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| Worship at NightLight International, Bangkok |
I don't watch "Christian" TV. Much of it is heretical. At the heart of a lot of the heresy is the "Prosperity Gospel," which says, "Give us lots of money, and God will make you rich." This ridiculousness is why Michael Brown writes:
"While I am absolutely unashamed to be called a Pentecostal-Charismatic believer, I am terribly ashamed at many things that are done in the name of the Holy Spirit today, especially by leaders on “Christian” TV. Without a doubt, if this represented the true core of the Charismatic Movement, the heart and soul of who we are, I would never want to be called a charismatic again. It would be similar to how Baptists would feel if Fred Phelps, the notorious leader of Westboro Baptist Church, was the poster boy for the Baptist Church in America." (Michael Brown, Authentic Fire: A Response to John MacArthur's Strange Fire, p. 13)
Brown quote one of our greatest New Testament scholars, Gordon Fee, on the Prosperity Gospel. Fee writes:
"American Christianity is rapidly being infected by an insidious disease, the so called wealth and health Gospel—although it has very little of the character of Gospel in it... The cult of prosperity thus flies full in the face of the whole New Testament. It is not biblical in any sense... besides being non-biblical, the theology that lies behind this perversion of the Gospel is sub-Christian at several crucial points. ... despite all protests to the contrary, at its base the cult of prosperity offers a man-centered, rather than a God-centered, theology."
(In Ib., p. 15)
