Summary Conclusion

Protestant theologians have magnified a gnat into a Boeing 747 while ignoring a mountain. They have built much of the history of Protestantism on one passage (Ephesians 2:8-9) while ignoring the overall teaching of the entire New Testament; and even the Old Testament, “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered” (Proverbs 21:13) (NIV).

Because they lack the ability to properly research an issue and find the truth, they have not noticed that the Gospel which Paul preached was to repent and do good works, “they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance” (Acts 26:20) (ESV).

Jesus said the Pharisees were neglecting the most important parts of the Law which involve “justice, mercy, and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23) (ESV). The Pharisees religiously paid tithes to the Temple but they were not concerned with directly affecting the lives of those around them. The only way to implement justice, mercy, and faithfulness is by doing good works and seeing to it that the poor are helped.

Most Christians are aware of the passage in Isaiah that speaks of the future Gospel, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” But they do not realize the powerful significance of its context. Here is the passage in context:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. 18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (Isaiah 1:16-18) (ESV)

This is another passage that shows that helping people is part of the true and complete Gospel. We cannot earn God’s forgiveness by doing good works, but after you have been forgiven you must obey his commands, which includes helping others. Anyone who is in rebellion against God’s commands will not be allowed to enter the Kingdom. Even though you cannot earn you way into God’s eternal presence, your good deeds become the evidence of your commitment to following God.

If all Christians followed the commands explained throughout this book, there would be far fewer needy Christians. This means that even if we have to give up some space in our home, or give up at trip to Disneyland, or give up buying a new car, we should give up those things to help our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as those who are not Christians.

Jesus said that loving God was the first and greatest commandment, but caring about other people is the second greatest command; so how important do you think it is to God? Very! How can we love our neighbors as ourselves unless we do all we can to see to it that they have food, clothing, and shelter?

As good and beneficial as Capitalism is, Jesus did not come to give us Capitalism or free markets; he does not expect Capitalism to relieve the suffering of the poor, he expects his followers to relieve their suffering.

Not only should Christians pull together their resources for the purpose of helping each other now, there are hard times ahead for the world. There will be famine and plagues and natural disasters. The only way we will make it through is by helping each other. Christians should begin preparing now by reducing debt, getting rid of excess homes, cars, boats, furniture, and jewelry and helping those they can help, and when they need help in the future God will move mountains to see to it that they have their needs met.

Christians today have forgotten where they came from. They used to be among the very poorest, thus the saying, “poor as church mice.” In other words, the mice who lived in churches were the poorest of all mice because the church members were so poor. But many Christians today act like royalty rather than servants! Churches cost millions of dollars, while our brothers and sisters in Africa and India are still poor as church mice. It is not a matter of if we can help but how much we can help.

Ministers, especially, are to serve others by giving to the poor rather than taking money from them, like so many are doing. The Bible’s concept of prosperity is having more than enough so you can give to others who do not have enough, but the get-rich preacher’s concept of prosperity is to amass piles of silver and gold from poor people who are trying to get rich.

Some Christians have an “I gave at the office” attitude. They think by giving offerings to their church or other charities, that they have fulfilled their moral obligations for helping others.

Do all you can for everyone who deserves your help. Don’t tell your neighbor to come back tomorrow, if you can help today. (Proverbs 3:27-28) (CEV)

“Speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless. 9 Speak for them and be a righteous judge. Protect the rights of the poor and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8-9) (GNB)

There are a great many demands on our time making it harder to find the time to do good things today than it was 2000 years ago; nevertheless, we are commanded to do so. The entire New Testament emphasizes doing good deeds to others, even sacrificially. We live selfish lives today. It is far too easy to drive passed those in need and never stop to help. Would you stop and throw a lifeline to someone who is drowning? Many Christians around the world are drowning. Evangelist Mario Murillo states:

[I]n our recent tradition, it is almost frowned upon to emphasize helping the needy in our own communities. Yet, there is no way to sustain revival without pleasing God in this way. The biblical evidence is overwhelming. . . The Word clearly and literally connects our openness to human need as a prerequisite to answered prayer. (Murillo, Critical Mass, p. 73)

Christians should be the first to extend help to all who need it: the widow, the orphan, the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, the homeless man, the homeless teen-ager, and those without transportation. This is not advocating a social Gospel in place of the salvation Gospel; they are both the Gospel, and both are incomplete without the other. Helping the poor is part of the true and complete Gospel which we have been commanded to give to all nations.

