Bethel is up to it again...selling the heretical and insulting concept of a "poverty mindset."

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Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. -- Philippians 3: 17-21 (ESV)

http://krisvallotton.com/god-want-wealthy/

The much chronicled heresies from Bethel Church continue. As we have noted before, Bethel is really a new blueprint for heretical churches in that they embrace nearly every false teaching and mash them together into an essentially undiscernible hodgepodge of mystical religiosity. Bethel is ground zero for the false signs and lying wonders movement, as they have bragged about having all of the false manifestation -- gem stones, gold dust and angel feathers. Lead Pastor Bill Johnson actually claimed that angel feathers just start magically falling all around him from the heavens when he was having breakfast at a diner. Bethel is also the place that the "glory cloud" false manifestation began. Bethel runs a "school for the supernatural where they believe they can teach the gifts of the Holy Spirit to people despite the Bible assuring us that only the Spirit decides when, where and to whom the gifts go. Bethel is big on the experiential Christianity that says we must tap into our wickedly deceitful hearts and whatever pops into our mind therefore must be from God. The enemy of this is Scripture of course, which Bethelites will refer to as a "box" that us legalists have placed God into. Bill Johnson is a leader in the NAR movement and teaches the seven mountains mandate nonsense. They also constantly preach sloppy agape and dabble in the antinomianism of Joseph Prince. One of their core beliefs is God is in a good mood! Bethel has a "dead raising team" that claims 15 resurrections to their credit without a shred of proof and the infamous grave sucking garbage comes from there as well. In any one given service you stand a good chance of hearing nearly all of these theologies in one sitting. It is not wonder then that regular adherents of Bethel are so hopelessly confused.

Today however, we will deal with yet another popular false teaching they love -- the prosperity gospel. The chief resident whore of selling God out at Bethel is Kris Vallotton. He is the number two person in charge there after Bill Johnson and above you will find a link to his latest blog post asking that question Jesus never asked -- does God want you to be wealthy? I know the answer! I used to always give the halfhearted feel good answer of "of course He does." The more I read the Bible however I realized that is not correct. The truth is that if the question on your heart is if God wants you to be rich then the answer is no. You cannot serve both God and money beloved. So let us reason together as we review Vallotton's recent attempt to pimp out our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

"There are a lot of people who don't know God and are rich. However, there are also people who are specifically blessed by God with wealth, and their blessing is in direct relationship with their relationship with God. Could it be true that wealth can be a sign of your relationship with God? Today I want to encourage you with this thought: is it possible that God is wanting to bless you with His resources beyond what you can currently hope for? If that's you, then let's get your hopes up!" -- Kris Vallotton

Let us start there beloved. These are raised hopes of Christians that will mostly go unanswered. Let's face it. Most people are simply not rich. It just came out this week that half of the wealth in this world is consolidated into the top one percent of people. The once proud Middle Class has been squeezed into the working poor. Most live paycheck to paycheck and the average credit card debt is approaching $17,000 per person. Can some escape this reality into wealth? Sure; but the vast majority simply will not. So what happens when someone claiming the mantle of Christianity starts raising their hopes that God wants them to be wealthy? I remember recently reading the comments section of a Facebook post from Joel Osteen ministries. The post was the same benign pablum he always shovels about how much God wants to bless your socks off. The comments however were so disheartening. There was one person who was genuinely confused. He said he had been tithing correctly as Osteen instructs and even given sacrificially above his tithe for years yet he was still facing foreclosure in 30 days. He said he was believing in faith and speaking God's promises into existence only to still be facing homelessness within a month. The people who tried to encourage him meant well but they had been so poorly taught all they could offer was more pablum. I stand in the gap with you. You have to have faith as a mustard seed. God will never leave you. All of these are biblical truths but they have been taught they are magical incantations that will stop a house from being foreclosed and they are not.

The second point here is one I always point out when prosperity pimps preach. If your gospel cannot be preached outside of your country and around the entire world, then it is not His Gospel and thus is false. The Gospel transcends time, culture, and the intricacies of this world. The same Gospel that saved a Jewish fisherman in 30 AD is the same Gospel that saved an Anglican farmer in the sixth Century and a Japanese businessman in the 20^th. It is the same Gospel that saved me in 2002. The problem with many heretics is they cater their abominations solely for their audience. Take a look at the picture above of Christians living in abject poverty in Pakistan. Or consider the Christians living in the underground church in China or being martyred in the Iraq. Their lives were determined solely by where they were born. Now imagine saying the following to them:

There are people who are specifically blessed by God with wealth, and their blessing is in direct relationship with their relationship with God.

Could it be true that wealth can be a sign of your relationship with God?

Today I want to encourage you with this thought: is it possible that God is wanting to bless you with His resources beyond what you can currently hope for?

How unbelievably insulting. Wealth is not necessarily a sign of blessing from God. Not even close. Let us turn to a parable from Jesus trying to explain to people the dangers of materialism and wealth:

'Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry."' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."' -- Luke 12: 13-21 (ESV)

Is it not ironic that Jesus tells this parable in response to the obvious covetousness displayed? That is the same covetousness displayed by Kris Vallotton. The parable itself is pretty straightforward. Here is the question. Is there any indication that the initial prosperity this man experienced was a sign of blessing from God? Absolutely not! He did not consider God in his abundance so why would we conclude he had considered Him before? Can you imagine looking at the mother of starving children and telling her that wealth is a sign of your relationship with God? What arrogant and disgusting nonsense. Unfortunately he would continue with bullet points summarizing the accompanying video teaching:

"" Deuteronomy 8:18 says, "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day."

