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A horrible thing has happened in this land—priests are ruled by false prophets, and my people like it so! But your doom is certain…They are swindlers and liars, from the least of them right to the top! Yes, even my prophets and priests! Yet the priests and prophets give assurances of peace when all is war.

--Jeremiah 5:30, 6:13-14 (Living Bible)

Although most faith teachers and others stubbornly resist the comparison, the conditions prevalent in Israel in the days of Jeremiah before the Babylonian invasion form a striking parallel to the conditions prevalent in America today. In fact, most faith teachers have a low view of the Old Testament in general. They often speak of the Bible as being "progressive revelation" as if the New Testament were a correction on the errant concepts of the Old. Consider this typical statement: "Sometimes we get a distorted view of God from reading the Old Testament, especially in the Scripture where it says that God sent these things…The King James Version of the Bible states that God sent fiery serpents among them. No: God didn’t do it at all. It was their own words that caused the fiery serpents to come…Their own set it in motion. GOD DID NOT DO IT. Their words caused it to come to pass…" (Charles Capps, Voice of the Word, May-June 1979). Even if you buy the explanation from one Hebrew scholar who said these verbs are often in the permissive sense (a point which has by no means been thoroughly established) the King James Version faithfully reflects the original, that God was at least involved in those serpents coming among the people. Instead of the metaphysical concept of our words creating our circumstances, this event in Numbers is an object lesson in God’s judgment against the people’s sin of complaining which I Corinthians 10:10, 11 says is a warning to us today.

You certainly are not in good company when you tinker around with the Old Testament. Even though Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, He made the Old Testament the basis for His entire life, including His teaching, His ministry, and finally His death. His mind was so thoroughly immersed in the Scriptures that He often expressed His own feelings in their words. Of the 1900 or so verses in the Gospels that contain in whole or in part the words of Jesus, 180 or approximately one-tenth include quotations from the Old Testament. Jesus said, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18), thus testifying to the absolute Divine Inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures—right down to the punctuation marks! How much more would this apply to the voices of verbs? In other words, you’d better not mess with the jots or tittles, let alone the prepositions and verbs.

Many of the major heresies in the early church after the days of the apostles centered upon a denial of the inspiration of the Old Testament. You cannot hold to its Divine Inspiration on one hand while making statements like "God didn’t send the flood—sin did" and "God didn’t send the serpents—their words did." To say that we might get a distorted view of God by reading the Old Testament (without first checking with faith teachers’ interpretations) is to be heretical in your Bibliology or doctrine of the Scriptures. Then again many are no longer interested in doctrine anyhow, which is one reason why we’re in the mess we’re in.

II Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." When you realize that at the time this was written, the New Testament was not completed and therefore this statement refers primarily to the Old Testament, it would surely be reasonable to apply the events and times to our day. Of course "rightly dividing the Word of truth" demands that we recognize that some things in the Old Testament apply only to Israel and not to us, but on the other hand, "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come" (I Corinthians 10:11).

So let us continue from Jeremiah, realizing that not all things here are perfectly parallel to the situation in our day in America, but they are at least striking in comparison and serve us a warning. PLEASE DO NOT SKIP OVER this lengthy quotation from Jeremiah (again from the Living Bible), but read it carefully and solemnly:

"Go and shout this in Jerusalem’s streets: The Lord says, I remember how eager you were to please me as a young bride long ago and how you loved me and followed me even through the barren deserts (2:2)…And I brought them into a fruitful land, to eat of its bounty and goodness, but they made it into a land of sin and corruption and turned my inheritance into an evil thing (2:7)…And yet my people have given up their glorious God for silly idols? How can you say a thing like that? Go and look in any valley in the land! Face the awful sins that you have done, O restless female camel, seeking for a male! You are a wild donkey, sniffing the wind at mating time. Who can restrain your lust? Any jack wanting you need not search, for you come running to him! (2:23-24)…Like a thief, the only shame that Israel knows is getting caught. Kings, princes, priests and prophets—all are alike in this (2:26)…And yet you say, ‘I haven’t done a thing to anger God. I’m sure he isn’t angry!’ I will punish you severely because you say, ‘I haven’t sinned!’ (2:35) …And yet you say to me, ‘O Father, you have always been my Friend; surely you won’t be angry about such a little thing! Surely you will just forget about it?’ So you talk, and keep right on doing all the evil that you can (3:4-5)…

