Jim Bakker on Prosperity Teaching

After his release for prison, Jim Bakker said this about the prosperity doctrine:

I'd always quoted 3 John 2, saying, ''Above all things God wants you to prosper.'' I loved that Scripture. It looks great on a tv screen when you're raising funds, and I interpreted it as God wants you to be rich. But when I got to the words of John, I said, ''Now this don't make sense.'' So I took the word prosper apart in the Greek and found out it's made up of two words—the first word means good or well and the second road. It's a progressive word, so it's like a journey. So, here's John saying, basically, ''Beloved, I want you to have a good journey through life as your soul has a good journey to heaven.'' It was a greeting! Building theology on that is like building the church on ''Have a nice day.''

I began to look up all the Scriptures used in prosperity teaching, such as ''Give and it shall be given unto you.'' When I put that Scripture back into its context, I found Christ was teaching on forgiveness, not on money. He was teaching us that by the same measure that we forgive, we will be forgiven.

I had gotten my sermons from other people. The Bible warns about the shepherds who get their messages from each other. I think today the reason we have another gospel and another Jesus being preached is because men have gotten their sermons from each other and from motivational teaching. A lot of what's being taught today is simply motivational teaching with a few Scriptures put to it. - Source: The Re-education of Jim Bakker, ChristianityToday.com, Dec. 7, 1998

Bakker, who spent five years in prison for defrauding Heritage USA investors, says he has had a change of heart about the prosperity gospel.

The same man who once told his PTL coworkers that ``God wants you to be rich,'' now says he made a tragic mistake.

``For years, I helped propagate an impostor, not a true gospel, but another gospel,'' Bakker has said in his 1996 book, ``I Was Wrong.''

``The prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of the Scripture,'' he said. ``My heart was crushed to think that I led so many people astray.''- Source: The prosperity gospel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, USA, Nov. 18, 2003

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