“They are prophets of destruction, these are New Age heretics saying they’ll show the way to salvation, but their cross is a bloodless stick.”
—Steve Camp, “The Agony of Deceit”
They are sly, sneaky, and crafty. They wear a mask and may look attractive on the outside, but inside, they are full of mischief. They seemingly have no fear and they love darkness. You might think I am talking about raccoons—those clever mask-wearing creatures that are master scavengers, prowling in the night.
But truth be told, I am talking about the spiritually bankrupt but materially wealthy con artists known as prosperity-gospel preachers. They are sly, sneaky, and crafty. They wear masks, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They are fearless, bold, and very good at what they do. Their hearts are full of darkness with a seared conscience, readily taking what doesn’t belong to them.
One of the cruelest schemes to come out of the United States is the “prosperity gospel.” This is the belief that God has plans for you in the here and now to receive all the health and wealth you deserve in response to the measure of your own giving and faith.
Prosperity preachers serve up a banquet of spiritual bunk at the expense of the weak, vulnerable, and desperate. They pad their own pockets by pulling the emotional heartstrings of those who want the American dream, with a spiritualized twist, calling you to give to their ministry so that a miracle of sizable proportion will come your way. (More on this in a minute.)
One might argue that the prosperity gospel has done more harm to the church of today than many other scandals, shortcomings, or cultural compromises. It is a deep perversion of the true gospel. What is the true gospel? It is the teaching of Jesus and the apostles that true spiritual life comes only through repentance from sin and faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And for the one who believes in this true gospel, a life of obedience and faith shows itself in denying oneself, taking up your cross daily, and following Jesus.
But you won’t find that line of thinking in prosperity theology. In a helpful and riveting interview, prominent author, pastor, and teacher Dr. John Piper sets forth six keys to detecting the prosperity gospel and its preachers. He summarizes them as follows:1
“the absence of a doctrine of suffering”
“the absence of a clear and prominent doctrine of self-denial”
“the absence of serious exposition of Scripture”
“the absence of dealing with tensions in Scripture” [in other words, a willingness to teach something made up by the preacher that the Bible elsewhere would clearly contradict]
the preacher’s own participation in an exorbitant lifestyle, where he lives above the average person in his parish
the exaltation of “self” and a marginalization of the greatness of God
One of the greatest needs in the church today is the spiritual discipline of discernment.2 The church has become vulnerable to the persuasive messages of prosperity theology due to the fact that many churches no longer teach a gospel-centered, biblically based theology from the pulpit. Much of what is taught today could be categorized as man-centered, therapeutic, and entertainment driven.
Tragically, the measure of a church’s success is often rated in human terms, such as size, scope, sales, and marketing. This focus on externals has robbed the American church of the ability to discern what has real, lasting eternal value and is inwardly transforming. It replaces discipleship with materialism and substitutes authentic Christianity for worldly religiosity.
There are many stories and Bible verses prosperity preachers like to use that are almost always pulled out of context. These false teachers have a knack for taking biblical truth and twisting it or repackaging it in a way that puts the focus on us rather than on God, much like Satan did to Eve in the garden of Eden.
Many like to use the promises to Abraham in the Old Testament as a basis for claiming materialistic entitlements today.3 Others like to take the principle of sacrificial giving and redirect its motives from selflessness to reciprocating rewards and returns of monetary abundance.
Along this latter path of “giving in order to get,” some false teachers have stolen the phrase sowing one’s seed and the story that goes with it that Jesus used in one of his parables. Jesus often used parables as illustrations that helped teach about spiritual matters pertaining to the kingdom of God. Some stories were easy to understand and relate to, others more difficult.
But the story known as the parable of the sower or the parable of the soils is relatively easy to understand, primarily because Jesus himself interpreted the parable for his disciples in private. We then have the luxury of understanding what it truly means. Yet in spite of this, many false teachers find a way to give it new meaning in order to serve their own subversive purposes.
The story is found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), but for our purposes we will focus on the account given to us by Mark, early in his gospel narrative. At this point in his ministry, Jesus had been known to have large crowds follow him due to the miracles he performed and the authority of his teaching. Within such large crowds there was bound to be a large variety of people—some hungry for truth, others looking for a miracle, some just curious, and others skeptical. It was a brilliant time for Jesus to teach about four kinds of hearts that the Word of God may encounter when it is preached—the hardened heart, the shallow heart, the carnal heart, and the receptive heart.
To be able to see and speak to the crowds clearly, Jesus gets into a boat and is in the bay while the people stay on the shoreline. He shares this parable:
“Listen! Consider the sower who went out to sow. As he sowed, this occurred: Some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it didn’t have much soil, and it sprang up right away, since it didn’t have deep soil. When the sun came up, it was scorched, and since it didn’t have a root, it withered. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it didn’t produce a crop. Still others fell on good ground and produced a crop that increased 30, 60, and 100 times what was sown.” Then He said, “Anyone who has ears to hear should listen!”
Mark 4:3–9
The reality here is that Jesus is not talking about money. He’s using an agricultural illustration to show the different kinds of reception the Word of God receives when it is proclaimed in a mixed company of people.