Yet the Lord pleads with you still: Ask where the good road is, the godly paths you used to walk in, in the days of long ago. Travel there, and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, ‘No, that is not the road we want!’ I set watchmen over you who warned you: ‘Listen for the sound of the trumpet! It will let you know when trouble comes.’ But you said, ‘No! We won’t pay any attention! (6:16-17) …But don’t be fooled by those who lie to you and say that since the Temple of the Lord is here, God will never let Jerusalem be destroyed. You may remain under these conditions only: If you stop your wicked thoughts and deeds, and are fair to others, and stop exploiting orphans, widows, and foreigners. And stop your murdering. And stop worshipping idols as you do now to your hurt (7:4-6) …You think that because the Temple is here, you will never suffer? Don’t fool yourselves! Do you really think that you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and worship Baal and all of those new gods of yours, and come here and stand before me in my Temple and chant, ‘We are saved!’—only to go right back to all these evil things again? Is my temple but a den of robbers in your eyes? For I see all the evil things going on in there (7:8-11) …Tell them this: The Lord God of Israel says, All your jugs shall be full of wine. And they will reply, Of course, you don’t need to tell us how prosperous we will be! Then tell them: You’re getting the wrong impression. I will fill everyone living in this land with helpless bewilderment—from the king sitting on David’s throne, and the priests and prophets right on down to all the people (13:12-13) …And yet the prophets and priests alike have made it their business to travel through the whole country, reassuring everyone that all is well, speaking of things they knew nothing about (14:18) …Then the people said, ‘Come let’s get rid of Jeremiah. We have our own priests and wise men and prophets—we don’t need his advice’ (18:18)… When you were prosperous I warned you, but you replied, ‘Don’t bother me’ (22:21) …My heart is broken for the false prophets, full of deceit (23:9) …for the prophets do evil and their power is used wrongly (23:11) …the prophets of Jerusalem are even worse! The things they do are horrible; they commit adultery and love dishonesty. They encourage and compliment those who are doing evil instead of turning them back from their sins (23:14) …Don’t listen to these false prophets when they prophesy to you, filling you with futile hopes…They keep saying to these rebels who despise me, ‘Don’t worry! All is well;’ and to those who live the way they want to, ‘The Lord has said you shall have peace!’ (23:16-17) …I have not sent these prophets, yet they claim to speak for me; I gave them no message, yet they say their words are mine. If they were mine, they would try to turn my people from their evil ways (23:21-22) …’Listen to the dream I had from God last night,’ they say. And then they proceed to lie in my name. How long will this continue? If they are ‘prophets,’ they are prophets of deceit, inventing everything they say (23:25) …So I stand against these ‘prophets’ who get their messages from each other—these smooth-tongued prophets who say, ‘This message is from God!’ Their made-up dreams are flippant lies that lead my people into sin. I did not send them and they have no message at all for my people, says the Lord. When one of the people or one of their ‘prophets’ or priests asks you, ‘Well, Jeremiah, what is the sad news from the Lord today?’ you shall reply, ‘What sad news? You are the sad news, for the Lord has cast you away!’ and as for the false prophets and priests and people who joke about ‘today’s sad news from God,’ I will punish them and their families for saying this. You can ask each other, ‘What is God’s message? What is he saying?’ But stop using the term, ‘God’s sad news.’ For what is sad is you and your lying. You are twisting my words and inventing ‘messages from God’ that I didn’t speak (23:30-36).

It is one thing to twist the Scriptures to teach false things, but when one claims to be a prophet also and supposedly prophesies by the Spirit of God or claims "the word of the Lord came" to him and these prophecies contain the same error, then we have gone beyond the area of unsound teaching into a much more serious issue. Do you understand what I am saying?

Consider this one from a "faith prophet":

Financial inversion [that is, a turning upside down or inside out] shall increase in these days. For you see, it is My desire to move in the realm of your financial prosperity…Yes, there’s coming a FINANCIAL INVERSION in the world’s system. It’s been held in reservoirs of wicked men for days on end. But the end is nigh. Those reservoirs shall be tapped and shall be drained into the Gospel of Jesus Christ…But it shall be, saith the Lord that THE WORD OF THE LORD SHALL RISE WITHIN MEN [emphasis in original]—men of God of low esteem in the financial world—that shall claim the Word of God to be their very own and walk in the light of it as it has been set forth in the Word and give. They’ll begin to give small at first because that’s all they have, but then it will increase, and THROUGH THE HUNDRED-FOLD RETURN, so shall it be that the reservoirs that have held the riches in days past, so shall it return to the hands of the giver. BECAUSE OF THE HUNDRED-FOLD RETURN SHALL THE RESERVOIRS BE LOST FROM THE WICKED AND TURNED TO THE GOSPEL…"

(Charles Capps, Honolulu, Hawaii, Feb. 1, 1978).