" God said He'd make them wealthy so that when people see their wealth, they know that they have relationship with Him.

" I understand that not all wealth is attached to a relationship with God, but theirs was.

" Wealth is a power and not just a condition." -- Kris Vallotton

Yes Kris and Deuteronomy 8:19 says if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, that you shall surely perish. Considering the vast heresies you teach, it would seem verse 19 is more appropriate. More to the point beloved this is borderline criminal what Vallotton is doing with the Bible. No doubt he Googled "Verses with wealth" and when this came up he strip mined it out context to give the impression that it applies to you. The full context shows this is God speaking to Israel and the wealth discussed is agricultural in reference to the Promised Land. Now, can God give anyone the power to yield great wealth? Sure, He is God. He also however may decide times of struggle, doubt, uncertainty or any number of afflictions. Other circumstances are merely circumstances of living in this fallen world. God allows all through His permissive will but that does not mean He has designed it that way through His decretive will. It is actually no wonder that the poorer countries often have the greatest faith. They do not have this kind of nonsense to distract them from the only thing of value -- Jesus.

"" God's the one who gives people the power to make wealth, which is the magnetic attraction to prosperity.

" God intends wealth to be a sign that His people have made a covenant with Him." -- Kris Vallotton

Talk about a switcheroo. He admits in the opening that not all rich people know God (most do not). Yet now he is stating as fact that God gives people the power to make wealth based on one cherry picked verse when He was speaking to Israel and warning them at the same time. Then he leap frogs to quite a telling conclusion. For Kris Vallotton, wealth is the magnetic attraction to prosperity. To be prosperous is to have money. I expected no more from a shameless shill but to see him admit it still remarkable. Prosperity is not about family, love, God, salvation, or helping people. Nope. It's all about the Benjamins. He then takes this unbiblical absurdity further into the gutter by proclaiming that God intends wealth to be a sign of covenant with His people. Except that is nowhere in the Bible Kris. What about all of those rich people who do not know God? Is God confused? What about the underground Chinese church, the martyrs in the Middle East or the people in the picture above? I guess they are just not in covenant with God. This is a despicable teaching from the pit of hell.

"" The word wealth in this verse is the word "chayil" which means strength, efficiency, wealth and an army.

" "Chayil" is used in Deuteronomy 3:18 where it says, ""Then I commanded you at that time, saying, 'The Lord your God has given you this land to possess it; all you valiant men shall cross over armed before your brothers, the sons of Israel."

" The word "valiant" here is also the word "power" in Deuteronomy 8:18.

" When God says I'm going to give you the power to make wealth, it's the same word as valiant men. When God anointed them with power it was like valiant men were going out to bring prosperity to them. It wasn't just attracting prosperity to them, it was a valiant strength that pulled prosperity into their life!" -- Kris Vallotton

Ahh, this is a logical fallacy known as the Illegitimate Totality Transfer, which means to illegitimately (wrongly) transfer a word's total possible meanings, with all its variations and nuances, and forcing them all into a particular context. So yes, Chayil can mean army, wealth, strength, valiant and power. It just cannot mean them all at the same time! His conclusion thus is asinine.

"I want to be clear that I'm not saying that all you have to do is believe God for His provision and it's like a magic trick where all of a sudden it's raining dollars from heaven (if that happens to you please share your story, because wow!) However, I am saying that your internal world dictates your external reality. What you believe about God and yourself will manifest in the realities around you. So, if we are going to be the kind of people who demonstrate God's abundance on earth as it is in heaven, it starts with believing it for ourselves." -- Kris Vallotton

The sheep beating and poverty shaming continues. So I guess those indigent children in South America are allowing their internal world dictate their external reality? Seriously Kris? This is what Bethel and Kris often refer to as having a "poverty mindset." That people are poor essentially by choice of how they think. While this is the rudest part of this trash, the saddest is that Kris Vallotton believes that demonstrating God's abundance on earth as it is in heaven only means money. No abundance of grace, mercy or love. No abundance of humility, forgiveness, or compassion. That's all for suckers. Show me the money. Thankfully, he concludes:

"Activation for the Week - Perhaps your first step towards a wealthy mindset today is recognizing that God does want His children to be wealthy. He wants His children to prosper, to have an ecosystem of kingdom stewardship in their soul, and be able to share and bless others with what He gives them. This week I encourage you to take some time to pray about your inner beliefs towards God's wealth in your own life. This isn't a "cure all" solution but it's a great first step towards recognizing obstacles or possible lies you're believing about prosperity in your life. I bless you today with grace to receive the power to make wealth, just as it says in Deuteronomy 8:18. I bless you with a revelation in your spirit of the valiant strength available to you to make wealth! Is it easy to believe God for wealth in your own life? Where are you in the process of breaking out of a poverty mindset? -- Kris Vallotton

Activation for the week? More high sounding nonsense. So according to Bethel and Vallotton, God always wants His children to be wealthy and prosper. That we just need to think God wants us rich and abracadabra! No more poverty mindset! Somewhere in some dark corner of the world tonight one of our Christian brothers or sisters is trying to figure out how to get a slice of bread to possibly feed their family something tomorrow. Kris Vallotton's teaching is that they have a poverty mindset and need to think wealth into reality because it is a sign of covenant between them and God. As the key verses today teach us, there are many who simply walk as enemies of the cross of Christ and Kris Vallotton is one of them. His end is destruction. His god is his belly. His glory is his shame. His mind is set on earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven. Let us fix our eyes there and upon our Savior, the only true prosperity we should seek.

Reverend Anthony Wade -- November 16, 2017

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.