" But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today." Deut. 8:18
The cash cow of Pentecostalism has lined the pockets of its oppressors, suppressed the spirits of its congregants, and has left God's Ekklesia vulnerable. This machine, when left running idle and unattended, has the ability to crush even the most astute of men when its antidote of discernment and the spirit of God are not applied. The crook in the neck of the Church, (always modeling its self after the world and not after God,) has taken a spiral down into the plight of spiritual bankruptcy. She is no longer thought of as a beacon of wealth and resources to a needy world, nor is she thought of as a reputable refuge. She has become a stain. In her attempt to become bigger and better, she has become just another corporation replete with its own offices for the disenfranchised, and the collaterally damaged. And as most big corporations go, the hierarchy gleans the cream while the laborers scurry for the remnants. It's not personal- it's just business.
In 2008, Detroit's Big Three automakers went to congress asking for a bail-out to avert bankruptcy. Their combined debt was an astronomical $80.7 billion dollars! They lamented over the collateral damage of its 1 million employees, sang a few Kumbaya's, and someone else saw to the mending. The long and the short of the story was that they received a $25 billion dollar lifeline. Why? Because of their alliance. The Treasury Department lent money and bought stock ownership in GM and Chrysler. It provided incentives to spur new car purchases; in effect, the government "nationalized" GM and Chrysler. However, in the midst of this bail-out, Americans grasped their pearls at the over $300 million dollars given to their CEOs as severance pay in the form of cash and stock awards! Over a decade later, GM is in the black, the government has technically been paid back, but its employees along with the American taxpayers are left gleaning the fields.
Whether it's the lure of expansion, a bigger edifice for their congregation, or the competitiveness at play in obtaining the district's best choir, the Modus Operandi of the Pentecostal church has morphed! And it's showing off in your Sunday morning extravaganzas which masquerades as praise and worship service. The business-as-usual attitude of sliding in new talent for their so-called worship services at the chagrin and despair of their current loyal musicians and worship leaders, reads like a page from the television series American Idol. The behind the curtain castigations, with their inflictions of pain and disrespect, is not to the glory of God.
When pastors act like CEOs whose eyes only see the bottom line, and they make these money moves seeking alliances with the world, and its influencers the results are God's children being handled, and marketed like a Wall Street commodity. These obtuse, executive decisions to move God's people around like chattel in an attempt to lure in more members, by dangling "celebrity praise and worship leaders" under their noses is reprehensible. The slick, repackaging and product rebranding, in an attempt to line the pockets of the church as well as the pastor's grip, is an insult to God and His most beloved.
Since the Church, and especially the Pentecostal church has now prided itself as businessmen, then I urge its decision-makers to do a little self-inventory and abort your current collision course which is now running like Big Pharma. You have become a self- sacrificing machine- praying upon the weak while holding them hostage to their own needs. This constant need to reinvent the wheel, (bible) with your heretical teachings, church monopolies and perversion of scripture is “just doing business" to you! And just as the business of the American pharmaceutical industry, it is rigged to make a handful of people wealthy! The sick and the infirmed among your four walls cry out for the clean, pure unadulterated Word of God and you throw them crumbs! Never enough for deliverance- but just enough for dependence! Never enough for enlightenment- but just enough to keep them coming back ... until the next big thing comes to town with a prettier voice, a few more slick chords, or a greater following!
“I rebuke you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” because your spiritual elitism is not of God, nor is his Ekklesia your "portion!"