Mike Todd’s "Crazy Faith" Is Prosperity Gospel Teaching!

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to the channel where the Bible and critical thinking meet to give you real

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Christian commentary about the things that matter. Thanks so much for watching, let's get into the video. So I hope you all had a great

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Christmas, a great New Year's, I know that I certainly did, but now we need to get back to your regularly scheduled programming and fighting for truth, so in the coming weeks and months we're going to do just that.

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Many of you have been following my channel for a while now, and I thank the Lord for your continued support. Many of you will also know that a teacher who

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I am often critical of is Mike Todd. Mike is the pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and his church is a trendy, seeker -sensitive megachurch that dabbles in prosperity gospel teaching.

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But because his messages are often so wrapped up in layers of passion and joy and zeal, it's easy to watch an entire

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Mike Todd sermon and come out really asking yourself what the actual implications of his teaching are. So I want to review a short clip of Mike Todd's teaching in this video, and show you exactly what the implications are and how they relate to the teaching known as the prosperity gospel.

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By the way, a big thank you to the viewer named TJ who sent me this clip. Please send me things to review, guys,

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I always appreciate when you do that. Anyways, just for reference, the prosperity gospel is the teaching that faith in God will always yield physical health and wealth as a sign of genuine belief.

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You will find that Mike Todd's message in this sermon matches up with this teaching perfectly. I'm going to deviate from my usual three -point presentation that I offer in many of my videos because I really want to track

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Mike Todd's argument in a different way. In this video, I want to show you the sly, almost undercover way in which the prosperity gospel is being preached at Transformation Church and from teachers like Mike Todd.

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It's easy to miss if you're not paying attention, so let's start with the first clip of Mike's argument here.

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Watch this. This next one is for you. See, a lot of people, especially religious people, they believe that crazy faith is just language.

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How you doing? I'm blessed and highly favored. Are you really?

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They think it's language. So here, Mike Todd makes it clear the type of person he's talking about.

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He's talking about those he calls religious people, which in this context refers to people who profess strong faith in Christ and claim to take their faith very seriously in their day -to -day lives.

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Some of these people believe that having what Mike calls crazy faith in God is just language.

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In other words, the crazy faith in God that these people have is merely a linguistic facade. It's an attempt to show others that you're really trusting in God for something when in reality, you aren't.

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That's what he's talking about, and Mike is going to add more clarity to that statement here in his next clip. Watch this.

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How you doing? I'm blessed and highly favored. Are you really?

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They think it's language. They just want to say the right things.

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I'm the head and not the tail of other nobody. I'm blessed coming in.

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I'm blessed. I've been in the Lord for 62 years, and I'm blessed to go in and blessed coming out.

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You're still on welfare. Somewhere along the way, it just became language.

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So yes, we're going to get to the whole you're still on welfare part because that's the part that probably sticks out to you. But first, let's table that for just a second so that we can see his entire argument.

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Mike chooses to identify the people he's talking about by the way that they talk. These religious people who have made their faith into simply a matter of language.

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These kinds of people say things like, I'm blessed and highly favored. They say things like, I've been in the Lord for 62 years, and I'm blessed coming in, and I'm blessed going out.

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Now let's disregard these people's claims to be blessed for a second because that's all a smokescreen for the overall point being made.

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Remember Mike's original statement, if you don't, I'll refresh your memory. He said that the type of people he's talking about, quote, believe that crazy faith is just language.

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In other words, their faith is not genuine. Now to be fair, I don't think he's talking about salvific faith, that is, faith that saves you.

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Rather, it seems to me that he's talking about everyday trusting in God type of faith, or what he might call in his theology, quote, believing in God for something.

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It seems that in his theology, this refers to something he might view as a matter of sanctification rather than as a matter of justification.

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But the point still stands. He says that there are people whose everyday faith in the Lord is simply a matter of language.

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And what is the mark of this kind of person? Well, this kind of person is on welfare. In other words, this kind of person has a bad financial situation.

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So listen closely to the point he's making. He's saying, some of you guys claim to exercise crazy faith in the

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Lord every day, but you're still in the same bad financial situation that you've been in for years. In other words, you cannot make a serious or genuine claim to be exercising everyday crazy faith in God if you're poor for an extended amount of time.

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That's literally what Mike Todd just said. At least, that's definitely implied in what he said. And most people can't even see this, so let's watch the full clip again, and we'll see it very clearly.

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How you doing? I'm blessed and highly favored. Are you really?

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I'm blessed. I'm blessed. I've been in the

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Lord for 62 years. And I'm blessed to go in and blessed coming out.

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You're still on welfare. Somewhere along the way, it just became language.

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So here's Mike's overarching point as it is presented to the viewer. He's saying that there are certain telltale signs of a person who is not exercising strong faith in God on a daily basis, or what he might call crazy faith.

