PROSPERITY THEOLOGY: GOD WILL MAKE YOU RICH

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From MINISTRY OF GREED

The Inside Story of the Televangelists &

Their Holy Wars

by Larry Martz

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While fundamentalists cling to the Calvinist belief

in austerity, hard work, atonement for sin, and abhorrence of worldly pleasures, charismatics tend to put their stress on God's love.  It is an old dichotomy in the Protestant faith.  As far back as the Puritan movement of sixteenth-century Britain, the pious have been arguing that the Lord loves his people and will not neglect his elect in this life.

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Indeed, no matter what Calvin said, some prosperous

burghers maintained complacently that rich meant right; they were manifestly enjoying God's grace, and the poor were just as obviously destined for hell.
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But one wing of the Pentecostal movement has found

in this notion the key to millions of Christian hearts.  In the late 1930's, in a sermon called "Acres of Diamonds," the preacher Russell Conwell told his flock: "I say you ought to get rich and it is your duty to get rich . . . because to make money honestly is to preach the Gospel.  The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community."

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In recent years, the doctrine has been developed

into all-out prosperity theology: God will make you rich, Jim Bakker and his colleagues promised, if you give him your money first as a token of faith.

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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Oral Roberts developed the doctrine

of Seed Faith.  Giving is just like agriculture, he discovered; the farmer plants a tiny handful of seed and reaps a great harvest.  So Roberts sent his contributors Seed Faith booklets, with monthly coupons to clip and mail in to request prayers and note the amount donated.  God wants you to succeed, Pat Robertson told his flock; there is an earthly store of abundance waiting for you.  It's all there in Luke 6:38: "Give that it may be given unto you."

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Dozens of other verses reinforced the message,

and the preachers told endless stories of pious folk parting with their last dollars in a good cause, only to receive several times as much from a surprise benefactor.

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To preachers with a sterner view of God and reality,

 prosperity theology was outright heresy, a perversion of the faith that turned Calvinism upside down.  As Jerry Falwell was to say upon taking over PTL, the Bakkers' message made God into a slot machine and insulted the faith of every poor person whose belief was not rewarded with riches.  And it was far from universally tolerated even among charismatics.  Jimmy Swaggart, who condemned Bakker and his operation for years, was a fellow minister in the Assemblies of God - until he resigned in his own fall from grace.

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For the preachers who held it, however, prosperity theology

had an interesting side effect.  If they were seen to be rich, it was no disgrace but a proof that their message was true.
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"Oral recognized what the popes knew long ago," said Robert's disillusioned old friend Jenkin Lloyd Jones, editor of the Tulsa Tribune.  "Little people are impressed by wealth.  That's why the silver is on display at the Vatican."
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Editor's Note:
The worst part of this mess took place some years ago,
when people like Tammy Faye Bakker (above, with what I'm
told is called "landfill" makeup) and her husband, and a
 bunch of other rascals, were wheeling and dealing religion
at all hours of day and night on television, everywhere
it seemed, with a smug assurance and arrogance
about their righteous cause that made the lies

obvious, transparent, dark, and depressing.

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Now most of these characters have spent time in prison, or died,
 or just melted away into the televangelical video tombs,
with one exception (below).
But take note: they've been replaced with
people just as dishonest and fraudulent as they were -
just different tactics,"con's," tricks, smoke and mirrors;
new lies for new rubes, new fools, new gullible and
spiritually bankrupt lost souls.

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And the new liars have better attorneys too, to keep
their butts out of jail and make sure the money flows nonstop.
We should note that Jim Bakker, who spent time in prison,
 has been back in action for a while -
 I watched him last night on the tube.  He blasts
prosperity theology out of one side of his mouth,
decrying the true foolishness of his old "line of goods,"
while at the same time hyping his books and a whole array of
trash on his website - watches and necklaces, vitamins,
 squeeze bottles, water pumps, so-called "survival items" that include
 5 gal paint buckets filled with beans or rice for $100.00,
blue tarps you can buy at the hardware store,
and even a "food bucket opener" for $5.00.  And lots more.
The whole thing is a hideous display of someone with
more nerve than an L.A. street whore, or maybe her pimp.
Some people just can't quit selling their crap,
even (or maybe especially) when they have a reputation
 as rotten and sordid as this guy's.  He should be forgiven,
but that doesn't mean he has to be tolerated.
He ought to be banned from the airwaves.
He's still a fraud.

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I pray that he fails.  The "average American's"
common sense is no longer insurance that total idiocy
will not prevail in our time.  Actually, maybe it
never was, but it was comforting at least to think that
we live in a place where reason and good sense were going
to win the race, in the long run.  Obviously, that's nothing but
a myth, a fantasy, an ideal - for the present.

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Faith tells us that all of this will change, in time.
And speaking of time, certainly this character must smell
 like goat cheese or milk that's gone real, real bad,
 but as long as people watch him and send cash,
 this all goes on, and on, and....
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BEWARE!
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