A Ritzy Trip Package? by Randy Rowley 4/15/25 ©

Over the years I’ve been contacted by many outfitters who are under the impression or hope that the average FCS member makes annual hunting or fishing trips to Alaska, Africa, etc.  In reality the average FCS member, like me, is middle class and has never hunted or fished outside of Texas.

Outfitters’ offers often include extras such as food, lodging, using their night vision scope equipped rifles, clays shooting, shooting varmints, and fishing stocked ponds.  The ritzier ones include chef-cooked meals and field dressing, skinning, butchering, and packaging of meat.  I always shake my head at such offers, as they’re as wrong about who they think or hope we are as Darryl Zanuck, Chief of 20^th Century Fox, was in 1946 when he said, “[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months.  People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”

Sadly, Christianity has seen many ideologies and movements over the years that have caused dissension and lead many people astray.  Some of the more infamous include:

• British Israelism or ‘Anglo-Israelism’ – the belief that many modern people of British and European heritage are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes or direct descendants of the Tribe of Judah and are thereby the heirs of God’s covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• Emerging Church Movement – a social justice and activism movement that used Scripture to call out oppression and highlight the voices of victims.
• Positive Christianity – a Nazi Germany movement that blended ideas of racial purity and Nazi ideology with Christianity elements, including an Aryan Jesus and an attempt to create a unified Protestant Reich Church.

But no movement has done more damage than the prosperity gospel (aka the health and wealth gospel) – the belief that financial blessings are the will of God and that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will increase one’s material wealth.  Material and especially financial success and physical health are seen as evidence of God’s favor and blessings.

The prosperity gospel merges three ideologies: Pentecostalism, New Thought, and the ‘American gospel of pragmatism, individualism, and upward mobility.’

Pentecostalism is a protestant, evangelical denomination that emphasizes experiencing God through baptism with the Holy Spirit.  Pentecostals believe that Spirit baptism will be accompanied by the physical evidence of speaking in tongues – people utter words or speech-like sounds, often thought by believers to be languages unknown to the speaker.

The New Thought movement popularized the belief in the power of the mind to achieve prosperity.  E. W. Kenyon, who introduced mind-power teachings into early Pentecostalism, taught that Christ’s substitutionary atonement secured for believers a right to divine healing.  This was attained through faith-filled speech, the spoken word of God which allowed believers to appropriate the same spiritual power that God used to create the world and attain the provisions promised in Christ’s death and resurrection, and prayer, which was a binding, legal act.  Rather than asking, Kenyon taught believers to demand healing since they were legally entitled to receive it.  By the 20th century, New Thought concepts had saturated American popular culture, being common features of both self-help literature and popular psychology.

The American gospel of pragmatism, individualism, and upward mobility’ was exemplified by Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth and Russell Conwell’s sermon Acres of Diamonds.  The Gospel of Wealth proclaimed success to result from personal effort rather than divine intervention and Conwell equated poverty with sin and asserted that anyone could become rich through hard work.

During the 1960s, prosperity gospel teachers embraced televangelism and dominated religious programming in the USA.  Oral Roberts, one of the first, developed a syndicated weekly program that became the most watched religious show in the country.  Roberts proclaimed that the laws of faith were a “blessing pact” in which God would return donations “seven fold”, promising that donors would receive back the money they donated to him from unexpected sources.

A new prosperity-oriented teaching developed in the 1970s called “Positive Confession” and the “Word of Faith” movement.  It taught that a Christian with faith can speak into existence anything consistent with the will of God.  Also during that time “name it and claim it” theology taught that whatever those who ask in faith wish will be done.

In 2006, a Time poll reported that 17% of American Christians said they identified with the movement.  Three of the four largest congregations in the United States were teaching prosperity theology, and Joel Osteen was credited with spreading it outside of the Pentecostal movement through his books, which have now sold over 5,000,000 copies.

