The
preacher smiled at the packed stadium. “Brothers and sisters,” he said, and the
crowd burst into applause. “God is
delighted with every one of you! He wants you to believe in yourselves and your
own awesomeness. Jesus died for all of us so that we can believe in ourselves.
Pray this prayer after me, and God will bless you. If you voice your dreams and
visualize them happening, God will make them come true!”
The ecstatic crowd was
on its feet. What a religion! God would give them what they wanted if they accepted
Jesus, repeated a prayer, and visualized success? This was better than a
rabbit’s foot.
We
were warned about teachers like this in 2 Timothy 4:3, but despite the warning,
they are gaining popularity. They are part of a pseudo-religion which claims to
be Christian but bears little resemblance to the discipleship Jesus requires (Luke 14:26-33). This is nothing but New
Age self-worship, decorated with Bible verse pieces to make it sound Christian.
These teachers are wildly popular, because they focus on making all hearers
feel good about themselves, rather than calling people to repentance and service
as scripture does. They present Almighty God as a cosmic Genie who exists to do
our bidding—and Jesus is the key to His treasure chest.
This me-centered “gospel”
has no roots, so when hardships come, it crumbles. The victims of this message
think God has let them down, when in fact their faith was in the wrong god all
along (2 Cor.
11:4). Unless
our faith is rooted in the "whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), it cannot withstand the
schemes of the devil or the temptations of the world.
Evaluate
the message of the teachers you enjoy. Do any of them fit the description of 2
Timothy 4:3?
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