I say to all
mercenary charlatans masquerading as ministers of light, I detest
your marketing gimmicks. To fatten your already bulging bank accounts,
you turn Me into just another marketable commodity. You perceive
Me as the ultimate slot machine, and thus you misrepresent Me to
your vast television audience.
“You
can’t outgive God” is your favorite motto. You serpents!
How cunning you are, the way you twist a bit of Scripture and lace
it with lies until it becomes a very lucrative heresy to enrich
you. “Put God to the test,” you say. “Go fetch that
money set aside to pay the rent.”
I did promise
to bless My people whenever they followed My directives in giving
liberally, but the exact amount will vary from person to person,
according as he is truly able. I did exhort My people to prove My
promise to bless them for their obedience in this area, but I also
specifically commanded them never to put the Lord their God to foolish
tests. Yet you greedy ones tempt My sheep to jump off the cliff,
just like satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness. Gullible souls
are told to give “the Lord” the rent money, because “there’s
bound to be be a divine safety net to avert a disaster on rent-paying
day.” Some of you even promise that special angels will move
into the donor’s house to keep the blessings rolling in. Thus
you counsel your listeners to overreach the boundaries of their
immature faith, and act presumptuously, so as to force My Hand.
But I am not a circus animal Who must jump through a hoop at your
slightest whim.
“Send
it in as a special, ‘one-time’ offering to this ministry,
and trust God to meet you at the point of your need, just before
the landlord brings the sheriff to the door to serve an eviction
notice on you,” you imply. “In fact, God MUST multiply
it back to you a hundred-fold! One hundred dollars will grow into
ten thousand. You can’t get better odds in Las Vegas! Plant
a seed out of your need, is your jaunty jingle.
I am weary
of your clever catch-slogans. I hate your phoniness, your studied
gestures and mannerisms, your gaudy carnival act cloaked in cunning
craft. I detest your subtle, manipulative techniques which border
on sorcery. I loathe your slick, multicolored mail-outs with warnings
not to “miss Jesus as He passes by” (your mailbox?). I
even hate the way you modulate your voice when you make a syrupy
appeal on TV for a special “Prove God” offering. Rather,
I say, it is a “Tempt God” offering, the way you workers
of deceit court my displeasure.
My, how slick
your routine has grown with practice. Even the melodramatic groans
of the canned organ music rise and fall in sync with the convulsive
contortions of your phony face as you shed crocodile tears and extend
your hand in supplication for ever more money, playing people’s
emotions like a fiddle. And your usual closing line is: “God
bless you. We love you.”
For the moment,
the lonely shut-in gets a nice cushy feeling. Why, you have him
or her eating out of your hand. How could that dear saint deny money
to someone who says “I love you?” So she hurries to get
pen and paper to write down all her prayer requests. With a boldness
gained from being psyched up by your spiel, she writes out a much
larger check than is wise, and sends it to someone who is only using
My Holy Name to further his own tawdry kingdom.
The dear lady
thinks: Oh, glory! That sweet brother said he’d PERSONALLY
touch God for my needs. I can’t wait to hear from him! But
little does she consider that you hear from thousands of poor souls
just like her, and you couldn’t possibly read, much less bother
yourself with, her personal trials. And just what do you mean by
“love”? What good would your ministry be to someone made
homeless by following your counsel and doing something presumptuous
which I never commanded him to do? After all the hundreds or thousands
of dollars which he sent in to your religious racket, would you
send him so much as a dime to keep him fed and off the street? And
why wouldn’t you help that person, if you truly believe giving
makes a person richer? Aren’t you motivated by money? Why,
then, don’t you practice what you preach?
Get your cheap
trash out of My sight! You’ve got no right to stamp My Holy
Name on those Miracle Key Chains and other cheap trinkets mass-produced
by impoverished laborers in third-world nations! Neither do I endorse
your assortment of Faith $eed Packets mailed out to vulnerable,
hurting souls! Your slick junk mail implies that if the recipient’s
“seed packet” is not postmarked for tomorrow’s mail,
there will be no answer to prayer, because God’s Special Season
of Miracles has an expiration date, and will soon pass you by like
a fleeting wind! As if the flow of My mercy were regulated by the
flow of the Almighty Dollar, or the schedule of the U.S. Postal
Service!
“Claim
a Cadillac,” you say. “But first plant the seed, and what
better seedbed than this ministry? Don’t stop paying on your
$2000 vow, or you’ll stop God from blessing you. How dare you
undercut the magnitude of My fathomless love! How dare you insult
My mercy! How do you greedy snakes expect to escape the damnation
of hell!!!
Judgment must
begin in My House. I behold you fat preachers gorging yourselves
on delicacies while you fail to feed the flock what they need, and
preach only mild messages which won’t rouse them from their
torpor. “Go away, I don’t have time for your troubles,”
is your attitude. Yes, all you see out there is a shapeless gray
mass of common peons who render their tribute to you as one of the
ruling elite. You always travel in style. Your clothes are the finest
money can buy. Your home is a virtual palace filled with the latest
in electronic gadgetry. Some of you possess several homes. You take
frequent vacations to to exciting destinations, and always go first-class.
And all because some lonely, frightened, desperate soul “sowed
a seed out of his need.”
Yes, the laborer
is worthy of his wages, and those who faithfully serve Me in full-time
ministry must be honored and well provided for by the rest of My
Body. From the beginning I ordained it to be so. But I also said
to my disciples who were to take My spiritual blessings to the four
corners of the earth: Freely ye have received, freely GIVE!
All you fraudsters
ever give Me is grief!