Jim Bakker Show

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.  

“Sowing and Reaping”, “The Widow’s Mite”, “30, 60 and 100 fold return”, “The Cheerful Giver”, “Don’t Eat Your Seed” and even tithing taught in some forms, are just some of the topics that have been twisted and manipulated to extract more and more money from trusting congregants.  On the surface, all of these messages seem valid.  But, you have to go a little deeper to fully understand the reason money messages are being preached more than others, and what their effects have been on the masses.  The motivation to give and/or tithe should be out of obedience and not with the intent of what you get in return, which is what the emphasis is for most of these messages.

During the first two years of my ministry, my budget was fifty dollars each week. By the time I lost PTL in 1987, I had to raise a million dollars every two days . . . and it wasn’t enough. The more money I raised, the more we spent, and the more we needed to raise. I should have listened to Solomon, who gave us the key to true success. He said, “Now all has been heard; / here is the conclusion of the matter: / Fear God and keep his commandments, / for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccl. 12:13–14 NIV). That’s what really matters, not the accumulation of material things. Financial gain is no indication of God’s pleasure. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:1 NKJV). Unfortunately, few people I have ever met are truly content; most of us have an insatiable appetite for more, more, more.

I will be eternally grateful to God for apprehending my life and drawing me into the valley so that He could teach me what He really thought about money.  In searching out the scriptures, I concluded that Jesus didn’t have one good thing to say about money! The “Prosperity Gospel” I had taught was a complete misrepresentation of the messages taught throughout the scriptures.

It was a course-correction I will never forget.

Today, much of the “Prosperity Gospel” is still being preached in lieu of the Revelation Message.  Even with everything that is happening in our world that screams from our daily headlines about the Second Coming, this perverted message of money often pre-empts it. Why?  I believe it’s because people don’t want to hear a message of what they perceive as “gloom and doom” and the preachers know this.  Stay tuned for my next blog on that point.  Having itching ears, they heap up teachers that will tickle them.  If they preach about Revelation, they lose some people and their income drops.  If they talk only about how people can be blessed, blessed, blessed – everybody wins!

So, it’s good for the preacher (keeps money flowing in) and good for the people (tickles their ears), and everybody stays happy in “Happy Church.”

Or do they?

In an effort to extract more and more money from their listeners, preachers teach all of this money gospel with the promise of the return of a multiplied MONEY blessing.  This has created what we refer to as a “give to get” gospel.  This is a false gospel and when it doesn’t come through for the giver, it sometimes shipwrecks their faith!

Many people have left the church, broken and disillusioned with what they believed to be a spiritual truth, but what was, in fact, false teaching.  This isn’t a ‘Santa Claus’ god we serve, but a God who is worthy of all our worship, in the good times and in the bad, in valleys as well as the mountaintops.

Jesus wasn’t against men having money, He was against money having men.  It’s a heart matter.  Money is not the root of all evil; it’s the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil.

Thankfully, many people are now beginning to wake up to the deception of this (and other) false gospels and rejecting them altogether!  But there were some who believed with all their hearts what they were taught and were virtually destroyed in their faith when the promise of monetary prosperity did not materialize!  Some left the body of believers and scattered like frightened and skinned sheep!

Those who have taught this false gospel will be held accountable for those sheep who were destroyed and scattered – unless they repent!  I used to teach this doctrine, until I studied the Word of God and found the truth. I love ALL pastor’s and I have made this mistake too. Let’s all stand together believing for eyes and ears to be opened, and for hearts to be changed.  None of us want any of our leaders to experience the “woe” that comes unto those who would ignore the correction.

Jeremiah 23:1,2  Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.  Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away , and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.

Woe is Me – Introduction
Woe is Me – Part 1
Woe is Me – Part 2
Woe is Me – Part 3
Woe is Me – Part 4
Woe is Me – Part 5
Woe is Me – Part 7
Woe is Me – Part 8
Woe is Me – Conclusion

Woe to the Shepherds!

One of the most scathing rebukes found anywhere in the Bible is in Ezekiel 34.  It is a rebuke to the shepherds, or in today’s culture, the pastors.  The Prophet Ezekiel was not the least concerned with sparing anyone’s ‘feelings’ when he gave his politically incorrect rebuke in the 34th chapter.  He was concerned with saying what the Lord instructed him to say.  He didn’t water it down, and he didn’t consider how it might put him in social jeopardy.  He was not afraid of the shepherds, but he did have a healthy fear of God, something the modern Church seems to lack.

In my next few blogs, we will be looking at the Woes to the shepherds (pastors).  This is one area of woes that you won’t hear preached very much.  Why?  This message about shepherds feeding themselves and not the flock may have been given centuries ago, but it is prophetically relatable to the modern-day Church.  God showed me in prison, that we (pastors and myself included) had been preaching a false, made-up money gospel.  I have repented of that and I continue to preach against it.  But, it still permeates much of the Christian teaching you hear everywhere.

SKINNING THE SHEEP

In our desperation to maintain huge budgets, we have carelessly misused Scripture to our own advantage. In this regard, the prophet Ezekiel’s warning to spiritual shepherds sounds as though it were written in our generation:

Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals” (34:2–5 NIV).

Clearly, the anger of the Lord expressed through Ezekiel was a result of the spiritual leaders’ callous concern for their own well-being, rather than being concerned about the needs of God’s people. God wanted shepherds whose hearts’ desire was to care for the sheep, not skin them alive. He still does.

One night while I was sleeping in a prison cell, God gave me another dream, a dramatic vision in which He showed me a picture of the church, the body of Christ. In the dream, the people of the church appeared as cattle being herded along in a line. I was horrified when I saw the sight, for these cattle had no skin! They were a bleeding, raw mass of flesh.

As I viewed the pitiful scene, I sensed God speaking to me. “This is what My leaders have done to My church—they have skinned them! They are being herded toward destruction by the shepherds; they are hurting and bleeding.”

I awoke shuddering with fear and an attitude of repentance. I vowed, “Never again do I want to be associated with anything that even hints at impropriety. Never again will I even hint that godliness is a means of financial gain.”

To Titus, Paul wrote of the requirements to be a spiritual leader, teaching that the bishop or overseer “must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain” (1:7 NASB). Then, in an effort to alert Titus and other spiritual leaders to be on their guard against those teachers who were propagating false doctrine, Paul warned, “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake” (1:10–11 KJV).

Granted, Paul’s main concern in this admonition was that spiritual leaders know sound doctrine so they could refute the errors being propagated by those believers who felt they should maintain the rituals of Judaism along with their newfound Christian faith; but it should not escape our notice that money was a motivating factor for the perpetrators of those false doctrines. It is still the same today. Money motivates much of the mixed-up, watered-down gospel messages being presented.

Woe is Me – Introduction
Woe is Me – Part 1
Woe is Me – Part 2
Woe is Me – Part 3
Woe is Me – Part 4
Woe is Me – Part 6
Woe is Me – Part 7
Woe is Me – Part 8
Woe is Me – Conclusion