The Cost of the Kingdom

Elliott Tepper

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781781912218

5

Divine Prosperity
A Cost-Benefit Analysis

A few years ago, Brian Huston traveled to Spain to visit missionaries who were related to the Hillsong Church of Sydney, Australia. Those missionaries engaged our Betel auditorium in Madrid for a special conference and platform for his ministry. Everything associated with the event was edifying and in good taste, a blessing. I, personally, was enlarged and enriched by the humility and authenticity of Brian’s life and ministry. During one of the evening meetings, I was sitting in the first row in front of the platform alongside of Brian. In the middle of the worship, Brian turned to me and said, “Betel is different than other Spanish churches we have visited. The evangelical Spanish Church seems to have a spirit of poverty. Betel does not. Betel has a spirit of prosperity.” He paused and then asked, “Why?”

There was no criticism in Brian’s comment, but a simple observation. In those few moments I took to reply, I thought, “Yes, most Spanish evangelical churches are poor. Most are located in small storefronts with humble, working-class and immigrant congregations. Most have cement or tile floors and folding chairs.” I thought, “We started like that, too.” My eye studied some of the familiar faces of our own working-class, immigrant, and ex-addict congregation. Then I looked around at Betel’s large auditorium that seats more than a thousand people, with its blue carpet and soft chairs, its three-story ceiling and stained-glass windows.

As I gazed around, the brilliant colors of the flags of the nations where Betel has established communities and churches around the world seemed to leap off and accent the tall, white walls of the auditorium. Just before I answered, my eye was drawn to the rich blond oak table and pulpit that Bernardo, Alberto’s father, had made for Betel. Bernardo, himself a former alcoholic, was the first father of an addict, who, along with his son, had been converted in Betel. I remembered Bernardo asking me, “What verse would you have me carve on the front of the table?” I replied, “Put John 12:21, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’ Let that always be before the congregation.”

Brian was still looking at me and waiting when finally I replied, “I suppose it is because we work with poor people.” He smiled and nodded his head.

Sir, We Would See Jesus

Prosperity—is it good? Is it bad? What is prosperity? Has the humble Carpenter, who was a friend of the poor and has asked for costly sacrifice from His disciples, found a place for prosperity in the Kingdom of God? Before I address these questions, let me share another anecdote that will help explain what I understand divine prosperity to be and what place it has in the Kingdom and councils of God.

Recently, I was asked to speak at the dedication of a small church building in Andalusia. I was not the only speaker. The missionary who founded the church had also invited an elder from his home church in Virginia to speak at the dedication. The elder and I had never met before, but we soon discovered that our paths had indeed crossed. In the early 1970s, we both attended a small church called Seagate Community Chapel in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 1974, Mary and I had left Wilmington to enter Elim Bible Institute to prepare for the mission field just as he and his wife arrived in Wilmington. Though we physically missed each other by only a few months, we knew the same people and had been the beneficiaries of the same deep teachings. In short, we had both spent rich times of fellowship at Seagate Chapel, in the same deeper-life, Charismatic-Pentecostal church.

In the early days of the Charismatic movement, most Charismatics were still active in their mainline denominations, but they also sought fellowship and teaching beyond their home churches in Christian organizations like Camps Farthest Out, the Full Gospel Businessmen, Women’s Aglow, World Map Camps, etc. The little Seagate Chapel became, for a short season, a special place of encounter for the embryonic and growing Charismatic movement in Wilmington and the surrounding areas. Many of the best-known and most articulate Charismatic speakers came to minister at Seagate: men like Derek Prince, Bob Mumford, DeVern Fromke, Costa Deir, A. S. Worley, and so many others whose names were household words for anyone who subscribed to the New Wine or Charisma magazines. For a short season, hungry seekers after the deep things of God were meeting seven days a week in that little chapel. Some of the meetings were so powerful that Seagate Chapel’s fame spread far beyond Wilmington. For a season, there seemed to rest upon that little church a similar mantle and a small measure of the blessing that rested on Azusa Street in Los Angeles in the early 1900s.

The elder from Virginia had moved away from Wilmington in the late 1970s. We finished our Bible school training in 1977 and left America in 1978 for the mission field. Wilmington was still our home base, and we returned regularly to visit family and friends. The elder from Virginia then asked me, “How is Seagate doing today?” After all our reminiscing over the past glories of Seagate’s golden age of Charismatic visitation, my answer stunned both my new friend and me. I replied, “Seagate hardly exists anymore. The chapel is still standing, but there are only a few old faithful brethren left in an empty building.” He replied, “How can that possibly be? So many people were touched and transformed by God there!” I was not sure what to say and then said, “I think I know why. After a number of good pastors, a flashy ‘super-faith prosperity’ preacher destroyed the church.” That statement just came out of my mouth. I had not thought deeply about it, but once said, it rang true. The emphasis that man had placed on the “gospel of prosperity” had replaced the mantle of glory that had rested for so many years on Seagate’s congregation. I am sure Seagate’s decline was much more nuanced than my spontaneous response, but that is what I said.

