Surely by now you've checked to see what Jesus actually said about this, haven't you?

"Woe to you who are rich!"----Jesus

"Blessed are the poor." ---Jesus

"Do not store up treasures on the face of the earth." --Jesus (BTW, what is more precisely a treasure than a very full bank account?)

"A person's life does NOT consist in the abundance of possessions"---Jesus

Granted, even though Jesus did say that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a (sewing) needle than for a RICH person to get into heaven, he didn't say it was absolutely impossible. But the point of his illustration is exactly HOW DIFFICULT it usually is. Ever try to push a camel thru the eye of a sewing needle?


Ok, now you've definitely MIS-quoted this.

 Jesus was talking to Judas when he said this since Judas was complaining about the woman using (or wasting from his perspective) expensive oil on Jesus. What is happening here is that Jesus is simply reminding Judas that he can help the poor anytime he wants as they will always be with us, but Jesus was honoring the gift that this woman brought and used on Him to prepare for his burial.

 He didn't end the sentence as you did.


What you have provided are examples of people whom God ALLOWED to have wealth, most likely because they could be trusted with it.

But the whole problem with what you and "gospel" are sharing is that your heart and desires clearly reveal themselves by your strong interest in getting rich FIRST. No offence ozell, but you seem a bit more desperate since your argument has nothing to do with YOU being a servant of God and happy with that even if he does NOT give you great wealth. You seem to be thinking that once you get great wealth then somehow, for that reason alone it seems, history will then suddenly take note of you being some kind of great servant of God.


The examples you keep listing were of men who were separated by hundreds of years, and who also never got to directly hear the wisdom of Jesus Christ. If they had, I could imagine that these same great and wealthy men would have been able to forsake their wealth like Jesus commanded his followers to do. God can give and take away as he pleases.

Is it your goal to have the longest running threat in Grace Centered Forum history?


The reason I ask ID is because you did not address any of the substance of my post.
 I am re-posting it to kindly ask you to comment on the specifics and share your knowledge for or against each point.

Here goes....

ID Jesus did not say things that were off HIS message. HIS message was Redemption.
Grace and Truth, ( God's True Way of Redeeming mankind) came by Jesus. Everything Jesus said, taught and demonstrated was regarding Redemption. When He served or spoke of serving, the message was redemption, when He healed or  spoke of healing the message was redemption, When he forgave or spoke of forgiving the message was redemption....similarly His attitude toward money and the way He spoke about money was related to Redemption.

That said.... Jesus demonstrated an ease among the wealthy as well as the poor. Furthermore he never preached poverty, only humility. His concern regarding money was never the money itself but people's attitude toward it.

Why you want Jesus, The Son of God, God Incarnate, The Owner of the Universe and all that is in it to be the icon of poverty is beyond me.
The tabernacle, the temple and their furnishings were all material representations of spiritual truths, shadows if you will of things that would come, which all in some way were types of Jesus and typified Jesus.

Two of those items, The Ark of the Covenant and The Golden Lampstand were made of pure Gold of the highest caliber and finest craftsmanship.

"You fools and blind men! Which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold? Matthew 23:17

Jesus point about the gold in the temple is not that the gold is polluted and should be tossed out of it. His attitude was that the people in the temple needed to change their polluted attitudes toward the gold!

Gold though one of the more valuable of precious metals is merely an inanimate material, just as is wood,  as is lead,  as is bronze and silver having no human attributes of good or bad, righteous or wickedness because they are inanimate....JUST LIKE MONEY!
 
It is people that bring the characteristics of good or evil to any material object.
A knife is not a weapon unless we use it to kill ......other than that it is a useful tool. It can become evil in the hand of a human and it become a great tool for good in the hands of a human. Same for money!

Jesus said the temple makes the gold sacred! In the New Covenant we are the temples of God. We are called to make the money sacred, to give our 1st fruits of it ( the tithe ) and God sanctifies and makes Sacred what remains.

