"If you have a need, sow a seed; Sow a seed of faith, reap a harvest of blessing." This and many other similar phrases have been around for several years and are from the gospel of greed, also known as the name it and claim it gospel, the prosperity gospel, and the health and wealth gospel. They are used by some pastors and televangelists today to manipulate their weaker congregation into giving.
According to the Prosperity Gospel, God has met all the needs of human beings in the suffering and death of Christ, and every Christian should now share the blessings of health and wealth won by Christ and he or she can obtain these blessings merely by a positive confession of faith. The most notable high priests of the prosperity doctrine include: E.W. Kenyon, A.A. Allen, Oral Roberts, T.L. Osborn, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and John Avanzini. Each of these has made his own contribution. However it was Allen, for example, who first made it an aid towards fundraising; he was the first to teach that God is a rich God and that those who want to share in His prosperity must obey and support God’s servant – the speaker himself. Roberts added the idea of seed faith: that you prosper by planting a seed in faith, the return on which will meet all your needs.
So, what is “seed-faith” teaching? Seed-faith teaching is part of the larger movement that’s been labeled the Prosperity Gospel. Adherents of this teaching prefer to call it the Word of Faith Movement. Those who preach the prosperity gospel teach that God aims to make every believer healthy and wealthy in this life, and the mechanism said to bring this prosperity about is “sowing seeds in faith.” For prosperity preachers, “sowing a seed in faith” means that you give money to their ministry, and in return, God will make you healthy and wealthy. Your “seed,” in their understanding, is dollar bills.
Seed-faith teaching is rampant and a scourge on the body of Christianity. It characterizes so many Christian churches. The central theme in seed faith giving is that the money you give to spread the gospel God would multiply back to you thirty, sixty and hundredfold. Thus, Christians are being led astray and taken advantage of by so-called pastors and false prophets, who have taken the biblical principle of sowing and reaping and twisted it for selfish gain. And that’s what Isaiah was pointing at when he said in Isaiah 3:15: “How dare you crush my people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?" demands the Lord, the LORD of Heaven's Armies.” (New Living Translation) If you have ever tuned into Christian television channels like the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), you must have probably heard Galatians 6:7 and 2 Corinthians 9:6 either quoted or alluded to a lot. Galatians 6:7 says, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap,” and 2 Corinthians 9:6 says, “Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” In fact, if I had a nickel for every time a person on TBN pleaded with me to sow a seed, I’d be a prosperous man. My hope is to equip you against such tricks and charlatans.
The seed faith teaching is a doctrine originating from Oral Roberts after World War II and popularized in the last half of the 20th Century by evangelical churches. Oral took Scripture verses from the Bible and creatively transformed (twisted) them into another gospel. Oral most often quoted verses from the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8 to build the bedrock foundation that would support the Seed Faith heresy. Other texts he invariably utilized include: Mark 11:23; Deuteronomy 28-30; Malachi 3:8-11; Mark 10: 29-30; Philippians 4:19;
The modern trend we see today can be traced directly back to the teaching and ministry of Oral Roberts. In fact, one of Roberts’ most famous disciples, Joyce Meyer, said this, “When I talked with Dr. Roberts today and we talked about this seed-faith thing, he said…when you give you get a receipt in heaven that when you have a need you can then go with your receipt and say ‘You see, God, I have got my receipt from my sowing and now I have a need and I’m cashing in my receipt’” (Joyce Meyer, Praise the Lord, TBN, November 3, 2003. There are many contemporary preachers who have picked up the mantel and methodology of Oral Roberts, but Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio, seems to be excelling. While explaining Deuteronomy 14:26 Parsley said: “God is saying you can sow that money for whatever you want….for a job, for food, for clothing, for cars, even for joy, peace….” But he didn’t stop there. He went on to include salvation as part of the harvest you will reap if only you would sow your seed money, *“Salvation for your family….Is that what you really want, to know that all of your children are saved, to pillow your head at night knowing if Jesus split the eastern sky, that your children are all within the ark of safety? Is that what you want? Then sow for it.” * With real entrepreneurial spirit, he offers his followers spiritual bargains. For only $50 sent to Parsley’s ministry, he offered these things, “I believe God will give you a harvest of protection from deception and an uncommon ability to discern between truth and error in your life….First, God is going to release to you the ability to hear and recognize His voice as never before. Second is protection over your decisions. I believe with you that for one year there will be no bad choices in your life. Finally, you will have protection from the deception of the adversary, all of that for only $50. Now that’s a deal!” Rod Parsley, Breakthrough, TBN, May 24, 2006).
