What Is Seed Faith?

Seed faith, or sowing an offering, is the claim that a gift given to God is a seed he multiplies back to the giver. R. Samuel Thorpe, in the Oral Roberts University journal Spiritus, quotes Oral Roberts’s book Is God Your Source? (1992): “You sow it, God will grow it, and you will reap it,” if you believe and set your faith on God. The Cape Town Commitment (3) uses “the sowing of seeds” as one of the two ways its definition says people are taught to obtain health and wealth. This page quotes both accounts. It does not decide.

Key points

• Daniel D. Isgrigg (2), writing in Spiritus in 2020, says Roberts released The Miracle of Seed-Faith in 1970, and he cites that book as Tulsa: Oral Roberts, 1970.
• Thorpe (1) says seed-faith has three steps in Roberts’s teaching: God is the source of the person’s total supply; the person gives first, out of need; the person gives for a desired result and expects a miracle harvest. Thorpe is summarizing The New Testament Comes Alive, volume 3, page 396. The three steps are his summary, not a sentence this page copies from Roberts’s 1970 book.
• Thorpe quotes Roberts, Is God Your Source?, page x, on sowing, growing, and reaping, and page ix, that God’s people are not to live in poverty, physically, spiritually, or financially.
• Luke 6:38CloseGive, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.Luke 6:38 · King James VersionOpen source (4) says, Give, and it shall be given unto you. Malachi 3:10CloseBring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.Malachi 3:10 · King James VersionOpen source (5) tells Israel to bring the tithes into the storehouse. What those paragraphs are doing is on Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblical?.
• Cape Town’s definition pairs this sowing with positive confession. That spoken practice is What Is Positive Confession?.
• The New Age page does not teach seed faith. Is Manifesting a Sin? quotes Wattles on thought, not on an offering.

What Roberts’s words, as Thorpe quotes them, say

Thorpe’s article is a study by a faculty member at the university Roberts founded. It is not a catechism. He says the overriding element in Roberts’s message is that something good is going to happen to you, and that Christians should expect miracles, prosperity, healing, and blessings because God intends his children to live that way. He says the manifestation of God’s plans depended on the faith of the believer.

On seed-faith, Thorpe quotes Roberts:

You sow it, God will grow it, and you will reap it, providing you believe it and set your faith on God who calls Himself the Lord of the harvest . . . . When He (God) speaks, and I obey, miracles happen.

Thorpe’s note sends that sentence to Is God Your Source? (1992), page x. This site has not opened that book. The words above are the words Thorpe prints in quotation marks.

He also prints, from page ix of the same book, Roberts’s line that God’s people must make God their source, and that God’s people are not to live in poverty, physically, spiritually, or financially. God, in that sentence, has already provided everything needed, and he is serious about needs being met.

Isgrigg, in the same journal two years later, says that until 1970 Roberts’s emphasis was God’s abundance to meet needs, and that the idea of using giving as a means to gain wealth was largely absent. He says the financial demands of the university led Roberts to emphasize that sowing into the ministry through the “blessing pact” was a way to reap a harvest for a person’s own need. He cites Miracle of Seed-Faith (1970) for the book’s release that year. Isgrigg also says critics of the health-and-wealth gospel are right to point at Roberts as a source of seed-faith concepts later used as justification for self-enrichment, and he says Roberts’s view did not begin that way. That is one historian’s judgment, published at Oral Roberts University. It is not Roberts’s own sentence, and this page does not adopt it as a verdict.

The giving Roberts describes is still giving to God, in faith, with a harvest expected from God. He is not saying the giver creates the wealth by a thought. Wallace D. Wattles, on the manifestation page, says the thought causes the thing to be created. Roberts, in Thorpe’s quotation, says God will grow it.

What Cape Town does with “sowing seeds”

The Cape Town Commitment (3), part II, section E.5, defines the prosperity gospel as the teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the sowing of seeds through financial or material gifts. The sowing, in that definition, is one of the two techniques by which the blessings are said to be obtained.

The same section says the Bible includes material welfare, both health and wealth, in its teaching about the blessing of God. It denies that spiritual welfare can be measured by material welfare, and that wealth is always a sign of blessing. It calls for self-sacrifice and generous giving as the marks of discipleship, and it affirms Lausanne’s call for simpler lifestyles. Generous giving is not what that paragraph rejects. It rejects sowing as a way to obtain a right to health and wealth.

The full quotations from Cape Town, the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, and La Civiltà Cattolica are on What Do Churches Say about the Prosperity Gospel?. Luke 6:38CloseGive, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.Luke 6:38 · King James VersionOpen source (4) and Malachi 3:10CloseBring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.Malachi 3:10 · King James VersionOpen source (5) are read in context on the biblical page. 2 Corinthians 9:6–7Close^9:6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. ^9:7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.2 Corinthians 9:6–7 · King James VersionOpen source says the person who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and the person who sows bountifully will reap bountifully, and that each should give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly. That chapter is about a collection for the saints. The biblical page says what that setting is. This page does not decide whether Roberts’s seed is that collection.

Frequently asked questions

Is every offering seed faith?

1 Corinthians 16:2CloseUpon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.1 Corinthians 16:2 · King James VersionOpen source tells the Corinthians to lay something aside on the first day of the week for the collection for the saints. Matthew 6:3–4Close^6:3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: ^6:4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.Matthew 6:3–4 · King James VersionOpen source tells givers not to advertise the gift. Seed faith, as Thorpe describes Roberts, adds an expected harvest back to the giver, including a harvest the giver gave in order to receive. A gift to the poor or to a church, with no such bargain, is not that sentence.

Did Oral Roberts invent tithing?

Malachi 3:10CloseBring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.Malachi 3:10 · King James VersionOpen source (5) is a command to Israel about tithes in the storehouse, centuries before Roberts. Isgrigg dates the book Miracle of Seed-Faith to 1970. The teaching is a use of giving, not the invention of the tithe. What Malachi 3 is doing in its own chapter is on the biblical page.

Where does this sit in the series?

What Is the Prosperity Gospel? is the overview. Spoken confession is the previous page. The history of Kenyon, Hagin, Roberts, and Copeland is Where Did the Prosperity Gospel Come From?.