What Is Prosperity?

The definitive word of Scripture on prosperity is found in 3 John 1:1-4 which reads:

The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.

Why did the Apostle John rejoice? He was pleased with his children. He had heard from the brethren that his spiritual children walked in the truth and that they gave witness to the truth. John wanted them to know that he took pleasure in hearing that the truth of the Logos was lived out in their lives and that they willingly shared that Logos with the world. In these opening verses of his epistle, John essentially praised the spiritual quality of their lives.

And yet it is telling; he was also evidently concerned about the quality of their natural lives. The preamble to his rejoicing in their spiritual progress is a simple prayer for their personal well-being: “I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.” What was the earnest desire of John, their spiritual father, and the will of God for them? Divine prosperity in all the dimensions of life. I would say that his prayer also reflects my desire for my natural and spiritual children in the Tepper and Betel families.

What normal people, what well-balanced human beings, would not desire the blessings of prosperity mentioned in 3 John for the lives of those they love? Suppose we were to select a group of Christians at random and then put the question to a vote: Who would be poor and who would be prosperous? I would be the first to vote for prosperity. Every pastor has prayed the Apostle John’s prayer for his own family and congregation. Under normal circumstances, can you imagine a pastor praying the blessings of poverty and suffering over those he loves? Something like this, “Beloved, I desire that you might be poor and enjoy the fruits of poverty in all things—trials, tribulations, hunger, needs, sicknesses, and rejection, all in order that you might become holy.”

No pastor would pray a prayer like that today, at least not under normal circumstances. I say under “normal circumstances” because, if one knows anything about the history of the Church and Christian mysticism and asceticism, there have been times when godly men and women in the Church indeed prayed prayers like that and willingly sought after and embraced lives of poverty and suffering.

The Desert Fathers

At the beginning of the third century of the Christian era, there arose in the Church of Egypt a significant group of earnest Christians called the Desert Fathers. Thousands of men and women left their churches in the cities to go to the desert to become hermits, monks, and mystics, seeking union with Christ through abnegation of self, renunciation of the world, extreme asceticism, and sacrifice. They chose Jesus’ first challenge to the early disciples as the foundation of their call to discipleship:

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matt. 16:24-25)

and

“If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” (Matt. 19:21)

Though Jesus Himself lived among men and celebrated life, eating and drinking and attending weddings, the Desert Fathers chose a life not unlike John the Baptist’s in the desert. Why they chose to follow John’s solitary approach to holiness rather than Jesus’ more balanced walk among men, punctuated by short seasons of solitude in desert places, we do not know. Perhaps after the Roman world made peace with the Church in A.D. 313 and ended Rome’s official persecution of Christians, many Christians felt that the world had not really ceased in its hostility, but had only changed its tactics. Where before Rome was a raging lion tearing the Church apart, after Constantine’s edict of acceptance, Rome became a smothering bear crushing the Church in its worldly embrace. The Desert Fathers saw the self-denial of extreme asceticism as an alternative to martyrdom and a way of preserving the holiness and purity of true Christian discipleship in a Church drifting into the arms of the world.

Streams of this via negativa and extreme asceticism have remained within the Church throughout its long history up until today. It has always produced a mixture of holiness and fanaticism, great saints and tragic fanatics. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic, Orthodox, and Coptic churches gave birth to many healthy and unhealthy ascetic communities. Modern Catholics still have their Carthusian and Trappist monks, closed convents, and Mother Teresas. Evangelicals have their William Booths and his humble army of Salvationists, and many other streams of austere Pietists and Holiness Christians. Even in my own mission, WEC International, we embrace the ethos and example of our founder, C. T. Studd. He was born into a millionaire family and yet gave away his inheritance in a single day to follow Christ’s admonition in Matthew 19:21 to the letter. He and his wife Priscilla agreed to a sixteen-year separation beginning in 1913, when she ran the home base in London while he lived and preached the gospel in the heart of Africa. Stewart Dinnen, a former international director of WEC, helped collect many of C. T. Studd’s sayings found in a little book edited by Jean Walker called Fool and Fanatic. I remember a conversation we had one day while we were traveling through the south of Spain visiting the Betel communities to gather material for Betel’s story, “Rescue Shop Within a yard of Hell”. Stewart asked the question, “Was C. T. Studd a fanatic?” And before I could answer, he answered his own question, “Yes, he was a fanatic, but he was God’s fanatic.” We modern WECCERS live today, though certainly imperfectly, by what C. T. Studd wrote in a note to his wife shortly before sailing from Europe to Africa: “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”

I believe that most of the historic Christian ascetics, mystics, and practitioners of voluntary poverty and self-denial did what they did because they sought union with Christ. That was their stated aim. How can we know or question their motives? Some found union and some did not. Asceticism in any age will always produce a brilliant mixture of fanaticism and, or, true holiness which only God can sort out.

