God is slowly crushing the Prosperity Gospel heresy.
It’s not as if folks didn’t prosper, but it wasn’t by the gospel. Savvy folks will still prosper just fine in the coming economic troubles, gospel or not. That’s the way it is in this fallen world. The story of Job is enough to shoot down the Prosperity Gospel, but most Westerners are too Western to get the message. The Prosperity Gospel is nothing more than the message of the Pharisees plastered over the Cross; it’s still the worship of Mammon. Every day I still run into people who insist the Fall wasn’t permanent.
An email from a friend reminded me so much how good spiritual people can suffer. Like Job, though righteous, things aren’t so pleasant. This particular friend knows better than to whine, but answered a question honestly. It’s not as if she hasn’t laid hold of God’s Laws; she is faithful and obedient inasmuch as she can understand. Meanwhile, she’s focused on her calling and mission. It would be hard to imagine her doing any better. That doesn’t prevent her ailments, nor those of her family members. They are all living with the results of some admitted mistakes and a vast ocean of unrepented sin from those around them.
I’ve often warned that America is in for a rough ride. I’ve know that for years in both the practical and prophetic sense. We are doomed, and I suppose it signals something similar for much of the rest of the world. I’m not called to prophesy to those other nations, so it’s not for me to say. Still, things are tough all over and getting worse for quite some time to come. No apocalypse, this stuff will tend to grind things down until certain features of the political landscape collapse, but the whole thing isn’t going to suddenly break down everywhere at once. It will seem that way to folks on the losing end of things, but for us who are sitting off to one side watching, it won’t really be too much change.
The world will still suck in roughly the same ways it did before. The only real change will be the credit reset. It won’t matter who claims to hold what; an awful lot of debt will be repudiated and some will simply be written off. I can’t predict how the system will change, but it will. With that change will come lots of other changes. Bits and pieces of it will be dramatic, but overall things will simply drift farther along the same awful path until God has had enough. That final end will be entirely unexpected on the human level.
Meanwhile, we who are watching this transition stand to suffer significantly. Much of what we thought was normal was actually front-loading through the credit system. We consumed our future; now the past will catch up with us. More than simple monetary poverty, this thing has a moral element. The entire range of Western Christianity has been chasing phantoms and these will finally fade to reveal the lies. What makes me just a little sick is knowing almost everyone involved is not going to have a clue, nor will they be capable of getting a clue when it’s offered. This thing will be explained just about every way you can imagine except for the truth. Eternal destinies remain in the hands of God, but everything we could and should have in this life will have been missed completely and never recovered.
There will be a measure of religious revival coming; it always happens. Bad times brings about a revival in religion, typically false piety. It will be emotionally based. Perhaps some slender minority will catch on, but the majority will continue chasing everything except the truth about how religion is supposed to work. You should not expect to see much of what I described in a previous post. The Harlot Church isn’t going anywhere until the final end of all things.
Stand back and take a good long look. Understand that all the misguided hope and thrill is just standard human response. Understand that the only solution is the same one that’s been around since Christ floated off up into the clouds. It will be the same solution that keeps a few of us on track when He comes back on those same clouds. This world is permanently subjected to futility, and only a precious few in any generation catch on to what’s real. The real eschatology is the one that recognizes things will follow no precise pattern, and recognizes that most of the Scripture about End Times is figurative and symbolic. Jesus is coming back quite literally, but most of what folks tend to believe comes with that is pure sewage. Yeah, the Prosperity Gospel will come back again, but God has warned us that most of the world will always worship Mammon in one form or another, and that includes most of organized Christianity. They want power in the here and now, and insist it be offered on human terms, not on the divine otherworldly terms.
Here in this world, the real saints of God will tribulate.
Edit: Add the following video —
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbnot1g5-T4
