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P.O. Box 14136 Dear TBN SANTA ANA and EAST LONDON FOLLOW-UP: ADDRESSING CONTROVERSIES [ACTS 15: 6] IN DEFENCE OF THE PERVERTED GOSPEL [GALATIANS 1: 7]: MATERIALISM AND HEDONISM MISCONSTRUED AS PROSPERITY I wrote several letters and reminders to you, unequivocally airing my concerns about how several preachers on your station are perverting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was and still is my Christian duty to do so. However, you have continued to ignore me, instead you have employed strategies that do not seem Christian at all, and I cannot go as far as being judgmental and questioning your role in this faith. As though you implied that I should mind my own business, you have not responded directly to me. This indifference smacks of a number of implications, indicative of a grossly unbecoming conduct for people who stand where you stand. It could mean that you regard me as a nonentity – perhaps because I am a Black person in a supposedly Dark Continent, the kind of subhuman species that should languish in ghettos and perish from the scourge of AIDS and such, who cannot warrant your attention and respect because you are this important …? If this is what you imagine, you have got it all wrong. I am a child of the Almighty and He goes with me through the darkness of the valleys of death all the way. Nothing, literally nothing, will ever intimidate Ishmael Mamonyane. The only continent of the world I have not visited is Australia. People are but people, wherever they are. Come down. |
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The only manner in which there came responses has been through vicious indirect references. The Prosperity Preachers you sent out to sarcastically refer to my warnings have continued to expose themselves as spiritually blind and really naïve, by advancing very insipid arguments. And I responded in my follow-ups. You keep on attacking me as a person, when I refer to an error? Are you playing the man and not the ball? How do you reconcile the case of a preacher who punctuates his every fifth statement with some tongues abracadabra, contrary to 1 Corinthians 14: 6 – 11 and verse 19, and yet he stands there and insult someone in indirect references? Hypocrite! People are playing with the Word of God. They are doing this at the wrong time when sin is the order of the day and diseases are ravaging lives all over the world. This teaching of prosperity is certainly Satan’s way of destructing believers’ focus and directing it away from the real things. It cannot be left unchallenged. Nobody, except God, can say anything about the Bible which may not be questioned. Not any of us has any final authority on the matters of Heaven. No one may expect the Christian world to swallow their convictions without questions. We are serious about this faith, our relationship with our Master Who died on the cross for us. No mortal man, not even Apostle Paul or Billy Graham, would present anything contrary to what Jesus Christ taught and expect us to swallow it. You have gone a bit too far. God has raised His devout men amongst us, the likes of ardent Miki Hardy who refuses to be repressed in his desperate effort to defend the Message of the Blood. It seems as if you do not hear what he is crying about, as you continue to do exactly what God is using him to warn you against – perverting the Gospel!. You ignore a very crucial statement by Charles Stanley regarding obedience on the part of man and consequences as a responsibility of God. In concurrence with the Lord Jesus Christ’s assertion that it is impossible to serve God and mammon, Michael Youssef has maintained that none of us is able to handle material success in a safe manner. TBN emphasizes the need for people to amass worldly riches against which the Word of God clearly and emphatically warns followers of Jesus Christ. I went out of my way, inspired by the Spirit of God, to research and put up a comprehensive study on the matter. I forwarded the study to you for free – I paid nothing less than R60,000 to print my book Pulpit Greed. You ignore the truths in it. Is that Christian? What should be done? Why should we not believe that mammon has purchased TBN to work against the Gospel of Redemption? Why should we listen to you teach things that the Lord Jesus and His disciples did not teach? The many-many dollars you are all about … has the Lord taught about such? Did Peter? Did John? Did James? Did Paul? Did Spurgeon or Wigglesworth? Why you? The Bible is about what we can and should become. Not what we should have! We have Jesus, the source of eternal life, and that suffices. What we need for this life is our Maker’s responsibility. Our responsibility is to obey and thus honour God. Nobody is a thief just because they do not tithe. If failure to tithe had such devastating implications, the Lord Jesus Christ would not have left it all to the scanty mention in the book of Malachi. He would certainly have gone out of His way to teach thoroughly about it, lest we became thieves on account of a lack of clarity on the matter. Thieves are self-made twenty-first century Levites who will intimidate people and take their tithes to do therewith nothing that the Scripture in Malachi says should be done with tithes. In which of all the many congregations he established and mentored has Paul ever mentioned that word “tithe”, if I may ask? CH Spurgeon, Prayer; 1. page 40 – 41 “We can never sufficiently adore free grace and dying love. The wonders of Calvary never cease to be wonders. They grow marvellous in our eyes as we think of Him who washed us from our sins in His own blood. Nor can we cease to praise the God of our regeneration, who found us dead and made us live, found us at enmity and reconciled us, found us loving the things of this world and lifted us out of the morass and mire of selfishness and worldliness into the love of divine, everlasting things.” 