This is a warning to all people within a
church, especially those in the Word Faith or name-it-claim-it movement – the
health, wealth and prosperity “gospel”. The health, wealth and prosperity
“gospel” teaches that God will give you all you want if you have more faith or
obedience. The prosperity “gospel” can be very blatantly obvious to extremely
subtle. Many Christians think they are not influenced by this “gospel” because they
do not attend a Pentacostal, Hillsong or Charismatic church. However, the prosperity
“gospel” can be as subtle as the teaching that God will give those who are
obedient to Him, all their basic material needs, that is, the needs of the
person on their own terms. If this is the case, why does God allow true
Christians to suffer persecution? Why did He allow Paul to suffer and go to
jail, to be eventually beheaded? Why did He allow Jesus to suffer, eventually
to die as a criminal when he was sinless? Are you saying that Jesus died so we
could live a good earthly live? No! He died for the sins of the world so that
it could be reconciled with God and saved from eternal damnation.
No where does the Bible say that God is
guaranteed to provide ‘all the basic material needs’ of those who are obedient
to Him. What are “basic material needs”? Who determines what a “basic material need”
is? The human flesh which feels it is entitled to its needs. By claiming that
God blesses those who are obedient by giving them their “basic material needs”
such as a safe home, freedom legal challenges, financial security and
sufficient food, the person is elevating oneself above God. It is essentially a
teaching that God needs to submit to people by their works. This is idolatry,
breaking the 3rd Commandment that ‘thou shall not make any graven
images of God’ since it creates a false image of God.
Christians need a reminder of what brought sin
into the world. It is humans who wanted to be like God, by convincing
themselves after satan told them that they could, that they can create their
own false image of God. This is an attempt to usurp God’s Sovereignty by
challenging His rightful authority as Creator of the Universe. Any slight
twisting of the one true Bible, no matter how minor it seems, is against God.
It is an attempt to usurp God’s authority over all humans. God, as such, is
treated like a Santa Clause, or a life-enhancer who is subject to human
demands.
Many people today, even many Christians do not
fully appreciate how Sovereign God is. This is owing to the ungodly, arrogant
and often hypocritically tolerant secular humanistic doctrine that each human
is sovereign over their own ways. The selfish secular humanistic culture,
although, it may claim to speak against capitalism in some cases, is a
materialistic mammonised one. It believes that material things such as money,
friends, romance and careers are that which determines a person’s worthiness to
respect. These things are what mammon provides. Mammon is a spirit which is
against God. Mammon is not money itself. Money, in this world can buy anything
the world provides – except for salvation from Lord Jesus Christ. It is a
spirit which seeks to satisfy the flesh by material earthly things and tempts
people away from seeking God through feeding the carnal flesh. Jesus said that
no one can serve God and mammon. One will hate one and love the other. This is
because the flesh and God are diametrically opposed to each other.
Serving material things means to pursue these
things as though they are of worthy value. This is the underlying doctrine of
capitalism, and because the world serves mammon, capitalism is dominant. Where
capitalism is criticised by the world, it is with ulterior motives of jealousy
against the rich because they have more, indicating that these critics of
capitalism who are of the world, are under the spirit of mammon.
So why do Christians need to be concerned about
capitalism? Capitalism is a stronghold of the devil. It is evil and speaks to
the lost that they are “sovereign over their own destiny”. Christians are
called to be discerning, as well as expose and fight evil. This is not to say
that it is capitalism that takes people away from God. Rather, it is to say that
mammon controls the world and seduces people away from seeking God, and serve
their own flesh instead. Mammon needs to be exposed so that people can see how
evil it is, whether lost or saved.
The “churches” that teach the prosperity
“gospel” are influencing many Christians including many who do not attend such
a church. Subtle forms of the prosperity “gospel” are spreading many churches
in the modern world. The true church is the only thing that came lead an
unsaved world to the Way, the Truth and the Life. Thus, if the church itself is
trying to serve mammon, or giving in to its seductions, its love for God is
growing cold, and unable to be the salt and light of the world. As David Platt
said, “you literally cannot tell the difference between the end of the world
and beginning of the church”. Worldiness is something from the heart, which
leads to actions that leads to damnation. It is not that abstaining from doing
certain things or doing certain things makes one not unworldly and godly.
1 John 4:8 says that “whoever does not love does not know God,
because God is love”. Therefore a godless world is a loveless world. Jesus
warned the Church of Ephesus that because its love for God has grown cold, as
is the modern church in attempting to serve mammon, He would take away its
lampstand. The lampstand is reflection of God’s Truth. Thus, having a lampstand
being taken away is to fail to reflect God’s Truth.
The Church of
Laodicea became lukewarm in its faithfulness towards God. It was
self-sufficient and proud in its possessions like the Woman on the Beast in
Revelations. Jesus was angered at them and rebuked them saying “you are
lukewarm. I wish you were either hot or cold”. It was compromising and
apathetic in its love for God because of the deceitfulness of wealth, which is
the epitome of worldliness, making it unfruitful.
The church must be
reminded that love for the world is diametrically opposed to love for God. The
more we love to the world, we more our hearts grow numb towards God.
The church needs
to return to zealous fervent love for God and wake up to the truth that one
cannot love the world or mammon and God. It needs to stop being proud and shun
mammon. Then only will there be a revival and the world might repent and come to faith in Jesus.
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