Sunday Adelaja built his church in the Ukraine by helping others:

People ask me where my breakthrough in ministry started. It wasn’t in learning and absorbing the Russian language, though this gave me invaluable tools. It wasn’t learning how to preach or feel comfortable ministering before a group. No. My breakthrough came when I left the pulpit and went to the streets to look for the outcasts. (Church Shift, page 97)

Christians historically have been known for helping those in need, while other cultures were not helping anyone, as a result, helping someone used to be considered “the Christian thing to do,” but helping others is now becoming part of mainstream society. It is time that Christians step up and take the lead in helping others before they loose this opportunity.

On July 29, 1997, a TV station in Austin, TX reported that there are several thousand homeless people in Austin. The next day the same TV station reported that there are 20,000 millionaires in Austin, a city of half a million total population! (I am sure the number is even higher today.) There are going to be a lot of rich people in hell.

Jesus makes helping the poor a condition for being admitted into the Kingdom of God on the Day of Judgment. Jesus gave a parable about the judgment he will give when he returns. Of all the things he could have said, he said nothing about stealing, or killing, or even believing that Jesus is the Messiah; he said:

‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat.” (Matthew 25:34-36, 40-42). (NIV)

Every poor person is Jesus, every hungry person is Jesus. Will you feed him real physical help or only the promise of heaven after he dies from lack of medical care? Many Christians in Asia and Africa are literally naked and wearing rags while the Christians in America are spending thousands of dollars on worthless designer clothes and jewelry, or a big screen TV. Worse, many of them are actually going to casinos and gambling away millions!

Who could deny that this century finds itself home to what is probably the most comfortable, the most materialistic, the most ‘fat’ and well-fed church in recorded history? . . . A people that live for mammon and pleasure will gather to themselves preachers that have exactly those self-same attributes. (Andrew Strom, Why I Left the Prophetic Movement, page 106, 108)

The church in America truly is the Laodicean church. It is wealthy, and is spiritually poor, blind, and naked. They have blinded themselves to the truth because of their desire for material goods, both the liberal churches and the conservative. Christians in America have more than enough money to preach the Gospel to all ethnic groups of the world and help the poor, but the money is being diverted to build temples for the spiritually dead. Since the American Church is the church of Laodicea, you can expect trouble to come to America; Christians here will be put through the refiner’s fire! God’s judgment must come upon American Christians. Perhaps the floods, fires, hurricanes, and tornados of 2008 is part of that judgment.

Many pagan cities throughout history have been very wealthy, such as Carthage, Athens, Babylon, and Rome. So being prosperous is not proof of God’s blessings. And as we have seen, wealth can actually be a curse. The gospel of greed can be summed up and illustrated with the words of one get-rich preacher on TV in 1997, “I want to pick up a golden fork and knife and belly-up to the king’s table.” No wonder they don’t preach against greed or gluttony.

God help Christianity in America! The Christians in America have been deceived by money; it has choked off the true Gospel. God is saying to American Christians today—

“Evildoers live among my people; they lie in wait like those who lay nets to catch birds, but they have set their traps to catch people. 27 Just as a hunter fills a cage with birds, they have filled their houses with loot. That is why they are powerful and rich, 28 why they are fat and well fed. There is no limit to their evil deeds. They do not give orphans their rights or show justice to the oppressed. 29 But I, the LORD, will punish them for these things; I will take revenge on this nation. 30 A terrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: 31 prophets speak nothing but lies; priests rule as the prophets command, and my people offer no objections. But what will they do when it all comes to an end?” (Jeremiah 5:27-29) (GNB)

Rather than thinking of ourselves as the King’s kids, we should humbly fall on our faces before God. You cannot think of yourself as deserving gold and jewels and be humble at the same time. The gospel of wealth is contrary to the humility required by the true Gospel.

