Why I Hate Prosperity Doctrine - 1

1) Because it guts the Gospel.

Jesus said, where your treasure is that is where your heart will be. Prosperity doctrine makes a treasure of material gain, while forsaking the spiritual treasures of faith, hope and love. - That is faith in the power of Jesus Christ to save, hope in His return and the Kingdom come, and the agape love of God which forms the basis of His work in us and the reason He sent his Son in the first place (John 3:16).

2) Because it becomes a measure of spiritual performance.

I recently read an article that was utter crap on the Kenneth Copeland website. Unfortunately I can't find it now to link back to, but essentially it took biblical hope (hope that rests in Christ and His sufficiency) and turned it into a spiritual automatic teller machine - my paraphrase; "when you hope for something with the fullness of faith here in this world, your faith reaches up to heaven and takes hold of the thing you are hoping for there and makes it manifest here in this world".

The problem is if your "faith" and "hope" aren't manifesting stuff (in Kenneth Copelands case - jet airplanes - this a real beauty) in this world then you just aint spiritual enough brother! You are "tying God's hands" and "preventing Him from blessing you in the way He wants to bless you".

I find this particularly disturbing when I consider the predominance of this kind of extreme Pentecostal, American teaching in developing countries such as Rwanda (where I do a bit of work as an operative) It is aborhent to think of Christians in places like this, stuck in the extremes of poverty thinking they are simply not doing "it" right because gold dust isn't manifesting on their shoulders or dollar bills appearing under their tables.

Part 2 coming soon.