A Review of the book, “God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies” by Graeme Adams, Senior Pastor, Ballymoney Elim Pentecostal Church, Ballymoney, Northern Ireland:
What this book is not, is as important as what it is. It’s not a drive by hit job. It’s not a rant. It’s not a cold graceless cheap shot at an easy target, nor is it a snipers bullet fired from a safe distance. Costi is no spiritual trophy hunter. He is fully engaged in a very real spiritual battle to bring truth to those entangled in the deception of the Prosperity Gospel.
Costi’s story is a disarmingly honest up close and personal account of a life lived within the household of Prosperity Gospel Royalty and his painful journey out of it. That’s what makes this book as heart rending as it is heart warming, as painful as it is persuasive, and as compassionate as it is convincing.
Starting with the Preface Costi wastes no time in clearly laying out his motivation and purpose for writing. His passion for the Glory of God above all things is made clear early on, and it’s this guiding conviction that shapes the book. In the end we are left in no doubt that Costi Hinn has been transformed by the grace of God and longs for his beloved family and others to come to the life transforming knowledge of Jesus Christ.
In the first chapter the reader is immediately plunged into the life of the young ‘royal’ as we see the nonchalant teen-age Costi almost missing out on his ‘prosperity gospel inheritance’ over a mess of Cheez-Its! What follows is a fascinating insight into the Hinn familys’ rise from humble beginnings in war torn Israel in 1967 to lavish riches in what became their Promised Land, North America.
Life for the young prince of prosperity wasn’t all a bed of roses though; there were tough and testing times as a kid in the school environment where the Hinn name was more a burden than a blessing. All of this was brought to a head, so to speak! (read the book) by a shocking incident involving a skateboard! However in that moment Costi encountered incredible kindness instead of the rejection he assumed was coming his way, prompting this from the confused kid… “What in the world is wrong with these people?” Later he would reflect… “At the time, I believed I had a special anointing they most certainly didn’t have. Looking back, I can see they were the ones who possessed something I didn’t have. Grace.”
The story of uncle George and his illness in chapter 3 is heart-breaking and highlights some of the most callous abuses found in the Word of Faith movement. If this were an isolated case it would be bad enough, but sadly as Costi and many others have documented, it is all too common within the sphere of influence of the Prosperity Gospel. This account alone should be enough to wake up and motivate all right minded people to compassionate and concerted efforts to highlight these abuses and rescue those caught in this snare.
As Costi toured the world serving Uncle Benny he began to be awakened to see what was really going on around him and what he himself had now become a part of. Following a particularly “slimy” appeal for financial offerings in Helsinki he felt very uncomfortable, he recalls, “I cringed. It was as though suddenly I had a conscience.” Later, on a ministry trip to India the stark contrast between the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Word Of Faith royalty and the grinding poverty and hopelessness he witnessed prompted him to have a further crisis of conscience. These poor people would be among those called upon to give sacrificially ‘to God’ later at the huge ‘miracle mission’. Costi, “I felt confused and angry. What’s wrong with this picture? I wondered.” By the grace of God it wouldn’t be too much longer till he found the answer to that question.
Costi’s account of what he refers to as his ‘grace awakening’ is simple and supernatural, yes the two very often go together without the need for razzmatazz, or background music. Clearly the greatest miracle of all can and does still happen today…‘at Bethesda’! I’ll not spoil the moment with a quote, get the book and read it for yourself; it’s worth it for this paragraph alone.
This is not the kind of book you can read and forget easily. I found it to be captivating, compelling and deeply challenging, it is a clarion call to action.
What now for Costi Hinn? What now for us? What now for those who care passionately about the glory of God and the true life transforming Gospel? What now for those ensnared in deception and lost in darkness? We surely cannot pass by on the other side and pretend that we don’t see what is happening, can we? We must know by now that this so called Prosperity Gospel is much more than a flash in the pan; it’s a wild and strange fire that is threatening to consume our house!
In this excellent book Costi has sounded an alarm and has succeeded in doing what too few of us even attempt to do, and that is to explicitly expose error by speaking out with courage, compassion, clarity and consistency.
