I had a few email exchanges with this guy last night. He, who has been involved with that church in question for the last 10 years, tried to defend its teaching as being evangelistic and from the Bible. And then he quoted Malachi 3:8-12 to back up his claim, as a “biblical” proof that God wants us to be generous and prosperous…
Dodgy!!!
the transition from OT blessing to NT blessing often gets obscured, even when Jesus makes some pretty clear, obvious and unambiguous statements about wealth.
Had a thought about this a couple of days ago, but seems like you created the entry first…
The logic seems to be like this:
- If you do good, God will bless, bad, God will curse. Or If you are Abraham’s descendant (or God’s people), God’s is on your side
- Sice we’re made perfect in Christ, and included in His Kingdom
- Then we should inherit God’s material blessing (e.g. Abraham to the nations, Genesis 12)
Probably I would lovingly ask the sobering, putting back into reality question, “What’s the role/value/purpose of material wealth in God’s salvation history ?”, and based on the answer, follow up and gently lead to the right direction…
Instead of answering the question, I’ll suggest reading through Tony Payne’s article on charismatic christianity in the current issue of Briefing. The key here is about the “timing”. Bible demands our generousity? Yes. Bible promises us prosperity? Yes. Conservatives and charismatics would agree on both of them. But in the prosperity Gospel, God-given-wealth comes as present reality, with direct correlation to the amount of your generousity. Such teaching is not from the Bible.