2. pages 101 - 102: “May the Lord save His people from the evils of prosperity. It may be that some of Your own people find it hard to worship because of cares … O Spirit of God, make us more completely the image of Christ. We long to be like the Lord Jesus Christ in spirit and character and in unselfishness of life. Give us the character of Christ, we pray. Redemption from the power of sin is purchased with His blood, and we crave for it. We pray that we may daily receive it. Let the whole militant church of Christ be blessed.” 3. pages 111 – 112: “O Spirit of God, renew any who are lovers of pleasure, who are dead while they live, and any who are lovers of self, whose lives are bound by the narrowness of their own being. Lord God, regenerate them; make them new creatures in Christ.” 4. page 113: “Let the wealthy be led away from their sin and brought to Jesus’ feet.” 5. page 133: “May the spiritual always gain the victory over the material.” 6. page 135: “It is an age of great luxury and great sin and gross departures from the truth.” 7. page 141: “Lord, send Your life throughout the entire church. Visit Your church; restore sound doctrine and holy, earnest living. Take away from professing Christians their love of frivolities, their attempts to meet the world on its own ground, and give back the old love of the doctrines of the Cross and Christ. May free grace and dying love again be the music that refreshes the church and makes her heart exceeding glad.” Do not teach us lies. Honouring God is living a holy life. It has nothing to do with giving money to greedy preachers – ask Nick Vujicic. We are talking about our God Who regards obedience as being better than sacrifice. Greedy preachers like the Old Testament because of what it has about material riches. Otherwise they would throw it away with everything about it. They are Abraham’s descendants only in so far as it affects wealth. Everything else they call Old Testament and obsolete, including parts of the Ten Commandments. If it does not bring money into their pockets, it can conveniently be seen as Old Testament. Everything was nailed to the cross, except the only one that enriches clergymen materially and inflates their egos. That was not nailed to the cross. The greedy have a way of pretending to be gathering riches for purposes of the Gospel. They say they do so in order for them to be able to give. It is all lies. Real givers give from nothing. Nick Vujicic, in an interview with James Robison: “I am the richest man, because I have things that money cannot buy.” These things, which money cannot buy, spelled out clearly in Matthews 5: 3 – 16, Galatians 5: 22 – 23, 2 Peter 1: 3 – 15, are the ones that matter and should be aspired for. Not material riches! It was very encouraging recently, to hear a young American preacher emphatically referring to repentance as the core of this faith, right there on TBN. His name is Napoleon Kaufman, and he talked, very sincerely, about the godly sorrow that leads into repentance unto Salvation. People who do not know how good it feels to be in a proper relationship with God are still looking for pleasure in useless perishable things. Their peace is defined in terms of their achievements, material achievements which most atheists possess in even larger scales. Real Christians, the likes of Nick Vujicic, find their kind of peace in an inexplicable manner, the peace of John 14: 27. Peace that surpasses human understanding is not some pleasure that comes from one’s hard labour or the luck that rattles a lottery machine. It is rather part of that flow of waters mentioned in John 7: 38. Our peace and prosperity has nothing to do with the things of this world. We rejoice right inside the physical limitations of the four walls of a prison cell and, right from there, we tell people to rejoice. Teach the things that matter. Talk like Charles Stanley, Ed Your Sr., Adrian Rogers, Tullian Tchividjian, Erlo Stegen, Mark Finley. Teach us what Jesus Christ taught and instructed to be taught. Open your Bibles to Acts 16: 8 and Acts 24: 25 and learn what you should talk about. Look at Matthew 3: 2, Matthew 4: 17, Acts 2: 38 and learn what this Gospel is all about. Otherwise we are about to alert the entire world to the possibility that you are used of the anti-Christ to lull Christendom through illusory vices into a spiritual indiscretion of Matthew 25: 3. We would be too unwise not to learn from Luke 16: 19 – 31 about the fate of people who enjoy their everyday lives. We cannot enjoy like that man. We enjoy differently – it sprouts and springs from within. Forsake everything that inspires the Iscariot spirit amongst believers. What the tsotsi had said about the anointing substance being sold and the poor cared for [John 12: 4 – 6] has taken a new shape in the greedy clergy telling us to give them money so they can take care of the poor. Who does not know that they take a huge chunk of the collected monies for their selfish enjoying everyday life agendas? Yes, they do go to Haiti and contribute something, which they magnify as they build their egos for ensuring future plunders. We all feel we must assist, for we are convinced that it is for a genuine humanistic purpose. The hedonistic pursuit is hidden under this cloak of philanthropic compassion. Who funds their elegant lifestyles? Is it God? Why did He not give Paul a similarly exuberant lifestyle? We are not letting anyone erode the integrity of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We are prepared to die for this Course. We, from within and without Africa, will campaign against the TBN. You will meet opposition right in America. We are looking forward to your Christian cooperation. Yours in Christ Jesus
Lereko Ishmael Mamonyane Antioch Evangelical Mission Pretoria, South Africa +27 82 807 4467 What are your thoughts on this article?
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