Tag Archives: perry noble

“Tithe for 90 days and God will bless you — or your money back!” and other scams

An old investment scam went like this: A stock tip would be sent to random people, but half the people would be told the stock would go up, and half that it would go down.  It was a free, no-strings-attached offer designed to build trust with whichever half got the correct advice.  This would go on for a few rounds until the remaining group thought they were getting advice from Warren Buffet himself, as in, “Wow, this guy has been right 6 times in a row!  Please take lots of my money and invest it for me!”  Of course that would be the last they’d see of their money.

I was reminded of that scam when I read about this:Texas Megachurch Promises 100 Percent Refund in Tithe Challenge if ‘God Doesn’t Hold True to His Promise of Blessings’.

Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, led by Pastor Ed Young, has launched a 90-Day Challenge, encouraging members of the multi-campus megachurch to put God to the test by “bringing their tithes and offerings to the House.” “Each of us has a unique opportunity to be a part of the incredible life change happening around us at Fellowship Church by bringing our tithes and offerings to the House,” reads a description of the 90-Day Challenge. “If you are not tithing already, the 90-Day Challenge is the best place to start. We commit to you that if you tithe for 90 days and God doesn’t hold true to his promise of blessings, we will refund 100 percent of your tithe.”

Think about it: If you feel extra-blessed during the 90 days, you’ll keep tithing, so the church will win.  And even if you don’t feel blessed and they return your money, there is no net loss for them.  You weren’t tithing before, right?  And think about how few people will actually contact the church to demand a refund even if they didn’t feel extra-blessed.  According to false teacher Perry Noble’s video, all you have to do is call God a liar and they’ll return the money, no questions asked.

Why don’t they just preach the Bible accurately and skip the gimmicks?

2 Corinthians 9: 6-7 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

There was no mention of a tithe there.  The only mention in the entire New Testament was where Jesus whales on the Pharisees for tithing on their garden spices but neglecting the weightier matters of the law.

My official stance on giving is captured in Thoughts on tithing: Something to offend everyone!, where I note that if God expected the poorest Israelite to tithe and more, then maybe 10% isn’t so unreasonable to aim at.  It is a nice round number.  In fact, most of the people reading this are in the riches 1-2% of people who have ever lived.  Yet I would never want to suck the joy out of giving, so why would I be legalistic and demand a specific percentage when Jesus didn’t do so?  These guys distract from the Gospel and make the church look foolish to non-believers.

It is pretty obvious who will really be “blessed’ by this tithe campaign.  My prayer is that those being challenged with the “90 day tithe” will take 2 Corinthians 9 to heart and give joyfully based on what they have decided in their hearts to give — but that they will give it to a ministry with sound doctrine instead of these 

Hat tip: Glenn

Steven Furtick = false teacher

Steven Furtick is a super-creepy false teacher.  He seems like a mean version of Joel Osteen crossed with a cult leader. This was going to just be a one-liner in a roundup post, but I kept coming across more things about this guy and rapidly growing Elevation Church.

His “Hey Haters” video is comical for its hypocrisy.

He trots out other false teachers like Perry Noble to preach sermons about how great Furtick is, all the while claiming that God gave him that text to preach about Furtick, not Jesus.

Poor guy only has a 16,000 sq. ft. house. It is sad that his “church” is growing so fast and taking in a half-million dollars in weekly donations.

His church has sketchy baptism rituals.

Then there is this coloring assignment for kids at the church.  Yes, it is real.  Yes, he takes a verse about government and applies it to himself.  Yes, it is cult-like.  This reminds me of the episode from The Simpsons where Homer joins a cult (“The leader is great . . .”).

furtick

Update: Furtick knew about the book and loved it.

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He actively discourages Bible study (surprise!) so his followers probably won’t catch on any time soon.  If only they would open the book . . .

Roundup

We still aren’t a Democracy, we’re a Republic — at least we’re supposed to be a Republic.  We would probably be better off if high schools and colleges just showed this 10 min. video instead of a semester of a government class.

Hat tip: Economics for Morons

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New peer-reviewed paper in Nature falsifies Darwinian junk DNA prediction — more embarrassment for Darwinists that will get little if any media coverage and definitely won’t be in those expensive textbooks.  But hey, we Christians are totally anti-science so don’t listen to us.

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Obama’s anti-God squad — Make no mistake: He is not a Christian.  The Democratic convention booed God and cheered abortion — including partial-birth abortion, aka infanticide.  They’ve been doing that for a very long time and are just getting more aggressive with it.

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When even declared Socialist Jon Stewart mocks the “tolerant and inclusive” Democrats for their hypocrisy, you know things are bad.

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I couldn’t care less about the pizza restaurant owner who bear-hugged Obama.  But when the Left set out to destroy Chik-Fil-A because the owner said he didn’t believe in square circles (or something like that) then no one should be surprised that people may not want to do business with someone so aggressively partisan.

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Abortion and the black woman — a moving account of what abortion really does, why it typically happens and why there is hope for those who have had them.

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The top 10 foreign policy failures of the Obama administration — They  are all really bad, but I think #3 is the worst.  Sadly, I doubt that many voters are informed of any of them — or worse yet, that they don’t care.

Failure #3: “Unconscionable” Leaks Of Classified Counterterror Information From The White House That Have Been “Devastating”

The Obama White House has released a torrent of leaks of classified counterterror information that has compromised our national security by revealing covert sources and methods. The pace of the leaks quickened as the November election drew nearer, raising the question of whether they were politically motivated. But whether the leaks were politically motivated and intentional or the result of bad management and sloppiness in neither here nor there.  Either case is unacceptable and injurious to the intelligence operatives and uniformed men and women in the field.

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An anti-ID biology professor who doesn’t even know the facts of life, let alone evolution — sadly, this is pretty common.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. You wouldn’t expect a biology professor, of all people, to get the facts of life wrong. You wouldn’t expect a man whose specialty is genetics to overlook the most basic facts about how evolution works. And you certainly wouldn’t expect a scientist who declares that “it is necessary for schools to teach biological evolution” to be ignorant of the key events in human evolution. “Surely,” you might say, “that could never happen.” And yet it did.

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Seen on Facebook, addressing the Sandra Fluke “I’m a law student at an expensive college but can’t pay $9/month for birth control pills, so you should buy them for me” issue:

You insist that I buy your birth control pills but do not allow the men who date you to pay for your dinner. Explain.

Seems like her boyfriend could spring for the birth control expenses.  Or, more apparently her boyfriends.  Hey, they could split the costs.

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Yikes!  This “praise band” played Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Night” to open their service.  And Perry Noble is considered a good preacher by many.

To get an idea of just what Perry Noble, “pastor” of NewSpring, decided to bring into God’s Temple watch the video below. It contains footage of both NewSpring’s

praise band and concert footage of Kiss, the band who wrote the song.

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Arguments do not have testicles (Hat tip: Duane from Facebook) — six excellent responses to the sound bite that men can’t comment on abortion rights because they can’t have babies.

Oddly, those using the argument never realize that it would mean that all those young, single pro-choice men wouldn’t have a say, either.  Those trying to silence the speech of others rarely consider how that becomes a two way street.  It is like those who try to silence Bible-believing Christians for “forcing their religious views” on others, while they are hypocritically affirming of pro-choice religious speech.

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And yet people thought he was the highlight of the convention.  Yes, he is a very compelling speaker.  But if you have a shred of discernment you should program yourself to assume he is lying.

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