This makes me mad!

Today I received one of the supposed “Saint Matthews Churches” infamous mailings. I’ve received them before, but once again I opened my mailbox to find some of their junk. Here’s what they look like in case you’ve never been so fortunate to receive one of their mailings:

So why does this make me mad? Because I hate people using God as a rip-off scam to start with! His Name is drug through the dirt as a result of these types of scams. Prosperity preachers and things like this have caused so much damage to Christianity and to the message of the Gospel! Granted, this particular mailing makes no request for money, but if I was gullible enough to respond I know their next correspondence with me would!

This makes me mad because they are trying to take advantage of the poorest people in our country. I live in a very poor county so this is why I received one of these mailings. Not only do they try to take advantage of the poor by promising prosperity (if of course you’ll give them a “seed gift”) they also take advantage of those who are going through very difficult circumstances in life. These people are often the most vulnerable and are desperate for any type of hope – and so they fall prey to this type of scam, all done in the Name of Jesus. Oh, and your prayer requests which they seem so interested in praying for, they go up in smoke!

This makes me mad because I know I have some people who attend my church who have fallen prey for this type of think in the past. It breaks my heart to see people trust in a low-life scheme like this rather than just trusting in Jesus!

It makes me mad because of the Scripture twisting that goes on with this type of thing. God never promised us prosperity and money – He promised never to leave us or forsake us no matter what we may face. God never promised us “Your Best Life Now!” Do you think the prosperity message applied to all of the saints who have died for the faith? Did they not have enough “faith”?

So, this makes me mad. Somehow I think it makes Jesus mad as well – temple cleansing, bull-whip wielding mad! If you receive some of this junk in the mail, do with it what they do with the prayer requests that are sent in – trash it, burn it, just get rid of it!