Here we will analyze some quotes from some well known Prosperity Gospel preachers and therein demonstrate the deceit, falsehood, and overall misleading nature of the message which they preach.  

From Benny Hinn: “Where in the Bible does it say I have to drive a Honda?”

The implication here is that Christians are supposed to have the best things in life and that pleasure on earth is never or rarely opposed to obtaining the glory of Christ’s eternal kingdom.  

Benny Hinn has also said: “”I’m sick and tired of hearing about streets of gold (in heaven).  I don’t need gold in heaven, I’ve got to have it now.” (TBN, December 9, 1990)

The Bible rather teaches in principle that no one is so important that they are entitled to a car at all- since it teaches that things which aren’t obtained honestly, things which are in any way obtained through choosing covetous values, and status symbols in general are evil to have.  

Dishonestly obtaining money would definitely include a preacher telling people, whether explicitly or implicitly, that giving to them will somehow be a factor in whether they obtain earthly gain themselves.  Without this deceit, every single prosperity preacher would be out of business and would have to actually work to eat.

2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”

No one is even entitled to food, let alone a Honda (in many parts of the world a Honda is considered a luxury- to this day).

The Bible indeed teaches a value system which makes light of and even despises a luxurious lifestyle.

Colossians 3:1-2 (if you want to make a Prosperity Gospel preacher work, expose their hearers to this passage- they’ll have to work hard to convince people that it doesn’t mean what it says) : “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”

1 Timothy 6:17-19: “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”

There goes the luxury car (even for the one who has made their money honestly and doesn’t need to give it back or give it away because they gained it deceitfully).  

You can’t even have the heart towards riches that is required to obey Biblical admonition while having a fancy car (or the many fancy cars in Benny Hinn’s case) or having anything else that everyone can see is intended as a boasting display of status and pride.  

Along the same lines, we read in 1 Corinthians 7:29-31: “But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.”

Does the Bible make a stark, evident contrast between living for the things of earth and the things of heaven?  Absolutely.  

Matthew 6:19-24: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.  If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Does the Bible even warn about false teachers who don’t live consistent with Biblical instruction and exhortations in this regard?  Yes.  

Philippians 3:17-21: “Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example.  (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”

The more blatant of these enemies of the cross of Christ who speak in His name (like the Prosperity Gospel preachers) give cover to the more subtle ones, thus increasing the complication and making the realm of professing Christianity exceedingly perilous and difficult to navigate now.

Speaking of a blatantly deceptive statement from a blatantly deceptive deceiver, Prosperity preacher Paula White has publicly said: “Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan.”  

Even though former President Trump, whom White has been a spiritual advisor to, doesn’t renounce her, she renounced Jesus by this statement.  Jesus, the real Jesus, not the fake jesus whom the Prosperity preachers serve, openly taught that we must deny self, take up our cross, and follow Him in order to inherit eternal life.  

Paula White truly equated the real Jesus with Satan when she said that anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan.  The very fact that she blatantly disregards the Bible’s commands related to women teaching and exercising spiritual authority over men, and many other things about her, should make this a surprise to no one.  

It is notable that there are many women preachers  in the Prosperity Gospel camp who teach men the Bible and lead them spiritually.  It is also notable how the supposed men of God in the Prosperity camp do not rebuke and stand against them but rather yoke with them.  It is also notable how most or all of these big name Prosperity preachers on TBN and other networks yoke with the Roman Catholic Church and support modern Israel (each dealt with in several of our other messages).  They only thereby further show that they are governed by their own belly; not by the truth of Scripture.

And by the way: Roman Catholics who see through the Prosperity Gospel preachers should also consider that their own church yokes with them.  

2 Peter 1:16-21 says: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.  For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.  And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.  We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.  For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”  

And then we’re told in 2 Peter 2:1-3 (remember that there are no chapter breaks in the original text; the train of thought from what we just read is continuing and hasn’t been broken): “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.  And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.  And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.”

“Privily” in this passage could have been translated as craftily.  The Prosperity Gospel people are a lot more blatant and easier to spot than many false teachers, yet they can be crafty overall in promoting their satanic trash and making it sound credible.  The itching ears of people are their greatest ally.

Another quote from a Prosperity preacher then, this one is from Bill Johnson.

“Much of today’s church relies more on a book the early church didn’t have, than the Holy Spirit they did.”

By a book he means the Bible or the individual books of the Bible.

The Prosperity preachers will quote from the Bible when they can twist it for their own devious ends, yet they will omit the things in it which prove them to be frauds.  They will even occasionally denigrate the Bible (like we’ve just heard how Bill Johnson has done)- because its whole counsel refutes their lies.  