In effect we are saying our money belongs to God.
That is impossible to say unless we have 1st sought the Kingdom and God's Righteousness, that is why God sees to it that things and/or the money to get things are added unto us.

When we tithe we are saying that our money is not our own but belongs to God and we are thankful that He has seen to it that we have shelter, clothing and food. The best part is that we are able to help others out of our abundance, the poor, the widows and the orphans  
      
For a believer Psalm 23 as many of the prophetic Psalms of David should be a comfort for us as it has millions who read it because it is a true depiction of the relationship between a Shepherd and His sheep.
Jesus is Our Great Shepherd, We are His Sheep, we shall not want or lack anything, our cups should run over, we should abound in blessings not in squalor lack or the despair of poverty in wonderment of why others seem to be blessed by God and we do not.  



Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." And they were amazed at him. Mark 12:17

Clearly in this instance Jesus is talking about money. Specifically he is talking about paying taxes. Obviously you cannot pay taxes on what you do not have only on what you have.As a former homeless impoverished person myself, the one benefit I can recall is not having to pay taxes. Nevertheless I must say I prefer having to pay taxes out of my substance over the benefit of having a care free attitude toward taxes due to the dire straits of having nothing to pay taxes on ...if you get my drift

John 2
8Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so,
9and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside
10and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

In the following verses please note, Peter was not fishing to catch a meal. He was a fisherman by trade. That was his livelihood, his business. Boats and nets were not items that poor people possessed more so then than it even is now.

After using Peter's boat to preach, in effect sanctifying it, making it sacred used by God to minister His message, Jesus Blessed Peter's business. There is no better picture of a demonstration of Jesus ability to bless with abundance.

And He said to them, "Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch." So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. John 21:6

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.Luke 5:5  

Peter like any business person recognized Jesus miraculous ability to bring about prosperity and abundance.
However Peter was led to follow and support Jesus ministry OUT OF HIS SUBSTANCE for the greater realization of Who Jesus Is, The Christ the Son of the Living God.
Point is Peter's initial realization of who Jesus is came about through a demonstration of Jesus ability to Bless him with supernatural material abundance.

Fine if that's what you believe, however you should take note that we are heirs to the blessings of Abraham and Abraham tithed to Melchizedek pre Law / pre Levite

For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.Galatians 3:18

 For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.Romans 4:13

Also the following passage is not in the context of giving but please note the standing principle that is addressed can be applied to most anything..... including money


If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.Romans 11:16

Point is .....Tithing sanctifies what remains after the tithe

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise Galatians 3:29

Anyway its worth reading the entire chapter of Hebrews 7

Hebrews 7
1This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him,
2and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, his name means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.”
3Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.
4Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder!
5Now the law requires the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, their brothers—even though their brothers are descended from Abraham.
6This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi, yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.
7And without doubt the lesser person is blessed by the greater.
8In the one case, the tenth is collected by men who die; but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living.
9One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham,
10because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor.

Sorry, "gospel", I'm just not sure if I can say this in a way that doesn't come across offensively, but I didn't respond to most of your last post as I found it to be quite boring at best.

Aside from that, it has been interesting to "spar" with you as you do seem to be aware of many of the arguments in favor of your case for the prosperity gospel.

The theme that runs all throughout what you share appears to be an attempt to return to the Old Testament, and quite frankly, I'd rather move into the New since I think Jesus has taken all the best from the "old" and presented it in a way that is easy enough for a child to understand, not just boring scholarly language that most people preaching that waffle don't even completely understand.

Ultimately I feel that until you and ozell can see that blessings and prosperity don't have to have anything whatesoever to do with wealth and riches, you'll never really begin to understand or appreciate the REAL blessings Jesus provides for his flock.

