Is Prosperity the Promise of the Gospel?

Can you explain what makes the prosperity gospel so bad? Why wouldn't I want God's blessings in my life?

That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. First up today, we have a good news story to share with you. Earlier this year, architect and designer Rhea Shah found herself stranded in her hometown of Vapi in India and unable to attend her doctoral program in the Netherlands. She was frustrated, but then she came up with a COVID-19 vaccine. With the number of coronavirus cases in India escalating every day, makeshift isolation wards were springing up across the country. That required a huge need for hospital beds and the country was running out of them.

Rhea's solution? She designed a line of affordable, disposable cardboard beds. Since her family owns an industrial paper manufacturing business, it didn't take long for the idea to move from the drawing board to the production floor to the supply chain.

In fact, the process took only about a week from concept to prototype. We'll put a link to an article about Rhea's invention and some photos of those beds in today's CORE Christianity show notes page. That is such an awesome story, although I bet those beds are probably not super comfortable.

I don't know about a cardboard disposable bed. Honestly, one thing I think that we've all noticed during this season of coronavirus is the creativity that's been birthed out of it. Even for churches trying to think through what is it going to look like for us to worship in a way that's safe and responsible.

It's taken a lot of creativity, but it's amazing to see people put their brains together to make it happen. Yeah, people have been stepping up all over the world during this coronavirus, and that's been encouraging to see. Well, let's get to our first question of the day. Rose emailed us this. She says, Hello, I have a question about 1 Peter 4-6, which says, For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. As far as I understand, there is no opportunity for salvation once people have died. But in this passage, what does it mean that the gospel was preached to those who are dead?

Thank you. I love that we're starting the show with this question. I mean, talk about getting right into a difficult passage of Scripture in one, Rose, that has caused a lot of people concern, because as you say, it seems that we confess as Christians that once you die, that's it. And yet, is Peter suggesting the opposite here?

Well, we have to understand the context. And in the context of 1 Peter, Peter is encouraging believers to suffer with Jesus, to follow Jesus faithfully, even if it means martyrdom. I mean, the church was being persecuted, heavily persecuted at this time. And so note verse 1 of chapter 4, Peter said, Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. He's calling the believers in his day to faithfully follow Jesus, even when it means suffering, to abstain from the sinful things that are taking place in the world, to follow Jesus, and to know, look, it's not going to be easy. Now, there are a few interpretations of this passage.

One is the one that you're alluding to, this idea of a second chance. You know, is Jesus preaching to those who are dead, giving them another opportunity to receive the gospel, that kind of a thing? Well, that can be ruled out at the outset, just simply by the fact that Scripture makes it absolutely clear that that's not something that happens. You think about a passage like Hebrews chapter 9, verse 27, and just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the judgment. It's very clear there. Or you think about even that parable that Jesus gave of the rich man and Lazarus, which makes it absolutely clear that once a person dies, I mean, that's it.

Their destiny is sealed. And so we have to be careful here. One of the really important principles of Bible interpretation I think that can guide us is this idea that the clearer passages of Scripture are meant to help us interpret the less clear passages of Scripture. And I think 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 6 is one of those less clear passages. I mean, there are just all sorts of different ways in which it has been interpreted.

Well, we want to make sure that the clearer texts of Scripture, like some of the ones I just referenced, Hebrews chapter 9, verse 27, are helping to guide us in understanding a text like this one. Now, another interpretation is that Christ is proclaiming his victory over the dead. And so it's not that he's preaching the gospel to the dead so that they might have a second chance of salvation, but that it's Christ as the triumphant one, the one who died and is going to rise again. He preached to those who were dead.

He proclaimed his victory. And in that sense, the proclamation of the gospel is not so that they might be saved, but so that Christ in his ministry would be vindicated before those who rejected him, before the dead who had rebelled against God. That's another interpretation. The interpretation, though, that I think works the best is that this is referring to those who had the gospel preached to them and are now dead martyrs, if you will, those who had given their life for the faith and have the hope now of eternal life. Again, 1 Peter 4.6, for this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. And remember, the context here is he's encouraging believers to faithfully follow Jesus, even when it means suffering. And he's setting before them here, I think, the hope of life, even in the face of death. Now, we might be judged in the flesh the way people are, that is condemned by the world, but we will live in the spirit. Now, a parallel text here is if you go back to chapter 3 in verse 18 of 1 Peter, it says this, For Christ also suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. I think there that's referring to the resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit. And it's that same hope that Peter is putting before his audience in his day. And what a hope we have as Christians that, yes, we might suffer for following Jesus, but we know what's on the other end. After the cross, if you will, comes the resurrection. We have the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and that's what Peter is setting before these Christians who are experiencing immense suffering so that they might continue to cling to the truth and faithfully follow Jesus. I think that's the best way of understanding that text, Rose.