As Costi so rightly says, we are all in some way part of the problem. “We’ve collectively played some role in the rise of prosperity theology at some point. Whether by passive silence or active participation, we allow false gospels to get a footing. We need to take responsibility together, whether we believe we should or not, to eradicate evils like the prosperity gospel. That begins with committing ourselves to defending the true gospel at all costs.” (157)
The ‘fall out’ from Costi’s ‘grace awakening’ clearly reminds us that Following Christ Costs! Costi has, Like Moses before him … “…considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt…” (Hebrews 11:26) Following Jesus has cost Costi Hinn in many ways, but that’s what he signed up for. What did we ‘sign up’ for?… ‘anything for a quiet life’ is not a good answer.
(The book is due for release on July 9, 2019 and can be pre-ordered now)
by Steven Lawson
Why did God create? Certainly not because He needed someone to love. Throughout all eternity past, God enjoyed perfect love and intimate communion within His own being. The three persons of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Spirit—enjoyed perfect relationships and completely fulfilled one another. Thus, God was not inwardly lonely or personally empty; He was entirely self-satisfied, self-content, and self-contained. So God did not create because of some limitation within Himself. Instead, He created everything out of nothing in order to put His glory on display for the delight of His created beings and that they might declare His greatness. The book of Genesis records God’s extraordinary display of sovereignty in speaking creation into being—and in saving it.
In Genesis, Moses first recorded the stunning demonstration of God’s sovereignty in creation. God did not look down the tunnel of time and see the universe evolve out of nothing. He did not foresee a big bang and then adopt the chaotic results as His eternal plan. To the contrary, God intentionally spoke into being everything out of nothing. He was under no coercion to create. There was no external pressure upon Him. Rather, His act of creation magnificently displayed His imperial sovereignty. No outside restraints can be placed upon God’s supreme authority, not by Satan and his fallen angels, and certainly not by mere men.
A. W. Pink writes with thought-provoking wonder of the extraordinary sovereignty of God before creation:
In the great expanse of eternity, which stretches behind Genesis 1:1, the universe was unborn and creation existed only in the mind of the great Creator. In His sovereign majesty God dwelt all alone. We refer to that far distant period before the heavens and the earth were created. There were then no angels to hymn God’s praises, no creatures to occupy His notice, no rebels to be brought into subjection. The great God was all alone amid the awful silence of His own vast universe. But even at that time, if time it could be called, God was sovereign. He might create or not create according to His own good pleasure. He might create this way or that way; He might create one world or one million worlds, and who was there to resist His will? He might call into existence a million different creatures and place them on absolute equality, endowing them with the same faculties and placing them in the same environment; or, He might create a million creatures each differing from the others, and possessing nothing in common save their creaturehood, and who was there to challenge His right? If He so pleased, He might call into existence a world so immense that its dimensions were utterly beyond finite computation; and were He so disposed, He might create an organism so small that nothing but the most powerful microscope could reveal its existence to human eyes. It was His sovereign right to create, on the one hand, the exalted seraphim to burn around His throne, and on the other hand, the tiny insect which dies the same hour that it is born. If the mighty God chose to have one vast graduation in His universe, from loftiest seraph to creeping reptile, from revolving worlds to floating atoms, from macrocosm to microcosm, instead of making everything uniform, who was there to question His sovereign pleasure?
God’s dazzling display of sovereignty in creation was a primer on His right to rule in matters of salvation. God, who commanded the light to appear on day one of creation, soon would order gospel light to shine into the darkened hearts of spiritually blind sinners. God, who separated the waters on day two, would cause an infinite chasm to separate Himself from sinners. God, who gathered the waters together on day three, would gather sinners to Himself. God, who created the sun, moon, and stars on day four, would omnipotently create saving faith. God, who began to create the animal kingdom on day five, would graciously send His Son to be the Lamb of God to take away sin. God, who created Adam and Eve on day six, would soon re-create sinners into His image. His free grace would perform the second Genesis in the salvation of lost men and women.
This excerpt is taken from Foundations of Grace by Steven Lawson.