As we have said before, the idea that we have been promised a hundred-fold return on what we give is unscriptural foolishness. Jesus did say, "Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life" (Mark 10:29-30). But there are many elements here that make it impossible for us to construe that Jesus meant that we would get back one hundred times whatever we give to the gospel. First, He wasn’t talking about giving at all. Jesus’ words were a response to Peter’s claim in the immediately preceeding verse (28), "Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee." This is the condition—forsaking all, not paying your tithe or giving what you don’t really need to live on in the first place. How many faith teachers or followers meet this condition? Second, it is obvious by the list of things mentioned that Jesus did not mean you would literally get back 100 each of these items if you forsook them. How could you literally get in return one hundred times your number of brothers and sisters? To be your literal brother or sister, one has to have the same earthly parents. Before you claim your "hundred-fold return" on your giving, maybe you had better first check this out with your mother! Again, how could you literally get 100 mothers and fathers? It is obvious that you could not except in the spiritual sense. You could have 100 older men or women praying for your ministry like your physical father or mother does, but not 100 literal fathers or mothers. You certainly couldn’t claim 100 wives for one you had forsaken, either, although it seems like some have shamefully made a good start on it! The same is true for brothers and sisters. By the same token, this doesn’t mean you would get 100 houses and 100 pieces of property (or even one house worth 100 times as much, which is preposterous and obscene). But you could and will obtain such friendship and kinship in the family of God that you could call any of a hundred fellow ministers especially and use his house should you come to need it sometime. Third, I question whether Jesus even literally meant "100 times" by "hundred-fold." There are such things as "figures of speech," that is, literary devices used for emphasis such as antithesis, comparison, dissimile, alliteration, and, yes, hyperbole, and sometimes these are employed in the Bible. At any rate, Luke’s version of this same statement by Jesus says simply "manifold more" or many times more (Luke 18:30).

Yet, many still cling tenatiously to this fantasy. Have you noticed yet that this hundred-fold return is not working for anyone except those who tell you to give to their ministries? And even they have had to invent the "heavenly bank" perversion of "lay not up treasures on earth" to make it come out right. As one follower wrote, "…Oh, banking with the Lord--/ The dividends are great, / 30-60-100-fold, / He pays the highest rates!…"

As we have said, it is one thing (a bad thing in itself) to put false things like this out as the teaching of the Word or inspire some crass poem, but when it comes out in "thus saith the Lord" prophecy, well…Am I calling these men false prophets? Well, they certainly aren’t true prophets, are they? No, I’m not calling all of them false prophets yet but when you examine the criteria for judging true and false prophets in both the Old and New Testaments, many prove to exhibit some of these characteristics and are well on their way. They must repent. 1) What a true prophet prophesies comes to pass; 2) it is in line with the true Word of God (not a twisted perversion of it); 3) a false prophet always draws attention to himself instead of the Lord (many do this subtily); and 4) false prophets have historically been covetous.

How about these prophecies: "…I’ll show you in these last days where the resources of this planet are. I’ve saved the best for last.[Now isn’t that just the Bible prophesies for the end!] The minerals are not near gone. But the sinners are not going to get any more of it…" (Kenneth Copeland, Oct. 1978). "…It is not My will that this nation fall. It will see its finest hour. Men will point to this nation from other nations and say, ‘Maybe it’s because they’re so religious that they’re so blessed.’ In 1978 the church of Jesus Christ will experience the greatest magnitude of financial blessing that the world has known since the ministry and life of Solomon…" (Kenneth Copeland, October 21, 1978). "It [the U.S.] is not going downhill; it’s going up. That’s the reason it’s so rough. Uphill climbs are rough. Downhill climbs are not hard. Oh, there was a great amount of nudity and sin for a season, saith the Lord, but the time that all of that sin and all of that horribleness was going forth, I was building an army, saith God…My people will be known as the ones that carry the material wealth and the power of this planet until we are through with it and done with it…Let no man minister unto you doom [emphasis in original]. Let no man tell you the worst is yet to come. Anyone with any sense knows that. Anybody with any kind of thinking ability knows that. You can not only prove that in the natural, but you can prove it by God’s Word…" (Copeland, Dec. 19, 1976). [I have noticed how far up we’ve come since 1976, haven’t you!] "…You will see vast fortunes change hands. It will go from the hand of those that are hoarding to the hands of those that are ministering to the people through the gospel of Jesus Christ; and it will be said by men in closed circles behind closed doors, ‘If we don’t get these tongue-talking Christians out of here, they’re going to get all the money!’ But just before they decide to destroy you to get all that you’ve been receiving from Me, I’ll get you out of here and they can have it and rot with it" (Copeland, Feb. 9, 1978). [Now there’s an end-time scenario for you—one that would make even the "kingdom now message" teachers blush!]

To be blunt, there is hardly a single major specific prophesy that some of these "prophets" have given since 1974 that have come to pass, yet people still cling to every word and bolster their false hopes through them, similar to Jeremiah’s day.

Many were shocked at the picture in the paper of Tammy Bakker’s 50-foot walk-in closet with a chandelier; but they need to realize that such extravagances are common among today’s "prosperity prophets" and "Jesus T.V. stars". Others foolishly and blindly say, "They deserve that wealth."

