by David Van Biema
Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise — that God will "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."
Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: "The pastor's not gonna say, 'Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,' but I have heard, 'Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you'll get that house or that car or that apartment.' " Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: "It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, 'If you give this offering, God will give you a house.' And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy." If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.
Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are "worthy of having more and doing more and being more." In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.
But Walton suggests that a decade's worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity's bloodstream. "The economic boom '90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message," he wrote recently. And not positively. "Narratives of how 'God blessed me with my first house despite my credit' were common. Sermons declaring 'It's your season to overflow' supplanted messages of economic sobriety," and "little attention was paid to ... the dangers of using one's home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations."
With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that Prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and they are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants' fortunes. Says Walton: "You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology." But he predicts they will persevere, since God's earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.
A recent publicly posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God, near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on Scriptural promises of God. But the believer's note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. "Last Sunday," it read, "You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1,020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace."
And pray that the credit market doesn't tighten any further.
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Source found HERE!
Now back to our Scheduled Programing...
Irresistible GraceA grace that cannot be resisted and always works in the manner in which God desires.
Since grace is undeserved by any person, Irresistible Grace teaches that when the Spirit of God is sent to change a person's heart, that person cannot resist the change. This is when the Spirit of God applies the work of Christ to the soul. This does not mean that the person is unwilling to be changed because the Spirit of God is "fighting against them", rather the Spirit changes the heart of stone to beat as a heart of flesh. The change opens the eyes of the spiritually blind to the work of Christ. It is that which the Spirit of God does on his own, previous to any act of man. The Spirit of God will accomplish what He is sent out to do and will not be frustrated in His work of changing the sinner's heart. There are two types of calling upon people, external and internal. The external calling is the preaching of the Word to men's physical ears. The internal is the Spirit of God changing the heart to respond inwardly to the Gospel message. This is the means by which the blood of Christ is applied to the heart and conversion takes place. Here is where the Spirit of God alone draws men to Christ. The Spirit of God then causes the heart of the sinner to be willing to repent of his sins, believe on the Lord Jesus and come to Christ.
John 6:37, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me;"
John 5:21, "For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will."
John 10:16, "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd."
Romans 8:29-30, "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified."
John 3:3, "Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (See tract on Regeneration.)
Acts 13:48, "And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed."
Ephesians 1:19-20, "And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,"
1 Corinthians 4:7, "For who maketh thee to differ from another?".
Puritan Quotations on Irresistible Grace:
"So that, you see, the Spirit of God, where it works in men, though they live in different places, yet they shall all believe the same truth and all receive the same faith." Christopher Love
"The internal call is when the Spirit of God accompanies the outward administration of the Word to call a man from ignorance to knowledge, and a state of nature to a state of grace." Christopher Love
"Calling is the gathering of men together in Christ so they may be united with Him." William Ames
"The passive receiving of Christ is the process by which a spiritual principle of grace is generated in the will of man." William Ames
"The inward offer is a kind of spiritual enlightenment, whereby the promises are presented to the hearts of men, as it were, by an inward word." William Ames
"That there is such a thing as a spiritual and divine light immediately imparted to the soul by God, of a different nature from any that is obtained by natural means." Jonathan Edwards
"As the prejudices that are in the heart, against the truth of divine things,
are hereby removed; so that the mind becomes susceptive of the due force of rational arguments for their truth. The mind of man is naturally full of prejudices against the truth of divine things: it is full of enmity against the doctrines of the gospel; which is a disadvantage to those arguments that prove their truth, and causes them to lose their force upon the mind. But when a person has discovered to him the divine excellency of Christian doctrines, this destroys the enmity, removes those prejudices, and sanctifies the reason, and causes it to lie open to the force of arguments for their truth." Jonathan Edwards
"This calling is an act of the grace of God in Christ by which he calls men dead in sin and lost in Adam through the preaching of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit, to union with Christ and to salvation obtained in him." Francis Turretin
"Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons." Stephen Charnock
"In the first creation, God made man after His own Image. So in the second creation or regeneration, God doth create men after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, true holiness, and love."
Vavasor Powell
"Repentance is a change of the mind, and regeneration is a change of the man." Thomas Adams
"There may be several things which may help to make the life fair in the eyes of men; but nothing will make it amiable in the eyes of God, unless the heart be changed and renewed. All the medicines which can be applied, without the sanctifying work of the Spirit, though they may cover, they can never cure the corruption and diseases of the soul."
George Swinnock
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Article borrowed from A Puritan's Mind. <<
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