by Andrew Corbett | Oct 22, 2008 | Theology
“Give to my ministry” announced the Televangelist, “and Lord will cancel all your debts!” These and other claims by ‘Prosperity Preachers’ are also suspiciously linked to the size of the “seed” someone “sows” into their ministry. In more recent times this prosperity teaching has even been linked to the collapse in the sub-prime mortgage market and the eventual global economic melt-down! But if the Prosperity Gospel was only about money, we could perhaps tolerate it. But it encompasses much, much more dangerous dogma than that!
In a recent Time Magazine Online article, it questions the influence of Word of Faith preaching on the Sub-Prime Mortgage collapse. Before this article appeared though, many pastors, Bible teachers, and theologians were screaming from the roof-tops about some of the dangers of the “Prosperity Gospel”. But such roof-top screaming fades into a whimper compared to the massive media resources available to the super-preachers of the Prosperity Gospel. This “Gospel” not only baptises materialism and avarice but it denies some of the most essential Christian doctrines and replaces them with what can only be described as cultic teaching and practice. The Prosperity Gospel is also known as “Word of Faith” theology, or the “Health, Wealth, Happiness Gospel”. Its most public proponents are all televangelists who appeal to their audiences for donations- with promises of God’s miraculous financial blessing according to the amount donated. All of these preachers have testimonials from people who have given to their ministry and allegedly miraculously prospered as a result. There are some televangelists who are probably charlatans because they have discovered that Christians are gullible cash-cows. But many of these Prosperity Preachers are sincere, genuine, and nice people- its just that their theology is fatally flawed with dangerous errors!
by Andrew Corbett | May 30, 2008 | Apologetics, articles
It was C.S. Lewis who said – “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” Human experience tends to confirm Lewis’s assessment. We are spiritual beings who are intuitively supernatural. Atheists object to this assessment though. They assert that there is nothing supernatural and that the uninformed are not being spiritual but rather “superstitious”. But when Christians, who claim to be spiritual, behave superstitiously and call it “revival”, we have to think that’s an odd Gospel, or perhaps a “Todd Gospel”…
by Andrew Corbett | Jul 10, 2007 | articles
This is the question I was recently asked to address to a gathering of year 9 school students. Before I could address this question though, I needed to share some insights into how we generally answer such objections to Christianity. Before we answer a question like this we have to identify the propositions within the question. This particular question has two propositions- since it assumes something about God, and something about the world in which we live.
For a question to be reasonable its propositions must be true. For example, a question like, “Why do all criminals chew gum?” assumes that all criminals chew gum. Another example might be “If God created everything, who created God?” This question assumes that everything (including God) has been created- when logic demands that something must be eternal (it has always existed) since it is illogical that something could spring from nothing.
by Andrew Corbett | Jan 22, 2007 | Devotions
Perhaps the most unrecognised writer within all of Christendom is the little known, but widely read, Frank William (F.W.) Boreham. Despite being unknown to most Australians he is still the best selling Australian author of all time with many of his books going into as many as 40 reprint editions! Today his books are collector’s items selling for around $500 each, and even up to $1000. They are now mostly available from the U.K. and U.S.A. And little wonder. When introduced to an assembly of Presbyterian Pastors in Scotland in 1936, he was introduced with…