Christians used to try to keep up with the Jones, now they are trying to keep up with the Trumps. We need to stop trying to keep up with the lifestyle of the rich and famous and start seeking God and doing his work. When we live simply like the nuns and monks, we can. But we should not shut ourselves off from society, but continually go into the world and do good deeds.

Jesus clearly teaches that we should not store up treasure on earth. To store up treasure does not mean to have huge rooms full of gold; anything that is valuable that is not a necessary item, is treasure! Is a Rolls Royce treasure? How about an expensive pair of designer shoes? Perhaps your treasure is only a million-dollar retirement account, but it is treasure anyway.

Some people might suppose that because God heals a few people when a get-rich preacher prays for them, that it is an endorsement of those doctrines, but that is not the case. There is no group, no church, no preacher that teaches the whole pure Gospel, 100% accurate. Miracles happen because they believe in miracles. Miracles also happen to Catholics, but that does not mean that Roman Catholicism has totally accurate doctrine. So don’t let the fact of healings or other miracles blind you into believing the false prosperity gospel. Help others as best you can and God will heal you and perform miracles for you.

Sell those million-dollar churches and build some small apartments or rooming houses for people who cannot afford a regular apartment on minimum wage. Buy some land and dwellings so people in the congregation can live without fear of their neighbors, or so they won’t have to go into a nursing home. Consider the nuns and monks who manage to provide for their own needs, and often those of others, and when they get too old to work they don’t have to worry about who’s going to take care of them. They will always have a place to live and dear friends all around them. We need some New Christian monasteries for singles and families.

In the same way that communal living declined in America when it became easier to find employment, the true Gospel was practiced during the first two hundred years after Christ but gradually declined as corruption and prosperity entered the Church. You may ask the question, “if this is the true Gospel, why did God allow it to be obscured for 1800 years?” Along with that you might ask why God allowed the Roman Catholic Church to rule for 1200 years before bringing in the Protestant Reformation? Those questions are too deep for this book, suffice it to say that the true Gospel will be dominate during the Kingdom Age when Christ rules:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:1-2) (ESV)

Why work for material goods that wear out or break when we can work for God, doing the Work of God, which is helping him feed the hungry and heal the sick which brings eternal rewards in the future Kingdom and rewards now of joy and fulfillment far greater than a mountain of earthly gold. You can have your wealth now for a short time or you can have it for all eternity, but you cannot have both.

If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who made them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship. (Proverbs 14:31) (GNB)

WOW, what a powerful and important statement. Most translations say that kindness to the poor “honors God.” There is not much time left, we need to join together to help others and in return we help ourselves. We need to build collectives so we can survive the Great Tribulation.

Even though this Gospel will work anywhere, it will work best in India, Nepal, China, Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia, and others countries where many people still live much like they did in the first century. The Christians in those countries usually walk where they need to go, live mostly without electricity or indoor plumbing, and they don’t have healthcare or retirement benefits, so they struggle to survive on a daily bases.

About good works, I talked mostly about helping those who are poor, but there is more to doing good deeds than helping the poor. Jesus said we should do to others what we would want done to ourselves if we were in their shoes. This means that we are to help people who need help, even if they are not poor. Stop and help someone change a flat tire, help someone find a good car if they know nothing about autos, run errands for an elderly person who does not get around very well, share whatever knowledge and abilities you may have.

God gave me several problems, such as a bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder and a curved spine. The combination resulted in not being able to earn much money in this life. God did this to me because he knew I would become like other Americans and desire wealth, and he knew that I had to suffer poverty to see the truth. At the age of 50, the total amount of money I had earned in my entire life was less than 100,000 dollars. I would have earned more than that working at minimum wage. Being unemployed gave me a lot of time to study the Bible, which resulted in my seeing and understanding the truth.

It is time we return to the roots of our religion, and put it into practice. Go and practice the Good News to the Poor.