Rose, thanks so much for your question. If you have a question for us, we would love to hear from you. You can go to our website at corechristianity.com slash radio and post a question there. That's what Chris did. And Chris says, Do you think it's right for the church to pay pastors? Wouldn't it be better for pastors to earn their living at a different job rather than asking other people to support them? Isn't this just using God's name to guilt people and take advantage of them? Well, I'm not biased here or anything, but I do think it's good for churches to pay pastors. Actually, I think it's biblical. Now, I recognize that that's not always possible and that there are many faithful pastors who work bivocationally, you know, or who don't even receive anything from the church because they pastor a very small church that's unable to support them.

And so I know that that happens, especially in other parts of the world. You think of third world countries, many of these places, pastors are working bivocationally, and we have to pray for them and remember them. But there is something biblical to this, Chris. Certainly under the old covenant, the priesthood was supported by the covenant people. Now, we don't have a priesthood today.

Jesus is our high priest. But I think there's a sort of parallel there that we can sort of draw from and understanding, you know, pastors, ministers today who are serving the church, receiving their living from the work that they do and preparing sermons and caring for the people of God and pastoring, shepherding. And in fact, this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 14.

In the same way, he says, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. Now, ordinarily, I think that's how it should be. Of course, again, I've already said that's not always how it is.

It just doesn't work out that way in some contexts. Another passage, though, that we could look at is 1 Timothy 5, verses 17 and 18. Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages.

Both of those passages, that text in 1 Corinthians 9 and in 1 Timothy 5, I think indicate that it's right. It's good to pay our pastors. I remember some years ago, I struck up a friendship with a man, an older gentleman Mormon guy. We actually met because we were doing some street evangelism at a big park out here in San Diego, and he liked what we were saying to a group of atheists that we were talking to.

And so he and I became friends, and we would talk about the Bible. We'd talk about the church. We'd talk about Mormonism.

We'd talk about the gospel Christianity. And one of the things that he would tell me is, he'd say, you know, what's really great about Mormonism is we don't have any paid clergy. We don't have any paid pastors. He was treating that as a positive thing. This is a good thing. We don't pay our pastors.

We don't need to, that kind of thing. And I told him, sort of tongue in cheek, his name was Gale. Gale, if you guys paid your pastors to study the Bible, you probably would find that a lot of them stopped being Mormon.

He sort of laughed, you know. And the reality is, we want to have a high view of the ministry of the word, and we want the people who are teaching God's word to understand it, to have studied it, to labor, if you will, in the word and for the church. And that takes time.

It really does. You know, sometimes I think that we just sort of assume that, you know, the job of a pastor is, what's the big deal? I mean, anybody can do it. We just sort of, you know, get these nice feelings when we study the Bible, and we just share those feelings with other people.

No. I mean, ordinarily, I think pastors should study Hebrew and Greek, you know, know theology, church history, go to seminary, those kinds of things. I mean, that's what we should want. We should want pastors who are trained to rightly divide the word of truth, because there's nothing more important than what we believe about God. You wouldn't go to a doctor who had never studied or learned his trade on YouTube by watching YouTube videos.

You say, yeah, I'd rather pick a different surgeon, one who actually was trained. And yet, I think when we think about studying scripture and learning God's word, we just sort of assume that pastor's job, no big deal, anybody could do it. Well, the reality is, is our pastors should be called. They should be men of character. Paul makes this clear in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1.

They should be competent, able to teach, studied, understand God's word, the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, the historical debates that have happened surrounding God's word so that they can rightly proclaim the truth of scripture. These are all really important things. And so I think because of that, we ought to support them. We ought to pay them. And I just want to encourage you and support your pastors, care for them, take care of them as churches, as they labor to serve you.

