Prostituting The Gospel

 I want to warn you up front that what I write here will offend some and step on toes of others.  I’m sure after you read this I will have some people who will agree with me and others who will not.  However, you choose to let your swing swing is fine with me!  I am not writing this to appear arrogant, a self-righteous know it all or to say that I’m perfect and I never make mistakes!  I’m probably more flawed and goof up more than any of you, too flawed and too imperfect to judge anyone.  One of my favorite sayings about my writings is ….it’s like eating fish, eat the meat and spit out the bones. 

  I’m just writing this to point out a major problem that is running wild in the Body of Christ today.  I wanna’ talk about the money changers in the Temple of God and what they are selling in the modern world: Matthew 21:12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, Matthew 21:13 “And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves”.  You can see here that Jesus was not a ‘happy camper’!  This is an example of godly righteous anger in action.  Many people like to think that God is only about love and that this means He is nice all the time and will put up with our blatant disrespect indefinitely.  Not so!  Here in Matthew 21:12 Jesus goes into the temple in Jerusalem and starts throwing out those who were there to profit from God’s Word.  These people in the temple were all religious people who knew what the scriptures said and they used this knowledge to make God’s work and His Word a business that caused them to get rich and profit from what did not belong to them.  So Jesus got angry and threw them all out!  Do not get me wrong, being rich is not a problem at all, but how you got rich is!  If you are using God’s Word to prosper you or your ministry then you are a modern day money changer in the temple of God and at risk of being driven out before Christ returns for His church very soon.

  There are many and I do literally mean many so-called Christian ministries that are in danger of this today.  All you have to do is go on the internet and search for them and you’ll find them.  They have literally thousands of tapes, CD’s,  DVDs and books for sale that clearly have huge mark ups and profit margins built into them.  They have taken the Word of God that was given to them for free (freely your received, freely give) and put a price on it because it's  valuable to someone and they can sell it to fill their own pocketbooks in order to have bigger mansions, fancier clothes, finer cars and bigger jets.  This is what I call prostituting the Word of God for money and it’s going on everywhere!  Just turn your TV to any Christian network and you’ll see what I’m saying is truth!  According to many, anyone is free to go to their website and spend hundreds even thousands of dollars to buy all of their ministry materials and they will be mailed directly to them.  But, do not ever think you can make copies of them and give them to anyone else or they will sue your pants off because of the copyrighted gospel only belongs to them.  This is called a gospel funnel.  An effect that satan loves.  If you limit the Gospel to go through one source of distribution only, it causes the Gospel to in effect be easily stopped or at the least severely hindered.  Does any ministry have the right to be a funnel for the TRUTH?  What if Paul had had this attitude?  Would we have most of the New Testament today?  How did the early church grow into the fastest known religion from 0 to thousands in only a very short time?  Could it be the fact that there were no funnels limiting the spread of the truth?  Could it be the fact there were no copyrighted gospel ministries?  All of this sounds a whole lot like the people in the temple who were profiting from selling doves and sacrifices for the people to obey the Word of God.  If only the rich could afford to buy their sacrifices, then the poor were in trouble. 

 This is the same situation we have in the world today.  We have a bunch of ministries that are preaching a rich man’s gospel and the poor are left out to fend for themselves.  These are ministries that are interested more in making a dollar than they are reaching the lost with the Word of God.  These are ministries that Holy Spirit came to for free and taught them what to teach to His people and they turn around and think they own the message. 

  Who do they think they are?  This makes me sick to my stomach and very angry!  This is no different than the money changers in the Temple of God that Jesus drove out with a whip.  If the people of Israel could not afford the money changers prices they did without a sacrifice that year.  What if the apostle Paul had had that attitude?  I would be willing to bet you that Paul would not have written 2/3 of the New Testament for us to have today.  He would have seen how much money he could have made from the revelations of the mystery of the Gospel and only give this valuable information to the rich who could afford to buy it.  Thank you, Paul, for sharing freely the awesome revelations given to you by the Spirit of the Living God!  

  Who do these people think they are?  Did I miss the memo saying that God stepped down from the throne and put any one of them there?  Read what Paul said about this subject and pay very close attention to the Word of God and what He says:1 Corinthians 9:18 What is my reward then?  Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel. Paul clearly tells us in 1 Corinthians 9:18 that his reward is great because he has freely given the truth to everyone without charge.  Paul further calls the charge of the gospel and abuse of the power of God!  Are you understanding what God just said?   If you’re making any money from the gospel, you are abusing God’s power and losing your eternal reward. 

 These are not my words!  I did not make this up!  Is this not what your Bible says about selling the Gospel?  So, do I sound like the ‘bad guy’ here?  Are you going to shoot the messenger and ignore the message?  In closing I want to leave you with the commandment and great commission given to the Church by our Lord Jesus Christ: Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.  Freely you have received from God, so therefore freely give to all men.

 A scripture I’ll leave you with….”May your money perish with you because you thought you could purchase the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:20) 

In His love,
Elizabeth