Revival is Like Judgment Day - Part 4

Or, covetous. Do you know what the word covetous means? It's greedy. Or, cheating. Idolatrous, those who make an idol out of something. Reviling, or drunken. That's like addicted. The scripture is very clear about this. So I'm going to switch to another side. Not merely the question of sexual immorality, but to that of covetousness. I'll speak as frankly as I can. We're cursed today with what I call the prosperity cult. You know how the Buddhists say, Abraham is the type. God wants me to be as wealthy as Abraham. Well, I thought to myself, you know, Abraham had at least 600 people working for him. In fact, he had an army, and he went and defeated several other kings in that area of the world. He had quite a lot of subordinates. They couldn't all be Abrahams. And I don't think God calls all of us to be Abrahams. To say that Abraham is the type makes nonsense of the gospel. I wonder if these people have ever heard the verse, If any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross. Rather than listen to some of them, I frankly would think highly of a Roman Catholic saint, a living one, Mother Teresa, who's denied herself by living in one of the worst slums in the world. I wonder if any of the newspapers today reach Mother Teresa, what she'd think of present controversy. I heard someone say, You know, for the Lord has promised for those who are persecuted for his sake, anyone whose father or mother or children or houses or lands, for my sake and the gospel, shall be restored unto him, father, mother, brethren, and so forth. Now, this verse needs to be interpreted. I heard this man say, Houses and lands. You know what that means, he said? It means that the devil has far too much real estate and we are told to liberate it. How do they liberate it? They take the Lord's money and buy property for themselves. Now, you might say, well, what does the scripture teach? I once talked to a fellow called, I wonder if anybody ever heard of Bill Jones. He used to pay for the presidential prayer breakfasts in Washington. He was a man who gave 90% of his business income to God. Kept only 10% for himself. And he pointed out to me when I was helping him write a book, he wrote a book on stewardship. He said the only validation for money making in the scripture is for stewardship to help those who are in need. In other words, God will bless anyone who will become a steward for him. I found something else interesting. Seldom does God call one who ministers the word to the ministry of money making. They're two separate callings. So when you hear of some pastor floating a scheme of developing some oil field somewhere, you know he's headed for disaster. He hasn't enough gumption to run an oil field anyway. So God raises up people to be stewards. Hudson Taylor had his friend who helped finance him in the China Inland Mission. The only reason given in scripture in the New Testament for money making is to be stewards of God. So I don't go for this so-called prosperity cult. Now I want to avoid present personalities. So I'm going to mention I had a dear friend in Ireland, Charles Coulter, who was the greatest man of prayer I knew in my young days. He told me, he's dead now, but he told me some years ago, maybe even 20 years ago, that a certain Texan, I just mentioned he was a Texan so that you won't jump to conclusions I'm referring to somebody else from some other state and others I'm camouflaging. I wouldn't even venture it. I have a name in the back of my mind, but I don't know if you're sure that's the person. This Texan went to the north of Ireland. Now the north of Ireland people are like the Scots, very careful with their money. This man had a campaign. Big tent, summertime. He tantalized the crowd by announcing that God had given him a special revelation that week, but had forbidden him to share it with anyone. Well, then I thought, why did he tell them? Curiosity built up. Some people would ask him and he'd say, No, God hasn't given me any permission to share this special revelation that I have. Until Thursday. He announced that God had given him permission to share it to the men only. At a special breakfast on Saturday morning. Every woman there made sure her husband was at that breakfast. Now he spoke on tithing. They'd heard things about tithing before. But he said the special revelation deals with this subject. Now he said, I'm going to put a proposition before you. If God gave you a thousand pounds more this year to your income, would you be prepared to give him a hundred? So most of those hard-headed businessmen and farmers said, Yeah, if I had a thousand pounds, sure. Nine hundred for me, a hundred for God, sure. He said, make another bet. He said, God gave you ten thousand pounds. Would you give him a thousand? And they were busy calculating and he was having heads and odds and so forth. He said, if you're more modest than that, if God gave you just a hundred pounds more, would you give him ten? And he had agreement. Now he said, that's not the revelation. The revelation is this. You give the money first. In that way, you enable God to do this for you. That releases God so that he can help you. And you know the bottom line. He passed out subscription forms. And my friend, the Irishman, told me he saw a letter from that man back in Texas saying, I sure took in those farmers and businessmen, didn't I? I have the painful duty of dealing with someone in Christian work not so long ago. One of the most painful experiences I ever had. When because of his deceitful ways, we finally subpoenaed his bank accounts. Found he was a millionaire. And found he was stealing the Lord's money. Putting into one account, changing to a second account, putting into a third account, what we call laundering dirty money. Well, it was the Lord's money, but it was dirtied by his hands. We, as a committee, asked him to return the money. He defied us. We said, we'll sue you. He said, you can't sue me. Why not? Well, Christians are not allowed to sue each other. I said, you must read the scripture. It says, dare any of you sue each other before the law? Are you not able to settle it yourselves? That's the corollary. Are you all right? You settle it and we won't sue you. Besides, I said, it says in the scripture, if we are going to judge angels, are you not able to settle trivial matters among the brethren? Trivial matters. Embezzlement is not a trivial matter. It's a crime. Would the pastor of a church, if he found a member had committed murder, help to hide the man? No, he'd say, look, give yourself...