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There are certain signs that a person's faith has merely become language, and more specifically, language that is not genuine.

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And one of those signs, according to Mike Todd, is that this person is in a bad financial situation for an extended period of time.

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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the prosperity gospel in action. If you're poor or on welfare for many years, it must be because you don't have enough crazy faith in God.

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If you're struggling financially for years, even decades at a time, it's because you don't have enough crazy faith.

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But let's keep listening because it gets even more clear. Watch this. Somewhere along the way, it just became language.

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And so we camp our whole lives behind the language of the

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Lord. But you got language and no result.

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We have no evidence that the language and your life match up.

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Did you hear that, folks? He says, quote, you got language and no results. He does not say you got language and no sanctification.

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He doesn't say you got language and no righteousness. He doesn't say you got language, but you don't attend church.

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No, he says, quote, you got language and no results. And of course, it's critical to understand that in context, he's talking about, at least in part, physical resources as those results.

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So you have language about your faith, but where is the financial blessing to prove it? That's effectively the question that's being asked.

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And then he even says, quote, we have no evidence that the language and your life match up.

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In other words, one of the ways that we know your crazy faith and your life don't match up is that you're on welfare for an extended period of time.

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The evidence of your lack of crazy faith is your financial situation. We know that you're not living in a way that is compatible with your crazy faith in God because you're poor.

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You're on welfare. You're impoverished. And this is so important to understand. The claim is fundamentally that if you really had faith in God, if you actually believed in his promises, then your physical, temporal, earthly, financial situation would surely have changed by now.

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That is the soft, subtle underbelly of prosperity gospel dogma that's being preached by Mike Todd and by pastors like him.

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It's not as obvious as someone like Joel Osteen, but it's just as dangerous and just as unbiblical. Nowhere in the

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Bible does it say that conclusive evidence of your faith is your financial situation, or that if you have a bad financial situation, then your faith must just be language.

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In fact, we have many different biblical examples of both rich and poor people and people who fit into those categories for extended amounts of time, even their whole lives, who exercise genuine faith in the

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Lord. Proverbs 28, verse 6 says, quote, better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways, end quote.

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If being poor is a sign that you are not exercising genuine, daily, crazy faith in God, then why would this passage tell us that it's better to be poor with integrity?

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Instead, the passage should say that being poor is an indication that you are not trusting in God the way that you ought to, and that you should have crazy faith, and then your financial situation would change as a result.

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But of course, the passage says nothing of the sort. It simply says to have integrity, whether you be rich or poor.

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In Mark chapter 10, Jesus encounters the rich young ruler. This young man is quite wealthy, and yet Jesus tells him the following in verses 21 -22.

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He says, quote, you lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

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Disheartened by the saying, he, the rich young ruler, went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions, end quote.

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If having financial blessing is a sign of you putting your crazy faith into action, as Mike Todd says, then why in the world would

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Jesus ask this man to sell all of his possessions? Mike Todd said earlier that the mark of someone who does not have genuine crazy faith is that they live a consistently poor life.

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And if that is indeed true, then Jesus is literally advising this man that he should not exercise faith in God, or at least that he should exercise less crazy faith in God, when he tells him to live a poorer lifestyle.

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It simply makes no sense. The true biblical sign of someone who has genuine faith in God is not whether or not they're on welfare.

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It is not whether or not they're rich. It's actually whether or not they live according to the teachings of Jesus Christ and have authentic trust in him.

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And of course, that is not to say that a Christian can never sin or exhibit bad behavior. Rather, it is to say that the marks of a faithful person are often entirely separate from their financial situation.

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This is a conclusion thoroughly demonstrated in Scripture, but it is also a conclusion that is often contradicted by the prosperity teaching of Mike Todd.

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This is the essence of the prosperity gospel. The message clearly is that if you are not being blessed in your life, in your finances by God, then your everyday crazy faith in God must not be genuine.

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It must just be empty words, empty language, rather than a reality in your life. That is the message being preached in that clip.

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However passionate and confident Mike Todd is, however many excuses people will try to come up with, there's just no getting around that.

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So in conclusion, Mike Todd preaches a subtle and subversive version of the prosperity gospel on a regular basis.

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In the clips we reviewed, it is clear that Mike Todd says that one of the signs of a person whose everyday faith in God is not strong or genuine is that they're in a bad financial situation for an extended amount of time.

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That statement is completely unbiblical, and it contradicts the many examples of poor faithful Christians that we have in Scripture.

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So let's pray that Mike and his congregation would really repent of this and believe the truth of God's Word.

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Thank you so much for watching. If you liked that video, please like, comment, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so that you never miss another one.

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If you didn't like that video for any reason, then I invite you to watch my Frequently Asked Questions video, link in description, where I deal with common objections and define the purpose and goal of my channel using

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And until next time, fight for truth, never surrender, and keep your eyes open. Thank you, and God bless.