Ping!
The thing that grabs me about the prosperity gospel is the confusion between ‘want’ and ‘need’. I am self employed and I cover my fairly humble bill. I work hard enough to have trouble walking at the end of the day. I have a hard time believing God doesn’t consider me ‘rich’.
I remember, as a teenager, our minister preaching a sort of abundance line at the end of his sermon: And remember to join us in the fellowship hall after the service for coffee and Daryl’s (the town baker and church member) hot cross buns.
I was amazing to see how fast those buns danced off the platters.
I watched Joel Osteen once and didn’t think he was actually teaching the gospel.
In John 14:6, when Jesus said “no one comes to the Father but by me,” he was referring to salvation through his own shed blood and completed work on the cross.It is because of Calvary that our sins can be forgiven, that we can be healed, and can have eternal life through Christ. Osteen and other preachers of the prosperity gospel avoid the fact that we are all sinners in need of a Savior, and that the wages of sin is death. They cheapen the genuine gospel, turning it into a feel good self help message that requires no repentance. This is why so many are drawn to it—no cross, no confronting one’s own sin, no repentance, no spiritual accountability, no death of self.