The Way of Affirmation

There is another way. For the vast majority of Christians, God has called us not in the way of Christian asceticism or the via negativa, but rather in the way of affirmation so clearly stated by the Apostle John, “Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 1:2).

Yet even in the way of affirmation, prosperity is not always strictly prosperity and good health. That way will always contain a measure of Luke 9:23, which states, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Right in the middle of the way of affirmation, all true disciples will soon discover the cross of Christ. There they will see writ large the admonition of 1 Thessalonians 3:3 which advises us to be strengthened in our faith “so that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we have been destined for this.” Even in what would seem to be the less arduous way, Jesus has not left us the slightest bit of room for the narcissistic materialism and love of ease that have tainted the modern doctrine of divine prosperity that is so often preached today. In contrast, the blessed and prosperous life that the apostles John and Paul describe in their epistles is an authentic, prosperous life in Christ only because it contains the cross and some measure of self-denial, long-suffering, and tribulation. This has always been and always will be the cost of His Kingdom and the portion of those who would be Christ’s disciples.

The Land of Goshen

How can we explain divine prosperity to the modern Church? What would help us understand? I have found Israel’s experience in the land of Goshen—their arrival, their permanence, and their departure for Canaan—to be a powerful illustration of what God considers prosperity to be.

Goshen was Israel’s dwelling place from the lifetime of Joseph up until the Exodus. Goshen is the rich, fertile, delta land that lies at the mouth of and between the major branches of the Nile in Egypt. But how and when did Israel come to live in Goshen?

We know that God called Abraham and his family from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Canaan about twenty centuries before Christ. God did not call Abraham as a poor man from a poor city to be an austere hermit, living a life of desert pilgrimage with an ass and a tent, but as a very rich man from a very rich empire to dwell in a new rich land. He was called from one earthly place to another earthly place, from the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia to Canaan land, a land that flowed with milk and honey. Canaan was a land of abundance. It was green, fertile, and covered with fields, vineyards and also dotted with prosperous little cities.

We must see that God called a rich man from and to a rich land. Of course, Canaan, though promised by God to Abraham, belonged to other men. The rich land of promise was just that—a promise. And the principal motive of Abraham’s pilgrimage to and through Canaan was spiritual. He sought God, not riches or possessions. He already had great possessions.

We know that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants lived there for many generations as nomads. Though they wandered without houses or a city of their own, they were rich nomads living in a strange land with large valuable herds, silver, and gold. And though the blessing of God remained upon them as they moved about and pitched their tents in their adopted earthly paradise, they also suffered external trials, oppressions, and wars, along with internal strife and rivalries among their own brethren. The sons of Jacob, though blessed by God with prosperity, fought among themselves for paternal affection and for place and patrimony in their family. The prosperous life in Canaan included a full measure of bitterness and grief, as well as divine favor.

In the previous chapter, we mentioned how fraternal jealousy led Joseph’s brothers to cast Jacob’s favorite son into a pit and then sell him as a slave to the Ishmaelites to be carried into Egypt. When they returned home to their father, they told him that a wild beast had devoured their brother—a half-truth because, in a sense, the wild beast of satanic jealousy had indeed devoured Joseph. We can only imagine the anguish and grief in the heart of Jacob and his house. Rich and poor families alike suffer tragedies and tribulations. Ask a wealthy person, and he himself will tell you that though wealth may shield one from some of life’s trials, wealth cannot completely protect the wealthy from the cup of suffering that all humanity must partake of from time to time. All of Jacob’s natural prosperity was not able to return Joseph to his father.

Universal Poverty

During the time of Jacob and Joseph, there was a great drought and famine in all the Bible lands between the...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Dedication
• How Much Is a Treasure in a Field Worth?
• What Is the True Cost of Discipleship?
• Where Is the Kingdom?
• The Details in the Greater Picture
• Divine Prosperity
• They Had Everything Except the One Thing
• They Had Nothing Left to Give Save Ashes
• Other titles from Christian Focus
• Christian Focus