Enough of Elevating Prosperity Prebendalism to Gospel -By Ugochukwu Ugwuanyi

Let’s begin by completing the caption: … It’s because “Gospel” means “The Truth” and the unravelling of prosperity preaching has proven that it is anything but the truth! Indeed, key takeaways from the viral panel discussion during Pastor Charles Osazuwa’s SWITCH Conference, themed: EMERGE, show there’s no basis to continue attaching gospel to the pastime of preachers who use the pulpit to propagate crass give-and-take materialism. Calling their preaching the prosperity gospel is a misnomer because it has been established that there’s only one gospel – the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! This Gospel doesn’t concern itself with prosperity – at least not in the manner that it has been bastardised in Nigeria. We shall return to this later.

As it is the manner of politicians, it will interest you to know that political correctness has unfortunately crept into the Body of Christ in Nigeria. This entails speaking tongues-in-cheek and refusing to speak uncomfortable truths so as not to offend entrenched interests or the establishment. This is why it was heartwarming to hear Pastor Yemi Osinbajo defy this encumbrance, to assert that only the Gospel of Christ obtains. He brought to light what has been relegated in Christian preaching to the extent that people forget it’s one of the cardinal pillars of Jesus’s teaching while He walked the earth!

Osinbajo observed this much by saying at that panel: “If we read the New Testament carefully, the sheer number of times that Jesus spoke about giving to the poor; that giving to the poor means giving to him; even this business of building riches in Heaven means giving to the poor; the number of times Jesus spoke about it. If we are going to be honest with ourselves, how often is it preached? Is it ever preached? I’ve been in ministry myself since 1996; it is rare to find… In almost every service, there is a portion dedicated to giving to the Church before the offering. Why do they not emphasise what the New Testament says, which is giving to the poor?”

The former vice president of Nigeria stated this to counter proponents of the biblical perversion called the prosperity or transactional gospel. He is one of the very few ministers of the Gospel who has come up to say what has been an inconvenient truth to many, probably because they believe it would hurt the major source of funding for their ministries. And that’s the problem – “their ministry,” not Christ’s, because if it’s Jesus’s ministry, He will build His Church and the gate of lack can never prevail against it. But then, I digress.

It’s not as if many Christian leaders don’t know that materialistic teaching is a perversion of God’s Word. They refused to distance themselves from it either because they are beneficiaries or don’t want to be ostracised or ridiculed when the chips are down. You only need to hear the lampooning in some quarters of the senior cleric who borrowed N4bn to complete the building of his church as operating outside the covenant to understand the point being made here. Moreover, these “see no evil” pastors are unabashed wannabes of their wealthy senior colleagues who choose to hold their peace based on the principle of: “you can’t attract what you attack.”

Thankfully, there is one who has all along taken the Apologetics aspect of theology upon himself, like the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, demanding that the way of the Lord be cleared of materialism. Now that the issue has attracted more credible witnesses, let it be known that the prosperity gospel is a scam! “No matter how we slice it, there is no such thing as the prosperity gospel. There is only a gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the gospel whose words are contained in the scripture. Anything else is a perversion,” those are the words of Prof Yemi Osinbajo, who became born again when he was already a professor of law. No one can say man doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Even if we agree, without conceding, that there is such a thing as biblical prosperity, which, according to its proponents, is activated by giving, the question that begs an answer is: Giving to whom? It’s definitely not to the God of Psalm 50:10-12 who declared: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.”

Thankfully, this same God specified where our giving should go for it to really matter. In Matthew 19:21, the Lord Jesus categorically told the wealthy man seeking justification: “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Notice that the Master didn’t ask him to bring the proceeds to Him but to distribute them to the poor. How many of today’s pastors with such influence can selflessly recommend such?

Even in the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites in Deuteronomy 15:10 to: “Give generously to them (needy) and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.” It will interest you to know that the reciprocal blessings that come with the prosperity sowing they preach are tied towards giving to the poor, not to the church or pastor. So says Proverbs 19:17 to wit, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed.”

From Matthew 25:40, it can be gleaned that you don’t give to God by giving to your pastor. The verse makes this clear thus: “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ Many biblical verses like this are alien to most Christians because they are rarely preached from in churches. This is why many of them give not unto the Lord but to connect with the grace at work in the life of their man of God.

That is where the so-called prosperity gospel has taken the church in Nigeria. It is virtually the reason most pastors invest in building their charisma, try to be woke, and try to live above lack. Such packaging goes a long way in attracting those who believe they can be like these pastors by sowing into their lives. When they come close, they would be told they’ve come to a fertile ground where their giving yields bountiful harvests. Now you can understand why someone could brag about being “among the few pastors on earth with the oil (anointing) of raising billionaires.” And like someone rightfully replied to him: if he truly has such anointing, why hasn’t he made billionaires of his siblings?

Granted that huge funding is required to run church activities and programmes, ministry overseers must resist the urge to manipulate the Bible lest they fall under the judgment in Revelation 3:14-18. People of the world are increasingly mocking prosperity preachers as taking from the poor while denying them any meaningful benefit from the wealth created by their sacrifices. Men of God shouldn’t give people of the world a reason to say such a thing about them. Rather than resort to exploitation, pastors facing financial difficulties should trust the Source to provide the resource, knowing that He who gives the Vision will always back it with provision – unless they are not called of God! With the Lord’s insistence on helping the poor and needy, wealthy pastors can create dedicated funds to support floundering ministries. That would be a veritable way of helping the poor.

The raison d’être for Jesus’s coming is encapsulated in Luke 4:18 and Matthew 1:21. You won’t find it stated that He’s come to make anyone rich. If there’s such a thing as the prosperity gospel, the Bible would have been among the training manuals in business and economics academies. Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) would also have been a key subject for admission into economics, accounting, and business management departments. If you think it’s because the subject is too esoteric to be relevant in secular disciplines, Bible Knowledge is basic to law degree programmes.

Meanwhile, in the light of the foregoing expose, Christians must seek to know God for themselves so as not to be misled by the very clergymen they look up to. They can achieve this by studying the Word of God and relying on the Holy Spirit for guidance and insight.

VIS Ugochukwu is a Sage, Narrative Architect and Branding Strategist who responds to feedback via X @sylvesugwuanyi