It’s absolutely true that whatever a man sows, he will also reap, and in 2003, Rod Parsley lamented a change that he was seeing in his ministry’s prayer request line, “Five years ago the number one request coming into prayer lines across America was ‘Pray for my lost family and loved ones that they do not go to hell.’ Number one request five years ago is now number eight today. It has been replaced by—neck and neck—number one, ‘Pray for my physical body,’ number two, ‘Pray for my financial prosperity.’ This has become the cry of the church”.
This Prosperity Gospel has proved very functional among the religious entrepreneurs who constitute the media evangelists, for its “seed faith” idea which has brought in the enormous resources needed to sustain these extremely expensive ministries. Kenneth Copeland has admitted that only after committing himself to a TV series with no apparent capital did he come to understand the doctrine of “biblical prosperity” properly. Its widespread diffusion owes much to its pervasiveness but its general socio-economic context that is significant. It appeared in the boom years of the 1960’s and 1970’s in the United States. There were days when living standards were visibly increasing, opportunity was everywhere, and “success through a positive mental attitude” was the rule. Indeed, the Faith Gospel’s affinities to the New Age thinking are obvious. Without some idea of the Faith Gospel it is possible to misunderstand global developments within Christianity.
Breaking free from bondage to the gospel of greed deception is no small matter. Some professing believers are fully committed and firmly entrenched in the prosperity gospel, not allowing them-selves to be instructed away from its precepts. While there are many Christians who see TBN and its association with the gospel of greed ministries as an abomination, many others (not well versed in the Bible) believe in the heresy and fall prey to its deception. They fall prey because they, like the prosperity pimps, have iniquitous hearts of greed. Although books abound about the prosperity gospel, these fraudulent top-selling authors continue to write and sponsor new book releases with no end in sight.
TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) not only sponsors these false ministries but has unreservedly adopted the gospel of greed heresy. TBN is a major media portal to the world, responsible for sending the gospel of greed heresy to hundreds of millions of unsuspecting people, and taking what little money they have. Jan Crouch, in her soft sugary voice said on TBN, "God has a special blessing for the little women who have caught the vision of giving, even if only their grocery money." This gospel greed has become a means of livelihood for prosperity preachers who live lavish lifestyles while telling you to send money to get more money. Sadly, this brand of teaching is being exported from America to the world.
The prosperity gospel is exploding in the economically developing continents of Africa, Asia, and South America. It has being met across Africa in varying degrees. In Duncan- Williams’ book, “You are Destined to Succeed” he explains from Genesis 1: 29-10 that God never planned for [us] or any mankind to have sickness, fear, inferiority, defeat or failure. His understanding is that prosperity inevitably accrues from the inexorable application of spiritual laws; He then quotes John Avanzini by asserting that: “God did not predetermine who will be rich and who will be poor. He simply created His spiritual laws and freely gave them to everyone. Every person therefore has a choice – to implement the laws of poverty or to implement God’s spiritual laws of prosperity.” An African pastor was once quoted as teaching that: “Many are ignorant of the fact that God has already made provision for his children to be wealthy here on earth. When I say wealthy, I mean very, very rich… It is not a sin to desire to be wealthy” (John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!, 3rd ed., p19). Biblical Christianity must stand against this terrible tide.
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