And I think ordinarily that's how it should be. And that's what these passages of scripture indicate. 1 Timothy 5, 1 Corinthians chapter 9. And so pray for them, support them. And are there pastors who take advantage, Chris, of the church, who are just feeding off the flock, if you will, instead of feeding the flock?

Yes. We see that in movements like the prosperity gospel. We see that even in evangelical churches. And we do have to be aware of that and careful. And yet at the same time, I think that warning, that danger shouldn't keep us from supporting faithful pastors who are rightly dividing the word of truth and caring for the flock.

Thanks for your question. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. And last week was National Suicide Prevention Week. And today we are offering a resource on a related topic, depression. Yeah, Bill, you know, we created this resource to give you a foundational understanding of what depression is and how Christians can best help someone who suffers from depression.

And it really is everywhere around us. This resource is called Nine Things Everyone Needs to Know About Depression, and it's free through our website. Just head over to corechristianity.com forward slash offers to download Nine Things Everyone Needs to Know About Depression.

I'm so glad that we are addressing this as a ministry, because unfortunately there's a lot of, I think, misunderstanding about depression in the church and how depression can be treated. So please give us a call for this resource, 833-843-2673. That number is 833-THE-CORE.

Let's get to a call that came in, Adriel, this one from Doug, who called us from Kansas. We have what we call a common set of books, apparently in the Bible, and I was wondering why the Apocrypha was separate. It was in some like Catholic Bibles and other Bibles, but the run of the mill, apparently King James, they decided to take it out. I thought that you should neither add nor take away from the Bible, but yet they have this whole separate set of books that they've kept out of the most Bibles in circulation. Anyway, that's my question.

Thank you. Yeah, Doug, the question here is, were those books added to the true canon of Scripture, or were they taken away? What you find in the books that we're referring to here are books like First and Second Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, I mean, there are several of these Apocryphal books, Old Testament, and there are even some New Testament ones.

The Old Testament ones, or the ones that were categorized with the Old Testament, were written in between the time of the end of our Old Testament canon with the Book of Malachi and the New Testament, sort of intertestamental period. The Jews and the people of Jesus's day did not receive these books as a part of authoritative Scripture. In fact, they weren't even quoted by Christ and the apostles as authoritative Scripture.

You think about with all of the quotations given to us by Jesus and the apostles of the Old Testament, thus sayeth the Lord. I mean, these quotations establishing doctrine, I think that this is a significant point. They weren't declared Scripture until the 16th century at a council that the Roman Catholic Church held called the Council of Trent, and that was really born out of debates that they were having with Protestants, with men like Martin Luther, who claimed that these books were not supposed to be included in the canon of Scripture.

And this wasn't just something that they were making up, it was also really something that you saw among the early church fathers as well. I mean, there was a differentiation between these Apocryphal books and the received canon of Scripture among the Jews. And so it seems that these books were a later addition, and that's why they're not in translations of the Bible that most of us as Protestants use. Early on, as I said, it does seem like these books were not treated as equal with Scripture, and they also present several doctrinal discrepancies. There are things doctrinally in these Apocryphal books that we wouldn't say line up with the teaching of the Bible as a whole, Old Testament and New Testament. So some of these things, you know, what was taught, the fact that they were written a little bit later, the fact that Jesus and the apostles don't seem to have received them as authoritative Scripture, and the Jews in Jesus' day didn't seem to receive them as authoritative Scripture, have led us to believe that these actually aren't supposed to be a part of the Bible. Now, again, like I said, there are some traditions, chiefly the Roman Catholic Church, that does include them, but that wasn't even really authoritatively defined until the 16th century. And so I think there's good reason for us to be suspicious of these books.

Now, that doesn't mean that they're all bad or there isn't some good stuff to glean from them historically, but at the end of the day, we don't treat them as God's Word, and so because of that, they're not included in many of our Bibles. Thanks for your question. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

You can post your question on our Facebook or Instagram accounts. You can also email us at questions at corechristianity.com. Claudia posted this on Facebook, and she says, How do you define God's blessing, Claudia? What makes the prosperity gospel so bad is that it is a false gospel. Ever since the days of the apostles, we've had to be on guard against false gospels. The book of Galatians was written at a time where essentially a false gospel was gaining traction in the church. Paul said at the beginning of Galatians that people were preaching a gospel which was not even a gospel. It wasn't good news, certainly not the good news according to Scripture. And I would place the prosperity gospel in that same category.

