You’ve probably heard me mention Prosperity to Providence if you’ve been following along for some time now. It is my first book so that’s kind of a big deal! I heard an accomplished author once say, “If you say you’re going to write a book someday, you’re not doing to write a book someday.” He was addressing the fact that those who say they will, don’t.

I started writing by blogging forever ago. I wasn’t consistent but it got my feet wet. It turns out that my obsession with reading since I was a kid helped my brain understand that writing is a conversation and that if you write at a comprehension level above fifth grade you won’t last long in the book sales space.

And that’s good for me because I may speak well addressing a crowd or in a board meeting full of angry teachers trying to “rush the border”* to get what they want, but writing seems to just flow from everyday conversations I’m already having with you in my head. (Rest assured this hasn’t happened recently, but believe me, you can’t work in education for long without it happening at some point. Sadly, the education a teacher receives to become a teacher is more like entitlement indoctrination 😤. Add that to the twenty-somethings that become teachers and, well, you know. 🤦)

So I LOVE writing to you. I feel like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail (my favorite movie by the way). She loved books first, and after losing her bookstore she learned she loved writing too. Writing is a passion for me. And especially the research before the writing.

You may have thought it strange I would include a Christian trigger word like prosperity in my title. When God put Prosperity to Providence on my heart, the title came before I even understood what the message was about. I initially thought I was writing about how the Prosperity Gospel spun so far out of control that the church threw the baby out with the bathwater. And it’s understandable! The way infamous prosperity preachers present the message today is nothing more than greed combined with offering people false hope.

So I started diving into research on the history of the Prosperity Gospel. I read Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel by Kate Bowler. (Kate Bowler is best known for her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved.) Blessed is Kate’s in-depth look at how the Prosperity Gospel became popular. She evaluates the ministries of positive thinkers like Norman Vincent Peale, and revivalists like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin, along with today’s hugely successful prosperity preachers, namely Kenneth Copeland. And she looks at other contemporary religious leaders such as Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, and Joyce Meyer.

And speaking of Kenneth Copeland, I read his foundation book, The Laws of Prosperity. While Kenneth Hagin was really one of the founders of the Faith Movement in America (now known as Word of Faith), Copeland is known for spreading the Prosperity Gospel in America. What started with Hagin as an effective approach to living the abundant Christian life was twisted and distorted by Copeland. Regardless of the distortion, it took off like wildfire because of Copeland’s charismatic ability to mesmerize and convince a crowd—common attributes of those we now call “Prosperity Preachers”.

Interestingly enough, I had already done my own research on successful healing ministries from times past as well. I read Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Four-Square Church, and her biography, The Story of My Life.

And then there was John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, Smith Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kulman, T.L. Osborn, and F.F. Bosworth. I studied them all.

Y’all. I did my homework. And I didn’t stop there!

I studied science and miracles. I delved into books based on scientific research such as The Biology of Belief by Bruce Tipton and Healing Body and Soul: The Meaning of Illness in the New Testament and Psychotherapy by John A. Sanford. and The Anatomy of a Miracle: Cutting-Edge Science Has Finally Advanced to a State That Puts the Miraculous Within the Grasp of Modern Man by Dr. James B. Richards.

Dr. Richard’s book is most notable because he led crusades all over the world in the 70s and saw every healing miracle in the New Testament. He has a doctorate in Theology, a doctorate in Ancient Chinese Medicine, and a doctorate in Human Behavior. He not only teaches, but he proved what he teaches in his own life, long before writing and building his Bible schools that are now worldwide. Dr. Richards has used faith and wisdom from the Bible to not only heal others by the millions but to heal himself of a terminal illness. He shouldn’t be alive today.

Yeah.

Dr. Richard shows how the study of quantum physics proves that miracles are not really as miraculous as one might think.

Pretty crazy stuff.

One day I pray we can see healing by the masses here in America. But there is a very real reason we don’t see it here.

The reason is we live by one of two gospels. The Prosperity Gospel and the Providential God Gospel. Just like the Prosperity Gospel, there is some truth to it, but much is extrapolated from scripture to fit our human experience.

I didn’t know anything of the Providential God Gospel when God put the phrase Prosperity to Providence in my heart through a dream. In fact, I thought I was supposed to take you on a journey from prosperity teaching to discovering the all-providential God of the Bible!

Turns out, I was wrong. In my research, I stumbled on John Piper’s 700-page dissertation on a “providential” God called Providence, his book on Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, and his widely popular website Desiring God. John Piper is known as an American theologian and a New Testament scholar.

