In this episode Trent examines the faulty claims of “prosperity preachers” like Kenneth Copeland who promise to wealth to Christians who tithe (to their ministries).
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. In today’s episode, I want to help you understand a part of something that is called the prosperity gospel, or the health and wealth gospel.
Trent Horn:
So prosperity theology became really popular in the mid-20th century with Pentecostals. They thought that a person could know God favored him because that person received spiritual gifts, or what are called charisms.
Trent Horn:
Now these gifts were usually things like prophecy, speaking in tongues, but gifts of prosperity and comfort, these became really popular saying, “Oh, not just speaking in tongues, you’ll get money and health if you love God and you tithe.”
Trent Horn:
Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, these are the guys saying this, and still saying this, with Copeland. And they said, “You need to plant seed faith. If you give a financial gift, like to your favorite televangelist, you plant a seed, it will grow. And then God will bless you with money.”
Trent Horn:
Robert Tilton, a televangelist called this the Law of Compensation. So it’s the idea that if you give to God, to the televangelist, God will give back to you. So giving is more like an investment. This seed faith idea, plant a seed gift.
Trent Horn:
And so, like I said, Robert Tilton called this the Law of Compensation. Kenneth Copeland calls it the Law of Prosperity. Prosperity preachers always use this.
Trent Horn:
Oral Roberts, put it this way. “Luke 6:38 says, ‘Give, and it will be given to you.’ We must first plant a seed of faith so that God can multiply it back to meet our need.”
Trent Horn:
So in this episode, I want to show you why this Law of Prosperity, Law of Compensation, is, it’s bunk. And it’s sad because you’d think people would just be able to see it’s ridiculous to think that God is going to automatically give us money just because we gave him, more accurately, these preachers, money. But a lot of people, they get caught up in this.
Trent Horn:
In 2006, Time magazine did a survey. And one third of the Christians in the survey said, “If you give your money to God, God will bless you with more money.” Which is not how it works all the time.
Trent Horn:
So let’s dive into the Law of Prosperity, the Law of Compensation, seed sowing, goes by many different names. Here’s an example from a prosperity preacher, Jerry Savelle. I want you to see how slick he is.
Jerry Savelle:
And this lady came up to me after the service and I’m teaching on the Laws of Prosperity. She came up to me after the service, said, “Brother Jerry, I want to be your partner.”
Jerry Savelle:
I said, “Well, that’s very kind of you. I appreciate that.” She said, “Now my husband died,” and she called it a pension. She said, “And I get a little pension from the railroad. He worked for the railroad and I get a little money from the railroad. And that’s what I live on. But I’m going to send you a dollar a month, every month.”
Jerry Savelle:
And I said, “Well, sweetheart, I appreciate that. That’s so kind of you, but I’d feel like a dog taking that dollar from you. I mean, you’re living on a pension and all you can sow is a dollar a month. I don’t feel right about taking your dollar.”
Trent Horn:
So it starts off nice. Right? Hey, he doesn’t care about money. He’s not going to fleece this older woman.
Trent Horn:
All con men start off this way. Most scams that I see on the internet, they begin by saying, this is not a scam. If you have to say it’s not a scam, it’s probably a scam. So keep listening.
Jerry Savelle:
She put her hands on her hip. She wasn’t about this tall. Put her hands on her hip. “You don’t practice what you preach, do you, boy?” I said, “Yes, ma’am, I do.” She said, “Well, what you preached today, I’m about to get off my fixed income and you’re blocking it.” Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Jerry Savelle:
I’m preaching in Jackson. And after the service, this lady came up to me and she said, “Brother, Jerry, you don’t know me, but I know you.” I said, “Well, how do you know me?” She said, “Well, my mother was your partner for over 20 years.” And I said, “Well, I, what was your mother’s name?” She said, “Oh, you’ll remember her. She sent you a dollar a month.” I said, “Oh, you mean Miss So-and-so?” And I called her name. She said, “That was my mother.”
Jerry Savelle:
She said, “Brother, Jerry, I just want you to know that $1 a month that my mother sent to you for over 20 years made me a wealthy woman.”
Jerry Savelle:
I said, “Tell me the story.” She said, “Well, after mom died, I was an only child. And so our property, we had a farm with a lot of acreage. It was turned over to me. I inherited it. And one day out of the blue, the city of Jackson decided they just couldn’t live without my property, because they wanted to expand. And they paid me top dollar. And I’m a wealthy woman today. And I attribute that to my mother sowing $1 a month for the last 20 years, praise God.”
Jerry Savelle:
Isn’t that an amazing story?
Trent Horn:
What’s sad is that true generosity, it can be seen in the widow’s mite, the widow who gave a single mite, a single coin, to the temple. And she didn’t expect anything in return.
