Gospel Prism

I’m leaving for South Africa tomorrow. If you have time, please lift up a prayer for me and my team. But as I go, I read this article in Christianity Today entitled, “Gospel Riches.” Listen to this False Gospel:

Pastor Michael Okonkwo rises from his gold-coated throne before 4,000 onlookers in Lagos, Nigeria. “Hallelujah!” bellows the self-proclaimed “father of fathers, pastor of pastors,” wearing a glittery green gown. The crowd stands and roars.

A 62-year-old former banker and graduate of the Morris Cerullo School of Ministry in San Diego, California, Okonkwo touts a seminar called “Financial Intelligence”; if you’ve missed it, he encourages you to buy the tapes. Okonkwo describes the “intelligence” he preaches in his book Controlling Wealth God’s Way: “[M]any are ignorant of the fact that God has already made provision for his children to be wealthy here on earth. When I say wealthy, I mean very, very rich. … Break loose! It is not a sin to desire to be wealthy.”

Bishop of the Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM) since 1988, Okonkwo presides over the annual Kingdom Life World Conference of 150 prosperity-oriented churches. But tonight he yields the podium to the Rev. Felix Omobude, who urges the crowd to dream big. “There are so many dream killers around,” he says. “Don’t let them kill your dream.”

Omobude prophesies: “Your tomorrow will be better than today. In 2007 you will take your place.”

The crowd is thrilled. Omobude promises that women will find husbands, audience members will buy new cars, and the barren will birth twins.

To open themselves to this blessing, Omobude encourages the crowd to give N25,000 (about $200). Local schoolteachers earn only $150 per month, so the amount is significant. Yet more than 300 people swarm Omobude, who rubs oil from a bowl on their palms. Within minutes, the church nets a tax-free $60,000.

Similar scenes unfold every day in countless venues throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where prosperity-tinged Pentecostalism is growing faster not just than other strands of Christianity, but than all religious groups, including Islam. Of Africa’s 890 million people, 147 million are now “renewalists” (a term that includes both Pentecostals and charismatics), according to a 2006 Pew Forum on Religion and Public life study. They make up more than a fourth of Nigeria’s population, more than a third of South Africa’s, and a whopping 56 percent of Kenya’s.

This is why so many will despise Christ, because they will associate Christ to this false Gospel. How this must break the Lord’s heart. And so, how much more the true good news is needed overseas to counteract this anathema. This is just another reason why churches that do hold the true Gospel must go overseas, because of disturbing messages like this.

And where does this all come from? Right here in the good ole U. S. of A:

The worst brand of African prosperity teaching is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an American export. Experts cite various reasons for the spread of this kind of renewalism, better known as health-and-wealth, including:

• American lifestyles have led African believers to equate Christian faith with wealth.

• Traditional African values often link material success and spiritual success.

• The African “Big Man” ideal honors rich, powerful leaders such as prosperity preachers.

And then there is television. As Pentecostal-charismatic programming has flooded Africa, renewalist numbers have risen from 17 million in 1970 to 147 million in 2005. The continent’s largest religious broadcaster is Santa Ana, California–based Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), followed by Europe’s GOD TV.

As TV sets grow common in African cities, these broadcasters are gaining huge audiences. People who lack a TV often watch with neighbors, and viewing options are limited. In Zambia, only three stations click on: MUVI TZ, which airs reruns of U.S. shows and old movies; ZNBC, the Zambian National Broadcasting Company; and TBN. Television is becoming the continent’s religious classroom.

“People turn it on and assume that TBN is American Christianity, and Americans know everything, so why not listen to it?” says Bonnie Dolan, founder and director of Zambia’s Center for Christian Missions, a Reformed school for pastors. “[W]e have Zambians looking to the West for direction, and they associate TBN with the West. And it’s killing our churches.”