INSTANT REGRET: Televangelists Get Caught Lying, then THIS Happens!

Private Jets, Luxury, and the Prosperity Message

I had enough money to buy a beautiful Cessna Citation Jet, cash. And since there's so much jealousy in this room tonight, that I can feel over this. A few weeks later, I bought another one worth three times what that one was, cash.

Tappy over my blessing, folks. Without the airplane that we have, that I bought from Tyler Perry, and I didn't pay anywhere. Tyler's one of the greatest guys. He made it. He made that airplane so cheap for me, I couldn't help but buy it.

Let me just say this. We're believing God for a brand new Falcon 7X, so we can go anywhere in the world one stop. We've asked the Lord Jesus Christ, and we're believing God. In fact, he told me, Jesse.

It was one of the greatest statements the Lord ever told me. He said, Jesse, you want to come up where I'm at? And I said, what do you mean? He said, before you ask, I'll answer. Isaiah 65, 24. I said, yes, Lord.

He said, I want you to believe me for a Falcon 7X. So I said, okay. But the first thing I thought of was how I'm going to pay for it. And then that great statement that he told me in 1978 flooded into my mind and said, Jesse.

I didn't ask you to pay for it. I asked you to believe for it.

If I want to believe God for a $65 million plane, you cannot stop me. You cannot stop me from dreaming.

Why would it be okay for a business executive, but not okay for somebody like me? I really could not fly commercial at this stage of my life and do what I'm doing. I could not endure it physically. You know how hard it is to fly commercial.

May I interrupt you there for a second?

You couldn't have done that on an airliner. No, sir. No way. Stand up and say, what'd you say, Lord? No. Okay, no, yeah. And the guy sitting over there saying, what the hell does he think he's doing? You can't do that.

You can't do that. No, no. This is so important. And those of you that are just now coming into these things, in the first place, Jesse and I and others, Keith Moore and Creflo and all of us, the world is in such a shape, we can't get there without this.

That's right. We've got to have this. The mess that the airlines are in today, I would have to stop. I'm being very conservative. At least 75 to 80, more like 90 of what we're doing, because you can't get there from here.

It's impossible. Now, Oral used to fly airlines, but even back there then, man, it got to the place where it was agitating his spirit, people coming up to him. He had become famous, and they wanted him to pray for them and all that.

You can't manage that today. Right. You can't get into this dope-filled world and get in a long tube with a bunch of demons. Right. That's exactly. And it's deadly. And it works on your heart.

It really does. Now you drive a wonderful car, and you have a plane, and you have all of the accoutrements of success. Listening to the sermon today, I understood very clearly, because God doesn't just bless you and say, enough.

He allows your cup to run it over. But how do you explain that?

One, he allows your cup to run over. I don't think the issue with clergy is what you drive or where you live. It's more how you got it.

But after the Crusades were over, Hinn's private jet took off to Italy. In Milan, Hinn's room at the Savoia Hotel was 1001, the presidential suite. It features its own Baroque swimming pool and Turkish bath.

The going rate, more than $10 ,000 per night. From Italy, the Hinn entourage headed to London for a day. The party stayed at the prestigious Lanesborough Hotel. The rate for Hinn's room, almost $4 ,000 a night.

And there were incidental charges on the hotel bill, including in-room tea, lunch, and chauffeur services, totaling $6 ,000. To his trademark white suits, his ministry's logo stitched, it is said, with 24-carat gold thread, custom tailored in Beverly Hills for several thousand dollars apiece.

The man who once asked, where in the scripture does it say I have to drive a Honda? As Mercedes-Benz tastes.

Giving, Seed-Faith, and Harvest Theology

I believe that God wants to bless us, yes.

But when you go to the conferences, you ask people to give money to you. You say, do it cheerfully.

Yeah. Because? Because the Bible says, give and it shall be given unto you. See, giving is a major part of the whole Christian doctrine.

But do you believe that if someone gives money to the ministry, that more will come back to them? Yes. Absolutely. I think that's what they mean by prosperity. Yes. But sometimes your message will be heard by someone in the most dire circumstances.

It's a sort of roulette wheel, a sort of gamble with God. Okay, well, I can't pay the rent, but I'll give it to Joyce and we'll see what happens. Do you worry at all that that may happen? I totally know.

I don't worry.

Joyce Meyer says, no, I totally don't worry about that. Well, I'm sure she doesn't. But she should. Because right now, even as we speak, there are thousands of people all around the world who are watching TBN and Daystar and Laseah Broadcasting and the Word Network and all these things.

