John Piper and the Prosperity Gospel
The following is a video someone made from one of John Piper’s sermon in regards to the abberant gospel of the faith movement. The properity gospel tells half truths and centers its focus on man and all that we can get instead of God as the all encompassing treasure of eternity. The prosperity gospel makes us focus on the blessing, instead of the blessed one, and negates the gospel that is given to us through suffering, so that those that suffer could have great hope in its object, Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 8:9)! The richness here has nothing to do with financial sucess, but the riches of the joy and hope we have in Christ on this earth and the life to come in Him!
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Powerful video.
I agree, the Gospel is about Jesus Christ, not about me!
My flesh states that I would rather have some prosperity for my comfort rather than live like the poor in a dirt hut – I’ve done both.
On my travels overseas it has always been painful to see local, indigenous churches trying to “look like us”. Pastors and more relatively well-to-do attendees wearing suits, choirs in old robes that look like cast-offs from our High school graduations.
But, like Paul states in Philippians, we need to be content in what ever circumstances we are in.
We need to be about mission in the circumstances God has placed us in.
I have always had an aversion to the health/wealth/prosperity gospel, but I hadn’t really processed it, I guess, until I saw this. I happened to be studying the value of suffering at the time and this video really stirred something in me. I started thinking about it how wrong and damaging the prosperity gospel is. You have to ignore half the Bible to really believe it. Anyway, I got really into it and wrote a big long blog about it on my myspace.
Thanks for sharing this.
Amen!