The New Testament is actually the product of the early church being guided by the Holy Spirit (by early church, I mean the faithful Christianity preached and practiced by Christ’s faithful Apostles).  The early church was instructed by and gave heed to the Old Testament, the already existing Scriptures in the first century, because its content had already been inspired by the Holy Spirit.  God had not changed then from who He had been- and He has not changed now.  God is unchanging.

In relation to Johnson’s quote, here is another one from Prosperity Gospel preacher Todd White.

“And if you are a religious without relationship person, you will study the Word, to find the ways that you can expose all the false teachers that are out there and not realize that you’re actually leading people to hell.  I say that, again.  It feels so good inside as you study religion, but you do not have intimacy or relationship.  God did not create you to have a relationship with a book.  God did not create you to have relationship with a book.  I am not to have a relationship with a book.”

Note the clear inference from this quote that those who take heed to “the book” do not have a relationship with God.  Yet it was the devil who did not want Jesus to reference “the book” (the Bible; the written Word of God) when he tempted Him in the wilderness.  

Matthew 4:3: “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” 

Jesus didn’t take the bait precisely because He referenced “the book.”

Matthew 4:4: “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

No one will go to hell for calling a false teacher a false teacher.  Those who call true servants of God false teachers will go to hell for doing so (because the false accusers are liars who are breaking the commandments of God; that is, the commandments of “the book.”)  “The book” (the Bible) is on the true servant of God’s side.  It is the false teacher which walks in darkness whom the Bible has a controversy with.  

Isaiah 8:20: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

Jesus prayed concerning His disciples in John 17:14-19: “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.  I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.  They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.  As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.  And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”

Though some use Biblical discernment who willfully don’t align with the Bible in every way they could themselves, exercising Biblical discernment and saying others should do so sends no one to hell.  We actually need to do this in order to be spared from hell.

The Apostle Paul told the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:26-31: “Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men.  For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God (my comment: he had taught them out of “the book” and he had used “the book” to expose false teachers; he is telling the Ephesian elders here to continue doing the same).  Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood (by the way: we see the Trinity implied here).  For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.  Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.  Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”

You can know a grievous wolf for certain when someone who stands up as a supposedly Christian teacher decries and/or downplays Biblical discernment of false teachers.  

The Prosperity preachers say that sickness and poverty are of the devil- though they get sick and die anyways themselves.  They get rich by convincing people to give to them to somehow allegedly ensure the ones giving will not be sick and end up in poverty.  

The Prosperity preachers all somehow attempt to equate giving to God with giving to themselves.  

And they always, unless perhaps they were to not do so as a publicity stunt, provide a verbal, pressure-packed, emotionally manipulative opportunity for you to somehow give to them as a staple of their messages.  

They also never offer to give money to their audience- though they would actually do so if they really believed the things which they told their audience to persuade those in it to give to them.  

And it is also notable that most or all of these Prosperity Gospel preachers speak in the gibberish tongues (Biblical tongues are other languages of earth- not gibberish).  These Prosperity preachers also further violate Scripture by speaking in the gibberish tongues publicly.

I have done another message on lessons from the 1970s documentary called “Marjoe” where an admitted shyster named Marjoe reveals his techniques for getting people into psychologically altered states so that they do things like fall over backwards, speak in gibberish tongues, and think they’ve been healed at his events (all in the name of Jesus; all claimed in the moment to have happened by the power of the Holy Spirit- all later admitted to be fake though the people participating in them thought it was real- and Marjoe wasn’t even screening those who came on stage to be prayed for like most or all of the big name alleged healing evangelists do).  

We’ll end with another quote from Benny Hinn: “The Bible warns us clearly that we must not attack men of God no matter how sinful they may have become or wicked in our eyes.” 

Anyone who knows the Bible to any significant degree, and is being honest, can see the oxymoron in this statement.  The Bible rather warns that the tree is known by its fruit and that those who commit sin are of the devil.  There is no partiality with God.  He commands us not to have partiality in ourselves by respecting persons.  That will sometimes involve calling the man whom you really don’t like truthful and sometimes involve calling the alleged “man of God” a servant of the devil.

The wolf in sheep’s clothing will look for ways to keep up the scheme and protect itself when it is being exposed.  These Prosperity preachers epitomize grievous wolves and are prime examples of mockers of the true God.

Jude 17-18: “But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.”

1 Timothy 6:3-10: “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness (epitomized by the Prosperity preachers): from such withdraw thyself.  But godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.  And having food and raiment (clothing) let us be therewith content.  But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare (a trap), and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition (eternal damnation).  For the love of money is the root of all evil (of all sorts or every manner of evil): which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 

Though they usually don’t admit this after it has happened- and they may even yet be preaching in Jesus’ name- perhaps even on television and before stadiums full of people.

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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