Piper on the Prosperity Gospel
John Piper has just put out a new edition of his book, Let the Nations be Glad!. In this new edition he discusses the reality of the impact of the prosperity gospel which has done great damage to American Christianity and global missions alike. Piper confronts the prosperity movement head on, calling prosperity preachers to consider the great error of their preaching and ways. He lays forth twelve appeals to prosperity preachers. You can read them in full at his website. Click here if you want to read it.
I strongly encourage everyone reading this to consider Piper’s words; they are drenched with Scripture and are presented with much humility, clarity, understanding, and brokenness.
I want to quote the concluding paragraph in his appeal to prosperity preachers–it is worthy of our attention.
I do not want prosperity preachers to stop calling people to maximum joy. On the contrary, I appeal to them to stop encouraging people to seek their joy in material things. The joy Christ offers is so great and so durable that it enables us to lose prosperity and still rejoice. “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one” (Heb. 10:34). The grace to be joyful in the loss of prosperity-that is the miracle prosperity preachers should seek. That would be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. That would magnify Christ as supremely valuable.*
May those of us who share this biblical burden with Piper spend more time praying for and preaching unto the advancement of the biblical Gospel than we do in ripping into those who are promulgating this false gospel. There is a time to tear down false teaching (Jesus’ teachings, Paul’s letters, Peter’s letters, and John’s letters are full of such activity), but may we be more defined by preaching the correct Gospel than we are by being against the false gospel of the prosperity preachers (which I am tempted to say is no gospel at all). In our passion for the true Gospel we must be against any false gospel which undermines the uniqueness and glory of the true Gospel. But may our battle against the counterfeit flow primarily out of a passion and love for the glory of the true Gospel. And I believe that Piper would encourage us to this end.
________________
* John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 31.