The early church historian Eusebius records the conflicts that the church had in the first few centuries with false prophets and heretics, some of whom were condemned because of the extravagant lifestyles. Of Montanus (c. 180 A.D.) he quotes Apollonius: "[He] established exactors of money and under the name of offerings, devised the artifice to procure presents; who provided salaries for those who preached his doctrines, that it might grow strong by gormandizing and gluttony." He goes on, "Does it not appear to you that the Scripture forbids any prophet to receive gifts and money? [No doubt a reference to Elijah.] When, therefore, I see a prophetess receiving both gold and silver, and precious garments, how can I fail to reject her?...Although the Lord has said, ‘Lay not up for yourself gold or silver [obviously while the old interpretation was still in vogue!], nor two coats,’ These, in direct opposition, have committed great crimes in regard to the possession of things thus prohibited. For we shall show, that those that are called martyrs and prophets among them [Montanists], have derived pecuniary gain, not only from the wealthy, but from the poor, and from widows and orphans" [Much of T.V. minister’s support comes from the aged, sometimes even their life savings]. "The fruits of a prophet must be examined; for by it’s fruit the tree is known [emphasis mine]…"if," says he, "They deny that their prophets took presents, let them at least acknowledge, that, if they should be proved to have received them, they are no prophets…All the fruits of a prophet should be examined…(Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book 5, chapter 18). Well, the times sure have changed, haven’t they? But the truth has not.

It sickens my stomach to see ministers urging the support of corrupt leaders in the charismatic movement. I don’t care what their reputation has been. I’m not saying we should not pray for them, but I cannot stand with those who are obsessed with money. Even though they say it is for a worthy project, I notice that a lot of money is going for luxury cars and virtual mansions—and it’s wrong. I cannot agree with Oral Roberts’ claim that God would in effect kill him if he didn’t get his money. That is foolishness and makes the charismatic ministry the laughingstock of the entire inhabited civilized world! We look for fruits of repentance from Jim Bakker and hope for his restoration, but instead all we get is false accusations against Jimmy Swaggart, The Assemblies of God, and Jerry Fallwell and pitiful excuses about being led away by corrupt associates and how God doesn’t want us to have junk (in response to questions about his gold-plated bathroom fixtures).

You may say, "Leon, what in the world are you trying to stir up?" I’m not stirring anything up—it’s already stirred up and I’m just doing what is my responsibility as a true servant of God and standing up against the whole mess, laying much of the responsibility for these things on the "Eat-the-best-wear-the-best-drive-the-best" American perversion of the gospel and calling on all of us to REPENT.

I hear feeble attempts to correct the materialistic bent of "faith" teaching, but pastor friend, teacher friend, how can you demand that people get their eyes off material things when you yourself live in luxury—four and five thousand square foot houses and foreign luxury cars. You are a hypocrite! If you don’t sell a lot of this junk or give it away, then don’t be surprised if some day your stuff is shown being auctioned off on T.V.

"Like a thief, the only shame Israel knows is in getting caught. Kings, princes and prophets—all are alike in this" (Jeremiah 2:26).

--II Corinthians 2:17

(KJV) For we are not as many, which corrupt the Word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

(Weymouth) For, unlike most teachers, we are not fraudulent hucksters of God’s Message; but with transparent motives, as commissioned by God, in God’s presence and in communion with Christ, so we speak.

(Shuttleworth) As for myself, I dare not, as many others have done, adulterate, by a spirit of carnal accommodation, the pure Word of God; but I preach it in truth and simplicity in Christ, as I receive it from God, and with a full consciousness that His eye is now upon me, and that I shall one day render to Him an account of my labours.

(Parker) …we speak of Christ in the power of God and do not pervert and misrepresent the word of God.

(Wade) for we are not, like the majority, hucksters, hawking for gain God’s message…

(Amplified) For we are not, like so many (as hucksters, tavern keepers, making a trade of ) peddling God’s Word—short-measuring and adulterating the divine message…

(Doddridge) For we are not as many who adulterate the Word of God by their own base mixtures, and retail it, when formed according to the corrupt taste of their hearers…

(Living Bible) …We are not those hucksters—and there are many of them—whose idea in getting out the Gospel is to make a good living out of it.

(Berkeley) For we do not, like so many peddle an adulterated message of God…

(New Life) We are not like others. They preach God’s Word to make money…

(GNB) …who handle God’s message as if it were cheap merchandise…

(Barclay) …who make a commercial racket out of preaching God’s Word…

(Cross) Unlike the money-mad peddlers of God’s message, we’re his sincere Christian Agents…

(Deane) …I do not preach, like many, a perverted Gospel…

(Bruce) …who adulterate the message of God and pass it off like so much second-rate merchandise…

Leon Stump, Pastor of Victory Christian Center

Background from Greenfield Graphics.