This doesn't mean that what I'm am pushing or preaching is some kind of destitute poverty for Christians. It's just obvious that our particular culture strives relentlessly after money, and this spiritual sickness has infected the church as well, so much so that the sermons of many modern day preachers share a great deal in common with what could be called mainstream "$bling-bling$" hip-hop. And if the church begins to resemble the world this much it's because it IS the world now.

BTW, tithing is a part of the law. I thought you strongly fought against the idea that we are under the law in any way?
If you're really bent on tithing, why not submit to the type of the tithe Jesus commanded of his followers---it's a little more than the Jewish 10 percent. Jesus commanded a tithe of all of your posessions and the proceeds of which going straight to the poor.

I'm now thoroughly convinced you are doing nothing but counting views and responses to your thread.

Furthermore I don't know how to say this without coming off kind of rude but your last paragraph coincides directly with your 1st paragraph while both the 1st and last paragraphs of your response coincide with your seemingly cursory reading of the bible in general.  

The Bible shows as I stated that the tithe predates the Law...of course you skipped that altogether to accuse me of adhering to the Law which you then follow up with a ridiculous comment about Jesus commanding everyone ( tithing ) giving away everything.

If you follow the pattern of the early church and SELL everything it isn't for a tithe, but to sustain the work of the ministry. If you give away everything you can only do it once then you become one of the recipients ( The Poor ) that Jesus and the disciples had to help!

Furthermore as I suspected you really do not understand what Jesus was talking about in regards to the temple tax in his comments to Peter.

Last but not least if reading what Jesus said and understanding what He said doesn't BORE YOU too much...

Your assignment if you choose to accept it is to


Please explain Jesus following statement

And He said to them, "But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one. Luke 22:36

Seems like some of them had money, luggage ( bags to carry their belongings ) and coats

That's what it seems like to me but I'm sure you have another explanation for the term "whoever has"

By the way...I believe scripture shows that He was talking to the 12 but.... I could be wrong ...
.....he could have been talking to all 120  


  

No offense  taken! Here is my thinking so you don't have to think what I'm thinking. Servants of God can be wealthy.
Servants of God are not all poor. Servants of God have understanding be they poor or rich. A wealthy servant of God knows that he cannot his riches blind him or her. Wealthy servants know that the Lord has blessed them with the knowledge to get wealth.

I'm a servant of God and I am not rich or wealthy, YET, I'm not blinded by this prosperity doctrine, Nor the doctrine of wealthy people cannot serve God as you imply.

   




 

ozell, do you (or "gospel") ever wonder why you can't just simply point at Jesus and say, "look, this is not just a servant of God, but his very own (and only begotten) Son, see how wealthy he was compared to people like Abraham, Job, David, Solomon"?

We all know that the gospels make it pretty clear that Jesus didn't have herds of livestock, a luxurious living space, or any other great feature(s) of wealth like these others that you keep bringing up, so wouldn't it make more sense to follow the actual pattern of Jesus rather than trying our hardest to pretend Jesus' own example was irrelevant?

You see, I keep bringing it back to the most perfect example for Christians to follow, which is Jesus himself---who even repeatedly told us NOT to seek after riches, but God and His kingdom. But if you insist on following FOLLOWERS of God (who didn't even get to personally know Jesus or hear his teachings), then please name yourself accordingly, like a JOBite, Abrahamist, Solomite, or Davidian, so that you don't contribute even more  to all the confusion that already exists in Christianity.

Now again, I'm not pushing for destitute poverty, but for people to just be content with following Jesus---even if he never allowed you to become wealthy.

How about ozell and "g"----would you still follow Jesus after years of serving him and no great increase in wealth?

What about if God took all that you currently had----WITHOUT compensating you later like he did someone like Job?

Hello Alex,

Welcome to the forum.  I have been looking for someone like you for support.  You will find that most here on this forum like to wallow in their poverty.  You will see them strike at the heel of those who Jesus has prospered. These guys do not sow a seed or tithe, and seem to think that people who do are being ripped-off. You have your work cut-out for you.