The seed that fell on the path and was immediately eaten without any crop represents the hardened heart. The seed that fell on the rocky soil that doesn’t allow the seeds to take deep roots is the shallow heart. The seed that fell among the thorns that choked out, cut off, or stole the nutrients away from the seed represents the carnal or worldly heart. In each type of heart there is a lack of true saving faith in response to the seed sown (the Word of God).
But the good soil or good ground represents the receptive, believing heart. This is the soil that receives the seed and allows it to take root and produce fruit. It describes the heart of the true believer in Christ. There is real repentance and real belief, and the fruit that springs from it gives evidence of a changed life. This person has embraced the truth, it has taken root in their life, and they are growing spiritually and producing fruit for the glory of God.
Jesus’ explanation helps us see what is happening spiritually.
“The sower sows the word. These are the ones along the path where the word is sown: when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy. But they have no root in themselves; they are short-lived. When pressure or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately stumble. Others are sown among thorns; these are the ones who hear the word, but the worries of this age, the seduction of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But the ones sown on good ground are those who hear the word, welcome it, and produce a crop: 30, 60, and 100 times what was sown.”
Mark 4:14–20
This parable is about the Word of God being “sown as seed” in the world where there is a spiritual battle taking place, where some hearts are hardened toward the things of God, some are distracted and experience-oriented without much depth, some are sucked into and seduced by the trappings of the world that is sold out to self-gratification and the lusts of the flesh, and others are hungry, thirsty, and open toward the truth of God found in the gospel.
Here is where the prosperity preacher twists the meaning of the parable for his or her own benefit. Many of them will say that Jesus teaches the principle of sowing seeds of faith with the promise of a monetary return. It’s true that the parable teaches that real faith will produce fruit, but it is quite a stretch to take a parable about the heart’s receptiveness to the Word of God and use it as a mechanism for weaseling people out of money.
The parable is not about giving money at all. It is not about sowing the seed of faith in any monetary sense in order to get a return. Rather, it is about preaching the Word of God in mixed company, knowing the true believer who receives it by faith will walk away with a life that will bear fruit. The Word of God will bring forth a harvest of righteousness among those who truly receive it by faith.
Recently I watched a video of a false teacher asking his listeners to sow a seed of $54.17 to his ministry in order to “focus your faith” and to take a stand opposing “every devil loosed against you, your family, and your future.” He called it an “Isaiah 54:17 no-weapon seed.” The prophecy of Isaiah 54:17 says,
No weapon that is formed against you will prosper; and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their vindication is from Me, declares the LORD.
NASB
Yet this passage in Isaiah is a prophetic promise of God’s protection of his people that will be ultimately fulfilled when Jesus comes to earth a second time to reign over his people, whereby he will shield and protect them from all enemies. But this false teacher has taken the passage out of context, repackaged it along with the seed-sowing principle, and is promising an “active miracle of protection against the devil,” right here, right now against Satan’s weapons of “disease, divorce, discouragement, doubt, or death.” Somehow, sowing the seed of $54.17 will help you declare victory and prosper by activating your faith in such a way that opposes “the devils loosed against you.”
This kind of sick, twisted manipulation of Scripture in order to conjure up money for a man’s ministry is the type of deception prosperity preachers thrive on. To be fair, believers are to go to battle by putting on the armor of God described in Ephesians 6:10–18, none of which prescribes the giving of money to a ministry as a means of focusing your faith so that you can take a greater stand and declare victory.
As a general rule, Christians should be very cautious whenever they hear a pastor or televangelist using the parable of the soils or the sower as a means of invoking the need to give to a ministry for the purpose of activating their faith and taking a stand against the devil. It’s not what that story is about.
The preacher will tell you that by sending in the funds, you are keeping the devil from prospering against you, but in reality that money is going to help prosper the preacher, who himself is teaching the doctrine of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). So in the end, it prospers the devil after all, since it helps prop up a ministry that is all about deception and greed.
This misuse of a biblical story of seed sowing reminds us of the principle of reading Scripture in context with specific attention to the main point of the story, which thankfully Jesus makes abundantly clear without much need for guessing.
Beware of those who extract biblical phrases and reapply them to foreign contexts in a way that undermines the useful truth that comes from that original phrase. Satan is a master at taking truth and twisting it ever so slightly, but in this case the twist is more than just a slight turn; it is rather a severing of its meaning altogether with the motive of preying on the weak and vulnerable.
The prosperity gospel promises what it cannot deliver and it sells something that you should not buy. Paul said to the Galatians that if anyone preaches a gospel other than the true gospel of Jesus Christ, let there be a curse on that one (Galatians 1:8–9). Jude, the Lord’s half brother, warned us about false teachers:
For some men, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into promiscuity and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. . . . These are the ones who are like dangerous reefs at your love feasts. They feast with you, nurturing only themselves without fear. They are waterless clouds carried along by winds; trees in late autumn—fruitless, twice dead, pulled out by the roots; wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shameful deeds; wandering stars for whom the blackness of darkness is reserved forever!
Jude 4, 12–13
Let us not be naïve. Let us put on the full armor of God against this kind of false gospel and against these kinds of false teachers, so that their weapons of warfare may not prosper against us.