"It's like Caleb who at 85 years old in Joshua 14 said give me this mountain and he conquered it. Just like the daughters of Zelophehad had said, give us a possession. God says possess your possessions. Deuteronomy 11:24a says that every place upon which the sole of your foot touches shall be yours!" - Joseph Prince
This is just an assault on scripture. Prince leaves out that the land Caleb referred to was already promised to him for standing in faith 40 years earlier. Prince however pretends this is just like the daughters of Zelophehad demanding their possessions as well. Prince's god? As any good cosmic bellhop, he gets the bags as ordered. What is more egregious however is superimposing Deuteronomy 11 over this false theology. This verse fragment is not God saying to us today that wherever we walk is ours. It was God promising to Israel about their promised land - assuming they kept Him as the Lord their God and kept the law. Spoiler alert! They could not do this within their own selves. This was why God needed to send His only Son to save us. For Joseph Prince however this all gets reduced to a transactional Christianity that gives us whatever we want in this life but ignores the eternal life with God and leads to our eternal demise. Still, he persists:
"Lets' look at Caleb's daughter, Achsah. The bible tells us in Joshua 15:18b-19 that she is asked, what do you wish? She answered, "give me a blessing" - I love that spirit! You know there are a lot of Christians who pray bless me prayers and people disparage that. Let me tell you this - God loves bless me prayers because unless you are blessed you cannot be a blessing. If you are sick all of the time or broke all of the time you cannot help anybody. So God wants to bless you first. God sent Jesus to bless you! To turn you away from all of your sins. God has promised for you and your families days of heaven upon the earth in Deuteronomy 11:21 - it's a family blessing." - Joseph Prince
Once again Prince finds a story in the bible that fits the narrative he was looking for - somebody asking for a blessing. The context Prince ignores is that this chapter is specifically dealing with the allocation of land to each of the tribes. Since the portion given to Achsah was known for being dry, she asks for springs and her father gives these to her. This is not some deep dark gnostic secret hidden in the text that grants us the right or ability to ask God for anything and expect the answer will always be yes! Then we see into the dark heart of Prince's theology. It is all about money. I know people who are sick who bless people with their support and understanding. I know people every day who bless people wo do not have two nickels to rub together. Did Jesus have money? Did the Apostles have money? Jesus teaches us over and over again how difficult it is for a rich man to find eternal life and that the love of money is the root of all evil while Joseph Prince teaches you that you can't even bless someone without money. As for Deuteronomy:
that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. - Deuteronomy 11:21 (ESV)
Notice what Prince does here. The verse does not claim that God will give you, or even Israel, days of heaven upon the earth. All this is saying is that the promises God makes are valid as long as the heavens are above the earth. A great promise yes but not this mystical creation Prince has concocted.
"Back to Joshua 15, she not only says give me a blessing, but give me springs of water. Notice - give me, give me, give me - and God loves it! In 1Chronicles 4 we see Jabez cry out that God would "bless me and enlarge my territory." God loves it when His people want more from Him." - Joseph Prince
Give me, give me, give me - and God loves it. No beloved, He does not. This is nothing more than a spoiled brat Christianity. Entire books were written about the error of praying the prayer of Jabez. This was once again a text that comes from historical narrative hijacked by a charlatan who wants you to believe it is a prescriptive text for you today. I do not need to hear anything more. These ten minutes suffice for us to know it cannot be redeemed. Prince believes that we should be greedy little Christians and sets out to find any biblical story where God gave people what they asked for. The problem is he ignores the individual context of each occurrence to pretend God wrote it just for you. Listen, petitioning God for what we might want is a perfectly appropriate part of prayer. In the end however, it is His will that matters. His answer of "no" is for a reason we cannot even fathom and may never know. THAT is faith. It is knowing that God always answers for our best interest and His grand plan. That should be enough for any professing Christian.