Trent Horn:
It’s not charity if you expect a return, that’s an investment. And in this case, it’s a foolish investment, though I don’t blame the people who are caught up in this. I blame predatory prosperity preachers.
Trent Horn:
Here’s Kenneth Copeland writing in his book about the Laws of Prosperity. Here’s what he says. “Do you want a hundred fold return on your money? Give and let God multiply it back to you. No bank in the world offers this kind of return. Praise the Lord.”
Trent Horn:
Now you might be thinking Kenneth Copeland, he’s just being metaphorical, right? Oh no, no, no. Here’s what his wife, Gloria Copeland said that people can expect if they give on their investment, which is their charitable giving to the Copelands. So I just can’t believe it. What she’s saying to them. “Oh, don’t worry. Here’s what you can get with your seed gift for us.”
Trent Horn:
She writes, “You give $1 for the gospel’s sake and a hundred dollars belongs to you. Give 10 and receive a thousand dollars, give a thousand dollars and receive a hundred thousand dollars.” Here’s my favorite part. “Give one airplane and receive 100 times the value of the airplane. Give one car. And the return would furnish you a lifetime of cars. In short, Mark. 10:30 is a very good deal.”
Trent Horn:
We’ll talk about that in a sec, but I love that. “Give an airplane.” You’ll get… Who’s going to give him an airplane? Kenneth Copeland wants an airplane. He wanted his followers to give him 65 million dollars to buy a private jet to do God’s work.
Trent Horn:
Here he is on Inside Edition, defending his actions of trying to get his followers to buy him probably one of the most expensive private jets that exist.
Interviewer:
Isn’t it true that you want to fly commercial so that you can fly in luxury? How much money did you pay for Tyler Perry’s Gulf Stream jet, for example?
Kenneth Copeland:
Well, for example, that’s really none of your business, but-
Interviewer:
Isn’t it the business of your donors?
Kenneth Copeland:
Listen, I’ve paid.
Kenneth Copeland:
You kind of caught me off guard here, okay. And I prayed about it and I thought I’m not missing that dedication in Jerusalem. Without the airplane that we have that I bought from Tyler Perry. And I didn’t pay anywhere… Tyler’s one of the greatest guy. He made it, he made that airplane so cheap for me. I couldn’t help, but buy it.
Interviewer:
Again. Getting back to the comment. You said that you don’t like to fly commercial because you don’t want to get into a tube with a bunch of demons. Do you really believe that human beings are demons?
Kenneth Copeland:
No, I do not. And don’t you ever say I did.
Trent Horn:
In any case, here’s how prosperity preachers twist the Bible to support their views. Let me talk about the Bible verses they cite.
Trent Horn:
Luke 6:38 Oral Robert says, “Give and it will be given to you.” You got to first plant that seed of faith so God can multiply it back to meet our need. Luke 6:38.
Trent Horn:
Mark 10:30 is another one. “What is given to you will be given back even more in return.”
Trent Horn:
But here’s the problem with these verses. They’re not unconditional promises of prosperity. They’re not talking about material prosperity. Luke 6:38 is part of the sermon on the plain. Jesus is teaching about being generous with mercy and forgiveness, because you’ll get back even more of that. He, Jesus, says, “The measure you give will be the measure you get back.” This parallels a Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, “With the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And the measure you give will be the measure you get.”
Trent Horn:
So if you give mercy to people, and forgiveness, God will make sure you receive mercy and forgiveness. Most importantly, from him.
Trent Horn:
Now here’s what Jesus says in Mark. “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time.” Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands. So what’s going on here? The prosperity preachers say, “Oh, if you give money, God will make sure that you get hundreds of times worth the money going back to you.” That’s not what it says here. It’s primarily talking about family members. So it’s clearly not literally saying I’m going to get hundreds of new biological family members. This verse is not about a guaranteed return on a tithe.
Trent Horn:
This verse is about God’s care for people who gave up their lives to serve him. That even if you have to give up your earthly family, you’re part of an eternal heavenly family where you’ll experience heavenly blessings for all eternity that are not just hundreds, they’re infinitely better than what we would have on Earth if we chose what was on earth instead of God.
Trent Horn:
All right? So we can see they abuse Mark 10:30, Luke 6:38. The Bible nowhere says that if you give money to charitable causes or to preachers, you’re destined to get even more of that back.
Trent Horn:
It’s okay to give money to a cause that you find to be helpful. If you believe in something you should donate to it.
Trent Horn:
For example, I believe in the Against Malaria Foundation. I think they do great work. So for a little bit amount of money, I can keep someone from dying from malaria.
Trent Horn:
That’s corporal work of mercy. I also give to help the spiritual works of mercy. We donate to a cloister convent because I just want these great little nuns praying for the whole world. Keep at it. That might be the one thing keeping the world from falling apart.