It's not truly good news. It sells us short of what the good news of the gospel really is, and the focus of that gospel is the forgiveness of our sins, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The first question we received about 1 Peter, I talked about how the context of 1 Peter was the fact that we as believers might suffer with Jesus, will suffer with Jesus, to follow Jesus, but that the hope that we have is in the resurrection of the dead. It's not that I'm going to have a life that's free from suffering, a life that's filled with prosperity and health.

Now, it's not that those things are bad things in and of themselves. But here's the thing, Claudius, that's not what's promised to us in the gospel. In the gospel, the message of the Christian faith, God is not promising you or me money, health, wealth. What He's promising you is the forgiveness of sins, communion with Him, fellowship with the true and the living God.

That's better than anything else this world has to offer. You know, there was a guy in the Old Testament who really learned this lesson the hard way. I'm thinking of Asaph in Psalm 73. He talks about in that Psalm, and I would just encourage you to maybe take some time this afternoon to read Psalm 73 with this question in mind, and he talks about how he'd look at the wicked, and he was jealous. He was confused and even concerned because it seemed like they were blessed.

They had everything they wanted. They were full, they were rich, they were healthy, and yet he felt chastised by God. And he really struggled with this.

He said he almost stumbled. I mean, it was really something that was giving him this sort of crisis of faith, and then he says he went to the temple of God and he understood their end, that one day they're going to perish. And he says, as for me, the end of that Psalm, the nearness of God is my good.

Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. He says so beautifully in Psalm 73, my flesh and my heart might fail, but God is the strength of my life and my portion forever. The problem with the prosperity gospel, Claudia, is that it focuses on this world and stuff, material things being our portion, our ultimate hope, when God says, no, I am your portion, I am your ultimate treasure, and in the gospel I give you myself. So it's not that we don't want God's blessings, it's that we don't want to define God's blessings as something other than the forgiveness of sins and communion with the true and the living God offered to us in the gospel. If we define them as something less than that, riches, health, and we take people's eyes off of the true gospel, the preaching of repentance, the forgiveness of sins, well then we're preaching a false gospel, and that's why it's so dangerous. And we've seen this prosperity gospel go to the farthest corners of the world from the United States, and it's devastating communities, because it's taking their eyes off of Jesus, and it's placing their eyes onto themselves, onto these physical blessings that they hope that God will give to them, or that they think God owes to them. And that's not what the word of God teaches, and so we have to be so careful, Claudia, that we're rightly discerning the word of God, understanding which promises apply to us, which promises were for the saints in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant, not confusing those things, and ultimately embracing the true gospel that the apostles proclaimed, that Jesus proclaimed, lest we be confused and ultimately condemned for embracing a false gospel.

Wow, powerful response to that question, Adriel, thank you. We have time for one last question here on Core Christianity. This is from Joe, who posted on our website, he says, I was driving to Las Vegas last weekend, and I saw a couple of billboards that says, Jesus saves, repent, and the end is coming, etc. Is this really an effective way to witness? Has anyone ever been led to Christ through a billboard, or let's say even a gospel tract? Joe, I don't put a limit on what God can do.

I know that there are people who have been positively affected by things like this. I mean, the Spirit of God can use whatever He wants, even a Bible verse on a billboard. And so I think it's easy to say, you know, I have the best way of evangelizing, or this is the best way of evangelizing. I heard one person once put it like this, the best kind of evangelism is the kind that you're actually doing, because we can talk about, you know, what the best way is and never actually do it. I don't think that there's anything wrong with having a billboard that has a Bible verse on it, certainly not, and gospel tracts, I don't think there's anything wrong with those either. God can use those. But I prefer, you know, building relationships with people and sharing.

It's getting to the point where you're able to care for them as a person, not treat them as a project. And because you love them, because you care about them, share with them the message of eternal life. We should boldly proclaim that whether we're putting it on billboards or having someone over for dinner and saying, I want to talk to you about Christ and what He's done. Let's share the faith because it's good news. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at CoreChristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this podcast and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together. Thank you.