And as it turns out, Providence is the most widely-accepted theory in America about God’s activity in creation and His intentions toward us. For the Assemblies of God and most non-denominational Spirit-filled churches to the Southern Baptist Convention, Lutherans, Catholicism, and Mormonism, the Providential God Gospel is irrefutable.

All I can say is, wow.

If I can summarize the Providential God Gospel it would be this: God is the firefighter who starts the fires in our lives so He can put them out.

Or this: Stop blaming Satan for anything because God created him, don’t take any responsibility for anything because God controls everything, and blame God for whatever happens in life. (It’s mostly Calvinism without all the predestination stuff if you want to know the truth.)

Or maybe like this: Don’t think about it all too hard, you’ll hurt yourself. God can’t be understood anyway. Just trust that if you find yourself starving or homeless or sold into the sex trade, it’s so God gets the glory so don’t hate on God. Just ignore scriptures like, “I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or His seed out begging for bread.” (Psalm 25:35). Or Psalms 23. Or Romans 1:18-20 which says, “…For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been CLEARLY SEEN, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Emphasis mine).

Yikes.

Apparently, according to the Bible, God isn’t a mystery after all. Who knew? Apparently, He doesn’t work in mysterious ways. And Paul says it’s wicked to keep this information from people. 😲

You can know for sure when a “gospel” isn’t true. I’m told there is an old saying among seminaries and it’s this: “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” For what John Piper can’t explain he blames the mystery of God’s character and His “complex emotions”.

Lord Jesus, help us.

I have studied the Bible in its original languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) for over twenty years. And I mean really studied. I have never been a “read the Bible in a year” Christian. If you truly meditate on scripture and study the language, context, and history behind the stories, you can’t read the Bible in a year unless you live full-time in a monastery. I was raising kids. But the study of scripture has been the passionate pursuit and motivator of my life for decades.

As a student of the Bible and a disciple of Jesus (not simply a convert), to simply read other authors, theologians, and healers is not enough for me to land on a position and try to convince you to believe something else about God than what tradition handed down to you. So I took the bottom-line opinions from each authority I studied and held them up to the full council of scripture. I took nothing out of context. If there was a contradiction in the English translations (as there often is) I researched it out until a cohesive message consistent with the life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus could be found.

So, I GET THIS. You might even call me an expert on the subject of the Prosperity Gospel, the Providential God Gospel, and healing ministries by now.

But wait, there’s more! 😉 Not only do have intellectual knowledge, but I’ve put these principles into practice in my own life as well. This is what the Bible calls having experiential knowledge of scripture. I’ve experienced firsthand the limitations and devastation each gospel has on the Christian experience. When it comes to healing ministry, I have been healed multiple times and have prayed for others and they have received healing.

I don’t say this to impress you but to impress upon you that I take rightly diving the Word of God seriously.

The truth behind the cover-up is that the Providential God Gospel leaves you on your own to solve your most life-controlling issues. It’s sold by making you think you are making peace with suffering as something from the hand of God when in reality, it’s forcing you to make peace with the devil.

The truth behind the cover-up in the Prosperity Gospel is that it makes it all about what you gain from God. It puts destiny and calling before the relationship. And it convinces those who can’t get a miracle they don’t have enough faith, despite the fact that even non-believers operate faith every single day, and it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain of a problem! (When it comes to miracles, by the way, the answer is never to get more faith.)

You can understand how damaging both gospels are. I call them “gospels” because that is our culture’s way of describing the two but in reality, they are not gospels at all.

It cannot be gospel if isn’t one hundred percent true and one hundred percent Good News.

Neither of the two fit the bill.

Okay, so what is my point here? My point here is that I want to really open up this conversation with you—the why behind writing Prosperity to Providence and why it is so essential, IMPERATIVE in fact, that you read it. As the days get darker you’re going to need to know how to operate in the miraculous and why Jesus said you could and would do greater things than He did.

If you can’t do those greater things you’re gonna be in big trouble. When the markets permanently collapse, housing is overtaken by the government, and America falls, it won’t matter a lick what you scrimped and saved for all your life.

What will matter is how you see God and how the full expression of Christ in you works in real life.

Every theologian and Bible commentator uses a lens through which they interpret scripture, whether they would admit it or not. They either see God as the prosperity God or the providential God. And the lens they use determines the God they get.

Here is the bottom line: we become like the god we believe in.

What is the solution? The Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of the Kingdom. You must know what it truly means to have “your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15) and to be discipled in the Gospel of the Kingdom (Matthew 24:14).

I don’t want you to be in fear. Miracles and provision happen for those who believe, even during the end times.

But just know this: neither the Prosperity Gospel nor the Providential God Gospel will prepare you for it. Both will leave you impotent.  