Prosperity theology teaches that Christians are entitled to well-being and interprets well-being as physical health and economic prosperity.  Teachers of the doctrine maintain that Christians have been given power over creation because they are made in the image of God and that positive confession allows Christians to exercise dominion over their souls and material objects around them.  Wealth is interpreted as a blessing from God, obtained through a spiritual law of positive confession, visualization, and donations.  Word of Faith pastor Creflo Dollar teaches that prosperity is an unbreakable contract between God and humanity.

With all ideologies and movements, Christians should follow the example of the church of Berea in Acts 17:11 who, “examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

So what did Jesus demonstrate and have to say about wealth?

• He had no bed to sleep on during his ministry. See Matthew 8:20.
• He called wealth a master and said, “‘No one can serve two masters.’” See Matthew 6:24.
• He called wealth “deceitful” and said that it chokes God’s message, making it unfruitful. See Mark 4:18-19.
• He said that it is hard for rich people to enter into heaven. See Mark 10:17-24.
• He said that the rich have already received their rewards. See Luke 6:24.
• He warned against all kinds of greed and said, “…life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’” See Luke 12:15.
• He said that our hearts will be where we keep our treasure. See Luke 12:33-34.
• He made enormous demands on and expected his disciples to be completely dependent on him – not on themselves. See Luke 9:23.
• He promised his disciples that they would have trouble in this life, instead of promising wealth. See John 16:33.

Jesus absolutely, positively didn’t live a money, possessions, and health-centered life.  He was born and died poor.  He repeatedly taught about the importance of spiritual wealth and health instead of material wealth and physical health.  He didn’t promise to make us rich and healthy, but promised something far better – his presence, care, eternal kingdom, and spiritual riches.

What did the apostles have to say about wealth?

• Paul said that Greed is idolatry, and he forbade the Ephesians to associate with anyone who brought such a message (see Ephesians 5:5-7).
• Riches were used for evil purposes (see 1 Timothy 6:10 & 17, James 5:2, and Revelation 18:15-17). When the New Testament speaks positively of riches, they’re spiritual, not material, ones (see Romans 11:33, 1 Corinthians 1:4-5, Ephesians 1:18, Philippians 4:19, and Colossians 1:27).
• The rich are to not put their hope in wealth and are to be generous (see 1 Timothy 6:17-18).

Following Jesus’ commands sometimes resulted in financial difficulties and not being healed.  For example, Paul had to make tents for money during at least his second missionary journey (see Acts 18:2-3) and three times he prayed for God to remove his ‘thorn in the flesh’ but God didn’t heal him (see 2 Corinthians 12:7b–10).

In the Old Testament, material blessings were rewarded for obedience, yet at least the New Testament church in Smyrna was poor (see Revelation 2:8-10).  That is still true for most Christians in the non-Western world today.  By their obedience, the Israelites incurred blessings (see Deuteronomy 28:1-14), but by their obedience Christians incur persecution (see Matthew 5:11-12, 2 Timothy 3:12, and 1 Peter 1:6).

Why these disparities?  No book better demonstrates the relationship between the Old and New Testaments than the book of Hebrews.  The new covenant is superior to the old one as it “is established on better promises” (see Hebrews 8:6) and the new covenant brings an eternal inheritance (see Hebrews 9:15).

But what about health – does God want us to be healthy?  Yes, many verves demonstrate that, and Jesus spent a lot of time healing people of all kinds of diseases.  However, there is no verse that supports that we are to demand healing from God.  Instead, we are to ask for it (see James 5:14–16).

Paul warned the Galatians, “As we have said before, even now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:9 NASB.

Perhaps John Piper conveyed the strongest criticism of the prosperity gospel in his message “Will Suffering Weaken My Ministry?” saying, “the prosperity gospel will not make anybody praise Jesus; it will make people praise prosperity.”

A preacher of the prosperity gospel has been corrupted by the love of money, and not the gospel of Jesus’ substitutionary death for our sins, rising again on the third day, forgiving our sins, and giving us eternal life when we believe in him and repent of our sins.

Just as I don’t fall for the flowery promises of outfitters, don’t fall for the prosperity gospel – you’ll regret it!