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“Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” One of the most tragic movements in Christendom today teaches that God promises to make each Christian prosper in material wealth. They are confident that God would bless them materially because they had the trappings of religion - the common denominator is greed. The Bible teaches no such thing. Their desire for personal prosperity led them to a prostitution of the true worship of God - whenever religion is used to justify the “love of money,” it suffers degradation
BY JOHN D. MORRIS, PH.D.
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” - (2 Corinthians 9:8)
One of the most tragic movements in Christendom today teaches that God promises
to make each Christian prosper in material wealth.
Suffice it to say,
the Bible teaches no such thing, as seen in our text and elsewhere, but this
false teaching is not new and is associated with apostasy.
Consider chapters 17 and 18 of the Book of Judges, which describe a period of
rampant apostasy and confusion.
The chapters
provide character sketches of an itinerant Levite, the tribe of Dan, and a man
named Micah.
Micah, fearing the
curse, confesses the crime.
His mother tries to
lessen the curse by dedicating all the money to the Lord and converts 200
shekels into an idol.
Micah places the
idol with his others and consecrates his son as priest, even though they are of
the tribe of Ephraim.
Later, he hires the
Levite to be his priest and exclaims, “Now know I that the Lord will do me
good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest” (Judges 17:13).
In the next chapter, spies of the Danites go to the priest for
God’s blessing on their efforts to find land that they can conquer.
When the marauders
return, they recruit the Levite to a more prosperous position.
He joins them,
having stolen Micah’s idols, and establishes the tribal priesthood.
Each one in this
story was confident that God would bless them materially because they had the
trappings of religion.
The common
denominator was greed. Their desire for personal prosperity led them to a
prostitution of the true worship of God.
But whenever
religion is “used” to justify the “love of money,” it suffers
degradation.
“Ye cannot serve
God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) wants people to know that God’s Word can be trusted in everything it speaks about—from how and why we were made, to how the universe was formed, to how we can know God and receive all He has planned for us.
After
50 years of ministry, ICR remains a leader in scientific research within the
context of biblical creation. Founded by Dr. Henry Morris in 1970, ICR exists
to conduct scientific research within the realms of origins and Earth history,
and then to educate the public both formally and informally through
professional training programs, through conferences and seminars around the
country, and through books, magazines, and media presentations.
https://www.icr.org/article/11774/
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