Friday, September 01, 2006

A Diseased Dollar

One of the most popular prosperity teachers on Christian television these days is Creflo Dollar. Today I was checking out his web site just to see what his idea of salvation involved. He writes:
The word salvation comes from the Greek word soteria, which means "deliverance, perservation and safety." It primarily involves deliverance from the bondage of sin (Galatians 5:1), but also includes deliverance from enemies (Luke 1:71) and from sickness and disease (Isaiah 53:4 AMP; Matthew 8:17; 1 Peter 2:24)....salvation involves a process that will not only guarantee you entrance into heaven, but will also position you to experience a complete life on earth.
Here is the predicament that followers of these teachers are put in: people like Dollar promise that not only will Jesus save you from your sins, but that you'll be delivered from your enemies and from sickness, disease and poverty.

Now, we all know that just ain't gonna happen! You are going to get sick and eventually you just might even die. You are going to have financial problems - your spouse will probably see to that! Enemies are going to come against you - especially on April 15th. So what goes through the mind of a Dollar Follower who gets sick, loses his job, or runs into money problems and hasn't been able to buy that Jaguar yet?

When a prosperity teacher is asked why someone isn't receiving all the good things in life, he will invariably tell the Christian that they don't have enough faith and that there is probably sin in their life messing up what God's trying to do for them. The unspoken logical conclusion becomes,
If I don't have enough faith to be healed and to have wealth, then how can I have enough faith to be saved?? Since these things are happening to me, maybe I'm not even a child of God! Maybe I don't have eternal life!
This, then, is the deadly disease these wolves are spreading!

2 Comments:

At September 01, 2006 8:00 PM, Blogger Mike Messerli said...

Robert,

Great post. Good to find your site. I pastored in Tulsa at the beginning of the WOF movement, we called it "Charismatic Disneyland" at the time, but it's not so funny anymore.

What started in the early 70's on a degree off of plumb has, over the last 30 years, become a major cult.

I look forward to reading your thoughts.

 
At September 08, 2006 12:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've heard that this guy's nickname is "Cash Flow" Dollar.

 

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