Q. Prosperity teachers say that Mk 11.22-24 says that whatever we say and believe is going to happen. Is that what that verse is teaching?

A. No, that verse is not teaching that. To understand the verse you have to look at the context, so let’s look at what was going on at the time that prompted the Lord to say what he did. Chapter 11 starts out with his entry into Jerusalem and he comes to Mt Moriah where the Temple stood. He goes in, looks around and leaves. The next day he goes back to the mountain and the Temple and begins to cast out the moneychangers and declares that the Temple has become a den of thieves, quoting Jeremiah. He knows that the chief priests and the scribes want to kill him so he would go out of the city at night. The next day he comes upon the fig tree he cursed a few days before and it had withered. Then fig tree was symbolic of the spiritual state of Israel and how it bore no meaning fruit anymore. His disciples were astonished and he then says “Have faith in God” and then the verses you mention follow. In verse 23 he says you will “say to this mountain.” What mountain is he talking about? It is Mt. Moriah which was the seat of so much corruption that he had to drive the robbers away from his Father’s house, cleansing it. He says that it would be “cast into the sea” and the Temple literally was cast into the sea when it was destroyed because they found pieces of it in the harbor at Caesarea. What he is saying is this. The false teachers, the priests and scribes were keeping people away from the Kingdom of God through their teachings. Yeshua is saying that with faith in God the falsehood of their teachings can be overcome and they will be able to enter into the Kingdom if you stand firm and don’t doubt in your heart what Yeshua was teaching because some of it conflicted with the teachings at the time, especially when it came to who he was, faith and salvation to name just a few areas. He was in conflict with the religious establishment at the time (see verses 1-21).  This has nothing to do with saying and believing something and it has to come to pass. This verse has been twisted into something it was never intended to say. There is so much more to this but I hope this gives you another way of looking at the verse.