And they are hearing this endless drivel of saying, you send us your money and God will give you a harvest. And there are people at home, they are poor, they are sick, they are desperate, they have sick children.

And so in desperation, they get out their checkbook or they get out their credit card. And they send in money to these multi-millionaire preachers who fly in private jets and who live in multi-million dollar homes.

Jesse Duplantis, for example, lives in a 35 ,000 square foot parsonage. But when your wealth is gained off of preying upon the hopes and fears of hurting and sick and desperate people, there's a lot wrong with that.

That's what the Bible meant when it said, give and it shall be given to you. Again, good measure taken together. No way you can serve me and need not serve you. The more you give to me, the more I give you.

The law is this. Here's the law in the kingdom of God. Harvest responds only to seed, not to prayer. Harvest responds only to seed, not to prayer, not to fasting or any kind of position you have. Harvest only responds to seed.

Say that out loud. Harvest only responds to seed. Not prayer. Not fasting. Not titles. Seed. Now, don't you go to thinking about, well, no, I don't agree with that. But I remember one time I pray. All right.

Keep living. Living this time right now. Ain't no harvest coming because you say, oh, Lord Jesus, you understand. Lord, help me. He said, I do understand. So you don't start all that. So find you some piece of money.

Find you something. So if it's money, you need whatever the harvest is. You need to come up with this money. You have to so money. You can't talk about. I'm going to sell my time. You're just going to get a vacation.

No money until the seed is sown. The harvest is not in view.

Tithing, Fear, and the Demand to Keep Giving

Fear of this. This Corona virus is faith in its ability to hurt you or kill you. The fear of what are we going to do? I'm getting laid off at work. Hey, your job's not your source. If it is, you're in trouble.

Jesus is your source. Whatever you do right now, don't you stop tithing? Don't you stop sowing offerings? Well, they won't let us go to church. Well, email it in there. Text and give or something, but you get your tithe in that church.

If you have to go take it down there and drop it off and stick it under the door or something, you get that tithe in that church. You get that offering in that church. And then you go home and you do what we're supposed to do.

According to the scripture, if you give to God, you ought to be so blessed. You don't know what to do with yourself. The title of the sermon today is why isn't my giving working? Think about that, because according to God, if you give, you ought to be so blessed.

My Lord, blessed in the city, in the field, going in, going out. But why is it my giving working?

I want you to go to the phone, dial the number on the screen and simply say, I'm one of the 1 ,000 I'm going to faith in somehow in 90 days. A $1 ,000 seed. You may already have the 1 ,000. It may be something you put aside for retirement or a college or a vacation.

You may have put some money aside that nobody knows about. And God's given you a picture. It may be in the bottom of your closet. It may be in a sock. It may be between your mattresses. It may be an account that nobody knows about but you and God.

That's not your harvest. That $1 ,000 won't get you anywhere until God touches it. In fact, I have a feeling that somebody watching me right now, I have a feeling that somebody that wants a credit card debt wiped out, that if you'll use your faith as you sow, as you sow the 1 ,000 on a credit card, as you use your faith, as you use your faith, God's going to wipe out your credit card indebtedness.

The Prosperity Gospel as a Rotten Tree

So many people think that this movement is just about health and wealth, Rolex watches, private jets, and healing. No, that's just some of the bad low-hanging fruit off of a rotten theological tree. It is a tree that is rotten and diseased and dead at its core.

And health and wealth is just some of the bad fruit hanging off of it. But the allure of health and wealth is what makes this movement so appealing and yet so dangerous at the same time. Because the prosperity gospel essentially says this, come to Jesus because he'll make you rich and he'll heal your body.

They appeal to two of the most basic and universal of all human desires. Most people want to be rich and almost everybody wants to be healed. Not many people want to be sick. There's a few people that just like the attention that comes with being sick and they think they're sick whether they are or not.

But for most of us, if we had our druthers, we'd rather not be sick, right? And so the prosperity gospel says, well, if you'll just come to Jesus, then you can have it. So let me get this straight. You're telling me if I come to Jesus, if I ask Jesus into my heart, then God will make me rich and I'll never be sick again?

Sign me up, man. I like that, Jesus. You got two of them, I'll take them both. But is that the real gospel? Or is the real gospel something a little bit more like this? Come to Jesus because you're a sinner.

And because of your sin, the righteous wrath of God abides on you. And the only way to have that wrath removed is to repent of sins, turn from sins, and place your trust in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

And then you will have heaven. But on this earth, we're not promised money. We're not promised healing. What are we promised? We're promised tribulation. We're promised persecution.