LOTS OF MONEY, THOUGH WITHOUT THE POWER OF GOD

Why success became a priority in the lives of thousands of Christian Leaders and the means to get it even more distant from the Word of the Lord they seem to proclaim?

The god of these times is Mammon, and his domain has already reached the evangelical streams long time ago. His sordid pursuing of the pleasures of this world has recently put down many leaders. And even all scandals and negative examples we see today are not enough to avoid others to fall into the same pit.

The measures of the success of many leaders are deceiving their hearts. The sinful pleasures of this world, the adulteries, the physical and spiritual prostitution, the luxuries, the avarice, the greed, are announced in their preaching and teaching Sunday after Sunday. The message they proclaim is of a fake prosperity, of a distorted abundance of goods, filled with earthly treasures and shaped by an egoistical wealth without limits.

When finally the scandals hit the media they had already and a long time ago hit the Heavens. Their preaching revealed their distance from God. God knew it since the beginning. They had already fallen when they were preparing their sermons and books. Their sermons only revealed what they are for and their live styles didn’t deny it. We just didn’t want to admit!

The Holiness and the Salvation of the Lord for a long time were substituted for a compulsive preaching of collecting offerings and donations.

The “Plant a Seed message” has been dispossessed of its Biblical meaning and has echoed in the hearts of the people because their eyes are blinking dollar symbols as they give more and more, for what they are promised to get – the presumed satisfaction of their consumption appetites.

They act as if they were saying out and loud: “Oh! The millions who perish without the Gospel are not my responsibility; are of those poor missionaries without money - who gave up everything to live in the Lord’s fields. One of these days we will send an offering to some of them and then, we will make public how we love the missionary work!”

That is a lie! More than 50% of the income of our churches is not destined to the missionary work. Actually, the most part of the money we spend in our ministries in America don’t even save one soul.

If we take 100.000 Christian churches in America we have 100.000 preachers that preach 100.000 sermons every Sunday with a total of 5.200.000 sermons per year. As Keith Green appointed many years ago, think about the money spent in salaries, buildings, electrical bills, etc. to sustain them all!

In Massachusetts, per example, more than 5 million of people are perishing as of now – they don’t know the Lord Jesus as their Lord and Savior. What about the rest of the country? And are we still boasting that we have here millions of born-again believers? That we are well!

What about the millions, more than three times of those who are born again? They have never met the Lord. What about the millions seated in our pews that are still lost because “no one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him.” (I John 3:6)?

The Power of God is unknown for the millions because most of the preachers in America don’t know the Power of God for salvation of souls. They know only the power of marketing and the power of numbers and statistics!

This “church of prosperity preaching” and of unending campaigns of offerings through Radio, TV, Internet, and of its millions of businesses can’t even save itself.

I hate poverty and the misery in peoples lives. I hate the sin that leads people into deprivation and starvation. But I also hate the kind of wealth that oppresses and make many miserable not only materially, but spiritually. So don’t tell me that I am against tithes and offerings, that I don’t believe that God is the One Who gives power to get wealth, that I don’t believe that God wants us to be the head and not the tale. Don’t tell me that I don’t believe that we should and will lend too many but will borrow from none and that we will eat the best from the land if we are obedient to God!

This insistence of a minister in getting more and more money and only talking about money is only a sign and a symptom of an imminent falling.

Many people give because the reason they live is to get rich and wealthy, to fulfill the American Dream and to continue despising the poor, the widow, the missionary work and the causes of the Kingdom of God.

By the way, what many call the Kingdom of God investments are only religious hooks to make people feel good in giving! It is outrageous to hear a preacher asking U$10.000 of offering for the giver’s privilege to have his/her name stamped in his special prayer’s room of his ministry airplane. What makes him a special intercessor for such thing? That is a manipulation from hell inspired by the Jezebel Spirit meant to make people sin instead to focusing on God.

We have to recognize that we are living in times “of unprecedented spiritual shaking” as J. Lee Grady called it: this unending number of leaders divorcing and involved in scandals, this uncontrolled competition of who is bigger and better, of these empires built around personalities is a serious symptom of a apostate church that lives the manifestation of the anti-Christ in its midst.

We are a church that needs to get back, totally and completely to God and His Word (the Scriptures, Old and New Testament). Don’t you see these pleasing men preachers - just to get the Catholics offerings -praising the Catholic popes who send more people to hell with their Mariolatry doctrine than Hollywood with its sexual immorality? What about to be politically correct and deny the Truth of God’s Word? I remember well when many Christian Leaders got upset with Franklin Graham when he denounced the hate of Islamism after 9/11! We must tell out and loud that the Bible denounces Islamism as a false religion, because Allah is a false god. Only Jesus Christ is God! The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! Only Jesus is Great!

We are a church that needs to get back to the simplicity of the Gospel and get back to the exclusive Message of the Cross. Jesus Christ is the Only Name that saves! Period! His sacrifice on the Cross and His resurrection from the death is the sufficient message for salvation, deliverance, healing, peace, etc. The preaching of the sufficiency of the Cross is enough!

We are a church that inexorably needs to abandon the modisms, exoterisms, mysticisms, amulets and the brightness of the platforms. Don’t you see the preachers announcing on TV the pictures of “Jesus”, the little angels in crystal, the “faith contact points” merchandises for an offering? For what many call it “art” the Word calls “idolatry”. These “Jesus pictures” stamped in the Protestant and Catholic temples are idols representing demonic hosts. Many have them as inoffensive. What about many leaders cultivating their own images with their fame? Both are offensive to the Lord. This modern paganism is an offense to our Lord Jesus indeed!

We are a Church that desperately needs to humble, and recognize honestly that we are poor of God’s power because we don’t preach God’s Word. And we don’t believe it! We don’t live it!

So immediately we have to go back to the loneliness of our rooms where our knees may touch the soil and our prayers may touch the Heavens as we repent of our sins and confess them name by name, crying to the Lord to have mercy on us. Mercy is what we do need a lot!

We have to find our way to the get close to the Holy Lord where broken hearts meet the Spirit of God as we face eternity only to intercede for Heavenly treasures.

We will be occupied exclusively with what we are in Christ – our identity – and not of what we possess. We will learn again to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness for what He is and not for the things He can add to us.

Yes, we will be a people that seek the face of Jesus more than we seek His hands. Because success with God is measured by what we are in Christ and not for what we own.

Josimar Salum é Diretor Executivo do BMNET- Brazilian Ministers Network e do Greater Revival Ministries - Contato: Email jsalum@greaterrevival.com, telefone 508-519-1773