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No, Jamal Bryant, Abracadabra Doesn’t Mean Romans 4:17

No, Jamal Bryant, Abracadabra Doesn’t Mean Romans 4:17

Last updated on: August 30, 2026 at 5:50 pm by Shawn Paul Wood

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No, Jamal Bryant, Abracadabra Doesn’t Mean Romans 4:17 2026-08-30T17:50:48-05:00 Shawn Paul Wood

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Abracadabra!

That word just walked off a Vegas stage and straight into the pulpit at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta.

And due respect to One Thousand and One Nights, but now, abracadabra is now doing theological work it was never hired to do.

Pastor Jamal Bryant grabbed a phrase magicians shout over rabbits and hats, married it to a verse about Abraham’s faith, and told an entire congregation to speak their August bills into nonexistence like they were auditioning for a magic act on “America’s Got Talent.”

He meant well. But he really did wrong. Somebody hand this man a concordance before he hands out any more spells.

Before we pull this thing apart with an etymology, commentary, and Abraham’s own faith story, do yourself a favor: Understand there is a real difference between not comprehending the depth of God’s Word and twisting it into a licorice knot. (We’re about to see the latter.)

BUT FIRST: Headlines hit the Body of Christ every week, and somebody has to dissect them with a real understanding of faith, instead of only a hot take from a news talk show. Subscribe to our free newsletter for a straight biblical answer to why each story actually matters to your faith. That’s what hits close to home!

Being a Pastor 101: Know What You’re Comparing

A Bible opened among several bookmarks and a pair of glasses on top of it.

Might need to crack open one of these for further insight. (Image Credit: John-Mark Smith via Pexels)

Before anybody reaches for Romans 4:17, they need to answer a simpler question: what exactly are you setting next to Scripture? Bryant preached at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church recently and told his congregation that a magician taught his second-grade daughters that abracadabra is Arabic for “I create what I speak.”

He then invited the whole sanctuary to shout abracadabra over their bank accounts. That’s not exposition. That’s improv night with a Bible verse as the punchline. Speaking of “Open Mic Night,” it would have been inferred that his tongue was firmly planted in cheek if he was giggling, but no one was laughing. Including Bryant. It wasn’t a joke. It was ham-handed theology. See for yourself.

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A post shared by New Birth Missionary Baptist Church (@newbirthmbc)

Pastors have a specific job description, and Paul spells it out in 2 Timothy 2:15: to “rightly divide the word of truth.”

Rightly dividing requires knowing what belongs in the comparison before you start comparing. A word a stage magician flexes for a children’s birthday party does not belong in the same sentence as a covenant promise God made to Abraham. There’s a line a leader of men and women of faith shouldn’t cross. Regretfully, Bryant skipped the first step and went straight to the applause line.

Barna’s research keeps confirming that most churchgoers can’t articulate a coherent biblical worldview, and stunts like the abracadabra sermon explain why.

When a pastor treats a carnival word and an inspired promise as reasonable conversation partners, he teaches thousands of people that Scripture bends to whatever illustration lands that Sunday. It doesn’t work that way. Scripture sets the terms; the illustration either serves the text or the preacher cuts it.

Bryant owed his congregation those checks before he preached the illustration, not after Donnie McClurkin called it out from another pulpit ten days later.

In today’s mad world of multimedia, Pastors don’t earn a mulligan on doctrine just because the sermon felt good in the moment. Know your material. Know your source. And know the difference between a magic trick and a covenant before you compare them out loud.

The Etymology Nobody Checked

A blue spellbook held up to a white woman's face to just expose her blue eyes peering over it.

Yeah, not so much, bruh. (Image Credit: RDNE Stock via Pexels)

Here’s the part an actual concordance would have saved everybody a sermon series, and it starts with getting the history in the right order: abracadabra was medicine before it was ever magic. So, Voilà, Pastor!

The word first appears in the second-century Liber Medicinalis, written by Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, physician to a Roman emperor, who prescribed it for malaria and fever.

Patients wrote the word on parchment, then wrote it again beneath, dropping the final letter each line until one lonely character sat at the bottom of a shrinking triangle. No, really. Even PBS could have helped a brother out.

They wore that parchment nine days, then threw it backward over one shoulder into an east-flowing stream so the vanishing letters could carry the fever off with them. That’s the actual résumé: a Roman folk cure, not an Arabic revelation—and the “magician” who taught it to Bryant’s daughters was already three steps removed from that history before Bryant ever carried it into a pulpit.

The linguistic guesses fare no better.

The popular “Aramaic” theory—avra kedabra, supposedly “I create as I speak”—collapses under its own grammar. If you’re interested, here’s why:

The vowel pattern is wrong for a first-person verb, and the root דבר means “to lead,” not “to speak” (Galilean Aramaic). Others trace the word to Abraxas, a Greco-Gnostic deity’s name stamped on pagan amulets, which is also, notably, not Romans 4:17. The Oxford English Dictionary reviewed every theory on the table and concluded that “no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures.”

Nobody credible calls it Arabic. Abracadabra’s résumé runs from Roman medicine to a Gnostic charm to a magician’s flourish, and not one line of it touches Scripture.

Now open an actual concordance to Romans 4:17. The Greek verb translated “calls” is kalountos (Strong’s 2564), which describes God as summoning “the things that are not” (ta mē onta) into existence.

Paul places that verb inside his argument about Abraham’s faith, pointing toward the resurrection power of God. The verse describes who God is—once, about one promise, one impossible birth. Abracadabra is not a Bible reference. Ever.

Why This Should Never Happen From a Pulpit

An empty lectern in a church's pulpit

This is a place of passionate Word, not of personal words or fiery darts (Image Credit: Freepik)

James 3:1 warns that teachers face a stricter judgment, and pastors don’t opt out of that warning just because an illustration lands well. Bryant preached a category error to thousands of people who trusted him to handle Scripture accurately. Then, Donnie McClurkin stood in his own pulpit at Perfecting Faith Church and said what needed to be said: “You cannot mix witchcraft with holiness.”

McClurkin called the abracadabra theology “damnable and wrong” and added, “You cannot speak things into existence… that’s a lie.”

The Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board backed McClurkin up, flagging the teaching as “new age cultist” doctrine dressed in church clothes. That’s not a small correction from a rival pulpit. That’s a public body drawing a line that pastors shouldn’t need drawn for them. And it spread fast enough that gospel outlets on social media covered the fallout within days.

You see, a pastor’s job is to open the Word accurately, not to manufacture a viral moment by bolting a magic word onto a promise God made to Abraham.

There are plenty of fun ways to flex during homiletics, and I encourage most of them to keep the attention of the sheep. Bryant had commentaries, concordances, and centuries of sound exegesis on his shelf before he opened his mouth—the same tools this space keeps begging churches to pick back up. He reached past all of them for a magician’s punchline instead.

Again, not so much, bruh.

Preachers don’t need abracadabra. They need accuracy. Say the actual magic word correctly next time, Bishop—it’s called exegesis, and unlike abracadabra, it works every single time you actually use it.

General Christian

History and Religion

About Shawn Paul Wood

Abracadabra! Now, you're blessed in Jesus' Name. That should give mad cringe when you read it because that was never meant to be a blessing. Too bad Pastor Jamal Bryant said it and convinced his entire church to use it. You can read more about the author here.

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