When you see ‘pastors’ wearing custom suits, $500 shoes, and pleasing for the followers to buy him a jet, just because a church or pastor wants you to enter into ‘sacrificial giving’ because ‘God will return it unto you...’, STOP.
You want to give to support a ministry, look behind the curtain. Is the money going to help the poor or buy an edifice. Is the money going to fees the homeless, or buy the minister a new Mercedes. Does the pastor live frugally or in a multi-million dollar mansion.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Probably that, more than anything else, to me is the biggest warning sign of a charlatan. At least, it’s the first and most obvious sign that something is wrong that there is.