Trent Horn:
But I don’t give my money thinking that God’s going to, oh, pat me on the back and make life perfectly easy for me afterwards. It might get tougher, but that’s not the point. The point is just to do good because God has done so much for us.
Trent Horn:
But here’s the ultimate argument though against the prosperity preachers. And that would be poor Christians. They say, “If you have faith and you give, God will lift you out of poverty.” But there’s lots of people all over the world, sincere, faithful Christians who give what little money they have to good causes. They’re still in poverty. So how does the prosperity preacher explain that?
Trent Horn:
Instead of just facing the obvious truth, which is that God does not always bless us with material prosperity, even if we do his will. Prosperity preachers, what they end up saying is, “Oh, it’s their fault. They didn’t really trust God. They didn’t really have faith.” The worst is, “They didn’t give as much as they could.”
Trent Horn:
Give me a break. Get on your jet and fly out of here with that. And, that’s ludicrous.
Trent Horn:
So on the face of it, you can see that is absurd. But we can do one better. Fine. I’ll give you a poor Christian who definitely carried out God’s will and had faith. And that would be Jesus, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, who perfectly followed the will of the father, right?
Trent Horn:
He was God incarnate. Hebrews 4:15 says Jesus was without sin. John 5:19 says that Jesus always did the Father’s will. So if that’s the case, then Jesus should have been the richest person in the ancient world. And obviously he was not. Now, Jesus was not.
Trent Horn:
There was no comfortable middle class in the ancient world. You had luxurious wealth, somebody like King Herod. And you had relative poverty. Now some people were destitute. Jesus was not a beggar, but he was not wealthy.
Trent Horn:
2 Corinthians 8:9 says that Jesus became poor. Philippians 2:7, he took the form of a slave. And Luke 9:58 says that Jesus had nowhere to rest his head. The fact of the matter is that Jesus was a nomadic preacher when he died. The only thing he had to his name was a seamless garment, his tunic that the soldiers did not want did not want to be torn.
Trent Horn:
And that’s because Jesus is our model for us to show that holiness is our goal. Some of us might be blessed with the wealth. Wealth can also be a curse too for people. But whether you’re blessed with wealth or we have different trials, we should always remember, well, remember what St. Paul tells us in his letters. “You know the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that by his poverty, you might become rich.”
Trent Horn:
Of course, what does 2 Corinthians 8:9 mean? Jesus, didn’t become a man so that we wouldn’t have any problems in this world whatsoever. Being Christian can be the beginning of your problems. You are ostracized, standing up for the faith can be hard. Those aren’t the riches Paul says God wanted to give us.
Trent Horn:
God became man so we could be rich in his grace, in his favor, in his friendship. So that we’d be able to persevere no matter what situation we’re called to, whether we have wealth or we lack wealth, whether we have health or we lack health. We can be like Paul, who said, “I am content in any circumstance because I’m rooted in the cross of Jesus Christ.”
Trent Horn:
And each of us carries a cross in different ways. And we should help one another. Galatians 6:2 says we should bear one another’s burdens. And prosperity preachers are a deformation of the gospel because they don’t want to carry other people’s burdens. Instead they want to make excuses. And they want to enrich themselves at the expense of others that they have manipulated.
Trent Horn:
And it’s just so sad that they walk away just fine and others give money thinking, and they’re in difficult situations, and think this is their way out. When what they need is someone who knows, loves them, and cares about them. They need someone, a Christian to truly give their money to the poor, to help them so that they… It’s hard for somebody to give their life to Christ, to grow in faith if they’re starving. Mother Theresa said something like that, I’m sure she did. I, I wrote the book on what the saints never said. I’m sure she said something like, “It’s hard for a poor person to hear the gospel when their stomach is roaring at them.” Maybe she didn’t say that. Maybe I said that. Whatever, you can borrow, run with it, but yeah.
Trent Horn:
How is someone going to hear the gospel if their stomach is roaring at them? We have to meet their needs, their material needs, but not just stop there. We also have to share and use words, and maybe apologetics even, to share the gospel with them. Just like Jesus said when the people followed him, Lord, you multiplied the bread. We will more bread. We don’t ever want to go hungry. And Jesus says, “You keep eating this bread, you’ll always go hungry. I’m the bread of life. And if you feed on me, you will never go hungry. You’ll have eternal life.” Talking about the Eucharist, talking about himself.
Trent Horn:
That’s what we need to share with people. And if we can help people to move away from the siren song, or the prosperity preachers, and place themselves before the altar, before Christ, who became the ultimate poor. He comes to us in the form of humble bread and wine for us to receive him. That is the true riches that Christ has given us. That’s what we should share with people.
Trent Horn:
Hope that was helpful for you all. I have a whole chapter on the prosperity preachers in my book, Counterfeit Christ. Definitely check that out. And yeah, I just hope that you all have a very blessed day.
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