Okay! That was heavy! But as future blog posts roll out, I will dive into each gospel to help you put it all into perspective. Stay tuned! Because what you read (and what you hear on the podcast) will give you the tools to overcome ANYTHING!

Did you know that the most pervasive gospel taught in America is anti-Christ doctrine? True story. According to 2 John 1:7, any doctrine that denies Jesus came in the flesh is anti-Christ doctrine. This doesn’t mean it is pro the anti-christ that is to come. It means it denies Christ as a man.

"For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.
This is a deceiver and an antichrist."
2 John 1:7

Most of us have read this and assumed it means those who deny Jesus ever came at all are anti-Christ deceivers. But that’s not what this verse is saying. It is a lie to say Jesus never came to Earth at all, but it’s not enough to say Jesus simply came to earth in human form. The key to avoiding anti-Christ doctrine is acknowledging that Jesus left His God-form in Heaven.

“He who, while he was in the form of God, did not esteem this as a prize, that he was the equal of God, But he stripped
himself and took the form of a Servant and was in the form of the children of men, and was found in fashion as a man.”
Philippians 2:6-7

Jesus didn't consider it necessary to be equal to God while on earth. What does that mean? Let’s look at some Greek definitions:

• The word stripped means to make empty, to abase, neutralize, he laid aside equality with and the form of God and took the form of man (Strong’s 2758).

• Form doesn’t simply mean a human body. It means a form (outward expression) that embodies essential (inner) substance so that the form is in complete harmony with the inner essence (Strong’s 3444).

• Prize means to claim for oneself eagerly (726).

In order for Jesus to have emptied Himself and taken on human form, His inner human form had to be in harmony with His outer human form. Said this way—Jesus was God, but He didn’t have God’s essential inner substance while on earth. He made no effort to take it with Him to earth; He didn’t consider it necessary to accomplish His miracles and mission on Earth.

Jesus came to earth as a human and was filled with the Holy Spirit to show us what a human filled with the Holy Spirit is capable of. Jesus was trying to show us how a human could experience Kingdom living right here on earth.

THIS. IS. HUGE.

Why? Because if you believe Jesus was able to do everything He did because He still had His inner God essence on earth, you have NO BASIS for believing you can do the things Jesus did, or even greater things than He did (John 14:12). You are not God. I am not God. If it takes being God to perform the miracles Jesus performed then we have no hope of ever doing them ourselves.

Jesus didn’t tell us to ask Him to heal people. He said, “You heal them.” Jesus didn’t say, “Ask Me to move your mountain.” He said, “Tell your mountain to move.” Over and over again Jesus said He did what He did as the Son of Man and that is why we can do the same.

We were given dominion over what happens on earth (Genesis 1:26). This is why Jesus had to come as a man—only man had dominion on earth. This is also why Jesus said, after His resurrection, “All power in Heaven and Earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). Jesus defeated death and the curse, taking back the power that man had given up. He was the only human in history who held power in BOTH Heaven and Earth.

And then He gave us the authority to use His authority. We have the keys of the Kingdom realm. Whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 18:18). The decision we have to make is whether or not we will loose God’s will on earth or our own will. God’s will isn’t automatic on earth and He won’t violate our free will. The world would look nothing like it does today if God had all the control. God gave us the same autonomy He has. He only has control to the degree we give it to Him.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with the responsibility of doing the greater things Jesus said we would do. We have authority (dominion) just because we are here and we are human. But what keeps us using our dominion to loose on Earth what God has already approved in Heaven? The Providential God doctrine has convinced us that Jesus didn’t come in human flesh and that God is in ultimate control of every outcome. It has caused us to stop seeking the miraculous and live by fatalism. If God is in ultimate control and pulling all the strings, you wouldn’t need faith and your authority would be meaningless. This is why healing crusades and miracles are prevalent throughout other countries but we don’t see them in America. We are convinced God is the ultimate decision-maker and in doing so we have abdicated our dominion.

On the podcast this week we begin a new series that will help you get over that thing you haven’t been able to overcome yet. Whatever habit, addiction, fear, or limiting belief is keeping you stuck can be unstuck when we understand how Jesus was able to accomplish so much and how to use His authority to do the same!

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So many Believers are asking: "Why can't I get free??? I'm saved, I'm a Believer, but this habit, addiction, depression, etc. keeps haunting me!" We come to Jesus and receive salvation and yet, most Believers don't look any different than non-Believers when it comes to cycles of self-destruction.

In this new series, we will break it down and find the path to freedom. And we will start by taking a look at common behaviors and beliefs that drive our inability to find freedom.

Ref: "Grace: The Power to Change" by Dr. Jim Richards, Dr. James B. Richards, Chaim Bentorah, Hebrew Word Study