A man holds an office that Christ gave. He can do it badly. Then the church that gave it can take it back.

A minister’s holiness adds nothing. Long ago, in a time of danger, some ministers in North Africa gave the holy books to the enemy to be burned. Later, one group said that baptisms by such ministers were worth nothing. The church said no. The great teacher Augustine explained it:

Peter may baptize, but this is He that baptizes… Judas may baptize, still this is He that baptizes.

Augustine, about the year 400

In simple words: Peter may be the one who baptizes, but really it is Christ who baptizes. Judas may be the one who baptizes, and still it is Christ who baptizes.

Think about this. The holiest minister adds nothing to your baptism. Then how can one man’s “anointing” keep the enemy away from you?

The church made courts.

None of this fits a teaching that says only: stay, and say nothing.

Did it protect them?

The covering teaching makes a claim that we can test. Look at people who were in good standing with the church of their day.

• Paul. He was beaten many times: “Five times I received forty stripes minus one” (2 Corinthians 11:24).
• James, the brother of John. King Herod “killed James… with the sword” (Acts 12:2).
• Peter. Jesus told him that others would take him where he did not want to go (John 21:18). He was killed for his faith.
• Ignatius. He was killed by wild animals in Rome.

So what does the New Testament promise? It does not promise that bad things stay away. Paul lists them by name: “oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (Romans 8:35). Then he says that none of these can separate a Christian from Christ.

There is one more problem. Look at how the claim works.

• You stay and things go well: “The covering worked.”
• You stay and you suffer: “God is testing you.”
• You leave and you suffer: “You lost your covering.”
• You leave and things go well: “Judgement will come later.”

Nothing that happens can ever count against the claim. That does not make the claim strong. It only means that nobody can test it.

Where the umbrella came from

The teaching came from three places in about thirty years. They were not connected to each other.

These were not one movement. But they share one move. Authority goes from an office to a person. An office is public. People can describe it, and the church can take it away. But the person’s authority now stands on a spiritual gift that only he and God can see.

Everything else follows. Obedience becomes personal. Checking becomes rebellion, because there is no public rule to check against. And leaving has “spiritual” results. That is the umbrella.

What the men who built it said later

Several leaders of the Fort Lauderdale ministry later wrote publicly about it. These are their own printed words.

We were guilty of the Galatian error: having begun in the Spirit, we quickly degenerated into the flesh.

Derek Prince, 1983 (he died in 2003)

In simple words: We made the same mistake as the Christians of Galatia in the Bible. We began with God’s Spirit, and we quickly went down to human effort.

I repent. I ask forgiveness.

Bob Mumford, public statement, November 1989

Many, including myself, had been too domineering and had hurt others.

Charles Simpson, in the magazine Christianity Today, 19 March 1990

In simple words: Many of us, and I too, ruled over people too much and hurt others.

In the same article Charles Simpson also defended the aims of the movement. This page says so to be fair.

A teaching is not proved wrong because its founders were sorry later. But this record shows one thing. The critics describe a failure. The people who practised the teaching describe the same failure.

The two best answers

“Hebrews 13:17 says: obey and submit.” This page accepts this verse fully. So read all of it.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they watch on behalf of your souls, as those who will give account, that they may do this with joy, and not with groaning, for that would be unprofitable for you.

Hebrews 13:17 · World English Bible

In simple words: Obey your leaders and do what they say. They watch over your souls, and they must answer to God for their work. Let them do it with joy and not with sadness. Their sadness would not help you.

There is a command, a reason, and a result. The reason is that the shepherd must answer to God for you. That is his danger, not yours. The verse does not say that his authority protects you. It does not say that leaving him puts you in danger.

“An early church leader said: nobody can have God as his Father who does not have the church as his mother.” Yes. And this is what this page says too. The old Christian faith does have a covering. It is the church. But look at what the church is. It is many people, not one man. People can see it. It has leaders with names, rules that people can read, sacraments that do not depend on the minister, and courts that can remove him. It lives longer than every minister. So you can lean on it.

The covering teaching makes this smaller. It goes from a body that is two thousand years old to one man in one building. If he falls, everything falls with him.

Where this page ends

This page gives no advice about leaving any church. It does not know your church or your pastor. Many pastors who say “covering” only mean that they take care of their people. That is their job. This page denies one claim only: that the man is what protects you.

Jesus said who holds his sheep:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand.

John 10:27–29 · World English Bible

In simple words: My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them life for ever. They will never be lost, and nobody can take them out of my hand. My Father gave them to me, and he is greater than all. Nobody can take them out of my Father’s hand.

Check it yourself

1. Read all of Psalm 105. Verse 15 comes in the middle of a story about a travelling family.
2. Read 1 Samuel 15, and then 1 Samuel 22 to 27.
3. Read Ezekiel 34 and James 3:1. Count the warnings to the sheep and the warnings to the shepherds.
4. Read the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch. They ask for more obedience than you expect, and they promise less protection than the covering teaching needs.
5. To hear the teaching from a serious man, read Watchman Nee’s book Spiritual Authority.